by Joanna Rees
How could she have thought that she would have – could have – killed him? Even in self-defence? She wasn’t a murderer.
She knew now that whatever her next move was, she had to plan it carefully. She didn’t want Khordinsky to die. Oh no. She didn’t want him to have such a simple way out. She wanted him to suffer first. To realize what an animal he was.
But how could she get to him? Those bodyguards were everywhere. She knew that supplying call girls to a businessman like Khordinsky was one of the only ways of getting close to him. And now she’d blown the chance.
‘Ross, is there something you’re not telling me?’ Peaches asked, suddenly aware that he’d gone very quiet.
‘It’s just . . .’
‘Just?’
‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you – although it breaks all rules of patient confidentiality . . .’
Confidentiality? Peaches’ hearing was as finely tuned to gossip as anyone else’s in LA, but the tone of Ross’s voice was all wrong for that. She tentatively asked him, ‘What?’
‘OK. It’s just . . . this is so weird,’ Ross said. ‘You’re the third person this week who’s connected to Alexei Rodokov and Khordinsky. In fact, the two other women I met even hate Khordinsky as much as you do.’
Peaches didn’t reply. She was too shocked. And confused. Who on earth could possibly hate Khordinsky as much as her? And how come Ross had met them? Peaches remembered the surgically enhanced prostitutes working the Moscow hotel. Was it possible Ross had met one of Khordinsky’s girlfriends, over here for some type of treatment?
Peaches’ mind was whirring faster than a Vegas slot machine because, above and beyond her shock and confusion, she sensed opportunity appearing on the horizon, like a lost ship she’d given up hope of ever seeing again.
Maybe these women would provide her with the ‘in’ she’d so desperately been searching for.
‘Tell me everything,’ she told Ross.
‘It’s too complicated to explain over the phone. I think you should come to New York. Like, as soon as you can. Tonight.’
‘You’re in New York?’
There were so many reasons not to go. Peaches looked back in through the studio doorway. Monica was being rearranged into another pose. The cancan girls with the nipple tassels were waiting in the background. Peaches would have to go back in and help any second. And on top of the photo shoot there were still a million details to finalize for the party.
But none of it mattered a damn. Not compared with taking another shot at Khordinsky.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll do what I can.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Peaches stared out of the tinted window into the neon-daubed New York night as Todd Lands’s brand-new chauffeur-driven customized Maybach 62S shimmied through the Manhattan traffic and turned up Fifth Avenue. Everyone noticed it. The tourists stopped and took pictures. Even the cab drivers honked their horns in awe.
Sealed off inside, a soft Mozart concerto played over the sound system and Peaches sat next to Ross, safely cradled in the squashy leather seats and black piano-lacquered interior. Ross leant forward and opened the fridge to refill their silver champagne flutes. Then he pressed a button and a velvet curtain slid back across the thick laminated glass that separated them from the driver, leaving them in their own private bubble.
Peaches sighed, glad to be in New York. Something about the early evening lights and the atmosphere of the place always lifted her soul. It always felt like a city of fresh beginnings to her, rather than a city full of broken dreams, like LA.
And Ross was here. Dear Ross. For the first time since her violent ejection from Pushkin, Peaches felt herself – albeit momentarily, she guessed – begin to relax. The champagne probably wasn’t hurting either. Her thoughts had been so filled with the terror of what might have happened to her.
But Ross always made her live in the present. He reminded her of what was good about life, about all the possibilities for the future. Just sitting next to him, she felt more like herself than she had done in ages. Like she was in control again. No longer a victim: a boss.
She put her hand over Ross’s wrist and squeezed. He leant across and nuzzled her neck. ‘You smell divine,’ he whispered in her ear.
He’d been so kind to her since he’d picked her up from the airport. He’d hugged her and tenderly touched her bruised face and assured her that it was only superficial. He’d brought ointment for her too: to reduce the swelling and accelerate the healing process. He’d told her she’d be back to looking like a goddess in less than a week. She’d smiled and simultaneously winced in pain, her jaw giving off a dull, low ache.
But at least she had managed a smile. And now she managed another.
‘You like it? It’s part of the brand range,’ she said. ‘My favourite. I’m calling it Peaches and Cream.’
Ross grinned back at her. ‘I imagine that’s exactly the thought that’ll pop into the head of any man within a mile of you when they smell it.’
‘Oh really?’ she said. She looked out of the window again, buoyed up by Ross’s compliment. He always made her feel more of a woman than anyone.
Ross still hadn’t elaborated on these two women Peaches was about to meet. Said he’d been asked not to by Todd Lands. As in Mr Fucking Hollywood. Todd Lands was the one who was putting them all in touch.
Of course this information made Peaches more intrigued than ever. If these women knew Todd Lands, then most likely they weren’t simply call girls like she’d previously assumed. Higher profile than that, Peaches was now guessing. Real pros. Or maybe even actresses, perhaps, even well-known ones.
If so, they wouldn’t be the first to have got involved with gangsters or foreign billionaires. Peaches herself had once brokered a liaison between a horny Arab playboy and his favourite Oscar-winning actress, who’d needed a couple of extra million to secure the house of her dreams.
Was that what this was all about? Peaches wondered. A couple of Hollywood A-listers who’d got burnt after selling themselves out to the wrong thug? Well, it’d certainly explain the need for secrecy.
But somehow she doubted it. If Todd Lands was involved, then, judging from his no-sex-before-marriage stance, Peaches wouldn’t mind betting these women were high-class hookers.
‘I didn’t even know you knew Todd Lands,’ Peaches said. ‘Is he a client? Do you do his work?’
‘No. Believe it or not, Todd hasn’t had anything done. He’s one hundred per cent himself.’
Peaches sighed. ‘Ross, you’re being very mysterious about all of this. Why are we in Todd Lands’s car? And why are these women at his apartment?’
‘They’re friends.’
Peaches laughed. ‘Come on. Nobody is friends with Todd Lands. He’s the least approachable guy in Hollywood. He’s famous for the amount of attorneys he’s got working for him—’
‘Oh Peaches, listen. Stop. Just . . . there’s something you should know,’ Ross interrupted, cutting her off. He sighed heavily, like he was lifting an enormous weight off his shoulders. Then he shifted in his seat towards her and she saw him take a deep breath. He chewed his lip, as if the words were like pins in his mouth.
Peaches felt her pulse race. She’d never seen Ross look like this. She held her breath, waiting for him to speak. Suddenly, the easy familiarity had disappeared. Something else had taken over. It was as if the rules had all changed. As if he were about to make some kind of confession that would change their relationship for ever.
Ross exhaled, preparing himself.
The suspense was killing Peaches, but still she didn’t say anything. Ross looked down, putting his hands over hers. Then he looked directly at her. ‘The thing is . . .’ He paused. ‘The thing is that Todd and I . . . we’re . . .’
Peaches stared at him.
And the penny dropped.
Could he possibly mean what she thought he meant?
Her mouth fell open. She searched his eyes. Surely it couldn’
t be true . . .
But she could see that it was.
There was a long beat. Peaches forced herself to recover. She knew she had to say something.
‘Jesus Christ, Ross, you’re a dark horse,’ she said eventually. She was doing her best to cover her shock and surprise . . . and sense of betrayal too. This was huge. Enormous. It changed everything between them. Everything she knew about him.
Why? That’s what she wanted to know. Why hadn’t he told her before?
But then she stared into Ross’s familiar eyes and she remembered how much they’d been through together. He was her best friend: she owed it to him to be supportive. She could tell from his ashen face what a huge deal this was to him.
‘So what? Does everyone else know apart from me?’
‘No, of course not. Nobody knows.’
Peaches paused, slightly mollified that he wasn’t making a fool out of her. It genuinely was a secret. And boy, what a secret! She felt as if they were suddenly in uncharted territory. Everything that they said now was like virgin footsteps on an expanse of fresh snow. She was unsure what all of this meant, and she realized that was because she was finding out the truth for the first time. The unabashed, unashamed truth.
‘So how long have you been dating Lands?’ she demanded.
She’d teased him innumerable times about his sexuality, but she’d never really believed he was gay and so to hear Ross finally admitting to this whole secret side of his life – with Todd Lands, no less – felt totally weird.
She realized now that deep down inside there was a tiny part of her that had always hankered for Ross’s celibacy to be somehow connected to her. Now that her fantasy in all its ridiculousness had surfaced and evaporated, she almost smiled at the absurdity of thinking that Ross might have been saving himself for her.
The truth, as always, was much more realistic. He was in a long-term relationship – with one of the most famous supposedly heterosexual men in the world! It was such a massive piece of information that Peaches could hardly believe it was for real.
‘Todd and I have been together for three years.’
Peaches nearly choked on her champagne. ‘Three years? But . . . wasn’t he engaged to – what’s that skinny bitch called? – Amy-Kay something?’
Ross smiled, the tension broken. ‘Hmmm. That was a bit of a disaster. But she’s disappeared now, thank God.’
No surprise there then, Peaches thought. None of Todd Lands’s erstwhile other halves stayed famous for long after their relationships with him had finished: probably because Lands was powerful enough to sever their links with the studios with a single phone call, if he was even half the bastard the press made him out to be.
Though maybe that was all bullshit too. Peaches couldn’t imagine someone like Ross dating a jerk. Her head spun with questions.
‘So that’s why he keeps all those attorneys on his payroll,’ she said. ‘To keep any rumours at bay.’
‘To stamp on them flat,’ Ross corrected her, a flash of pride in his eyes. ‘They keep a lid on it all. We’re very discreet.’
How the hell had they managed to keep it secret? If there’d been even one sniff of that one going around, Peaches would have been on to it immediately. In the circles she moved in, one indiscretion, one comment, one accidental sighting of them together and she’d have known all about it within half an hour.
She shook her head ruefully, thinking about the amount of times she’d flirted with Ross in the past, and the number of other women she’d watched stalk him like hungry cats. But Peaches truly didn’t care what Ross’s orientation was, as long as he was happy. She could tell from the nervous sparkle in his eyes that he was, and that he was proud, too, to be telling her that Todd Lands was his man.
‘Why are you telling me this now?’ she asked. ‘I mean, you nearly had me convinced that you were happily celibate.’
‘Because you’ve trusted me with your secret, so I owe it to you to trust you with mine. And besides, you’re gonna meet him. You’re the most intuitive person I’ve ever met. You saw us together . . . you’d have guessed in an instant.’
Images of Todd Lands flashed into Peaches’ head. Todd swinging through the jungle in that trilogy he did in the early nineties, and more recently the sci-fi action hero that had made him internationally recognized. Not to mention the twenty-storey-high billboard for Blue Zero they’d just passed in Times Square with a close-up of Todd’s face. The very same billboard, she now recalled, that Ross hadn’t so much as glanced at as they’d driven past, the sly devil.
‘How about I try some of that famous intuition now?’ Peaches said.
Ross shrugged.
‘The apartment in London. The mystery weekend getaways. Your château in France that you’ve never invited me to . . . all because of Todd?’
‘That’s right. The place in London is two houses backing on to each other. Even if the press worked out Todd owned them, they’d never catch us going in the same door.’
Peaches whistled. That was a hell of a lot of subterfuge to keep a relationship going. ‘You’re faithful then, the two of you?’
‘Completely.’
‘Not bi?’
‘No. We love each other. Always will.’
‘So what about all these girlfriends of his? What about his reputation? I even read about a new squeeze of his on the plane. Frankie someone. Not a bad ass on her, unless the photo had been airbrushed.’
‘I’ll let Todd tell you all about that,’ Ross said, rubbing the side of his face. ‘But for the record, it’s all smoke.’
One hell of a smokescreen too, Peaches thought admiringly. Todd was a global brand, goddamnit, and a heart-throb all over the world. And here she was sitting next to the man who really did have his heart, by the sound of it.
Peaches was no stranger to the concept of people creating illusions to mask the reality of their lives. She knew a thousand stories of happy marriages that were all a sham. But this? Ross and Todd? It was hard to get her head around.
‘If you love each other, if you’re this serious, then why don’t you just come out?’ she asked, but even as she asked it, she knew the impossibility of such a question. Todd’s box-office success relied on women of all ages finding him attractive enough to fantasize about him. Their adoration would turn quickly to vitriol if they found out that he’d rather be in bed with their husband.
And Ross was just the same. Peaches remembered all the ladies in his waiting room. What would they do if their secret fantasies were quashed by the truth about Ross’s sexuality?
She could see now why the two of them had kept it a secret for so long. Peaches knew better than anyone the double standards of Hollywood. No matter how much sleaze was under the surface, to really be successful, to be right at the very top, you had to maintain a veneer of squeaky-clean morality. It sucked, she knew, but she could hardly complain. She’d personally made a fortune out of such hypocrisy.
‘It would ruin his career. Or so he thinks,’ Ross said. ‘But New York’s a lot more liberal than LA. And Broadway’s a world away from the studio lots. ‘
‘Meaning . . . ?’
‘Meaning Todd’s about to do a huge Broadway show. We both think a theatre run is a good move. And I’m happy to set up a practice over here. It means we can spend more time together with much less risk of being caught out.’
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘Yes, well, it feels weird telling you. I’m kind of used to living a double life.’
But there was no time to discuss it further. The chauffeur had stopped the car outside a 1930s neo-Gothic skyscraper next to Central Park.
‘We’re in the penthouse,’ Ross said.
Peaches smiled. ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ she said, stepping out of the car.
She looked up towards the top of the skyscraper and the stars above. She felt a flutter of nerves.
Suddenly, she felt sure that her destiny was about to change.
> CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Peaches stared at Todd Lands in the kitchen of the colossal open-plan apartment as he handed her a glass of Hildon mineral water. His face was so familiar, although she’d never met him in person. He was shorter than she’d imagined, but fit. Even fitter in the flesh than he was in his movies.
He was barefoot, his tanned manicured feet poking out of the bottom of trendy designer jeans. The sleeves on his black Armani dress shirt were rolled up and he stood facing her with his hands on his slim waist, like a general, or a monarch. Like Burton as Mark Antony, she thought. Or Brynner as the King of Siam. Like a man most at ease when he was in control.
She could tell as he turned on his most seductive smile that he was playing a well-rehearsed game. He didn’t even glance at her bruises, let alone remark on them. This was a man who’d won female hearts on screen and off for over twenty years. He thought he knew where all the female buttons were and how and when to press them too. But he was no match for a pro like Peaches.
Todd Lands might be über-famous, but, hell, he was just an actor. Peaches had seen hundreds rise and fall. Literally.
No, Peaches could see right through his act, and with just one bob of her eyebrow, she let him know that he wasn’t in charge. That they were equals. Whatever went down here today with these two women Peaches had come to meet, Lands was going to have to play it – for want of a better word – straight. Dead straight. Peaches didn’t know how much Ross had told him about her connection to Khordinsky, but if Todd was out to play some kind of power game, she needed him to know right away that, as far as Yuri Khordinsky was concerned, Peaches Gold was not going to be jerked around.
Still, she had to concede how smart he was. He was not to be underestimated. She’d never clocked before that he was gay, and someone who could pull off a global hoodwink like that was not to be messed with.
