Page 40 of Slow Simmer

Chapter Nineteen

Luke had only been gone a couple of minutes when a harried production assistant came in and asked Suzannah to go next door, where the video crew wanted to talk to her about what she’d be doing. George tagged along behind, and Suzannah watched in amusement as he and Myst practically fell on each other. It was obviously a very new romance, she thought - well, it had to be if they were still worried about keeping it quiet from the press.

Myst, as petite and beautiful in real life as she was on the screen, looked tiny in George’s burly arms. The battered rugby player was clearly besotted, and the pop star just as evidently returned the feeling. Suzannah felt warm just looking at them.

“It’s the ginger babe!” a voice exclaimed, and she sighed as B-Rex approached, grinning.

“Nice to meet you at last… Brian,” she said, and B-Rex laughed good-naturedly.

“Aw, you discovered my dirty secret. It kinda destroys my mystique when you know about it, yah?”

He was actually a sweetheart, Suzannah decided. “You destroyed your mystique when you asked a haute cuisine chef for hot dogs, I’m afraid,” she told him.

“Hot dogs?” another voice interjected, horrified. “That’s not what we ordered, is it? B-Rex, what did you do?”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Suzannah whispered as B-Rex looked briefly panic-stricken, and then she stepped past him to offer her hand to the older man she assumed was the producer, or director or whatever they called it. “Just a joke, sir.”

“Good, good.” The director looked relieved. “Okay, come through this way and we’ll do a walk-through. You can explain to me what food you have and what B-Rex will have to do on screen, and then we’ll do a dry run.”

There was an awful lot of standing about involved in shooting a music video, Suzannah soon discovered, and going over the same thing over and over again until they had everything precisely cued to the music. Which meant she had to coach B-Rex through serving the pasta onto two plate, sprinkling pine nuts over the top with artistic flair and carrying them to the table, in the space of exactly nineteen seconds.

While she was working through that, trying not to get exasperated with the musician’s fumbling, the camera crew were out on the beach with Myst, filming her walking in the edge of the water, lip-syncing along with the music being pumped from a large speaker.

“Like this,” Suzannah said, taking the serving tongs from B-Rex and showing him the deft little twist of her wrist which swirled the tagliatelle into a perfect little cone.

The rapper sighed, but he took the tongs again as she tipped the pasta back into the pan. “I wonder if we could cut the scene from me lifting the pasta from the pan, to putting the plates on the table?” he said. “You could do the presentation bit, that way.”

“I’m more than happy to, but I don’t think that’s part of the director’s vision. So let’s see if you can’t get it right. You nearly had it last time,” Suzannah encouraged.

“It smells fantastic. Can’t I have a taste?” B-Rex wheedled.

“Of course you can.” She opened a drawer and found a fork, handed it over. “Have you had lunch yet?”

On discovering they hadn’t eaten since an early breakfast, Suzannah insisted B-Rex sit down and eat a plate of the pasta. George had already wolfed down a huge bowl and pronounced it fantastic, and Suzannah watched with pleasure as B-Rex took a mouthful and his eyes lit up.

“Shit. This is your hot cuisine?”

“Hautecuisine,” she corrected him, smiling. “It means high - it’s French.”

“Don’t think I’d appreciate it as much if I was high,” B-Rex said quite seriously, and she had to cover her mouth to stifle a laugh.

Myst came in from the beach then, flushed and warm, and George immediately rushed to get her a glass of iced water. The producer wanted to take her straight back outside but George wasn’t having any of it, insisting Myst needed to eat.

The director looked all set to argue until George stood directly in front of him and scowled. The rugby player looked intimidating as hell, at which point the director decided he’d quite like some lunch himself, actually.

It was as good as watching a comedy on TV, Suzannah decided, once again having to stifle her laughter. She was having fun, she realised, even out of her element as she was. She was dying to tell Carlo about all of this later.

As though her thoughts had summoned him, he arrived at that moment, escorted by the harried production assistant. He smiled as B-Rex got up to shake his hand and greeted George and Myst politely when they were introduced, but Suzannah thought he looked distracted. When everyone’s attention was returned to what they’d been doing before, he came up quietly beside Suzannah and put his arm around her waist.

“Everything okay,cara?”

“It’s been fun, actually. B-Rex is getting the hang of the presentation.”

“Good.”

“Everything okay at the restaurant?” Carlo seemed distracted, and that got Suzannah worrying. When he hesitated, she frowned and said “Excuse us a moment,” to the room at large before grabbing his hand and almost dragging him outside.

“Spit it out,” she demanded. “What’s happened?”

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