Prima Donna (23 page)

Pia stared at him. Even just listening to him was exhausting. How long had he been planning this for? She’d not even known him a month.

Will clocked her expression and stopped pacing. He stood and faced her, hands on his hips. He was almost breathless. ‘Don’t you see? I’ve turned Baudrand’s pessimism
about you into your greatest advantage. It’s
great
that he doesn’t think you’ll be ready in time. It’s perfect! He’s convinced you’ll fail and that
everybody will judge his production to be the winner. The ChiCi’s celebrating its hundred-year anniversary this year so he’s desperate for the coverage, and just imagine what it
would do for the ChiCi’s international profile to trump the Royal
and
you.’ He shook his head, delightedly.

‘But what if he
is
right?’ Pia argued. This thought clearly hadn’t crossed his mind at all. ‘If his
is
better, my career will be over, Will – for
good. It’s too high a risk. I could never come back from such a high-profile failure as that.’

Will shrugged. ‘But that’s not going to happen. Is it, Evie?’

‘Not on my watch, darling.’ She handed Pia the pristine, as-yet undanced score. ‘Here, you’d better start learning this.’

‘But you just said I was broken . . . a write-off . . . that . . . that I need complete rebuilding.’

‘And you do. But all the components are already there, sweetie. You know, I always say there are three steps to becoming a professional dancer, Pia: learning to dance, learning to perform
and learning to cope with injury. This is your final lesson. I’m going to put you back together again, and by the time you get up on that stage you’ll be ahead of Petrova in every
way.’ She grinned. ‘You’ll be even
better
than you were before.’

There was a long pause as Pia looked between them. ‘Is that even possible?’ she whispered.

Will burst out laughing, throwing his arms around her and squeezing her tightly. ‘You see, Evie? What did I tell you? The old Pia’s coming back to us already!’

Tanner stood at the office window, the international dial tone beeping through the phone by his ear, his fingers winding themselves in the coiled wire. He watched Violet
laughing with Rob by the stables. Matchstick, Will’s black stallion, kept nodding his head between them, and they absent-mindedly patted his muzzle as they chatted.

Jessy was coming out of the tack room at the far end of the yard, holding a saddle and numnah over one arm and a set of reins slung over her shoulders as she went to saddle up Kermit,
Will’s bay hunter. It was her first day back today. Rob and Tanner had told everyone she’d come down with swine flu in Switzerland, and none of the rest of the stable crew were any the
wiser.

They’d managed to keep the real story under wraps, and it was imperative the truth didn’t get out. Tanner needed the yard and all its staff to have a pristine reputation if they were
going to draw in a new big-money owner – nobody would touch them if there was even so much as the whiff of suggestion that drugs were being smuggled through with the horses at international
events.

Tanner stared at the empty stalls. Even with Silk’s patronage they had had nearly twenty stables going free, and if he didn’t get a new client in before the polo season opened
– the very week Silk’s liveries were due to leave – they were likely to remain empty till the grass season closed in September. Nobody would risk unsettling the horses and their
training regimes midway through the calendar, but even now, with a three-month lead time, it was a tight schedule to bring everything right. He couldn’t deny things looked bleak, especially
with Violet throwing it accusingly in his face every day. She was convinced he was running the yard into the ground.

He watched her stalk across to the sand school where one of the grooms, Ricky, was putting the new gelding through its paces. Violet’s long legs were tantalizing in chocolate jodhpurs. He
remembered the sight of her in those and nothing else as she was getting dressed that morning . . .

Dammit, she always distracted him. He turned away from the window, sitting on the ledge. He wasn’t capitulating this time. She could go grovelling back to Silk over his dead body. That man
manipulated everyone and everything around him. He’d conned Tanner’s father out of their six-generation heritage and then acted as though giving his business to the yard was balm to the
wound.

Everyone else may have bought the alliance, but for Tanner it had festered for four long years. He’d taken Silk’s business because he’d had no choice. The yard was all that was
left of his family’s estate and fortune, and even that had almost folded. Neglected by the family as a money-making concern for so long it had been on its knees when he inherited it.

But they were back from the brink now. Silk’s business had bought them some time and given them good exposure on the international scene, allowing Tanner to forge relationships while Silk
was on the pitch and in the bar. He had the contacts. Now he just needed to convert one into a client.

The dial tone disconnected, unanswered, and Tanner looked at the shortlist of names on the notepad. If he could just make this happen, he knew it would be the break he needed.

The door opened and in burst Rob Butler. He was pulling off some rubber gloves that had bloody smears on them.

‘Oh,’ he said, seeing Tanner. ‘I didn’t realize you were in here. I’ll come back.’

‘No, it’s fine. I’m finished,’ Tanner said, putting the phone down.

They looked at each other for a moment. ‘I was just going to put the kettle on. Fancy a tea?’ Tanner asked.

Rob hesitated then shrugged. He’d barely said two words to Tanner since coming back and Tanner had felt the snub acutely. The two men had met at the Royal Agricultural College in
Cirencester six years earlier and they’d formed an instant friendship. Five foot ten and slight, with a mop of muddy blond hair and an easy smile, he was Tanner’s opposite and rock.
Tanner had been studying for his Equine Business Management MBA, Rob for a postgraduate Applied Equine Science MSc, and when the latter pioneered non-surgical equine embryo transfer, Tanner had
collared him into working with him in setting up a fledgling stud and bloodstock business. It was early days yet but, alongside the polo management, their successes had helped consolidate the
growing reputation of the Ludgrove equine business.

‘Jessy’s looking well today,’ Tanner began, his back to him as he put a tea bag in each cup.

‘Yes.’

‘Are you checking up on her?’

‘Yes,’ Rob said again.

Tanner turned and leant against the rickety pine table the old Tefal was sitting on.

‘Look, I’m sorry, Rob,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I know that I put you in a very difficult situation.’ He shrugged. ‘I panicked. I didn’t know it would get
that bad with Jessy. Honestly, I didn’t. I was just so worried about the police getting involved.’

‘And the reputation of the yard,’ Rob said bitterly.

There was a stiff silence. ‘Yes, and that,’ he replied, looking at his feet. ‘I’ve been so desperate to get free from Silk that I put my reputation ahead of yours. I know
you would have lost just as much as I would have done had the truth come out.’ He sighed wearily. ‘I cocked up. I should have just taken her to a hospital in the first place.’

Rob looked at him. Tanner’s guilt was written all over his face. He was a proud man, obstinate, demanding, supercilious even. But he was also moral to a fault. He’d made the wrong
call but for the right reasons. Rob knew exactly how much he was tortured by his ongoing alliance with Silk.

He shook his head and smiled. ‘Let’s just forget about it. It all turned out okay in the end.’ Tanner passed him a cup of tea and he cracked a cheeky grin. ‘In fact,
it’s turned out better for me than I might have hoped.’

Tanner looked up at him and Rob nodded. He’d been after Jessy for ages.

‘It’s amazing what saving a girl can do for your sex life,’ he chuckled.

Tanner laughed. ‘I’m really pleased for you, mate.’ He paused. ‘It just goes to show there are some girls out there who know how to be rescued. I didn’t even get a
thank you, much less a shag.’

Rob frowned. ‘What – you mean . . .’

‘In fact, all I got was a stream of abuse, can you believe? Consider yourself lucky,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘You should have left her there.’

‘I’m considering throwing her back in actually,’ Tanner drawled.

They laughed, and Tanner felt relieved that Rob had forgiven him at last. Rob was the only person he’d discuss his troubles at home with, and things were going from bad to worse with
Violet, as she kept on at him about keeping Will’s business at the yard. She seemed to have no understanding of the self-loathing the association left him with and he was beginning to wonder
how well she really knew him at all. The only thing that seemed to keep them together was the sex, and that had kept them together for far too long already. They’d lived together for six
years now, but her strength of character, which he’d so admired in their early years, had taken on a bossy, nagging hue and he was fed up with her always throwing her weight around. Where
once he would have tolerated it for a quiet life, now he was pitching himself against her in almost every discussion. He was scared he was beginning to hate her, but in his heart he already knew
the answer: Silk’s wasn’t the only relationship he needed to bring to an end.

Violet leant back in her chair and watched as her friends Kit and Minky did the conga, flashing their knickers and white thighs at the delighted and equally drunk men in front
of them. The hunt ball, held in the Duke of Lamington’s ballroom, had been going on for three hours now. Dinner was over, the annual bread fight dispensed with, and everyone was getting down
to the serious business of necking their wine, and then each other. It appeared everyone was having a good time apart from her.

Tanner was on the other side of the ballroom, deep in conversation with Rob and his chief groom Ricky. Apart from squiring her on the way in, he’d barely said more than a sentence to her
all night and she knew he was in one of his low-grade sulks with her for banging on about Will.

She watched as Jessy – trussed up in a one-shouldered pink tube dress that looked ineffably cheap – skittered up to Rob. His eyes glittered at the sight of her trembling bosom and he
squeezed her bottom lustily. He clearly didn’t share Violet’s opinion that she looked like a sausage. She wondered how long they’d been together. From the looks of things, they
were still in the first randy flush.

Violet looked hatefully at Jessy. She knew perfectly well that Jessy had had an affair with Tanner just before she had come onto the scene and, though she’d never had any evidence of it
continuing, she was convinced Jessy had been in love with him. Tanner seemed unconcerned by the new relationship though, laughing uproariously with Rob and telling stupid jokes. She looked away.
She couldn’t put a finger on why but she felt inched out by the little group.

A well-built brunette with an ample bust and tiny ankles flopped down on the chair next to her. ‘I am whacked!’ she gasped, grabbing a glass – any glass – off the table.
‘God, I thought I was fitter than that,’ she wheezed.

Violet smiled. ‘The conga’s not easy to do at the best of times, Minky, much less drunk and in those shoes,’ she said, looking down at her friend’s vertiginous
midnight-blue velvet Miu Miu heels. They had to be at least five inches high.

Minky groaned. She’d already twisted her ankle, but she wore them so that she stood at nearly the same height as Violet – otherwise she came up only to her armpits and Violet hogged
all the men. Not tonight, though. She seemed strangely subdued.

‘Everything okay, Vi?’ she asked, crossing her skinny legs and swinging them temptingly. ‘You seem quiet tonight.’

Violet shrugged. ‘Tanner’s being a bit off. I’ve annoyed him.’

‘What about?’

‘Oh he’s kicking out Will’s horses. Says he wants nothing more to do with him,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Only he doesn’t seem to have thought about
what’s actually going to happen once the stables are empty. You know what he’s like – so bloody stubborn!’

‘That I do,’ Minky muttered. He’d rebuffed every single one of her advances over the years. ‘But I can’t say it’s a surprise. Everyone knows there’s no
love lost between those two.’

‘No. But they’ve managed to make it work for the past four years – just. I don’t see why it should all suddenly become
so
untenable.’

Minky didn’t say anything. She was watching Tanner. He was looking imposing in his dinner suit and laughing easily. He didn’t seem especially angst-ridden.

‘You know what’s happened of course, don’t you?’ Violet continued. ‘Tanner’s shot his mouth off and backed himself into a corner and now he can’t see
how to get out of it without losing face. He’d rather let the yard go under than look a fool.’ She shook her head wearily.

A sudden shriek caught their attention and they watched Kit try to jiggle some ice cubes back out of her dress.

‘So why don’t you sort it out, then?’ Minky said. ‘Go and talk to Will yourself.’

Violet looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, if Tanner’s only getting rid of Will to make a point, you can step in as the voice of reason. You two are as good as married anyway so Will will listen to you, and Tanner will
be grateful to you for sorting it out for him.’

Violet lounged back in the chair and considered the idea. Minky was all bust and no brain, but she’d hit on something this time.

‘Hmm, you could be right,’ Violet said. It might be just the thing to put them back on track again. Tanner’d got himself so wound up about Silk’s deception again recently
that he seemed to have lost sight of the fact that they’d managed to settle into a truce, albeit an uneasy one.

‘Well, talk of the devil!’ Minky said, sitting up excitedly. ‘Look who’s just walked in. I’ve been waiting for this all night.’

Violet looked round and saw Will come through the doorway, dashing in his dinner suit as he helped Pia hobble in on her new weight-bearing cast.