haven’t lost your sense of humour anyway.’ He reached across and refilled her glass.
‘Why are you still so angry with me, Kirsten?’ he asked suddenly, with that quiet, disarming directness that always unnerved her. ‘You divorced me, if you remember, not the other way around.’
Was he serious? She wanted to scream at him in that second. The divorce had been a formality. OK, in a rare flash of gentlemanly behaviour he’d allowed her to file for it. But what choice had she had?
She stared at him, her green eyes shimmering with a kind of mutant dislike. What did he expect? she wondered. After the way he had treated her, what the hell did he expect?
She reached for her champagne. ‘I’m not angry,’ she said coldly. ‘That would mean I gave a damn.’
The champagne left a bitter taste in her mouth, which was strange; champagne had never done that before.
‘You know, Kirsten we were both under a lot of strain two years ago. I don’t think either of us was thinking very clearly.’
The gentleness of his tone made her stomach twist in knots.
‘No couple should ever have to go through what we went through.’
She looked down at her hands and tried to close her ears and her mind to the soft words. If he mentioned the unmentionable she would leave, she told herself. She’d just get up and walk out.
‘When I got to England I tried to ring you several times.’ He changed tack. ‘But you never took my calls.’
‘What was the point?’ She looked up at him, relieved that he wasn’t going to delve into the darker area of their break-up. ‘The day you left our marriage was over.’
She saw the flash of annoyance in his eyes and found herself feeling pleased. Pleased that she could inflict just a tiny proportion of the hurt she had felt back on him. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to have this conversation,’ she told him firmly. ‘I don’t even want to be here.’
‘So I gathered.’ His tone was dry. ‘But we’ve got a lot of filming…a lot of work to get through together. I reckon we could do with calling a truce for a while, don’t you?’
She hesitated.
‘We can’t change the past. We can only go forward and learn from it.’
He sounded so sensible, so mature. She knew he was right, but she couldn’t forgive and forget.
‘What do you say?’ he asked. ‘Shall we put our personal differences aside and work smoothly together?’
What choice did she have? she asked herself dismally. She couldn’t get out of working on the film and he obviously wasn’t going to do the decent thing and walk away from his part in it. So the only thing she could do was to try and at least tolerate his presence; otherwise the next few months were going to be hell. She shrugged. ‘I don’t want to work with you, but I’ve already signed the contract.’
‘So that’s a yes, then?’ he asked sardonically.
‘It’s an I’ll try,’ she said huskily, the words sticking in her throat.
‘Good.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll look forward to working with you, Kirsten. I’ve read the reviews about your performance on Broadway. They say you’ve got talent.’
‘You don’t need to try to flatter me, Cal,’ she murmured. ‘A healthy respect between us will suffice.’
He raised his champagne glass. ‘I’ll drink to that.’
She didn’t join him in the toast.
‘Would you like a coffee?’ he asked as she straightened her cutlery on the plate of untouched food.
‘No. I’d like to go,’ she said.
He didn’t argue.
She watched as he summoned a waiter to ask for the bill.
He was probably happy now, thinking that everything was smoothed out between them, thinking that Cal the charmer was victorious again and that they could sweep the past tidily away out of sight. Work could go ahead unimpeded, and that was all Cal really cared about, she thought angrily.
‘So, I’ll see you next week on set,’ he said as she got to her feet.
‘Yes, see you next week.’ She kept her voice light with difficulty. She could be as businesslike as him, she told herself confidently. Cal the charmer would never triumph over her again.
CHAPTER TWO
‘YOU know I’ve always loved you.’
Kirsten’s voice sounded stiff and unnatural even to her own ears. She glanced down at the script on the kitchen table, and read the line again, but it didn’t sound any better; in fact, it sounded worse.
‘Are you still working on that one line?’ Her flatmate Chloe came in and grinned at her with genuine amusement.
‘This is no laughing matter, Chloe.’ Kirsten glanced at the kitchen clock. ‘I’ve got to leave for the studio in five minutes and I’m still no closer to getting a handle on this part.’
‘You’ll be OK once you get on set. It’s just first-day nerves.’
‘Do you think?’ Kirsten wanted to believe that, but honestly she had never felt as nervous as this before.
‘I know so,’ Chloe smiled. ‘But I think you’d better have a look at this before you leave.’ She slipped a glossy magazine down on top of Kirsten’s script.
‘Are you still buying these gossip rags…?’ Kirsten’s voice trailed off as she looked down and saw a picture of herself and Cal leaving Charlie’s restaurant after their lunch together last week.
The headline read, Is Hollywood heartthrob Cal McCormick getting back together again with his ex-wife?
Kirsten tore her eyes away from the article without reading it. ‘Who the hell took that photograph?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t see any reporters outside that restaurant.’
‘Well, you know what they’re like, they were probably hiding up a tree.’ Chloe grinned. ‘Do you want me to read it to you while you get ready?’
‘No, I do not.’ Kirsten pushed it away. ‘I’m ready to go anyway. Hell, I hope my mother hasn’t read that!’
‘Kirsten, half of Hollywood has probably read it. That’s why I thought I’d better show it to you now before you leave. In case anybody says anything.’
‘Thanks, I think.’ Kirsten snatched up her script and her car keys. ‘On that happy note, I had better go,’ she said, sliding dark sunglasses down over her face.
It was only a fifteen-minute drive to the studios. Kirsten flashed her pass to the man on the gate and drove onto the lot with a feeling of doom firmly settled in her stomach. Noticing that the car in the reserved space next to hers had Cal’s name on it didn’t help. He’d probably been here since six this morning, and knew his lines backwards and inside out.
After the fierce heat of the Californian sun it was dark and cool inside the studios. Kirsten made her way to her dressing room and found that the girls from Wardrobe and Hairdressing were already in there.
‘Morning, everyone.’ She tried to smile cheerfully, as if she hadn’t a care in the world, then she noticed the blue negligee hanging alone on the rails. ‘What’s that?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘That’s your costume.’
‘I thought we were doing an outdoor scene today?’
‘Change of plan.’ Mel, the hairdresser, smiled. ‘They’re shooting a bedroom scene instead.’
Kirsten tried to keep her smile firmly in place but