by Victoria Fox
Kevin picked up the soggy card again. Beneath the summons was a list of six other VIPs. Accompanying you will be …
It was quite a selection. Maybe this was his chance. Maybe this was where he got to put his stamp on the world, to do something meaningful, that mattered.
Take your place and make a difference.
He prayed for a difference to his own life. Get out of LA. Leave the fans. Leave the paps. Leave the commitments. Leave the airplane nightmares that roused him in a hot, sick sweat and had him reeling for days. Leave his mom. Leave Sketch.
Kevin was ready. Whatever was in store, it had to be better than this.
‘Fine.’ He hauled himself out of the water. ‘When do we leave?’
22
London
Eve sat across the table from the father of her child. She said what she had to say and then she waited for his response. It was a long time coming.
‘You’re serious,’ he said eventually, his fork hovering over a rare veal shank. Pink blood was leaking from the meat and staining his potatoes.
‘I am.’
Orlando leaned back in his chair at The Ivy and wiped his mouth with his napkin. The waiter came to refill their glasses. The silence was brittle. Their date had been impromptu, a rare occasion for them to be out, but he had insisted. Maybe it was his way of making it up to her: take her for a meal, expensive food, expensive wine, buy her into forgetting, see if they could pick up where they left off …
‘But I thought …’ He stopped. ‘Everything you said—’
‘I’m not getting rid of this baby. I can’t.’
Orlando’s dark eyes were trained on the tablecloth.
‘The other guy,’ he said, ‘are you still seeing him?’
The question, of all the questions he might have asked, took her by surprise. It was a second before she placed what he meant. That stupid lie she had thrown at him in her flat. Cheap shots and petty vengeances—was that all they had become?
‘No.’
He watched her. ‘So where does this leave us?’
‘Us?’
‘We made this baby, didn’t we?’
‘It doesn’t mean anything.’
Without warning he balled his napkin and slammed it onto the table. Heads turned, alert at the disturbance. Orlando leaned in, fighting to keep his voice down.
‘Why does everything have to be so cold with you?’
‘I’m not cold. I’m practical.’
‘Then quit being practical for a second—don’t you have feelings?’
Eve sipped her water. ‘Feelings are what led me here in the first place. This isn’t a decision I’ve taken lightly.’
‘It isn’t a decision I’ve had a say in at all.’
‘Why should you have a say? We’re not together.’
‘You should have consulted me.’
‘What would you have me do, Orlando?’
‘Keep your voice down, for a start.’
‘You wanted me to get an abortion, is that it?’
He flinched at the word. ‘You inferred that was the plan.’
‘I changed my mind.’
‘Since when did you get rights to lock me in for the rest of my life?’
‘Lock you in? Who’s having this baby? Who’s going to look after it every day, feed it, clothe it, hold it when it cries?’
‘You, because you chose it.’
‘Or you, because you screwed me?’
‘And now you’re screwing me.’
‘Do me a favour and grow up. Aren’t you some big-deal billionaire? Hotshot Director of the Board? I would have thought you knew how to deal with a crisis by now—if that’s what this is. Sooner or later you’re going to get sick of playing with Daddy’s toys and want to realise something all yours, something that’s more substantial than what money can buy. Wake up: this is it.’
She didn’t mean it, but she hoped it stung.
‘There’s stuff going on with my family right now,’ his voice was harsh, strained, ‘stuff I haven’t told you. I can’t tell you. It’s difficult.’
‘When isn’t it?’
‘Everything’s a riddle with you, Eve. Everything’s about pushing me away.’
‘You never said you wanted to be close.’
‘Come on, I’m not a mind reader. We never tried. We never bridged the gap. That sort of thing takes—’
‘Exactly. It would never work.’
Eve wasn’t about to disclose her feelings about her own family. How every night she lay awake worrying she would recognise Terry Harley in her baby, and wouldn’t be able to love it. But fear couldn’t stop her. That would mean fear had won.
‘It sounds like you’ve made your decision,’ he said.
‘You’re not disagreeing.’
Orlando put his cutlery together.
‘You barely touched it,’ said Eve.
‘I’ve lost my appetite.’
She looked down at her tummy, barely showing beneath a tailored silk blouse. Five months gone, the life inside her growing by the day. A baby. A world.
‘This will change everything,’ he said. ‘It will change your life. And mine.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t run it past you first.’ She meant it sarcastically but, in saying it, heard what she should have done. But what if he had tried to talk her out of it? What right had he to do that? Orlando didn’t want this child so it was pointless.
‘I don’t require anything,’ she said evenly. ‘You’ll concede you’re in a good position financially so I would welcome a level of support, but as far as contact goes it’s up to you. There’s no obligation. I’m not going to force it.’
‘And that’s all you want?’
She met his gaze and held her nerve. ‘I don’t hold you to anything.’
Orlando shoved his plate away. ‘I’m done.’
He got to his feet. As a parting shot, he threw out angrily: ‘I cannot be associated with this child. Whatever you have to do, do it. I’ll organise a transfer, but, as you say with such conviction, that’s all. I don’t wish to see it, or speak to it, or hear its name—and I forbid my name, or the Silvers name, to be connected to it, or to you, in any way. As far as the rest of the world knows, this child is nothing to me. Do you understand? This is your child. It’s your responsibility. Not mine.’
‘Fine. Just the way I want it.’
‘And you always get your way, don’t you?’
‘You don’t know the first thing about me.’
‘I doubt anyone else does either. I hope you’re less of a bitch to your child, Eve, or they might just turn out as fucked up as you are. Good night.’
Eve arrived home and slammed her keys onto the counter. She wanted to kick something, scream at someone, throw a chair at the wall. Rich bastard!
Why ever had she done it? Why had she slept with him? She must have been out of her mind. Orlando Silvers was an arrogant, fame-wrecked rich boy. She should have avoided him like the plague. She made her living from sussing these people, knowing what selfish mechanisms made them tick, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. She had made the mistake of thinking one of them could break the mould.
How dare he say those things to her? What right had he to tell her what kind of a mother she’d be? Eve stood in the hall, breathing hard. She would prove him wrong.
Why? Who cares what he thinks?
But she did. Against all her reasoning, she did.
So fired up was she that she almost didn’t see it, the envelope tucked inside the rest of her mail. Savagely she tore it open.
Eve Harley … invited to cover the trip of a lifetime … the biggest names for the biggest need … to faithfully report on the crisis and its repercussions …
Cane Enterprises. Eve didn’t recognise the charity.
Absorbing the six accompanying names, she landed on Senator Mitch Corrigan. The tabloid had been chasing her for days. A politician who believed in little green men? A senator who was missing a sanity chip?
A would-be president who thought ET was real? It was farcical. Outrageous. The story was sure to ruin him.
Corrigan would be sitting tight right now, praying Rossetti kept his mouth shut. This trip, a chance to spend time with the man himself, was the Holy Grail.
Kevin Chase, Jacob Lyle and Tawny Lascelles.
Her gaze rested on another. Angela Silvers: Orlando’s sister. Eve resisted the urge to rip up the invitation—that or set fire to it.
She wanted nothing more to do with that family, now or ever.
She would sleep on it. Perhaps she would feel differently in the morning.
23
Milan
Applause rang in Tawny Lascelles’ ears as she slinked off the catwalk and into the throng of the dressing room. Hearing the gallery gush their praise, Tawny mused on the point at which it had stopped being about the clothes and had started becoming about her. She was the attraction people had come to see. She would be the charm written about on tomorrow’s blogs and in tomorrow’s papers. She was the reason for a fashion show in the first place: the designers could suck on that and see.
She flopped into a chair. JP came rushing over, together with her hairdresser. Tawny released the knot on her head, her gold mane tumbling around her shoulders.
‘Hot date,’ she said. ‘Do something radical.’
JP was proffering an envelope. ‘This came for you. Marked private.’
Tawny snatched it. As she did so, she noticed her hairdresser heating up some Babyliss hair straighteners and screeched her objection.
‘Excuse me, but what do you think you’re doing? How many times do we have to go through it? I will not be frazzled by any machinery other than my own!’
On cue JP produced her engraved lemon-yellow tongs:
‘TO THE FAIREST OF THEM ALL, WITH LOVE & ADMIRATION.’
‘I—I’m sorry,’ stumbled the hairdresser.
‘You should be,’ blasted Tawny. She would fire her tomorrow.
Taking a breath, she gathered herself. It wouldn’t do to start kicking off when there were other models in the arena, fangs bared for the next opportunity to tear at some bitch-flesh. Tawny slid a nail down the seal of the black envelope and opened it.
She skimmed its contents and yawned.
‘Another junket thingy,’ she said, without reading it properly.
‘I see Jacob Lyle’s been invited,’ commented JP, before Tawny’s acid glance confirmed he had overstepped the mark. The mark was always a touch blurred with Tawny: some days she was his boss and some days she was his BFF. He was screwed if he knew what was coming. ‘Sorry,’ JP bumbled, ‘it’s none of my business.’
‘You got that right.’ Tawny snatched it back. ‘So he has. How interesting.’
‘Should we accept?’
A rival model drifted behind her, listening in. Tawny’s pretty mouth pouted.
‘I don’t see why not,’ she said loudly. ‘Who doesn’t want me for something or other these days? I can’t say no to everything …’
‘Especially when it’s for a good cause.’
‘For such a good cause,’ agreed Tawny sweetly, in a voice better reserved for cooing over ickle-wickle kittens wearing bonnets and posing in a calendar. As soon as the model had passed, she tossed down the invitation and rolled her eyes. What a drag!
Although …
Jacob could be in for a good cause too, she decided, if he played his cards right. She smiled as the magic straighteners worked through her silky hair. Predictably he had been in touch, begging for some face-time. Her rejection had been swift. She intended to make him wait for it: he could do with a smack of discipline.
At least she had been truthful in the rebuff. She had started seeing someone new, and was damned if she was going to let Jacob think she was holding out on him.
The new man in question was red-hot in the sack, a croupier Tawny had seduced with ease on a recent jaunt to Vegas—or, rather, he had seduced her, trailing her all night before cornering her at the bar when he came off shift. Their exchange had been magnetic. Normally Tawny wouldn’t have given the time of day to someone so far removed from her high-octane lifestyle, but the encounter was bizarre—it was as if he already knew her. Everything he said had been tailor-made, every compliment word-perfect. They had so much in common. No wonder they had ended up in bed that night, and every other night; and, shit, he was one of the most sensational fucks of her life! His cock was the size of the Washington Monument.
Minty Patrick joined them, an outfit slung over her arm. ‘Aren’t you headed home?’ she asked, clocking the hairdresser at work.
Tawny raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m meeting you-know-who.’
‘You sure you know what you’re doing?’ Minty held the colour against her. ‘He looks … I don’t know, kinda dangerous to me.’
‘What’s wrong with dangerous?’
Minty lifted her shoulders. ‘I don’t trust him.’
‘Whatever,’ drawled Tawny, ‘I like that he’s rough round the edges. It’s hot.’
‘So long as you know you can handle it.’
Tawny bit the inside of her cheek. If Minty and JP knew how much she had been made to handle at the Rams & Rude Girls Dancing Bar, they would think twice before dishing out advice. She had seen it all! Fat, scrawny, coked-up and doped-down; those who wanted to hit or slap and those who wanted to sit on her lap, naked and weeping about their frigid wives or their flaccid cocks; those who required hour-long blowjobs, or wanted a thumb up their ass, or wanted to use dildos or handcuffs or leather contraptions; those who wanted to hurt and those who wanted to be hurt.
Nothing this new guy could throw at her would be any kind of surprise.
‘I know what I’m doing,’ she answered, thrusting the invite back to JP. ‘Sort this,’ she instructed. ‘Clear my schedule for July.’
Tawny was determined not to think of the Rams … especially that client.
He had been a dark-eyed boy, thin, unsure, with an awkward stammer. She had been able to spot the virgins a mile off: those who came to rid themselves of that hated coil. But this client turned out to be the worst type of virgin, one who had no understanding of the female body or what caused it pleasure or pain.
The things the boy had asked to do …
‘Freak!’ she had yelled at him, and for the first time had struck the alarm.
The Rams boys had come running, hauling the weirdo off as he kicked and writhed in protest. His words stuck with her, that painful stutter:
‘I—Id-didn’t mean it, p-p-p-please …’
She felt no sympathy. Treating her like a plaything, a curiosity in a museum he could poke and prod for his entertainment. Then he had started talking about his dead mother, how he had never known a woman, and crying, crying so hard …
All the way out she had taunted him, trembling as she spat the words. She had joked about his body, his flimsy, stark white body and his cluelessness.
But at least the freak had given Tawny something. He had been the last straw, the final push she needed to get the hell out. Without him, she might never have left.
‘All done,’ ventured the hairdresser, replacing the lemon-yellow tongs.
‘Good,’ Tawny said. ‘I’m outta here.’
‘Have fun.’ Minty smiled. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’
Too late for that, thought Tawny, as she departed into the night.
24
San Francisco
Jacob listened as patiently as he could. He tried his best not to yell back at his partner because there was a whole office out there and did they want the world to know what they were up to? Goddamn Leith—if only he could keep his shit together.
‘I don’t freaking want them,’ Leith Friedman said through clenched teeth, thrusting two solid gold watches into Jacob’s hand and forcing him to stuff them in his pocket. ‘It makes me feel like I’m part of the fucking KGB.’
Their friends in Russia had couriered the gifts to Leith’s private address—a tok
en between business partners. Leith was shaking, his glasses steamed up.
‘Relax,’ Jacob said, unconcerned. ‘We’re on terms. That’s a good thing.’
‘Is it? I don’t want terms. I don’t want hand-outs. I don’t want anything.’
‘Apart from twenty billion dollars,’ Jacob muttered.
‘This was your lead. You’re the point of contact. Got it?’
For all his genius, Leith was an idiot sometimes. Jacob spent the next twenty minutes talking him down off the ledge. But Leith was right about one thing: from here on in, Jacob was the port of call. Leith should continue to do what he did well, and that was code. Jacob strapped the watch to his wrist, only too happy to wear it: it was a handsome thing, and a pleasing reminder of the power now vested in him. What was a present between friends? He certainly had no objections.
Later that night, Jacob signalled the waiter and ordered another Armagnac. Whenever he came to the San Fran office they always seemed to wind up at The Red, the city’s premier gay club. Jacob was relaxed enough in his sexuality not to care.
In any case, it was a sweet spot for picking up girls. The Red attracted straight, gay and everything in between, meaning the instant Jacob got recognised, chicks flocked like flies onto shit. He settled back on the couch, a blonde nibbling one ear while a busty brunette ran a hand down his chest and towards the ever-present bulge in his trousers. ‘You’re wild, you know that?’ purred the blonde.
Jacob knocked back another. The girls squealed when he requested a magnum of Schramsberg—vodka chasers, too. He felt like getting wasted.
The afternoon had been capped by news of Tawny Lascelles’ rejection. ‘Thank you for your interest,’ her PA had responded, after several voicemails had been left, a bouquet of peonies sent and even a diamond necklace that had cost Jacob more than his first ever Ferrari, as if he were enquiring after nothing more than a sale item that had run out of stock. ‘Ms Lascelles is otherwise involved. We will notify you if this changes, if indeed Ms Lascelles returns your consideration.’
Returns your consideration? It was an outrage. Who the fuck did she think she was? Women on every continent revered Jacob Lyle and now he had been made to feel like some second-rate jock doing all he could to bone the most popular cheerleader in school. It wouldn’t be so bad if he could guarantee that Tawny—sorry, Ms Lascelles—hadn’t been made aware of his intentions, but he felt sure given her stinking attitude and cool appraisal that she had taken great pleasure in this denial.
