The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [192]
“Sure.” Nevern said eagerly, “I’ve known her mother for years. I’ll get them here tomorrow without fail.”
Zev watched the hours ticking past until morning, pacing the house like a caged animal waiting for its release. At dawn he showered and dressed in a light, beautifully tailored suit and a pale shirt of the finest Sea Island cotton, knotting his French silk tie carefully in the mirror. His shoes were Italian and his thin platinum watch Swiss. He inspected his image critically, adjusting his tie yet again, adding a flowered silk handkerchief to his breast pocket, wondering what she would think of him. Then he summoned his car and drove to the studios.
Dick Nevern was on the phone to him at eight-thirty. They would be at Magic Studios at noon.
C. Z. shut his office door and paced the floor again until ten, when he called for his car and returned home. He took another shower, changed his clothes for an almost identical suit, shirt and tie, checked his appearance once more, and drove back again to Magic. It was eleven-thirty and he was ice-cold with nerves. What if Missie didn’t remember him? What if she treated him coolly, an almost-stranger, just some person from a past she might not care to remember? He wondered what had happened to her husband and if she had children. And he wondered if she would still look the way he remembered.
On the stroke of noon his secretary buzzed and said Mr. Nevern was here with Azaylee O’Bryan and her mother. He told her to send them in.
He stood with one hand on his desk for support, his eyes fixed on the door as it opened.
She looked exactly as he remembered, her wide violet eyes opening even wider as she saw him. Dick hovered in the background as she stopped and said, “My God, it’s Zev! You are C. Z. Abrams! You are Magic Movie Studios.”
His heart flooded with the old emotion. Nothing had changed at all. He held his arms wide, his eyes fixed on her. “I did it all for you, Missie,” he said quietly.
Azaylee was aware of the whispers that if C. Z. Abrams were not Missie’s friend she would not be starring in Magic’s first big talkie. She tried not to let it bother her, concentrating on each day’s work in Marietta and staying close to her mentor, Dick. She didn’t find what she was doing difficult and Dick was right, the camera loved her. Sometimes, in the evenings, she could hardly believe that the girl on the screen was really her, and the fact that she had a new name for the screen, Ava Adair, made it all the more unreal. Rosa and Missie conspired to keep her feet firmly on the ground though, insisting that no movie-star nonsense was discussed in their household and reminding her that Ava Adair was just Azaylee O’Bryan, a fifteen-year-old who still had to finish high school.
She thought it was nice coming home from the studios and becoming her old self again, a kid with a glass of milk asking what was for supper and taking the dog for a walk. But she couldn’t wait to get to the studios the next morning and become Ava Adair.
She knew people were jealous because she was earning a small fortune, and that worried her because she didn’t care a damn about the money. She would happily have made movies for nothing, she loved it so much. Dick had given Rachel a small role and at six-thirty every day they traveled to the studios in the big Lincoln limousine C. Z. sent for them, giggling together about Azaylee’s eighteen-year-old costar Will Mexx, who had confessed he was madly in love with her.
“Love,” Azaylee scoffed, laughing. “Even Dick is better-looking than him.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Rachel replied thoughtfully. “He’s got nice teeth.” And then they fell about laughing again.
Rachel was a young lady of eighteen now, small and pretty with her mother’s soft features and merry dark eyes, and she was Azaylee’s best friend. They shared a joint ambition to be movie stars as well