Secrets of the Rich & Famous (5 page)

There would be no point changing her own image if she couldn’t tell the difference between real money and an ordinary culture vulture like Gordon from the
Gazette
. She needed to nail the difference between bespoke tailoring and
mass production. She felt a bit more positive. This wasn’t going to be a wasted evening. It was going to be a dry run. A learning experience.

And, talking of learning, she had nearly an hour yet before her taxi was due. What would be a more productive use of that time than a bit of investigation? Alex Hammond might not be up for twenty questions, but this apartment was full of the trappings of his rich life, just there to be examined. She padded down the passageway from her bedroom in her stockinged feet. Alex had been out for most of the day and had shut himself in the study the moment he got back. There was no sign of him emerging any time soon.

She stopped outside the door of his dressing room and hesitated. Dressing room? Honestly! What kind of a man needed one of those?

The kind who had so much hard cash he didn’t know what to spend it on, she answered herself, pushing the door open. A little look wouldn’t hurt. She was sure he wouldn’t mind.

There were dark wood sliding cupboards on either side, a tiled area with his-and-hers smoked glass sinks, and a gleaming mirror took up almost the whole wall at the end of the room. The lighting was unforgiving, and she grimaced as she caught sight of her pale complexion in the mirror. She really would have to get some
fake tan sorted out if she wanted to look as if she regularly holidayed in the South of France.

Sliding open cupboards, she was faced with rows of perfectly cut jackets, pristine shirts in every colour, and racks of gleaming shoes stored with wooden moulds inside them. She picked up a pair and studied them. Italian leather. She could see they were beautifully made, but she could hardly spend the evening staring at men’s feet. She decided to concentrate on the clothes instead.

She reached into the wardrobe and took out what looked like an evening suit in a very dark slate-grey. She unzipped the transparent dust cover and took the jacket off its hanger. She examined it, trying to burn the look and feel of it into her mind. The fabric was rich and heavy, the cut so sharp that it even looked perfect hanging from her hand.

On impulse she shrugged herself into it, just to see what it might look like on a person. It smelled faintly of the warm citrus aftershave Alex wore, snapping her straight back to the first time she’d breathed in that scent. The jacket, huge on her, reminded her of the breadth and strength of his toned shoulders as he’d held her down, his green eyes locked on hers. Her breathing speeded up just at the thought of it, and she could see in her reflection the pink hue that rose in her cheeks. She wished her body
would get the message that she didn’t have time for men like him. Not when she’d spent her whole life grappling with the reason why a man like him had no time for her.

She was turning this way and that, examining the fall of the jacket in the mirror, when the door opened behind her and Alex Hammond stepped into the room.

She felt as though her heart had fallen through the pit of her stomach.

His hair was damp from the shower and he was wearing a sea-green bath towel around his hips, to which her eyes traitorously dipped before she got herself under control and dragged them back up to face level. The toned pecs and biceps were lightly tanned. He looked as if he’d just stepped in from the beach.

For a long moment Alex couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Hot on the heels of yesterday’s thinly veiled threat to make him her next story, now he found her standing next to the open door of his wardrobe, apparently trying on his clothes.

‘I can explain,’ she said.

At least she had the good grace to look embarrassed. The blush high on her porcelain cheeks made her look very young, and prettier than ever.

This would be interesting.

‘Cross-dressing?’ he supplied helpfully.

Without looking at him she took the jacket off, hung it back on the hanger, zipped the cover over it and replaced it in the wardrobe. While her back was turned he crossed the room to stand behind her. This close, he was enveloped by her perfume, something light and sweet that knocked his senses. The skin of her shoulders, visible above the boat neckline of the dress, was the colour of double cream against the plain black fabric. Her neck curved delectably. He crushed the impulse to kiss it.

‘First you go through my bin and now I find you looking through my clothes,’ he said in a low voice.

She spun round, and he heard the small gasp as she realised how close he was to her. He saw in the surprised widening of her eyes that she thought she’d got away with the bin story.

‘What the hell is going on here? What are you? Some kind of stalker?’

She stood her ground defiantly, looking boldly into his face. The confident don’t-care exterior didn’t fool him. He could tell by the way her breath had quickened, the way her eyes met his, that she was attracted to him. She thought she could blag her way out of this, as she did everything else.

‘I came in to use the mirror,’ she said. ‘There isn’t a full-length one in my room. And then
I wondered if there might be a jacket I could borrow. I only have a pashmina and it’s freezing outside.’

‘Make a habit of wearing men’s clothes, do you?’

‘Masculine tailoring is the new black, actually,’ she said airily. ‘I was just having a try-on. It’s a girl thing. You should never trust the way it looks on a hanger.’

She sidestepped him deftly. He let her go, watched her as she pretended to look in the mirror, dabbing her lips with her little finger as if trying on menswear was the most normal thing in the world for a girl to do.

‘Naturally I would have asked your permission before I took it.’

‘Naturally,’
he said sarcastically.

She glanced at him.

It was clear now that she had to be gathering background for some article or other about him. He was shocked to realise how disappointed he felt by that. He’d begun to like her, with her off-the-wall behaviour and her amazing legs. He was used to mixing with women who played the game his way. A couple of dates, a good time, and when he broke it off—which he always did—they left on good terms. No fuss or backlash. Because his good opinion counted in the competitive world of film.

A woman with her own agenda was a refreshing
change. And that was not necessarily a good thing.

He considered walking her to the door right now and throwing her out, but he needed to speak to Mark first. Make sure he’d found out something to ensure her confidentiality. That, he insisted, was the only reason he didn’t tell her to go and pack now. It had absolutely nothing to do with the way she was affecting him from the waist down.

Obviously tasting victory when he didn’t say anything further, she made for the door while the going was good.

‘Going anywhere special?’ he called after her.

‘It’s a work thing,’ she called back. ‘Don’t wait up.’

The gallery would have been stunning even without pictures festooning the walls, Jen decided. The building itself was cutting-edge modern, and inside there was major use of glass, highly polished wood floors and superb clear spotlighting to show the art off to its best advantage. At least it would have done if any of the pictures had been Jen’s cup of tea. Enormous arrangements of Christmas greenery studded with tiny white pin lights stood near the entrance. Wine waiters mingled effortlessly among the guests, dispensing crystal flutes of champagne and canapés. The artist was up-and-coming
and, according to the loud-voiced man dominating the group next to Jen, extremely collectible. The guests were glamorous, their enthusiasm for the exhibits bubbling like the champagne.

Feeling drab and invisible in her plain black shift dress, and unsteady in her borrowed nude heels, she took a third glass of the complimentary champagne from a passing waiter. OK, so she rarely drank, but in this intimidating fish-out-of-water environment at least it gave her something to occupy her hands. She found herself sipping from the glass in an effort to appear busy and avoid speaking. Not that anyone had attempted to start a conversation with
her
.

There were plenty of extremely attractive men in attendance, but they seemed to have at least two or three women keeping them company at all times, all of them beautiful and expensively dressed. A few weeks to go until Christmas and sequins and gold were everywhere. The only way she’d be able to compete might be by tipping her champagne down the designer-clad back of the competition, and that would only get her ejected from the premises before she could so much as speak. Deciding the only way to salvage the evening was to treat it as a serious scouting mission, she chose the least offensive of the eye-wateringly bright oil
paintings and picked her way through the crowd to stand on the edge of the group in front of it.

‘Fabulous brushwork. So
insistent
,’ one woman was saying to no one in particular. Her gold silk sheath dress screamed expensive. Not a hint of tasteless sparkle, more a subtle hint of
luxe
. It made Jen, in her boring man-made-fibre black, want to slink under the nearest rock.

She took a sip of champagne and gazed up at the picture. These people—honestly! Could they not see what was plain as day? To Jen it looked as if a toddler had run amok with a paintbrush.

Confidence shored up by the champagne, she leaned in towards the man standing next to her.

‘Not sure about it myself,’ she said.

Hah!
She’d made a comment. Not so hard, after all! She took another slug of the delicious champagne and glanced sideways at him to see if he was listening. Hmm. Sleek blond hair, haughty but attractive face. Her eyes dipped expertly to his suit. Definitely expensive tailoring.

He smiled and nodded at her. He took a sip from his own glass and his sleeve fell back to reveal his watch.

Cartier!

It was like a message from the gods. She gave him her full attention.

Her confidence was soaring on the back of three glasses of champagne, and she realised
with a flash of inspiration that this was the answer to all her problems. Dutch courage! She grabbed a passing waiter by the arm before she missed out, and swapped her empty glass for another full one.

The rest of the group drifted away, but the blond man carried on looking appraisingly at the framed paint explosion in front of them.

‘Personally …’ Jen leaned in conspiratorially and, extending a finger from the hand encircling her champagne flute, jabbed it towards the picture ‘… I like what I like. It needs to speak to me on a sentimental level.’ She clasped her other hand to her chest to emphasise how heartfelt an opinion that was.

Oh, the champagne was marvellous. And she was just
so
witty and interesting.

‘Tell me, what do
you
think of it?’ She pasted an expression of interest on her face. Her high heels seemed strangely unsteady and she concentrated hard on not swaying.

The man began an extremely dull monologue on the inspirational brushwork, and she tried valiantly to listen and nod encouragingly when her will to live wanted to dash to the exit and throw itself under the nearest lorry. She glanced around for the wine waiter.

‘… name?’

She suddenly realised he’d stopped talking and was looking at her expectantly. The chatter
in the rest of the room seemed to have degenerated into a humming background noise.

Name. Right—she’d prepared for this. Something that sounded as if she’d been born into money, because she’d read somewhere that was more respectable than
nouveau riche
.

‘Genevieve,’ she said. Her tongue felt strangely hard to control.

‘Genevieve?’ the man asked.

One of her heels suddenly dipped to the side, and she plummeted four inches before managing to right herself by grabbing his sleeve. Champagne slopped from her flute onto his lapel. As she managed to steady herself he pointedly disengaged himself from her grip and took a step backwards, wiping at his suit. People around them began to look over at the disturbance, and she smiled around at them reassuringly—just a little accident, nothing to worry about.

‘Genevieve?’

She glanced round at the voice behind her in confusion.

Next thing she knew she was being taken firmly by the elbow and Alex Hammond had control of the situation.

‘Genevieve! I wondered where you’d disappeared to!’ His voice was loud and commanding. ‘Excuse us …’ he added in an aside to the blond man.

She suddenly found her hand encased firmly in his and his arm slid strongly around her waist, propelling her at a stumblingly fast pace towards the exit. Many more heads turned. Interested faces passed Jen by in a blur. As they descended the stone steps onto the frosty street the icy cold air hit her and made her head spin. She was vaguely aware of a crowd moving towards them, saw cameras and mobile phones raised as people clocked just who it was she was in a clinch with.

She struggled free and put a pace between them, intending to swing round on her heel and give Alex a piece of her mind. She didn’t care what media grief that might cause him. She’d had it with his interference. Even though her knees went buckly and he caught her again around the waist, before she could hit the frozen pavement, she refused to let him get away with this.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ She snapped crossly. ‘I was well
in
there! ‘

A
LEX
managed to hold his tongue until they were out of earshot of the press. Having rushed her into the safety of the back of his car, he had his driver head back to the apartment.

‘Well in there?’
he said through gritted teeth, wondering why he was so angry. ‘That was not a school dance and you are not fourteen. Do you realise you just threw champagne over Viscount Dulverwell?’

To his utter amazement, instead of looking ashamed or embarrassed, she actually looked even more pleased with herself.

‘Hah! A viscount, eh? I knew it! The watch gave it away.’ She hiccupped suddenly and clapped her hand over her mouth.

His lips quirked. The sooner he got some black coffee into her the better.

‘Anyway, why are you so annoyed?’ She jabbed a finger at his chest. ‘What were you doing there? Are you checking up on me?’

‘No, I am not!’ he snapped in exasperation.
‘I’m being seen in the right places. Looking respectable. Looking
single
. And escorting a drunk young woman off the premises was definitely
not
part of my plan.’ He glanced sideways at her, taking in her delectably dishevelled state. ‘You’d better hope no one got a picture.’

He imagined for a moment the fallout if the chaos of the last fifteen minutes made it into tomorrow’s papers. His PR team would have him becoming a hermit next. But suddenly Alex realised none of this made him the slightest bit regretful. If anything, absconding from the dull exhibition, rescuing a delightfully out-of-her-depth Jen, felt like a small victory in the face of the ridiculous media manipulation supposedly taking place on his behalf.

‘Why do it, then?’ she asked him.

‘Do what?’

She gave an exaggerated shrug. ‘Why escort me anywhere?’

She leaned in towards him, putting a slim hand on his arm and enveloping him in the vanilla scent of her perfume. His pulse kicked in response, hard.

‘Why not just ignore me, let me get on with my evening while you do whatever it is you people do at these places? Buy one of those ghastly pictures, maybe? I didn’t ask you to drag me out of there. I was managing perfectly well by myself.’

Thrown by his body’s instant reaction to her touch, he plucked her hand from his arm and moved it back into her own personal space.

‘I was saving you from making a total fool of yourself,’ he said. Not strictly true. The sensible thing would have been to leave her to her own devices, keep as much space between them as he could.

He refused to acknowledge how he’d felt on spotting her across the gallery. At first he’d assumed she was there watching him, convinced as he was that she was now planning to write some story about him. But a few minutes’ observation had made it obvious she hadn’t a clue that he was there. Intrigued as to what on earth she was doing there on her own, he’d been unable to concentrate on the pictures or the conversation. His eyes had kept dragging themselves back to where she stood, nervously fiddling with her handbag, not speaking to anyone.

He’d seen how her confidence had grown in proportion to her champagne consumption. Watched her grow louder and more animated. And finally he’d watched her throw herself at Viscount Dulverwell, gazing raptly into his face as he talked, only breaking her focus on him to grab yet more champagne. For some reason watching her start out nervous and unspoilt, as if she were at her first grown-up night out, and
slowly morph into a vivacious flirt had bothered the hell out of him. Whatever her reasons were, whatever she was doing there, he hadn’t been prepared to wait until the end of the evening for an explanation.

Back at the apartment he took her firmly by the shoulders, marched her through the kitchen into the den and deposited her on the sofa while he made industrial-strength black coffee. The silky feel of her shoulders under his hands had him wondering if she felt that satiny all over. He crushed the thought from his mind. Maybe the fact she’d drunk too much was a good thing. If he were to pursue that impulse he would want all her wits and senses at his disposal.

Not that it was even a possibility.

While he waited for the kettle to boil he skimmed an e-mail Mark had sent while he was out. When he came back she’d kicked off the skyscraper heels and pulled the pins out of her hair. It fell in soft waves to her shoulders. She looked suddenly very vulnerable and he curbed the temptation to snap at her.

He sat down opposite her and leaned forward.

‘I want to know exactly what is going on. What you’re really doing in London. Why you’re in my flat, snooping in my cupboards, and why you were at that reception tonight by
yourself. You tell me everything or I put you in a taxi right now.’

‘You can’t do that,’ she said defiantly. She sipped her coffee and grimaced at the strength of it but didn’t complain. ‘You don’t know what I might say to my press contacts.’

He held that defiant blue gaze unwaveringly with his own.

‘Which contacts do you mean?’ he asked. ‘The one who runs the agricultural desk? Or maybe Births, Marriages and Deaths? They’re standard fare in a village newspaper, aren’t they?’

Mark’s e-mail had given full details of her current employment. No tabloid newspaper contacts in sight.

Silence for a long moment, with the blue eyes fixed on his. Then she looked down at her coffee cup.

‘You checked up on me,’ she said accusingly.

‘You turn up out of the blue, living in my apartment and refusing to leave, no matter how much money I put on the table. Not to mention all the weird stalker stuff. Did you honestly think for one second I wouldn’t check up on you?’

He didn’t add that he checked up on everyone these days, no matter how insignificant they seemed. Trust seemed to have been phased out
of his life since Susan had left. After five years it was all but gone.

Jen took another sip of her coffee, pushed her hair back from her face. Her expression was steadier when she looked back at him. Sobriety seemed to be slipping back.

‘I’m sorry about the weird stalker stuff,’ she said. ‘I’m not, in fact, a weird stalker.’

She paused and he waited for her to elaborate, waited to see if she’d feed him another line or actually come clean this time.

She took a deep breath. ‘I’m working on an article I pitched to
Gossip!
magazine.’ She searched his face.

He raised mystified eyebrows.

‘It’s the biggest-selling women’s magazine in this country,’ she explained. ‘I managed to land an internship there for the last three months, and at the end I pitched my own idea for an article.’

The look on her face was disbelief mingled with delight.

‘I still can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying for the past three years to break into mainstream women’s journalism but it’s so damn competitive. There’s a permanent job vacancy there and the editor said if I can pull this off I’ve got a great chance of landing it. A proper career. Not just an internship. This is
my big break—my foot in the door. Christmas is my deadline, I have to file my copy by then.’

‘And how does trying on my clothes and flirting with Viscount Dulverwell fit in to all this?’

She took a breath.

‘My article investigates whether it’s possible for an ordinary Miss Nobody …’ she glanced up at him ‘… someone like me … to reinvent herself and win the heart of a millionaire.’

He stared at her, wondering if he’d actually heard correctly.

‘Obviously a rich man with half a brain wouldn’t look twice at me normally, because he’d assume someone like me must be a gold-digger, right?’

A sick feeling rose in the pit of his stomach as Susan flashed into his mind again.

‘So I need to give the impression that I have money and success of my own. An address in the right postcode, the right clothes, the right things to say.’ She took a sip of her coffee. ‘And the right places to go. That’s why I was at the exhibition. And that’s why I’ve been taking a bit of an interest in your clothes and your lifestyle. I would have asked you outright but I didn’t think you’d take kindly to the idea, given … well, given …’

Incredulity mingled with outrage.
Given the fact that the one person I trusted, wanted to
spend my life with, turned out to have pound signs in her eyes and not a lot else …

‘Given my past, right?’ he said.

Not for the first time he felt a surge of fury that his private life was public property.

‘You mean to tell me you’re posing as some socialite so you can bag a rich man? I’ve never heard anything so ludicrous!’

‘It’s not
real
. I don’t really want to “bag a rich man”, as you put it. Personally I’d rather eat my own head than get involved with someone like that.’

Even in his amazement he didn’t miss the venom in that comment, and wondered where it had come from.

‘It’s a way of writing about that whole rich, sumptuous world without it just being a run-of-the-mill description. The editor of
Gossip!
wouldn’t have wasted a second on me if I was just writing a straightforward article because that’s been done a million times. The way I’m doing it is more fun. It gives an original spin. It’s intended to be tongue-in-cheek, not serious.’

‘Well, it’s never going to work. I can tell you that now. You think a few new clothes and hanging out in the right places is enough?’

‘
You
were there, weren’t you?’

‘What?’

‘I said, you were there. Tonight. According
to a recent poll you are the thirty-sixth most eligible bachelor in England right now. I checked.’

She’d been checking up on him? His mind zeroed in on that piece of information. He would revisit it later.

‘What’s your point?’

‘That in order to meet a wealthy, eligible man you have to go to the right places. And I did. I just … drank a bit more champagne than I should have.’ She rubbed a hand tiredly across her forehead. ‘I’m not really used to it.’

‘I think the whole article idea is laughable,’ he said shortly.

She leaned forward and spoke slowly and clearly. ‘It’s a tongue-in-cheek social experiment. It isn’t serious.’

‘Judging by this evening, the experiment isn’t panning out all that well.’ He felt an unexpected jolt of regret as he saw the look in her eyes. Clearly she wasn’t happy with the way it was going. Question was, why the hell did he care?

‘I’m not giving up,’ she said, ‘if that’s what you’re hoping. That I’ll just throw in the towel, pack my bags and be out of your hair. I’m going to make this work, no matter what it takes.’

‘Nice though it would be to get my life back, I wouldn’t expect you to go quietly.’

And that was the whole point, really, wasn’t it? He was used to maintaining absolute control over every aspect of his life, used to excluding
anyone or anything that could take advantage of him. If he wanted something he went after it. If he didn’t want something he found a way of avoiding it. His wealth and position made that entirely possible. And now his lack of control over this situation, over her, was driving him nuts. Well, not for much longer.

‘I’ve got a proposition for you,’ he said.

Interest sparked in her face. She sat forward, the blue eyes shrewd. The only sign of the champagne now was in the dark circles beneath them.

‘A confidentiality agreement,’ he said. ‘You sign that and I allow you to stay here for the month. Long enough for you to finish your insane undercover article.’

The leave-nothing-to-chance reliability of a signed agreement appealed to him. He’d long since learned from the mistakes of his past.

‘A gag order?’ Her tone was tinged with contempt. ‘You want to control my freedom of speech?’

Had he really expected her to sign on the dotted line without a word of protest?

‘It’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’s a standard contract. All my staff sign one as a condition of their employment.’

‘I’m not staff. And
you
might consider giving someone else control over your life to be nothing out of the ordinary, but I don’t.’

‘We’ll both benefit from it. I’m not asking you to cut your tongue out—you can write about any other damn thing you like except for me.’

He felt a stab of exasperation. Did she have any clue at all what it was like to be on the receiving end of the press pack? To go through the worst of times and have to elbow your way through photographers just to leave the house? And, when they couldn’t get what they wanted from you, to have them hound your family? To read about private details of your marriage break-up in the papers, your heartbreak there in black and white for anyone to see?

He watched her staring into her coffee for a moment, deep in thought. Eventually she looked up at him, a frown touching her eyebrows.

‘I could do with a new approach, I’ll admit,’ she said slowly. ‘So how about we strike a deal?’

Mark would have insisted he halt the conversation right there, withdraw the offer and tell her to go and pack. But there was something about her defiant attitude that he couldn’t help responding to. In spite of himself, it stirred him. In more ways than one. To put his business interests first he had to curb his socialising. Yet solitude did not come easily to him, and having her here would offer some diversion. The question was whether that was a good thing or not.

He put his coffee cup down and met her gaze.

‘What kind of deal?’

She shrugged.

‘I admit you might have a point about my press contacts. I don’t know anyone in the national press. But I could still make trouble. It wouldn’t take much for me to ring up the entertainment correspondent of one of the daily tabloids and give the inside story of my few days in your company following your scandal.’

A counter-threat. He wouldn’t have expected anything less.

‘So you understand where I’m coming from?’ he said.

She nodded. ‘And I’m prepared to sign your agreement if you change the conditions. Your offer is to let me stay here, but I’m going to ask for a bit more than that.’

He wasn’t sure he’d ever met anyone who pushed their luck so hard.

‘Go on,’ he said slowly.

‘What I need right now is an adviser. To help me get my article back on track. Someone who knows the world I’m writing about and can give me a few pointers.’