Boot Camp Bride (3 page)

Chapter Four
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know

Feigning indifference and sipping her cosmo in front of a huge photograph of the Brazilian rainforest, Charlee strained to catch her antagonist’s reflection in the glass covering the photograph. What would his next move be? She smiled as, predictably, he made his way over, confident and assured - acting as if he’d won the game, not her.

However, even as her smile broadened, her sixth sense kicked in and cautioned her that it would be unwise to let her guard drop, even for a second. She had a hunch that his apparent interest in her went beyond rock, paper, scissors. Although what that ‘interest’ might be, she had no idea. The idea was scary, yet oddly exhilarating.

Sobering, she vowed to take things slowly. Think before she spoke. Not indulge in the flippant, off the cuff remarks that were her stock in trade and usually got her into a mess of trouble. He was just another alpha male, wasn’t he? And she knew all about those. There had been so much testosterone around when she’d been growing up, it wouldn’t have surprised her to find that her voice had broken. Or, that she’d taken to wearing her jeans so low-slung you could see her knickers. She pulled a wry face at the thought and recalled with some satisfaction the way he’d fallen for her double bluff.

Maybe she’d caught him on a bad day.

Maybe she was just cleverer than him.

Or - maybe that’d been his objective all along?

She regarded him through her glass, darkly, and gained the impression he was purposely taking his time to reach her. As if it was a ploy to redraw the boundaries; to establish who had the upper hand. But if - as she was beginning to suspect - it was all part of some hidden agenda, what could be the reason behind it?

Eyes narrowing, she gave him another, more thorough, second look.

There was a certain something about him; an air, a manner of just being, that intrigued her and compelled her to stay. It set him apart from the other men in the room wearing Paul Smith suits and two-hundred-pound shoes. It was almost as if, like her, he was here under false pretences. Then she assured herself that it was his clothes - battleship grey linen and silk mix trousers, loose-fitting jacket and white Sea Island cotton shirt - that made him stand out. Nothing more. Except - perhaps - his Byronic good looks. Charlee grimaced. If she was beginning to think in clichés, it was time for her to put down the empty glass and head for the cloakroom.

However, she was intrigued and wanted to know more.

‘You walked off without giving me a chance of a rematch,’ he said smoothly, looking over Charlee’s shoulder at the photographs. His warm breath stirred the tendrils of hair on the nape of her neck and a tiny shiver of reaction travelled the length of her body. Ever practical, Charlee put the frisson, and the goose bumps in its wake, down to the fact that the gallery was cooling now that the evening was almost over and the big doors were wide open.

‘Rematch? Dream on,’ she said, with a mix of asperity and incredulity. ‘You lost, mate - take the shame.’ Laughing, she turned a victorious face towards him just in time to catch the displeased frown before it was hidden behind another charming smile. The smile of a snake towards a mongoose, she thought, experiencing another shock wave of response.

Now she wanted to take back the careless words.

What if he wasn’t an employee of the gallery?

What if he was an important guest and she’d offended him?

Much as she longed to take the wind out of his sails and the swagger from his walk, she reminded herself that she was the hired hand this evening, whereas he, apparently, was a VIP or well known to the gallery. Sobering, her heart plummeted - this would probably be her first and last chance to represent
What’cha!
at a prestigious award ceremony. Even as part of the catering staff. After tonight, sifting through the photo archive would be regarded a career move.

‘So no chance, then?’ he persisted, seeming more amused than annoyed by her outburst.

‘None.’

Relieved that he wasn’t going to report her for overstepping the mark, Charlee relaxed. Her self-assurance and sassiness reasserted themselves and she soon forgot her misgivings about his identity and apparent interest in her. She took a few steps towards the next photograph; more to give herself some thinking time than to look at yet another yawn-inducing shot of the rainforest.

‘So, Chelsea …’ He barred her way, inclining his dark head as he peered down at her name tag. Oh, that firmly put her in her place. ‘When does your shift finish?’

‘My name’s Charlee by the way. Short for Charlotte? And my shift - as you so quaintly put it - is over when I say it is. I don’t work down t’pit until my canary keels over; nor - in case you’re wondering - do I take floors in to scrub. You’ve got me all wrong, mate.’ She sent him a scathing look. Wasn’t it plain that she’d come dressed to party, not to hew coal - or man the cloakroom? Didn’t she have aspiring journalist written all over her? Clearly not! She removed the offending label, screwed it up, tetchily. ‘What’s it to you, anyway?’

‘I was going to ask if you would -’

‘Would what?’ In that second, everything slotted into place and she had his backstory all figured out.

Of course.

He worked for the gallery in some vague capacity because the owner was a chum from boarding school. He was probably called Binky or something else equally ludicrous and had fagged for the gallery owner at Eton/Harrow/Winchester. Delete as appropriate. His definition of a hard day’s work would be directing men in brown overalls to move the display boards a few more centimetres to the left. Sweetie. And - on a really exacting day, he probably ensured that the author/artist didn’t run out of pens during book signings/exhibitions. However, with the natural authority of his class, he was past master at swanning around looking busy, taking long lunches and delegating jobs to people like her.

Or, at least, the person he thought her to be.

She’d met his type before and avoided them at all costs. Dull, boring, predictable and up their own arses. She gave him a look that said: prepare to be disappointed, and followed it up with a curt:

‘Forget it. I have plans for tonight. And they don’t include stacking chairs, sweeping floors or any other menial tasks you can dream up. I’m not spending another minute in this gallery.’ She encompassed the room with a dramatic sweep of her arm. ‘Places to go; people to see. Champagne to drink, it’s almost Christmas Eve, after all.’

‘So you’re not impressed by the exhibition of photographs?’

‘I might have been impressed if I’d had a chance to look at them. Properly, that is.’ She struggled to keep the aggrieved note out of her voice. Under normal circumstances, she’d have loved to look round the exhibition and discuss the photographs, sip champagne and go clubbing with the other interns. But thanks to Vanessa that had all gone down the toilet, along with any dreams she nurtured of schmoozing her way to an introduction to someone influential.

‘So why don’t you look round now?’ he asked reasonably, summoning a passing waiter and taking two glasses off his tray. But the moment had passed and Charlee wanted to get away from him and out of there. Hang with her friends in a bar and have a bitching session about Vanessa and Sally over several glasses of bone-dry, white wine.

‘Look,’ she glanced towards the cloakroom where Poppy was making ‘get a move on’ signs and pointing at her watch. ‘I don’t want to be rude, but …’

‘That’s not the impression I get, Chelsea,’ he said smoothly, as he replaced her cocktail with a fresh one. ‘I think you enjoy being rude. You’re a bit of a rebel, aren’t you? A rebel without a clue.’

‘Now, hang on a minute. Mate.’ Putting an emphasis on the word, she attempted to reduce him to the level of an ordinary Joe. But even as she sprang to her own defence, a nagging voice reminded her that it wasn’t the first time this particular charge had been laid at her door.

‘Hey, don’t get me wrong,’ he held up his hands as if to protect himself from her wrath. ‘I like rebels.’ He grinned, a boyish, charming grin. No doubt the one used to melt implacable female hearts and weaken their resistance. ‘Even rebels who aren’t quite sure what they’re rebelling against.’

‘Oh, I know exactly what I’m rebelling against, thank you very much.’ Charlee could feel her veneer of sophistication slipping and knew that soon she’d say something she regretted. Words that couldn’t be called back.

‘And what might that be?’

Over the course of the evening, the list of grievances had stacked up. The hours she’d spent getting ready, the new clothes she’d bought on her MasterCard but couldn’t really afford, the fun she and Poppy had planned on their way over in the taxi. The fact that her Christmas flash and glitter had been hidden behind a grotty apron, the misspelled label which had marked her out as a ditsy, Essex Blonde. And now, Mr-friend-of-the-gallery-owner was about to ask her to stay behind, to count the takings and help with the clearing up. Well, he could go hang.

‘It’s personal,’ she said with all the hauteur of a grand duchess. ‘So if you’ll excuse me?’ She turned on her heel and stepped away from him.

‘Something tells me there’s more to you than a waitress and a grand master at rock, paper, scissors.’ He paused, giving her the chance to put the record straight.

‘And you’d be right.’ Charlee not only took the bait but snapped it right up. ‘Actually,’ she drew the word out, arching her eyebrows and giving him a haughty look that dared him to laugh. ‘I’m a journalist.’ He didn’t need to know that she spent most of her life in a rank smelling cupboard or collecting Vanessa’s designer clothes from the dry cleaners.

‘Really?’ He looked impressed. ‘In that case I really would value your opinion of the exhibition.’ He took her by the elbow and steered towards a large photo of an indigenous South American female with a fierce expression and three porcupine quills threaded through her nose.

Charlee's brain was in danger of complete meltdown as she thought of something clever to say. Something that would mark her out from the crowd and indicate what an amazing journalist she would, someday, become. A pithy phrase, some witticism which would show Posh Boy that he was dealing with a sophisticated, articulate professional.

 ‘Now that’s what I call an extreme makeover,’ she blurted out.

Chapter Five
Your Starter for Ten

Within moments, Charlee realised that instead of putting him in his place she’d made a complete arse of herself. She gave the woman in the photograph a considering look while she searched for a telling phrase to undo the damage. However, judging from his boot-faced expression, the time for damage limitation had passed.

It was plain that he thought he was dealing with a total flake.

And, as the seconds drew out, Charlee imagined she could hear the slow, sonorous tick of a grandfather clock marking time; feel the chill wind of disapproval whistling round her ankles. In fact, she half expected clumps of tumbleweed to come rolling across the gallery towards her, like in an old cowboy film.

She suppressed a groan of dismay. He was right. She was a complete flake.

Now that she looked at him more closely, it was evident that he belonged to the moneyed, metropolitan-artsy-fartsy world of gallery openings and first nights. He probably had a mantelpiece bristling with exclusive invitations. He wouldn’t appreciate the flippant, throwaway remarks that passed for humour in the subs’ office where she worked, the facetious one-liners used to deflect the sarcastic comments considered fair game for newbies like her.

Time to move on, head off into the night before she made another gaffe.

First, she had to leave him with a more favourable impression; you never knew where a casual encounter at a party could lead. Five years down the line, his opinion of her could mean the difference between an exclusive scoop and a libel suit. She simply had to shatter the cringe-making silence stretching out between them.

Thinking on her feet, she read the tiny inscription at the bottom of the photograph. Then, as casually as possible, she cleared her throat and regurgitated the information with all the aplomb of an expert at the Natural History Museum; the BBC’s go-to anthropologist.

‘Ahem - Not everyone knows that, due to the characteristic whiskers the women place in their noses, the Matsés Indians are often referred to as the Cat People.’ For effect, and to add gravitas, she drew inverted commas round the words: Cat People, and whiskers in the air using her fingers.

‘Amazing.’

At last - he spoke!

‘Cater-waiter, journalist; and now,’ he paused for effect, a smile lighting his smoky grey eyes, ‘anthropologist.’

Charlee glanced to see if she could detect irony in his expression. His disapproval had vanished and in its place was an appreciative look that suggested he was impressed by her knowledge. Crossing her fingers behind her back she prayed he wouldn’t realise she was making it up as she went along.

‘Well, I wouldn’t quite go that far …’ She dipped her head modestly and - with her earlier gaffe forgotten - bounced back with customary chutzpah, full of dangerous self-confidence which usually preceded her descent into deeper dung.

Now in full daydreaming mode, she was no longer Charlee Montague, cupboard dwelling troglodyte. She was Dame Charlotte Montague; blue stocking, Amazon explorer and doyenne of the late-night television circuit. In her mind’s eye, she saw Ant and Dec pleading with her to go on
I’m a Celebrity
in order to teach the contestants how to survive in the rainforest. Naturally, she would refuse. Nothing could distract her from penning her next learned article, which she would present at the Natural History Museum on the anniversary of Darwin’s birth - to a packed audience of envious peers.

‘Tell me more about the …’ he dragged her out of the daydream and back to the present.

‘Cat People of the Amazon?’

‘Precisely.’

Glancing down at the inscription, she realised there was no information there. So, like a good journalist, what she didn’t know, she made up.

‘They revere the cat as a god,’ she began, regarding him with an expression she hoped was both serious and profound. It wouldn’t hurt to let him know there was more to her than rock, paper, scissors, being paid minimum wage, and an unguarded tongue. But she was edging her way forward. She had the unnerving feeling that everything she said was being filed away for future reference and he was just waiting for her to drop another clanger. Then, he would have her ejected from the gallery and fired from her job.

‘Rather like the ancient Egyptians?’ he added helpfully, moving the conversation along.

‘Exactly like the ancient Egyptians. Except …’

‘Except?’

‘Except, you can’t build pyramids in the rainforest … All those trees.’ Charlee’s alter ego, Dame Charlotte Montague, slipped alarmingly for a moment. ‘Although, I do believe that the Incas built ziggurats in the rainforest?’

‘Oh, quite.’ He took a sip of his cocktail and was beset by a coughing fit and Charlee had an awful suspicion that he was laughing at her. But when she looked again, he was straight-faced and serious - so she guessed she had him all wrong.

‘Let’s move on shall we? I find your erudition fascinating. Quite illuminating, in fact.’ He took her by the elbow and then stopped in front of a large photograph of an atoll. A long crescent of sand set in a turquoise sea so blue it almost hurt to look at it. ‘And this?’ he asked.

‘Ah, yes.’ A quick glance at the title in the bottom left-hand corner provided her next clue. ‘This is Mururoa Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. You may have heard of it?’

‘You know, I don’t think I have.’ Engrossed, he turned to face her, and waited politely for her to continue.

Now this Charlee did know about.

When she was in primary school, her brother Tom and some of his uber cool sixth form mates had protested with Greenpeace outside the French Embassy in London because the atoll had been used as a nuclear testing ground. Inspired, Tom had gone on to study Environmental Sciences at Uni, and now worked as a lobbyist for various green pressure groups.

‘Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t advise you to ‘Thomas-Cook-it’ for a few thousand years, until the radiation subsides.’ Charlee laughed to demonstrate that she could be light-hearted and amusing as well as knowledgeable.

Experience had taught her that an intelligent woman generally frightened men. She’d lost several boyfriends because of her quick wit, sharp tongue and intelligence, so she reined herself in. However, she wasn’t about to let him off the hook just yet. When they did part, it would be on her terms and with him left wondering what’d hit him. Although, with his air of ‘I can do anything I damn well please’, he looked like it would take more than her off-key ramblings to make an impression on him.

She was intrigued by him, by his mood switches and sudden change of tack. There was a story here, one the journo in her wanted to learn. Why, for example, did he have a long, grey cashmere scarf wound loosely around his neck in this overheated room. Affectation? How come his eyes were dark-circled beneath his tropical tan - as though he was recovering from a long illness? Why, despite his obvious youth and vigour did he look world-weary - as though he’d been there, seen it, done it - and had worn out the tee shirt.

Her desire to escape was overridden as her journalistic antennae started to twitch. She gave him one more sidelong glance and made mental notes to dissect later. His suit had obviously been tailored but no longer appeared to fit him; it hung loose on his rangy frame and the jacket seemed too wide for his shoulders.

‘Quite,’ he agreed, leading her onwards, as if he sensed her sudden interest in him and was keen to deflect it. They paused by a photograph of an ancient Romanesque temple burning white beneath an unforgiving desert sun. Once more, the titles came to Charlee’s rescue.

Hatra, Iraq.

Charlee knew Iraq was formerly ancient Assyria and lay along the fertile crescent of the east. Then - out of nowhere - she remembered that the opening scenes of
The Exorcist
had been filmed there. She’d watched the DVD with her brothers years ago when her parents had travelled north for some family wedding and she’d been left behind in the un-tender care of Tom, Wills, Jack and George.

For months afterwards, she’d had nightmares about the girl with the green face and revolving head. She’d taken to creeping into Tom’s room when she was too frightened to sleep, knowing that she couldn’t go to her parents’ room without landing her brothers in a heap of trouble.

‘Ah, yes. Hatra. Where they filmed
The Exorcist
. A dangerous place to go,’ was all she managed as memories crowded in, thick and fast. Remembering how it’d felt to bask in her brothers’ approval, knowing that they appreciated her not dobbing them in. How, briefly, she’d been admitted into their gang of four. But it hadn’t lasted. Within days, she’d reverted to being ‘Shrimp’, fit only for retrieving cricket balls from the long grass and running errands to the village shop.

Seemingly sensing that she’d zoned out, he moved her onto the next photograph. It was then that the penny dropped. Of course!

The Amazon Basin … A contaminated atoll in the Pacific … Iraq.

The photographs were taken in some of the most dangerous places on the planet. Places where only the most intrepid or foolhardy traveller dared to tread.

‘And this?’ he asked, drawing up at the last one: Darien Gap, Colombia and Panama. He positioned himself so that she couldn’t read the entire label, and she suspected he knew she’d been blagging. But she’d seen enough photos for one evening and so she abandoned her alter ego - Dame Charlotte Montague, darling of the lecture circuit - and reverted back to plain old Charlee Montague, bloody-minded intern, full of half-baked opinions and careless who she shared them with.

‘Well … clearly, only a complete idiot would go there,’ she pronounced with all the conviction of someone who knew nothing of the sort. Other than what she’d read in the Sunday papers about drug smugglers, kidnappers, Contras - all working deep in the impenetrable rainforest. She gave him one last assessing look. Sure, he was good looking; but she’d had a lifetime of being put in her place by gorgeous, exasperating males.

The opinion of a man she’d probably never see again didn’t matter to her, either way.

Now, did it?

‘An idiot?’ he pursued.

‘Oh yes. You know the type - ’ Charlee was so anxious to join Poppy over by the door that she didn’t register that his wry, slightly patronising smile had morphed into something considerably more tight-lipped and not quite so amiable.

‘I’m not sure that I do. But something tells me I’m about to find out.’