Authors: Charlotte Phillips
‘Did you?’ he said pointedly, watching her intently as she looked up, her cheeks warming. ‘Why is that?’
He was clearly alluding to the grainy pictures of his naked backside that were currently going viral on the internet. Surely he must know his scandalous behaviour of the previous month or so had been trending on Twitter?
‘You wouldn’t be the first celebrity guest to make that kind of demand,’ she said, choosing her words carefully. ‘They worry that they’ll be hassled for autographs while they’re eating their toast and marmalade.’
If she was trying, with her forced professional attitude, to keep the slant of disapproval out of her voice she failed epically. Matt leaned back easily on the sofa and watched her carefully. Unable to sleep the previous evening after her sudden exit curtailed his plans in the most frustrating of ways, and unable to get out of this damned hotel and distract himself at a nightclub or party, he’d instead spent hours being needled by the fact she’d run out on him. It was the contradiction that bothered him. The fact she could have indulged herself so fully in that moment and yet afterward was so desperate to undo it. He’d got his way, letting it slide now would be the sensible thing to do. Yet her lack of interest drove him crazy.
Frankly, he had precious little else to amuse him this week. He needed some respite from the insanity of his training schedule. His team had brought in a new English coach for a different perspective and he was under scrutiny from the moment he arrived at the tennis club until he arrived back here in the late afternoon. And since he’d agreed not to be seen going out, partying or socialising until his sponsors were placated, amusement would instead have to come to him. She fitted the bill perfectly. And arranging to have her as his PA meant she was completely under the radar of the press.
The only problem was that she was looking at him as if she wanted to call security and have him thrown out onto the pavement. Didn’t exactly bode well for a few nights of no-strings fun. But still, he liked a challenge, and the result would be so much more satisfying if he had to work for it. Sometimes easy was just too damned easy.
‘Why are you so determined to be unimpressed by me?’ he said, holding her gaze deliberately. ‘Was yesterday such a disappointment?’
He had the concerned frown on his face of someone whose feelings were on the brink of being hurt. Counterfeit concern surely. She’d read about his exploits in magazines and newspapers for years and from all she knew of him, he didn’t usually let concern get in the way of whatever he wanted to do.
Of course it hadn’t been disappointing. It had been
mind-blowing
, and just at his mention of it her face felt vaguely throbby with heat and she knew she must be looking beetroot-red. She cut her eyes quickly away from his.
‘I’d rather not talk about yesterday, if you don’t mind,’ she said, fiddling with her pen and notebook. ‘I thought we agreed it never happened.’
‘I just don’t understand why you’re so regretful of it when you were so enthusiastic at the time. It was fun, wasn’t it? We’re both adults.’ He shrugged. ‘No biggie.’
No biggie?
A burst of contempt broke her professional façade before she could stop it. All her intentions to just avoid mentioning it flew out of the window. OK then, if he was determined not to let it lie she could take the opportunity to throw a few truths his way.
‘It might be no biggie for
you
,’ she snapped. ‘Bedding a woman you’ve just met is clearly the order of the day in your life. I’m not like that.’
He raised questioning eyebrows at her and well he might because yesterday she had been like that. She flapped a hand at him.
‘Not usually anyway,’ she conceded irritably.
A brief tap on the door signified the coffee arriving and he watched her as she poured them each a cup, concentrating hard on what she was doing instead of looking him in the eye.
‘So what was different about yesterday?’ he said, not letting her off the hook.
She lifted her cup and saucer and looked across the table at him steadily, a guarded expression in the china blue eyes.
‘I had a bit of a crazy day yesterday, I wasn’t thinking straight, it just happened,’ she said in a rush. Quick dismissal. ‘Now it’s done I can’t take it back however much I might want to, but at least I can draw some kind of line under it.’
‘Why would you want to take it back? Why so negative about it? Because from where I was standing it was pretty damned wonderful.’
She tried to ignore the happy skip in her stomach that comment caused.
‘Look,’ she said, talking slowly and deliberately, making a desperate attempt to close the subject once and for all. ‘Let’s just say I’ve had some experience of the way celebrities live and while it might seem glamorous and exciting to lots of the girls you meet, it has absolutely zero pull for me. I like to keep things grounded in the real world. That’s the difference between us. So if we could keep things professional between us, that would be good.’
She put her empty coffee cup on the tray and stood up.
‘Now, if that’s everything, I’ll leave you to it while I go and liaise with the kitchen,’ she said.
‘It isn’t everything,’ he said, standing up and moving towards her. ‘In actual fact it’s nothing.’ He nodded at the list in her hand. ‘All of that stuff is a front. Admin tasks that either don’t need doing or that I could easily delegate to a member of my own staff.’
Her heart picked up the pace as he closed the gap between them.
‘I was told you wanted one of the hotel staff to work for you this week, in the absence of your own assistant,’ she gabbled. ‘Are you now saying you don’t want that after all?’
‘I didn’t want one of the hotel staff. I wanted you. And you can carry out all those tasks on the list if you like, but to be perfectly honest the main point of asking you to take on the role was for your company.’
She narrowed eyes at him.
‘I’m not talking about sex,’ he said, holding his hands up, face the picture of innocence. ‘You’ll be perfectly safe. I’m just not that great at staying in by myself. I own a share in a nightclub back home, I like to party and I have a full-on social life when I can. Obviously the tennis calendar is pretty in-your-face and I behave differently when I’m playing a tournament, but it’s October and things are a bit less crazy right now. I should be making the most of the downtime, but because the press have gone overboard this last month or so my sponsors are demanding I keep a low profile.’ She saw a brief flash of defiance cross his face. ‘Thing is, I don’t really
do
low profile. Staying alone in a hotel room with Pay Per View is not my idea of R and R. So how about you have dinner with me tonight?’
She stared at him. For some reason the way he dismissed sex made her mood, already confused, take a downturn. Not that she wanted to have sex with him again, of course, but it had been kind of flattering to think he wanted to. The idea that he could just take it or leave it made her feel strangely deflated and she was extremely irritated with herself for even caring. Platonic company and a few admin errands? How hard could it be? And with sex resolutely off the agenda she would be perfectly safe.
‘Dinner? Here?’
‘Yes. Like I said, I’m meant to be staying out of sight. I’m training this afternoon but this evening is completely free. The restaurant’s probably not a great idea.’
‘And if I say no?’
He burst out laughing.
‘You can say whatever you like, Layla.’
The way he used her first name made her stomach give a slow and delicious flip. She bit her lower lip hard to keep her mind on task, even if her body didn’t seem to be up to the challenge.
‘Haven’t you got a friend you can call up? Or family? Why would you want to spend time with me? I’m a total stranger.’
There was a flash in his eyes of something she couldn’t quite fathom. Uncertainty was probably the nearest she could get to it.
‘I like you,’ he said simply. ‘You tell it like it is. That’s unusual for someone when I first meet them.’
‘Don’t you think that’s down to the kind of people you mix with?’ she said. ‘Where are your close family and friends? What about a proper home life, proper friends, people who are honest with you? Or do you just have yes-men and hangers-on?’
‘It’s not like that,’ he said.
She looked at the guarded expression on his face, her interest piqued by his evasion.
‘What
is
it like then?’ she pressed.
He put his head on one side, considering her question.
‘It’s just the way it works,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s not a deliberate choice who I socialise with, it’s just the way things end up. Tennis at this level is incredibly demanding. There isn’t a tennis season as such, not in the way there is for football or rugby. It’s pretty full on for most of the year.’
‘So you’re surrounded by adoring fans who don’t even know you beyond your media image and your magazine photos.’ she said. ‘Those things aren’t real. That’s all just window dressing. Where are your family, where’s your proper home life?’
He shrugged.
‘I’ve got a brother and sister but they’re based back in Boston, both have got their own lives,’ he said. ‘My parents are elderly and not particularly sporty so they don’t make it to many of my matches. And there’s a lot of travel involved. It’s kind of hard to keep up family ties when you’re on the other side of the world half the time.’
She began moving toward the door.
‘It all sounds like a lot of hard work and shallow relationships,’ she said. ‘I’d have thought your family would watch your every game. If I had a brother like that I’d be so proud I’d go to everything.’
The thought of having family support was intoxicating and she felt a pang of envy that he had siblings. Her own family unit had only ever made her feel alone.
He shrugged.
‘Maybe you could see it that way. The rewards are amazing though, beyond anything I could have dreamed of as a kid. And it was never really a conscious decision to let family slip, you just end up so busy that coming into contact with people on a normal level is unheard of. To be perfectly honest when I have downtime I want to have some fun. Sometimes that’s a whole lot easier when all it’s about is having a good time, the last thing you need is relationship complications.’
She watched him, letting her mind process all that. His life was completely shallow. And shallow was all he wanted from her. Easy, inconsequential company for the week. The familiar old contempt spiked in her stomach. His was exactly the lifestyle her mother had coveted, and practiced, for her entire adult life. The excitement, the glamour, the parties and hangers-on. All the things Layla had learned to loathe as she grew up, the endless distraction of her mother’s attention and regard. Oh she might settle down for a month or so, meals would start coming regularly, she would be at home when Layla came in from school, but then festival season would start and she’d disappear to camp in a field with friends while Layla managed as best she could with a succession of friends and relatives, and later when she was old enough, by herself.
‘So dinner?’ he said again. ‘I’ll leave you to organise the menu, you’ve got my nutrition list.’
It was a week. That was all. The promotion hung maddeningly in front of her like a carrot before a starving donkey. She might disagree with his lifestyle and his every principle but what did that matter as long as she got the new position and, more to the point, the pay rise associated with it? She just needed to keep him sweet.
‘Fine,’ she said.
Matt opened the door of the suite that evening on her first knock again and whatever he’d done that day at training, it clearly hadn’t pushed him to any physical limit. He looked as fresh as a daisy in his jeans and dark blue shirt, the sleeves casually pushed up. His dark hair was still shower-damp and the light woody notes of his aftershave on warm skin made her stomach go soft. For once she was glad of her grey uniform with the pink piping on the lapels. It felt like armour. Wearing this suit sent out the message that for her, this was about
work
. She didn’t look like she was smuggling herself into his room, she was there legitimately. An unnerving flash of clarity followed that thought as it occurred to her that being in his room legitimately might be the whole reason she appealed to him right now. Wasn’t his usual type out of bounds in the wake of the recent naked butt scandal?
The suite was cosy, a fire spitting in the grate between the velvet sofas, the thick silk curtains shutting out the endless damp weather. What had happened between them in this room yesterday crackled between them and she fought to block it out.
She could feel his eyes on her as she pushed the room service trolley across the suite and begin moving plates to the table. A delicately presented light meal of jewel-red tuna steak served with mixed salad leaves. Her stomach gave a flip of anticipation as she saw that the food was accompanied by a bottle of champagne on ice.
‘Champagne?’ she said carefully. ‘I didn’t order that.’
‘I took the liberty,’ he said.
His words of the previous evening surfaced in her mind.
Not that I don’t drink sometimes, I just choose my moments, make sure they count.
Her heart began to thump so hard she wondered if he might hear it.
She sat down opposite him, picked up her napkin and a fork. The food looked perfect, yet she couldn’t have been less interested in it. Every cell in her body felt on edge. She was here at his beck and call, on his say-so, against all her better judgement. Yet there was a hint of danger about going along with this that made her feel more excited and alive than she could remember. She tried her best to crush that feeling by sweeping straight into smalltalk. Nothing like boring life detail to keep an air of detachment. He was hardly going to jump her bones if she could keep the conversation rooted in the day-to-day stuff.
‘What’s your house like in the States?’ she asked.
Matt picked up his knife and fork, glanced up and smiled at her. She didn’t smile back. Her expression was detached, polite.
‘In Malibu. Beachfront, which is really great. Not that I get much time to spend there. There’s so much travel going on that I’m rarely there for more than a few weeks at a time.’
She was pushing her salad around her plate with a fork, not looking at him.
‘Must still be nice though. You must be set up for life. And what a dream, to excel at something, find something you’re brilliant at, that you love and make a mint at it.’
There was a hard edge to her voice that didn’t quite gel with what she was saying.
‘You have a remarkable way of saying something must be fantastic in a way that makes it sound a bit crap,’ he said.
She glanced up at that and gave him a you’ve-got-me smile. More genuine this time. A shrug.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound jaded. A few years working in the hotel industry does that for a person. It’s hard graft with horrible hours at times, and the pay isn’t great.’
There was an undertone of bitterness in her voice.
‘It hasn’t always been that easy for me you know,’ he said. ‘And to be perfectly honest it has its downside even now. I mean look at me, having my freedom curbed this week because of the tabloid interest. I didn’t sign up for fame, I signed up for the tennis.’
‘You’ve certainly made the most of the fame side of it though, haven’t you?’ she remarked, a cynical tilt to her chin that he couldn’t fail to miss. ‘I mean if you wanted to concentrate purely on the game you could lead a quiet life, keep yourself out of the public eye, maybe not pose half naked in women’s magazines…’
‘Ah that.’
‘Yes, that.’ She pointed at him with her fork. ‘You can’t put yourself out there, courting publicity, dating a different woman every week, and then moan when public interest bites you on the arse. Why exactly
are
you on house arrest again?’
It wasn’t intended as a question and he knew from her cynical expression that she’d read the papers. He felt on shifting ground with her and it was a sensation he wasn’t used to when it came to women. There was no easy admiration to be garnered from her. He knew she was attracted to him, it was obvious in the way she stole glances at him, in the sharp intake of her breath when he moved close to her, but apparently attraction wasn’t enough. He had the oddest feeling that there was an element of contempt for him lurking beneath the polite surface conversation and he was irritated by his irrational compulsion to find out why. Why should he care what she thought of him? He didn’t
do
that kind of concern. She was a welcome distraction for the week to prevent him staring at these four walls. No point making it any more than that.
He held his hands up.
‘OK, OK, so I’ve made the most of the perks of being in the public eye, I’m not denying that. I just didn’t expect it to interfere with my sponsorship and my game.’
The familiar stab of resentment spiked in his gut. He’d had one dodgy tournament, knocked out in the first round by an unknown. A fluke, nothing more. An off-day. It certainly had nothing to do with the fact he’d gone to a party in the previous days, something that would never have been an issue if the girl he ended up with hadn’t blabbed full details to the press. It hadn’t even been the night before the game, he would never have done that. And yet still he was being treated like a wayward teenager. And frankly, he was used to a bit less criticism and a bit more fawning from the girls he had dinner with.
He put his fork down and leaned back in his chair.
‘How come you’re so unimpressed by me, so uninterested in the whole success and fame thing? I’ve never met anyone so dismissive of it, you actually seem to go out of your way to make a point of it.’
She burst out laughing.
‘Used to people watching you adoringly and falling over your every word, are you?’
He grinned back.
‘Actually, yes.’
‘Celebrity rubbish doesn’t have that effect on me I’m afraid. It’s all totally shallow. I prefer to stay rooted in the real world.’ Then she shrugged and backtracked a little as if realising she was being insulting. ‘Nothing personal, though, I’d had a gutful of the celebrity fishbowl way before I ever met you.’
Just what the hell did that mean? He frowned at her.
‘How do you mean? You make a habit of bursting into unsuspecting celebrities’ hotel rooms?’
‘No. I try to make a habit of NEVER doing anything like that,’ she said, and added ‘
Ever
,’ as if he wouldn’t get the point.
‘I don’t follow.’
He waited patiently, unfazed by the silence, letting it drive her to elaborate.
‘My mother is currently working her way across America with my savings, following some insane has-been rock group who’ve decided to reform,’ she said. ‘I only found out when she went AWOL yesterday and it took me a whole day of trying before she picked up her phone at the airport. In her head she’s still eighteen and wearing leather trousers. It’s completely tragic.’
‘Rock group?’
She nodded.
‘I was absolutely furious and yet and at the same time not entirely surprised.’
The look of tired resignation on her face for some reason tugged at his heart.
‘Why not? She make a habit of that kind of thing?’
He couldn’t imagine having a parent like that. His own straight-down-the-line mother and father flashed into his mind. Paragons of respectability. Hard to live up to.
‘She spent the better part of my childhood doing exactly the same thing.’ She gave him an I-don’t-care smile that was a bit too small to really pull off.
‘Travelling?’
‘With a purpose.’ She eyed him for a moment as if deciding whether to keep talking, then shrugged. ‘She’s the number one fan of this ageing Glam Rock eighties band. She spent months travelling, went to every gig they ever did back in the day, and now they’ve decided to get back together. I saw it all the first time around. They might’ve been able to pull off eyeliner and big hair twenty years ago but now they just look like a tragic bunch of middle-aged saddos who really need to grow up.’
‘So your mother is a groupie?’ He bit his lip hard but failed to stop a smile. At least now he knew her cynical attitude had nothing to do with dislike of him. And when she was talking seriously about something she had a determined tilt to her chin which was the cutest thing he’d ever seen.
‘No, worse than that. She’s an ageing groupie. Go on, laugh it up, I can see you want to. And it
is
funny. Or it would be if it wasn’t so bloody embarrassing.’ She shrugged, obviously thinking of her lost savings. ‘Or so bloody expensive. Reforming old bands is the order of the day, there’s this big eighties revival going on, but of course what it’s really all about for them is making a fast buck. Problem is, all the fans got old too. My mother no longer fits the bill of cute groupie, not that it stops her.’
He groped for something to say that wouldn’t sound like he was taking the piss.
‘What about your father?’ he managed.
She speared a cherry tomato with her fork.
‘From the same kind of universe I’m afraid. He was the lead singer in a one-hit-wonder rock group. If I told you their name you might even recognise it.’ She paused. ‘Then again, maybe not. You were probably in nappies when they were at the height of their fame.’
‘I’d never have pinned you as having such an unconventional upbringing,’ he said. ‘You seem so focused on your job, so sensible, and you look so…’ he searched for the right words ‘…not like a rock chick.’
Oh yes that just sounded great.
‘Yeah well,’ she said, taking a sip of her champagne. ‘The clue’s in the name.’
He frowned, thinking it over.
‘
Layla
?’ he said. ‘You mean like-‘
‘The song. Yep. My father’s all-time favourite. If only he could have been that talented, eh?’
She was very good at not taking herself seriously, it was impossible not to like her, with her jokey self-deprecating description of her background, yet there was a barbed edge to her tone that told him that however outwardly amusing all this might be, in reality for her it was anything but.
‘Are they still together, your parents?’
She shook her head.
‘He never lived with us. It was just some backstage fling my mother had. Not sure either of them had counted on me as a consequence. He sends Christmas cards. He’s a cinema manager now of all bloody things, somewhere up North. I have an address. But I’ve never had a real relationship with him. Nothing to do with my parents has ever been real. For all my mother’s obsessing, it’s never led to anything concrete. That money she took would have been my deposit on my own little place. She might as well have just thrown it off the plane. It will just be frittered away; there’ll be nothing to show for it.’ She took a sip of her wine, looked at him over the rim of the glass. ‘I don’t expect you to get that, you’re clearly someone who’s had an excellent return on their hard work but that’s because it’s YOUR celebrity, YOUR success. My mother thinks that hanging around that will somehow make it rub off on her and in reality the opposite is true – all it ever does is bleed her dry. And now me too.’
Their backgrounds were wildly different yet he could relate so easily to that feeling of not being the focus of his parents’ life, of somehow not being enough to satisfy them.
That odd feeling that she was fighting not to like him now made perfect sense. She kept herself consciously detached, he could see her doing it, making small talk, keeping her professional image going, yet in the moments when he broke through that barrier it was clear she was as attracted to him as he was to her. The fact drew him to her even further. She liked him in spite of his status and image, not
because
of it, and that to him was intoxicating.
Layla pushed her plate away, half finished, the beautifully presented meal pushed thoroughly into a haphazard pile that would have given the Michelin-starred chef palpitations. She’d said too much. Given away far too much of herself. Yet she’d had no real opportunity to vent her building fury at her mother, and once she’d started it was hard to stop the outpouring of bitterness. Maybe the fact he was from the same shallow world added to it. He was the perfect by-proxy target for her exasperation. Part of her felt better for letting off steam, yet her plans to keep things professional had somehow been forgotten in the process.
‘How did you get started then?’ she said. If they were going to talk family background, let it be about his no-doubt perfect one instead of her own train wreck of a childhood. She sat back in her chair and sized him up. ‘I bet you were one of the kids in sports lessons at school who got to pick the teams, weren’t you? I was the one lurking at the back because the whole picking process was hideous. Either that or I wouldn’t be there because I’d accidentally-on-purpose forgotten my kit.’
He grinned and nodded.
‘Sport not your thing then?’
‘Two left feet, zero co-ordination. Do you come from a sporty family?’
She imagined him as a kid smashing a tennis ball around a court while his family looked on proudly.
He took a sip of champagne.
‘Not really,’ he said, not looking at her. ‘In fact I probably couldn’t come from a less sporty family. My parents are both academics.’
She thought she picked up a hint of guard about his tone, but that couldn’t be right, could it? This was small talk, of the most general kind.
‘Really?’
‘My father’s passion is medieval history. He’s written a few books, he’s quite highly regarded in that field, if medieval history’s your thing. With my mother it’s English Literature.’