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filming tomorrow?”
    I pick up my martini and take a sip.
    “Yes. Well. We appear on set tomorrow. You’ll have a few days to get settled and learn your lines.”
    A few days!
    “Is that… normal,” I ask, “to have a few days to learn a script before filming?”
    “Not ordinarily, no,” says James, “but you are superbly talented, Isabella. I’m sure the challenge will pose no problem for you.”
    That’s what he thinks . Then another issue suggests itself to me.
    “Why has the movie been rescheduled?” I ask.
    James looks up at me. “Because of Natalie,” he says. For a moment I can see the jet lag on his face. I wonder how long it’s been since he slept.
    “I am concerned that if we delay filming any longer, she’ll be exposed to temptation over in LA and succumb to her drug problems again.”
    I feel a wild stab of jealousy, as though someone has taken my heart and squeezed it. I’ve seen Natalie Ennis in pictures. Everyone has. She’s a size zero with huge childlike eyes and long dark hair. Every man on the planet wants to bed her, and James can’t be the exception.
    I stare down at my plate of food, feeling suddenly sick.
    “Have you had a relationship with Natalie?” I ask, unable to look at him.
    I hear him make a little sound of disbelief.
    “Is that what you’re worried about?”
    I look up to see him wide-eyed in shock. My temper rallies.
    “Yes,” I say, the volume of my voice rising. “You disappear for four days without telling me where you’re going. Then I discover you’ve flown halfway across the world to see another woman. After that, you announce you’re turning my life upside-down to fit around her requirements. So yes. Since you ask, James, that is what I’m worried about.”
    I am so angry, I know I’m not being reasonable, but I don’t care.
    “I want you to answer the question,” I continue, glaring at him. “Have you had sex with her?”
    I am holding my fork like a weapon. And to my disbelief, James breaks into a warm laugh.
    Then he reaches across the table, gently removes the fork from my fingers and takes both my hands in his.
    “How could I even look at another woman when I have a tiny chance of having someone as maddening and mystifying as you?” he says.
    I stare back at him, some of the anger sliding away. How does he always say the right thing?
    “My relationship with Natalie has and always will be a professional one,” he says, “and I’ve told you before, I don’t sleep with my actresses.”
    My actresses. A stab of pain strikes my heart.
    “You are such a lovely thing, Isabella,” he says. “I even rather like you when you’re in a silly temper. And I know for a fact, I don’t deserve you.”
    He pauses for a moment, as if wondering if he should continue. “If you had any idea,” he says carefully, “what I want to do to you for running into that alley, you’d run for the hills.”
    He stares at his martini glass for a moment, and then his eyes return to my face.
    The atmosphere between us has shifted, suddenly.
    “What is it you want to do to me?” I whisper. My mouth is dry.
    He keeps his eyes locked on mine.
    “Your behaviour today was unforgivable,” he says. “My job is to keep you safe. To protect you. Your role is to make my work as easy as possible. Old-fashioned, I know. But, simple. I cannot have you venturing alone into dangerous backstreets.”
    His voice is cool. For some reason I find it impossible to look away.
    “What I would like to do to you,” he says carefully, measuring every word, “is take you back to my apartment and bend you over a certain desk I have there.”
    I swallow, feeling my face and body growing hot.
    “Then I would like to pull up that rather ordinary skirt which you look so extraordinary in.”
    He pauses to take another sip of his martini, and I find myself leaning forward slightly, mesmerised by his words.
    “After that, I would hold you firmly down so you couldn’t move and tug off your