The A-List Collection. Victoria Fox
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she grabbed the box and examined the guidelines. Three times she read them over, looking between the pictured results and those of her own, before she was sure.
Lana put her head in her hands and breathed out slowly. For a long time she stayed like that, not moving.
Suddenly her phone trilled from the next room. Her hands were shaking so it took time to open the bathroom door, which she had wanted to lock even though she was alone. She stood, confused, not knowing where the sound was coming from. Her attention was drawn to the bed, where her cell blinked its red eye. She considered not picking up, then, realising she’d been avoiding calls recently, forced herself to reach for it.
It was Rita. She sat down and answered cautiously.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s me. Is everything OK? I’ve been trying to get hold of you all week.’
‘Everything’s fine.’ The words seemed to come from the other side of the room.
‘Good. What do you think of the matricide project?’
Lana winced. ‘What?’
‘The Paramount script I had biked over. What did you think?’
Lana bit her lip so it hurt. ‘I’m reading it today–um, I had something else I needed to take care of.’
‘You only just got to it? Lana, we have to move quickly on this–what’s up?’
It was tempting to tell her. But while Rita was her closest friend, she was also her agent and they had a working relationship to protect. After all the work Rita had put into the contract with Cole, the nightmare negotiations with Marty King, it was indulgent to expect her support.
‘Nothing’s up,’ she said instead, summoning her strength. ‘I’ll finish today–we’ll talk in the morning.’
‘Hmm.’ Rita wasn’t convinced. ‘Fine, but make sure you pick up this time. I’ll call at eleven. Get some sleep if you’re tired.’
‘I will.’
Lana hung up and dragged herself back into the bathroom. She looked in the mirror. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Haunted shadows pooled around her eyes, the dim glare of inevitability.
In her reflection she saw a fugitive who knows she is about to be caught. You’re done for.
Cole called Marty on his way back from the function. He was furious.
Lana had been a no-show. She’d let him down again. He was enraged. Humiliated. Wasn’t the whole point that they were a freaking couple? A team, an alliance, call it what you want–they were meant to do things together. What else was the point of having a damn wife? If he had to attend these gatherings by himself all the time, he might as well be going it alone. God only knew what people thought.
And to top it all, Michael Benedict had been there. He shuddered, remembering how the director had watched him from across the room.
‘Hello, Cole,’ he’d said, his mottled skin slack. ‘Have you been avoiding me?’
Cole gagged at the memory.
He wasn’t stupid. He knew something was up with his wife. Lana had been distant for months now and pleading illness didn’t wash with him. His years with Kate had taught him to know when a woman was lying.
He’d resisted Marty’s suggestion at first, there had to be another way. Now she had left him with no choice.
Cole speed-dialled his agent’s office. On his signal the driver sealed the partition glass.
Marty picked up straight away. ‘Cole, hi.’
Cole looked through the tinted glass at the grids of LA rushing by and gripped the leather armrest. He swallowed hard. ‘I’ve made my decision.’
He could hear Marty making excuses to the company he was with. Once he was alone: ‘Are you sure?’
Cole didn’t hesitate. ‘I’m sure. You start making things happen. Marty, I want her pregnant.’
Las Vegas
‘What is that?’
Jessica Bernstein grabbed a fistful of her sister’s hair and pushed it back, revealing a moth-sized bruise of a hicky just below her diamond-encrusted earlobe.
Elisabeth smacked her hand away. ‘Get off, it’s nothing.’
The sisters, along with Christie Carmen, were looking through bridal magazines at the Bernstein mansion. It was a warm March day and they were gathered on the east veranda, watching the sun flashing off Bernstein’s gold-bottomed swimming pool.
‘Gross!’ Jessica tried to get another look before being swiped away. ‘What are you, in high school? I never had Robert down as a biter.’
‘Whatever,’ Elisabeth said hurriedly. She had deliberately worn her caramel hair long and loose in an effort to obscure Alberto’s mark of passion. No amount of concealer had made the damnedest bit of difference. Trust Jessica to uncover it.
‘This one’s cute,’ whined Christie Carmen. Elisabeth’s eyes darted to the page and she cattily thought it would be a million years before those over-inflated breasts squeezed their way into a corset dress.
God, when had she turned into such a cow? She wasn’t in the least bit happy about the joint wedding–in fact, it was an atrocity–but deep down she knew it was more than that.
‘Your tits are too big,’ said Jessica bluntly, flipping the page. Christie seemed to take it as a compliment.
‘I want a dress like yours!’ she wheedled, looking to Elisabeth.
‘I’m already sharing my wedding, I’m not sharing my gown,’ Elisabeth muttered, pushing back her chair.
‘You’re a bitch these days,’ observed Jessica with a note of admiration. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be the blushing bride?’
‘We’re not at the wedding yet,’ Elisabeth lashed out. Dread tightened in her stomach at the thought of it, a meagre five months away. She’d sort out her head before then, put a stop once and for all to this madness. Damn it, why did she keep going back for more? Alberto Bellini was like a drug–they just had this profound connection, she couldn’t explain it.
Desperate to get away, she padded inside and fixed herself a martini, plopping in a plump green olive–she had to keep eating, after all. Her appetite had vanished these past few weeks and she was finding it hard to sleep.
Jessica tapped on the glass with a long fingernail. ‘Yes, please,’ she called, indicating the drink. Wearily Elisabeth drew out two more glasses.
After the wedding was set she had tried to cool things, really she had, but Alberto refused to take no for an answer. So had begun a dedicated wooing campaign: flowers and jewels delivered to the house, increasingly hard to conceal; champagne cocktails beneath the stars; a candlelit dinner he had prepared himself. ‘In Sicily, we cook with love,’ he had said that night in the grounds of his mansion, feeding her dark chocolate, and then, after they had swum in silver moonlight, tasting zinging papaya sorbet from that most private of places … She shuddered now when she thought of And all of it, every moment, behind Robert’s back.
Get your shit together, Elisabeth. You’re about to be married.
Back on the terrace, Jessica had moved on from bridal gowns and was busily flicking through a glossy celebrity magazine, looking for pictures of herself. She snatched the martini.