Tortured Rake

by Sarah Morgan

  ‘That’s great.’ And it was. But what really warmed her was how involved he’d become. Far from shutting himself off, he’d opened himself up.

  ‘He’s emailed me. Gabriela let him use the connection from her office.’ His smile was tinged with self-mockery. ‘I’m going to regret that one. Never given my private email to a snotty kid before. Next thing, he’s going to want to come and stay with me in LA.’ But there was satisfaction in his voice and a smile on his lips as he tapped a reply.

  Katie blinked back the tears that stung her eyes. ‘I think that would be great.’

  Nathaniel turned his head slowly and held her gaze. ‘I’m glad I got involved. I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for you.’ He leaned forward and kissed her. They’d kissed so many times over the past two weeks, and yet this kiss was different. She felt the difference. And so did he.

  Lifting his head, he frowned. ‘Katie—’

  She waited, her heart in her mouth. She had no idea what he wanted to say but she felt the tension and the shift in the atmosphere.

  ‘Five minutes to landing.’ The captain’s voice filled the cabin and Nathaniel pulled back from her, his eyes blank.

  ‘Nothing. We’ve arrived. Welcome to Los Angeles.’

  They walked off the plane straight into a heaving crowd of reporters and photographers.

  ‘Nathaniel? Is it true you saw your brother Jacob on your opening night in London?’

  ‘Do you have any comment about why you walked off the stage?’

  ‘Have you spoken to him since that night?’

  Shocked by the relentless battering by the press, Katie gripped his hand, horrified that all the things he hated talking about were being flung out there for public consumption. To her it seemed monumentally insensitive and cruel and she wanted to shout at them to leave him alone but she knew that wouldn’t help. They were like a pack of hungry hyenas converging on a juicy carcass. They showed respect for neither privacy nor personal space and she found the crowd and the cameras both threatening and intimidating.

  The confidence she’d found on the island evaporated and suddenly she wanted to shrink into the background again.

  In contrast, Nathaniel was cool and confident, striding through the ranks of photographers with a bored smile that was absolutely in character with his public persona. The man she’d spent the past two weeks with had vanished and he was every inch the remote, supersuccessful movie star.

  ‘I have nothing to say about my private life,’ he drawled, ‘but if you want to talk about Alpha Man, then contact one of my team.’

  ‘Do you blame Jacob for murdering your father?’

  Nathaniel didn’t break stride, nor did he give any indication that he’d heard, but Katie thought that he gripped her hand a little tighter.

  ‘Do you think Alpha Man will win the Sapphire for Best Movie, Nathaniel?’

  ‘Katie, how does it feel to have trapped the wealthiest movie star in the world? Is he paying off your debts?’

  Before she had time to recover from the shock, Nathaniel sprang like a leopard trapping its prey. Lithe and lethal, he ploughed through the front row and grabbed the journalist by the front of his shirt, dragging him forward. ‘She did not “trap” me,’ he growled, ‘and what I do with my money is none of your business.’

  Frozen with shock, Katie closed her hand over his arm and tugged. ‘Let him go. He isn’t worth it.’

  For a moment she thought he hadn’t heard her, and then he released the journalist and the man staggered. His face was white and he looked shaken.

  ‘Don’t ever speak to her like that again or I’ll rip your throat out.’ Nathaniel wrapped a protective arm round Katie. ‘Now leave us alone.’

  Touched by his violent defence of her, Katie suddenly wished the journalists would just vanish. At that moment she felt closer to him than she ever had, and when he lowered his head to kiss her in blatant disregard of the cameras, she felt happiness brim over.

  Through the mists of pleasure and the explosion of flashbulbs she heard a voice—a clear, hard voice—shout from the back of the crowd. ‘What about Carrie? Isn’t it time you talked about Carrie?’

  Because her mouth was pressed against his, she felt the change, felt the ripples of tension as he slowly lifted his head.

  Anxious murmurings spread across the crowd from journalists worried that they’d missed an important story. People turned to one another, seeking enlightenment as to who ‘Carrie’ was.

  The journalist who had spoken pushed to the front. She was an icy blonde who had ruthless ambition stamped over every centimetre of her carefully made-up face. Behind her was a cameraman determined not to miss a shot. ‘Must have been a hell of a childhood, Nathaniel.’

  Confused, Katie glanced at the woman and then back at Nathaniel. His face was the colour of the palest marble.

  ‘My childhood was fine.’

  ‘Really?’ It was obvious that the journalist wasn’t going to let it go. ‘If I knew my mother tried to drown me when I was a baby, I don’t think I’d be fine.’

  His mother? Katie frowned, wondering how the woman could have got the story so wrong. It wasn’t his mother who had tried to drown him, it was his father. She waited for Nathaniel to correct the woman but he stood silent, the black fury in his eyes sending an uneasy silence across the crowd of journalists.

  The blonde took a step backwards but refused to abandon her story. ‘You’ve been clever. You put out the story that your mother left, so none of us bothered looking. Why didn’t you just tell people she had a complete breakdown and she’s been in a psychiatric hospital ever since? You and your brother Sebastian should be proud that you used some of your many millions to build her a pretty cottage in the grounds so she thinks she’s living a normal life. Why do you keep her a secret, Nathaniel? Are you afraid that if people find out about your mother, it will ruin your perfect movie-star image?’

  Carrie was his mother?

  She was in a psychiatric hospital?

  Katie’s first impulse was to leap to his defence and deny it, but one look at Nathaniel’s white face and traumatised expression told her that the woman was telling the truth.

  And this time he didn’t attack. He didn’t move. It was as if he’d been felled at the knees.

  And the warmth inside Katie melted in an instant. His mother, she thought numbly. Hauling back the sick disappointment that he hadn’t told her, she focused on the blonde journalist. The woman’s smile said everything. She knew she’d hit the jackpot.

  Pushing her own pain aside, driven by a depth of anger she’d never known before, Katie stepped forward. ‘How dare you use someone’s personal life for cheap entertainment and to make a name for yourself. Shame on you.’ Her voice shook and she stared at the woman with contempt. ‘Shame on you.’

  Shaking with anger, Katie stepped backwards just as six bulky men arrived and surrounded them.

  ‘You’re late,’ Nathaniel said flatly, and the largest of the men gave him an apologetic look.

  ‘Terrible traffic in downtown LA, boss. Sorry.’

  They were ushered out to a waiting limousine and Katie collapsed into the luxurious interior. The warmth she’d felt when he’d leapt to her defence had seeped away through the stab wounds made by this latest discovery. Why hadn’t he told her?

  She glanced across at him but he sat in silence, withdrawn and remote. The Nathaniel she’d got to know on the island and in Rio—the real Nathaniel—was gone. Katie pushed aside her own pain. They’d only known each other for two weeks, she reasoned. For a man like him, that wasn’t long enough to establish real trust. She needed to be patient. ‘I’m sorry. She had no right to say all those things. How did she find out?’

  Nathaniel tipped his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. ‘The surprise isn’t that she found out, but that it took everyone so long. Sebastian and I have been waiting for this for years. We tried to keep the secret—whenever there is press coverage about my father, it affe
cts Carrie badly. She takes a lot of medication, but even with that, it isn’t good.’

  He didn’t talk about it because he was trying to protect his mother. ‘Why do you call her Carrie?’

  ‘Because that’s how I think of her. I stopped thinking of her as my mother a long time ago. She wasn’t really capable of being a mother. She was too ill.’

  ‘Is it true that you built her a cottage?’

  ‘Sebastian and I wanted her to have as normal a life as possible. It’s easier to keep her condition stable when she isn’t around strangers. She lives in her own little world. Most of the time she’s happy enough. She has full-time carers who she sees as family.’

  ‘And what about you? Her real family?’

  ‘I see her whenever I’m in England. But she doesn’t recognise me. Or Sebastian.’ Nathaniel’s hands curled into fists. ‘Do you know the really frustrating thing? She talks about me all the time. “My son Nathaniel, famous Hollywood movie star …” But she doesn’t actually know it’s me. She calls Sebastian “Nathaniel” but when I visit her, she can’t seem to make the connection. Once she even asked me if I knew her son Nathaniel.’

  Thinking about his bleak, loveless childhood brought a lump to her throat.

  He’d learned to survive alone.

  She slid along the seat and put her arms round him but he was rigid and unresponsive.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Nathaniel, you’re not fine!’

  ‘It’s how it is. It’s how it’s always been. I need to warn the clinic.’ Shrugging her away, he reached for his phone. ‘They need to keep her away from newspapers and television. It could have a serious impact on her emotional stability. And then I need to increase security so those jackals can’t get anywhere near her because she associates gangs of journalists with her disastrous marriage to my father. And the LA press don’t have anything on the British tabloids.’

  Katie sat there, helpless, trying not to feel hurt by his rejection. ‘Are you going to call Sebastian?’

  ‘I’ve just sent him a text.’

  One by one the doors between him and the world were slamming shut. Katie wanted to put her foot in the final crack to stop him closing her out along with everyone else.

  ‘You don’t think a conversation might be helpful?’

  ‘All he needs are the facts.’

  Facts. Facts. Katie wanted to point out that there was more to conversation than an exchange of facts.

  Picking up on her tension, Nathaniel turned his head and looked at her. ‘You’re upset that I didn’t tell you—’

  ‘No.’ She pushed the words past stiff lips. ‘It’s how you cope with things. I understand.’

  ‘Do you?’ His voice was hard. ‘Because if revelations about my family are going to shock you, then you’re hanging out with the wrong guy. There are more skeletons in my family than in the average graveyard.’ The brittle tone rubbed over her nerves like sandpaper and Katie tried desperately to regain some of the closeness they’d had on the island.

  ‘I understand why you didn’t tell me. I understand how much you must be hurting.’

  ‘I’m not hurting.’ The shield was up and no one was getting through. ‘I stopped hurting twenty years ago.’

  Katie stared at the perfect lines of his profile, despair seeping through her.

  Not hurting?

  He was in agony.

  And she had no idea how to reach him.

  ‘This place is incredible.’ They were high up in the Hollywood Hills, near the urban wilderness of Runyon Canyon. Beneath them, the sprawl of Los Angeles lay in a haze of early-morning sunshine.

  Sunbeams danced on the infinity pool and the place was infused with the delicious scent of pine.

  ‘An architect friend of mine built it.’ Distant and polite, Nathaniel poured her a cup of coffee. ‘Down there is Sunset Boulevard.’ He gestured with his head. ‘And to the left you can see the high-rises of downtown. Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’ Did he really think she would have slept when he hadn’t come to bed? She wondered where he’d spent the night. Awake on the terrace thinking about his mother? Pacing?

  Feeling utterly exhausted, Katie stared down at the city. It felt like a million miles from London in February. A million miles from her real life. Only her real life hadn’t gone away, had it?

  In the past twenty-four hours she’d come back down to earth and she was still bruised from the rough landing. ‘I need to do something about finding a job.’

  ‘Howard Kennington will be at the Sapphire ceremony tonight. You’re going to meet him along with Alicia. There’s a project they want to discuss with you.’

  For a moment their problems receded into the background. Her head spun and excitement sparked inside her. ‘The Howard Kennington? The producer?’

  ‘That’s the one.

  ‘But … how do you know the two of them will meet me?’

  ‘I’ve already set it up.’ Nathaniel was polite and formal and Katie felt as though her heart was being twisted in different directions. He was offering her a dream with one hand, while snatching back an entirely different dream with the other.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, ‘for doing that for me.’

  ‘I already sent your preliminary drawings and your costume plot. He’s impressed and so is Alicia. The rest is up to you.’ Nathaniel glanced at his watch, all brisk efficiency. ‘You need to start getting ready for tonight.’

  She hadn’t even taken a sip of her coffee. ‘Already?’

  ‘This is the Sapphires.’ He gave a sardonic smile. ‘Most of the actresses started preparing at least two months ago.’

  ‘You’re kidding …’ Awash with insecurities, she put her cup down on the table. ‘Suddenly I’m not so excited about going—how do you fancy an evening in front of the TV?’ Her feeble joke drew a flicker of a smile from him.

  ‘Think of it this way—you’re already at an advantage because you don’t need Botox, plastic surgery, teeth-whitening or a month with a personal trainer. You’re going to look fantastic and I predict much teeth gnashing among the glitterati.’

  Panic set in. ‘Nathaniel, I can’t go to the Sapphires. For a start I don’t have a dress.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Follow me, Cinderella.’ He walked across the terrace towards the house.

  ‘I can’t wear something you’ve chosen. There are loads of fabrics and colours I just don’t look good in. And turquoise is fine for the beach, but it won’t do for the Sapphires.’ Wishing they were back on Wolfe Island where it was just the two of them, she followed him into the house. The vast windows threw sunshine and light over the polished wooden floors and elegant white furniture.

  Silent and preoccupied, Nathaniel led her up the winding staircase to the master bedroom with its Brazilian wood balcony and views across the Santa Monica Mountains. But the last thing on her mind was the view.

  Aware of the tension in him, Katie tried again to reach out to him. ‘Nathaniel … about the press yesterday—’

  ‘I have two well-known American designers waiting to talk to you if you don’t like the dress.’ Without giving her the chance to turn the conversation into something more personal, he gestured towards the dressing room that was about the same size as her apartment in London.

  Walking into a room that dazzled with glass and mirrors, Katie blinked in shock. Hanging from a rail was the dress she’d designed. Her dress. It was taken straight from the drawing he’d admired that night in her flat, even down to the sequins hand stitched to the gold silk. ‘Oh.’ She swallowed. ‘Nathaniel. How did you—? When did you—?’

  ‘I found another drawing of it in your pad and sent it to a designer friend of mine. He’s had a team of seamstresses working on it non-stop.’

  ‘It’s perfect. It’s—’ An incredible gesture. And she had no idea what to read into it. She’d never felt more confused in her life.

  Nathaniel was watching her with an expression that she couldn’t fat
hom. ‘You approve?’

  ‘How could I not?’ Katie stepped forward, touching the fabric as she always did with any garment. ‘It’s exactly as I imagined it. Except that I didn’t imagine I’d be wearing it myself.’ Really touched, she flung her arms round his neck and hugged him. ‘Thanks. That was incredibly thoughtful.’

  It was like hugging a stone pillar—a one-way experience. There was no response. Nothing.

  Nathaniel gently disengaged himself. ‘I bought you something else ….’ His tone casual, he removed a box from his pocket and flipped it open. A beautiful diamond necklace winked at her from a bed of seductive black velvet.

  ‘Oh—’ Katie’s heart stopped and suddenly she couldn’t breathe. ‘That’s beautiful ….’

  And it was a breathtakingly extravagant gift. No one had ever given her anything that generous before. She stared at it, stunned.

  ‘Pleased?’

  ‘Of course.’ And she was. It was crazy to think that what she really would have preferred was a hug. Or a kiss. Something intimate.

  But Nathaniel made sure there was no opportunity for intimacy as he wheeled in a team of hairdressers, make-up artists and a top stylist.

  By the middle of the afternoon, Katie had been primped and pampered and was feeling more and more nervous about the evening ahead. Why had she and Claire ever thought it would be fun going to the Sapphires? She was going to walk down that famous red carpet with some of the most beautiful women in the world on the arm of the sexiest man in the world. It didn’t take a genius to predict what everyone would be thinking. Why her? It would be like letting a mongrel loose in a dog show, she thought gloomily. There was no way she’d ever win Best of Breed.

  When she finally stepped into the dress, the stylist stood back and stared.

  ‘You look totally awesome.’

  Unconvinced, Katie turned to look in the mirror. And saw a stranger. They’d swept her hair up and the skilled use of make-up made her skin look flawless and her eyes huge.

  ‘The dress is stunning.’ The stylist sighed. ‘Who is the designer?’

  ‘Me.’ Katie stared at her reflection, trying to see herself through the layers of sophistication. ‘I’m the designer.’