Flawless

by Tilly Bagshawe

  “What, now? Why? You were dancing with that divine bit of rough in the white suit a few minutes ago. What went wrong?”

  “Your eyesight, that’s what went wrong,” snapped Scarlett. “Jake Meyer is anything but divine. I was only dancing with him because he forced me, and because I thought, foolishly, that I might be able to talk some sense into him.”

  Nancy sighed. She adored Scarlett, but she did wish that her friend would occasionally take off her save-the-world hat and simply relax and have fun.

  “Look, if you really want to go, I’ll give you the keys,” she said, delving into her gold clutch bag. “But I think you should stay. I’ve got more hot guys back there than I know what to do with.” She gestured to the eager posse of admirers behind her. “It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll pass,” said Scarlett. After two frustrating conversations, first with Brogan O’Donnell and then with Jake, she was ready to punch someone, and certainly not in the mood to make small talk with Nancy’s castoffs. “You be careful, OK? Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “I won’t,” said Nancy, privately thinking that that didn’t leave her with too many options, other than getting into unnecessary political arguments with every guy who wanted to sleep with her. “See you at home.”

  Meanwhile Jake, who had also lost his appetite for the party, managed to track down Danny.

  “Where’s Annalise?” he asked, finding his brother alone and morose at the ground-floor bar.

  “Gone,” said Danny. “Some bloody Adonis with a hedge fund called Chip or Chuck or something damn stupid like that turned up. Next thing you know she was climbing into the back of his Vanquish.”

  “Her loss,” said Jake supportively. “Imagine her having to shout out ‘Chip! Chip!’ when she comes. He’d better have an awfully big cock to compensate for a name like that.”

  Danny gave a halfhearted smile. “What about you? What happened to Scarlett?”

  “Disappeared up her own arse,” said Jake, irritated. “She’s a gorgeous bird, but honestly, she doesn’t half bend your ear about all this ethical trading crap. I almost felt sorry for Brogan by the end of it.”

  “Blimey, I don’t,” said Danny. “Did you see how drop-dead gorgeous his wife was? By far the best-looking woman here.”

  Jake noticed the dreamy expression on his brother’s face and took him firmly by the shoulders.

  “No,” he said, looking him right in the eye. “Do you hear me, Danny? N-O spells no. Mrs. O’Donnell is very definitely off-limits.”

  “I know that,” said Danny, shrugging him off. “I’m not stupid. I’m just saying…she’s got something.”

  “That’s right,” said Jake. “It’s called a billion dollars in the bank and an old man with half the Russian mafia at his beck and call. Promise me you’ll steer clear.”

  Danny looked puzzled. It was unlike Jake to take a throwaway remark so seriously. “Relax,” he said. “I promise.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SIX MONTHS AFTER the Tiffany party, London was enjoying a rare summer heat wave that seemed to have infected the city’s inhabitants with a quite uncharacteristic joie de vivre. People on the streets began smiling and waving at one another in the mornings, commiserating that they were forced to spend such a gorgeous day stuck in an office, and bemoaning the general lack of air conditioning. Stifling, stuffy tube trains emptied as commuters opted to walk or bike to work, thronging to the parks and banks of the Thames like salmon swimming upriver to spawn. There was plenty of “spawning” going on too. Everywhere you looked lovers seemed to be strolling hand in hand, the women with their legs and cleavages at last on show, the men looking happy but at the same time awkward and British in their shorts and flip-flops, as if the soaring temperatures had forced them all to pretend to be Italians without providing the requisite tanned skin and laid-back manner needed to pull the look off.

  Nature had also risen to the occasion. Even in the heart of the city, window boxes and tiny postage-stamp front gardens exploded into riotous color with poppies, freesias, roses, clematis, and buddleia bushes all jostling for position and their share of the apparently endless sunlight. Cafés and pubs battled with stick-in-the-mud local councils to be allowed to put tables and chairs on the pavements, and illicit smokers hung out of every window, enjoying the summer smells of freshly mown grass and Starbucks’ iced Frappuccino.

  At Bijoux Scarlett had thrown open all the windows and doors and done her best to allow the spirit of summer inside with the help of huge porcelain water pitchers filled to the brim with daisies, dandelions, and other pretty weeds she’d gleaned from Holland Park earlier. She’d never seen the need for the vastly expensive, imported flower arrangements that so many fancy shops went in for in their window displays, when there was a plentiful supply of free, home-grown flora out there for the taking. For Boxford’s sake as much as her own, she’d also invested in two expensive Conran ceiling fans, which left her permanently windblown and dusted with pollen, but which did at least keep the worst of the punishing temperatures out.

  “It really is very beautiful.”

  The young woman holding the platinum-and-amethyst pendant in her hands looked down at it longingly. “I particularly like what you’ve done with the diamond setting, so subtle. I’d hate it if it were all…”

  “Sparkly?” offered Scarlett.

  “Yes. You know, overdone,” agreed the woman. “Still, fifteen thousand pounds. It’s not cheap, is it?”

  “No,” Scarlett admitted, admiring her own handiwork over the customer’s shoulder. “No, it’s not. I think it looks exquisite on you, but I quite see that it’s not something one can just splash out and buy without a second thought.”

  It was funny: when it came to her Trade Fair campaign she was quite capable of being pushy, yet with her own designs she’d never mastered the art of the hard sell. The thought that she might be pushing someone into buying a piece they didn’t really want, or worse, couldn’t afford, seemed straightforwardly wrong to Scarlett, no matter how many times wiser heads described it as “business sense.”

  “I’ll take it off the display for a few days if you like,” she said kindly, “while you think it over. I’m afraid I can’t really hold it any longer than that.”

  Inside a not-so-small voice was shrieking, What the hell are you doing? Your business is going under; you can’t hold it at all! But the woman looked so relieved and hopeful Scarlett hadn’t the heart to play hardball. Besides, in the past she’d won many a loyal customer through being reasonable and patient. Perhaps this was simply a delayed sale?

  God, she hoped so.

  It was astonishing how a thriving business like Bijoux could have been brought so low in such a short space of time. This time last year she was going full bore, with a healthy waiting list of custom orders shoring up the retail business and suppliers lining up to work with her. Now it was as if everything Scarlett touched turned to dust in her hands, as if somebody had put a hex on her. And she had a pretty shrewd idea who that somebody might be.

  After their very public run-in in New York, it became painfully apparent that Brogan O’Donnell had the knives out for Scarlett. In the four years since she’d started Trade Fair, she’d made a number of powerful enemies. It was safe to say that none of the big jewelry chains or diamond-mining groups much liked her, and there were plenty of corrupt government officials from Mozambique to Moscow who wished fervently that she and her meddlesome crew of cronies would take up some other crusade. But not until she crossed swords with Brogan had she realized quite how damaging a truly personal vendetta could be, to her campaign as well as her livelihood. It seemed there was no aspect of her life that his malevolent influence couldn’t touch.

  At first, the intimidation was gradual, so much so that at times she questioned whether Brogan was masterminding it at all or whether she was simply being paranoid. Trade Fair was the first thing to suffer, as one by one she found her speaking engagements b
eing canceled for vague, unspecified reasons. Those venues that did bother to come up with excuses were far from convincing. The concert hall in Geneva claimed to have double booked itself for Scarlett’s two-night run, an unheard-of error for the efficient Swiss to make. Still, at least they’d had the decency to warn her in advance, unlike the Corn Exchange in Cambridge, who called only hours before she was due to go onstage with her slide show to announce that they’d been overrun by rats (rats!) and forced to shut up shop for the night.

  If it had happened once, it might have been bad luck; twice, a freak of coincidence. But in the six months since she’d met Brogan, she’d mysteriously lost all but two of her public-speaking gigs. Quite apart from the lost money and time, it was a serious blow to the campaign’s momentum, as so much of Trade Fair’s success was built on word of mouth as Scarlett traveled from city to city.

  And it wasn’t just Trade Fair that was suffering. By February, her problems had started to spread to Bijoux too. All of a sudden suppliers she’d worked with for years began refusing to do business with her.

  “But Johnny, this is madness,” she’d remonstrated with her longest-standing diamond dealer when he pulled the plug on her by phone. “If it’s a price issue, surely we can talk about it?”

  “It’s not the price, Scarlett,” he said awkwardly.

  “Well what, then? Something personal? Whatever it is, you can be honest with me. We’ve known each other long enough.”

  “It’s nothing personal, truly.” She could hear the tension in his voice on the other end of the line and was left with the strong impression that he was enjoying the conversation even less than she was. “It’s purely business. I just…I can’t sell to you anymore. We’re oversubscribed, and I just can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

  Johnny Fitzhammond was a brilliant diamond man, always had been, but there was no way he was “oversubscribed.” An ex–crack addict, he’d been almost destitute when Scarlett started working with him. She knew for a fact that none of her major competitors in London trusted him enough to forgive him his past.

  No, it was patently clear that Brogan had gotten to him. Just as over the next few months he’d get to her other suppliers, the magazines who sold her advertising space, even some of her clients. If it hadn’t been for her online business, she might have gone under altogether, and she still wasn’t out of the woods yet. Thank God she’d bought the store outright rather than leased it. At least that meant Brogan couldn’t bribe the landlord to hike her rent up.

  Boxford, his shaggy coat blown into a bizarre, spiky up-do by the ceiling fan directly above him, gave his mistress a reproachful look as the young woman customer left the shop empty-handed.

  “Oh, don’t you start,” said Scarlett, crossly. “She’ll come back, all right?”

  Sitting down cross-legged on the floor, her legs unusually bronzed from the sun and as long as two slender saplings in the pair of frayed denim shorts and pink espadrilles she was wearing, Scarlett pulled the spaniel into her lap.

  “Sorry, old boy,” she said, ruffling his knotted, dangly ears. “I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

  It had been a tough few weeks.

  It all started with the anonymous, threatening letters. Scarlett dismissed the first one as the work of some crank. But when two more arrived, each more luridly menacing than the last, she called the police. No one at Ladbroke Grove station seemed particularly interested. The problem, apparently, was that none of the letters contained an explicit death threat.

  “Come back to us if something ’appens,” the bored duty sergeant told Scarlett dismissively.

  “Like what? Waking up with a carving knife between my shoulder blades?”

  “It’s probably just kids tryin’ to wind you up, miss. Try not to worry.”

  Scarlett tried not to worry. The next morning she woke to find her car tires had been slashed and a laminated note superglued to her windshield:

  Next time it might be your neck.

  This, surely, the police would have to take seriously.

  “I do sympathize, Miss,” the officer who came to her apartment said apologetically. “It’s terribly upsetting when something like this happens. But chances are we’re still dealing with local kids up to no good.”

  “Kids?” said Scarlett, exasperated. “Kids use spray paint. They don’t have laminating machines. Most of the ones round here can’t even spell ‘neck.’ I know who’s behind this, and he’s no kid, believe me.”

  “Hmm, so you said,” said the policewoman, in the sort of conciliatory tone she might use to pacify a violent lunatic. “The American billionaire diamond chappie.” She made Brogan sound like Scarlett’s imaginary friend. “You see, the problem is that without any actual evidence of him being involved, Miss Drummond, there’s not a lot we can do. These sorts of empty threats towards someone like yourself, in the public eye, they’re a lot more common than you’d imagine. You’d be amazed.”

  I’m amazed at your incompetence, thought Scarlett, furious.

  “It’s not just empty threats. Someone tried to poison my dog, you know. Treats laced with rat poison, left on the ground outside my flat. What if a small child had eaten them?”

  The policewoman looked down at her shoes.

  What the hell do I pay my taxes for? thought Scarlett. But once she calmed down, she could see that perhaps the policewoman had a point. The Brogan theory did sound a bit far-fetched when one actually said it out loud.

  As a last resort she’d turned to Cameron, who’d trained as a lawyer before he joined Goldman, to see if there might be something she could do to protect herself legally.

  “Like what?” he laughed, over lunch at the Wolseley. “Sue him for your Autoglass bill on the window? Don’t be silly, Scar. You haven’t a shred of evidence that O’Donnell was involved in any way, and frankly I find the idea quite preposterous. You and your little gaggle of Tatler groupies are far too small-fry for a man like him to be bothered with.”

  “He didn’t seem to think I was such small-fry when I met him in New York,” Scarlett shot back defensively. “He was busy telling the head of Cuypers how much damage Trade Fair has done to his business before I interrupted him.”

  “Yes, well, perhaps you shouldn’t have interrupted him,” said Cameron piously. “What do you expect if you go around baiting big businessmen and generally making a nuisance of yourself?”

  “Hold on.” Scarlett shook her head. “A moment ago you said you thought I was being preposterous. Now you think he is involved, but it was my fault for provoking him? You think I’m responsible for getting my own tires slashed?”

  “I think whoever was responsible did you a favor. That car’s a bloody eyesore.”

  “What about a restraining order?” asked Scarlett, who didn’t find the situation remotely funny.

  “On O’Donnell? No chance. They’d throw you out of court.” Wiping his wet lips with his napkin, Cameron looked his sister in the eye. “If you honestly think this is Brogan O’Donnell’s doing, and you’re worried about it, the solution lies in your own hands. Give up this nonsense campaign of yours, write him an apology for whatever foolishness you got up to in New York, and let bygones be bygones.”

  “Bygones?” Scarlett pushed back her chair in defiance. “Over my dead body.”

  “Yes, well. Let’s hope not,” said Cameron.

  Jake Meyer fixed the waiter with a frosty stare.

  “There must be some mistake,” he said.

  “There’s nothing wrong with that card. Run it through again.”

  He was sitting outside at Il Sole on Sunset, soaking up the California sunshine and gossipy lunchtime atmosphere in the enchanting company of Greta Saltzman, the sultry German-born wife of the producer Michael Saltzman, and one of his most generous clients, when his Amex was returned to him a second time.

  “Sir, I don’t mean to be rude,” said the waiter, looking equally frosty. “But we’ve run this card twice now. Perhaps you’d like to take care of the
check another way?”

  Cracking his knuckles, Jake got to his feet.

  “Or perhaps you’d like to do as I ask, sweetheart, and run it through your machine. Again.”

  It wasn’t a question. The waiter hesitated for a moment, but taking in Jake’s biceps bulging through his Abercrombie T-shirt and the murderous violet-blue eyes narrowed beneath his blond bed-head of hair, he decided to opt for caution. Sighing heavily, he scurried back into the restaurant.

  “It’s really not a big deal, you know,” said Greta, who’d also clocked Jake’s Power Ranger arms and was hoping to put them to better use than waiter bashing once she got him home. “I’m happy to pay.”

  “No way,” said Jake. “Thanks, but I’ll give them my bleeding watch if it comes to that. I’m not taking your husband’s money.”

  Greta roared with laughter. “You won’t take his money, but you’ll take his wife? And what about all the thousands you’ve taken off him for diamonds over the years?”

  “That’s different,” said Jake. “That’s business.”

  “And me?” Greta looked at him archly, her slanting, playful eyes dancing with desire and expectation. “What am I?”

  “You, my dear, are purely pleasure,” growled Jake, returning the look. He did love a flirtatious woman. What was the point of being sexy if you were too uptight and prissy to do anything about it, like the saintly Scarlett Drummond Murray? “All’s fair in lust and war. But that doesn’t mean I can fleece your old man for lunch. Trust me, if you were a guy you’d understand the difference.”

  It was awkward being embarrassed like this in front of Greta and the other wealthy diners, pretending not to be watching the unfolding drama from their neighboring tables. In LA, and in Jake’s business particularly, appearances were everything. It was acceptable to be in debt, but totally unacceptable to drive a shitty car, for example, or to have one’s platinum Amex turned down in public. As long as you appeared successful, no one much cared whether you actually were.