When she woke up in the morning, Will Logan had cleared out. His head planter told her that he had gone to supervise another job.
‘Don’t worry, Miss Lancaster. Mr Logan designed the whole project already. All we have to do now is the final bedding in of the rose plants.’
‘That’s fine.’ But she couldn’t stop herselfa,sking, ‘Where is the other job?’
‘In France, miss.’
2.62
‘Welcome back, Mrs Conran,’ Janice said, teasing her with a big grin.
‘Thank you, thank you.’ Lira took a little bow and smiled at her staff. ‘Though my honeymoon was too good. I almost wish I hadn’t come back.’
‘You’ll wish that in a minute,’ Harry Weiss muttered.
‘Excuse me?’ Lira asked.
The smiles had faded from the New Wave staff’s faces, and there was a mutual shuffling of feet and stating at the table.
‘Somebody spill,’ Lira said firmly. ‘I know I took two months off, but this place can’t survive without me for two months? Harry?’
‘It’s not that. In fact, it seems that it’s you that’s the problem,’ Weiss said bravely.
‘Harry,’ Janice protested.
Harry cut her off. ‘Somebody has to tell her. Look, Lita, New Wave has lost six new accounts, including United Newspapers.’
Lira looked dismayed. That had been her biggest coup, the large regional publishing group that put out papers in Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham.
‘Why the hell .. 2’
‘Bad press.’ Harry opened his briefcase and poured a spill of clippings on to the table. Lita picked one up at random. It was a PR Weekly article implying that she was sleeping with Jocelyn Wilson, and that New Wave had got its start by tipping off. Doheny. It brought up the charge of Lira’s ‘plagiarism’, and insinuated that she had only been promoted there by doing ‘sexual favours’ for Harry.
Lira felt a huge rush of adrenaline as she read it. She flushed darkly, her heart started to thump and sweat broke out on the palms of her hands.
‘We’ll sue,’ she whispered.
‘You can’t.’ Weiss was matter-of-fact. ‘I’ve already consulted libel lawyers. This is a “blind item”. It just suggests without stating it outright.’
Lita rummaged through the rest of the clippings. It was all equally
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damaging. It made them look like sleazy nouveau arrivistes who were out to take British jobs and who ripped off other firms for campaigns.
She saw that her hand was trembling slightly with the force of her rage.
‘Who’s behind this?’ Lita demanded.
Weiss shook his head. ‘Lancaster Holdings. As far as I can work out, they hired three individual tabloid hacks from Fleet Street to dig dirt, then send it on to their pals in the press. It worked out a lot better for them than hiring a PP, firm. In fact, you have to give it to them—’
‘Goddamn it, no, you don’t, Harry.’ Lita blinked. ‘How the hell can it be Lancaster Holdings? I destroyed them. They sold everything to Wilson Shipping.’
‘Everything except the name.’
‘What the hell use is that?’
‘She rebuilt. She’s working at lightning speed. A luxury hotel in her own house, then a theatre conversion in London and a lodge house in Edinburgh right next to the Palace of Holyrood House. Where Mary Queen of Scots—’
‘Enough already with the history lesson!’ Lita snatched up the profile of Becky’s company.
‘She has guests lining up to pay astronomical prices to stay in these places. The banks love her. And she wants your blood,’ Harry said succinctly.
‘Well.’ The white-hot rage was replaced with an icy calm. ‘That’s fine. If she wants blood, she’s got it.’ ‘
‘There’s a call for you, Miss Lancaster.’
Becky tightened her plastic headscarf against the icy wind and drift of snow that was whipping down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile towards her site, an historic lodge house, fallen into disrepair which she was given permission to restore with the aid of the local authority’s historical buildings commission.
Other developers were frightened off by the need to retain original features. Becky wasn’t. She knew that was what would sell it to her guests.
The beauty of the Royal Mile, with its twists and turns and small shops set into the ancient stonework, was worth fighting for. And she wasn’t scared of paperwork.
This hotel would go down great with all the ScottishAmericans. ‘Come and be neighbours of the Queen at the Royal Thistle Hotel.’ Perfect. In fact, she had money in the bank already from guests who wouldn’t get there until the conversion was complete in May.
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Becky ducked into the small field office to take her call. A wave of nausea rocked through her, and she pressed one small hand to her mouth. Oh, God. This was happening more and more frequently as her successes spread. The joy of winning contract after contract, and the satisfaction of ripping those assholes at New Wave into pieces, was offset by all the travel and the stress. And her inability to get Logan out of her head.
‘Who is it, Freddie?’
Her foreman passed her the receiver. ‘I think she said her name was Rosalie or something, miss.’
The nausea doubled. Becky steadied herself. She knew exactly who this was.
‘Can you give me a minute, Freddie? I need to take this call.’
‘Is this Rebecca Lancaster? This is 1Losalita Conran. I’m President
‘I know who you are, Ms Conran.’
‘You’re making a big mistake,’ said the voice at the other end of the line. Becky recognized, dredging it up from her memory, the slight Bronx tang.
‘A big mistake, huh? Like when we tried to sell the tin mines in
Cornwall, and there was an “environmental hazard”?’
There was a pause.
‘No,’ the other girl said slowly. ‘More like when you stood at the top of the stairs and watched me cry like I was your private freak show. You’d better back off, lady. I mined you once and I’ll be happy to do it again.’
‘Oh, I get it.’ Becky grinned to herself. ‘This is all about Rupert. You must have gotten him back, you must be in this with him. Well, I’m more than a match for both of you scumbags.’
The girl laughed. ‘I’m married. Unlike you. And you can’t fool me, Rebecca. We both know you were the little society playgirl with that bastard. Now you have money, maybe he’s back with you. But money isn’t going to be able to hide you from me if you don’t draw that head back into your shell.’
‘You don’t scare me, sister. Not one tiny bit. If I were you, I’d head down to my travel agent and book the next flight back to New York. You can get a discount if you book in advance, you know. And pretty soon you’ll be needing the money.’
‘I see, chiquita. It’s like that, huh?’
‘See you around, P,,osalita,’ Becky told her. She hung up, but not before she heard the little click that announced the other woman was doing the same thing.
z65
Becky smiled to herself, despite the churning in her stomach. Bring it on! She was ready for it.
Lita picked up the phone in Mark’s townhouse in Park Street, and started to dial Harry.
Mark reached over, took the receiver out of her hand and gently
replaced it. ‘You can do that tomorrow.’
‘Honey—’
‘Tomorrow, I said.’ His fingers started to undo the buttons at the top of her silky blouse. ‘Doctor’s orders.’
She didn’t dare protest and, anyway, she didn’t really want to. Mark’s hand was already tracing little teasing patterns on her bra. He made her feel her sexuality every second of the day. He rang her at work and told her exactly what he was planning on doing to her when he got home, in a detached, almost clinical voice that made her belly warm and her nipples hard. Lita had thrown away every piece of functional underwear she possessed, and dropped five hundred quid buying little thongs and high-cut French knickers at Janet t
‘But a maid is so extravagant,’ Lita had protested, as his hand slid up her skirt, feeling her smooth, lean thighs.
No, she’s a necessity. I don’t want housework on your mind.’ Now he was lightly, tormentingly, touching her nipples the way he knew drove her crazy, forestalling any further conversation. Lita gasped. The bra today was pale gold satin, but even its silky caress was almost painful to her when her breasts swelled like this.
Mark brushed her blouse half-off her soft shoulders and freed her heavy, soft breasts from their bra, dropping it on to the ground. He bent his head close to the warm, sweet scent of her, and his tongue darted out, flickering across the dark, taut peaks, taking her nipples into his mouth so she groaned lightly, aloud.
‘Let’s have a look at you,’ he said, and lifted up her skirt, where her tiny golden G-string was pressed against the trimmed, silky V of her crotch. ‘Yeah, those panties are very nice.’ He slipped a finger inside them and stroked the wetness of her, ‘I really don’t know why you bother to wear them …’
His thumbs hooked into them and slipped them free of her thighs. She wasn’t wearing any tights, nothing but a stacked pair of slides that threw out the rounded curves of her butt.
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Even his control was lost.
‘God, you’re beautiful,’ he said breathlessly.
‘Mark,’ Lita moaned. She tugged off his T-shirt, looking at his muscular, lean chest, her nails lightly raking the wiry hairs there.
‘Hold on,’ he said. He loosened his zipper and kicked off his socks and shoes, and Lira’s hand came out, for revenge, cupping him, taunting him. He grabbed the small of her back and pulled her closer, their lips and tongues tangling, until Lita lost her footing and they tumbled back on to the soft sheepskin rug at the bottom of her desk. Mark thrust himself unceremoniously inside her, and the waves of pleasure began before she even began to thrust back at him, as he angled himself inside her deeper and harder, his rhythm coming faster and more furious, sending the silver lines of ecstasy running up to her nipples and down through her flat belly to her thighs, as he reached behind her to grab her butt, stroking it, toying with it, using it to pull her deeper against him, until she was gasping his name and clutching at him, and the bright wall of pressure inside her exploded, and her body crunched into orgasm, and everything except Mark fell away from her.
‘Oh, Rupert, darling, roll the dice again.’ Madame la Baronne Marie d’Escalier clapped her slightly wrinkling hands, which made the gaudy rings she wore on each blood-red finger sparkle in the light of the chandeliers.
They were playing craps in the Casino Lowenstein in Monaco, on the tue de la Croix. tLupert knew to stay away from all the big houses. His credit rating was for shit there, and he had to keep appearances up. The mortgage on his tiny one-15edroom apartment, which he called his ‘pied-d-terre’, was killing him. Lita’s money had been spent or gambled away long ago, and now he was surviving on presents from rich ‘girlfriends’, like the Baronne, if indeed she really was one. That didn’t matter to lupert, though -just soft enough lights, and enough coke and booze, so that it became bearable to get into bed with her occasionally.
He obeyed and rolled the dice. His luck had been in today. Baronne Marie liked to laugh and peel him off some notes from her winnings, as though he were some floozy hanger-on that needed a tip. P,.upert didn’t have enough pride to turn her down. That burned his insides worse than the ulcer he had developed.
‘Sept, Monsieur le Baron,’ said the impassive voice of the croupier.
‘Oh, Iu-u-pert darling, you arefantastique,’ Marie purred. ‘Here, for you.’ She tossed him a couple of shiny red chips.
‘I’ll get the champagne,’ Rupert said, pocketing them and winking at
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her. He sidled off to the bar, anything to get away from that awful old hag. ‘Bottle of MoSt,’ he said, snapping his fingers. They understood English here providing you spent enough money.
There was a tap on his shoulder. Another older woman, this one about fifty and with a bad dye job on reddish hair, and a skirt at least
two inches too short for her dumpy legs.
‘Lord Rupert Lancaster?’
Rupert was high, but he still clocked the sharp London accent, middle-class with a trace of Cockney.
‘Yes,’ he said, not bothering to correct her on the title. Who cared in this hell-hole, anyway?
‘Doreen Evans, the Star. Would you have time for an interview, my lord?’
‘No, I bloody wouldn’t,’ Rupert snapped. ‘Sod off.’
‘We pay,’ said the harridan softly. ‘A thousand pounds for half an hour.’
Rupert beckoned a waiter over and told him to send the champagne to the Baronne. ‘Put it on her tab,’ he muttered.
‘Now.’ He turned to the woman and smiled at her, his most seductive smile. ‘What exactly did you want to know?’
He got drunk that night, not enough to render him incapable but just enough to help him through banging the Baronne. She was starting to whine about ‘doing it with the lights on’. Thank God he had taken a couple of thousand from her tonight, because he couldn’t hack this for much longer. Rupert splashed water on his face, back at his own flat, trying to sober up. The cheque from the journalist was lying on his dressing-table. As soon as the bank opened, he’d be there, paying it in. They shouldn’t have a chance to cancel it.
He ran some numbers in his head. With the cheque, and the small amounts he’d managed to skim off Mrs Ashford, last month’s ‘companion’, he probably had enough for a trip to the States. What that journalist said burned him.
‘It’s a human-interest stow.’ She had waved her tall glass of gin and tonic around, sloshing the ice cubes dangerously near the rim. ‘You know, the two women, both young and sexy, you should see the pics, and we heard they have a history and the history is you.’
‘Possibly,’ he’d agreed. Guarded, but she’d want something for that grand.