Secrets of the Rich & Famous (3 page)

He looked up at her to see that she’d finished eating and was now staring at his wrist. She leaned forward on her stool to get a better look.

‘That’s a lovely watch,’ she said.

He smiled distantly. What was she up to now?

‘Thanks.’

‘Would you mind if I took a closer look?’

Before he could answer she’d jumped down from the stool and taken a step closer. She took
his wrist in her slender hands and turned the watch this way and that, examining it.

‘Cartier …’ she murmured.

He realised that she was the perfect height for him right now, standing next to him as he sat on the stool. This close he could see the big blue eyes, the frown touching her brows lightly. The curve of her top lip above the full pink lower lip was adorable. There were fine tendrils at the nape of her neck where she’d pulled her light brown hair up from her shoulders into a messy ponytail. He was reminded suddenly of the last time he’d been at eye level with her—last night, with her slender wrists in his hands, lush body pinned beneath him on the bed, close enough to kiss her with one short movement of his head. Heat sparked on his skin at her touch and seemed to pool deep in his abdomen.

This was not a good sign. Less than four days since he’d sworn off women and he was mentally wondering what she might taste like. He debated for a moment if he should have ignored Mark’s advice and evicted her, anyway.

He tugged his wrist away sharply.

She looked up in surprise, her hands left empty in mid-air.

‘I’ve got a conference call in twenty minutes that I really ought to be preparing for,’ he lied.

She took a step back, still eyeing the watch.

‘OK, not a problem. I’m planning on going
out, anyway, so you can have the place to yourself.’

Honestly, she had more front than Blackpool. Acting as if she was the one doing
him
the favour when it was his own damned apartment.

She tossed his cold toast in the bin and stacked their plates together in the sink.

‘Can you recommend somewhere good for lunch?’ she asked, her back to him. ‘I need to get a bit of background on the area. The kind of people who hang out here, what they wear—that kind of thing.’

He shrugged. ‘Depends what you’re after. Coffee and a sandwich? Or something a bit more substantial? What do you want to spend? Some places are pretty exclusive and expensive.’

She turned back from the sink in time for him to see the sudden shadows in her blue eyes.

‘Not that I’m implying you’d be out of place there,’ he said, wondering why he was worried about hurting her feelings.

‘Why don’t you just tell me where
you
would go?’ she said. ‘If you were hypothetically going out for lunch in South-West London.’

He thought for a moment, trying to come up with somewhere she might enjoy.

‘La Brasserie,’ he said. ‘French-style place. It’s very popular—decent food.’

‘Great, thanks!’

‘Don’t thank me until you’ve tried it. We might not like the same kind of food.’

She left the room. Just as he was insisting to himself that she was having zero effect on him he realised he was watching the graceful way her legs moved in the slim-cut jeans. He’d have to find a way of getting her out of here.

The globe lights, the ceiling fans twirling above her, the framed French posters on the walls and the marble-topped bar made stepping into La Brasserie feel like stepping into a little corner of Paris in the middle of London. Strings of white fairy lights and Christmas greenery added a warm festive touch. At a corner table, Jen thought it really was the perfect place to while away an hour or two people-watching.

She glanced at the menu and drew in a quick breath at the prices—even after her internship they never failed to amaze her. The coffee shop back home in Littleford did a knockout shepherd’s pie for a fraction of the price of the main lunch menu here. Then again, the residents of Littleford wouldn’t know what to do with a place that served frogs legs in white wine and parsley, Coquilles St Jacques—whatever
that
was—lobster and steak tartare.

When a waiter in a pristine white shirt and black waistcoat arrived to take her order she chose only coffee and a
pain au chocolat
, with a
pang of regret that she couldn’t afford to sample the full deliciousness of the menu. She needed to eke out her money big-time if she wanted to frequent places like this and actually look as if she belonged. The group of young women having a girly lunch at the table opposite made her feel totally invisible. She was kidding herself, thinking she could pass herself off as one of them in her High Street wardrobe. She needed designer
everything
. And on the money she’d scraped together that was going to be no mean feat.

The women were glossy without being in your face. Hair loose and natural, with gentle highlights, perfect smiles, less-is-more make-up and not a hint of orange fake tan. Clothes impeccably cut. Fur seemed to be
the
accessory this winter. No outfit appeared to be complete without a bit of dead animal attached to it somewhere.

So this was the world her father inhabited, while she and her mother were an inconvenience he’d written off twenty-four years ago just by opening his wallet. She didn’t think she’d ever had a stronger feeling of being on the outside looking in. Jen felt plain, boring, and like an impostor with her mousy brown hair and her cheap handbag. And the worst of it was that none of that should matter—not to her. But still it did.

Wasn’t the whole point of her article to look at this world of luxury from the perspective of an ordinary High Street girl? Her fresh eyes would enable her to pick up on all the little things that stood out. Like the way people air-kissed both cheeks as a greeting. Jen had never done that in her life.

She was furious with herself. She was an investigative journalist—a professional gathering background for an article. She should be finding this interesting, not intimidating. But try as she might she couldn’t quite squash the needling little voice in her head reminding her that if things had been different, with a shift in circumstances, this could have been
her
world, too.

Darkness was already filtering in as she left the restaurant, and the cold air burned her cheeks, but she forced herself to do a bit of window-shopping on Brompton Road instead of skulking back to the apartment. In the brightly lit Chanel store, with the interlinked Cs logo huge behind an exquisite suit in the window, she could feel the eyes of the perfectly groomed assistants following her in her cheap jeans as she picked up a black tweed jacket—heavy in her hands, impeccably cut. Beautiful. She checked the label and felt the moisture disappear from her mouth. Maybe if she sold her car. And then some.

She put the jacket back slowly, so as not
to look as if she couldn’t afford it, more as if she’d decided it really just wasn’t
her
. And she checked out a couple of handbags and a scarf on her way to the exit in an attempt to leave with some dignity. None of the staff approached her, clearly knowing perfectly well that she wasn’t worth attending to. She wasn’t the real deal. And all the while she was thinking that what she really wanted was to be back in sleepy Littleford.

She snapped herself out of it. She was just a bit homesick. It wouldn’t last. These last three months in London had gone by in a whirl and she’d loved every pacy second of it. Christmas in Chelsea exuded class. It was all twinkly white lights and mistletoe, co-ordinated colours and not a tasteless bauble in sight. It couldn’t be further from Littleford, which by now would have its threadbare Christmas tree put up on the village green by local volunteers. The same balding tree had been resurrected every year for as long as Jen could remember.

She wanted to stay in London and this was her chance to do that. Her chance to show she could claw her way up in life by herself. She didn’t need a rich father smoothing her path for her.

An hour or so later and things were looking up. It was amazing what people sold online. She
scrolled through the auction listings on her laptop, propped up comfortably against the pillows on her bed, mug of hot chocolate next to her. It was gobsmacking how much of a discount you could get for pre-owned clothes. No time to wait for the auction to unfold over a week. She concentrated on the ‘Buy Now’ options.

Within half an hour she’d been possessed by a kind of madness. It was all too easy to click ‘Pay Now’. A pair of jeans, a wear-anywhere shirt, a stunning velvet cocktail dress and a heavily knocked-down pair of nude shoes that she hoped would go with everything—all by designers she’d only ever read about in upmarket women’s magazines. She snapped her eyes away from the screen and calmed her racing pulse with the fact that she could sell the whole lot on when the project was over with.

Before she could stop herself she’d clicked ‘Pay Now’ on a gorgeous leather tote bag. In for a penny, in for … a lot of pounds. Hmm, it was just too easy to get carried away online when the clothes were this delicious. She’d better do a quick recce of the cost. Her wallet was under serious strain. She’d ploughed her meagre savings into her project—after all, you had to speculate to accumulate—but still she needed to watch her spending.

The cost of renting the apartment, although seriously discounted from what it would
really
be to rent a place like this, was still taking up the lion’s share of her budget. Add in the anticipated cost of tickets, entry fees, food and drink—all the essentials she needed to actually get herself in the same room as her prey—and she had hardly anything left for her own makeover. And, judging by the young women she’d seen today, she was in serious need of one of
those
if she was to pass herself off as one of
them
.

She tapped the figures into her pocket calculator and stared in disbelief at the total. Clothes alone would never be enough, she needed to look the part inside and out. That meant hair, make-up, fake tan, nails. How the hell was she going to manage all of that on the ten pounds twenty pence she had left in her budget?

‘Sorry, could you just say that again? I thought you said you were sharing a flat with Alex Hammond, but that can’t be right, can it?’

‘You didn’t hear me wrong.’

Jen held the phone away from her ear with a grimace, but still the piercing squeal of excitement was audible. When it came to overreaction, Elsie was a professional. Then again, to someone who’d spent a lifetime living in Littleford, and for whom the working week consisted of giving perms and blue rinses to the village’s pensioner contingent, the news that your
friend was living with a celebrity was probably the highlight of the year. When the squeal subsided she tentatively put the receiver back to her ear.

‘Are you sure?’ Elsie asked breathlessly. ‘
The
Alex Hammond? The one on the front of today’s newspaper with no shirt on? I’ve never seen abs like it.’

Jen made a mental note to check out today’s paper, then mentally crossed it out. She didn’t have time to think about Alex Hammond’s abs. She felt mildly offended by Elsie’s disbelief. Was it really
that
far-fetched that she could move in these social circles?

‘Yes, definitely
that
Alex Hammond,’ she said.

Elsie sighed.

‘So any chance of you coming home before Christmas Day is even more non-existent, then? I’m dying of boredom here without you. What’s he like?’

‘Nowhere near as hot in the flesh,’ she lied.

She hadn’t counted on Elsie being quite so starstruck. It was a good few minutes before she could get her off the subject of Alex’s physique and onto the subject of the favour she needed to beg. For Pete’s sake, her future career was at stake here.

‘I need your help,’ she said when she could
get a word in. ‘The success of my article depends on it.’

She’d bored Elsie rigid with her writing career plans since they’d both been at school.

‘What kind of help?’

‘I need to look like a goddess—on a budget and in minimum time,’ she said. It sounded an extremely tall order spoken out loud.

‘How long?’ Elsie asked.

‘One day would be nice. For a start, is there some over-the-counter product I can use to make my hair look sun-kissed?’

Elsie made a dismissive chuffing sound.

‘Pah! You don’t need to bother with any of that over-the-counter rubbish. Not when you’ve got a professional on your team. I’ll see you right. Don’t you worry.’

‘But you’re in Littleford. And I can’t afford to pay for you to come here even if I was able to let you stay.’ She didn’t bother to enlighten Elsie about the fight she’d had to keep herself under this roof.

There was a disappointed sigh at the end of the phone.

‘I suppose it was too much to hope for a meeting with Alex,’ she grumbled. ‘And it’s been ages since I’ve seen you. The place has been dead quiet since you took that magazine job.’

Jen squashed the sudden pang of homesickness.
No matter how much she had missed her, Elsie would eat Alex alive if she got within touching distance of him.

‘Sorry,’ she said apologetically. ‘He’s rarely home, anyway. We barely see each other. And even if you
were
here, what I’m after is that modern, subtle, glossy-but-undone look the It-girls have. I need to look like myself, but better. I’m not sure there’s much of a call for that kind of look in Littleford.’

She was trying hard to be tactful but clearly failed, because Elsie gave a derisory sniff.

‘A couple of months in London and you think we’re all hillbillies,’ she complained. ‘Just because I spend my days doing shampoo and sets for grannies doesn’t mean I don’t have all the skills for modern stuff, you know. A tint is a tint, whether it’s blue, pink or just-back-from-Cannes-gold. I’ll pop some colorant in the post tonight, shall I?’

Jen brightened immediately.

‘Is it something I can do myself, then? Can you write me a list of instructions?’

‘I can do better than that, honey. I’ll instruct you
personally
via Skype.’ She spoke in bossy and professional tones, as though she were a stylist to the stars, then ruined it by adding with a touch of stalker, ‘Now, give me Alex Hammond’s address.’