No Strings Attached

Chapter Sixteen

Honor had no idea what to wear to a photo shoot. The day was fine but the wind was frolicking with white woolly-lamb clouds so she teamed an aquamarine summer dress with a long cream cardigan that fell right the way to the dress’s hem, like something out of the sixties. She was no fashion guru but you couldn’t go wrong with retro.

Martyn was quiet.

He hadn’t shaved. His hair swung spikily around his cheekbones as it usually did and, thinking back to his image rumbling down The Butts on the side of that bus, Honor concluded that Martyn’s style of modelling relied a lot on people liking him exactly as he happened, by good luck, to be.

‘So, tell me about the shoot,’ she tried, when they’d negotiated the village traffic and were on their way, uphill, out of Rottingdean. ‘What’s it all about?’

‘The client is DownJo Jeans and it’s for an ad — magazine, website and the lead page of their section in catalogues,’ he said economically, eyes on the road.

‘Will it be exciting?’

‘No.’ He accelerated past the mock-Tudor Downs Hotel.

Juice, a Brighton radio station, took the place of conversation. Honor watched the scenery, the roadside bungalows with little windows in the roof and flint cottages with redbrick corners, giving way to grassy hills divided into irregular fields by darker green hedgerows. Sheep and horses grazed. The occasional hill was clad entirely in trees, reminding her of west Connecticut. Small scale.

They fought their way on to the A27 and, periodically, Martyn glanced at his watch.

‘Worried about being late?’

He glanced in his side mirror and pulled into the right-hand lane. Although she’d never driven in England and hated the idea of tackling those endless rotaries — roundabouts — let alone driving on the ‘wrong’ side, she knew that the faster traffic should be in the right-hand lane and the slower should be in the left-hand. It didn’t appear that all of the traffic knew that. ‘More mindful than worried,’ he said, after driving closer and closer to the dawdling little car in front before, grudgingly, it inched over. ‘I could have stayed at the hotel with the rest of the crew but as the shoot’s almost on my doorstep I decided not to. Now, of course . . .’ He waved a disparaging hand at the lines of traffic. ‘People trying to get to work are being held up by tourists setting out on their nice day trips. But I’ve built in a time buffer.’

‘And I guess they won’t start without you?’

He grunted but didn’t smile. Honor translated the grunt into, ‘Actually, I’m feeling tense and regretting inviting you so I’d prefer you not to tease me about my job. Let me retire into my own head for a while.’ Under time pressure, Stef had not only been as snappy as a dog but, unlike Martyn, who seemed self-reliant, he’d expected her to multitask her way through both their schedules as an unofficial and ultra-reliable PA. She knew how it felt to desire a little silence in which to contemplate the business of the day.

When had she last thought about business? Wearing a suit or studying client files would seem like living on Mars, now. She tried to imagine herself back at her desk with her licences on the wall and her computer screen permanently alight, land line and cell phone ringing all day and her income linked firmly to commission. Driving home with a headache that promised to last until bedtime only to discover that Stef had an evening off from the diner and wanted to go to the Star Bar where his old high-school buddies’ rock band would play and he’d dance all night with a bottle of Bud in his hand. If she mentioned her headache he’d say, ‘It’s because you have to relax, babe. You’ve got to learn to chill.’

Time had flown by, in Eastingdean. Was it really only six weeks since she’d taken down her licences and walked out of that life?

Nearly a month since she’d stored her stuff in a storage facility and taken a car to the airport?

In that short time, she seemed to have learned how to chill. Waiting tables didn’t pay well but neither did it scramble her brain. Robina and Sophie were just nuts enough and the locals just friendly enough to make her time in England fun. Her old life had fractured and she’d crept out of one of the cracks.

She watched the cars, buses, trucks and vans streaming along the undulating road between tall banks of scrubby shrubs in the morning sun and sank into her seat, content, for now, just to soak up the country that had given her half the blood in her veins.

Even the silence of the man beside her was fine. And, fifty minutes later, when they were approaching a fairytale town on a hill, swinging over a little humped bridge and up towards castle, trees and cathedral, he kind of shook his shoulders and relaxed into his seat and began tapping his fingertips to the music on the radio. ‘We’re here. This is Arundel.’

Jolted from her reverie, she leaned forward to stare as they cruised past a jumble of grey stone, flint, red brick walls, spires and turrets.

‘That’s part of the castle, but not where you get in. And, see that kind of mini castle peeping over the wall? That’s made of oak and it’s in the castle grounds.’

‘Wow.’ Honor gazed at the jaunty flags waving on each corner of the ‘mini castle’, which, she knew from her guidebook reading in bed, last night, was actually called Oberon’s Palace, created from drawings by Inigo Jones. Her mind was bombarded with a feeling of entering history, as if all the thousands of souls who had lived in Arundel over the centuries it had stood where the hill met the river were yelling at her all at once. No way had the guidebook done Arundel justice.

The road eased around to the right and into a broad street in which brick, stone and flint were joined by buildings painted white, blue or yellow and a couple of those cute timbered places, lining the slope down towards a monument in the middle of the road.

Martyn found his way around the back of the buildings to park at a red brick hotel. A last glance at his watch seemed to reassure him. But as she gathered her things he said, ‘Are you coming to watch the shoot?’

She hesitated. She was, wasn’t she? Didn’t he invite her last night . . . ? But then she got it. Last night, he’d been put on the spot by Clarissa and, making the best of a bad job, had invited Honor to cut Clarissa out. Aw, shit.

She responded brightly, hoisting her bag on to her shoulder and trying not to look disappointed. ‘I don’t quite know. I don’t want to miss out on seeing around this cute town and all these amazing buildings—’

But maybe her acting needed work because his eyes softened and he actually did the gallant Englishman thing. ‘You can come on the shoot. It’ll be OK if you don’t mind hovering in the background. I should be finished in time for a late lunch anyway, and then we’d have the rest of the day.’

She capitulated in a heartbeat. ‘If you’re sure no one will mind?’ She wouldn’t be human if she wasn’t agog to see a real live shoot.

He shrugged. ‘It’s not a big busy shoot.’

Following him through a rear entrance of the hotel she hovered so far in the background that when one of the reception staff showed them to a ground-floor meeting room with a conference table somewhere in amongst the clutter of clothes rails, aluminium boxes, leads, tripods, boxes and people, he had to look around for her. ‘This is Honor. Honor, this is Ian, the photographer, and Lily the MUA. Make-up artist.’

With a squeal of joy, Lily flung herself into Martyn’s arms, blonde hair flying. ‘Martyn! Hello, stud muffin!’

Martyn laughed and hugged her with one arm, shaking hands with Ian with the other. He’d obviously worked with them before.

Ian had dark, slicked-back hair and black-rimmed glasses; Lily was about Honor’s age, blonde prettiness spoilt by a peevish expression when she spotted Honor.

A faun-like guy, complete with dark curls and a pointy goatee, merited only a brief introduction from Lily. ‘Hair’s Leon, today. He’s here on work experience.’

Honor gave the faun a sympathetic smile at being so dismissed. But Martyn shook Leon’s hand anyway, obviously not catching Lily’s subtext that Leon was beneath Martyn’s notice.

But the presenting of Leon proved to be almost effusive compared to Ian’s single-word introduction of two incredibly young and eager girls wearing skinny jeans and untidy ponytails. ‘Assistants.’

Obviously quite used to being the bottom of the heap, the ‘assistants’ paused in burrowing through the mysterious aluminium boxes and black crates on wheels only to give distracted waves, although one of them muttered, ‘Stylist, really.’

Ian and Lily began talking to Martyn and Honor found some background to occupy.

From there, she figured out that the girl whose role was to assist Ian with light boxes and umbrellas was called Ettie and the other, stylist-really-Olivia, was there to look after the clothes and be barked at, with a dual role of keeping everyone supplied with coffee, tea or bottled water from a table set up at the side of the room that, during her weeks at Florence Events Catering, Honor would have known to refer to as the beverage station.

She helped Olivia hand around the drinks, then retired to a seat beside the beverage station from where she could occasionally be useful, see everything happening in the large room, but wouldn’t trip anyone up. As a conference room, with red velvet at the windows, red carpet on the floor and brass lights along the walls, the environment was familiar. But, in its current guise as a crew room, she was out of place.

Coffee over, Lily ushered Martyn to a canvas seat that reminded Honor both of a garden lounger and a dentist’s chair, tilting him back and covering his chest with a blue paper bib, talking quietly, Lily’s giggles ringing over Martyn’s soft baritone. After breaking off for a quick conference with Ian, Lily delved in a big pink case and brought out what looked like a razor and buzzed like a razor, but actually merely reduced the length of Martyn’s stubble. GQ stubble , Honor thought. Then, wow. That’s exactly what it was.

Ian was brought to examine the result and they pored over a sheet of paper Ian unfolded from his shirt pocket; Olivia dashed over to listen in, then all parties nodded. Lily beamed. ‘OK, the bathroom is through that door. Martyn, can you wash? Finish with cold.’

Martyn disappeared and Honor switched her attention to Ian, who seemed welded inside a leather jacket although the room was stuffy, and who was comparing his sheet of paper to one proffered by Olivia, ticking things off and rubbing his chin, allowing Olivia to coax him over to the clothes rail and study and nod as she took out pairs of jeans and other garments, making the odd note on his paper, pausing Olivia mid-sentence whenever Ettie ran over with a different list or a piece of equipment for a different consultation.

Then Martyn was back in the chair.

Honor tried to see exactly what Lily was applying to his face — it seemed to take a lot of pressing on to his skin for no discernible result — and then almost fell off her chair when Lily took out a long brush with flat, squared-off stubby bristles and began first tapping the bristles into something then touching them to the base of Martyn’s eyelashes. So intent was she on her task that she got closer and closer until she finally straddled him in order to get really close in.

‘I’m never sure what to do with my hands when you do that,’ Martyn rumbled. Lily’s whispered response made him laugh, a laugh he covered with a cough.

Lily’s voice rose to normal volume. ‘Calm down,’ she cooed, concentrating fiercely. ‘It’s only because you’re tall.’ But then she whispered something else, obviously at home virtually on Martyn’s lap. She wore a complicated layering of underwear-as-outerwear covered with a loose green top in swirling Indian print that, falling casually off one shoulder, probably gave Martyn an interesting view.

Honor began to realise that, as a financial advisor, she had missed out on a whole bunch of fun jobs. And that Lily and Martyn were far friendlier with one another than with the rest of the crew. Refusing to become a voyeur to their renewing their acquaintance, she transferred her attention to where, it seemed, decisions had been made and clothes and equipment were being relayed out of the room by Ettie and Olivia like ants carrying food to the nest.

Leon, ready with a smaller black box like Lily’s pink box, watched Martyn, who had shed his shirt and was standing, now. Studying his torso, Lily chatted about his chest hair, a shadow between his mighty pecs. ‘It goes with the stubble, doesn’t it? And flows into the line of belly hair into your jeans. Can you undo your waistband? Because we’ve got some unbuttoned shots and you’ll need powder right down. You’re a nice colour. And no tan lines! Good boy. Been sunbathing in the nuddy?’

Honor wondered where or what the nuddy was.

Lily’s words flowed steadily as she wielded first a towel over his entire torso and then a big powder puff from the base of his neck in slow circular movements over his belly and down to the waist of his underwear, making his skin glow luminous and supple. Then, with a fresh white towel, she lightly blotted away any surplus.

Martyn, responding with a grunt or the occasional, ‘Yeah,’ seemed to have drawn into himself, paying attention to what was going on without contributing.

Then Ian was looking at his watch and Lily was apologising and Martyn sitting down again so that Leon could finally get his hands on him — or rather his hair — talking to Martyn earnestly and spending ages rubbing wax between his finger tips to tease Martyn’s shining raven spikes and, to Honor’s eyes, make absolutely no difference whatsoever, whilst Lily watched critically, muttering, ‘He’s only half-trained. It’s only ’cos his dad knows someone that he’s out on shoots. I could have done that.’

Whilst Martyn was fussed over, the room had steadily emptied of equipment and clothes. Honor rose, unsure of what she was expected to do. The movement seemed to make her visible to Martyn again, as he slid carefully into his shirt. ‘I’m going in the van with Ian, will you be OK walking with the others?’

Honor studied him carefully but she just couldn’t see he looked any different after Lily and Leon’s attentions. He was just Martyn. ‘Sure,’ she said.

Lily led the crew, and Honor, down the hill and across a busy crossroads at a trot. ‘Ian wants to begin on the bridge.’

Honor hardly paid attention to their destination because suddenly they were rushing right by the turrets and arch that formed the entrance to Arundel Castle, crenellations and chimneys soaring behind, and her eyes didn’t seem to be able to unglue themselves from the solid chunk of history the others were streaming past without a glance. To cross the road she shuffled crab-wise, gazing at the gatehouse and the slot windows where once archers must have defended the person and family of Roger de Montgomery when he built the first castle there, after Hastings. After Hastings for Crissakes! Almost an entire millennium ago. Holy freakin’ Joe, couldn’t these people see ?

Oblivious to being towed along by one elbow, she mentally ticked off the buildings rising behind the gatehouse — Norman keep, medieval barbican, and, towering behind like something out of Disney, the gothic Victorian castle. It was like European History 101 and she could hardly breathe for excitement. ‘Holy crap,’ she whispered.

Lily swung on her. ‘Do you want us to leave you behind?’ she demanded, like a mother threatening a dragging child.

Honor jumped, guiltily. ‘I was just looking.’

‘Only, you can stay and gawp if you want.’ Lily began to pant as she picked up the pace. ‘But the rest of us have to get to the location because if Ian gets pissed off we’ll all have a bad day. So if you’re coming, come on .’

Oh well, the castle would still be there later . . . With one final awed stare Honor gave in to the pressure and hustled with the others. Already, she could see a blue van pulled over by a long stone bridge that spanned the river in three graceful arches. Olivia sprang into the open back doors. Lily and Ettie got busy amongst the boxes and Leon stood around, looking lost.

Grimly, Ian inspected the location. ‘This is going to be a pain in the arse. A giant pain in the arse. The client wants the bridge but what about the fucking traffic?’ Somehow, he arranged his equipment out of the way of the traffic and, finally, placed his model in an alcove, in the eye of the camera.

And Martyn became somebody else.

He reduced his focus until it was all on the photographer, who brought his light meter up close to Martyn’s skin and gave Ettie curt instructions to stand for arm-aching periods holding aloft a light box or a big white disc which she could somehow, with a dextrous twist, fold down into a smaller circle in three layers. Lily and Leon ran in between shots with powder and wax and, so far as Honor could make out, still made no difference to Martyn’s appearance.

Martyn did a lot of leaning, turning and staring. Honor had had some idea that he would strike poses and hold them but, in fact, he was rarely still. In contrast to his snapping and snarling at the crew, Ian talked to Martyn like a cowboy gentling a horse. Martyn worked hard to give the photographer what he wanted, occasionally with a fleeting smile at a joke. But the camera shutter whirred when he was unsmiling, as if the smiles were only to let his glower relax.

The shoot began interesting but slid slowly and surely into tedium. Martyn kept appearing from the back of the van in various jeans and shirt combinations; sleeves rolled up, sleeves rolled down, but shirt always sexily open around his torso; leaning or sitting on the bridge parapet with the lichen and the moss, then moving down by the glassily gliding water and the reflections of the sky. The reflections, at least, Ian approved, and he spent what felt like years over them.

Crew attention was on Martyn and when Honor volunteered, ‘I guess that’s the River Arun,’ it was met with such eye-rolling apathy that she kept to herself the rest of her knowledge about Arundel for centuries having been a thriving port, and tried to work out where the docks would have been, instead.

Ian’s voice began to take on the rhythms of a relaxation tape. ‘Look down . . . then up. Again. Again. Now left . . . and front. Again. Try right. And front. This time, when you look down, don’t come up so far . . . and up — stop! Let’s try that again. Wait. Let’s wait for the fucking sun.’

‘He’s really intense, the camera loves him,’ breathed Leon from several yards behind the camera.

Lily unbent enough to giggle. ‘What’s not to love?’ And Leon shivered and smiled for the first time.

At the end of a couple of hours Honor had turned her attention to the town, which looked as if a giant child had opened a toy box marked ‘historic buildings’ and jumbled them all together on the hillside.

But, just as she was preparing to abandon the shoot and cross back into the town that she was itching to explore, the crew all got busy stowing the equipment back in the van. Ian stretched and yawned. ‘Next stop, the castle grounds. And you’d better all find a way to squash into the van because we’ve only got a crew pass.’

Honor’s desire to leave vanished.

Martyn looked her way, apparently not as unaware of her presence as he’d seemed. ‘Honor, you can squash in the front with me,’ which earned her an affronted look from Lily, who had to crawl into the back with the racks of clothes, photography equipment and the rest of the crew. Martyn took Honor’s hand and stepped up into the cab all in one motion, hoisting her on to the seat by his side as if she were a doll. She looked at his face curiously. The make-up was so subtle she probably wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t watched it being applied. He smelled a little different to usual; powder and hair wax. Other than that he was still Martyn. More remote than she was used to and sitting oddly at the centre of everyone’s attention. But still Martyn.

Still warm, as his hand proved when it lingered on her leg as he reached past her to shut the heavy door. She glimpsed his smile. Then he turned back to listen to what Ian was saying about the light and the grey clouds just beginning to move in over the clutter of buildings on the brow of the hill.

Apart from a member of staff who showed them to a roped-off area of greensward in the lee of one of the massive curtain walls, Arundel Castle took no notice of the photography crew in its grounds. The van burst open and spilled its cramped cargo of crew, arms full of equipment, clothes and collective backs to turn on any tourists hovering at the distant ropes, treating the castle as a huge prop that might as well have been made of cardboard as majestic grey stone gathered over centuries.

‘This is better!’ Ian kept saying, brandishing his light meter. ‘We’ve probably got an hour before it clouds right up and I think we’ll get the best stuff, here. I like the light and we don’t have to keep stopping for fucking traffic.’ In the comparative peace and quiet of the castle grounds, he became almost jovial.

Martyn no longer bothered to squeeze himself into the back of the van to change his clothes. He stripped off his shirt to exhibit a body that deserved to be looked at and Honor felt her breath stick. The sun poured over him, defining every line, and it took her a moment to remember how to fill her lungs.

And then he unsnapped the waist of the dark indigo jeans and eased the two halves open and she forgot again, her eyes helpless but to follow to where the faint arrow of hair pointed.

Oh, whoa . . .

‘Let’s work with the wind and get your hair across your face.’ Ian was again behind his tripod. ‘Don’t quite turn all the way back — yes! Exactly like that! Let’s have that again . . . again. OK, now over here.’ With an anxious glance at the sky, he kneeled, and then lay, on the ground and shot up past Martyn with a tower soaring into the sky behind him, doing a lot of squirming and rolling and making Martyn laugh.

‘Next,’ said Olivia. ‘Half into the jeans.’

Without comment, Martyn undid the jeans the rest of the way and shucked them down to his thighs, showing mid-grey trunks. Olivia fussed around, arranging denim between his thighs as he said something that made her giggle. Yup. Honor had definitely pursued the wrong career.

‘Last set,’ Ian said, some time later, relief in his voice, ‘the tattoo.’

Honor edged closer to watch as Lily took handfuls of wipes then a towel to Martyn’s torso, removing the powder. Then Martyn propped his hands against the side of the van, presenting his naked back to Lily, who opened an alcohol wipe to clean his lower back, then took out a coiled sheet of white shiny paper and began to press it on to his skin, slowly and painstakingly.

Whilst Lily concentrated, Olivia passed around bottled water and muesli bars and Ian studied the window on the back of his camera as he clicked through shot after shot. As his humour seemed to have improved, Honor hovered nearer and he tilted the camera so that she could see the shots in miniature in the viewing pane. ‘These are going to be good.’

And, all at once, she understood ‘the camera loves him’. It somehow honed the planes of Martyn’s face, made his eyes glow like marcasite and emphasised every muscle. He really did look like the personification of a Manga animation. Honor had always had a soft spot for the dark clear lines of Manga men — odd how she’d ended up with tawny-haired Stef because she could almost have written the order for Martyn herself, right down to the deep dark eyes. The massive stone wall was the perfect backdrop, especially the dramatic shots from below with the castle towering over him like a giant chess piece. ‘Jeez,’ she said, inadequately.

‘They’ll look fabulous in monochrome. The clients will wet themselves.’

‘You’ve done a great job.’ She could see why the crew forgave him his grouchiness if he got results like these.

Above the elastic waist of Martyn’s grey trunks, Lily was putting the finishing touches to the transfer tattoo, a pair of intensely staring, slanting eyes beneath curling brows, maybe man or maybe beast.

‘Ooh, wicked,’ breathed Leon.

Olivia passed Martyn a different pair of jeans and he stepped into them but pulled them up only loosely as Lily squeaked, ‘Watch the tatt!’ Then she brought out a spray.

Martyn frowned. ‘I suppose that’s cold?’

She pulled a face. ‘It was warm this morning, when I wrapped it in foil but . . .’

He sighed and lifted his arms and she began to spray him with water. ‘Fucking cold,’ Honor heard him say. Lily replied with something reproving and he laughed, choking on the spray. Then he closed his eyes and Lily sprayed vigorously over his head until his hair dripped and hung in his face.

Ian rose to new heights of enthusiasm. ‘Leon, get out of shot! I want his hair exactly like that. All right, Martyn, face the wall, drop the jeans a bit then pull them up slowly as you turn your head back towards me, looking over your shoulder.’

Each time he did so, Honor could hear the spitting of the shutter taking continuous shots and Lily breathing, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, watch that tatt . . .’ Down, up. Down, up. By the time she’d watched it a few times, the tight cheeks of Martyn’s ass under those tattooed glowing eyes were etched into her brain and she was pretty sure she’d dream about them that night.

Then, suddenly, it was over.

Lists were compared for a final time. Lily removed the tattoo with more alcohol wipes and then Martyn towelled himself dry and climbed back into his own clothes.

And it was as if he had been released from a serious-spell.

He began to chat and smile and the tension he’d fed on all morning evaporated. The crew relaxed, packing the equipment back into the van with end-of-assignment laughter.

‘So, you up for lunch at the hotel with us, Martyn?’ chimed Lily. ‘Even Ian’s staying today.’

Martyn smiled but shook his head. ‘Honor and I have plans.’

‘OK.’ Lily somehow managed to make her carefree smile for Martyn become, by the time it got to Honor, a glare that quite plainly accused her of pushing in and spoiling crew camaraderie.

‘I don’t really mind—’ began Honor.

Martyn took her hand and squeezed it. ‘No, you’ve been patient but I can see the way you’ve been lusting after the castle all morning. Let’s wallow in the history stuff.’

‘Oh, you like history.’ Lily sounded as if she’d just uncovered a filthy secret.

‘I was a history major.’ Honor tried not to sound apologetic. ‘Actually,’ she turned to Martyn, ‘I’m a real fool for social history and would rather look around the town. I’ll never do the castle justice in just half a day, anyway.’ She wondered if Martyn realised that he’d kept hold of her hand.

Once back at the hotel, the turnaround was rapid. Martyn washed, retrieved his wallet and keys, shook Ian’s hand, kissed Lily’s cheek and gave her a hug, waved at the rest of the crew, ‘Thanks, guys!’ grabbed Honor’s hand again and strode out across the hotel vestibule and into the street outside.

It felt like an escape.

‘You really didn’t want to eat with the crew?’ she asked.

‘Not today,’ he said, frankly. ‘A coffee-shop lunch OK for you?’

‘Sure.’

‘Let’s find the oldest looking place we can, with sloping floors and a ceiling I bang my head on. Then it can count as part of your history tour.’

She laughed and allowed him to tow her into exactly that sort of coffee shop, down by the monument, where a teenage girl, who blinked when she got a look at Martyn, showed them to a titchy circular table for two under the rake of a staircase, as all the other tables were filled elbow-to-elbow with holidaymakers and day trippers.

Martyn grimaced and tucked himself into the available space, sure enough banging his head.

It was past two but the teenage girl said they served lunch any time, blowing her dark fringe out of her eyes as she passed out cardboard menus, cream with a line drawing of the castle gatehouse in brown. Honor chose something called Smuggler’s Pie, which seemed to be a pie of beef and ale and sounded right at home here in Sussex, England. And Martyn chose Chicken Balti and boiled rice, which didn’t.

He laughed when they banged knees under the table and even when he banged his elbow, twice, on the panelled wall beside him. ‘Ow! Have we wandered into a doll’s house by mistake?’

‘You’ve sure unwound,’ she observed. ‘You’re quite different in front of the camera.’

‘Oh?’ He looked faintly surprised. ‘I’m certainly ready to relax. Today there wasn’t much hanging around and we’ve wrapped everything up nice and early, but it’s amazingly tiring standing in front of a camera and doing nothing.’

‘It looks it.’

His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

‘I’m not being sarcastic. You’re so concentrated and intense, having to put up with doing the same thing over and over, the make-up artist and the hair guy dancing around you. There were times I was reminded of Gulliver and the folks of Lilliput. They were trying to tie you down with a thousand threads of annoyance.’

Laughing, he shifted his legs and banged her knees again. ‘Ow. Sorry. They don’t annoy me. We’re all working together to get the best results. It’s a team thing. Also . . .’ His eyes crinkled, ‘I don’t want to come over like a diva. That gets you lots of hate.’

Sitting back to allow the waitress to place cutlery and water glasses on the table, Honor asked, ‘So why aren’t we eating with the crew?’

‘Because I’d rather eat with you.’

‘Or because you think I’ll save you from Lily?’

‘I don’t need saving from Lily.’

But something had flickered in his eyes. She tried not to act deflated. ‘You have history.’

His gaze steadied. ‘True. Because we were both free to hook up, so one night we did. But it was what it was. I didn’t invite you to lunch to warn off Lily.’

She gazed back. ‘But you didn’t want to spend time with her today, that’s why you held hands with me.’

A smile formed slowly, lighting his eyes. ‘It would have been a good excuse, if I’d thought of it. But I don’t need saving from Lily because we hooked up briefly and we parted friends. End of.’

‘I expect you have a whole army of make-up artists, stylists and models to pick from.’

‘Not an army.’

‘But you do go out with models?’

‘Of course.’ His eyes had half closed, gleaming at her from between the lids. He seemed to be enjoying her questions, as if intrigued to learn where they were heading. ‘Why wouldn’t I? But not exclusively. I love attractive women but I don’t have a “type”. A woman just has to interest me, not be a model or a six-foot-tall blonde.’

She didn’t ask about five-foot-five and sort of sandy. ‘Was Rosie-with-the-hidden-husband a model?’

He shook his head. ‘Flight attendant.’

She snorted. ‘Just another industry hot on physical perfection and beauty. And I bet you met her when you were flying home from some exotic location?’

‘The Maldives,’ he agreed. ‘Rosie was gorgeous, well-travelled and sophisticated.’

‘I guess you miss her.’

‘Not once I realised how short on honesty she was.’ His eyes became teasing. ‘And how unoriginal — she never once sifted through my sex life or got my attention by taking on teenage louts with a handful of hot food and a kickass attitude.’

The waitress arrived, easing the steaming and fragrant plates carefully on to the tiny table. ‘Not much room I’m afraid,’ she pointed out, unnecessarily. Martyn’s fragrant sauce came in a steel balti bowl, naan bread and white rice in another. Honor’s pie scarcely left room on her plate for peppery wedges of potato and a mound of peas, making her realise how hungry she was. She was never going to compete with models or flight attendants with that kind of appetite.

‘So,’ he said, inconsequentially, when her plate was nearly empty, ‘what do you really think about my job?’

She lifted her brows. ‘I think it’s great. You’re obviously sought-after and, I presume, earning good money.’

He brushed that away. ‘So you don’t think it’s odd for a grown man to stand around in his underwear all day, being told where to look? You don’t think I should be utilising my intelligence in some more worthwhile way? And that it’s plain lazy to only work for a few days each month?’

‘You sound as if you’re the one who has a problem with your job.’

‘No. I don’t have a problem with it. But I’d like your objective opinion, as someone who hasn’t known me long. How does the whole thing strike you?’

Thoughtfully, she stacked her plate and cutlery with Martyn’s so that it would be easy for the waitress to swoop up as she hurried by. ‘I don’t think it’s odd. It’s interesting. Yes, the stuff at the bridge got repetitive and my attention wandered but it looks a wonderful career. You’re using the assets you’ve been given. If you have so many issues with your career, how come you got into it? Did you go to modelling school, or something?’

His expression relaxed. ‘Just fell into it, which must be really annoying for anyone who does go the modelling school route. I was in Brighton and something was going on in the Pavilion Gardens. So I wandered over to look because it seemed to involve a group of pretty girls. They were from a promotions company, scouting for guys to go into a competition to be a model, organised by In Town Magazine , sponsored by le Dur. “You are just what we’re looking for — how would you like to be in a modelling competition?” they said. And, compared to revising for my finals, it seemed attractive.

‘I’d never done any kind of performance but I’d swum and played sport and the shoot director began by sticking us all in swimming gear and it didn’t seem too difficult. It might have been torture if they’d wanted cheerful, beaming knitting-pattern guys or something but they just wanted someone who would stare into the camera. I found I could do that OK.’ His smile was slow, as if waiting for her to butt in with some kind of funny.

When she didn’t, he went on, ‘Le Dur liked me and offered me work, which conjured up several agents and managers, so I hooked up with Ace. I don’t do runway or acting or anything. I do product-led commercial print and I do quite a bit of editorial — you know, a feature in the glossies about some lifestyle thing and they want the right images.

‘I think I must have been born three-parts lucky bastard. It’s so random that I just happen to look how they want that sometimes it seems almost wrong to make money out of it.’

‘Have you ever been in GQ ?’ Her voice sounded shy and awed, even to her own ears.

‘British GQ , yes, for a company that sold hand-sewn shirts, and in a couple of editorials, but GQ uses a lot of top sportsmen and actors in their ads. I’ve been in FHM and Esquire and In Town , of course. But I’m in more women’s or general interest magazines. And on buses.’

She sorted through the subject in her mind. ‘Do you have to deal with clients?’

‘Not a lot. Ace, my agent, does that. I maintain my website and do Twitter and Facebook. The agency is keen on each of their models having an online presence.’

She wasn’t going to admit that she’d already Googled him. ‘And what comes after? Can you model for all of your life?’

‘People do. They shift their area of operations into . . .’ He made a face. ‘. . . I don’t know, ads for vitamins and life insurance. But others become agents or managers or get work on fashion courses. A lot of models are actors or musicians, anyway, so they concentrate on that. But I don’t do that kind of performance.’ He hesitated. ‘I do some web design, which is what I was doing at uni. I look after the websites of several of the models at the agency. And the agency’s site, too.’

She studied him. ‘And you do that so that you have a career to move into?’

‘And I enjoy doing it, I suppose. I don’t get it when men say they do nothing but model. I like to exercise my brain. I do a couple of websites for charities, too, because I’ve got the time.’

He lapsed into silence, chin on his palm. He seemed to want to get something off his chest but he was having a hard time coughing it up.

‘Are you telling me some kind of secret?’

‘I suppose I am.’ His smile stretched slowly, ruefully across his face. ‘I don’t tell Clarissa.’

She laughed. ‘About the web design? But surely she knows?’

He shook his head.

Baffled, ‘Why not? It would seem to me that she’d get off your back, if she knew.’

‘That’s why I don’t tell her.’ He smiled at the waitress, who looked dazzled. ‘I suppose I have some ridiculous idea that she ought to accept me as I am.’

‘You know . . . last night you were pretty hard on Clarissa.’

He glanced away. Sighed. ‘I’m afraid I’ve always had a highly developed talent for speaking in the heat of the moment and she has an equal talent for pushing my buttons. But, you’re right. I was hard on her. And it would have taken away all the sting if I’d just put my arm around her and said sorry, straight away, wouldn’t it? If I’m three parts lucky bastard then the other part is irritable and I do recognise it — but not normally until the next day. And then I’m sorry for how accurately I aimed hurtful words. And that’s when I apologise. When it’s hardest to do. But, don’t worry, I’ve already sent her a “let’s be friends” text.’ His eyes were rueful, even as he laughed at himself.

His phone began to ring, getting him out of the confession, and he answered with a brief, ‘Hi, Ace.’

He didn’t get up and seek privacy so Honor had no real choice but to listen to his side of the conversation, presumably with his agent, as Ace didn’t seem a common name. They talked about the shoot. And Martyn said, ‘No, I’m not home yet. I’m eating lunch with someone. No, not from the crew. Yes. Yes, she’s pretty.’ His eyes crinkled at Honor. ‘No, I haven’t . . .’ He took the phone away from his ear. ‘My agent, Ace is coming for dinner tonight. He says he wants to meet you.’

The waitress stopped to clear the table and offer the dessert menu. Honor took it, not so much because she had room for dessert but to give her time to consider. ‘Why would he want to do that?’

Martyn shrugged. ‘Typical, flamboyant, expansive — slightly nosey — Ace.’ A voice buzzed thinly and he put the phone back to his ear, then added, ‘And now he’s heard your accent, he says he loves Americans.’

‘Oh. Well, I guess.’ Now that she’d seen a male model in action, it would probably be interesting to meet his ‘flamboyant and expansive’ agent, too. She imagined someone who wore satin and called everybody ‘darling’.

Ending the call, Martyn chose plain vanilla ice cream but Honor said, ‘I’ll pass. I’ve kind of lost my sweet tooth, working amongst Robina’s cakes all day.’

‘One thing that woman does well is make cakes.’

‘If she heard you say so, she’d be beating down your door to deliver lemon drizzle or rocky road.’

‘Then please don’t tell her. I can run off most things I eat but have never dared let myself get addicted to Robina’s cakes. And they’re positively dangerous if they arrive attached to Robina.’

No trace of Martyn Mayfair the Model remained. He was completely his Eastingdean self, now, leaning into the crook of the wall, his hair drying and tousled as if he’d just come in from walking in the rain. She felt comfortable with this Martyn. The kind of comfortable that had a lasting feel to it. A comfortable she might never tire of . . . uh-oh.

There was this feeling. As if he was reaching his hand into her chest and stroking her heart. And her heart liked it.

She sat straighter, her breathing quickening like an animal sensing approaching danger.

And the danger was from within herself. A self that already knew that falling for Martyn . . . wow. Way to improve her emotional stability! She’d have to be a special kind of swivel-eyed loon to make a fool of herself over a pin-up.

Just like Robina.