by Nigel May
‘It doesn’t. But the residency of Blair Lonergan here at Velvet does. You know him, I trust. Handsome man, a big hit with the ladies. Well, the easy-lay ones anyway.’
Nikki winced at his words. Was Julian letting on that he knew a little bit more than she had thought? She certainly hadn’t told him about her feelings for Blair. Had somebody else?
‘I know him. He’s a huge star. So what do you want?’
‘I had a phone call from the Velvet PR department saying that one of the big TV shows here in Toronto did an interview with Blair and that they wanted to interview you about him too. You’re the right age and dynamic to add kudos to the interview, and of course being the spokesperson for Velvet means that you can big up your father’s wonderful empire.’
‘And if I say no…’ Nikki had turned down many an interview before and somehow talking about Blair on camera seemed a little too intimate given their union.
‘Then your father will be even more pissed at you. And you don’t want that, do you? You’re going to need to see him at some point, aren’t you?’
Nikki sighed. ‘Yes, but in my own time.’
‘As you wish.’
‘So when is the interview?’
‘In the lobby in two hours, 10 a.m. Interviewer is called Tash Dallin. Be there, okay?’
Nikki knew she had no choice. ‘Okay.’
He was just about to leave when a thought struck her. ‘Julian, how did you know I was here?’
‘I’m your father’s right-hand man, so it’s my business to know everything. Plus, one of the girls on the front desk said she’d seen you and word got around. I guess that’s how the TV show knew. Small world, eh? Loose lips and all that.’
Julian turned and walked off down the corridor, hiding the smile that wrapped itself across his face. It wasn’t true at all. He’d seen Nikki at the hotel himself and when he heard one of the girls on reception talking about Tash Dallin’s interview with the, as she put it, ‘muscled hunk of DJ, Blair Lonergan’, he immediately hatched a plan. A phone call to the TV station offering Nikki up for interview was a carrot that no TV show wouldn’t take a nibble of – and Tash and her team had leapt on it straight away. And maybe he just happened to mention a few extra titbits of information about Blair and Nikki too, namely how they had just spent the night together. Julian wanted this interview to be a juicy surprise for Nikki, and he was going to do everything he could to make sure it was.
‘Oh, and by the way, Nikki. Nice outfit,’ said Julian as he reached the end of the corridor to take the elevator.
Nikki, still standing at her suite door with her toothbrush in her hand, looked down at what she was wearing: Blair’s sweat top and a pair of his boxer shorts. She gave Julian a withering look and slammed the door in his face.
‘You look fabulous as ever, Nikki, and thank you for agreeing to speak to us. We were thrilled you offered. You must be a big fan of Blair’s.’
An air of confusion immediately rippled through her at Tash’s words. Offered? Didn’t Tash’s team chase her for the interview? She let it go, knowing that the camera was running. It might not have been live TV but when in front of the camera, Nikki was of the belief that you should never look anything less than perfection – and that meant oozing calm and composure.
Nikki had spent the last hour and a half making sure that she looked red-carpet fabulous, even if there was no red carpet to be seen. She had demanded the hotel send the best hair and make-up people they could find and that they come to her suite immediately. Thankfully they delivered, with a reputed make-up lady, Lisa, who had worked with most of Canada’s big names and a deliciously handsome, buff and talented hairstylist called Dino. Much to Blair’s amusement, as he sat and watched Nikki transform from an already beautiful chrysalis into a jaw-dropping butterfly. It was obvious from Dino’s flamboyant actions and giddiness at getting his hands on Nikki’s lustrous tresses that his exuberance was not flirtation but gay campery. Otherwise Blair might have been worried that he had major competition in the hottie stakes for Nikki’s affections. The man had muscles on an insane level.
Nikki shifted a little nervously in her seat as she mentally prepared her answer to Tash. ‘I think Blair Lonergan is an amazing talent and number one in his field, which is why, as the number one chain of hotels in the world, Velvet had to have him. He is talented, right?’ Nikki turned to the crowd gathered in front of her, as if questioning, yet knowing full well what their response would be.
Just as she expected, the crowd, mainly consisting of hotel guests and staff members excited at seeing both one of their most popular TV hosts and the legendary Nikki Rivers in the flesh, applauded at her asking, obviously fans of the DJ.
‘So, have you and Blair met each other before, Nikki?’
‘Yes, we have. He is booked to play the Belter in the Swelter boxing event between Hatton Eden and Orlando Vince at Velvet Barbados in July – not long now – so we have had meetings about that. And I also met him during one of his amazing shows at Velvet New York.’
Nikki was happy to be mentioning as many of the hotels as possible and she knew her father would be pleased about her shoehorning in the upcoming boxing match. For a second a dark cloud hung over her as she thought about Sheridan. She hoped it didn’t show underneath her perfectly applied make-up.
‘So, you guys are good friends?’
‘I am a major fan. Who wouldn’t be?’
‘And it’s said that Blair is quite the ladies’ man as well. His womanising skills are legendary. What do you have to say to that, Nikki?’
Nikki could feel her cheeks redden slightly at the questioning. Again she hoped it didn’t show beneath her make-up. She scanned the crowd. She could see Julian standing at the back, watching the interview unfold. It struck her how quickly she had swept from being more than happy to use him sexually for her own financial gain to now finding the sight of him completely abhorrent. A smug grin painted itself across his face as he saw that she had spotted him.
Nikki turned to Tash and manoeuvred her mouth into a fixed smile as she answered. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t know anything about that, Tash. I’m a fan of what he does for me on the dance floor.’
Tash was quick to reply. ‘Well, I think we could be getting a scoop here because a little birdie tells me that you and he are more than just friends and that you spent the night together in this very hotel last night. Would you like to confirm that, Nikki? Does one of the hotel world’s most glamorous and available heiresses have a new million-dollar DJ on her arm?’
A traffic jam of questions lined up in Nikki’s mind. What should she say? Would Blair want their relationship broadcast to the world? What was their relationship? Who was the little birdie?
She turned to Julian again. With a sickly gesture of arrogance he gave Nikki the thumbs up.
So it was him, she thought. I should have guessed. And you can bet that if he knows, then my father will too.
Nikki was just about to answer when Julian stepped to one side and revealed the figure standing behind him: it was her father, Sheridan Rivers. He glared at Nikki, saying nothing yet speaking volumes. She felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. Her father was the last person she wanted to see. She had no urge to involve Blair in the situation with her father.
‘No comment,’ whispered Nikki, her words parcelled in uncertainty.
Julian couldn’t stop smiling as he watched her squirm. His plan had worked a treat. Telling Tash that Nikki and Blair were an item she was willing to discuss was easy, as was telling Sheridan that turning up unannounced at the interview would be the first way to get his own back on his treacherous daughter. And if Julian could drag Nikki’s new lover into the sandpits of scandal as well, then as far as he was concerned, that could only be beneficial.
Nikki needed to escape the cameras and hide away from the penetrating gaze of her father as quickly as possible.
‘Thank you for a lovely interview, Tash,’ she said, trying to keep things professio
nal and panic-free. ‘I’ll have to end it there as I have important Velvet work to be done. Thank you, everybody.’
Nikki stood up from her chair and turned to look at the audience. Keen not to make eye contact with Sheridan again, she scanned the crowd gathered on the side not containing her father. Her face froze as she saw another familiar face: the blackmailer from New York. He too was staring directly at her and his gesture to her was far more sickening than the thumbs up she had just experienced from Julian. He formed two of his fingers and the thumb on his right hand into a gun shape and pointed it straight at her. Then he mouthed the words ‘bang bang’.
Nikki felt her legs buckle under her and as she fell to the floor the last thing she saw before blacking out was another familiar face running towards her. It was her mother. Nikki’s head filled with another question as she hit the deck. Just what were all of these people doing in Toronto?
‘Oh my darling girl, what’s happened? Stand back, give her room, for heaven’s sake!’ screamed Sutton, taking her daughter in her arms and gently slapping her face to try and bring her round. ‘And turn that pissing thing off!’ she growled, realising that the TV camera was pointing at her and her eldest child.
As the cameraman finally switched the camera to black, Tash Dallin was smiling. As interviews went, that one would make for electrifying TV.
44
The footage of Nikki Rivers fainting and being cradled by a panic-stricken Sutton while a stern-faced Sheridan and a grinning Julian looked on hit celeb blogs across the globe before the TV crew had even packed up their cameras and vacated the hotel. There had been enough guests in the audience who had used their iPhones to document what had started out as a straight one-to-one interview between Tash and Nikki. But the fact that it had ended with Nikki flat on her back and in the arms of her hysterical mother made for upload gold.
Nikki’s blackmailer was watching it back in his hotel room. He had chosen not to stay at Velvet – too expensive and up its own ass for his tastes. Instead he had picked one of Toronto’s more budget hotels, not that he really needed to, given the money he had already accrued from Nikki, but the thought of putting his own cash back into the Velvet empire didn’t appeal. And besides, all he needed was a bed, a sink to wash his face in and a café on the nearest corner serving a decent portion of poutine. The Velvet crowd could stick their fancy waffles and their porcini mushroom risotto right where the sun didn’t shine.
He had gone to the hotel, assuming rightly that Nikki would be there, to collect the money. But when he entered the lobby the interview had been in full swing, and despite thinking maybe it wasn’t the best of ideas, he had chosen to watch the action unfold. Thankfully, from his position towards the back of the crowd, he had remained pretty insignificant. Nikki had only spotted him after he intentionally moved into a clearer vantage point to announce his presence.
He watched the screen on his laptop and scrolled his mouse along the view line of the YouTube video. The clip had already been watched nearly half a million times. Good news and bad interviews travelled fast.
He took note of all of the action. Nikki’s mother, he recognised her face, reached into her fancy handbag and pulled out some smelling salts. She then waggled them under her daughter’s nose, causing her to cough and come round from her fainting spell. Nikki was helped to her feet by her mother and the grinning man – he didn’t recognise him but watched intently as the man leant into Nikki’s face and whispered in her ear. Was that a smile or a grimace that showed across Nikki’s face? The blackmailer couldn’t tell. Another man stood alongside the group, his face as hostile as a rampaging weasel. The blackmailer recognised him as Sheridan Rivers, head of the Velvet clan.
‘Quite some gathering,’ he mused to himself.
The phone footage clicked off as Nikki’s parents and the man who had whispered in her ear moved her towards the elevators in the hotel lobby.
The last voice to be heard was Sutton’s as the video stopped. ‘Okay folks, the show’s…’ The blackmailer assumed correctly that she was about to say ‘over’ but he laughed to himself at the thought that she might have been about to say ‘been hilarious’, ‘been humiliating’ or, his personal favourite, ‘been very useful to the blackmailer wanting to extort a fuckload of cash from my daughter’. Because it had indeed.
There was still no sign of the money – he had just checked his account again – but now, thanks to the phone footage, he’d figured out exactly how to guarantee that Nikki Rivers would be offering it to him faster than the speed at which she’d fallen to the floor.
45
‘Oh my God, are you alright? I’ve just heard what happened.’
Blair Lonergan’s voice was smothered in concern as he pushed through the door and rushed across Nikki Rivers’s hotel suite to where she was seated on the bed. Her face was streaked with mascara and her eyes red from where she had obviously been crying.
‘Come in then, you must be the new boyfriend my daughter has been banging on about.’ Sutton Rivers had let him in.
‘Heard? I suspect you’ve seen it as well, haven’t you? It’s all over the internet. I’m a laughing stock. Keeling over after bumbling through an interview about you, which I had no idea how to handle for once in my life. What the fuck was all that about?’
‘For what it’s worth I thought you handled it very well,’ said Blair, holding her in his arms. Nikki took in the scent of his aftershave, Creed Aventus if she wasn’t mistaken, as she nestled her head in the crook of his neck. He smelt good, he felt good – a sanctuary in the madhouse of her life.
‘It was Julian’s fault. He set the whole thing up, I’m sure. He wanted me to squirm in front of the camera and he was no doubt the one who told Daddy to turn up. Where is the old man anyway?’ Her voice was pitiful and streaked with painful expectation.
It was Sutton who spoke next, the mention of both her lover’s and her husband’s name in one sentence spurring her into speech. ‘What has dear Julian got to do with any of this? And as for your father, he said he had some business to take care of. Doubtless he’ll be back in a while.’
‘Oh, doubtless.’
‘So what’s this beef with Julian? Why was it his fault?’ As she asked, Sutton’s mind was half thinking about organising another illicit rendezvous as soon as she could, even though Sheridan’s appearance in Toronto had taken her completely by surprise. From what Julian had said to her at Sandy Lane she had assumed that Sheridan was too busy to be there, so her flying into the Canadian city was the perfect opportunity for a hush-hush hook-up, even if his reaction to seeing her had been underwhelming, to say the least. As one half of her brain contemplated the sexier side of Julian, the other was demanding to know just why he was in the frame for being blamed about something.
‘There are things you need to know, Mother. I’ve done something stupid. Really stupid.’
Sutton teetered across the room on her Brian Atwood heels and sat next to Nikki on the bed. It was time to play mother. The concern and evident pain in Nikki’s voice pricked at Sutton’s heart, as only a child’s can to a parent.
‘Sugar, we all have in our time. If there was a University of Stupid, then I would have graduated with a first class degree, so don’t you go worrying your beautiful little head about that.’
‘No, I mean like seriously stupid…’ Nikki’s words tailed off as she stared first at her mother and then turned to look directly into Blair’s eyes. He nodded silently as if to encourage her to carry on, spotting the hesitation in her eyes.
‘It’s to do with Daddy…’
‘What’s he gone and done, now?’
She was just about to answer when the handle of the suite door turned and the door opened. Three people trooped into the room: Sheridan, followed by Julian, and just behind them a somewhat sheepish and nervy Kassidy Orpin. It was clear that Sheridan meant business – the look on his face was not one of a man who had come to console his daughter in her hour of need.
But it was
Sutton who spoke first. ‘What the hell are you doing barging in here like that? Can’t you knock first?’
‘I own the hotel, Sutton. I hardly think I have to knock, do I? I can go where I like, when I like.’
‘You’re hardly room service, Sheridan, especially with a face like that. You look like you’ve lost a hundred dollars and only found a dime!’
‘I’m not here to see you, Sutton. I thought you’d still be sunning that ass of yours in Sandy Lane, but no, you’re here.’
Sutton turned her gaze across to Julian who was standing on one side of Sheridan as Kassidy stood on the other. He was the reason she was there and, if she had her way, very soon her husband would know all about it – he’d been playing top dog in the infidelity department for too long. Julian ignored the curling of her lips as she let her mouth form into a wry smile.
‘So, what is this, some kind of menacing stand-off? Look at you three, standing there like some whacked-out cast list from The Godfather, all serious and predatory.’ Sutton was far from sure what was going on, but she was determined to find out.
It was true, the way that the people in the room were positioned – the trio of Sheridan, Julian and Kassidy facing off against Blair, Nikki and Sutton – was like two opposing teams getting ready to go into battle, or gangs from different sides of the street: the Jets versus the Sharks, the T-Birds versus the Scorpions. But the crux of the conflict was yet to be revealed.
‘I’m here to see Nikki. I have something to tell her. And I guess it’s kind of apt that you are here after all, Sutton, as you’ll want to hear this too.’
‘Well, shoot then, Sheridan. And make it good as this poor girl has not had the best morning of it so far and she could do with a bit of an uplift.’ Sutton ran her hand across Nikki’s back to try and comfort her. ‘We’ll go shopping and buy something nice. Don’t you worry, Mamma’s here.’ But she could see from her daughter’s expression that even a trip around the best fashion boutiques in the city might not be enough to erase the sketch of worry scribbled across Nikki’s young face.