Secrets of the Rich & Famous (12 page)

A pause and an unconvinced smile.

‘Come and let me show you something.’

Jen followed her out of the kitchen.

There was an enormous ball of mistletoe suspended from the doorway into the sitting room, and Alex’s eccentric uncle Norman seemed to be hanging around it rather more than necessary.
He flashed her a toothy smile as she sidled past him into the room.

‘I’m amazed to see him,’ Alex’s mother said as they sat down on the sofa. ‘He has no need for us any more. We’re lucky to get a phone call now and then. He’s got all he needs—all those rich friends. There’s nothing here that he wants to come back for.’

Jen shook her head. ‘You’re wrong. He misses you. He misses
this
.’

She was fascinated. It had always been just her and her mum. Her grandparents were long gone. She envied him the warmth, the buzz of it. You’d never be on your own with a family like this.

Unless you took yourself out of it. Which was what he had done.

‘I’ve kept all the cuttings from his career.’

She produced a groaning photo album. Jen forced her face to keep a smile on it as she flipped through a few pages. It was full of tabloid pictures of Alex with various models and starlets. Here was Alex on the red carpet with a gorgeous redhead. And here he was cavorting in the surf somewhere tropical, with Viveca Holt of all people.

Photos of ex-girlfriends. Exactly what you needed to boost your ailing confidence when you met the parents for the first time.
Not
.

‘Fabulous!’ she exclaimed, smiling so hard
her cheeks ached. ‘And have you seen all his films?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘We’ve got all the DVDs.’

Alex’s mother leaned in conspiratorially and added in a stage whisper, ‘Some of them are a bit dull, to be perfectly honest, a bit too arty for us. Still, I’d never tell him that. It’s brilliant that he’s won all those awards. Graham and I prefer more of an action film, like that
Faith
trilogy. We love those—have you seen them?’

As they said their goodbyes Alex bandied about promises of regular visits and phone calls. In the silent warmth of the car on the drive back to London Jen wondered if he’d meant them. Or whether the whole day had really been about proving a point.

‘WHY did you take me to meet them?’

Alex stared into the fireplace for a moment. She was curled warmly against him on the sofa in the den, back in his apartment. The room was lit only by the soft glow of the fire and the coloured lights on her little Christmas tree. She followed his gaze, watched sparks flying from the logs into the velvety darkness. Two glasses of wine and the remains of scrambled eggs on toast lay on the coffee table to the side of them.

‘I wanted to show you my roots,’ he said. ‘You were so determined to accept the newspaper view of me as a playboy, and I don’t blame you. I’ve never tried to correct it either publicly or privately. To be honest I haven’t cared either way what was written about me.’ He glanced at her. ‘Not until now.’

‘Why now?’ Her heart beat faster as she waited for his reply.

‘I want you to know what I’m really like. Not the press image. The real me. If you’re going to do a bunk I want it to be because you’re not happy with
me
, not some illusion.’

‘Why haven’t you seen them for so long?’ she asked. ‘They were so delighted to see you I thought you were going to be lynched, and you obviously love them all to bits.’

He took a sip of his wine.

‘Part of it was the demands of work keeping me away. I wasn’t lying to them about that. But it isn’t the only reason.’

He sighed.

‘After Susan left it was just such a reminder of what I was missing, seeing them all. My brother became a dad, something I could never see happening for me after she went, and it became easier somehow to just stay away. They’ve never been excited by what I do. Not when I was a kid starting out and not even when I became a success at it. Michael’s given them grandchildren. He sees them all the time. Those are things they can relate to. His life is real to them.’

He ran a hand distractedly through his hair.

‘I think they see me in the newspapers and wonder who the hell I am. When I see them they act like I think I’m better than them. I sometimes think they’d have been happier if
I drove a taxi for a living or worked down at the docks.’

She could see his agitation in the tensing of his shoulders and was touched. If today had been about proving to her he was serious, it hadn’t been an easy gesture for him to make.

‘But what conclusion did you
want
them to make? You’ve encouraged them to think that way by staying away so much. They think you’re ashamed of them because you don’t see them.’

He flinched, and she knew she’d touched a nerve, but she wasn’t about to back down.

‘I can see where you’re coming from,’ she said. ‘They’re happy in their own little bubble. Flying halfway round the world fills them with dread. But it isn’t that they aren’t proud of you. It’s just that they’re so in awe of the world you live in.’

He was shaking his head. She put a hand on his arm.

‘Your parents own all your films, you know,’ she said. ‘They’ve got them all, every single one, on DVD. I saw. And your mum subjected me to a scrapbook of newspaper clippings. You in the arms of half of Hollywood. I was expecting baby photos and I got you frolicking in the surf with Viveca Holt. They’re your biggest fans, you idiot. Just because they don’t really
understand what you do it doesn’t mean they aren’t proud of your achievements.’

A pause. He watched the fire.

‘Maybe,’ he said.

‘You should see more of them.’

‘I know.’

‘That Christmas tree is a shrine to your childhood,’ she said.

He grimaced.

‘I know. It’s hideous. Sorry.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I like it. That’s the kind of Christmas tree I want to have one day. You can keep those ludicrous black trees with minimalist lights and those deconstructed turkey dinners. It’s like wearing designer clothes and not caring if you look like a moose as long as they cost a fortune. Christmas at your parents’ has been fine-tuned over years and years. It actually has something concrete behind it instead of vacuous self-importance.’

‘So your Christmas tree will be festooned with tat?’

‘Decorations made by toddlers do not fall into the
tat
category.’

He laughed, gave her a squeeze.

‘I thought you were aiming for editor-in-chief of Vogue.’ His tone was neutral, almost deliberately so. ‘How are you going to fit family in with that?’

‘This isn’t the Dark Ages. I know you think
it’s impossible to mix business with family life but I don’t agree. I definitely want kids one day. You just need to be good at juggling and working as a team. Women are fabulous at that kind of thing.’ She pointed an emphatic finger at him. ‘Your big problem is you think it has to be all or nothing. Anything less than white-picket-fence-two-kids-and-a-dog-perfection doesn’t cut it for you. But, like I told you before, there’s more than one way to crack a nut. As long as both parents are never away for work at the same time, maybe downsize their hours a bit, delegate more, cut down on travelling. There’s loads of ways you could make it work.’ She leaned forward, picked up her wine glass and took a sip. ‘I intend to have it all. Nothing’s going to stop me.’

‘I guess I thought the way things were with your father and your insane sense of ambition, that you weren’t big on family.’

‘I’m not right now. But give me a few years working my way up and family is next up.’ She paused. ‘My father is irrelevant.’

He glanced her way. ‘Is he?’

She leaned against him for a moment, savouring the warmth of him, the feeling of security his closeness gave.

‘Almost doing a bunk this morning was about me, too,’ she said. ‘Not just about you.’

He moved sideways a little so he could see her face.

‘It’s not you, it’s me?’
he said, eyebrows raised. ‘You don’t have to spare my feelings. I just want you to be honest with me.’

‘Remember when we talked about false names for my article and you suggested I use my father’s surname?’

He frowned.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, the fact he’s a waste of space wasn’t the only reason I didn’t use it. I didn’t want to draw attention.’

‘How do you mean?’

She took a deep breath.

‘My father is Dominic Armstrong.’

She waited. The fire spat softly in the background.

‘You don’t mean
the
Dominic Armstrong? The—’

‘The media giant,’ she finished for him. ‘Yes.’

He looked sharply down at her, his interest clearly buzzing. Of course it was. She met his gaze, ready for the questions.

‘But he owns two or three newspapers, doesn’t he? Not to mention magazines and that TV news channel?’

‘He does.’

‘Then I don’t get it. All it would take is a bit
of namedropping and you could land yourself a job on the magazine of your choice. But instead you’ve slogged your way up with an internship after working for a newspaper from the back of beyond.’

‘It’s how I wanted it. I’ve never wanted to be indebted to him for anything. Twenty-five years and not a card. Not a phone call. The only part he’s ever played in my life was on his way out of it. He had my mother sign a contract—gave her a lump sum in return for relinquishing all parental responsibility.’

‘He paid her off?’ He sounded appalled.

‘Exactly. And that’s why I was trying to make a quick exit this morning. Because when you get down to basics he saw me and my mother as a hitch in his life. So he fixed the problem and then disappeared.’ She paused. ‘Like you did with Viveca Holt.’

‘You’re comparing
me
to your father?’

She could hear the edge in his voice, grabbed his hand, held it.

‘Not now. But I was this morning.’

He’d pulled away from her, a frown touching his brows. She spoke quickly, needing to make him understand.

‘Think about how it looked to me. You had an affair with Viveca, it began to cause you problems in the media, so you got your PR people onto it and got the hell out of the country.
And then we spent the night together, you’re plastered across the press for belting Richard Moran in the chops—a situation caused by me—and suddenly your PR people are on the case and you’re jetting off to LA. What was I supposed to think? I wanted to jump before I was pushed. I don’t want to make the same mistakes my mother did.’

He took her face softly in his hands, looked steadily into her eyes. The woody scent of the fire mingled with the fresh citrus of his aftershave.

‘This is not a mistake. I am not getting on a plane to fly out of your life. Don’t judge me by the way your father behaved.’

‘I couldn’t help it. After twenty-five years it gets to be a bit of a mind-set.’

‘Give me time and I’ll change that.’

He pulled her against him in the firelight, held her, kissed her so deeply it made her lightheaded, and then he was easing her onto his lap, his hands sliding deliciously beneath her clothes, and she let hot desire for him crush away doubt.

Afterwards she lay in his arms, watched the fire flicker. He grabbed the patchwork throw from the armchair and tugged it around them.

‘You really think this can work?’

She wondered where they could go from here.
Would he suggest that she move her work ambitions across the pond? Or even drop them altogether? Take on a new job as Alex Hammond’s Other Half? With his views on putting each other first, surely that was how he would see things progressing. Susan had supposedly left him because he wasn’t in the same room as her often enough, so chances were he’d view working on different continents as a bit of a hitch.

She looked up at him to gauge his response and he kissed her forehead gently.

‘Yes, I really think this can work.’

‘With you on the other side of the Atlantic?’

She waited.

‘You could come with me, you know,’ he said.

There it was
.

She wriggled away enough to raise herself on an elbow. The glow from the fire lit the strong contours of his face. His green eyes held her gaze and her heart turned over softly. There was a part of her that wanted to leap in immediately, agree to anything he asked just to keep him. But the self-sufficient part of her, honed over twenty-five years, easily held its own.

‘I can’t do that,’ she said, and waited for it all to begin unravelling.

‘I didn’t think so,’ he said, ‘which is why I’ll be relying on air travel.’

‘Air travel?’ Her heart did a happy little skip.

‘When you get this new job—’

‘If,’
she interrupted.

‘OK,
if
you get this new job, you’re going to be even more career-obsessed than you are now, right?’

‘Obsessed is going a bit far,’ she said, and then saw his raised eyebrows. She sighed. ‘Maybe you have a point.’

‘And I’m not going to lie to you, my work schedule can be fierce. I’ve built it up to be exactly that. It’s been everything for me these last few years. I can’t downsize my hours overnight.’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to.’

‘But I could start to rebuild things from now—work my schedule so it fits with yours. We both work hard when we’re apart, and we make the most of every moment we’re together. Starting now.’

He slid his hands beneath the throw and turned with her so she was on her back, the softness of the velvet sofa against her naked skin as he loomed above her. He leaned down to kiss the line of her collarbone, sending sparks fizzing right down to her toes, and then moved back up to look into her eyes, his forehead pressed lightly against hers, his warm breath on her mouth.

‘I’m serious about this,’ he said. ‘I’m serious about you. And even though I’m as scared of
letting people close as you are, a few thousand miles aren’t about to stop me.’

Perfect man, perfect Christmas. And now New Year, new job.

She straightened her new short jacket. Now she had a proper regular income and an image to keep up. She had money for clothes. Not the designer level stuff she’d bought to play Genevieve, but a wardrobe that was a cut above her old jeans-and-T-shirt uniform. Marlon’s makeover had been all about playing a part for her article, but somewhere along the way she’d begun to like feeling a bit more polished.

Plus she wanted to look her best for Alex. He’d managed two visits since Christmas—one a four-day break and the other a forty-eight-hour turnaround spent almost entirely in bed that made her toes curl and her stomach melt whenever she thought about it. He called every day, and used Skype whenever he could, but she was still competing for his attention with film stars and models, and a new suit seemed
essential
under the circumstances.

She stacked her papers together and put them away in her briefcase, shook her editor’s hand. The delicious feeling of having made it hadn’t gone away yet. Four weeks in and she was still in pinch-yourself mode.

She’d done it. Actually done it. Sold her article
to
Gossip!
magazine and been offered a permanent role in the Features Department. She was on her way. She’d just finished a meeting at which she’d pitched new article ideas and the reception had been great.

Her editor accompanied her down the hallway, a sheaf of papers in one arm.

‘Really pleased to have you on board,’ she said. ‘Always on the lookout for a fresh approach.’

‘I’m just so happy to have the opportunity.’

‘No need to thank me.’ She shifted the papers to the other arm. ‘You came highly recommended, after all.’

Jen frowned. What the hell did
that
mean?

‘Recommended? By who?’

No one at the
Littleford Gazette
had an ounce of clout in this universe. Maybe if she’d gone for a job with
Pig-Farming Monthly …

‘Our Entertainment Editor.’ She smiled at Jen. ‘Apparently Alex Hammond mentioned you to her a few weeks ago. The film producer. I had no idea you knew him. He gave her an exclusive interview on account of the fact you now work here. Fantastic scoop for her. She was delighted. That’s exactly the kind of networking we should be doing.’