Escape for the Summer (40 page)

“Cal, look at me! I’m not designed to be a size zero! Chloe knows I can act and she should have seen beyond that and pushed me towards what I’m actually good at. But no, it was easier to try and cram me into the mould rather than look outside it.” She took a deep breath. “And do you know what? If she doesn’t like me for how I am then I’m better off without her. So I might not be a famous actress but at least I can enjoy myself and live my life.”

He whistled. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

She nodded. “Totally. The worst has happened and do you know what? It wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d imagined. In fact quite the opposite. It’s liberating.”

“Unlike going back in there,” said Cal bleakly, pointing towards his house, or rather where his house would be if they could actually see it for the hordes of people and press milling across the tarmac.

“Bloody hell,” said Gemma. It was easy to forget at times just what a big star Cal really was. When they were shooting the breeze and hanging out he was just a regular guy. The fact that he was best mates with David Beckham and regularly partied with A-listers always came as a bit of a surprise.

“Bloody hell indeed,” said Cal. “Well, that rules out the going home option.”

He put his foot down and shot past the gates while Gemma crossed her fingers and prayed that nobody would notice the personalised number plates. For once luck was on her side: they were all far too busy trying to peer through.

“Great.” Cal looked so downcast that it was all Gemma could do not to reach across and hug him. “Now what?”

She smiled at him. “Now you drop me off at Tesco’s for ten minutes and then come back to the caravan while this all dies down. It’s nonsense, Cal! Look at it from the perspective of the real world. You ate a Big Mac. Nobody died.”

“Just my career,” he muttered.

“Not necessarily.” Gemma plucked her purse from her bag. Twenty quid. Great, Angel hadn’t been on a raid, so there was more than enough for what she needed. “I know exactly how to cheer you up.”

Again Cal gave her that famous slow, sexy grin that made Gemma feel as though somebody had lit a furnace deep inside of her. Oh no. Not good.

“Chocolate body paint?” he suggested.

She sloshed him on the arm and hoped he couldn’t see that her sex drive was dancing a tango. The thought of Cal covering her in chocolate body paint and then licking it off very, very slowly was one that she’d have to save for another time. And she’d have to get a very big vat of body paint too.

“Much better than that,” Gemma told him. “Callum South, prepare yourself. We are going to do some baking!”

Chapter 36

Earlier on that same morning, while Andi had already been at work for several hours and before Gemma and Cal had taken their ill-fated trip to McDonald’s, Angel had floated out of a heavy sleep and back into consciousness. For a moment she’d lain still, wondering what had happened to shut up the squabbling seagulls and Gemma’s endless obsession with Pirate FM. She felt less cramped too: her legs weren’t jammed against the melamine of the caravan wall for once, and she seemed to have acres of space. The tip of her nose that poked above the covers was frozen, though, and her fingers could have easily competed with anything from Captain Birds Eye. She yawned and rolled over, burrowing into the heavy blankets before colliding with a solid form: Laurence Elliott, Viscount Kenniston, Lord and master of a huge and crumbling mansion and, as it ironically turned out, as stony broke as she was.

Yes, it was all coming back to her now. Gingerly, Angel reached out with her foot and, sure enough, her French-pedicured toes brushed against solid male calf. Laurence, fast asleep, reached out and pulled her against him, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her tight against his chest. With his touch, Angel’s heart raced as memories of the previous night came rushing back like the Severn Bore. Angel had no idea that her body could do
that.
Finally she understood what Jackie Collins and Jilly Cooper had been going on about. Even
Fifty Shades
was starting to make a bit more sense. Penniless or not, she didn’t want to let Laurence Elliott go in a hurry!

Angel had heard the expression “gobsmacked”
before but until the moment Laurence confessed that he was pretty much penniless, she’d never really understood it. For a moment she simply couldn’t speak. What on earth did he mean, he had a
cash-flow
problem? But that was impossible! He was a viscount! He lived in a house that made Buckingham Palace look like a garden shed. He drove an Aston Martin. If this was a posh guy’s idea of being skint then bring it on.

“Skint. Brassic. Broke,” Laurence said, just in case she didn’t follow. He’d looked close to tears as he’d said it. “Angel, I can’t pretend anymore; I’ve got to be honest. You’ve come to mean too much to me for there to be any secrets.” He hung his head. “The truth is, although I might create the opposite impression, I am struggling to be solvent.”

She’d stared at him. “I don’t understand. You live here, in this huge house! You’re a viscount… aren’t you?”

Laurence nodded. “The last in a long line of hard-living, hard-spending Elliotts with all the debts and responsibilities that come with inheriting an estate this size.” He raked a hand through his hair and his shoulders slumped as though the weight of all those responsibilities was sitting on them. “Can you imagine what the death duties were like when Pa died?”

Angel couldn’t – she struggled enough when Mr Barclaycard came knocking – but suddenly the patches on the wall where portraits had been removed, the freezing-cold rooms and the Aldi bags were starting to make a lot more sense. It was like looking at the back of a tapestry, all tangles and knots, before turning it over and seeing the true picture. The lack of ready cash. The cards that constantly got declined. The pennies were dropping. Maybe she should offer them to Laurence?

“But what about your house in Rock?” she whispered, once her vocal cords had recovered. “Your beautiful car?”

He closed his eyes in defeat. “Neither one is mine. They’re both Travis’s. He’s my oldest friend from school; he’s been really good about bailing me out but I can’t expect him to do it indefinitely. I think he wants his house back too. He’s seriously got the hots for your sister.”

Personally Angel thought Trav had more hope of flying to Mars than he did of getting lucky with Andi. Her sister was more interested in the moody handyman. Andi might deny it but Angel could tell; her sister used to get that soppy look on her face when she looked at her Busted posters. Still, it was all making sense. No wonder Travis hadn’t taken the hint and pushed off to a hotel. Why should he if it was his own house?

“But you’ve got all this,” she said, gesturing at the room and the gardens beyond. “What about all the land? Surely you don’t need it all? Couldn’t you sell some?”

Laurence looked horrified. “Angel, the estate’s been in our family since the conquest; I can’t be the one who breaks it up. Christ. I’d be the Elliott who went down in history as losing Kenniston.”

Angel gave him a stern look – the kind that Andi often gave her when she pleaded poverty but went out and bought some Gina sandals on her credit card.

Laurence sighed. “Yes, I know it sounds crazy but there has to be another way. Besides, the land’s all tied up with all sorts of codicils and entails.”

“So it’s either sell the lot or nothing?”

The expression on his face said quite clearly that selling the lot wasn’t an option.

“What about antiques?” Angel suggested. Having skived off work quite a bit in her time she was pretty much an expert on
Car Booty
and
Cash in the Attic
. Since Laurence had a bloody big attic, there had to be something useful hidden there, surely? Maybe a Monet they’d all forgotten about, or a tiara? She herself had often stemmed her overdraft by selling a (fake) LV bag or pair of shoes on eBay, which was practically the same thing.

But Laurence wasn’t leaping at this genius idea. “Anything that can be sold has already gone to Christie’s. We’ve closed up most of the house to save on heating and you’ve seen how frugal Ma is.”

Angel certainly had. She’d thought Spam went out at about the same time Winston Churchill left Number Ten. Come to think of it, the dusty tins that Lady Elliott had fished out of the pantry probably dated to around then. Her stomach lurched at the thought.

“I’m in an impossible position,” he continued, starting to pace up and down the room in agitation. “I’m the trustee of a priceless mansion and millions of pounds worth of prime land, but I can’t release equity from any of it. The roof is starting to fall in, there’s dry rot in the grand stairwell and two of the estate cottages have to be renovated. The Munnings has gone, Ma sold two Chippendales last week and I’ve sent our last Stubbs to auction. It’s the law of diminishing returns, though, because once those have gone that really is it. I can’t think of anything else that could help.”

Angel nodded. This made her maxed-out credit cards look like nothing. Wonga.com wouldn’t be much help to Laurence either. Her mind started to wrestle with the problem. Angel might look like a lost member of the
TOWIE
cast but her intellect was straight out of
University Challenge
and she was usually very good at thinking her way out of trouble. While Laurence continued to explain about inheritance tax and insurances and the Lloyd’s of London crash, her brain was shuttlecocking the problem about. There had to be an answer; she just needed to find it.

“What about the National Trust?” she suggested finally when Laurence paused. Her mother had loved visiting stately homes; as a child many of her weekends had involved exploring castles and moated manors. Andi had lapped it up but Angel had been bored, wishing instead that they could go to the West End. The National Trust shop was fine but there were only so many tea towels and lavender sprays a ten-year-old could appreciate.

Laurence laughed despairingly. “They’re turning people away. There’s so many of us in the same boat that they can take their pick now. Besides, they state that the property has to be financially self-supporting, which Kenniston isn’t – we’re haemorrhaging money.”

Angel filed this information away. No to the National Trust then, but there had to be another way. She thought hard and her brain, which hadn’t really thought much beyond bodycon dresses and leg waxes for quite a while, started to whirl. A flicker of an idea flashed through her mind like a fish flitting near the surface of a lake; there one second then gone the next. She’d dive for it later when she had a bit of time to reflect. Besides, she had her own cash-flow issues to address now that Project Rich Guy
had crashed and burned in such spectacular style.

“Are you angry?” Laurence asked quietly when she didn’t speak. His dark grey eyes were troubled and could hardly meet hers. “I wouldn’t blame you if you were but, Angel, please believe me when I say that I never meant to deceive you, not seriously anyway. That was never part of the plan.”

Angel felt gutted that her gorgeous millionaire had been nothing but an illusion, and a little bit stupid for taking everything at face value rather than stopping to question the disparities that now, with the gift of twenty-twenty hindsight, were glaringly obvious. But a small part of her was also whispering that, actually, hadn’t she done something very similar to Laurence? Angel was at heart an honest person and she wasn’t afraid to admit that, by leading Laurence to believe that she lived in the Alexshovs’ house and cleverly rotating the few designer pieces she owned, she was doing
exactly
the same to him.

But a plan? What did he mean by that? She pinned him with a bright blue stare. “And what exactly was this plan?”

Laurence couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable if she’d thrown him face down onto a bed of nails and jumped up and down on his back.

“It sounds really crass now,” he groaned. “Oh, who am I trying to fool? It was really crass before, but somehow I convinced myself that it was perfectly acceptable. Travis pointed it out to me actually, so I should have known it wasn’t going to be genius.”

Angel nodded. Since this was the same Travis who had nearly drowned them all it stood to reason that he probably wasn’t the best person to take advice from.

“I’ve got a title and a stately home,” Laurence continued apologetically, “and a family seat that goes back centuries. What I don’t have is cash. So Trav thought—” he paused, “or rather, we thought, that if I found myself a rich wife it might solve a lot of problems. There wasn’t time to hang about; something had to be done, and done quickly before Kenniston Hall is just a pile of mouldering rubble – or, even worse, snatched up by some footballer and his WAG, who’ll paint it pink, lay shagpile all over the mosaic floors and turn the chapel into a fitness studio.”

Angel took this in. To be honest, shagpile wasn’t such a bad idea, since the house was so bloody cold, and as for the fitness studio… That silver flickering fish idea surfaced again.

“Why Rock?” she asked. “Surely you’d have had more choice in London?”

Laurence looked shamefaced. “There are too many people there who know the truth. Everyone who goes to Boujis or Annabel’s knows everyone else. It’s actually a very small pond. Besides, you’d be surprised just how many of us are in the same boat. And,” he gave her a self-deprecating grin and, in spite of everything, her heart cartwheeled, “I was tired of competing with Prince Harry! Trav had a place in Rock and it’s where the new as well as the old money plays for the summer. So I came here. It was either that or sit at home and count the holes in the roof. Rock seemed like the perfect place to start.”

Angel couldn’t argue with this. Hadn’t she already figured that much out for herself? And wasn’t she doing exactly the same thing? Then a dreadful thought occurred to Angel, and to her horror her throat grew tight and her eyes began to prickle. Did this mean that Laurence was only spending time with her because he thought she was rich? Didn’t he like her just a tiny bit? To her distress, Angel had started to realise that she liked Laurence much more than just a bit, and not because she’d thought he was wealthy, either.