Free Her Leading Man by Alice Duncan Page A

undies
before.” If
he went into some kind of too-good-for-this world modest-man act now, Christina just might
have to hit
him with
Gran’s cane herself.
    She saw him swallow. “Er, yes. Yes, of course, I have. I—ah—I’ve—well
. . .” He shrugged helplessly, obviously not finding the right words with which to express
himself.
    Enormously irked, Christina said, “I see.” With a savage yank, she
finished tying the belt of her wrapper. It had taken great strength of will
for Christina to put aside the teachings of a lifetime, not to
mention cultural taboos and her own natural reserve, and learn to be as
immodest as the rest of the picture industry people with whom she worked. If this
man — this man who’d helped found the industry, for
heaven’s sake—was going to hold her lack of modesty against her after she’d
worked so hard to conquer any hint of delicacy, she was going to be darned good and
mad.
    “ I see,” she repeated, and stalked away from
him .
     
    Good Lord, he’d done it now Martin stared after Christina Mayhew’s
retreating form in distress. He hadn’t meant to goggle at her. He hadn’t
meant to get
tongue-tied. He hadn’t meant to act like an
addle - pated adolescent. Hell, he’d seen scads of
women without
their clothes on since he’d started working in pictures. Half of them undressed for no
reason at all
and any time they felt like it in order to make sure they were attractive to the
men they worked with.
    Not a single one of them had stirred his juices as had Christina Mayhew
just then. And all she’d done was remove a costume. She’d still had her
camisole and
pantaloons on underneath the costume. It’s not as if she’d been buck
naked .
    For some reason, though, t he act
had seemed so incredibly intimate to Martin that he could only
stare and
make that stupid gurgling sound He’d also had to restrain himself from grabbing her and
making off with her. Sort of like Orozco was supposed to in the picture in a few
days.
    The thought of Orozco putting his hands on Christina’s delicate
flesh made Martin’s hands bunch into fists and the blood rush to his head.
Great. This was great. Here he was, the director and producer of this picture, and
already he wanted to murder the star. And not because the star had done
anything stupid, but because the star was going to get to fondle Christina Mayhew and
Martin wasn’t. What was he going to do when it came time to direct that
scene when
Christina stepped, naked, out of her bath? He’d die, was what.
    He was feeling very depressed when he wandered outside to shoot the
next scene in the picture.
     
    Hammers and saws clattered away behind the resort, where Pharaoh’s
palace was being constructed. Christina heard shouts and curses, and she saw
a whole herd
of people watching from behind the barriers the studio had erected. She assumed
they were citizens from nearby who had come to see a picture being
made.
    She ignored the crowd and everything else, except what she was
supposed to be doing, which was ca rrying a
bucket from a well. Civilization had come a long way, she thought with an
internal snort of derision. Now women only had to pretend to fill
buckets with
well water for the sake of entertainment. A few generations ago, she’d have had
to do it for real, and she was darned sure it wouldn’t have been entertaining.
    “ All
right,” Martin called from the sidelines.
    He looked grumpy for some reason beyond Christina’s ken. He kept shooting glances at her and at Pablo Orozco.
Christina couldn’t blame Martin for being grumpy at Orozco , because Orozco was slime . She assumed Martin
had a better reason than that, however, and she wished she knew what it was
so she could
add it to her list of reasons to detest Pablo Orozco.
    “ Places,
everyone!”
    She and Orozco took their places. Hers was beside the fake well,
complete with a bucket already full of water waiting for her. Pablo Orozco leered
at her as she carried the empty