All Work and No Play (12 page)

As had the arm he’d casually draped around her waist while speaking to her, and the long looks he’d given her with those deep blue eyes.

All of them purely for show.

Jane found a tissue in her bag and wiped off the lipstick and put the first one back on again. She didn’t think either one of them made any difference: her dress was still the pinkest thing she’d ever worn and she was pretty sure she looked like a big fluffy stick of candyfloss.

And she was almost as sure that this boyfriend act wasn’t saving her friendship with Jonny. Because if they were still friends he would have emailed her as he had nearly every other day of their friendship, wouldn’t he?

Her bell rang. Quickly she stuffed lipsticks and tissue back into her handbag and went to answer the door.

Jonny stood in the hallway. And for a moment, all she could do was stare.

He wore a black suit and a crisp light blue shirt and brighter blue tie, but on Jonny these articles of clothing stopped being merely clothes and were vehicles for his gorgeousness. His suit emphasised his broad shoulders, his lean waist; his shirt and tie made his eyes still bluer. His hair was pushed back from his face in a calmer version of the messy hairdo the stylist had given him for the photo shoot, and even that showed off his high cheekbones, the perfect shape of his jaw.

And, as always, he smelled of warm cotton and Jonny, familiar and yet new.

‘You look wonderful, Jane,’ he said, and only then did she realise that he’d been looking back at her.

‘You don’t think it’s too pink?’ she blurted, because that was the only thing she could think to say. Her brains appeared to be entirely muddled by the idea that she was going to be spending the evening with a man who looked and smelled and, God forgive her, felt and tasted as incredible as Jonny did.

‘I don’t think anything could possibly be too pink,’ he said. ‘It’s a good colour on you.’

‘It’s very girly.’

‘Which fits, because, last time I checked, you were definitely a girl.’

With that, her circulatory system, which seemed to have been on pause since she’d opened the door, started up again and she felt the blood rush to her face. ‘Uh, come in.’

He stepped past her and stood in her living room, surveying the space. ‘Nice flat.’

Jane closed the door behind him, suddenly becoming aware that this was only the second time since they were eleven years old that the two of them had been totally alone in a room together, with no observers.

Except this time, she wasn’t going to allow herself to touch him.

‘Thanks,’ she said, trying to sound nonchalant.

He nodded at the empty space in the centre of the room. ‘Have you got something against furniture?’

‘Gary took it. Would you like a drink before we go?’

He didn’t seem to have heard the question; instead he was looking at her with that typical Jonny kindness.

‘I’m sorry, Jane. I would have thought the bastard would at least have left you somewhere to sit down.’

‘I can get new furniture.’

‘Yes, the furniture will be easy to replace.’ There was something harsher than kindness in his emphasis on the word ‘furniture’. He wandered across the hardwood floor to her desk, set against one of the unfinished brick walls. He touched her closed laptop lightly, and then laid his
hand on the back of her chair. ‘This is where you talk with me.’

‘Uh-huh.’ And that was exactly where she’d been sitting when they’d had their last online conversation. About sex. And where she’d been sitting when she’d waited in vain for him to email her, yesterday and today.

‘You were wonderful at the photo shoot,’ she said, to change the subject.

He looked up from his scrutiny of her desk. ‘Are you talking about my modelling, or my acting?’

‘Both.’

He nodded and reached into the pocket of his suit. ‘I have something for you,’ he said, and pulled out a small white box.

She was nervous enough to fumble slightly opening it. Inside, on a bit of velvet, rested a silver necklace with a fine chain and a pendant in the shape of a heart.

‘Oh, Jonny, it’s lovely,’ she said. She touched the heart, and then her own chest, between her breasts where the pendant would lie. ‘You didn’t need to give me anything like this.’

‘It’s strategy.’ He took the box from her hands and lifted out the necklace. She turned around and held up her hair so he could fasten the chain around her neck. The warmth of his hands feathered across her nape, and she felt his breath on her skin as he spoke.

‘What you do, is you fiddle with the necklace all night, and then whenever anybody comments on it, you say that I gave it to you. It should be convincing.’ He turned her around and looked at her.

She touched the heart, so close to where her own was beating. The necklace was a tool, then. To achieve what she’d said she wanted.

It was still just as beautiful, but it suddenly seemed less precious.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ she said, hoping he was looking at the pendant, and not how his near-touch had hardened her nipples underneath her dress. ‘You’re trying to save money, aren’t you?’

‘Some things are worth spending money for.’

He raised his eyes to her face, and in the momentary heat she saw there she knew he’d noticed what his touch did to her.

Then he was neutral-faced, a man she couldn’t quite read. ‘Don’t worry about anything, Jane. I haven’t forgotten our plan. I intend to be the perfect boyfriend tonight. The model boyfriend.’ There was the slightest hint of bitterness in how he said the last three words.

But then he smiled, like Jonny, and held out his arm for her to take. ‘Let’s go and put on our show.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘S
TOP
here, please, mate.’

The cab pulled up to the side of the road several metres from the front of the building where Thom was having his party. Jane gathered her wrap and her bag, looking at Jonny questioningly.

‘Strategy,’ he told her again. ‘Stay here for a minute.’ He got out of the cab, paid the driver, and went around to open her door for her. ‘May I?’ he said, offering her his hand to help her out of the cab.

‘I don’t need help,’ she said, but she couldn’t resist taking his hand anyway. Fifteen minutes in a cab next to Jonny, her leg just brushing his when the uneven London street jostled them, was enough to tempt a saint’s patience.

He was warm and steady. She stepped down from the
cab and saw a flash. Jonny pulled her close to him and slipped an arm around her waist as something flashed again.

Jane felt dizzy from the lights and Jonny holding her. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Thom usually gets someone to tip off the paparazzi about his parties,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘We’re relatively small fry, but we might make a couple of the glossies. Smile—it’s good publicity for your company and for our relationship.’

He brushed her hair back and gave her a kiss on the temple before he twined his fingers around hers and began to walk with her down the pavement.

Dazed, Jane held onto Jonny’s hand and looked around for a camera to smile at. There were quite a few, all pointed at them as they traversed the distance between the cab and the party. The route Jonny had chosen brought them directly into the path of the photographers.

Strategy, indeed.

She glanced over at Jonny. He was smiling, confident, gorgeous. Of course, he was used to cameras. She tried her best to look like someone who belonged holding hands with him. That was, like someone other than herself.

They reached the door, flanked by large bouncers, and
Jonny gave their names. He led her through a short corridor and into a wonderland.

The interior of the art nouveau building was all elegant white lines and tall thin stained-glass windows. Crystal chandeliers in the shapes of flowers cascaded from the ceiling. But the people, dressed in dark suits and glittering flapper-style dresses, outshone the surroundings.

Thom approached them, his arms and smile stretched wide. He was wearing a dinner jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, a fashion combination that Jane would associate more with teenage boys than a millionaire models’ agent, but on Thom, as usual, it worked.

‘How’s it going, my lovebird friends?’ he asked, flinging his arms around them both.

‘Brilliant,’ Jane managed, narrowly avoiding getting a mouthful of shaggy blond hair. ‘This party is amazing,’ she said when Thom let them go.

Thom shrugged. ‘Not bad. It’s the people that make it beautiful. You look gorgeous, woman.’

A compliment from Thom didn’t make Jane blush; she’d worked with him several times and she knew that, while he was sincere, he was also generous.

‘So do you,’ she said. It was a lame compliment, but Thom beamed as if she’d just given him the moon.

‘Thanks, babe, but I don’t have that new love glow like
you do.’ A little cloud passed his sunny face. ‘I haven’t seen your friend Amy yet—did she decide not to come?’

‘She’ll definitely be here,’ Jane told him. ‘She hasn’t talked about anything but this party for days.’

In fact, she’d been in Jane’s office that morning, worrying about her clothes and her daughter, who’d already been spending way too much time with a babysitter because of the extra hours Amy had been putting in on designing the Franco cologne advertisements. Jane hadn’t been able to be much help, but she’d reassured Amy as best she could. It was almost like the girly bonding Jane had always vaguely hoped for with Amy.

‘Okay, okay, cool. Listen, you need one of these.’ He dipped into a gold-covered box on a table next to him and handed them each a glittery disposable camera. ‘I want plenty of memories of tonight.’

‘I think we’re all going to remember this night for a very long time,’ Jonny said, taking a camera. ‘Smile,’ he said to Jane, and clicked a photo of her, though she was pretty sure she had her mouth half open and her eyes half shut.

‘No porno pics, now,’ Thom said to them with a wink, and then he turned to greet the next set of guests.

Jonny took her hand again and led her forward into the glittering room. At first glance, Jane thought that about half the people in the room looked familiar. At
second glance, she realised that was because the half she recognised were famous—and the other half probably were, too, only she wouldn’t know because she didn’t have much time to watch television or movies or read celebrity magazines.

‘Smile,’ she heard somebody say, and Jonny pulled her quickly to his side and pressed a kiss to her cheek as a camera snapped and flashed. The camera owner, a small blonde, giggled at them and moved on to take some more photos.

‘Perfect,’ Jonny murmured to her.

‘I’m not sure I like having my picture taken so much,’ she said, twisting her head around to check if someone else was going to ambush them.

‘It’s good,’ Jonny said, though his voice was a bit grim. ‘We’ve got documentary evidence. If we play it right, we can have our photo snapped together dozens of times tonight, every time being a perfect couple. Isn’t that the sort of thing you want?’

‘I’m—’ She clapped her mouth shut as another flash went off near them. She’d been about to say she wasn’t sure of that, either. But then that was ridiculous. Showing the world that she and Jonny were a perfect couple was exactly what she’d planned.

‘Jane,’ someone said to her, and this time she recognised
the voice as well as the face: Hasan, from the office, with his wife, Sharon.

Jane greeted them with the customary air kisses on both cheeks. ‘So good to see you,’ she said, and then turned to present Jonny. ‘Hasan, Sharon, this is Jo—’

‘Jay Richard,’ Jonny quickly and smoothly interrupted, and shook hands with the couple. Jane bit her lip at her near-mistake.

‘You’re the model working on the Franco cologne campaign, aren’t you?’ Hasan was acting merely polite and professional, but Jane caught an extra whiff of interest. Of course, he was the one who’d picked up on tension between her and Gary the other day … and in the office it was open season on gossip about the break-up and Jane’s new relationship.

Sharon confirmed her thoughts by stepping slightly aside with her and saying, in a low voice, ‘I was so sorry to hear that it didn’t work out between you and Gary.’

‘Thank you,’ Jane said. Though she wasn’t sure what one was supposed to say in this situation. ‘Thank you’ didn’t seem quite appropriate, but then again nor did, ‘It’s none of your business,’ since Jane’s love life seemed to be being conducted in public and she couldn’t exactly blame people for talking about it.

‘Your date is very handsome,’ Sharon continued.

Irritation flared through Jane, though again she
couldn’t say why, because that comment was precisely the reason that she was at this party. She bit off the ‘thank you’ that seemed to be required again, and merely nodded.

Sharon seemed to take that as encouragement to greater intimacy. She put her hand on Jane’s arm and leaned closer, her voice lower.

‘What’s it like to date a model? I’ll bet you get envious looks from every woman in the room.’

‘There is a bit of that,’ Jane replied, only just overcoming her irritation enough to avoid pulling away from Sharon’s insistent grip. She’d been to social occasions with Sharon before, once or twice as couples with her and Gary and Sharon and Hasan. Mostly Jane preferred to talk with the men, with whom she could discuss business. But of course she’d been expected to talk to Sharon, as the other female. As she remembered, her conversations with Sharon had been purely superficial, chat about things such as the latest big news item or the weather or property prices in London. There had never been anything as personal as this.

But then maybe that was how female friendships worked, on an exchange of gossip and confidences. Jane smiled and tried for the same bright intimacy as Sharon.

‘You must be used to admiring looks yourself,’ she said. ‘Hasan’s a very good-looking man.’

Sharon’s face immediately closed. ‘Yes, he is,’ she said, unmistakable hostility in her voice. She dropped Jane’s arm and put her own arm in Hasan’s, breaking eye contact with Jane to look lovingly at her husband instead as he chatted with Jonny.