Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (90 page)

'You make me sound like a robot.'

'That's because you're cold and unfeeling.'

'I'm faithful and monogamous. There's a difference.'

He drew her close. 'But you must agree there's no harm in
trying.' He smiled.

'On the contrary. I think it's very harmful.'

He made a face. 'Come on,' he urged. 'Let go. Live a little.'

'What you're proposing isn't living. It's cheating.'

'You'd only be cheating yourself by missing out on me.'

'I'll gladly take that chance.'

Despite her warnings, she could feel his arms tightening
around her. Then she felt his hips pressing against hers, and for a moment she felt his solid warmth. One of his hands was
at the base of her bare spine, tracing little circular motions
with a finger. Despite herself, she could feel her nipples hard
ening, and then a warm wetness moistened her thighs.
A curious confusion came into her eyes and her heart con
tracted. One part of her wanted to recoil while another craved
his clever fingers. She looked into his eyes, and they seemed
to glitter with a perverse triumph, as though he sensed that
he'd pushed the right buttons.

It was precisely the look she'd seen when he'd unveiled her
in front of the mirror in Italy. She was something he'd laboured to create. He thought of her as something which had
sprung from his fertile mind, something which he had breathed
life into. Soberly she realized that he considered her his own
personal Galatea.

Now she was becoming increasingly agitated and more than
a little annoyed by the unrelenting caressing of her back. The
lusty hardness of his groin was barely contained by his
trousers, and for a fleeting moment she felt a wave of panic.
What if someone had noticed O.T.'s advances . . . more
important, what if Louie happened to notice? How was she to
explain that she had done nothing to lead him on?

Silently she cursed the dampness of her mound. Her body's
instinctive reaction to a masculine touch was like a slap in the
face.
What was wrong with her?

His hands slid down to her buttocks, and she felt his palms
cupping her silver-sheathed cheeks, and then a thumb pressed
the cleft between them.

Damn! He wouldn't stop!

Now her irritation was turning to red-hot anger, and she
could feel the adrenaline rising inside her. Obviously, ignoring
him or trying to reject him discreetly was getting her nowhere.
Far more drastic measures were called for.

Tightening her lips, and smiling sweetly and never missing
a beat, she adroitly kneed him in the groin.

It was the last thing he'd expected. His eyes bulged and he
could barely stifle a cry. His face went white as a sheet and for
a moment he looked confused, as though he didn't know what
had hit him. 'Je-sus!' he finally managed to gasp.

She looked suddenly contrite. 'Oh, I
am
sorry, O.T. You've
aroused so much passion in me that my body just went wild!'
She clutched him like a vice with her lacquered talons. 'You've
got to understand one thing, O.T.,' she said softly, her tone
dead serious. 'I love my husband. Nothing in the world is going
to separate me from him. Nothing and no one. Not you or
anyone else.'

He looked at her with growing respect. 'Louis is a lucky
man.'

'And I'm a lucky woman. I never forget that, not for a day.'
She smiled. 'What's the matter. You've missed another step.'

'Damn you.' He gritted his teeth. 'I'm going to sing soprano
for a week.'

She shook her head. 'You'll never sing soprano, O.T.,' she
said definitely. 'Your balls are too big.'

And with that she turned her back on him and made her
way back to the table.

He stared after her, ruefully shaking his head.

The house seemed especially quiet and seductive after the
raucous noise of the party. Only the foyer lights were lit; the
rest of the house was dark and asleep. She started to head
straight up the curving staircase to the master suite, but Louis
caught her hand and wordlessly led her into the living room
instead. Then he let go of her and, to her surprise, went round
switching on all the lamps.

She saw it immediately, on the wall over an end table so
that the open top of the lampshade bathed it in a circle of light.
It was an exquisite little Mattisse oil that suggested, rather
than illustrated, a tabletop still life. Tears sparkled in her eyes
and she couldn't speak. He took her hand and pressed his
warm palm against hers. Clasping their fingers together they
stood there, studying the painting for a long time.

Finally she turned to him, her eyes bright and shiny.

'Do you like it?' he asked softly.

She stood on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his. 'I love it,' she whispered huskily, her tongue tracing his lips. 'And I
love you even more. Today was the second-most wonderful
day of my life.'

'What was the first?'

She smiled. 'The day we got married.'

'Well, there are a lot more to come,' he promised.

And there were. Unknown to her, he had started a family
tradition. They would celebrate the second anniversary in the
Crystal Room, the Beverly Hills Hotel's principal ballroom,
and afterwards Louis would present her with a large Toulouse-
Lautrec painting of a Moulin Rouge scene. After their third
anniversary, which was held in tents on O.T.'s lawn, Louis
gave her a vibrant, startling Van Gogh landscape that seemed
to pulsate with a strange inner light.

Each time she looked at it, she could feel her own mind
bridging the gap to the artist's final madness and wished she
could achieve the same kind of genius in her acting as Van
Gogh had achieved in that painting.

But despite the more valuable paintings which joined their
growing collection each year, it was the little Matisse, the
first anniversay gift, that would always remain her personal
favourite. Because it had been the first, it was the most
treasured.

Chapter 15

Anna Karenina,
Tamara, and Miles Gabriel were all nomi
nated for the Academy Awards.

To celebrate her nomination, Louis gave Tamara a brand-
new white Packard convertible with white-walled tyres and
red cowl.

'I'm going to buy you a new white convertible every time
you're nominated for an Academy Award,' he said expans
ively. 'And if you win it, then we'll upgrade you to a Rolls.'

But
Anna Karenina
went away empty-handed. Oscar
Skolnik's best-laid plans had gone astray. A lot of great movies
with a lot of great stars in them had been released during the
past year. MGM's
Grand Hotel
won the Oscar for Best Pic
ture, Helen Hays for
The Sin of Madelon Claudet,
her very
first film role, and Fredric March and Wallace Beery made
history by tying for Best Actor, the former for
Dr.
Jekyll and
Mr.
Hyde,
and the latter for
The Champ.
Walt Disney received
a Special Award for Mickey Mouse.

Oscar Skolnik fumed. Miles smarted. Tamara, delighted at
having been nominated at all, had never really believed she
stood a chance to win, so she took losing with philosophical
good humour. What mattered to her was that her peers
thought highly enough of her to nominate her and that
Anna
Karenina
was a resounding success, both artistically and at
the box office. It did far better than
Marie Antoinette,
but
admittedly less well than
The Flappers,
which still solidly held
its position as the most successful box-office smash made to
date. Nevertheless, she was one of the hottest celebrities in a
town chock-full of celebrities, no mean feat by any standard.

After having made only three movies, she was already one of
the most recognizable stars in the industry. Her face appeared
on the covers of so many magazines that she joked about it:
'I could paper my living-room walls with the covers, and still
have some left over for the den.' IA's publicity department
clipped so many articles about her, ranging from respectable
reviews to the most outrageous fiction, that she could not
possibly read them all. Five thousand fan letters a week were
pouring in. She was at the very peak of nationwide popularity. Her platinum hair had become all the rage. If she changed her
hairstyle, it was news, and hairdressers across the country
were obliged to copy the style. Nothing about her was sacred.
It was strange, she often reflected wryly, that she didn't
feel
any differently at the pinnacle of success than she had before.
The major differences in her life were the way others
responded to her, the financial security which she enjoyed, and the detestable inconveniences, which she grew to hate.
Whether at home or at the studio, she was, like royalty or a
cherished, particularly priceless gem, protected from the pub
lic by guards and gates. The begowned, bejewelled siren who
could cause mass hysteria by simply being seen in public was,
by necessity, turning into a virtual recluse.

Unless her presence was absolutely required somewhere,
Tamara prefered to keep herself isolated from the public. She
had to think twice before leaving the house. Autograph
hounds, photographers, and fans haunted her every step.
Even her home was not spared—the curious, with an eye
peeled for a glimpse of her, drove continually back and forth
in front of the house. Fans went so far as to ring the doorbell and offer to help around the house free of charge; they were willing to do anything, as long as they could be close to their
favourite star. Tamara-watching had become a national pas
time. She was a superstar before there was such a word to
describe her.