Trish Wylie – His Mistress Proposal?: Public Scandal, Private Mistress / His Mistress, His Terms / The Secret Mistress Arrangement (страница 3)

People were willing to forgive her a lot to be on the receiving end of that smile. It was no wonder she had lived something of a charmed life, and had consequently ended up a little spoiled and thoughtless.

How thoughtless Veronica discovered a little later, when, the welcoming flurry of greetings and family news dispensed with, Karen admitted the reason for her non-appearance at the airport.

She was busy packing, all right, just not for France!

‘The Caribbean?’ Veronica was thunderstruck. ‘Leaving on Sunday?’ she repeated dumbly. ‘B-but—that’s the day before we go to Paris!’

Karen flipped her hair back over her shoulders, her brilliant smile a mixture of defiant excitement and shamefaced guilt. She pressed her manicured, be-ringed hands together in an exaggerated mea culpa.

‘I know! I should have told you about it, but it was only confirmed in the last few days, and you had already prepaid for everything by then and were practically on your way … but, oh, Ronnie, isn’t it fantastic?’ she gushed, as if her sheer enthusiasm could roll back her sister’s bewildered shock.

‘I … didn’t even know that you were interested in modelling,’ Veronica said hollowly. She felt physically sick with disappointment, the light-headedness that had dogged her since her flight increasing exponentially, until she felt as if her head were a hot-air balloon, floating off her shoulders.

Karen was gabbling now: ‘I met someone who said I should give it a go, so I had my portfolio done in Auckland and I’ve been taking it around the agencies here on my days off. I even managed to get a couple of little jobs—just a few hours each. Do you know how hard it is to get a break into the modelling scene in London? Especially the fashion side of things—so this is, like, a chance in a zillion! Ronnie, it’s a week in the Bahamas for a series of fashion spreads, not just once in one magazine! I’m substituting for a girl who broke the terms of her contract by putting on too much weight—which I guess makes it my big, fat break,’ she joked with artless cruelty, skipping swiftly on when she saw it didn’t raise a smile.

‘The agent said that the clients said that if they’d seen my portfolio before, they would have picked me over the original girl in the first place. They wanted an unknown for a totally new look and I’m it!’ She ran her hands down over her hips in a self-consciously preening gesture, which Veronica watched with dazed grey eyes.

‘But you already have a job,’ she murmured blankly.

Since she was seventeen, her sister had worked for internationally successful New Zealand food author, Melanie Reed, first as a child-minder, then full-time nanny to her youngest daughter—graduating to live-in personal assistant when nine-year-old Sophie had gone off to boarding school. Melanie and her husband had a lavish home-base in Auckland, but, to Veronica’s great envy, Karen had travelled extensively with her employer, and for the last two months had been staying in London while Melanie had been working on a new book deal, researching, and taping segments for a television lifestyle programme.

The Reeds had planned a four-week family break in the South of France following Melanie’s London engagements, and, when they heard that Veronica was thinking of flying over to holiday with her sister, had offered Karen cheap rent on their Paris apartment and free use of a small lodge in the grounds of their villa in Provence.

‘I thought you enjoyed working for Melanie,’ Veronica added, thinking of all the other generous perks and privileges that Karen had taken advantage of over the years.

‘I did—I do, but it’s not what I want to do for the whole rest of my life,’ Karen declared. ‘I mean, I never really chose it, did I? It just sort of happened. And it’s not as if I’ve got a lot of choices—I’m not clever like you—’ the way she tossed off the compliment made it sound almost like an insult ‘—but, well—modelling—I know could do that, and it’s got to be loads of fun. I might become a famous supermodel and make wads of cash!

‘Oh, Ronnie, this is my dream—like, like going to France has always been your dream!’ she burst out, seeming not to see the irony in her words. ‘I’m not going behind Mel’s back, she’s totally OK with it—you wouldn’t want me to turn down my big chance, would you?’ She pinned a mournful expression on her long face as her shoulders slumped.

It was such a patently silly thing to say that Veronica rolled her eyes. Of course she wouldn’t selfishly stand in the way of her sister’s newly minted ambitions—and Karen knew it!

‘Stop looking so tragic,’ she ordered, and Karen instantly obeyed, obviously sensing victory in the snappish words.

‘Don’t be mad at me,’ she begged earnestly. ‘I know it’s incredibly bad timing, but when destiny calls, what can you do?’

Veronica was tempted to roll her eyes again, but controlled herself. Her head had now recovered from its weird floating sensation and had settled to a painful throb.

‘You were the one who persuaded me it was such a great idea for us to spend our holiday together—’ She sighed, thinking of the whirlwind weeks of excited organising that had followed her late-night phone call to London on her sister’s birthday.

‘Yes, but you were the one who first brought it up,’ Karen pointed out. ‘You wanted me to persuade you, and once France was mentioned there was no stopping you. You said it would be a great chance for you to pick up some ideas and contacts for your little gift thing.’ Her voice became bubbly and teasing again: ‘You also had a pret-ty good reason for wanting to be out of New Zealand right now, if I remember rightly—’

‘Well, that’s all irrelevant now, isn’t it?’ Veronica cut her off hurriedly. The ‘little gift thing’ that Karen dismissed so lightly was the new business she was starting up—a corporate and personal gift-buying service, which she was intending to expand from what had been until now a thriving sideline into a fully-fledged company.

She throttled another upsurge of choking disappointment as she faced the full impact of her sister’s defection. ‘What are we going to do about all our bookings?’

But Karen had it all worked out. She didn’t care about losing her half of the expenses—she was going to make all that and more from her modelling, she said. Since everything was prepaid, Veronica should simply stick to the plan—go to Paris for five days, then on down to Provence. When Karen got back from her week or so in the Bahamas, she would get a cheap flight down to Marseilles—and join her sister for the rest of the holiday.

And when Veronica expressed reluctance about imposing herself on the Reeds, Karen scoffed.

‘Oh, don’t talk rot! They’re already down there and expecting you to turn up. It’s a self-catering cottage in the garden, not a guest suite in the villa. You’ve met Melanie and Miles before, and others are just family, so it’ll be all very laid-back and casual. Mel likes you, you know she does. She thinks your working for Mum and Dad’s organic farm business makes you a kindred spirit. I’ve been to France before, so it was more for your sake than for mine that she made the offer … after I told her all about your secret passion for all things French and how you drooled over her books set there—’

‘Oh, you didn’t?’ Veronica groaned, not fooled by her sister’s innocent look. Had Melanie recognised the manipulative ploy? ‘That just makes it even more awkward—you made me sound as if I was a freeloader, angling for an invite. Maybe I should at least suggest some kind of payment—’

‘Oh, well,’ said Karen meekly, instantly raising Veronica’s suspicions. ‘I suppose there is something you can do that they’d appreciate much more than money …’

Melanie, it transpired, had broken her right elbow in a fall on the day of her arrival in Provence, and was going to be wearing a sling for the next four to six weeks. Consequently, she had rung to warn Karen that she might be asked to do a little bit of work during her holiday stay. Of course Karen had agreed, but with her arrival delayed, perhaps Veronica offering her help would be a clever way to repay the Reeds for their generosity without risking offence? Melanie might not take her up on it, after all she had her family there for all her personal needs, including her widowed mother, but if she did require assistance on something relating to her work, it was bound to only be the occasional errand or bit of note-taking—the sort of thing that Veronica could dash off in a jiffy without even breaking a sweat!

Melanie hadn’t been the only one who had ended up being manipulated in that little scenario, Veronica thought wryly as she looked out the window at the late-comers to the first-class carriage hurrying to board before the doors began to close.

As for sweating—plenty of that had broken out when what Veronica had dismissed in London as a bad case of jet lag and tried to sleep off with regular doses of paracetamol had been diagnosed as a nasty case of flu by the emergency doctor she had called in a panic when she had staggered into the apartment in rue de Birague with a raging temperature and only a hazy memory of her trip through the Chunnel.