Inns put the phone down and frowned. The boys were coming to town. How the hell did Freddie manage to make Dean’s list? Academically, he wasn’t anything special, but the guy knew how to swing things to his advantage. No doubt, he was screwing some clever girl who did his work for him. Freddy would do something like that. All’s fair in just about anything was his motto.
These boys had been both his ambition and torment. They’d always known Inns wanted to be a part of them and that had given them leverage. And now they were coming to visit. He couldn’t help feeling flattered. They hadn’t forgotten about him, although he’d been the example of everything that could go wrong if one didn’t know how to get things done—a cautionary tale.
For a moment, he felt overwhelmed and couldn’t think what he had to do to organize everything. Should he ask if they could stay here? It would be a bit cramped. Cramped might not be up to scratch. Maybe rent a house for the weekend. There was a chance it would get trashed during some drunken skirmish.
Seb and the boys did nothing by half measures, and they were here to party. But what kind of party? A nice, proper party, fitting for their station, or did they want to make it as sleazy as possible, dredging clubs for girls whose clothes came off at the merest nudge. Inns never quite could read what the right response would be.
Aggie would be no help; she hated these guys and guys like them. In fact, girls like her were supposed to disapprove. If they didn’t, there was something wrong with them. The old double standard was alive and kicking. Obviously, he couldn’t bring Esme anywhere near them. They would see her for what she was in a minute flat.
They didn’t give him a lot of notice either and he needed to sort out accommodation quickly. How the hell did one rent a house? Easily: delegate to father’s secretary.
Phyllis called back in the afternoon and said she had organised a place, and that he had the sea view he had requested. It could cost a fortune, but then Inns hadn’t really spent any of the money his parents had put into his bank account.
*
The airport was busy and Inns waited while the BA flight from London was processing. Cedric appeared first, looking smart in a casual suit jacket. Cedric did look a bit more urban than Inns did. Maybe Esme was right that his dress sense needed a bit of sprucing up. Not to a ridiculous degree like some of the guys here on the coast, but more like Cedric.
“Tadpole,” Cedric said and gave him a manly, guarded embrace. He ran his hand through his long, blond hair. “How’s it living amongst the heathens.”
“Fucking hot,” Inns said and Cedric laughed. Freddy and Seb appeared, followed by Anders. They greeted him like friends and Inns felt a little overwhelmed. Absence apparently made the heart grow fonder with these guys. At school, he had always been that bit less than, never quite good enough, but then he’d also been the one who could never talk to girls or manage to charm anyone. Seb was the real charmer, particularly with the older generation. Cedric did best with the girls.
They followed him to his car and he drove them down the coast to Marbella. The boys talked, discussing who they’d seen around lately, who they’d screwed and who’d been caught doing what. Inns listened.
“So what have you been up to?” Cedric asked him and they all quietened.
“Keeping busy,” Inns answered.
“There’s enough skirt around here to keep a man busy,” Cedric commented while looking out the window.
Inns smiled. “That too,” he said suggestively without inviting further comment.
“The head of the admission board is coming to a shooting party dad’s having next week,” Seb said and through the mirror, Inns could see that he was being addressed. “Maybe you should come along, plead your case. Surely they can’t punish you forever. You never were much good at talking yourself out of anything, but you really need to try harder.”
Could that really work, Inns wondered. He’d been pulling in some excellent marks here. Perhaps enough to tip the balance in his favour with the admissions board. “Something to think about,” he admitted.
“He’s known my dad since school,” Seb continued in his lazy drawl. “Might put in a good word for you if you ask him to.”
Inns hated the idea of going cap in hand to ask someone to help him, but it would be worth it if he could undo this mountain of shit he’d managed to heap on himself. If all of it could be overwritten, it would be worth crawling naked on his knees.
Maybe Seb calling him out of the blue had been a stroke of luck. Or maybe Seb had orchestrated this to get him back to where he belonged. It would be an extraordinary effort if he had, and meant the boys were better friends than they pretended to be. If it worked, he would owe Seb. No doubt, he would collect at some point. Seb’s favours always came with strings.
Still mulling over this development, he pulled into the driveway of the rented house. It was large and monolithic white. It looked like Phyllis hadn’t embarrassed him. With Aggie dragging him around, he knew some of the better restaurants and clubs, as well. He would take them to the best and then they could decide what they wanted to do after. There were some more sedate bars with high cover charges, or they might even prefer the seedy clubs where the unwashed masses congregated.
Chapter 47
The sea was bright blue outside the large sliding doors of Roan’s new hotel room. The sun was bright and anything white practically glowed. The hotel was right on the beach front, surrounded by lush, tropical gardens. He wasn’t exactly sure why he’d chosen this place. Probably because it had appeared in front of him.
The suite was nice, though. He had all the amenities he needed and the Internet was decent. More often than not, he used room service rather than going out on his own. Around here, he might not be accosted, but people always noticed him, always stared. He could feel their eyes on him as he sat and ate in restaurants. With another person, it wasn’t so noticeable.
His agent hadn’t understood why he hadn’t packed up and headed back to LA. What the hell was he waiting for, he’d asked. The reason he was here hadn’t changed. He might not have come if it hadn’t been for Cheyenne urging him here specifically. In fact, he’d never heard of Marbella before, but now he was here, and he was still trying to have a life.
His life had become surprisingly small, though. It was as if he’d stripped away all the bullshit and found that his life was actually tiny. It was him, this tiny hotel room he lived in, and Cheryl. He had one friend. That would be very sad if it wasn’t for how pathetic it was. How could he be so successful and be such an utter failure? But his acquaintances back in LA were just that. They were industry people doing their thing. When their interests aligned, it was all well and good, but then they split apart and chased their own rainbows. Some of the other actors were technically classified as friends, but it wasn’t like he could call them up and hang. They were working, just like he had been.
Now his only friend was an unemployed, single mum hairdresser. There was a decent script in there somewhere. But he did enjoy hanging out with Cheryl. As he got to know her better, he enjoyed her dry humour and her take on the world. Cheryl saw beauty everywhere. She would point out colours and think they were fantastic. She also knew the inner workings of women’s minds. Probably from spending every day talking to her clients. And at the same time, didn’t care about the people around her. It was all or nothing with her. Either deep reflection or she was off in her own world.
That someone had tried to hurt her was a crime. She really didn’t deserve it. There wasn’t any nastiness in her at all, although she was guarded. Her openness had been taken advantage of. Her ex sounded like a total shit. Lauren would never have stood for being treated like that. Lauren had been tougher than Cheryl was. When he’d known her, Lauren had had moxy.
Old memories returned. He’d lost his virginity to Lauren, and it had been a fumbling, nerve wracking mess the first time. He smiled at the memory. For a while, they had been a team, but then they’d grown up. Roan had the looks, and it turned out, the acting
ability, to make the small town they came from too small for him. Lauren had gone to the state university to do business administration and they’d just walked away from each other and their youthful romance.
After that, success had become like a drug, and with success came every vice possible on offer. Until the day it had all stopped meaning anything. He’d never been into drugs, but he’d found himself considering it because he’d been so bored. That was when he’d realised something was very wrong, and he was on a path where he saw nothing ahead of him. No future, but a decent past. Everything had been so exciting back then, and he’d been up for taking on the whole world.
Looking down on the laptop on the coffee table, he typed in Lauren’s name into the search engine and waited to see what came back. Up came photos of her. Still recognisable, but older. Lauren was pretty more than beautiful. She was the perfect girl-next-door. Technically, a couple of houses over, in his case.
Her hair was a neat bob and she looked both professional and a little mumish. Lauren had grown up in his absence. These pictures were of a woman when he’d known a girl. That attitude was still there, though, that said: you’re going to get your arse handed to you if you do something she doesn’t like. He knew she had a kid and she looked like it.
Long lost emotions prickled at him. He’d loved this girl once, then he’d left and she’d loved someone else. He hoped she was happy. By the looks of it, she had everything she wanted—the husband, the family, a decent house and job. She even had a dog.
There was a link to her Facebook page and he clicked through. Only a few photos were showing, the rest were locked. They weren’t friends and they hadn’t been for a long time. As a celebrity, Roan’s Facebook account had never been his own to manage, so he couldn’t even friend her. Would he want to, though, or would he be raking up lots of old muck?
Lauren’s smiling face was looking out at him, unblinking and unwavering. She looked happy, fulfilled. There was another tab and he clicked on it. It showed her status and it said: Divorced. Roan’s breath froze. Lauren was divorced? When had this happened? Everything had been so perfect for her, but it hadn’t lasted. Lauren was single?
Goose bumps rose up Roan’s arms. Lauren wasn’t happily married—out of reach. With too much force, Roan closed the laptop and then regretted it because her smiling face would pop up again the next time he opened it. It felt like something that had been completely locked in the past was suddenly not at all what it seemed.
Laying down sideways on the couch, he placed his ankles on the arm rest and tried to work through his own reaction. He hoped she wasn’t unhappy, but then Lauren moved on. She wasn’t one to dwell on things that went wrong; she cut her losses. Exactly like she had done with him.
Roan felt a twinge of guilt. Lauren had tried to keep in touch—he hadn’t bothered, thinking himself too busy to keep up with ghosts from his past. Lauren had had no place in his world and with his ambition. Eventually, her emails had stopped. Alright, he’d been a bit of an arsehole about it.
Chapter 48
Inns had disappeared back to the UK for some reason. It had come a bit out of the blue, but Esme guessed that was his business. He hadn’t exactly said how long he would be, and it was strange going to class without him. She was so used to him being there, to them hanging out.
It might be misleading to keep insisting that they weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, because they acted like it, and she’d managed to get here without going through the typically obligatory psycho stage. God, she missed him. But the fact that he’d just popped off to the UK without a word might prove that they weren’t.
Within their little cocoon, he was a very sweet guy—generous and giving. He liked kissing, and he was funny, even in his abrasiveness. But as soon as the outer world crept in, it was as if his hackles rose, as though he was constantly on the defensive. A harder edge emerged and he became scathing to just about everyone. The transformation was really noticeable.
She could fully understand how no one would see the part of him that she did. It took a lot of digging to get there. Still, there were parts of himself that he wouldn’t show her, wouldn’t discuss. Inns was a guy with issues. There was no doubt about it.
What was true was that she spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about him, from his quirks to that way he sometimes looked lost when he didn’t think anyone was looking. There was so much more to him than the prickly package.
But with him out of town, it might be time to spend time with her friends, whom she had more or less neglected since things had started with Inns. No change there then. As soon as she got a boyfriend, she disappeared out of everyone else’s lives. He wasn’t her boyfriend, she told herself, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to fully stand by the statement anymore. Would it be so bad if he were? She physically ached for him. Alright, so she had a prickly, unpleasant boyfriend that no one liked, but they got on like a house on fire. She quite liked the idea that she saw things in him no one else did.
“Hi, Clara,” Esme said as she rang the first person she’d been meaning to catch up with. “Want to do lunch later?”
“Sure. I’m meeting with Rashida, so why don’t we make a thing of it?”
“Sounds good. Text me where, okay? Also, before I let you go. Did you ever hear that rumour about that hairdresser located in Dad’s building?”
“Some woman trawling for a rich husband? Passingly. Why?”
“I’m just wonder who you heard it from.”
Clara had to think for a moment. “I think Mum and Alicia Hernvey were talking about it.”
“Oh, cheers. I’ll see you guys around lunch. Text me.” Esme hung up.
Alicia Hernvey, Esme thought. One of the gossips. Esme worked through her contact list before she found the number from a call months back. A quick chat and she learned where Alicia had heard it from. It was like the who’s who of the Marbella gossips. But finally, she reached a name that surprised her. Bianca.
Working through another rumour, it worked back to the same person. It seemed these rumours were originating from Bianca. A bad feeling crept up Esme’s spine as she put the phone down on her bed. She’d liked Bianca; had thought she’d be good for Dad, but why would she start rumours about this random person who no one had really seen hide nor hair from?
A noise downstairs told her someone was in the house. Maybe Inns was back. These days, he tended to walk in as he knew the keycode to the gate.
Esme bounded out of bed and rushed to the railing of the mezzanine only to see Felix downstairs. Disappointment flared in her. “What are you doing here?” Felix was never around these days. He officially didn’t live here anymore.
“I need something,” he said as he walked up the stairs and into his room. Esme followed and sat down on his bed, while Felix rifled through his closet, eventually pulling out a snowboard.
“You’re going skiing?”
“Yep,” he said, gathering his scattered gear. “Aspen.”
“That’s far. There are closer mountains.”
“Shania’s feeling nostalgic.”
“Does she even know how to ski?” As far as Esme knew, Shania was from the desert.
“We compromised.”
“Father is never going to let you take the plane across the Atlantic.”
“I know that,” Felix said as if she was annoying him. Felix hated flying commercial. Shania must have asked him at a particularly vulnerable point in bed to get him to agree to go to America.
“Do you know anything about some hairdresser that works in Dad’s building?”
Felix froze and looked at her. “She doesn’t work there anymore. She’s gone bust.”
“Oh.” Someone had mentioned something to that effect during her sleuthing. “Who is she and why does everyone seem to know who she is?”
“I don’t know if anyone does, but Dad’s got a full-blown hard-on for her.”
Ewh, on the terminology when talking about dad. But also a sentiment that soun
ded ludicrous to Esme’s ears. “Dad’s got a crush on a hairdresser? At some point in this conversation, I am going to be accused of being gullible.”
“He built her a salon in his building,” Felix said and stopped to light a cigarette.
“Yuck. I thought you stopped.”
“Mostly.” The acrid smoke blew into the room.
“Seriously. Open a window.”
He complied. “Dad has a total hard-on for this woman, but he won’t do anything about it.”
“Why not?”
“Would you if you were in love with a hairdresser?”
She was just about to say she was in love with Inns Whiting-Cross, which was probably not something she wanted to get into with her brother. “He did ask me to find out about these rumours that have been circulating about her.”
“What’s the point? The salon is gone and sweet Cheryl is gone, too. She’s not actually sweet.”
“You’ve met her?”
“She cut my hair once, plus it’s hard not to notice that Dad is slyly stalking her.”
Esme had noticed no such thing. There was something very uncomfortable in all this. “So what I found,” Esme continued, “is that the rumours all seem to originate with Bianca.”
Felix stopped and stared at her, then laughed. “Guess she’d picked up on his little obsession, too. Cleared that problem away, didn’t she? Precious.”
“So what do I tell Dad?”
“The truth is always the most fun.”
Esme bit her lips together. If what Felix what said was true and Dad really had a thing for this woman, how was he going to feel about his current chasing her away? Badness all around. It was also something really sneaky for Bianca to do. Talk about running off the competition. There was a good chance Dad was going to hit the roof.
Chapter 49
The entrance to the restaurant was boarded by lush, colourful plants, and Cheryl had to watch that her heels didn’t stick into the cracks in the wooden walkway. It was a nice restaurant, but she probably wouldn’t have gone here unless it was for Roan and his plan to rehabilitate her reputation. She wouldn’t be doing this if he wasn’t so keen on helping her. Not that she at all minded spending time with Roan. He was a sweet man, so very different from the image projected of him.
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