Guilty Pleasures (28 page)

Emma sat in her sunny office looking at the month’s press clippings with mixed emotions. For one thing, it was a fairly slim file. Zoe, Milford’s publicist had offered exclusives to the
Tribune
and to
Vogue
which meant that the bulk of the Milford coverage would be running in the September issues – she hoped. Still, the August issue of
Vogue
had just hit the news stands, and their glowing two-page profile on Stella had been absolutely fantastic. But Emma’s
Tribune
interview with the strange little man she’d met at the wedding had been quite the opposite; the feature questioned Emma’s fashion credentials, sniped at Milford’s stuffy image and ridiculed the designs. Zoe was mystified. She had told Emma she usually had a good relationship with the journalist and couldn’t offer up any explanation why their piece had been so damning.

‘Hey Em, why so glum?’ said Stella, popping her head around Emma’s office door.

Emma smiled. Nothing seemed to be able to get Stella down.

‘Oh nothing, just work stuff,’ she said.

‘Forget about all that,’ said Stella, waving her hand dismissively. ‘Think about happy things like this: we’re going to a festival tomorrow afternoon. Want to come?’

‘What sort of festival? Opera? Cheese?’

‘Cheese?’ said Stella, flumping down on Emma’s leather office sofa.

‘Cheese is the new wine, or so I’ve been reading,’ smiled Emma.

‘That might be so. But I’m talking about a rock festival.’

‘You mean like Glastonbury?’

‘A bit like Glastonbury but this one has posher loos and fewer
drugs. Come on. It will be fun. Rob’s getting us tickets so it will be rude to turn him down.’

Rob.
Emma smarted at his name. They had barely spoken to each other since the Hildon wedding. Emma had packed her stuff the morning after the Wild West party and, too afraid to interrupt a possible sex-fest with him and the redhead, had stuck a note under the door of his suite, claiming a work emergency had called her back to Chilcot. She’d got the train home and since that weekend she’d kept her distance. She had just about managed to convince herself that the arrangement suited her fine, so why then was she so irritated that Rob was now apparently such good friends with Stella?

‘In other news, have you seen this?’ said Emma quickly, handing the cuttings file to Stella.

‘The
Vogue
piece? It’s wicked.’

‘No,’ said Emma. ‘The
Tribune
story.’

Stella flicked through the stories, lingering on Larson Quinn’s hatchet job of Emma. She handed them back with a half-smile.

‘It’s disappointing, but not that many fashionistas read that newspaper anyway.’

‘Just their handbag-gift-buying husbands,’ replied Emma. ‘Anyway, talking of the press, I saw the pap shot of you crying in the
Sunday Mirror,’
she said softly. ‘Is everything OK?’

Stella shrugged. ‘I’ve already told you my dad’s wife is pregnant, haven’t I? The paparazzo caught me just after he’d told me. I was upset at the time, but it’s fine now, honestly, I was being silly. I didn’t think it was a story but clearly it was.’

Emma looked at her kindly. ‘Now you’re going out with Johnny I guess everything’s a story.’

At the mention of his name, Stella’s face broke into a beaming smile.

‘He’s so great, Emma, I so want you to meet him.’

‘I met him at the shoot.’

‘Meet him
properly.
That’s why you should come to the festival tomorrow.’

Emma felt glad for her friend’s obvious happiness, but she wasn’t at all keen about spending the day in a muddy field surrounded by hippies. And she wasn’t all that keen to see Rob either.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she said quietly.

‘Well, don’t get upset about the cuttings,’ said Stella, suspecting
that’s why Emma was in a bad mood. ‘Remember
Elle
are doing me “At Home” and there’s the double page spread in
Tatler’s
Accessories Special.
Grazia, Marie-Claire, In Style, Red, Harpers-
everyone’s featuring us.’

‘The future sounds so rosy,’ smiled Emma displaying her usual caution.

‘So you’ll come to the festival? There’s a big group of us. Rob, Johnny and some of his mates, Ruan too. It’s going to be a laugh.’

‘OK, OK, I’m in, I’m in,’ said Emma, holding her hands up in surrender. ‘Can you pick me up after my run?’

‘Sure thing, boss,’ said Stella as she headed for the door, ‘although I’m not sure sweaty Lycra is entirely appropriate for a festival.’

She ducked, squealing, as Emma threw the cuttings at her.

For the first time in her life Cassandra Grand had found a great passion other than her work. Almost immediately after he returned from his honeymoon, Max and Cassandra had begun a full-blown affair, meeting for snatched afternoons in discreet hotels and at her apartment. To her complete surprise, Cassandra found she couldn’t get enough of him. Work appointments, lunches, dinners were cancelled if the chance arose to be with him. For Cassandra, who had never been addicted to anything except power and success, Max Carlton was a compulsion. He was the only person she had ever been with where she felt empowered simply being in his company. Conversation was electric, sex was fantastic and she didn’t even need his physical presence to be aroused. He’d call her at 3 a.m. from the quiet of his study, instructing her where to touch herself, making her come with the sound of his voice and his intimate knowledge of her body. If Cassandra hadn’t known better, she would have said she was head over heels.

Three weeks after they’d first met she had invited him to Les Fleurs. It was only the second time since she had inherited the beautiful Provencal villa that she had managed to get down there. It had required some intricate planning: in particular, sending Laura away to LA to style a hastily arranged beauty shoot. She hadn’t felt guilt, just faint pity that Laura couldn’t even vaguely satisfy her groom so soon after their wedding vows.

In Provence, the lavender fields were in full bloom and the sun was liquid fire. Cassandra and Max had spent the last two days in bed, only getting up to take a dip in the pool or make a little
food. The only time they had ventured out of the house for a dinner at the Grand Hotel du Cap Ferrat, they had been forced to beat a hasty retreat after both seeing someone they knew. On the vast, antique sleigh bed, Max rolled himself off Cassandra, lying on his back and pulling her into the crook of his arm.

‘Have we got anything to drink?’

‘Get it yourself,’ she growled, feeling too exhausted to move.

‘Hey, I’m a guest in this house,’ he said, pulling the white crumpled sheet down to his six-pack to cool his sweat-sheened body. ‘Come on, mistress of the house, get me a drink and I’ll be your willing sex-slave for the rest of the trip.’

‘I thought I was getting that for nothing.’

After a moment’s stand-off Cassandra stepped from the bed, grabbed a silk sarong from the chair and tied it loosely around her breasts.

‘I don’t do this for anyone,’ she smiled, shaking her dark hair over her shoulders. ‘In fact I do it for no one but you.’

Walking downstairs she enjoyed the feel of the cool stone tiles on her bare feet, in fact Cassandra loved the way she was feeling altogether. She was more relaxed than she had been in years, despite – or perhaps because of – the sneaking around they had had to do over the last few weeks. Returning with two tumblers of iced water, she found Max propped up in bed on the pillows.

She jumped up beside him and her sarong fell open. He gulped at the water while his hand lazily stroked her thigh.

‘Why have you never got married?’ said Max suddenly.

She looked at him curiously and then shrugged against the pillow.

‘Marriage just isn’t a compelling enough idea for me. I don’t need companionship; every minute of my day is full and I barely have time to see my own daughter. I get enough sex. I’m financially independent. I only have time to be alone.’

‘So if you don’t want a husband, what is it you want?’

She knelt on the sheets, facing him.

‘I want to be fashion’s biggest name,’ she said frankly.

He looked at her seriously.

‘And how do you intend to do that?’

She took a deep breath before she told him. No one knew the true extent of Cassandra’s ambitions. She admitted little to Giles and nothing to Ruby, Astrid or her mother but she felt as if she could open up to Max as he was a separate, secret pocket of her
life, hidden from the world. Besides, she knew Max would understand – his ambitions were as fierce as hers.

‘For a long time I thought I was going to inherit a luxury goods company,’ she began slowly. ‘I thought that would be my base.’

‘The company was Milford and it went to your cousin Emma Bailey,’ said Max.

‘How do you know?’

‘I keep up,’ he said with a small smile.

‘I was promised it and I
will
have it,’ she said flatly. She paused, then she told him everything. How she had warned Claude Lasner not to touch the company so that Emma could not get a big-name designer in place. How she had threatened photographers and art directors not to work with them, banned Milford products from
Rive,
whispered among the big retail buyers that the new Milford range was a dud. She didn’t want the company to get off the starting blocks and while she killed time she was going to become the US editor of
Rive.

Max was smiling as she recounted her back-stabbing and double-dealing and it irked her enormously.

‘What’s so funny?’ she snapped, totally unused to someone not only challenging her, but
mocking
her.

‘Darling, I know you think you’ve been running this clever campaign of industrial espionage, but all you’ve been doing is taking pot-shots. And not very effective ones at that,’ said Max.

‘Pot-shots!’ said Cassandra, widening her eyes.

‘Let me guess,’ said Max, running his hand up and down his firm belly. ‘You went to see the banks to find out if you could borrow the money to buy out Emma, yes? They refused because you have no retail or real business experience. Yes, you understand publishing better than anyone in the business, but that isn’t particularly relevant to running a luxury goods company, no matter how famous a journalist you are. So you thought laterally: if you continue to undermine Milford with your considerable influence, maybe in twelve months the company will be worthless and then Emma will want to sell. As editor of US
Rive
you’ll have a bigger global pull, the banks might take notice and back you this time. But wait! You’re worried. You might be next in line but you might have to wait years to get the job. And what if Emma surprised everyone and made a success of the company. Then you can never afford it.’

Cassandra sat looking at him, her eyes glowing with fury. She had exposed herself to him, she had trusted him and he’d made her plan seem so amateur and haphazard that her cheeks stung hot with ridicule. The hurt she was feeling was because his assessment was so devastatingly accurate.

‘Get out,’ she said quietly, unable to stop her voice quavering.

‘No,’ said Max, having the confidence not to move an inch. ‘Forget Milford. What do you really want, Cass?’

She got off the bed and started pacing around before she spoke.

‘To build a Cassandra brand. And Milford would be the perfect base to build from.’

‘But that ship has sailed for the moment,’ said Max brutally. ‘What are you going to do now? And similarly, what would becoming editor of US
Rive
achieve? Make you a tiny bit more famous than you already are? It’s a blind alley. You should forget that too.’

Cassandra went to the window and leant against it. She felt weak with frustration.

‘What then? Forget my whole career?’ she said sarcastically.

‘You should be building up
your
brand, not
Rive’s.’

‘Well, I have the
Cassandra Grand: On Style
book coming out in September.’

‘Fantastic!’ said Max. ‘Now you’re thinking about
you.
This time next year you want your name to stand for a whole lifestyle. Like Kelly Hoppen, Donna Karan, Martha Stewart, Donna Hay. They all say something. Start thinking about what Cassandra Grand stands for, not
Rive. Rive
is yesterday’s news, a stepping stone to a real career.’

‘So do you think I should start a fashion line?’ she said, suddenly feeling excitement growing in her belly.

He shook his head. ‘Takes too long. You need to make the biggest splash in the smallest space of time. Your field of expertise is magazines so let’s start there.’

‘Launch my own magazine? That’s expensive unless I wanted to start small – and small’s not my thing.’

‘No, private equity won’t look at start-ups,’ continued Max, ignoring Cassandra’s look of disappointment.

‘So what do you suggest?’ She was so unfamiliar with asking for help that her voice was almost a rasp.

‘Launch
Grand
magazine on somebody else’s money but take a
stake – 50 per cent ideally. Time Warner backed Martha Stewart who later bought out their shareholding. That’s where you start.’

She looked at him. He was so sure, so confident, so brilliant. What did he see in someone as timid as Laura?

‘Next you use the magazine company to spin off into other areas: clothes, cosmetics, interiors, using private equity cash. That’s where I can help you,’ he smiled. ‘In the meantime, if Milford stalls, you’ll have more business credentials and collateral to raise the cash to buy her out.’

She felt a surge of an unfamiliar feeling.

‘You believe in me,’ she said feeling aroused.

‘You are beautiful, you are smart and you are
hungry.
And
Grand
magazine is where it all starts.’

He said the word ‘hungry’ as if it was their special word.

‘I want this to work for you,’ he said, stepping off the bed before coming round to hold her from behind. She leant back into him and took a breath. His words had been cruel, but they had been a wake-up call. She groaned, feeling his lips on her neck. Sunshine streamed in through the shutters, warming their bodies and speckling their skin with light. Max Carlton was the other half of her circle. She didn’t just want her brand. She wanted it all. She wanted him.