Secrets of the Rich & Famous. Charlotte Phillips
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to stay in the flat short-lived. For the first time in weeks she longed for her cosy kitchen back home, with its threadbare sofa in the corner, perfect to curl up on if you shifted the cat to one side before you sat down.
There was no sign of Alex Hammond this morning. He was obviously sleeping in after the late night. She listened hard for a moment to make sure.
Nothing. The perfect opportunity.
Kneeling down next to the stainless steel dustbin, she pressed the button on the lid to open it and scrabbled around, grimacing as she shoved aside teabags and eggshells and goodness knew what. At last she found what she was looking for: yesterday’s newspaper. She tugged it out, scattering coffee grounds across the glossy grey-tiled floor and smoothed it out with her fist. Folding herself up on the floor, she settled down to read the article she’d only skimmed yesterday.
Now she was sharing a flat with him she wanted every gory detail.
Unfortunately Alex’s face in the photo was obscured by a blob of cold scrambled egg from last night’s supper. And as she began to read the irony of that fact wasn’t wasted on her. Since a costly divorce five years ago he’d been living the life of a rich bachelor to the full. And if you insisted on dating a different woman every week, all of them beautiful and most of them famous, it stood to reason that sooner or later one of those affairs would come back and bite you very publicly on the behind. It was a simple matter of probability.
The latest film from Alex Hammond’s extremely successful production company, The Audacity of Death, was already tipped to clean up at next year’s awards season. Its star, the young and stunningly gorgeous Viveca Holt, had been plucked from obscurity to take the female lead role over a number of well-established actresses. None of this had mattered one bit until pictures had surfaced of Alex Hammond stepping out with Viveca during the film’s production and the rumour mill had begun with a vengeance.
The glamour surrounding the film-maker and the film star being together was far too good to pass up. Whether or not sour grapes were to blame wasn’t clear, but the implication from the press pack was that Viveca had moved from obscurity into the role of a lifetime via Alex’s bed, with him pulling strings along the way. Definitely not the kind of publicity a serious piece of arty film-making needed, with award nominations being announced next month.
Jen nearly hit the ceiling when Alex Hammond walked unexpectedly into the room. She frantically screwed the newspaper into a ball. He looked down at her as he rounded the corner, at the bin open next to her spilling its contents across the floor, and raised his eyebrows. She coloured.
‘What are you doing?’ He moved smoothly across to the counter and switched on the coffeepot.
She squashed the paper back into the bin and slammed the lid down on it.
‘Recycling,’ she lied, getting to her feet. She soaped her hands under the single curved tap in the enormous double sink. Conscious of his far too observant eyes still on her, she added, ‘Everyone can play a part in saving the planet.’
Oh, yes, that sounded just great.
He was looking at her as though she were a moron, then he shook his head lightly, as if to clear it.
‘Coffee?’ he asked, coldly polite.
She smoothed her hair back from her face with one hand, drew in a composing breath.
‘Yes, please,’ she said. ‘Black, no sugar.’
He opened one of the many cupboards and took out two mugs. She waited, wondering if he was going to pick up where she’d left off last night on the eviction thing, but he didn’t mention it. He simply filled the mugs with coffee and handed one of them to her. Then he leaned back against the counter, mug in hand, watching her.
Even on a couple of hours’ sleep he looked fantastic, it was so unfair. His hair was still damp from the shower, and he was dressed casually—just jeans and a dark grey polo shirt that on its own probably cost more than her entire wardrobe. She folded her arms defensively across her own cheap white shirt and jeans and took a sip of her coffee.
‘You checked my contract out with your lawyer, then?’ she asked.
He grinned wolfishly. ‘Of course I have.’
Of course. Men like him left nothing to chance. She wasn’t the least bit surprised. She waited, ready to argue her point. He probably had the best lawyers in the world, more than capable of pulling apart a standard rental agreement, but she knew she’d touched a nerve when she mentioned the press even if it had been just a bluff. She was just a reporter on a small country paper, not a tabloid entertainment correspondent. Her last story before she’d started interning had been about a cat who’d hopped on the bus and travelled from Littleford to the next village all by himself. That was the level of celebrity she was used to dealing with.
He didn’t say anything else, just carried on looking at her with that appraising expression in the green eyes which made her self-conscious no matter how hard she tried not to be.
‘And?’ she prompted, when he didn’t say anything.
He sipped his coffee.
‘While I could break the contract—and I’m sure the house-sitting agency would be prepared to be reasonable about it …’ His tone made it obvious who he considered the troublemaker to be in this scenario. ‘You’ve told me how important it is to you that you keep this address. And, as I’m all in favour of enterprise, I’m prepared to be the bigger person here and honour the agreement. I wouldn’t want to make things difficult for you.’
She bridled a little at his taking the moral high ground but kept her irritation under wraps. She didn’t believe a word of it. He needed to keep his nose clean. That much was clear from the newspaper article and his turnaround since last night. Any sniff of scandal and he’d be back on the front pages. She had no intention of going to the press—she just wanted to concentrate on her article, on not letting her big chance, her only chance, slip through her fingers—but she didn’t need to tell him that.
Let him think she had the editor of every London tabloid on speed dial.
‘That’s really good of you. Thank you,’ she said through gritted teeth.
He raised his mug in acknowledgement.
She waited until he began scrolling through his mobile phone.
‘Will Viveca be joining you for Christmas?’ she asked pointedly.
His expression as he looked up from the phone was dark and inscrutable. She saw a flash of the arctic coldness from the previous night.
‘No, she will not!’ he said curtly. ‘It’s a working relationship, nothing more.’
‘That’s not what the papers say,’ she said.
‘And of course they are always right about absolutely everything.’ He slammed his mug down, slopping coffee across the granite counter. ‘It was a few dates and it was months ago. Can’t I go on a couple of nights out without the world reading God knows what into it?’
Clearly not. She would give him her standard live-in-the-public-eye-at-your-peril lecture.
‘That’s the thing, though. You’re happy to court publicity when it suits you. When it’s good publicity. When there’s a film to promote. You can’t then say it’s unacceptable when people want to know more about you.’
‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ he said. ‘Seeing as you belong to the vulture camp. Hoping to get the scoop, are you? Well, there’s nothing to scoop. I’m single. I only date when I have to, and I don’t see that it’s anyone else’s business. There’s a line between public and private. Who I date and why I date them is private.’
She gave her suddenly pricked-up ears a mental slap. The fact that he was single was definitely of no interest to her. She didn’t care that he was utterly, heart-stoppingly gorgeous. Firstly, she’d be wasting her time.