Charlotte Phillips – Man vs. Socialite (страница 1)
‘Goodnight, Jack,’ she whispered.
Before he realised what she was doing she’d leaned in towards him and touched his lips softly with hers. She smelled sweetly of the baby wipes she’d smuggled in, and she tasted of toothpaste—and the moment her lips were against his he had absolutely no chance.
Before she could move away he raised a hand and slid his fingers into her hair, tugging it from its loose tie and relishing its silkiness, his thumbs stroking along the softness of her jaw. The silk of her skin beneath his hands was delicious, the closeness tantalisingly unfamiliar in the outdoor situation. He tilted her face gently. Another kiss, his own kiss this time, deeper, a chance to savour her.
The fire spat and popped behind her. Evie was vaguely aware of it warming her back as his tongue slipped softly against her own. One of her hands crept up and around his neck, and with the other she felt her way slowly over the padded sleeping bag to curl it around his back.
Delicious heat coursed through her as she pushed her reservations aside. Jack Trent was not some wannabe partygoer, desperate for the kudos of bedding
I wrote this story in the middle of winter, just after Christmas, in that lull during the New Year when going out is on the back burner and it’s cold outside. I spent rather a lot of my evenings back then cozied up on the sofa in my pyjamas, fighting my husband for the remote control and watching all kinds of TV. And it was on one of those evenings that the first seeds of this story came together.
If, like me, you’ve ever watched a reality TV show and thought
The setting for this book was great fun to plan and write—and, as always, I hope I can entertain you!
Love
Man vs. Socialite
Charlotte Phillips
CHARLOTTE PHILLIPS has been reading romantic fiction since her teens, and she adores upbeat stories with happy endings. Writing them for Mills & Boon® is her dream job. She combines writing with looking after her fabulous husband, two teenagers, a four-year-old and a dachshund. When something has to give, it’s usually housework. She lives in Wiltshire.
For my mum, with love and hugs.
Contents
The thing about smartphones was that when you were public enemy number one you could pick up all derogatory comments about you in one place. Convenient, not.
A post online...
Like to see @evieITgirl eat roasted rat. Where does she get off bad-mouthing @SurvivalJackT? #shallow
New Social Network group...
Sack Evie Staverton-Lynch from reality TV show Miss Knightsbridge. 15000 likes and counting.
Video currently going viral...
Watch It-girl Evangeline Staverton-Lynch accuse TV survival expert Jack Trent of sham expeditions.
The hit counter was heading towards six figures and the hateful mobile-phone clip had only been posted two days ago.
Crisis talks were called that for a reason. Evie turned off her phone with its tirade of abuse and sipped the horrible coffee in the office of the one person who might be able to get her out of this hole she’d dug for herself.
Chester Smith, PR to the stars, to whom she’d pledged a percentage of her income for the foreseeable future and whose manipulation of the media was responsible for her meteoric rise from insignificant socialite with too much time on her hands to darling of the reality-show-viewing public, sat on the opposite side of the glass desk. Signed glossy framed photos beamed from the office walls showing TV stars past and present whose über-successful careers had been managed by him. The desk was spread with a selection of the day’s tabloids. She could see grainy stills of her own face on the front page of at least three of them. Chester tossed his perfectly styled quiff, pulled out a tablet, flipped back the gaudy cover and tapped ‘play’ on the mobile-phone video, as if Evie hadn’t had it playing on a humiliating loop in her head for the last forty-eight hours.
There she was, picture quality not great but still perfectly unmistakeable, her favourite designer clutch on the pristine white tablecloth next to her water glass. Her father, stiff-backed, sat opposite her with his back to the camera. In the background she could see the other people lunching earlier this week at the glossy Knightsbridge eaterie, a popular celebrity hangout. And wasn’t that exactly why she’d chosen that venue when her father had demanded they meet? Her father never suggested or asked when it came to seeing Evie, he demanded. When he said lunch, you said how many courses. And if she was going to sit through a couple of hours of criticism she might as well do it on her own territory, somewhere she’d at last begun to feel she fitted in.
She’d even had a couple of fans of the show interrupt the lunch to ask for photos. Her father’s disapproval had surged towards breaking point each time—and hadn’t that rather been the point? She might not be appreciated by him, might in fact be pretty much insignificant these days unless she somehow showed him up, but at least here she felt as if she was among people who liked her, even if it was the carefully manufactured prom-queen version of her they saw on screen.
After twenty-odd years of Evie feeling inconsequential and pointless, the public interest and support that followed her appearance in hit reality TV show Miss Knightsbridge had been the stuff of dreams.
Turned out it was the fickle kind of support that could be undone with one stupid wrong move.
* * *
Chester fiddled with the tablet until the clip was full-screen at maximum sound.
‘No, I don’t watch your show,’ her father’s deep clipped voice boomed out. ‘I have absolutely no desire to watch you make a spectacle of yourself on national television. I find it inexplicable that the viewing public would have the slightest interest in how you spend your time.’ There was a pause as her father took a sip of his white wine. She could see her own smile fold in on itself on the opposite side of the table. ‘Should I happen to put the television on, I would be watching the other side. Jack Trent’s Survival Camp Extreme.’
There was a pause in the conversation. The background buzz of the restaurant could be heard in the gap. Evie wasn’t sure even now which revelation had rendered her speechless—the simple fact that her father watched television at all these days or his traitorous allegiance to the rival show in the ratings to her own.
After nigh on twenty years of trying and failing, at first to please him and eventually just to interest him, you’d think she would have developed the skin of a rhino by now. This last year the sudden sensation of being liked, of being popular, had been like a dream. After being unexpectedly scouted by the TV production company for Miss Knightsbridge, Evie had found that public affection had even more unexpectedly followed. Interviews and magazine photo shoots poured in as the popularity of the show climbed. And on the back of it all she was just launching her very own jewellery line, a dream she’d secretly nurtured for years but had never before had the confidence to take forward. A new business. Surely that would impress her father. The hoped-for happy response to the news that she would be making a living for herself now instead of cruising along on the cushion of her allowance was instead lost to his disapproval of the TV show. She wondered for a moment what job she would have to do to elicit his good opinion. Brain surgeon, perhaps.
‘Making a spectacle of yourself for all to see,’ he was saying. ‘After the upbringing you’ve had.’