“Good morning, Mr Taylor,” Robbie said with a cheerful smile.
Christian grunted a return greeting as he climbed the stairs to the trailer. Behind his back Robbie rolled his eyes, and Tessa suppressed an uncharacteristic giggle. Robbie was a fresh-faced young Englishman, easy-going and easy to like.
“His costume stylist is already in there, then he’ll be in the make-up trailer for quite a while. Come with me and take a look at the set.”
Tessa cast a look towards the open trailer door. Christian had disappeared inside without a word so she shrugged and followed Robbie, who was already busy on his radio, letting the rest of his team know that “the eagle had landed”. She rolled her own eyes.
Robbie walked her through the lot, pointing out the make-up trailer, the mobile production office, the portable toilets for the crew and non-featured cast. Then he led her through a side door and into the palace.
Organised chaos, that was the impression that struck her first.
She’d danced in the palace ballroom many times, especially when Archduke Christian, Fredrik’s father, had been alive. Those parties had been legend, yet they’d never matched the spectacle before her now.
If she ignored the massive film lights scattered around the room, the great thick cables running along the walls, or the corrugated cardboard taped around the door frames to protect them from damage; she might have stepped back in time.
The ballroom, with its high ceiling decorated with an intricate frieze, thronged with people, all in magnificent period costume. Everywhere she looked there were massive hooped skirts, tall feathered head-dresses, and every colour of the rainbow. And that was just the women. There was more satin and silk on display than at a wedding fair.
Film crew darted between the extras, fiddling with equipment, arranging impressive displays of imported flowers, adjusting the performers’ clothes, or moving people like chess pieces on a board, their modern clothing incongruous amongst the period costumes.
Tessa wondered what time the crew must have started work to get this all ready on time, especially the elaborate wigs and make-up.
Robbie introduced her to a few people, then left her on one side of the ballroom as he was called away. She hovered by a wall, trying to keep out of everyone’s way.
Most of the activity centred around the camera, mounted on tracks that ran half the length of the room. She watched, intrigued, as rehearsals began.
Dancers swirled around the camera, parting as a young man of Christian’s height and colouring, dressed in sombre dark clothes, made his entrance and strode across the floor towards the camera, a stark figure amidst all the bright colour and movement.
Again and again they repeated the move, with Christian’s stand-in blocking his moves. The young man may have borne him a more than passing resemblance, but he didn’t move with Christian’s lightness, or have his mesmerising appeal. She had no problem dragging her gaze away from him.
“Hello, chica!”
She looked around to see Lee and smiled. He leaned up against the wall beside her. “I was hoping to catch you here. I had a few ideas after our dinner last night and started some sketches. Want to see them?”
“Of course.”
“All good things come to those who wait.” He smirked. “I’ll show them to you over lunch.”
She smacked him on the arm. “Tease.”
“Speaking of which, how has Mr Taylor been so far?”
Infuriating. Unsettling. Occasionally charming. She couldn’t pin down how he made her feel. One minute all intense, those seductive blue eyes making her feel like prey in the hunter’s sights, the next minute prickly and combative.
“He’s fine,” she said.
“He shared any confidences yet?”
If only. But since she didn’t know how much Lee knew, she simply shook her head. He leaned closer, dropping his voice. “You know that the quickest way to get him to reveal whatever you want to know is to seduce him? You’re sure to catch him unwary in the throes of passion.”
Her entire body stiffened in horror. “I couldn’t do that!” Even if she wasn’t engaged, it was unthinkable.
“Pity.”
She followed Lee’s gaze across the room to where Christian had just entered, flanked by Robbie, Christian’s stylist, his make-up artiste, and the man Tessa had already gathered was the director. She wasn’t the only one who turned to look. A flutter swept around the room. Christian seemed oblivious. With those looks, he’d no doubt had people falling at his feet his entire life. Add the athletic build and the attitude, and he was very hard to ignore.
Lee laid a dramatic hand over his heart and sighed. “If I were in your shoes, I’d so do him. He’s even sexier in person than up on the big screen.”
She didn’t dispute that. She’d never met a man who made her skin prickle with awareness like Christian did.
Christian was joined by a young woman Tessa vaguely recognised, and this time it certainly wasn’t from any late-night crime report. She was a brunette, at least a head shorter than Tessa, with an exotic Mediterranean colouring, slender yet with curves in all the right places, and a cleavage that needed no accentuation. Especially in her heavily embroidered Baroque ball gown.
Scarlet. It suited her.
Tessa pursed her lips as Christian bent to kiss the woman’s cheek and whisper in her ear. The woman blushed and giggled.
“Nina Alexander, Christian’s leading lady,” Lee said. “She’s not half bad for an actress who it’s rumoured will be an Oscar contender this year. Almost as down-to-earth as Christian and she has a wicked sense of humour. The crew are laying odds she’s going to make him wait until the end of the movie before he gets lucky, though.”
“What are the odds he doesn’t get lucky at all?”
Lee laughed. “Nil. As long as she’s not married, she’s fair game. And there isn’t a woman who can say no to him if he sets his sights on her.”
Want to bet?
Across the room, Nina laughed at something Christian said. He definitely seemed in a better mood now. Tessa bit her lip. “I hope the poor woman isn’t looking for a relationship. Christian’s attention span seems to be limited to about a week.” Or so said the page and a half of her father’s report that had been devoted to his love life.
Lee nudged her. “That’s why you’d be so good for him. What you want from him is unique. It’s not like you want to marry the man.” He rubbed his stubble thoughtfully. “Might even be good for you.”
“I don’t mess around,” she said stiffly.
The dimple appeared in his cheek. “Not even a last little fling before you settle down to marriage?”
They’d gotten to know each other well enough over dinner last night for Tessa to be pretty sure that that Lee was only teasing. In spite of the fact he never took anything seriously, she could understand why he and Kenzie were such good friends. And why he and Anna had hit it off so well last night.
He was a good listener. And he’d become even more excited about her wedding than the know-it-all wedding-planner she’d hired and fired. Certainly more excited than she felt.
There were days she wished they could just elope and get married on a tropical island somewhere. But Europe’s entire aristocracy expected to be present at the wedding of the last heiress of the noble House of Arelat, the family that had given its name to the island where Christian