No Cure For Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

murdered corpse of a twelve-year-old street kid.
    Stuart said the audience liked the characters because they kept people in suspense about whether they’d end up in the sack together. They had filmed a kiss for the Christmas special – a chaste one, but with definite possibilities – then the network would be showing reruns for a couple of weeks to keep the viewers on tenterhooks.
    Stuart also said the male viewers loved Sarah because, although she seemed a bit aloof and prim, very Brit, they just knew she was a screamer between the sheets. All that repressed passion. Strictly footprints on the ceiling.
    Sarah took all the praise with a pinch of salt, and she took Stuart’s crude comment as a compliment. That, to her, was what acting was all about. Being someone different. She was by nature shy and quiet; her shyness was a personal prison she could only escape through acting. She could only be truly alive and real on stage or in front of the cameras.
    Being reserved, Sarah didn’t like parties very much, either, but she understood the importance of attending them, especially in Hollywood. It wasn’t just a matter of being seen at the right places. Certainly that was important, as Sarah was still only an up-and-coming star, rather than a fully fledged one. But she was also relatively new to America, and she wanted to make friends; she wanted to be liked. It was especially difficult being English. People were inclined to think you were stuck-up and stand-offish just because of your accent.
    So she showed up when she was invited, mingled and said the right things. She never really made any close friends that way, but at least she collected more faces to smile at when she dined at Spago’s, which she usually tried to avoid because it was too noisy there to hear yourself think.
    Sarah turned to the sliding door and smiled to see Jack coming towards her with a bottle of beer in his hand. She liked Jack. Of all the people she’d met in Los Angeles – Stuart aside – he was the closest she had to a friend.
    Handsome in a TV star sort of way, Jack was tall and slim, not exactly muscular, but in good athletic shape, with a dark complexion and a great head of shiny black hair. Sarah liked him because he was straightforward – no games, no bullshit – full of mischief and energy, and he had a sense of humour. Jack could act, too, not like some of the people in the show, who had walked right out of toothpaste commercials and used-car lots.
    Sometimes they went out together to restaurants, plays and concerts. There had been one or two media attempts at rumours of romance, of course, but even the greenest of entertainment reporters hadn’t been able to maintain that fiction for long, reverting instead to the cliché of the beautiful star’s lonely life, her Garbo-esque love of solitude and privacy.
    Sarah knew that Jack was gay, and that the one marriage he had tried, to appear hetero, had been a dismal failure. If the gossip columnists also knew, they weren’t saying anything. Hollywood could be very funny about things like that, even today.
    ‘Playing wallflower again?’ Jack asked, standing next to her. They turned to face the canyon and he draped his arm over her shoulder in a brotherly fashion. The solid wooden fence they leaned against was all that stood between the two of them and a long plunge into the dark.
    ‘Oh, shut up, Jack,’ Sarah said, thumping his arm. ‘You’re such a party animal, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
    Jack feigned a frown. ‘Not for much longer. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s my birthday. I’m getting old.’
    ‘Thirty-seven’s not old.’
    ‘Easy to say that when you’re only thirty-four.’
    ‘How did you know that?’
    Jack winked. ‘Same way I know your real name’s Sally Bolton. No problem if you flirt a bit with one of the secretaries.’
    ‘Swine.’ Sarah nudged him in the ribs, but a chill went through her when he mentioned knowing her real name.
    ‘Oh, I