Falco: The Dark Guardian

“Goddammit,” Falco growled.

Then he grabbed his cell phone and arranged for a chartered plane to fly him to the West Coast first thing in the morning.

Chapter Two

ELLE HAD spent most of the morning in bed with a stranger.

The stranger was tall and good-looking and maybe he was a good kisser. She didn’t really know.

The thing was, she didn’t like kissing. She knew less about it than, she figured, 98 percent of the female population of the United States over the age of sixteen, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know how to make kissing seem fantastic, especially with a guy who looked like this.

Kissing, the same as walking and talking, laughing and crying and all the other things an actress did, was part of the job. She had to remember that. This was a movie. Kissing the man in whose arms she lay was, yes, part of the job.

No question that women everywhere would change places with her in a heartbeat. Fans, other actresses…Chad Scott was world-famous. He was box office gold. And, for this scene, at least, he was all hers.

Elle knew how lucky she was. She hated herself for not being able to get into character this morning. Love scenes were always tough but today…

Today, things were not going well at all.

It wasn’t her co-star’s fault. She’d worried he might be all walking, talking ego, but Chad had turned out to be a nice guy.

He’d shaken her hand when they were introduced days ago, apologized for arriving after everyone else. She knew he hadn’t had to do that. They’d spent five minutes in small talk. Then they’d run their lines. Finally, they’d shot their first scene, which was actually a middle scene in the film. Movie scenes were rarely shot sequentially.

Today, they were shooting their first love scene. It was, she knew, pivotal to the story.

The set was simple, just a seemingly haphazard sprawl of blankets spread over the sand near a big Joshua cactus. She was wearing a strapless slip; the camera would only catch her head, her arms and her bare shoulders, suggesting that she was naked. Chad was shirtless and wearing jeans. They were surrounded by a mile of electrical cable, reflectors and boom mikes, and the million and one people it took to film even the simplest scene. Antonio Farinelli, as hot a director as existed, had told the two of them he hoped to do the scene in one take.

So far, there’d been four.

A sudden gust of wind had ruined the first shot but the three others…Her fault, every one. She’d twice blown her lines; the third time she’d looked over Chad’s shoulder instead of into his eyes.

Farinelli sounded angrier each time he yelled, “Cut.”

Elle sat up, waiting while the director spoke with the lighting guy. Her co-star sat up, too, and stretched. Chad had been really good about all the delays. He’d obviously sensed she was having a problem and he’d made little jokes at his own expense. She knew they were meant to put her at ease. Heck, he said, I’m pretty sure I shaved this morning. And don’t feel bad, kid, my wife once told me the ceiling needed paint at a moment just like this.

Everyone who heard him laughed because he was not just a hot property, he was a hot guy. Elle laughed, too. At least, she did her best to fake it. She was an actress. Illusion was everything.

In real life, she could never have lain in a man’s arms and gazed into his eyes as he brought his mouth to hers, but then, reality was a bitch.

And reality was the phone call that had awakened her at three o’clock that morning.

“Darling girl,” the low male voice had whispered, “did you get the picture? Did you get my note?” A low, terrible laugh. “You’re waiting for me, aren’t you, sugar?”

Her heart had slammed into her throat. She’d thrown the telephone on the floor as if it were a scorpion that had crept in under the motel room door. Then she’d run to the bathroom and vomited.

Now, all she could hear was that voice in her head. All she could see was that mutilated ad from the magazine, the note nobody knew about. Bad enough Farinelli knew about the ad. If only he hadn’t walked into her on-set trailer just as she’d opened the innocent-looking white envelope she’d found propped against the mirror of her makeup table.

“Elle,” Farinelli had said briskly, “about tomorrow’s schedule…”

But she wasn’t listening. The blood had drained from her head. She’d been as close to fainting as she’d ever been in her life.

“Elle?” Farinelli had said, and he’d plucked the envelope and what she’d taken out of it from her hand.

“Madre di Dio,” he’d said, his words harsh with fury. “Where did this come from?”

She had no idea. Once she got her breath back, she told him that. A crazy person must have sent it. She’d had nasty little notes before, especially after the Bon Soir lingerie ads, but this marked-up photo…

Still, anything was possible. Her face was out there. In those two-year-old ads and now in stuff the publicity people for Dangerous Games had started planting. It was nothing, she and Farinelli finally agreed, but if she received any more things like this, she was to tell him and they’d go to the police.

Elle had agreed. She’d told herself the photo was a oneshot. Whoever had sent it would surely not contact her again.

Wrong. A few days later, a note arrived in her mail. Its message was horrible. Filthy. Graphic. And it was signed. The signature stunned her but it had to be a hoax. She told herself she would not let it upset her. She was an actress, she could pull it off.

Evidently, she was not as good an actress as she thought.

Farinelli had taken to asking her if she was okay and though she always said yes, certainly, she was fine, she knew he didn’t believe it. He’d proved it two days ago when he stopped by her trailer during a break. Was she ill? No, she assured him. Was she upset about her part? No, no, she loved her part. Farinelli had nodded. Then he could only assume that the photo he had seen was still upsetting her because she was most assuredly not herself.

Elle had tried telling him he was wrong. He silenced her with an imperious wave of one chubby hand. He had given the situation much thought. The photo had been of her but it had been meant for him. She had been in, what, two, three films? She was almost unknown. He, however, was famous. He was taking a big chance, starring her in Dangerous Games. Obviously, someone understood that and wished to ruin his film.

But, by God, he would not permit it. He had millions of his own money tied up in this project and he was not going to let someone destroy him. He was going to contact the police and let them deal with the problem.

Elle couldn’t let that happen. The police would poke and pry, ask endless questions, snoop into her past and find that the story of her life that she’d invented had nothing to do with reality.

So she’d resorted to high drama. She pleaded. She wept. She became a diva. A risky gambit but she had not come as far as she had by playing things safe. No guts, no glory. Trite and clichéd, maybe, but true. Besides, really, what did she have to lose? A police investigation would destroy the burgeoning career she had worked so hard for. She was twentyseven, a little long in the tooth to go back to modeling…

More to the point, she could not face her ugly, ugly past all over again.

In the end, Farinelli had thrown up his hands. “Basta,” he’d said. “Enough! No police.”

A disaster avoided. She’d forced herself to forget the ad, the note, to keep focused on the movie. And then that phone call at three this morning…

“Okay, people” Farinelli said. “Let’s try it again.”

Elle lay back. Chad leaned over her, waiting for the camera to roll. She felt his breath on her face…

“Hey,” her co-star said softly. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, with no conviction at all.

Chad sat up and looked at Farinelli. “Tony? How ’bout we break for lunch?”

The director sighed. “Why not? Okay, people. Lunch. Half an hour.”

Chad stood up, held out his hand and helped Elle to her feet. One of Farinelli’s gofers rushed over and held out an oversized white terrycloth robe. Elle snugged into it and Chad squeezed her shoulder.

“Sun’s a killer, kid,” he said softly. “Some shade, some water and you’ll be fine.”

Her smile was real this time. He truly was a nice man, a rare species as far as she was concerned.