Her Leading Man (9 page)

“
Oh,” he said. “No. I didn’t mean to frown
at
you.”

He cast a withering glance at George, who appeared
quite shocked to be
its recipient, and Christina
wondered if George had done something wrong.
If
he
had, he plainly didn’t know what it
was.

Hmm
.
All of this human interaction was
quite
fascinating. Christina, who believed medical doctors
should study their
fellow human beings from not
merely a physical standpoint, but from a
psychological
one as well, was a keen student of human deportment
and social
behavior.

She let George and Martin go ahead of her and
Gran, and watched
the two men deal with each other.
From everything Christina had heard Martin
say
about
George, she’d judged that Martin not only approved of George, but
liked and admired him. Everyone
she’d ever spoken to about Martin
Tafft
considered him the best in the business. Martin had
seemed quite pleased
to see George when he’d joined
them out by the camels.

So something must have happened since then to
set
Martin’s back up, and it must have done so within
the
last few minutes.
She cast her mind back—and
came up blank. The only thing that
had happened
was
that George had seemed to admire
Christina.

S
he eyed Martin closely, then
transferred her gaze
to
George. They seemed to be
conversing easily with
each
other
now
.
Perhaps she’d been mistaken about
Martin’s sudden and
transitory hostility toward the
young set designer.

Then George turned, smiled at her again, she
smiled back, and
when she glanced at Martin, he’d
started scowling again.

Goodness, this was very strange. Christina could
have better
understood it if Martin had scowled at
Gran. At least Gran deserved a good
scowl from time
to time. Most of the time, even.

Martin Tafft couldn’t possibly be jealous of
George, could he?
Christina was so accustomed to
receiving lust-filled
glances
from men that they hardly
even registered on her consciousness any
longer. And,
really, George hadn’t looked at her lustfully, but
only
appreciatively, and that was nothing to worry
about
.
And she’d only smiled back at him to be
polite.
Surel
y
Martin wasn’t jealous of George. Was
he?

Christina scoffed at herself
.
Of
course
he
wasn’t!
They’d barely met, and she’d never even
set eyes on
George Peters until this
morning
,
about ten minutes
ago. There wasn’t any way in the universe Martin
Tafft could be
jealous of George over her.

Perhaps some of Gran’s concern about Christina’s
virtue had rubbed
off on Martin. Christina squinted
at her grandmother. Gran could set
anyone’s back up
and generally did. Perhaps that was the problem. Or
perhaps Martin
resented Gran’s snide comment about
naked scenes. That had been pretty low,
even for her
grandmother, who never shrank from saying anything,
especially when it
might outrage her listeners.

Fiddlesticks. After mulling over the situation for
several seconds,
Christina gave it up. If Martin
seemed to be acting strangely later on,
perhaps she’d
think about it again. Right now, she wanted to look
over the set design
plans
.

George, on his knees, unrolled a long parchment-like paper
on the floor of the
resort’s
front parlor.
He glanced up and
grinned. “It’s six feet long. There
aren’t any tables around here long enough
to accommodate
it.”

“
That’s fine, George.” Martin sounded
perfectly
civil when he, too, knelt beside the plans.
Christina decided
what the heck, and she knelt beside
Martin and
George. Gran huffed, which
Christina
had
expected, and said, “I’ll pull up a chair and sit
on it.” Her tone was
unmistakable. It as much as
told the other three that she considered them
boors,
not
complete monsters, for not seeing to her comfort
before they started
working.

George glanced up, his face showing clear signs
that he didn’t
understand why Gran had used that
tone. Christina smiled inside. He was
still such a boy
. A
likable boy, true, but he was nowhere
near as
grown-up as he thought himself to be.

Martin jumped to his feet. “I’m so sorry
,
Mrs.
Mayhew. Let me get a chair for you. I was so
interested
in
George’s plans, I didn’t think about anyone
else. Please forgive me.”

Gran
offered him a terse humph.

How sweet he was, really. Christina appreciated
Martin a lot in that
instant. Few men, after
having
received the full
glory of Gran’s uncivil tongue, remained
polite to her. In fact, most of them
tried with
all
their might to ignore her. Martin
didn’t even flinch
at
her humph.

Looking more closely at her grandmother,
Christina discerned
signs that she was pleased with
Martin Tafft, too. That made Christina
feel pretty
good, actually.

Placing the chair so that Gran would be able to
see from one end of
the design to the other if she
stretched her neck a little, Martin asked, “Is
this close
enough, Mrs. Mayhew? I think this is about the best
place, if you want
to take in the whole set.”

Gran sat with a slight crunching sound of stiff silk
and propped her cane
at her side as if it were a
queen’s scepter. “It’ll do,” she conceded as if it
hurt
her to
do so.

Martin
only smiled. “Good.” He rubbed
his hands
together in a gesture of happy anticipation and
knelt
beside
George again.

Christina took note of Martin’s pleasure in this
aspect
of his
craft. She also noticed that he chose to
sit on the other side of George.
Before Gran had
interrupted things, he’d been kneeling beside her.
She
shot her
grandmother a frown. Drat the old bat.
Christina wondered if she’d disrupted
things on purpose.
She wouldn’t put it past her

Then Gran sneaked a peek at Christina, smirked,
and Christina knew
it for a fact.

“
Darn
you, Gran,” she muttered.

Her grandmother adopted an innocent expression
t
hat sat about as well on her face as it would on a
hippopotamus, and
peered serenely at the design
plans resting at her feet. Knowing she’d lost
this
round,
Christina gave up thinking and did likewise.

F
our

“
This is
going to be wonderful, George.”

Although he wouldn’t admit it to a soul, Martin
was glad Mrs. Mayhew
had put on her act of offended
dignity Perhaps because he hadn’t slept
well
last
night, his nerves were on edge today. Every single
time he got near
Christina Mayhew this morning,
they tingled as if somebody had plugged him
into
an
electrical socket.

“
Glad
you like it.”

George gazed serenely at his handiwork, but
Mar
tin
wasn’t fooled. He was as proud as punch,
although
he’d
never let on. Martin was glad George
hadn’t let success go to his head, but he
was sorry
that he’d begun to suppress his boyish
eagernes
s.
He’d
probably done so because he thought it denoted
lack of sophistication. As far as Martin was concerned,
sophistication was
an overrated commodity.
Martin much preferred unstudied enthusiasm
and
honest
reactions to an appearance of languor.

“
Oh, my, this is breathtaking, George.
Can you really
create this set out here? In this desert?”

Martin glanced at Christina with gratitude. That’s
what he liked. Just
that very thing: real, down-to
-
earth
enthusiasm. “George can do it,” he said with
confidence. He was
glad to see that George retained
the
ability
to
blush and get confused under the influence
of praise.

“
Why, it’s beautiful. It looks exactly like
reproductions
of ancient Egyptian cities I’ve seen in
museums
.”
Christina reached out and allowed one of
her
beautifully shaped fingers to trace the outline of
the
biggest
building, shown as being the centerpiece of
the set. “I’m very impressed. Maybe
this picture
won’t be totally idiotic after all.”

Some of Martin’s affinity for Christina dimmed.
Frowning, he turned
toward her. They were both
kneeling over the plans, and both leaned
inward.
George obliged them by backing up a foot or two
so they could see
each other without him in the way
.
“Why did you think
the picture was going to be idiotic?
”
he
asked, perhaps a shade too sharply.

She shrugged her slender, elegant shoulders. Her
whole body was
slender and elegant, and Martin
could hardly wait to see it
undraped
.

Instantly, he
caught himself up short, aghast.

Good God, had he really thought that? Appalled
by his own
disrespectful thoughts, he sat back
slightly. Since he was still curious to
hear her answer
to his question, no matter how horrified he was at
his own prurient
urges, he kept looking at her.

“
I think motion pictures are basically all
pretty
silly, Martin. I’m very glad to know this one won’t
be as silly as most
of them.”

“
Heh!”
Gran said.

Martin darted a peek at her, but didn’t let his gaze
linger. The blasted
old woman was enjoying her
granddaughter’s outrageousness almost as much
as
she
enjoyed her own. Martin didn’t aim to add his
approval to theirs.

Affronted and indignant, he said, “I don’t agree
wi
th
you, Christina. And I hope this picture will help
to change your
mind.”

He heard her sigh from where he sat. “I’m sorry,
Martin. I didn’t
mean to insult you.”

“
You didn’t insult me;” he lied. “But you
must
know that I love the industry
,
which
Phin and I have
helped to build.” Recalling the swarm of recent
events surrounding
the picture industry that had
started earning salacious headlines across the
country,
and
although it pained him to say so, he added,
“I
understand how some people might look upon pictures
as less than a
stellar means of mass education
and entertainment.”

Which he resented, blast it. The pictures were a
medium that held out
incredible promise to the world.
Through moving pictures, people could get
to know
each
other. They could learn about each other’s cultures, and discover
that, no matter how different they
appeared on the surface, they were all
human underneath.
And every man and woman on earth possessed
the same needs and
desires as every other man and
woman.