As soon as Amy was settled, filming started. And, just as Alex had said, all the animosity between them faded as they became the characters in the film. I wouldn’t have believed that such a change could happen if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. The difference in them both was astonishing. The characters they were playing were madly in love with each other, and whilst acting, the look of love in Alex’s eyes was so real.
As soon as Rowan shouted, “Cut!”, and the scene was over, Alex returned to his snarling self. After each scene, he headed toward the corner of the room. He sunk onto a chair where he drank from bottles of water and studied the script. If anyone dared to approach him, he scowled at them. If anyone was stupid enough to talk to him, he snapped at them.
Amy surprised me. She wasn’t much better than Alex. Although she did anything but remain quiet in between scenes. She shrieked at her make-up artist for more coverage, she continually moaned about the clothes the costume department had organised for her, and she rudely bossed everyone around, ordering them to fetch her coffees and snacks from external coffee houses rather than the canteen attached to the studios. But she wasn’t bothered. If she wanted it, she made sure somebody fetched it for her.
I got to see just how rude she could be when Rowan decided to introduce me to her. I was nervous about meeting her, but nowhere near as nervous as I had been with Alex.
“Amy, this is Ella, she—” Rowan started.
“Work experience. I know. Alex mentioned her.” She didn’t lift her gaze away from the magazine she was reading.
“Hi,” I said, speaking as clearly as my nerves would let me.
Any hopes I had of her being friendly toward me completely disappeared as she waved her hand in the air, dismissing me.
Heat rose across my face, and I dipped my head as I shuffled away. Embarrassed at the way she had spoken to me, I took a surreptitious glance around the studio, hoping no-one else had witnessed the event. No such luck. Alex was watching, a frown on his forehead.
I took a deep breath and held it in before sighing. I’d expected more from them. Not only had Alex shattered my illusions of what I thought he was like, so had Amy. I debated whether I was in some sort of parallel universe. But, my thoughts returned to the new-found fact that Alex was an incredible actor, and Amy a very realistic actress, whenever they were out in public.
I was a fool for believing everything I had seen and read. I didn’t know a thing about them. I bit my bottom lip, fighting the sudden emotion that washed over me. I was determined not to cry; I was just being stupid and over dramatic. But I couldn’t help but feel like a big part of my life had suddenly disappeared. I had nothing to replace it with. Alex and Amy had been a sweet couple in my imagination, the sort of people you could invite home to meet your mum.
I swallowed hard, forcing the unwelcome tears away as I dawdled over to a fold up canvas chair, ready for the next scene to start.
“Hey,” Alex’s quiet voice interrupted my thoughts. He stood only a few feet away from me. “You okay?”
I lifted my head and narrowed my eyes. Was he concerned about me, or was he about to unleash his vile and venomous words my way?
“Why are you so bothered?” I said, straightening my back. I didn’t want to be drawn in to talking to him at this moment. I wanted to lick my wounds, pretend that I’d not had every single one of my fantasies ruined by him.
“It’s just . . . well, I saw the way Amy ignored you. She’s such a bitch.”
I snorted at his statement. “It seems that your personality has rubbed off on her. I only hope that after my four weeks in your charming company, I’ll manage to retain some clarity of humanity and not end up like either of you.”
“It’s not infectious.” A small smile twitched at the corner of his mouth as he spoke. But it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. He repeatedly ran his fingers through his hair, but I tried to ignore the action. I was too busy staring at his stupid perfect face trying to figure out why he was talking to me. I swallowed loudly as his hand continued to pull through the side of his hair.
“Well, I won’t be here for four weeks. I’m going to Los Angeles next Wednesday,” he said. “And, you’ll be in the editing studio for the final two weeks. So theoretically you have less than two weeks to put up with all this shit.”
“I don’t know if I can survive even a week of this.”
Amy was screaming at some poor man about there not being enough sugar in her coffee.
“The way you both behave is quite disappointing, and franking incredibly disturbing,” I said, focusing on Amy, and ignoring Alex.
“Well, you need to get used to it,” he snapped, bringing my attention back to him. His whole posture had altered. His back was straight and his jaw tense. “If you don’t like it, you can always leave. You know where the door is.”
He turned sharply and sulked back to his spot across the room.
I opened my mouth to say something to his retreating form, but thought better of it. Who was I to challenge Alex Denton?
My eyes travelled quite unintentionally to his ass again. He was the most arrogant and nasty person I had ever met, but he really did have a nice ass. My frown turned to a smirk as I registered my wandering thoughts. It was so damn typical of me to see the positive in something that was beyond all hope. Maybe I should speak to his ass, I was convinced it would be nicer than his mouth. My shoulders shook as I laughed at my own private joke.
“Care to share the joke, Ella?” Rowan said as he sat down and opened a packet of crisps. “God knows I could do with having a laugh about something. These two get worse every day.” He threw a few more crisps into his mouth and offered the packet to me. I shook my head at his gesture before taking a deep breath. I wanted to ask him some questions that were playing on my mind. Unfortunately, I had no idea whether he would be willing to answer them.
“You directed the other two films before this one. Were they always like this, or did something happen?”
Rowan sniggered, crisps flying from his mouth. “Something definitely happened.”
He screwed the packet of crisps into a ball.
“You don’t breathe a word of this to anyone, understand. You are under a confidentiality clause. I don’t need to remind you that if this gets spoken about, I will sue you, and you’ll be fired.”
I nodded, drawn in to what he was about to tell me.
“It’s quite simple, really. What happened . . . was that Alex fell in love with Amy.”
He shot a nervous glance in Alex’s direction, but he was too busy concentrating on his script to notice Rowan.
“And Amy fell in love with Alex.” He glanced in Amy’s direction. “It was amazing to watch. They fell in love with each other whilst filming that first film. We all saw it. They were completely loved up in real life as well as on screen. They were the perfect couple. Amy was always a bitch to work with mind you, but her acting ability speaks for itself. And Alex always had a way of calming her so that she wasn’t too awkward to work with.”
I widened my eyes. It seemed incomparable that the same man who behaved the way he did now could have ever calmed anyone.
“I know, I know. It’s hard to believe when you see how he behaves. But he has a reason. They say that fairy-tale romances always end badly. It did in his case.” He paused, glancing to both Alex and then Amy. “This goes no further, understand?”
I nodded, frantic to hear the rest of the story—to find out the reason for the change in the man who had built and then ultimately destroyed my dreams.
“Amy started seeing someone else behind his back, and she realised that she had never been in love with Alex, that it was more an infatuation with him. She fell in love with Simon, and that’s when things went wrong.”
“Simon, as in the man she’s with now?”
Rowan nodded. “She saw Simon behind Alex’s back for six months before he found out about it. I have no idea how she managed it. Alex, understandably, wasn’t happy. That was when he changed into the angry and bitter man you now see.”
“When was this?” I asked, curious as to the timings of things and how it fit into what the public had been told.
“Just before the filming of Sunspark, the second movie. It was a nightmare situation.”
“No!” I gasped. I couldn’t believe it. “The word was that they split at the start of filming this movie,” I hissed. “Amy said that Alex’s wandering eye had proved too much for her to cope with.”
Rowan nodded. “I know. It stinks, doesn’t it? The truth is that she was sleeping with someone else whilst Alex was madly in love with her. And then to top it all, the media machine that is Starshine made them continue to act as a couple in public. Can you imagine how he felt?”
I dropped my gaze from Rowan and stared at the floor. Maybe I was beginning to understand Alex a little better.
But Rowan still hadn’t finished. It was as if now that he had told me part of the story, he couldn’t wait to tell me more. “The icing on the cake was when they chose to blame Alex as the reason for the split.”
“I remember. The media was horrible to him.” I recalled the abusive headlines that were published about Alex, and the outcry of sympathy directed toward Amy. “That’s so unfair,” I practically whispered. “And this is how he copes around her—behaving like a complete shit?”
Rowan nodded. “He hates her. She broke his heart in the worst possible way.”
The temptation became too much, and I lifted my head to catch a quick glimpse of Alex. He was leaning against the wall, his hand once again pulling through his hair as he studied dog-eared pieces of paper in his other hand. Then, without any warning, he turned in our direction. He threw the script against his leg and headed toward us.
“Shit,” Rowan hissed. “Don’t you dare let on to Alex what I’ve told you.”
“I won’t,” I assured him. “Why would I?” I was sure that Alex wouldn’t want anyone to know what Rowan had told me. I was a stranger to him. One that he didn’t seem to like.
“You two having a good gossip?” he questioned, stopping right in front of our chairs. “About me?”
“What on earth gave you that idea?” Rowan asked lightly, although he was focusing on the clipboard in front of him.
Alex narrowed his eyes at Rowan before turning to me. “Do you want to tell me?”
“Tell you what? About my studies at college? I didn’t think you’d be interested in all that? But please, pull up a chair. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” I inwardly wondered whether I should have been an actress. I sounded very convincing.
Alex drew in a deep breath. “Are we doing this next scene, or what?” he asked. His question was obviously meant for Rowan, but he didn’t shift his eye contact from mine. A contact that I dared to not shy away from.
Rowan flicked the crisp crumbs from his t-shirt. “Are you ready for it? It’s quite intense.”
“I know. I’ve read the script.” He waved his papers in the air toward Rowan, but still, his gaze remained fixed on me.
“Something wrong?” I asked sharply. I didn’t like his eyes focusing on me the way they were. It unnerved me.
“Just trying to figure you out.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea.” He turned away and headed over to the set. “Amy! You ready? Or are you still moaning about the sugar in your fucking coffee?”
I grinned as Amy stomped her foot again. Even though Alex’s behaviour was rude and unnecessary, I found myself understanding it. Caught between the two of them, I knew which side I’d take. My thought shocked me. It wasn’t like me to take sides. I was always the one who tried to see reason, to work things out. At college, I’d become somewhat of an agony aunt to my friends, frequently sorting through their relationships problems whilst my own crashed around me. I shuddered—best not to go there.
But it seemed that I had already taken sides between Alex and Amy.
I had no first-hand knowledge of the situation. Rowan could be telling me a pack of lies for all I knew. But the more I thought about things, the more it all fit into place. Where was all the evidence of the women that Alex had supposedly slept with? The only photographs that were ever published of him with other women, were of him with female co-stars from his other films, or with Amy. Many tabloids had run articles on woman who said they’d slept with him, but there was never any evidence—never any photos of them together. And whereas I devoured these stories, looking for an insight into him as a person, I never once, fully believed them. Like I said—there was no proof of them being together.
Was I feeling sorry for him, making excuses for his unacceptable behaviour?
Maybe Amy did deserve what he threw at her, what she did was unforgiveable, but the rudeness he had pushed my way was completely out of order. What had I done to him? I growled under my breath as I tried to balance my fantasy man with the man before me. He’d destroyed my dreams earlier this morning, but knowing what I did now, perhaps I understood—just a little bit.
I glanced in his direction as he held the chair out for Amy to sit down. How far beneath the surface was the man I desperately wanted to see? Was the gentleman, the kind-hearted and softly spoken man the public saw the real him? Where was that man now, and what would it take to break him free from the barrier he had put around himself?
Did he just need someone to listen, to not judge him, and to love him for the real person he was, not Alex Denton, the famous actor?
I hoped my fantasy man was still there—somewhere.