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silently. For two months they’d made her see psychiatrists.
Don’t think about it
, the last one had told her – the only good advice she’d received. All that talk about her real father being dead and then her mother leaving her, causing her to feel like an abandoned child, meant nothing.
    She wasn’t abandoned – she was strong. A survivor. Brigette Stanislopoulos didn’t need anyone.

Chapter 7
    Sitting still for an interview had never been Lennie’s favourite pastime. Especially when the interviewer insisted on intruding on the set, watching everything, eavesdropping, and making copious notes.
    Shorty Rawlings, the PR on the movie, had talked Lennie into it against his better judgement. It was a cover story for
People
or
Us
, he couldn’t remember which, and the interviewer was a horse-faced woman who kept on skirting dangerously near his private life – a subject he
never
discussed, a fact always made very clear up front.
    Not that his private life was a secret. Marrying Olympia Stanislopoulos, and then Lucky Santangelo, did not exactly help him maintain a low profile. What the hell – he refused to fuel the gossip – better to keep quiet.
    Lucky was paranoid about staying out of the press. She refused to give interviews, and like her father, Gino, she went to a great deal of trouble to avoid being photographed. ‘I’m not a public person,’ she’d warned Lennie before they were married. ‘And I intend to keep it that way.’
    Not that easy when you marry a movie star – he’d wanted to say. Especially when your previous husband was one of the richest men in the world and your father made plenty of headlines in his day.
    Somehow Lucky had succeeded in holding on to a certain amount of anonymity. Not many people knew what she looked like – her name was better known than her face.
    â€˜How’s your wife?’ the horse-faced reporter threw in casually, tracking his thoughts. ‘Is it true you’re separated?’
    Lennie fixed her with his disconcertingly green eyes. ‘I gotta get back to work,’ he said, rising from his canvas chair. He’d had enough.
    Undaunted, the reporter pressed on. ‘Lucky Santangelo. Quite a woman. Is she in L.A.?’
    â€˜Ever thought of getting a tongue job?’ Lennie asked sharply.
    The woman was startled. ‘I
beg
your pardon?’
    â€˜Y’know, a little snip at the end? Just to stop you asking those personal questions you’ve been told not to ask.’
    Before she could respond, Shorty Rawlings appeared, and Lennie stalked off without saying another word.
    â€˜Well, really!’ the woman said, her face flushed. ‘Did I hit a nerve?’
    â€˜I sure hope not,’ Shorty replied anxiously. This movie was giving him ulcers – what with Joey Firello laying everything in sight, Grudge Freeport drinking himself into oblivion, Marisa Birch shacking up with her female stand-in as well as the producer, and Lennie Golden behaving like he didn’t have to do publicity. And this was on home ground – Christ knows what they’d all be like on a five-week location in Acapulco.
    Shorty frowned. Lennie Golden wasn’t Nicholson or Redford, for chrissake. He was just the new schmuck on the lot with a couple of money-making movies behind him and no solid track record.
    Shorty Rawlings was fifty-two years old, he’d seen them come and he’d seen them fade – real fast. Plenty of publicity kept you up there, and Lennie Golden better wise up.
    Shorty threw his arm around the journalist’s shoulders. She was a tall woman with greasy hair and a bad nose job. Probably a failed actress – Hollywood was full of ’em, and they all ended up doing something else. ‘C’mon, honey,’ he said expansively, ‘I’ll buy you a drink.’
An’ maybe you’ll give me a blow-job,
he added silently. After all, this was