‘Ouch,’ shouted Izzy, bouncing out of her chair so hard that she knocked it over.
Pepper looked up from her desk.
‘Problem?’
Izzy subsided. ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’ She hoped that was true.
‘You sure? You look as if you’re drowning over there.’
Izzy returned to the subject of work with relief. ‘When the woman from the PR company told me that the launch was just the start, I didn’t know what she meant,’ she told Pepper with feeling. ‘Now I do. The phone just doesn’t stop. It’s great.’
But Pepper, infinitely more experienced in business than her cousin, was more temperate.
‘That’s good. But we mustn’t let it take our eye off the ball. Publicity will be no use at all if the catalogue isn’t out and the goods aren’t ready. Hire an assistant if you need one. But for God’s sake don’t fall behind on the production schedule.’
Izzy chuckled. ‘Okay, boss.’
So when Molly rang up, asking whether Jemima was available, Izzy cut her short.
‘Jemima only did the launch as a one-off,’ she said pleasantly, but with finality.
‘But she is back in the country?’ pressed Molly.
Izzy looked at her wall calendar. ‘Due in six a.m. flight from Rio de Janeiro tomorrow. I’ll see her at breakfast.’
‘Well, could you ask her to give me a call? Soonest! Tell her,’ said Molly tantalisingly, ‘that it’s good news.’
Izzy wrote it down on her daily organiser and transferred it to the kitchen noticeboard that night. But when she got up in the morning there was no suitcase in the hall. Jemima’s door still stood open and the bedroom was untenanted.
‘Flight delay?’ said Pepper.
Izzy agreed. But she was uneasy, though she could not have said why.
When the day had passed and there was no message from Jemima, she looked up the flight details on the Internet. The plane had landed on time!
Thoroughly unsettled, she called Jemima’s cellphone. It was switched off. So then she called her sister’s agency. It was a frustrating experience. In the end she slammed the phone down.
‘What is going on?’ she exclaimed, torn between exasperation and real unease.
Pepper was frowning over a new designer’s portfolio. She put it down, eyebrows raised.
‘Trouble?’
‘Jemima isn’t still in Brazil,’ said Izzy, breathing hard. ‘According to Dolly Daydream on Reception at the model agency, she’s back in the UK. Everyone else is too cagey to say where she is.’
‘So?’
‘It’s not like her.’ Izzy bit her lip, trying to marshal her thoughts. ‘Even if she had to go straight to another job she’d call. She always calls.’
Pepper shrugged.
‘And before she went away she was sounding—odd. On edge.’
Pepper looked at her curiously. ‘You’re very protective.’
‘Older sister syndrome,’ said Izzy brusquely.
Pepper was an only child. ‘It’s not a criticism, Izzy. I think it’s nice. But Jemima is her own woman. She doesn’t have to check in with us before she goes off somewhere.’ She gave Izzy an encouraging grin. ‘Hey, maybe she met a great guy and just wanted to party with him.’
‘Maybe…’
Izzy shut her eyes. Oh, Jemima Jane, where are you? Something has gone wrong with you. I can feel it.
Pepper whipped a press cutting off the wall behind her and waved it under Izzy’s nose. Izzy did not have to read it. They had laughed about it when it had first come out, all three of them. A dazzled journalist had written:
Jemima Dare is more than a hot babe. There’s the gut-wrenching sensuality. And, then again, there’s the unreachability, Titania’s ethereal provocation. There’s the tremulous, tender mouth—allied to a siren’s body. The sexual punch is deadly. And then you think—will she be gentle with her victims?
Oh, yes, they had all laughed—Jemima longest of all. And now Pepper was saying tolerantly, ‘Jemima just hit the big time. She isn’t going to want to take in pizza and a movie with the family the first time she gets back to London.’
Izzy opened her eyes. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘What’s not to understand? She doesn’t mean to be mean. Give it time; the gloss will wear off.’
‘But you don’t know her like I do,’ said Izzy, still worried. ‘This just isn’t Jemima.’
‘Hey,’ said Pepper gently. ‘Success changes people.’
‘Not that much,’ Izzy said stubbornly.
Pepper patted her shoulder. ‘You’re a good sister, Izzy. Do you give the same service to cousins? I could do with someone like you in my corner, believing in me right or wrong.’
Izzy struggled with herself. ‘You’ve got it.’ But her smile was perfunctory.
Pepper pursed her lips. ‘You’re serious about this,’ she said on a note of discovery.
Izzy pushed her hand through her hair. ‘I knew there was something wrong,’ she said with difficulty. ‘When Jay Jay was here for the launch, I knew. There wasn’t time to talk. But I knew. We were so busy. Oh, I should have made time.’
‘Okay. You’ve got a feeling. I’ll buy that.’ Pepper was suddenly brisk. ‘So we find out where she is and you go talk to her.’
Izzy gave her a slightly watery smile. ‘Thanks. Only how? The agency won’t even talk to me.’
‘I’ll call in a couple of favours. I’ve been in this business a long time. And I’m the name behind the revolution in retail shopping,’ said Pepper with superb assurance. ‘There’s someone out there who will tell me where the face of Belinda is hiding out.’
And why? said Izzy. But she did not say it aloud.
Pepper did not overestimate her abilities. Within three hours she was pushing an address across the desk. It was a boutique hotel in an exclusive area of London.
‘Seems you’re right.’ There was an apologetic note in her voice.
Izzy stared at the address. ‘She’s staying at a hotel? But why? I don’t understand.’
Pepper said uncomfortably, ‘Well, she’s not alone.’
‘So?’ Izzy was impatient. ‘What am I? Victorian? I don’t care who she’s with. I just want to know she’s all right.’
Pepper drew a deep breath. ‘According to my information, she arrived hiding behind dark glasses and hasn’t been out of the suite since.’ Her voice was completely neutral. ‘She booked in under an assumed name, too.’
‘What?’
‘I guess she’s been on what Steven would call the bender of a lifetime,’ Pepper said gently. ‘She’s probably ashamed of herself. That’s why she hasn’t called.’
She made Izzy a cup of coffee in silent sympathy. And then, because she had done all she could, went back to work.
Stunned, Izzy drank the coffee and tried to get her head round this new, irresponsible Jemima. And when she couldn’t, she went back to work, too.
Izzy was nothing if not practical. If Jemima wanted help she would call. If she didn’t, then she was sorting out her own problems—whatever they were. She wasn’t a child. And Izzy wasn’t her keeper.
It still cost her a sleepless night.
And in the sleepless hours, to her dismay, the image of her alien lover came back to haunt her with might-have-been. Well, not the image, exactly. She still could not remember a thing about what he looked like. But there was a memory of strength, of wicked laughter, and the fatally alluring sensation that they belonged together.
‘I wish,’ said Izzy wryly.
In the dark she sat up in bed and hugged her knees. Pepper had her Steven to hold hands with when life went wrong. Jemima presumably had the man who hired luxurious hotel suites for her. Izzy had to stand on her own two flat feet and fight right back. And, just for a moment, she wanted a hand to hold and a shoulder to lean against more than anything in the world.
She would not have admitted it to anyone else. Hell, she would not even have admitted it to herself if it weren�
��t five o’clock in the morning and she weren’t in turmoil. But that momentary sense of belonging, of being part of a team, of knowing there was someone she could utterly, totally trust, had been bliss. Ever since she had tiptoed out of that unknown house she had been in mourning for the dream she’d left behind.
‘Tosh,’ Izzy had told herself robustly on an hourly basis ever since.
But now, alone in the small hours, and worried out of her mind about Jemima, there was nothing she wanted more than to have the dream back.
She took herself to task. That’s exactly why romance rots the brain. You don’t need a white knight on a charger to gallop up and take over. You need to get yourself sorted, she told herself hardily. And if that means making a fool of yourself and turning up uninvited at Jemima’s love-nest, so be it.
So that was the decision taken, it seemed. Izzy gave a great sigh, as if a burden had slid off her back. And fell asleep at last.
Of course it was not as easy as that. She had no trouble convincing Pepper that she needed to be out of the office for a couple of hours. But getting into Jemima’s suite was another thing altogether.
The hotel denied all knowledge of Jemima Dare. Izzy walked up and down outside three times in the morning sunshine, calling herself all sorts of a fool. Nobody else thought there was anything wrong. So why was she punishing herself like this?
She was hot. She was sweaty. She was wearing the wrong shoes. She could feel a fine new blister beginning to throb. The doorman at a nearby gaming club was starting to look at her suspiciously. And still she could not make up her mind to stop fussing and go home.
‘I need my head examined,’ she muttered.
She tried Jemima’s cellphone number again. Phone still switched off. Of course she might just be lost in the romantic idyll of the century. Only the hairs on the back of Izzy’s neck said that Jemima was isolated and in deep, deep trouble.
She could be wrong. She and Jemima were no longer as close as they had been as infants, as teenagers. It was all too possible that she was wrong. Please let me be wrong.
Izzy stopped trying to connect to Jemima’s number. The little telephone slipped in her wet hand. It was so hot she could barely think straight.
‘I need water,’ said Izzy aloud.
She bought a bottle from a street vendor and went into the park. Children were playing on the dry grass. Lovers wandered hand in hand, or sat and gazed silently into each other’s eyes. Dogs romped. Even men in business suits on their way to somewhere else seemed to slow down and look around at the trees with pleasure. Izzy felt like the only person in the world who wasn’t happy on this perfect day.
Was she being a fool after all? Had Jemima turned into just another celebrity, with no time for anyone who was not a celebrity, too? The idea hurt, but she had to be realistic. It was obviously what Pepper thought. Even her parents weren’t worried.
Izzy looked round the park and the voices in her head receded. Maybe everyone else was right. But she had loved Jemima from the moment she was born. She did not believe it.
She stood up. If I’m a fool, I’m a fool. But I’m going in there.
It was not easy. The hotel prided itself on its luxurious intimacy. Which meant that it was small and the desk staff knew everyone staying there. Especially as half of them were the sort of stars that made Jemima Dare’s new celebrity look pretty pale. But in an adventurous life Izzy had got herself into—and out of—stickier situations than infiltrating a luxury hotel at the tail end of the tourist season.
List your advantages, then use them. Izzy repeated the mantra that had got her out of the tightest spots in her life.
She pulled a face. Even now, some of those spots could give her nightmares if she let them. But she was here, and alive, and she knew she could get in to see Jemima if she put her mind to it.
Her advantages were—well, she was tall and athletic. She had the sort of devil-may-care smile that made people smile back at her in the street. Okay, she wasn’t in Jemima’s class, but she had the same silky red hair and long legs. Maybe she didn’t pack Jemima’s sexual punch, but people liked her. She had charmed her way out of more tight corners than Jemima had any idea of.
And then it hit her. The same silky red hair!
Izzy went as taut as a bowstring.
Right!
Rapidly she took stock. She knew she could imitate Jemima’s model-girl slinky walk. She’d done it at last year’s Christmas party and Jemima had laughed until her mascara ran. As for the make-up—well, Jemima might threaten her with make-up lessons, but Izzy had lived with Jemima long enough to learn the rudiments.
I just bet I can do that tremulous, tender mouth thing if I put my mind to it, she thought. All it takes is a lot of lippy—and a serious attitude adjustment, of course.
The reflection cheered her up. She certainly ought to be able to fool a hotel desk clerk into thinking she was Jemima returning to her room. Or she ought to if she kept moving and didn’t let her innate honesty trap her into giving herself away.
‘I can do this,’ said Izzy aloud.
Fifteen minutes later she was standing outside the hotel. After a visit to a make-up counter and the ladies’ room of a coffee shop, her hair seemed to have trebled in size, along with her eyelashes and her pouting lips.
She made one last attempt to call her sister. Same result. Izzy knew she had no choice. She either did it or gave up on Jemima. And Izzy was not a natural giver-upper.
‘Okay,’ she said, putting back her shoulders and going into catwalk motion. ‘You’re on.’
She wriggled the short sleeves of her cotton top off her shoulders. It was not much, but it was all she could think of to give her that little-girl-lost sexiness that was Jemima’s trademark. She fluffed up her hair. Think ethereal provocation, Isabel! You’re gentle with your victims, remember.
She snorted in derision. Pulled a face. Squared her shoulders. And launched herself into Operation Rescue Jay Jay.
It was easier than she had dared hope. The reception desk was dealing with a couple of guests who were clearly demanding all their concentration. A speeding porter said, ‘Good afternoon, Ms Blane,’ which meant that Jemima was staying here under the name of her manager—Basil Blane. Izzy was taken aback. She disliked Blane and had thought Jemima felt the same.
Still, no time to think about that now. Nobody else took any notice of her at all. Izzy was outside the suite in seconds. She knocked.
Nothing happened. She could not hear any sounds from inside the room. Izzy’s heart began to pound uncomfortably. She knocked again, their special knock this time, the one without which nobody had ever been admitted to their attic playroom. Still no answer. She was thinking—service entrance? Fire escape?—when there was a sudden crashing noise, as if someone had knocked over a load of furniture, and the door was flung open.
‘Izzy? Izzy?’
It was Jemima—not ethereal any longer, not even beautiful, but a starveling thing, with hollow cheeks and wild eyes. Her hands wouldn’t keep still and she was panting.
‘My God,’ said Izzy involuntarily, ‘what have you done to yourself?’
In only a week or so it seemed as if Jemima had lost half her body weight.
Izzy just stood there and stared, going colder and colder inside. Her instincts had been right—in spades. This was bad.
‘Jay Jay—’
Jemima gave a banshee wail and flung herself into Izzy’s stunned arms.
‘Oh, thank God. Thank God. Oh, Izzy, you’ve got to help me! I’m going out of my mind!’
It took Izzy about ten minutes to establish that Jemima was not exaggerating. And that things were a lot, lot worse than the worst she had imagined.
‘We’re getting out of here—now,’ she said firmly.
But Jemima—beautiful, confident, successful Jemima—huddled into the corner and wouldn’t get up from the floor. She sat on the deep pile luxury carpet as if it was a stone prison floor and whimpered that she couldn’t—she coul
dn’t. Basil would find her!
‘So?’ said Izzy, her fingers flexing. She quite looked forward to Basil finding them. Nobody did this to her sister and got away with it.
Jemima was white to the hairline. She put up a hand to ease her throat. ‘I’m under contract. He owns me. The Belinda people will have me thrown in prison. I’ll never work again.’ Jemima’s voice rose to hysteria pitch.
There was obviously no point in trying to reason with her.
So Izzy did what she always did when Jemima was in a state. Took the heat out of the situation, talked calmly, made her laugh a little. Eventually she coaxed her out of the corner. Then she sat on the couch with her and took hold of Jemima’s hand comfortingly.
‘Do you remember your first day in kindergarten?’ she said, teasing.
Jemima managed a watery smile. ‘You said there was nothing to be afraid of. People were nice really.’ Her smile died. ‘But they’re not, Izzy. Basil’s right. It’s a jungle out there. I need him to look after me.’ She started to shiver, in spite of the late summer sunshine.
Izzy wanted to kill. ‘Basil’s a shark,’ she said coldly. ‘You don’t need anyone to look after you but yourself.’
But Jemima just shivered harder.
In the end, Izzy switched tack and brought in reinforcements. Pepper’s Steven was the Master of an Oxford College.
‘You must know some seriously discreet doctors,’ she told him in a rapid phone call. ‘My sister is gibbering and she says it’s the end of her career if she moves from this hotel room. I don’t know what to do.’
Steven knew a lot of troubled students, as well as members of the medical profession.
‘What’s she taken?’ he said practically.
‘Taken?’ Izzy was shocked. ‘Jemima doesn’t do drugs. Never has.’
But the moment he said it, it made sense. She looked at her sister, with a cushion clutched protectively to her chest and her eyes darting all over the place, and suddenly everything fell into place.
The Accidental Mistress Page 6