‘All this is why you’re so cagey about your private life,’ she said.
He nodded.
‘I don’t want Helen’s problems dredged up.’
His sense of responsibility for his sister touched Evie deeply. Who did she have in her life that felt that way about her? She couldn’t help being drawn to that side of him.
‘The last thing Helen needs is for all this to be made public. She’s got her life back on track. She’s going to college now. So I keep my private life well away from the TV stuff.’
‘Do I count as TV stuff?’ she said then.
‘You’re kind of becoming a bit of a grey area.’ She was relieved to see a smile touch his lips. ‘I kind of thought you’d be running for the hills.’
She smiled at him.
‘I’m not going anywhere. Not until tomorrow. I’m flying from Inverness. I’ll be out of your hair before you know it.’
‘I quite like you in my hair,’ he said softly.
ELEVEN
Three weeks now since the weekend in the Highlands, during which the TV show had aired to a fantastic reception. Any residual fear that Jack’s interest in her would diminish in direct proportion to their growing time apart had turned out to be unfounded. His work commitments had rocketed since the roll-out of the first kids’ courses, but still he texted when he said he would, he phoned when he said he would. He was always on time when he visited. In that he really did remind her of the men in her family—that military organisation that became so ingrained that it was a part of their personality.
In Jack she found she liked it. She found herself relying on him now because she knew she could.
There was just the secrecy thing.
She’d agreed with him right away that it was best to keep a low profile for now. How could she disagree after what he’d confided in her about Helen? The media interest in the joint show had led to scrutiny of them both and he refused to do anything that might drag his sister and her problems into the limelight.
But now the show had aired and his desire to keep their—relationship?—whatever this was under wraps showed no sign of declining. While his explanation for it made perfect sense there was still a prickling insecurity deep inside her that his reluctance to shout it from the rooftops had more to do with her than it did Helen. His sister’s overdose was a few years ago. She was settled now, as was his mother, the newsworthiness of their past surely diminished through the passage of time. The thought nagged at her, deep inside. Was it instead just a handy excuse to stop things between them getting too full-on?
* * *
Now he’d spent a third night in as many weeks at her Chelsea flat. They’d had food delivered rather than go out, making the most of each other’s company. Jack had never felt so settled. The ability to offload without judgement, to share his work plans with someone instead of working all hours and going home to his own company, was great. The sense of isolation brought on by keeping everything to himself had been so acute that he hadn’t realised how alone he was until now. She made him talk things over. She was interested in him.
Things were good.
The phone rang in the hallway and she padded out across the bare wood floor to pick up.
Her shoulders sagged visibly and he watched from the kitchen as she turned away from him, one hand creeping upwards to sink itself into her hair. She walked away from him. Far enough to be out of listening range, not that he needed to hear what was being said to see that she was uncomfortable. Her answers were short. The entire conversation lasted only a minute or two and then she put the phone down on the table and crossed the room back to him, her eyes clouded, gnawing at her thumbnail.
‘Who was that?’
She shook her head lightly and offered him a smile.
‘My father.’
He followed her into the sitting room. She sat down on the oatmeal sofa, her expression thoughtful.
‘Don’t tell me,’ he joked, holding up a hand. ‘You want to introduce me.’
‘He called to tell me he’ll be staying in the house in France for the next three weeks,’ she said as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘A “nice escape from the tabloid media”, he called it. Had to get that dig in, of course. He wanted to make sure I knew he was there in case I tip up unexpectedly and we’re forced to do anything so off the wall as actually spend time in the same house together.’
She spoke with pure sarcasm but he knew her well enough by now to pick up on the tics. The way she folded her arms across her body, that tight expression on her face that gave nothing away. He moved to sit next to her, put his arm around her and tugged her against him. The dark pink sofa cushions were sinkably soft. A huge flatscreen TV hung on the opposite wall. She hadn’t been joking about liking a box set, and so far she’d seemed happy to stay at home with him, cooking or having takeout. Party girl really had been a persona she put on when she left the flat.
‘Ah, well, meeting your girlfriend’s father isn’t something you rush to do as a bloke,’ he said. ‘There’s this kind of unspoken power-struggle thing with girlfriends’ fathers. You know, no one is ever good enough for their little girl and all that.’
She shook her head, a wry smile touching her lips.
‘You’re mistaking my father for someone who gives a toss.’ She leaned back on the sofa and looked at him. ‘He’d like you. You’ve got that military thing going on that all the men in my family have. And he likes your show.’ She shrugged. ‘Although you’ve probably ruined that by having me on it.’
‘Has it always been this tense between you?’ he asked carefully. ‘I remember you mentioned he wasn’t around much when you were at school.’
‘He was around when I got into trouble,’ she said.
‘What about when you were a kid though, the camping holidays you told me about?’
‘That was different. My mum was around back then.’ She leaned back on the sofa and looked up at the ceiling. ‘It’s like you could draw a line in the sand. Split up everything before and after that point.’
He thought briefly of his own mother, bringing him and Helen up by herself, doing whatever it took to keep things going.
‘What was she like?’
She thought it over.
‘She was hands-on in a way my father’s never managed to be. She had Will and me going to the village school, mixing with local kids, playing outdoors. Family holidays. My father’s army leave was packed with day trips she’d organised, fun things to do.’ She smiled at him briefly and then looked down at her hands. ‘She was killed in a car accident. All very sudden and unexpected. Immediately my father slid the whole lot of us into stiff-upper-lip army mode. Our lives were reorganised, new schools, nannies. Grieving never really made it into the process. Perhaps he thought it might make Will and me feel secure, but the change was so radical we were both gobsmacked by it. It took me years to feel even remotely settled anywhere.’
‘Maybe that was the only way he knew of dealing with it,’ Jack said. ‘Not that I’m making excuses for him, but when you’ve been in the army organisation and discipline can become so ingrained that it’s hard to do anything on an emotional level. It’s all about order. Maybe it was his way of keeping control.’
She seemed to ponder that for a moment.
‘There was more to it than that,’ she said. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘In what way?’
She looked at him carefully as if she was debating what to say.
‘When I was fourteen he came to my school to sort out some scrape or other I’d got into,’ she said. ‘I’d had to act up for him to even acknowledge I was alive. I wonder sometimes if I hadn’t made him so angry whether he’d ever have told me.’
‘Told you what?’ She wasn’t making any sense.
She swallowed hard enough for him to hear
the click in her throat.
‘He isn’t my real father,’ she said.
He stared at her.
It was the first time she’d said it out loud. Now it was out there it was as if she couldn’t stop. She ran a distracted hand through her hair.
‘I’m not a real Staverton-Lynch. I don’t know masses of details. He didn’t tell me much and I’ve no one else I can ask. My mother and father were childhood friends, in touch throughout school and university. At some point my mother drifted into a bad relationship and when she found she was pregnant the guy just left her. My father was there for her. He supported her through it.’ She glanced up at him. ‘And he claimed the baby—me—as his own.’
His face was a picture.
‘This is unbelievable,’ he said.
‘I know. You should try being part of it,’ she said.
‘And he treated you as his child?’
She nodded.
‘While my mum was alive, yes. But after she died it became clear that he did that for her sake, not because he really thought of me like that. Looking back, I knew something was different from the moment she’d gone. He was different with me straight away, withdrawn, distant.’ She let her mind drift back down the years. The memory made her throat constrict and she bit her lip hard. ‘I just couldn’t fathom what had changed. I spent years trying to get his attention. Any attention would have done, just for him to look at me again the way he used to.’ She shrugged. ‘He never did, of course, because his regard for me was completely dependent on my mum being there. He did it for her, not for me. That day at the school he told me he’d continue to support me for my mother’s sake. I would remain a Staverton-Lynch and the whole thing would be confidential.’ She leaned forward and touched his arm urgently. ‘No one knows about this, Jack. You mustn’t tell anyone. Even my brother isn’t aware of it.’
He let out a long breath.
‘What about your real father?’
The familiar hard tightening in her chest as she thought of him.
‘He walked away from my mother and me before I was born and he’s never been in touch since,’ she said. ‘Whatever I might think about John Staverton-Lynch, we both loved my mother. We still do. That’s the one thing we really have in common. What he does, even now, he does for her, and I don’t want to mess with that.’ She paused. ‘I would like to be loved like that.’
The ache in her voice, ill-hidden, tore at Jack’s heart.
‘When Miss Knightsbridge took off I couldn’t believe how nice people were to me all of a sudden. How interested.’ She smiled a little. ‘That all seems so shallow now, the wanting-public-approval thing, but for a while there I was really carried away by it. I bought into it so much that I ended up being taken in by men who were never really interested in me at all. Not until you, anyway.’
His innate protectiveness kicked in and he slipped an arm around her and tugged her against him. She leaned into his embrace. All that bravado and in-your-face attitude had been a protective barrier between her and the rest of the world, and she’d chosen to let him see past it. He was touched.
‘That girl on screen, the one I first met in the production office that day, she’s two-dimensional,’ he said into her hair. ‘Some mad reflection of how you think people want to see you. Why the hell should you care so much what people think about you?’
‘I know I shouldn’t. My rational mind tells me that. I’m not a complete idiot. But everything that’s happened to me tells me otherwise. Oh, I was always well looked after. I still am—I mean, look at this place.’ She waved a hand around her to take in the glossy flat. ‘But in terms of affection, of being loved or actually even liked—that was dependent on my mother being here.’
She leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees, her hands raking back into her blonde hair. He slid from the sofa next to her to kneel on the floor and peel her hands gently from her face.
‘You are lovely,’ he said. ‘You. Without reference to anyone else, real or imagined, past or present.’
She looked sideways up at him and gave him a half-grin.
‘I’ve never met anyone who cared so much what other people thought of them,’ he said. ‘And fitting in is a big deal for anyone. Hell, I threw away my teens on exactly that. But don’t let it stifle who you really are. You don’t need approval from the world or the media or me or anyone else.’
He slid his palms against her cheeks, his fingers raking gently back into her hair, and tipped her face to meet his so he could press the point with his eyes. She covered his hands with her own and moved in to kiss him, wrapping her arms around his neck, pushing him backwards until he was on his back with the soft rug beneath him.
He got her. The sensation of relying on someone, of knowing that she had his support, made her feel as if she could conquer the world without any pretence. Being herself was good enough for him. Did he have any idea what that meant to her?
Her every movement was deliberately slow. A tender intimacy that had been altogether missing from any encounters Jack had had with women before.
He realised now that this wasn’t anything so easy to categorise as an ‘encounter’, which meant it was equally impossible to write off as anything similarly throwaway. Not a fling. Not a one-night stand. He didn’t want it to end. He was greedy to share not just time with her, not just a bed, but what was going on in her mind, the highs and lows.
The revelation of how in deep he really was took his breath away. There was a sliver of his mind that told him to run for the hills, a voice that had held great clout with him for the longest time. With her he had the ability to tune it out.
As she slowly undressed him and tugged him to the thick rug on the floor, as she knelt deliciously naked astride him, all the time her blue eyes fixed on his, one small hand pressed lightly on his chest. As she ground her hips against him, sometimes circling, sometimes moving up and down in a slow deliberate rhythm, he saw how much she’d come to mean to him and instead of denying himself that pleasure, not just their physical but their emotional connection, he embraced every second of it.
* * *
‘I’m sorry, I must have heard you wrong.’
There was a loud clatter as Chester let his latte cup fall into its saucer. He leaned forward across the table as customers rubbernecked across the smart café, incredulous eyebrows practically disappearing into his quiff hairstyle.
‘For a moment there I thought you suggested delaying signing up for a second series of Miss Knightsbridge.’ He cackled madly. ‘Which of course you couldn’t have, because that would be career suicide.’
Evie took a nervous sip of her own coffee.
‘I’m not saying I won’t sign, I’m just asking you, as my agent—’ she emphasised that last part in the hope that it might remind Chester exactly who was paying whom here ‘—to negotiate a little bit more time before I do.’ She took a calming breath. ‘I have a few issues I need to think over first.’
Like exactly whether she could stomach being someone else again for months of filming after the freedom of these last few weeks with Jack. Not to mention the impact that being in the public eye, which had seemed so important to her a month or so ago, would have on this whatever-this-was that was happening between them.
‘What the hell is there to think over? You’re hardly in a position to negotiate after your libellous comment went public.’ He held up a hand as she opened her mouth to butt in. ‘OK, so you’ve smoothed that over with the joint survival show and that’s exactly why you sign up now, while the offer’s on the table, while Purple Productions are still basking in the success of the one-off show. Just what the hell are these few issues that are so damn important?’
She shrugged and toyed with her coffee cup.
‘I’ve been seeing rather a lot of Jack Trent,’ she said quietly. She glanced up at Chester.
‘We’ve become quite close since we filmed the TV show.’
Chester’s eyes widened and his face broke into an enormous grin as if he’d just unwrapped an amazing present. He held up a hand.
‘Stop. Backtrack a moment there. You mean to tell me you and Jack Trent are an item?’
She shrugged.
‘Kinda.’
There was a scrape as Chester pushed his chair back and joined her on the sofa opposite. He put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed.
‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘Because Jack doesn’t do publicity. He’s about the nearest thing you can get to a recluse while still appearing on TV. I’m worried that the interest from Miss Knightsbridge will drag his private life into the spotlight.’
These last few weeks had been so delicious and she wanted that feeling to stay on. Wanted Jack to know she was prepared to make compromises for the sake of their relationship. And the idea of winding down on some of the crazy Miss K publicity was suddenly very appealing to her too. The more time she spent being herself with Jack out of the spotlight, the harder it felt to put on that front.
He held up his hands.
‘Enough said. I’ve navigated my way through the tricky waters of the media for hundreds of clients and I can do the same for you and Jack.’
‘Really?’
He patted her hand.
‘Sweetie, have I ever let you down? You know you can trust me to do whatever’s best for your career. Now, let’s get another coffee over here and you can tell me all about it.’
He snapped his fingers for the waitress’s attention.
* * *
Evie perched on the orange sofa as a make-up artist dashed on set and dusted her face with a huge powder brush. She tried not to notice that the girl took far longer than was necessary to do the same to Jack, who might have been sitting next to her but was keeping a gap between them that said platonic. His face was a tense mask. The TV show logo—Hot Breakfast, in gaudy sunshine-orange letters—was everywhere she looked, and they’d be on air in a matter of minutes.
Man vs. Socialite Page 14