by Victoria Fox
So did nightmares.
Carmine and her father shook hands, prompting the barrage of press to surge once more. In the background, the spires of the Parisian rose majestically against a bright-blue sky, fountains spraying jets of silver. Tourists swarmed like bees to honey, drawn by the bonus of a rich heiress and her casino-boss fiancé.
‘A happy day for us,’ Carmine grinned wolfishly, ‘and for Vegas.’
Donald supplied more formally: ‘We are thrilled at news of this alliance, and wish these two the best for the future. I couldn’t be prouder of my daughter.’
The festivities over, Dino escorted her back to her suite.
‘Should I come in?’ They reached her door and he leaned in.
‘No. I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’
‘I could keep you company …?’
Angela turned, faced him on a level. ‘Dino, this isn’t what I want. You know that. I will be civil, and discreet, and the nature of our treaty will remain hidden. But I will not—now, or ever—be entering a physical relationship with you. Good night.’
Instead of dejection, she met determination.
‘You won’t always feel this way,’ Dino murmured.
‘I know I will.’
‘You can learn to love me.’
‘My position will never change.’
‘Give me six months … Tell me after six months that you don’t love me.’
‘I can tell you now and save us both the time.’
His eyes were hungry. ‘You underestimate me.’
‘This isn’t a game. Try and force me into a corner and I will destroy you.’
He chuckled. ‘Careful. You’ll turn me on.’
‘This conversation is over.’ Slicing her card through the lock, Angela vanished inside her suite. Bastard! Who did Dino Zenetti think he was?
She applied the chain to the door, went to her case and removed her Ruger revolver. Men like Dino thought they were entitled to whatever they chose. If he thought for a second that she fell into that category, he could think the hell again.
Peeling open her balcony, she stepped into fresh air. Her hair blew in the warm desert breeze and far below the blare of car horns swam up on the thermals.
Angela gazed at the Strip hundreds of storeys below and wondered what it would take to jump. One foot on the ledge, arms spread wide, a leap of pure faith …
Stumbling backwards, she collapsed, her head in her hands.
What had their lives come to?
Luca had cried when she’d told him. The siblings had met in Boston, gathered at the table they had grown up around, fighting over their mom’s dinners.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Orlando had repeated, again and again, his face leached of colour. ‘It’s not true. I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it …’
Angela lay back. She wished, if only for tonight, to be anywhere else but here. She wished for dreams—dreams of Noah, of the past, of their love, before it all went wrong. You never forgave me. You said you did but you didn’t.
Was Noah right? Despite the years and the promises and the regrets and the reasons, was she still caught up in a past she couldn’t change? Was she afraid to give herself totally, unconditionally, because it meant too much, because it ran too deep?
It was easier not to feel. It was easier not to care.
She hugged her knees and closed her eyes. Suddenly it was cold.
Noah Lawson wasn’t backing down that easily.
Angela Silvers was his thunderbolt. He had known it since the day he met her—but it wasn’t that simple and he wasn’t that stupid. A kid in his position had nothing to offer. He had to get out of town, make something of himself, get his shit together so he could bring a future to her door and tell her: Trust me, I’ve got this, we’ll be OK. We don’t need your father. We don’t need anyone. All we need is each other.
That was why he’d been taking on the extra work. Stupid to call it that, but he had to make money somehow. Servicing Mrs Mason and all the other housewives, a buck-a-fuck stud who never failed to satisfy, it was all he’d known, the only thing he was any good at. Maybe he was kidding himself hoping to hit Hollywood some day and make an honest living. The more he visited their pool houses and holiday homes, their marital beds and Jacuzzi baths, the more the dream seemed to slip further away.
The women he slept with told him he was special. Noah didn’t feel it. Unless he was with Angela, he didn’t feel much of anything at all.
She would never understand why he did it. How could she? She had never wanted for anything. She had never looked in the mirror and wondered why the hell she’d even been born. And so he hid the affairs. They made him feel dirty, used, unworthy of Angela and her bright smile and her hair that smelled like apples. He wouldn’t make his move until all that was buried and gone. He didn’t deserve to.
Following the altercation with her father, Noah swallowed his pride and showed up at the mansion. The thought of seeing Donald again filled him with anger but he would do it for her. He had reached a decision. He was splitting town, and Angela was coming with him. He could offer her nothing but a one-way ticket and the promise of his heart. Maybe it would be enough. He hoped it would be enough.
But Donald beat him to it. Waiting on the porch was the man himself.
‘I want to see her,’ demanded Noah.
‘She doesn’t want to see you.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
Donald smirked. He folded his arms. ‘Stay away from Angela,’ he said, ‘or face the consequences.’
Noah defied the threat. What did he have to lose? What did Donald have to take? Angela was the only thing of value in his life.
‘You can’t tear us apart,’ said Noah. ‘You can’t break what we have.’
‘I already did.’
Noah wanted to hit him. Balled his fists but resisted the urge.
‘You forget I am a powerful man,’ said Donald. ‘I have contacts in this town: people who work for me. Nothing escapes my attention, boy—least of all a sex-crazed worm that thinks for even a second he deserves to touch a hair on my daughter’s head. I know what you’ve been up to. I know about Veronica Mason, and Cassie Wentworth, and Brenda Dowler, and all the rest. Now, so does Angela.’
Noah raised his fist, drew his arm to strike, but he wasn’t quick enough. A crunch of gravel and Donald’s bodyguard was behind him, gripping his elbow and locking it at his back. A bolt of pain and Noah was forced to the ground.
‘Begging, now, are you?’ Donald taunted. ‘How apt. I’ll give you what you want. Take this,’ he thrust Noah a cheque, ‘and never cross this threshold again.’
Noah was released. Through the shooting pain in his shoulder he absorbed the sum. It was incredible. Enough to forge a whole new life: to split town, to move to LA.
Without thinking twice, he tore it up. It meant nothing without Angela.
‘Let me talk to her. I can explain.’
‘She’s not here.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘Angela knows about the money. She asked me to give it to you. She never wants to set eyes on you again and I don’t blame her. How do you think she feels?’
Noah could only imagine. Knowing he had hurt her was unbearable. More than that, he had lost her respect, her love, her trust. The terrible things she must think about him. Angela’s opinion mattered to him above all others.
‘Tell her I don’t want it.’ He stood.
Donald laughed. ‘Can’t you see? A girl like Angela would never enter into anything serious with you. She said as much. You were fun for a while but she wants more from her life. She wants money, and security. She wants a solid family name, not a useless band of heathens. She hates you. She wants you gone.’
‘I have to hear her say it.’
‘After what you’ve been getting up to, do you think she so much as wants to share the same air as you, let alone look you in the face? Think about it, Lawson. You don’t belong with us. You can’t give
Angela anything she doesn’t already have. You’re wasting your breath. You’re nothing compared with her.’
The words were a blow to his gut. For the first time, Noah’s confidence faltered. Donald’s tirade cemented what a part of him already knew but had been hiding from: that Angela would always be too good for him. Even if she did hear him out, even if she did get his reasons, it was only a matter of time before she wised up and saw him for what he was. Her prospects were sky high. She could do—and be—anything. He was a waster with a drunk for a mother.
Donald wrote a second cheque and forced it into his hands.
‘If you truly care about my daughter,’ he said quietly, ‘you’ll do the right thing and get as far away from Boston as you can.’
The door slammed.
Noah didn’t quit town right away. He kept Donald’s cheque in a drawer and despised himself for not being able to destroy it. He thought of everything he could use it to become—and that one day, maybe, that might mean he could earn back Angela.
One afternoon, he spent every dime he had made from the housewives on a silver ring. It would be nothing against the finery she was used to, but he meant every cent. He put it in her mailbox the next and last time he passed the mansion gates, together with a note.
At dawn, he left for LA. There was nothing to stay for. Noah hitched his way to California, where fortune decided he was long due a break. Inside a week he was signed with La Lumière models. Inside a month, he had snagged his first TV role.
It was a year before she made contact. She had read his note, and against her judgement could ignore him no longer. It wasn’t the women that upset her, she said. It was that Noah had taken the hush money, that covert exchange at the heart of all she despised, the tyranny and suffocation of her father’s rule. Even now, Donald’s stance was unchanged. See Noah Lawson and she could forget all about the Silvers Empire.
In secret they rekindled their love. Both felt it, brighter and more brilliant than ever before, but it was stained by the confusions of the past.
Noah Lawson never recovered from the suspicion that he had done the wrong thing all those years ago. That his whole career was built on a cheap trick for which he should never have fallen. That he should have torn up that second cheque, he should have torn up a hundred cheques, and run for Angela Silvers like his life depended on it. He should never have given her up.
21
Los Angeles
‘She was fifteen, Kevin! Fifteen!’
In a bubbling hot tub that Cut N Dry Records had had specially installed in the studio basement for their number-one protégé, Kevin Chase reclined in the churning froth, ramped his arms across his chest and scowled dangerously.
‘I didn’t know that, did I?’ he grumbled.
Shame engulfed him. He felt terrible about the whole thing: poor Marie with her quivering lip and big, trusting eyes, his failure to launch, his harsh dismissal …
Not that he was going to admit that to Sketch—or to his mom.
‘What were you doing anyway,’ Sketch raged, ‘making out with a fan in your dressing room? Are you insane? These people go crazy for you. She could have been anyone; she could have had a fucking psycho boyfriend hanging out in the closet!’
‘Whatever.’
‘No, not whatever, Kevin: not this time, buddy. This time it’s serious.’
‘We didn’t do anything.’
‘That’s not what’s she’s saying. She’s saying you were all over her. That she tried to get away but you forced her, and it was only when she escaped—’
‘She’s lying!’ Kevin struck the roiling surface of the water with both palms, prompting an almighty splash to surge over the sides of the pool and splatter his manager in the face. ‘It was her who was coming on to me—!’
‘OK, stop right there.’ Sketch ran a weary hand over his brow. ‘That is not going to wash. That is not going to stand up in a court of law or with the biggest jury of all—the public. The fans. Christ! US Weekly has already got hold of it. Life & Style called this morning. Star wants your first interview on the matter. Do you understand what this means for the brand?’ His voice skittered up two octaves. Kevin had never seen him like it. ‘After this, there is no brand!’
‘Quit overreacting,’ supplied Kevin. ‘I’ll make a statement.’
‘Do you think I trust you to do any such thing after this?’ In the background, Kevin’s mother Joan was wringing her hands. At last she spoke up. ‘The gala prize might help?’ she ventured tentatively.
Sketch was too irate to string a sentence together.
‘What?’ Kevin exploded. ‘Don’t tell me I actually have to do that piece of shit day trip, do I?’
Two wealthy middle-aged sisters had bid for the honour of Kevin’s company: a morning of shopping, lunch at Nobu Malibu and an afternoon of play at the dolphin sanctuary. The auction had fetched close to half a million dollars. The thought of going through with the pantomime made Kevin want to curl up in a tiny ball and die.
Quietly Joan began: ‘It’s been paid for, darling—’
‘With those fat old crones?’
‘It’s one day, I’m sure you can rise to the occasion.’
Rise to the occasion … That would be a first.
‘Sure, so it’s one day here and one day there and d’you know the thing about days, Mom? Days add up to weeks, and weeks add up to months, and months add up to years, and before I know it my whole fucking life’s been shot down the drain!’
‘Kevin, please! Your language!’
‘Mom, please! Your face!’
‘Sketch! Do something!’
Kevin’s manager turned. There was thunder in his eyes. ‘You haven’t been taking your pills,’ he said menacingly. ‘Have you?’
‘I have so.’
‘Every day, like we made you promise?’
‘I said I was, didn’t I? What more do you want?’
‘Those pills are meant to calm you, Kevin.’
‘Yes,’ parroted Joan, ‘they’re meant to help—’
‘Well they’re not fucking working, then, are they?’
Unable to continue the conversation for fear of bursting into tears, Kevin pinched his nose and vanished beneath the water. The tub boiled and foamed. A pair of bony hairless knees broke the surface. Sketch and Joan looked at each other.
‘Right—that’s it.’ Sketch leaned in and hauled his client out by his elbow. ‘You’re doing the gala prize and that’s not all. Bethan?’
Sketch’s assistant approached, her high heels click-clacking on the spa floor. She produced a square of black card and handed it to Sketch.
Kevin was drenched and sullen. ‘What’s that?’
‘We received it this morning. If you want my opinion—and Jesus H., pal, I would urge you to take it—you accept this invitation without a backward glance.’
‘Invitation to what?’
Kevin snatched it. His wet paw prints marred the edges of the card, making them damp. He scanned the text. It was written in gold script, with an official stamp emblazoned across the top: CANE ENTERPRISES—FOR THE BEST YOU CAN BE.
‘What is this?’
‘It’s a call to arms. For the Salimanta crisis.’
‘The what?’
It had been too much to hope that Kevin read the news. As patiently as he could, Sketch illuminated. In January, the Salimanta coastline in Indonesia had suffered a giant tsunami. Entire families, their homes and livelihoods, had been wiped out. The devastation was titanic, the suffering terrible, and the aid effort thwarted by bureaucracy. The solicitation was the first of its kind. Kevin would become part of a never-before-seen crew who would fly out to the region and, through a global-scale PR mission, break down those barriers. It was a humanitarian crusade of the highest order, and it was hoped that each of the seven personalities invited to take part would have big impact on the crisis and its recovery.
‘We’ve checked it out,’ said Sketch, ‘it’s legit.’
‘
Why don’t they just hand over the cash?’
‘With the right PR they’ll treble their money. You’re the PR.’
‘I’m not doing it.’
‘You have to.’
Kevin’s head snapped up. He’d never heard his manager use that tone before.
‘No, I don’t,’ he replied carefully, reminding Sketch who was boss.
‘Imagine how it will look if you refuse.’
Kevin spoke slowly. ‘I. Am. Not. Doing. It.’
Joan rummaged in her purse for a Valium. There was a pause, before Sketch crouched down, located the controls to the hot tub and turned off the foam.
The water became cooler, and clearer, and Kevin brought his knees to his chest, looping his arms round them. Still he sulked, but with less bravado.
‘You will do this, Kevin, because there is no choice. Without this, you can consider your career at the beginning of the end. God knows, I have been patient with you. We have all been patient with you. But this is where it stops. This is time for you to give something back. Your image, as it stands, is nothing short of a train wreck. You want to salvage it? Then you bite this Cane guy’s arm off for a piece of the pie. Stars just like you wait a lifetime for this kind of save. Wake up to the facts. The way we’re seeing you right now at Cut N Dry isn’t the best. We’re close to the edge. We’re working for you, Kevin, but you’re not working for us. We believe in you. We always have. Only I don’t know if you believe in you any more.’
Humiliatingly, Kevin’s eyes sprang with tears. He felt very young and very old at the same time. Goosebumps prickled his skin.
‘Show us that you still care,’ urged Sketch. ‘Do this. Say yes. And I guarantee if you perform well then we’re back at the top. We’re right back up there. It’s this,’ Sketch took a dramatic pause, ‘or it’s nothing.’
The inference was clear. Even Joan got it. Kevin had been thrown an ultimatum. Get flown out to Indonesia—or get dropped.
