He was magic. Even before the crowd caught its first glimpse of his patent-leather-shod foot swing out the open door of the limo, it held its breath in anticipation. Even before they heard the already legendary voice, they sighed. Leaned forward. Focused their entire attention right past the reigning macho hero and his giggly, buxom date to witness the appearance of the man every one of them had actually come to see.
A leg. An arm. A slow unfolding of over six feet of honed, elegant male.
The whispers grew. The sighs built. The flashes multiplied like an approaching electrical storm. And then, finally, the face.
The face. The face a billion women wanted to possess, a billion men wanted to find in the mirror every morning. Eyes so blue they made you forget the words Paul Newman. Cheeks chiseled with the mastery of a Michelangelo. A chin so perfect photographers wept to capture it so the light just caught that faint cleft.
Perfectly groomed, almost jet black hair. Just a little long, a little rakish. Just brushing the edge of his collarless tux shirt, so that the adoring throngs would know he wasn’t really as concerned about his appearance as he might have been. As he had a right to be.
And, according to the myriad reports that crossed wires daily across the world, he really wasn’t. It wasn’t simply that Cameron Ross was the most devastatingly handsome man in the world. It wasn’t that he was the most effortlessly elegant, easily capturing the “new Cary Grant” moniker—actually, the “finally, a new Cary Grant” moniker. It wasn’t even the fact that the Academy Award nomination he was strolling up the red carpet to see about proved that he wasn’t just handsome and elegant and intelligent, but, damn it, talented. It was that he didn’t even seem to notice any of it.
“Oh, no,” one of the women in the crowd moaned as Cameron reached behind him to take hold of a very feminine, very beautiful hand. “He brought her.”
Her. Isabelle Renoult, a whisper away from an Academy Award herself, a plea on the lips of almost as many men as women who chanted the name Cameron Ross. Cameron’s leading lady for the film for which they’d both captured their nominations, and, unfortunately, his off-again on-again paramour for most of the last two years. Tragically, more on than off. Rumor had it that he was carrying a big ring to go with her Oscar.
She took even longer to emerge from the car, a regal butterfly set free from its sleek cocoon, and all the while Cameron watched her with delighted eyes. And the crowd watched them both, alternately fascinated, enchanted and despairing.
“How does it feel?” the luckiest interviewer breathlessly demanded, shoving the first of a thousand mikes in Cameron’s face. “Your first nomination? Do you think the Golden Globe you won will mean a shoo-in for you?”
It seemed that Cameron was oblivious to the jostling, the sweating, the deafening roar of approval from the crowd, the desperation of the various camera people to capture that perfect smile perfectly.
He smiled as if he meant it, and four women in the front row of the peanut gallery fainted dead away.
A man only thirty-three years old should not look so mature. So mysterious. So gently amused, as if he were in on the joke along with everyone else about how undeserving he was of their attention.
“Well,” he drawled in that voice that carried just a hint of Oxford in it, “I imagine I could almost get away with saying that I’m not affected by any of this, if Isabelle hadn’t been there to catch me all ready in my tux at six o’clock this morning.”
Isabelle, a vision in Grace Kelly cheekbones and upswept honey blond hair, smiled. The crowd gushed, and the couple moved on, chatting, smiling, waving, lingering just a little so the people on the street knew they were the ones this enchanted couple would really rather spend time with. They were the people Cameron Ross enjoyed, even though every one of them knew there wasn’t a thing they’d have in common with a man who mingled with historians, mathematicians, moguls and princes. A man who played Chopin with the tenderness of a lover and polo with the passion of a predator.
He was the new Cary Grant. The man who had single-handedly brought elegance back to film, who kept his private life private and his public life a delight. Who courted brilliant women of legendary beauty and impressed experts on his range of knowledge.
He was charmed, charming, roguish. A raconteur and friend. He was magic; and in that moment, suspended on a brisk, bright California afternoon, the crowds in the streets felt privileged that they had had the chance to even see him.