An Eligible Bachelor (34 page)

‘Maybe you’re right. I’ll leave it up to you. We can always
have a costume change if it doesn’t look right on camera.’

‘And you’ll bring all your equipment?’

Again her voice was syrupy with suggestion. Charles tried to inject a little of it into his response, hoping he didn’t sound too like Leslie Phillips.

‘Oh yes. Don’t worry about any of that. All you need is your secateurs.’

‘Perfect. Shall we say ten o’clock?’

‘Ten it is.’

Charles put the phone down with a shaking hand. The innuendo had oozed back and forth down the line between them – he felt the blood pounding in his head, his veins tingling. He picked up the phone again to rearrange his appointment for Wednesday, wondering if he was completely and utterly insane. There was no doubt that Fleur was a bit of a loose cannon. She had to be, to drop her knickers in his lap like that on Saturday –

Shit! Her knickers! What had he done with Fleur’s knickers? He’d been pretty drunk by the time he got back on Saturday – he’d meant to secrete them somewhere safe. But had he? He couldn’t remember now. They must still be in his jeans. Over the back of the chair in the bedroom. He hoped against hope that Henty hadn’t washed them. He was always having a go at her about remembering to check his pockets. How ironic it would be if this was the one time she did remember…

He couldn’t phone her and tell her not to touch his trousers. That would be asking for trouble. He’d just have to pray that they hadn’t made their way into the laundry basket.

*

Sally really couldn’t believe what was happening. Mick was going to go ballistic when he saw this in the paper. Totally ballistic. And serve him right. She helped herself to another glass of champagne. She shouldn’t drink too much, because she didn’t want to make a fool of herself. She didn’t want to let Richenda down. Besides, her head was already starting to throb from the unaccustomed bubbles. And the stress – believe it or not, it was very stressful being made up, pampered and photographed. She wouldn’t want to do this every day.

Sally leaned back on the sofa and shut her eyes. She was trying to drown out the persistent question that kept popping into her head: what the hell was going to happen to her when all this was over? She might have been fêted and fussed over today, but Richenda wasn’t going to want her hanging around. She had nothing to offer, after all. What use was a raddled, addled, out-of-work barmaid to an international superstar?

When Charles got back home, Henty was in the kitchen, straddling a chair, while Travis manhandled her from behind.

‘You’ve got to relax here,’ he was saying, motioning down her spine with his tanned and capable hands. ‘And you don’t want any tension here.’ He grasped her hips firmly, then smiled as he saw Charles come into the room. ‘Hi. I’m just convincing your wife she should learn how to ride.’

‘Oh.’

Charles noticed Travis wasn’t in any hurry to take his hands off Henty’s ample curves. And that Henty seemed quite happy.

‘I’ve told him I’m terrified of horses,’ she declared, her eyes wide.

‘You just need a good teacher.’

Travis finally released his grip, and Henty clambered off her imaginary steed.

‘You’d need to sedate me, I’m afraid.’

‘You don’t know what you’re missing.’

‘I’ll just have to imagine it then, won’t I? I’ve got a very good imagination.’

She walked over to Charles and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

‘Hello, darling. Good day?’

‘So so.’

Charles kissed her back warily. He couldn’t tell from her reaction whether he had any reason to panic. She wasn’t behaving like a woman who’d found another woman’s pants in her husband’s pocket – but then presumably she wouldn’t give anything away in front of Travis.

‘I think I’ll just go and change.’

‘OK. Supper’s ready in ten minutes.’

‘Lovely.’

He escaped from the room, ran up the stairs, threw open the bedroom door and looked at the chair where he usually slung his clothes.

No matter which way he looked at it, it was empty.

Fleur’s knickers hung suspended in the air between Henty and Charles for the next couple of days. Neither of them mentioned a thing. Henty because she was quite happy that she had marked her territory, and besides, she had other, more important business utilizing her brain power. If she behaved a little distantly, it wasn’t because she was worried about the predatory Mrs Gibson. On the contrary, the incident had spurred her on. The moment the house was empty she hit the keyboard, metaphors and similes flying from her fingers.

Charles, meanwhile, mithered himself almost stupid all of Monday night and most of Tuesday wondering where on earth the offending garment could have got to. In the end he decided that they had come apart from his jeans in the wash, and that Henty had assumed they belonged to either Thea or Lily and put them in the appropriate drawer. If she didn’t actually recognize them it was nothing unusual: their friends were always leaving half their stuff behind when they stayed the night, and the girls were constantly borrowing clothes – their wardrobes were thirty per cent other people’s. He didn’t quite have the nerve to go rifling through their drawers to put his mind at rest, but by Wednesday morning he had decided that if there was going to be a scene, it would have happened by now. Thus he was able to set off for Fleur’s
house with impunity. He let Travis drop him at the station as usual, then called a taxi to take him to the Gibsons’house, set in a little hamlet down a leafy lane between Eldenbury and Eversleigh.

He sighed with envy as the house came into view. It was chocolate-box Cotswolds and absolutely pristine – there wasn’t a hedge or a leaf or a chipping out of place. They must have legions of underlings keeping on top of it, thought Charles, alighting from his cab. He admired the immaculately creosoted gates as they swung open, the shining wrought-iron letter box, the crunch of the thick gravel as he strode up to the front door. The first thing he would do when he pulled off his next big deal, he decided, would be to get a landscape gardener in for Fulford Farm, which was shambolic in comparison to this. They had a chap to help with the lawns and hedges, but apart from that, it rather ran to seed.

Charles lugged his recording equipment up to the front door and rang the bell.

Fleur answered the door wearing an off-the-shoulder dress with gathered sleeves and ruffles galore, splashed with brightly coloured flowers. She was obviously going for the peasant look, decided Charles, though it had undoubtedly cost more than any peasant earned in a year, and the strappy pink sandals that went with it would have been useless for toiling in the fields.

‘Charles.’ She gave him a hundred-watt smile, showing perfect white teeth, and ushered him inside. ‘Come through into the conservatory – I’ve set everything up in there. You can tell me what you think.’

She whisked him through the hallway, and Charles
followed at a gentle trot to keep up as she disappeared down a long passage, rather alarmed at the brisk pace she set.

She threw open a pair of double doors.

‘Here we are.’

The word conservatory didn’t quite do the room justice. Charles recognized the handiwork of a well-known local architect in the spectacular floor-to-ceiling glass room she led him into. It was simply, almost sparsely furnished in cream and gold, giving it a washed-out, dream-like effect, with pale flagstones, wicker chairs covered in bleached linen cushions, muslin drapes tied up in thick knots and an impressively large Moroccan-style chandelier. The only real colour was provided by huge distressed terracotta pots stuffed with lush, exotic greenery. In the centre was an antique butcher’s block, the wood scrubbed and gleaming, on which Fleur had laid out the tools of her trade – buckets and vases and scissors and oasis, as well as several bunches of flowers and assorted greenery.

‘I thought we could shoot it here, with the garden as a backdrop. What do you think?’

‘Perfect,’ agreed Charles. ‘I just need to check the light and so on.’

He started taking the camcorder out of its case. He found himself fumbling. Somehow Fleur being so crisp and businesslike, with no hint of flirtation, was making him even more nervous. He told himself to pull himself together.

‘Right,’ he announced briskly. ‘I’m going to need power.’

Fleur pointed at the floor, where the sockets were covered up with neat little brass covers.

‘Perfect. Now if you want to get behind your work station…’

Fleur slid a dark-green florist’s apron over her head, tied it round her waist and took up her position with a rather unnatural, fixed smile that made Charles’s heart sink. This was going to be a total waste of time. An utter fiasco. What on earth had made him think she might have even a modicum of talent? Sighing inwardly, he realized he’d have been better off lunching his ingénue writer, who would no doubt have hung off his every word and been thoroughly grateful for his time.

Henty leaned back in her Lloyd Loom chair and stretched luxuriously, then circled her head to release the tension in her neck. She’d been typing solidly since Charles and Travis had left for the station that morning, and only the rumbling of her stomach had roused her from the dream world she was creating. She looked at her watch and was amazed to see it was midday – not quite lunchtime, but she hadn’t even stopped for elevenses. She decided to break for a pot of coffee and a sandwich, then press on until it was time to pick up the children. Conscientiously she clicked on the ‘save’ icon. She still didn’t entirely trust her new silver machine not to swallow up everything she’d done and refuse to relinquish it. It always amazed her to find her work still there, exactly as she’d written it, every time she turned it on.

In the kitchen she found Travis sawing inexpertly at a bloomer on the kitchen table with decidedly unclean hands.

‘Are you making enough mess?’ she teased.

‘Where I come from the bread comes in slices,’ he complained, handing her the knife. ‘You do it.’

Henty carved off several neat doorsteps and spread them with butter.

‘What do you want on it?’

‘Peanut butter?’

Henty wrinkled her nose in distaste and found peanut butter for him and lavender honey for her. The two of them sat at the table, munching contentedly. Travis looked at her curiously.

‘What are you doing locked away up there in that room, anyway?’

‘Writing a book.’

‘You should have regular breaks, you know,’ he chided. ‘You’ll get repetitive strain injury.’

‘Will I?’

‘My mum did. She types up stuff for the professors at the uni in Cape Town. She was in agony.’

‘I don’t think I’ve been at it long enough to get RSI. I only started it last week. When you arrived.’

‘Well, you should make sure you keep altering the height of your chair. And get outside for some fresh air every couple of hours.’

Henty gave him a mock salute of obedience.

‘OK, sir.’

Secretly, she felt rather pleased that someone was actually bothered about her wellbeing. She spent so much time fussing and clucking over everyone else, it was strange to be on the receiving end. But not unpleasant.

‘So what’s it about, this book? Can I read it?’ Travis was asking.

‘It wouldn’t be your sort of thing. It’s a novel for middle-aged housewives like me.’

‘Am I in it?’

He gave her a cheeky grin. Henty tutted.

‘No,’ she lied.

‘Well, I should be.’ He slathered another piece of bread with a thick layer of peanut butter. ‘I know exactly what middle-aged housewives like.’

Henty choked on a stray crumb.

‘Do you?’

‘Oh, yes. Back home was crawling with yummy mummies. My mates and I had to beat them off with a stick.’

Henty looked at him, slightly appalled but curious.

‘That’s awful.’

‘Nah – it’s just the way it was. They were bored and rich, looking for their next thrill.’ His eyes were twinkling with mischief. ‘We quite liked it too.’

Henty was scandalized.

‘That’s totally immoral.’

‘Don’t worry – we were all over the age of consent. And it was a fantastic education. That’s the great thing about mature women. They show you exactly what they want.’

Henty’s eyebrows nearly shot through the roof.

‘I’m not sure that this conversation is appropriate,’ she said, hating herself for sounding so prim.

Travis looked anxious that she was getting the wrong end of the stick.

‘Hey, listen, don’t worry – I’d never make a pass at you or anything.’

Henty couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit piqued at his
matter-of-fact tone, as if it was an utterly ridiculous eventuality.

‘Good.’

‘Don’t get me wrong. It’s not because I don’t fancy you. But because I like you too much. And I like it here. And I’m always falling in love – if I fell in love with you, it would be a disaster.’

‘Well, it’s not going to happen, so we don’t need to worry, do we?’ Henty stood up briskly.

‘No – but if you want any gory details, I’ve got a pretty good idea what your age group likes…’

Henty stared at him, tipping back in his chair, chomping on his bread. He was still skinny with youth; everything he ate was instantly burned up, but his shoulders, his biceps and his thighs were bulking out from the physical work he undertook every day. For a moment her mind wandered, imagining his hard, boyish limbs entwined with softer, more yielding curves, and she felt a twitch of excitement.

‘For example?’ she ventured, unable to contain her curiosity any longer.

Charles’s suspicion that the morning’s work would be something of a travesty was not unfounded. Fleur was wooden and forced, and she couldn’t talk and arrange flowers at the same time. She kept dropping her secateurs and fluffing her lines. And when she wasn’t fluffing, she was hamming it up with exaggerated facial expressions and innuendo. He wasn’t even going to look at what they’d recorded, let alone try and edit it. It was totally cringe-worthy. By two o’clock he was squirming inwardly with
embarrassment and panic. How the hell had he got into this situation, and how was he going to get out of it? He’d promised her fame and fortune – or at least that’s what she seemed to understand. And he’d totally compromised himself by coming here furtively. Why hadn’t he been open and honest with Henty: told her up front that he was shooting a pilot with Fleur?