"I'm alone," she retorted flatly, struggling to keep her composure. "Is there any law against sleeping in the nude on a hot night?"
"None that I know of, baby," smiled Phil, settling himself uninvited into an easy chair and lighting a cigarette without taking the trouble even to offer her one.
"What do you want, Phil?" she insisted, standing over him uneasily. "If one of the neighbors saw you coming here tonight, there could be a scandal. I've got a nice life with Matt now, and I don't want…"
"Relax, pussycats and let me look at you," Agard drawled with vulgar self-confidence. "Goddamn, you're as beautiful now as you were the last time I had you flat on your back! You weren't so nervous about my visits then, as I recall, and as a matter of fact, I always had the impression you looked forward to them. How about a quickie for old time's sake?"
"No!!!!!" she found herself saying although in the back of her mind another voice was saying "Yes!" with approximately the same intensity. You mustn't get involved with this man again, she warned herself. He couldn't care less about you or your husband or your marriage! Matt would find out and the whole world would come to an end as far as you were concerned.
"You said you had some business, Phil," she told him, making a supreme effort to keep her voice level and controlled. "Why don't you tell me what it is. I'm very tired and want to get a good night's sleep tonight."
Lynn knew perfectly well that she was in no position to order this man out of her house. Not only was he Matt's boss and in a position to keep her husband from ever working in television again, but she lived in continual fear that he would open his big mouth and tell Matt exactly what kind of a girl he had married, thereby ruining her marriage.
"Okay, baby, although I see a couple of perky little tits underneath that robe that keep sending me messages that I can't ignore. But the thing is this: we're shooting a television video-tape tonight at the studio, and one of the extras just called in sick. Everything's set to start taping at one o'clock, and I hate like hell to start re-scheduling things at this stage of the game."
"And what do I have to do?" inquired Lynn, a little puzzled by all of this.
"Just stand in for the extra. I'll pay you the going rate."
"I don't understand," she confessed unhappily, not liking something about the situation, but unable to put her finger on exactly what was worrying her. "You know perfectly well I'm not an actress, and why are you shooting a film at one o'clock at night?"
Agard smiled easily and shook his head like an adult being asked to explain something to a simple-minded child.
"You don't have to act, sweetheart," he assured her. "The girl who copped out on me was just an extra. All you have to do is stand there for a couple of hours and look beautiful. It's an oriental scene and you're a slave girl who waits next to the queen. And we're shooting at night because it's quiet, and we can work without being disturbed all the time. Any more questions?"
CHAPTER TWO
Lynn had said no adamantly, but Phil was a hard person to turn down. He had quickly found a way to remind her subtly that her marital happiness depended entirely on his keeping his big mouth shut about their wild life together prior to her marriage, and Lynn realized that in the long run she had very little choice. He had given her five minutes to dress while he smoked quietly in the living room and then bundled her into his car and driven rapidly to the studio.
From the outside, everything seemed dark and deserted, since WRT-TV went off the air at twelve-thirty, but once inside, the young and frightened woman found that the studio was alive with activity. Most of the technicians were men she had gotten to know slightly during the six months she had worked as Phil's secretary. Most of them seemed to be surprised to see her for some reason, and one older man who had always seemed like the grandfather type lewdly pinched her bottom as she walked by him.
"Why's everybody acting so strange?" she questioned her former boss, but the executive was busy and he had neither the time nor the patience to get involved in lengthy explanations.
"Jon!" he called across the studio to a tall, gaunt, sour-faced individual who worked as the studio's make-up man. "Lynn's going to stand in for Millie! Get her squared away, will you? She can share a dressing room with Kelly."
"Is Kelly in the movie?" Lynn inquired with surprise. Kelly Agard was an attractive woman in her early thirties, certainly good looking enough to be a professional actress, but this was the first time that Lynn had heard of Agard's wife actually playing a role in a video-film. But the producer had no time for discussions at the moment, and he waved her in the general direction of the dressing rooms and turned to confer with the video-tapes director, a squat, mean looking man named Lenny who scowled at the world with an ugly cigar protruding from one corner of his mouth.
The longer she thought about it, the stranger this whole situation was, and Lynn found herself growing more and more suspicious as she walked across the set to the dressing rooms with Jon at her side. For one thing, she remembered, WRT-TV did not usually get involved with taping its own shows; the national networks in New York supplied most of the tapes they used except for sports, news, interviews with local politicians, and an occasional cultural program featuring a boring academic speaker from the university. Yet the set which had been erected was obviously intended for a drama of some kind, and Phil had said something about shooting an oriental scene with slave girls. Very strange!
"Why, Lynn, how good to see you, darling," called Kelly Agard as Lynn timidly entered the spacious but cluttered dressing room. The young woman had always been shy and ill at ease with Kelly because of her former love affair with this woman's husband. Phil had once said that Kelly knew all about it and didn't mind, but Lynn had not believed him.
"It's nice to see you, Mrs. Agard," the young wife responded politely, studying the well-built brunette as she took a seat and fumbled nervously through her handbag for a cigarette. "I didn't know you were an actress."
"Oh well, I don't know how much acting talent you need to do this kind of thing, honey. Mostly it's a question of having the body for it. And incidentally, please don't call me 'Mrs. Agard' anymore. Now that we're both in the same business, I think that just plain 'Kelly' will do nicely. Actually I'm amazed that Phil was able to talk you into coming down here tonight."
This strange conversation was making the young blonde more confused by the minute. A good body – which Kelly certainly did have – was obviously important for an actress but then so was acting skill! Anyway why should Phil have had any difficulty in getting her to accept a night's work as an extra for a television film? It didn't make any sense.
"Have a drink, dearie," suggested Mrs. Agard in a hearty friendly manner, sliding a bottle of vodka down her dressing table towards Lynn Langley. "We've got awhile to wait before they're ready for our scene, and I find it helps if you go out there a little bit sloshed, if you know what I mean."
Lynn didn't but she accepted the drink anyway, despite the fact that Matt disapproved of liquor and would not keep any in the house. Maybe a quick slug will clear my head a little, she decided, pouring herself a healthy glassful and then adding some tomato juice to make a Bloody Mary. Then she settled back to watch as Jon barged busily into the dressing room and went to work on Kelly's face, applying rouge and make-up to give her skin some color under the bright lights on the set.
"Finish your drink, baby," advised Jon bruskly, nodding in Lynn's direction. "I'm going to be ready to do you in another minute. And better get out of that dress unless you want to get make up all over it."
"What should I put on?" asked Lynn, a little alarmed.