Читать книгу British Bachelors: Gorgeous and Impossible - Jessica Hart - Страница 12

LEXI followed Mark through a door to a large room on the first floor, looking around in delight and awe.

Crystal Leighton had not had a study. Crystal Leighton had created a private library.

‘How did you know my mother even had a study? I don’t recall mentioning it.’

Lexi touched two fingers to her forehead in reply to Mark’s question. ‘Intuition. Combined with the number of rooms in this huge house and the fact that Crystal Leighton was an undisputed artist. Any creative person coming to this island would bring a fine collection of writing materials and reading matter with them. And when it’s your own house … She would have a study. Elementary, my dear Watson.’ She tapped her nose and winked in his direction. ‘But this …’ she continued, whistling softly and waving her arm around the room, turning from side to side in delight. ‘This is … wonderful.’

‘You like it?’

‘Like it?’ She blinked at him several times. ‘This is heaven. I could stay here all day and night and never come up for air. Total bliss! I love books. Always have. In fact I cannot remember a time when I haven’t had a book to hand.’

She almost jogged across the room and started poring through the contents of the bookcases. ‘Poetry, classics, philosophy, history, languages. Blockbuster fiction?’ She flashed him a glance and he shrugged.

‘I have a sister.’

‘Ah, fair enough. We all need some relaxing holiday reading. But look at this collection of screenplays and books on the theatre. My mother would be so envious. Did I mention that she works as a wardrobe mistress? She loves reading about the theatre.’

‘Every school holiday my mother used to stuff a spare suitcase with plays, books, scripts her agent had sent—anything that caught her eye.’ Mark gave a faint smile and plunged his hands into his trouser pockets, nodding towards the shelves. ‘I spent many wet and windy afternoons in this room.’

‘I envy you that. And it’s just what I need.’ Lexi turned to face Mark, resting her fingertips lightly on the paper-strewn table in the centre of the room. ‘Have you ever heard the expression that you can tell a lot about someone from the books they have in their home? It’s true. You can.’

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ Mark replied with a dismissive grunt. ‘What about the car magazines, polo-pony manuals and the school textbooks on biochemistry?’

She shook her head and waved with one hand at three particular shelves. ‘Theatre history and set design. Fashion photography. Biographies of the Hollywood greats. Don’t you see? That combination screams out the same message. Crystal Leighton was an intelligent professional actress who understood the importance of image and design. And that’s the message we should be aiming for. Professional excellence. What do you think?’

‘Think? I haven’t had time to think,’ Mark replied, and inhaled deeply, straightening his back so that Lexi felt as though he was towering over her. ‘My publisher may have arranged your contract, but I’m still struggling with the idea of sharing personal family papers and records with someone I don’t know. This is very personal to me.’

‘You’re a private person who doesn’t like being railroaded. I get that. And I can understand that you’re still not sure about my reason for being here in the first place.’ She glanced up at his startled face and gave a small snort. ‘It’s okay, Mark. I’m not a spy for the paps. Never have been. No plans to be one any time soon. And if I was stalking you I would have told you.’

Lexi turned sideways away from the table and ran her fingers across the spines of the wonderful books on the shelves. ‘Here’s an idea. You’re worried about sharing your family secrets with a stranger. Let’s change that. What do you want to know about me? Ask me anything. Anything at all. And I’ll tell you the truth.’

‘Anything? Okay, let’s start with the obvious. Why biographies? Why not write fiction or business books?’

She paused and licked her lips, but kept her eyes focused on the books in front of her. To explain properly she would have to reveal a great deal of herself and her history. That could be difficult. But she’d made a pact with herself. No lies, no deception. Just go with it. Even if her life seemed like a sad joke compared to Mark’s perfect little family.

‘Just after my tenth birthday I was diagnosed with a serious illness and spent several months in hospital.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered after a few seconds of total silence.

She sensed him move gently forward and lean against the doorframe so that he was looking at her.

‘That must have been awful for you and your parents.’

She nodded. ‘Pretty bad. My parents were going through a rough time as it was, and I knew my father had a pathological hatred of hospitals. Ironic, huh?’ She smiled at him briefly, still half-lost in the recollection. ‘Plus, he was working in America at the time. The problem was, he didn’t come home for a couple of months, and when he did he brought his new girlfriend with him.’

‘Oh, no.’ Mark’s eyebrows went north but his tense shoulders went south.

‘Oh, yes. I spent the first year recovering at my grandmother’s house on the outskirts of London, with a very miserable mother and even more miserable grandmother. It was not the happiest of times, but there was one consolation that kept me going. My grandmother was a wonderful storyteller, and she made sure that I was supplied with books of every shape and form. I loved the children’s stories, of course, but the books I looked for in the public library told of how other people had survived the most horrific of early lives and still came through smiling.’

‘Biographies. You liked reading other people’s life stories.’

‘Could not get enough.’ She nodded once. ‘Biographies were my favourite. It didn’t take long for me to realise that autobiographies are tricky things. How can you be objective about your own life and what you achieved at each stage? The biography, on the other hand, is something completely different: it’s someone else telling you about a mysterious and fabulous person. They can be incredibly personal, or indifferent and cold. Guess what kind I like?’

‘So you decided to become a writer?’ Mark asked. ‘That was a brave decision.’

‘Perhaps. I had the chance to go to university but I couldn’t afford it. So I went to work for a huge publishing house in London who released more personal life stories every year than all of the other publishers put together.’ She grinned up at Mark. ‘It was amazing. Two years later I was an assistant editor, and the rest, as they say, is history.’

She reached her right hand high into the air and gave him a proper, over-the-top, twirling bow. ‘Ta-da. And that’s it. That’s how I got into this crazy, outrageous business.’ Lexi looked up at him coquettishly through her eyelashes as she stood up. ‘Now. Anything else you’d like to know before we get started?’

‘Only one thing. Why are you wearing so much make-up at nine o’clock in the morning? On a small Greek island? In fact, make that any island?

Lexi chuckled, straightening up to her full height, her head tilted slightly to one side.

‘I take it as a compliment that you even noticed, Mark. This is my job, and this is my work uniform. Office, movie studio, pressroom or small Greek island. It doesn’t make any difference. Putting on the uniform takes me straight into my working head—which is what you’re paying me for. So, with that in mind, let’s make a start.’

Lexi pulled down several books from the shelves and stacked them in front of Mark.

‘There are as many different types of biography as there are authors. By their nature each one is unique and special, and should be matched to the personality of the person they are celebrating. Light or serious, respectful or challenging. It depends on what you want to say and how you want to say it. Which one of these do you like best?’

Mark exhaled loudly. ‘I had no idea this would be so difficult. Or so complex.’

Lexi picked up a large hardback book with a photograph of a distinguished theatre actor on the cover and passed it to Mark.

She sighed as Mark flicked through the pages of small, tightly written type with very little white space. ‘They can also be terribly dry, because the person writing is trying their hardest to be respectful while being as comprehensive as possible. There are only so many times an actor can play Hamlet and make each performance different. Lists of who did what, when and where are brilliant for an appendix to the book—but they don’t tell you about the person, about their soul.’

‘Do you know I actually met this actor a couple of times at my mother’s New Year parties?’ Mark waved the book at Lexi before dropping it back to the table with a loud thump. ‘For a man who had spent fifty years in the theatre he was actually very shy. He much preferred one-to-one conversations to holding centre stage like some of his fellow actors did.’

‘Exactly!’ Lexi leant forward, animated. ‘That’s what a biographer should be telling us about. How did this shy man become an international award-winning actor who got stage fright every single night in his dressing room but still went out there and gave the performance of his life for the audience? That’s what we want to know. That’s how you do justice to the memory of the remarkable person you are writing about. By sharing real and very personal memories that might have nothing to do with the public persona at all but can tell the reader everything about who that person truly was and what it meant to have them in your life. That’s the gold dust.’

Mark frowned. ‘So it all has to be private revelations?’

‘Not all revelations. But there has to be an intimacy, a connection between reader and subject—not just lists of dry facts and dates.’ Lexi shrugged. ‘It’s the only way to be true to the person you’re writing about. And that’s why you should be excited that you have this opportunity to make your mother come alive to a reader through your book. Plus, your publisher will love you for it.’

‘Excited? That’s not quite the word I was thinking of.’

She rubbed her hands together and narrowed her eyes. ‘I think it’s time for you to show me what you’ve done so far. Then we can talk about your memories and personal stories which will make this book better than you ever thought possible.’

Lexi sat down at the table, her eyes totally focused on the photographs and yellowing newspaper clippings spilling out of an old leather suitcase.

Mark strolled towards her, cradling his coffee cup, but as she looked up towards him her top slipped down a fraction and he was so entranced by the tiny tattoo of a blue butterfly on her shoulder that he forgot what he was about to say.

‘Now, I’m going to take a leap here, but would it be fair to say that you haven’t actually made much progress on the biography itself? Actual words on paper? Am I right?’

‘Not quite,’ Mark replied, stepping away to escape the tantalisingly smooth creaminess of Lexi’s bare shoulder and elegant neck. ‘My mother started working on a book last summer when she was staying here, and she wrote several chapters about her earlier life as well as pulling together those bundles of papers over there. But that’s about it. And her handwriting was always pretty difficult to decipher.’

‘Oh, that’s fine.’

‘Fine?’ he replied, lifting his chin. ‘How can it possibly be fine? I have two weeks to get this biography into shape, or I miss the deadline and leave it to some hack to spill the usual tired old lies and make more money out of my mother’s death.’ Mark picked up a photograph of Crystal Leighton, the movie star, at the height of her career. ‘Have you any idea how angry that makes me? They think they know her because of the movies she worked on. They haven’t got a clue.’

He shook his head and shuffled the photograph back into the same position, straightening the edges so that each of the clippings and photographs were exactly aligned in a neat column down one side. ‘I don’t expect you to understand how important this biography is to me, but she is not here to defend herself any more. Now that’s my job.’

Lexi stared at Mark in silence for a moment, the air between them bristling with tension and anxiety.

How could she make him understand that she knew exactly what it was like to live two lives? People envied her her celebrity lifestyle, the constant travel, the vibrancy and excitement of her work. They had no clue whatsoever that under the happy, chatty exterior was a girl doing everything she could to fight off the despair of her life. Her desperate need to have children and a family of her own, and the sure knowledge that it was looking less and less likely ever to happen. Adam had been her best chance. And now he was gone … Oh, yes, she knew about acting a part.

‘You think I don’t understand? Oh, Mark, how very wrong you are. I know only too well how hard it is to learn to live with that kind of pain.’

She watched as he inhaled deeply before replying. ‘How stupid and selfish of me,’ he said eventually in a low voice. ‘I sometimes forget that other people have lost family members and survived. It was especially insensitive after what you’ve just been telling me about your father.’

‘Oh, it happens in the very best of families,’ she said with a sad smile. ‘Your mother died a few months ago, while I’ve had almost twenty years to work through the fact that my father abandoned us. And that pain does not go away.’

‘You sound very resigned—almost forgiving. I’m not sure I could be.’

‘Then I’m a very good actress. I’ve never forgiven him and I don’t know if I ever can. A girl has to know her limitations, and this is one of mine. Not going to happen. Can we move on?’

Lexi looked up into Mark’s eyes as she asked the question, just as he looked into hers. And in the few seconds of complete silence that followed something clicked across the electrically charged space between them.

‘And just when I thought you were perfection,’ he whispered, in a voice which was so rich and low and seductive that the tingles went into overdrive.

Lexi casually formed the fingers of both her hands into a tent shape, raised an eyebrow and stared at him through the triangular gap between her fingers.

‘There you have it. I have flaws, after all. You must be incredibly disappointed that a respectable agency sent you a defective ghost writer. You should ask for a discount immediately. And I shall officially hand back my halo and declare myself human and fallible.’

Mark smiled. ‘I rather like the idea. Perhaps there is hope for the rest of us?’

‘Really? In that case,’ she breathed in a low, hoarse voice, ‘let’s talk about your baby photos.’

And Mark immediately swallowed the wrong way and sprayed coffee all over his school reports.

They had hardly stopped for over three hours. He had made coffee. Lexi had made suggestions, dodging back and forth to the kitchen to bring snacks.

And, together, somehow they had sorted out the huge suitcase bursting with various pieces of paper and photographs that he had brought with him from London into two stacks, roughly labelled as either ‘career’ or ‘home life.’ A cardboard box was placed in the middle for anything which had to be sorted out later.

And his head was bursting with frustration, unease and unbridled admiration.

Lexi was not only dedicated and enthusiastic, but she possessed such a natural delight and genuine passion for discovering each new aspect of his mother’s life and experience that it was infectious. It was as though every single scrap of trivia was a precious item of buried treasure—an ancient artefact that deserved to be handled with the ultimate care and pored over in meticulous detail.

It had been Lexi’s idea to start sorting the career stack first, so she knew the scope and complexity of the project right from the start.

Just standing next to her, trying to organise newspaper clippings and press releases into date order, made him feel that they might just be able to create some order out of the magpie’s nest of thirty years’ worth of memorabilia.

He couldn’t remember most of the movie events that his mother had attended when he was a boy, so photographs from the red carpet were excellent markers—and yet, for him, they felt totally repetitive. Another pretty dress. Another handsome male lead. Yet another interview with the same newspaper. Saying the same things over and over again.

But Lexi saw each image in a completely different way. Every time she picked a photograph up she seemed to give a tiny gasp of delight. Every snippet of gossip about the actors and their lives, or the background to each story, was new and fresh and exciting in her eyes. Each line provided a new insight into the character of the woman who’d been a leading lady in the USA and in the British movie and TV world for so many years that she had practically become an institution.

Dates, names, public appearances, TV interviews—everything was recorded and checked against the film-company records through the power of the internet, then tabulated in date order, creating a miraculous list which they both agreed might not be totally complete, but gave the documented highlights.

And from this tiny table, in this small villa on Paxos, in only three hours, they had managed to create a potted history of his mother’s movie career. All backed up by photographs and paper records. Ready to use, primed to create a timeline for the acting life of Crystal Leighton.

Which was something very close to amazing.

He wondered if Lexi realised that when she was reading intently she tapped her pen against her chin and pushed her bottom lip out in a sensuous pout, and sometimes she started humming a pop tune under her breath—before realising what she was doing and turning it into a chuckle because it had surprised her.

Every time she walked past him her floral fragrance seemed to reach out towards him and draw him closer to her, like a moth to a flame. It was totally intoxicating, totally overwhelming. And yet he hadn’t asked her to wash it off. That would have been rude.

The problem was, working so closely together around such a small table meant that their bodies frequently touched. Sleeve on sleeve, leg on leg—or, in his case, long leg against thigh.

And at that moment, almost as though she’d heard his innermost thoughts, Lexi lifted up the first folder of the second stack and brushed his arm with her wrist. That small contact was somehow enough to set his senses on fire.

Worse, a single colour photograph slipped out from between the pages and fell onto the desk. Two boys grinned back at Mark from the matte surface—the older boy proud and strong, chin raised, his arm loosely draped across the back and shoulder of his younger brother, who was laughing adoringly at the person taking the photograph.

Mark remembered the football match at boarding school as though it were yesterday. Edmund had scored two goals and been made man of the match. Nothing new there. Except that for once in his life nerdy Mark Belmont had come out from the wings and sailed the ball past the head of the goalkeeper from a rival school.

And, best of all, his mother had seen him score the winning goal and taken the photograph. She had always made time in her schedule if she could to attend school sports days.

Edmund had called him a show-off, of course. And maybe he’d been right. Mark had wanted to prove to at least one of his parents that he could be sporty when he wanted.

He inhaled slowly through his nose, but just as Lexi stretched her hand out towards the photograph he picked it up and pushed it back on the pile.

Not now. He was not ready to do that. Not yet.

But there was no escaping his companion’s attention to detail. Lexi instantly dived into the stack and retrieved the photograph.

‘Is this your brother?’ she asked.

He took a moment and gave a quick nod. ‘Yes. Edmund was eighteen months older than me. This was taken at our boarding school. The Belmont boys had just scored all three of the goals. We were the heroes of the hour …’ His voice trailed away.

Out of the corner of his eye he realised that she was standing quite silent and still. Until then it hadn’t dawned on him that her body was usually in constant motion. Her hands, shoulders and hips had been jiggling around every second of the day, which was probably why she was so slender. This girl lived on adrenaline.

But not now. Now she was just waiting—waiting for him to tell her about Edmund.

He picked up the photograph and gently laid it to the far right of the table. Recent history. Too recent as far as he was concerned.

‘He died seven years ago in a polo accident in Argentina.’

If he was expecting revulsion, or some snide comment, he was wrong. Instead Lexi gently laid her fingertips on the back of his hand in a fleeting moment of total compassion. And he felt every cell of his skin open up and welcome her in.

‘Your poor mother,’ Lexi whispered, only inches away from him.

He turned his head slightly. Her eyes were scanning his face as if she was looking for something and not finding it.

‘That must have been so heartbreaking. I can’t imagine what it’s like to raise a child to manhood and then lose him.’

Her gaze slid down his face and focused on a family snap of his mother. Not a studio press release or a publicity shot. This was a photo he had taken with his pocket camera when his mother had been manning the cake stall at a local garden fête. She was wearing a simple floral tea dress with a white daisy from the garden stuck behind one ear. But what made her really beautiful was the totally natural expression of happiness she wore.

It was just as hard as he’d thought it might be, looking at the photograph and remembering her laughing and chatting and waving at him to put down the camera and enjoy himself.

Lexi ran a fingertip ever so gently across the surface of the print. He steeled himself, ready to answer her question about how the famous actress Crystal Leighton had come to be working behind the counter of a country village fête.

That was why, when she did ask a question, it knocked him slightly off-balance.

‘How old is your sister?

‘Cassie? Twenty-seven,’ he replied, puzzled. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because I’m going to need to talk to her about Edmund. I know she’s a lot younger, but I’m sure she can remember her eldest brother very clearly.’

‘So can I,’ he retorted. ‘We were at school together—more like twins than brothers.’

‘And that’s the point. You’re too close. You can’t possibly be objective, and I wouldn’t expect you to be. He was your best friend and then you lost him—and that’s hard. I’m so sorry. You must miss him terribly,’ she whispered, and her teeth started to gnaw on her full lower lip in distress.

The deep shudder came from within his chest, and it must have been so loud that Lexi heard it. Because she smiled a half smile of understanding and regret and looked away. As though she was giving him a moment to compose himself.

Just the thought of that generous gesture flicked a switch inside his head that went from the calm controlled setting straight to the righteous anger mode.

This woman, this stranger who had walked into his life less than twenty-four hours earlier, was giving him a moment to bring his pain back under control.

Nothing she could have done would have made him more furious.

How dared she presume that he was unable to control himself?

That he was unable to do the job he had set himself because of the foolish, sensitive emotions in the gentle heart he had suppressed for all these years?

He’d learned the hard way that the Belmont men did not talk about Edmund and how his death had wrenched them apart. No. Instead they were expected to shoulder the extra responsibilities and obligations and carry on as though Edmund had never existed.

Lexi pressed both hands flat against the table, lifted her head and looked into his eyes.

And, to Mark’s horror, he saw the glint of moisture at the corners of her own eyes—which were not violet after all, he realised, but more of a grey colour in the diffused warm light coming in through the cream-lace curtains from the sunny garden outside. Her eyelashes were not black, like his, but dark brown, with a tint of copper. The same colour as her hair—well, most of it. The places that weren’t streaked with purple highlights.

But it was those amazing eyes that captivated him and dragged him helplessly into their depths. Multiple shades of grey and violet with blue speckles gazed back at him, with the black centres growing darker and wider as her eyes locked onto his and refused to let go. And he simply could not look away.

Those were the same eyes that had stared up at him in total horror that morning in the hospital. The same eyes that were now brimming with compassion and warmth and delight. And he had never seen anything like it before.

His mother had used to say that eyes were the windows to the heart.

And if that was true then Lexi Sloane had a remarkable heart.

But the fact remained—just looking into those eyes took him back to a place which shouted out, loud and clear, one single overpowering word.

Failure.

He had failed to protect his mother.

He had failed to replace Edmund.

He had let his parents down and was still letting them down.

And just the sight of his mother’s pretty face looking back at him from all these photographs was like a knife to the heart.

‘How do you do it?’ he demanded through clenched teeth. ‘How do you do this job for a living? Poring over the pain and suffering of other people’s lives? Do you get some sick pleasure out of it? Or do you use other people’s pain in order to make your own life feel better and safer in some way? Please tell me, because I don’t understand. I just don’t.’

He was trembling now, and so annoyed by his own lack of self-control that he brusquely slipped his hand out from under hers, turned away and strode downstairs to the patio doors, pulled them open sharply and stepped outside onto the cool shaded terrace.

Well, that was clever. Well done, Mark. Very slick. Taking your problems out on the nearest person, just like your dad would.

He closed his eyes and fought to control his breathing. Minutes seemed to stretch into hours until he heard the gentle tapping of Lexi’s light footsteps on the tile floor behind him.

She came and stood next to him at the railing, so that they were both looking out across the pool towards the cypress trees and olive groves in total silence.

‘I don’t do this job out of some sick pleasure or self-gratification. Well …’ she shrugged ‘… apart from the fact that I get paid, of course. No. I do it to help my clients record how they came through the traumas of their lives to become the person they are now. And that’s what other people want to read about.’ She half turned at the railing. ‘I was serious when I told you how much I loved reading about other people’s lives. I love meeting people. I love hearing their life stories.’

Her fingers tapped on the varnished wood. ‘Just in case you haven’t noticed, every family in this world suffers pain and loss, and every single person—every one—has to survive horrible trauma which changes their lives forever. That includes me, you and all our families and friends. There is no escape. It’s how we deal with it that makes us who we are. That’s all.’

‘That’s all?’ He shook his head. ‘When did you become an expert in sorting out other people’s lives and their histories for them? You’re hardly perfect yourself—not with your father.’

The temperature of the air dropped ten degrees, and the icy blast hit Mark hard on the forehead and woke him up.

He hadn’t meant to sound bitter or cruel, but suppressed emotion and tiredness swept over him like a wave and he needed a few moments before he could very, very slowly relax his manic hold on the railing and start to breathe again. He was only too aware that Lexi was watching his every move in silence.

‘I apologise for that outburst, Miss Sloane. It was uncalled for and unnecessary. I thought that we could get past what happened at the hospital but apparently I was mistaken. I can quite understand if you would prefer not to work with me after my rudeness. In fact, if you pack your bags now, you should be able to catch the ferry which leaves at four. I’ll make sure your hire car is picked up at the harbour, and that the agency pays your full fee. Thank you for your help this morning.’