Chapter Ten
Rowan
‘I really wouldn’t have minded picking you up from your apartment,’ Rowan said as he spotted Lila arrive at the end of the private road in the early morning on Sunday. There were large, bushy carob trees lining the road on one side, their listing trunks allowing their foliage to shield all the large villas behind them.
She’d called him twice on the way to meet him, unsure of directions and her movements were jerky as she readjusted the big bag over her shoulder. ‘It’s okay. I found you in the end. And I didn’t want to risk Ruth spotting you.’
‘You don’t think she’d have kept it a secret if you told her?’ He held his hand out to her and she stared at it for a moment before taking it, with a smile. A thrill ran up his arm.
It had been such a long week. They hadn’t met again in his trailer, though it had been very tempting. They’d had to make do with quiet conversation as she removed his makeup at the end of each day’s shooting and then messaging each other in the evening.
‘I don’t know,’ she said as he led them along to the unmarked cut-through that would take them down to the private beach for the half a dozen residents who owned the large villas surrounding it.
He nodded and left the subject there. She was probably being smart. He just hated the thought of making her creep around and tell her friends half-truths for his sake. He wasn’t feeling bad about what he had planned for this date though.
‘God, this is beautiful,’ Lila said as they got down to the small beach. It was a perfect horseshoe shape with turquoise water lapping at the ochre sand.
‘It is. But we’re not staying here.’
‘No?’
He pointed out the wooden jetty with a couple of motorboats where the pale sand petered out. ‘My friend Pearl has a friend from Broadway with a holiday home here. Every June there’s this big flashy theatre festival in Syracuse apparently but at the moment it’s empty and his motorboat is just sitting there. So she arranged for me to borrow it.’ He’d met the house-sitter half an hour ago to run through the basics of it and he’d driven Kristof’s ones plenty of times, so he wasn’t a complete novice. He’d also found out about where he could take it out to and drop the anchor to get an amazing view.
‘How the other half lives, eh?’ She nudged him with an elbow.
‘Yeah.’ He snorted. ‘I never really imagined days like these in my future when I was growing up.’
‘How you doing?’ She leaned towards him, so their arms brushed together. ‘I so wished I could give you a hug every day.’
‘What’s that then? Five hugs, I’m owed? I’ll take one now,’ he replied, stopping on the sand and she turned to face him, sliding her arms around his waist, and pressing her body softly against him.
He wanted to kiss her so much. They’d barely scratched the surface and he was already addicted. All he could think about was getting his lips on hers. Kissing her eyelids, nibbling her earlobes, trailing his mouth down the arched curve of her neck, his tongue on her skin… But not yet. He folded his arms around her too, marvelling at the feel of her petite body tucked in to his, and breathed in deep, willing himself to appreciate this moment.
It was no lie. Would he ever have imagined this kind of bliss would feature in his life? Private beaches and boats, the sun rising in a perfect blue sky that went on for miles, and a beautiful, kind woman in his arms?
He could have told her how tired he was. Not his usual kind of tired either. Instead of feeling like a bag of bones he’d been animating through some kind of black magic comprised of stubbornness and food, he was empty.
Against all expectations, he’d actually been sleepingmore, but that sleep was haunted with bad dreams that had him waking, heart racing, coated in sweat. He couldn’t remember them much, but there were enough snatches for him to know what they were about. It was like forcing himself not to retreat from the bad memories had given them free rein across his subconscious too.
‘Have you ever done it?’ she asked, showing no sign of wanting to leave his arms yet – which was fine by him. ‘Acting on the stage I mean. A lot of screen actors seem to give it a try these days.’
‘To be “taken seriously”? I don’t know. Never say never I guess, but I thinkHamletwould be a bit of a stretch for me. I didn’t understand that kind of stuff at school. I wasn’t a great student, and I didn’t do the classics. I barely scraped through my GCSEs.’
‘Do you need to be smart to be an actor though?’ Her eyes widened and she hid her face against his chest, her voice coming out muffled and heating his skin through his T-shirt. ‘Sorry. I really didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I just meant, academic smart. Book smart. Exam grades aren’t the only sign of intelligence—’
‘I’m sure there’s a spade some kid left around here in the sand, you can keep digging with,’ he teased her and she groaned but when she lifted her head again to look at him there was laughter in her eyes.
‘Don’t. What I wastryingto say was, acting is about showing emotion, right? So being emotionally intelligent is more important isn’t it? I think you’ve got that in buckets.’
‘Thank you. Maybe you’re right.’
He smiled as it made him think of the conversation he’d had with Wesley about the dissociation problem during the week. Wesley hadn’t pried but had been understanding, and when Rowan thanked him for his patience, what his director had said had floored him.
‘You don’t need to thank me. You’re telling me that you’re prepared to bleed out there for this film. No director in his right mind is going to see that as a problem.’
‘But it’s making it take a long time.’
‘Some scenes are like that. You’re not the first method actor I’ve worked with, Rowan – and the same goes for the crew. If it gets the results we want, the least we can do is watch you go through it.’
