"Guys, I've had it," she said, feeling the flush of sexual arousal begin to sweep upward through her quaking belly. "Must have some tea-my throat is on fire."

Rick Benton was immediately at her elbow with a thermos of iced tea. He poured a glass and she gratefully drank it, thanking the youth with her deep violet eyes and seeing the shy worship in his own dark eyes. Rick was barely fifteen, a pleasant self-effacing young boy, tall for his age and unmistakably handsome. He had appeared one day from the farms of the midwest and attached himself to the camera crew. He did the unpleasant but necessary tasks, such as carrying the heavy electronic equipment, keeping track of the scripts, bringing coffee, and he never complained if they forgot to pay him. He was happy just to be on the glamorous fringes of show business. He had a guitar which he was learning to play, and his greatest hope was to be a singer himself one day.

"Thank you, Rick," the exhausted brunette movie star said gratefully, favoring him with a smile which showed fine white teeth set in an unbelievably soft oval of sensuous lips. The tea was soothing to her strained throat. Candy Mullender rarely drank anything but tea or coffee or milk or lemonade, and smoked a cigarette only when under stress. She knew that virtually all the actors and actresses she worked with at least smoked marijuana, and many dropped acid or took pills or even heroin or the other hard narcotics, but Candy had never felt the need. They called her square and she shrugged it off, setting her own standards and sticking to them. In ten years struggling up the thorny ladder of show business, she had seen too many people with talent fuck up their heads with dope and alcohol.