Beautiful, all of it…and after almost a week, Fallon hoped to God she’d never set eyes on the place again.
The sun was merciless, blazing down like golden fire from a sky so blue it seemed artificial. Shooting on the terrace hour after hour, with the sea at her back, meant she spent most of her time staring at the castle and all that dark glass. It was like looking at someone wearing mirrored sunglasses. Were they watching you, or was it your imagination? It was always impossible to tell.
Filming in the pool was better, but Maurice thought that setting too tame. He preferred the beach, and that was hell.
The beach was rocky, the stones hot and sharp beneath her bare feet, and even when Maurice motioned her into the surf, the water was tepid against her ankles and calves rather than cooling.
The last day of the shoot seemed endless. Maurice was barking out orders, as usual.
“Angle toward me! Get that arm back! Think sexy!”
Think sexy? All she could think was thirsty, but she moistened her lips, turned a half smile to the camera and clung to the thought that they’d be finished in just another few minutes.
She was hot; her feet were raw from the rocks and her skin was itchy under its layer of sunscreen. Andy had used waterproof makeup on her face and it felt like a mask, and the hairdresser—Carla had brought along more than the three people she’d promised—the hairdresser had sprayed so much gunk at her head that she felt like she was wearing a wig.
“Let’s go, O’Connell! This time, run into the surf. Look like you’re having a good time. Give me lots of splash.”
The only thing she wanted to give him was a sock in the jaw. But she was a pro; she knew how to do her job. And she was trying to do it, she really was. It was just that she’d come here expecting to love this place.
Instead, she hated it.
“Smile. Yes. That’s it. Another one, over your shoulder this time.”
The sun, reflecting off the sea in sparkling flashes, was too bright. She had a headache from it by the end of each day. The beach was impossible to walk on, all those stones cutting into the tender soles of her feet.
“Okay, honey. Drape yourself over the big rock. You know what I want, babe. Lean back on your hands. Nice. Very nice. Bigger smile. Yeah, like that. Good, fine—except turn your head. Give me the look. You know the one. That’s it. Nice. Very nice. Now you’re cookin’.”
Cooking was the word. This place could pass for hell’s anteroom. Had it been this hot last time she was in Sicily?
“Go a little farther into the water. Good. Push your hair back. Use both hands—I want to see those tits lift! That’s it. Perfect. Now wet your lips and smile.
“O’Connell? Turn around. Try one hand on your hip. Give me a pout. Let your lashes droop. Look at me. You’re a bride, you’re on your honeymoon, and you’re looking at your groom with sex on the brain and nothing else. Pretend you’re going to get out of the water soon, go up to that castle and jump his bones. Good. Better. We’re getting there.”
Go up to that castle? No way. The closest she’d come to it was the day she’d arrived.
The driver had taken her through an imposing gate, past a couple of men with ice for eyes who looked as if they should have been wearing camo and combat boots instead of suits, past security cameras tucked high in the trees, toward a soaring edifice of stone and glass.
“Il castello,” the driver said, his voice as solemn as if he were in one of the ancient churches they’d passed on the way.
That he said anything at all startled her. He hadn’t spoken a word since they’d left the airport. He didn’t understand English, he’d indicated with a lift of his shoulders, but it was a lie.
He’d understood every bloody word his arrogant feudal lord had spoken. It was only when Fallon demanded he let her out of the car that the man suddenly turned mute. She’d ended up shouting at him; she’d come close to reaching over the seat and pummeling his shoulders with frustration.
That wasn’t going to happen again.
“How nice,” she said coolly.
The truth was, nice didn’t come close.
She’d been expecting a medieval structure, cold, gloomy and desolate. This was a soaring mansion that somehow bridged the distance between the past and the present. She craned her neck and stared as they drove past it, until the car came to a gliding stop.
Fallon looked around as the driver got out and opened her door.
They’d stopped beside—
A tent?
“Signorina.”
Confused, she looked up at the man. “Are you sure we’re in the right place?”
“Si.”
She stepped from the car. It was a tent, all right. A big one, true, the kind she’d seen at garden parties in the Hamptons, but a tent just the same.
The driver reached in for her suitcase and at that moment the Bridal Dreams crew ran out of the tent to greet her. She hugged Andy and Maurice, exchanged air-kisses with Carla, shook hands with the others and asked the obvious question.
Why were they all hanging around in a tent when there was that big old house just a couple of hundred yards away?
Off-limits, Carla said with a patently false smile. “The owner’s eccentric. He doesn’t want us using it.”
The tent would be their office and dressing room. She’d made catering arrangements for lunch and had a portable john installed in a little cove on the beach.
‘It’s as if we’re camping in the wilderness,’ Carla said with a gaiety anyone could see was false.
“Don’t tell me we’re camping here at night, too,” Fallon muttered, and Carla laughed and laughed.
“Of course not, darling. We all have rooms at an inn just up the coast. It’s a charming little place.”
The others, who’d already seen the inn, groaned so that Fallon knew “charming” was a happy euphemism for not enough hot water, lumpy mattresses and threadbare linens.
Carla was the only smart one. She went back to New York on the second day.
Of course, it made for problems, not having Carla onsite. The stylist or the designer’s rep or somebody else was almost always clutching a cell phone, talking to New York, asking questions, getting things clarified.
Nobody could figure out why Carla had left. It certainly wasn’t the most practical thing to have done but that second morning, Carla’s cell phone had rung, she’d answered it, turned white, glanced up in the direction of the big house on the cliff and the next anyone knew, she was gone.
“Important business in New York,” she’d said, but Fallon didn’t buy it. It just didn’t sound right.
Fallon sighed.
Thank goodness the week was almost over.
Tomorrow morning they’d all fly back to the States, and not a moment too soon. Why she’d ever imagined she’d enjoy being on this godforsaken island was a mystery. She’d had enough of the heat, the rocks, the house or mansion or castello or whatever it was called looming way up there on the cliff.
She didn’t like this place. Nothing about it seemed right, starting on day one when she’d mistaken that big black car at the airport for the one that was supposed to meet her.
That car. That man. Stefano Lucchesi, with