Adored (20 page)
“It’s emotional blackmail,” he insisted whenever Claire brought it up. “She thinks that by making our lives a misery, she can get her own way. And we all know who taught her
that,
don’t we?”
With Peter, sooner or later, everything came back to Duke.
Siena’s hostility and bad behavior were compounded, Claire felt, by the enforced separation from Hunter. Although she didn’t dare say so to Pete, she knew that that boy had never been anything other than a good influence on their daughter. Without him, and alienated from both herself and Pete, there was nothing to stop Siena from running completely wild.
This evening, as Claire sipped her fizzy water and watched the sun begin its slow descent into the horizon, she prayed that Siena would be home soon. Despite all the battles and the tantrums, she missed her daughter terribly.
But it wasn’t just that.
Pete was already getting extremely wound up about Siena’s extended stay in England since she’d finished her A-levels in June. He didn’t approve at all of his daughter’s foray into modeling and had made it patently clear to Siena that he wanted her back at home and studying for Oxford as soon as possible. Despite having no academic background himself—Claire was the only true scholar in the family—he had always expected Siena to excel at school. Her place at Oxford meant the world to him. Subconsciously, perhaps, Claire thought, he wanted his daughter to grow up in a world as far removed from Hollywood and Duke’s hopes for her as possible.
After all the shenanigans with Hunter and this stupid vendetta with NBC, Pete’s temper was already on a knife edge. Claire prayed that for once, Siena would do what she was told and not push her father over the edge completely.
Ensconced in the warm comfort of her trailer, in a deserted East London car park, Siena was in a truly foul temper. Sighing and pouting like a five-year-old while simultaneously being made up and having her hair pulled, tweaked, and pinned into position by an exhausted hairdresser for the Ailsa Moran shoot, she reached down for her cigarette and took a long, drawn-out lungful of nicotine. Why the fuck couldn’t they get a move on?
She’d finally broken things off with Patrick that morning, something she’d been meaning to do for ages, but instead of the relief she’d expected to feel, she found she was overwhelmingly depressed. His words about modeling—that she was just a jumped-up clotheshorse, that she ought to take her place at Oxford—kept ringing in her ears like an irksome ghost of Christmas past.
This Moran campaign was a big break for her and she’d been looking forward to it for ages. But now that she was actually here, all the luster of it seemed to have gone. Whose crazy idea was it to shoot in an “urban-wasteland” setting? Anything less glamorous or fun than hanging around in a cold parking lot that smelled like pee would be hard to imagine.
And just to top things off, she’d woken up this morning with a revolting pimple on her chin, and enough PMS to classify her as a one-woman biological weapon.
“Siena, please, keep your head still,” pleaded the exasperated hairdresser through a mouthful of bobby pins. “I can’t do this if you keep leaning forward.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” snapped Siena. She knew she was being a bitch, and it wasn’t the hairdresser’s fault that she’d broken up with Pat, but she had to take it out on someone. “I’m just grabbing a magazine. Have you any idea how boring it is, sitting here for hours on end with you lot pulling and prodding at me like a fucking prize cow?”
Prize cow is right, thought the makeup artist, but she doggedly continued brushing Siena’s brow with highlighter.
“Don’t exaggerate,” said the hairdresser, who was also not in the mood to pander to some two-bit model’s mood swings. “You’ve been in this chair for forty minutes. It’s the
rest
of us who have been here for hours.”
Siena mumbled something incoherent and pointedly immersed herself in her magazine.
“Besides, if you want to get out of here, the best thing you can do is sit still. Two more minutes, okay? Just don’t move.” She fixed two more pins into the precarious-looking mountain of Medusa-esque curls piled on Siena’s head, then covered the elaborate structure with an asphyxiating shower of hair spray.
“Isn’t that your brother?” asked the makeup artist in an attempt to change the subject.
Hunter’s picture was on the back of Siena’s magazine, advertising the new season of
Counselor,
with a semi-naked Lanie Armstrong wrapped seductively around him.
Siena didn’t know what people saw in Lanie. She looked like every other Californian blond bimbo to her.
“No.” She looked at the hapless makeup girl as if she’d crawled out from under some particularly unpleasant rock. “He’s my uncle. My half uncle, actually. And words can’t describe how fucking bored I am of seeing his inane face or hearing about that godawful program.”
Her agony at missing Hunter, combined with the shame and embarrassment of having to admit that she no longer really knew him or anything about his exciting new life, made her lash out at anyone foolish enough to mention his name. Why couldn’t people just shut up about him and leave her alone?
“Counselor
?
”
The hairdresser couldn’t resist. “I love it. Never miss an episode.”
“Me neither,” chimed in the makeup girl. She had had quite enough of Siena for one day. “I think he’s got a lovely face, anyway.” She took a clean sponge from her cavernous blue bag and began removing the excess blusher from Siena’s cheeks. “You look like him, don’t you?” she went on absently. “I bet people tell you that all the time.”
“Are you blind?” said Siena rudely, stubbing out her cigarette with such force that the butt snapped. “He’s so dark-skinned he practically looks Arab. For all I know he
is
Arab. His mother was such a slut, Grandpa probably wasn’t even his father. I’m so pale I’m see-through.”
She looked critically at her complexion in the mirror on the back wall, straining to examine the now invisible spot on her chin.
There was a rapid-fire rapping on the trailer door and Marsha, Siena’s gushingly enthusiastic agent, came bursting in on the happy trio, waving a piece of paper excitedly. Marsha, who barely scraped the five-foot mark even in heels, and was renowned for her questionable business ethics, was universally referred to in the London fashion community as the poison dwarf.
“Darling!” she squealed, arms flapping and face flushed like a munchkin on speed. “It’s confirmed. Confirmed!”
“What is?” asked Siena. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“What am I talking about?” Marsha was hopping up and down so manically that the makeup artist wondered if she might be about to pee her pants. “Paris, of course! The October show, McQueen, he loved you. He’s confirmed. Paris!”
“Oh,” said Siena weakly, and managed a small smile, her first of the day. “Good. That’s good news.”
“Good news?” shrieked Marsha. “
Good news
? Child, have you gone mad? It’s great news. It’s fabulous. Do you know how many girls would sell their soul to be doing that show? I’m talking about girls who’ve been around for years. Have you any idea what it means for a newcomer like you to go from Ailsa Moran to Alexander McQueen overnight?”
Siena did have a pretty good idea. This was what she’d wanted, what she’d dreamed of and prayed for day and night for the last three months. To be going to the Paris shows at all was a big deal for someone as new to the business as she was. But to be fronting Alexander McQueen’s collection? It was unbelievable. A fantasy.
But Paris also meant problems. Marsha did not know, of course, that Pete had expressly forbidden her to pursue her modeling other than as an occasional hobby. He had already refused to sanction her proposed trip to France when she’d floated the idea to him a couple of weeks ago. She would be three weeks into her first term at Oxford when Paris fashion week started, and he expected her to be 110 percent focused on her studies by then. As far as Pete was concerned, the matter was already closed. But that was before McQueen.
Her hair and makeup finally finished, Siena got up carefully from the chair and admired her reflection in the mirror. The floating pale green, Grecian-style chiffon dress clung loosely to the voluptuous curves of her body as if held in place by static electricity. One smooth alabaster-white shoulder rose from the folds of material across her breasts, curving up into her long, fragile neck and finally to the creamy softness of her complexion, subtly heightened by the faint rose glow of her perfectly made-up cheeks. Two gleaming tendrils of jet-black hair tumbled across her face, having struggled free of the immaculate pearl-and-crystal-studded triumph of coiffure that crowned her head, held in place by a hundred invisible pins.
Siena smiled at the vision she’d been transformed into, suddenly empowered and alive. Just the thought of the cameras waiting outside excited her, and her eyes flashed with an almost sexual rush that would translate into dynamite pictures.
Pete or no Pete, she had made her decision. She was not going to Oxford. She was going to be at that McQueen show come hell or high water.
Curled up on the couch in his Santa Monica beach house, Hunter was deeply engrossed in his script.
“Are you ever going to get your nose out of that bloody thing and get me a whiskey? You’re not being a terribly good host, you know.”
Max De Seville, his oldest and closest friend, had just flown in from England for a whirlwind week of meetings in Hollywood. Max had taken his last final at Cambridge two weeks ago and was trying to get his foot on the ladder at one of the studios where, one day, he dreamed of becoming a director.
At twenty-three, Max still looked faintly boyish, with his unruly mop of blond hair and a lingering smattering of childhood freckles across his wide, rugby-broken nose. His body, however, was definitely all man. Six foot four in his socks, and with shoulders like Ben-Hur, he strode around Hunter’s living room like a clumsy colossus, trying to find a piece of furniture large and solid enough to sit down on.
Max had been there for Hunter in the terrible first few years after Duke died. He had seen him pining hopelessly for Siena, while trying to shore up an emotionally unstable Caroline as she ricocheted from one dead-end job to the next. As Hunter’s family crumbled around him, Max’s friendship soon became one of the only constants in his life.
Caroline’s affair with Charles Murray had fizzled out shortly after their move to Los Feliz, and it was plain to the young Max at the time that his friend’s once beautiful mother was lonely. He remembered being around at the apartment when Charlie came to pick up the last of his things, watching with Hunter as Caroline tried hard to be brave.
“Look, really, it’s okay. We’re fine,” Caroline insisted, helping her ex-lover carry a pile of office shirts out to his car. “You don’t owe us anything. You never asked for any of this.”
Charlie threw the shirts in the backseat of his Porsche and turned to face her. She looked exhausted, worn down from the long, fruitless legal battle with the McMahons and from trying to cope with raising Hunter alone in such straitened circumstances. In baggy jeans and an old sweatshirt, her face bare of makeup, she was still an attractive woman, all lips and cheekbones. But there was a sadness bordering on despair in her eyes that had replaced the mischievous sparkle he remembered from the early, crazy days of their affair.
The fact was, Charlie simply wasn’t ready for marriage and a family. It never would have worked, and they both knew it. But that didn’t stop him from caring about her or from feeling terrible as he watched her struggle to stay afloat.
“It’s not about owing you anything, Caro,” he said. “We’re friends, aren’t we? I want to help.” Pulling a check from his inside jacket pocket, he handed it to her, overruling her protests with a firm wave of his hand. “Take it,” he said. “I know you need it and it’s the least I can do. I want to be there for you and Hunter financially, at least until you get back on your feet. Please.”
Reluctantly, she smiled and pocketed the check. He was right, she did need it. Pride, never her strongest suit where money was concerned, had now become a luxury she could not afford. Reaching up on tiptoes, she put her arms around his neck and gave him a kiss on the cheek. She wasn’t in love with him anymore. In all honesty, she probably never had been. But it was still sad, watching him go.
He picked her up in a big bear hug, then set her back down on the sidewalk and got into the car. The brilliant L.A. sunshine and the bright blue sky provided an incongruously cheery backdrop to such a painful parting. Rain, or at least a gray horizon, would have been more appropriate.
“You can always call me, you know that, right?”
Caroline nodded. “Sure. And vice versa. Take care of yourself, Charlie.”
“You too, babe. You too.”
Max had watched with Hunter from his bedroom window as Charlie pulled away, and seen Caroline wait until the car was out of sight before putting her head in her hands to cry. Until that moment, he had always thought of Hunter’s mom as hard as nails. Seeing her in tears seemed so wrong somehow, he almost felt guilty having witnessed it. Not that she didn’t deserve to suffer, after all the suffering she had put other people through in her selfishness, especially her wholly innocent son. But despite his vehement dislike of her, the scene had stirred some real compassion in Max and the memory of it had stayed with him to this day.
The real tragedy was that in her own despair, Caroline had been unable to reach out to her son. When she decided to move back to England, Hunter had been relieved more than anything, and Max had watched him diligently put himself through school and acting classes, managing the household budget and bills alone as if he’d been doing it for years. Which, Max suspected on reflection, he probably had.
Not that Max’s own family was exactly the Brady Bunch. In fact, he suspected that Caroline might once have had an affair with his father; but as both his parents seemed to bed-hop among their friends with alarming regularity, it didn’t really bother him. At least his parents, unlike Hunter’s, still had money. And when the going got rough, he knew he could always turn to Henry.
Henry was Max’s beloved elder brother, his mother’s son from her first marriage, who at ten years older than Max was more of a father to him than his own father had ever been. When he’d decided to apply to Cambridge, it had been Henry who’d driven him to his interview at Trinity, Henry who put up with his unbearable angst and snappiness as he waited for his results, and Henry and his wife, Muffy, who had taken him out to celebrate when, by some miracle, he got in. Last year, when Max had announced he wanted to become a film director, Henry had been right behind him, loving, supporting, and encouraging him as always. Poor old Hunter had never had anyone in his corner like that. Everything he’d done, he’d done alone.
Hunter put down the script with a sigh and got up to go to the drinks cabinet. “You’re all the same, you goddamn directors,” he grinned. “You think the whole world is at your beck and call.”
Max flopped down in Hunter’s vacated place on the couch, his long jeans-covered legs sprawled along its full length. He picked up Hunter’s script and began to read in a hammed-up falsetto: “Oh, Mike, Mike! You’re so noble and brave, Mike! The way you stood up to that evil conglomerate in court today was just incredible. I’m
hot
for you, Mike!”
“Give that here!” said Hunter, snatching it back from him with one hand and passing him a huge glass of Glenfiddich with the other. “It does not say that, jerk-off.”
“Practically,” said Max, sipping at the warm amber liquid and sighing with contentment.
“Look, I never said it was Shakespeare, okay?” said Hunter, sitting down without complaint on the polished maple floor, his couch having been usurped. “But it pays the bills. And it’s fun, it really is.” His tawny face lit up, cobalt-blue eyes sparkling, and Max saw for the thousandth time exactly why the world’s women were all madly in love with him. It was odd that despite his gorgeous looks, Hunter was the steady, stable one, while he, Max, already had a bit of a reputation as a womanizer, or at least a serial flirt.
“I just wish this thing with Pete would blow over, you know?” Hunter said anxiously. “Hugh’s being great about it, but I can tell he’s pissed, and I can’t say I blame him.”
Max sat up and took a bigger slug of his drink before passing the glass to Hunter, who shook his head. He was determined to nail this scene tonight, and that meant Perrier only.
“If he’s pissed, it’s with Peter, not you,” Max said firmly. “Hugh knows how hard you work and how great you’ve been for the show. Hell, you
are
the show. It’s you that gets all the press, you that all those girls are tuning in to see, God help them.”
“I don’t know about that,” mumbled Hunter, blushing. Amazing how such a gorgeous, lusted-after guy could have remained so cripplingly shy. “Anyway. How long are you thinking of staying?”
“A week,” said Max.
Hunter rolled his eyes to heaven. “As long as that?” he said, grinning. The fact was, he loved having Max around and they both knew it. “Seriously, though, what are your plans, long-term? I assume you’re gonna be spending more time out here, looking for a directing gig?”
Max nodded. “Yeah, eventually. I’m going back to England first to sort a few things out, and then I guess I’ll have to start looking for a place to live.”
“What are you talking about?” Hunter sounded genuinely surprised. “You can come live here, with me.”
Max looked doubtful.
“Why not?” said Hunter. He waved his arm in the general direction of his three guest bedrooms. “There’s plenty of space.”
“I know,” said Max, draining his whiskey and getting up in search of a refill. “It’s not that. The fact is I can’t afford it, mate. All I have in the world is a trust from my grandfather so tiny it would barely buy me a deposit on a Mars bar. And last I heard, junior assistant directors aren’t exactly the most highly paid blokes in this town.”
“Oh, come on,” said Hunter, with the same warm, infectious laugh that Max remembered growing up with, a laugh that seemed to encapsulate his friendly, open nature. “Do you think I care? I don’t want your rent, I want your company.”
Max still looked doubtful. It was an incredibly generous offer, and he didn’t doubt that sharing a house with Hunter would be a blast. But he didn’t like the idea of not paying his own way.
“Please,” said Hunter, sensing his friend’s hesitation. “You’d really be doing me a favor. What if some deranged fan tried to break in and attack me one night? You could be my bodyguard.”
Max laughed. “Yeah, right. Most of your deranged fans are about fourteen and wear miniskirts and too much lipstick.” But he could tell that Hunter really did want him to stay. And the truth was, he
could
do with some help financially, at least for the first few months.
“Okay,” he said eventually. “But only on the condition that we keep track of how much back rent I owe you. And as soon as I’m earning enough to break even, I’ll pay you back, every penny.”
“Deal!” said Hunter, delighted.
He hadn’t quite realized, until that moment, just how lonely he’d been, rattling around the beach house on his own. Living with Max was going to be fantastic. He couldn’t wait.