‘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