Paradise (10 page)

‘Shit! I’m sorry, Jose. I’ll go and phone Benny right now. Put him on to it.’

‘If you could, Mr Turner, I would be very grateful. I’m behind with my mortgage and health insurance payments, and I think I told you my daughter is a diabetic . . .’

Angel felt awful hearing this. Honey was sitting at the table, tucking into her bowl of Cheerios and singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ contentedly to herself. The contrast between her secure, privileged life and Jose’s made Angel feel incredibly humble. She waited until he was out of the room before saying to Ethan, ‘Let me pay the staff right away.’

Ethan vehemently shook his head. ‘No way. This is my problem, I’ve got to deal with it.’

‘Please, think of it as a loan. I can’t bear to think of Jose being anxious, it’s not fair on him – you heard what he said about his daughter. You can’t leave him in that situation.’

Ethan slammed his fist down on the black marble kitchen counter and kicked one of the sleek white units below it, in sheer frustration. ‘I can’t believe it’s come to this!’ He seemed a million miles from the man she had met a year ago, who had charmed her with his good looks and easygoing character. He looked grey and unhealthy under his tan, and his blue eyes were still bloodshot from the previous night.

‘Okay,’ he said quietly, ‘if you could sort out the staff salaries this month, I’ll pay you back next month, I swear. The last thing I wanted was to drag you into all this.’

Angel spent the next hour with Jose, going through who needed to be paid. As she worked through the list of names she realised that she had to help Ethan get out of this situation, not by loaning him the money, which she didn’t think he would accept anyway, but by finally agreeing to do the reality show with him. One series of it should be enough to pay off some of his debts and secure Loretta’s house and this one. She just couldn’t stand by and let him suffer like this – even if she wasn’t keen on filming the show. So long as she knew it would help Ethan, it would be worth it. And surely it wouldn’t be too intrusive. Right now Ethan needed her and she wanted to prove that she was committed, that she would stand by him.

‘
ANGEL, IF YOU
could just sit on Ethan’s knee . . . I want a nice intimate set up for the next questions.’ That was Mimi, director of the reality show, now called
When
Ethan
met
Angel
, in full flow. Angel had naively thought that filming the show would involve a couple of days’ work a week at the most, and that she would hardly know the cameras were there while she got on with her life. Wrong and wrong.

E! wanted to start airing the series in two months, which meant it was an intensive and full on schedule to record the material for the first two episodes. Mimi, thirty-something, ambitious, with a body to die for but a rather plain face under her long blonde hair – someone that Angel’s brother would cruelly have described as ‘Body off
Baywatch
, face off
Crimewatch
’ – and Todd, the camera man, twenty-something, ambitious, and in love with Mimi, became permanent fixtures at the house. Sometimes it felt as if they had moved in as often they were there filming from the moment Angel and Ethan got up to the moment they went to bed – and if they’d had things their way, would have been in the bedroom as well.

Ethan had the attitude that it was access all areas, and it was left to Angel to lay down the boundaries – i.e. that they couldn’t film in Honey’s bedroom or play room or
in Angel’s dressing room. She truly thought she would go mad if she didn’t have some kind of space away from the cameras.

And along with Mimi and Todd, Benny was there most of the time as well: checking that they were getting the recordings done, adding his own – usually unwelcome – thoughts about what he thought should be filmed.

‘Oh, and Angel . . . could you just unfasten one of your buttons?’ Typically that was from Benny. He was always trying to get her to flash as much flesh as possible, something that she stubbornly resisted. Just because she made her living as a glamour model it didn’t mean she wanted to show off her cleavage 24/7, especially not with Benny in the room, practically with his tongue on the floor. Ugh! He made her skin crawl!

‘I’m fine as I am, thanks, Benny. And I’m going to sit next to Ethan, if that’s okay,’ Angel said firmly.

A slight pursing of the lips from Mimi showed that she wasn’t entirely happy, but she had learnt in the last few weeks that Angel was not some bimbo blonde to be ordered around, she had views of her own – something that Mimi had not really factored in.

‘Just make sure you’re real close.’ The reality show was supposed to be a ‘dynamic’ mix of Angel and Ethan out and about doing their own thing, plus more intimate footage of the couple talking about their relationship, and Mimi was always trying to push it. Ethan complied and instantly moved closer to Angel, draping his arm round her. He was just a bit too keen to go along with what everyone wanted for her liking. Sometimes she wished that Ethan would say no and stand up for her.

‘So, you guys have been together nearly eight months now . . . still the honeymoon period?’ Mimi began firing
off the questions while Todd zoomed in with the camera. ‘Lots of action in the bedroom?’

Ethan treated the camera to his trademark sexy, lazy smile. ‘Yeah, I’ll say. In the bedroom, in the games room, in the hot tub . . . you name it!’ He laughed, though Angel wasn’t so happy about him discussing their sex life. ‘But it’s not just about the sex, though of course that’s great. She’s perfect in every way – my lover, my soul-mate. Every day is just so special when I wake up with her next to me. She’s beautiful on the outside, as everyone can see, and a beautiful person. What else can I say? I love this woman.’

He was laying it on thick for the cameras and Mimi was nodding approvingly, especially when Ethan turned to Angel and kissed her full on the lips. She was practically squirming with embarrassment at his comments and imagining how her friends would react to that description of their relationship, never mind her parents! She would have to warn them not to watch that bit.

‘How about you, Angel?’ Mimi asked when Ethan had finally released her from the embrace.

‘Everything’s great,’ Angel said in a slightly clipped tone. She felt far too self-conscious, and not able to turn on an act for the camera.

‘In the bedroom?’ Mimi persisted,

‘Great,’ she replied, and realising she wasn’t going to get away with keeping things so brief, added, ‘Ethan’s a very special guy.’

‘In the bedroom?’ Mimi asked again.

‘In every way,’ Angel replied, still sounding uptight. God, she wished they would stop asking questions – she didn’t want to go into such detail about her relationship with Ethan and, perhaps naively, hadn’t expected they would want to talk about it incessantly.

‘And what about plans for the future? Have you thought about getting married?’

Not this again! Angel winced inside; she had hoped the whole marriage question would be forgotten in the midst of all Ethan’s other problems, but apparently not.

He didn’t even hesitate before he replied, ‘I’d love to marry, Angel. I’d do it tomorrow if I could.’

‘There’s just one small problem,’ she said quietly, ‘I’m still married.’

‘Oh, yeah, to the English soccer player, Cal Bailey,’ Mimi replied. Then added to Todd, ‘We could do a cutaway here to him.’

‘And how do you feel about that, Ethan? Must be tough when the woman you love is still married to some other guy?’ she asked, aiming as always for the jugular.

Ethan shrugged. ‘What do you think? But Angel’s her own person, and I respect her decision to have a two-year separation followed by divorce, or whatever they do in England.’ He didn’t sound like he was too happy about it, though.

‘Actually it’s just a year and a half now,’ Angel said quietly.

But Ethan had temporarily lost his charming, everything’s great persona. He just shrugged and said, ‘Whatever.’

Later that night, when the crew and Benny had finally gone, he confronted Angel about it as she tried to soak away the stresses of the day in a hot bath. ‘I just don’t get why you don’t divorce him,’ Ethan said, sitting on the edge of the huge porcelain bath and instantly making her feel claustrophobic. After a day of filming, she needed some space. ‘Doesn’t it feel weird, knowing that he is still legally your husband?’

Angel shook her head. ‘Not really. To be honest, I don’t think about it.’ A lie. ‘And I just want things to
end quietly; you’ve no idea how vicious the English tabloids can be. I don’t want the affair plastered all over them again, not because of me but because of Honey. When she’s older, I don’t want her to think that her parents’ marriage ended in bitterness and hatred.’ That was true.

‘But what if he won’t give you a divorce at the end of the two years? I’ve read cases where that happens, and it drags on and on.’

Angel shook her head. ‘Cal would never do that to me. He promised me a divorce after two years, and he would never go back on his word.’ As soon as she said it, she thought what a foolish thing that was to say as Cal had gone back on his vows to be faithful. But fortunately Ethan didn’t pick her up on it.

‘So it’s not because you still love him?’ he replied, gazing intently at her. ‘Benny thinks you must still love him.’

What? Ethan had been discussing her with that wanker? Angel struggled to contain her emotions. ‘No, I don’t. I’m with you, Ethan. I love you.’

‘Promise?’ he demanded.

‘I promise,’ she replied, longing for this conversation to be over. ‘Come here,’ she added, and when Ethan came closer she raised herself out of the bath and kissed him. ‘Now why don’t you go into the bedroom and get ready for me, and I’ll show you how much?’ she said huskily, running her hands lingeringly over his body and caressing him through his jeans. That was one sure-fire way of ending the unwelcome conversation. Ethan didn’t mention Cal after the make-up sex, but Angel felt as if he was just biding his time before he brought it up again. It wouldn’t be long before Cal Bailey was once more a source of conflict between the two of them.

‘
My
saviour
Cal
,
I’ll
never
forget
what
he
did
for
me
’. Angel stared at the headline on the
News
of
the
World
website that dominated her laptop screen. Since moving to LA she regularly read the British tabloids online; it was one of her evening rituals after putting Honey to bed. She would sit at her dressing table and go through all the stories. She liked to keep up with the celeb gossip, and it would often make her smile. But not this story.

Simone had ‘intimately’ and ‘exclusively’ revealed how Cal Bailey had ‘saved her’ from her life as a high-class escort and drug addict. Angel feverishly scrolled through the article. She’d had no idea that Cal had become so involved in Simone’s life again. Certainly he hadn’t mentioned it in any of his daily phone calls to speak to Honey, but judging from this article he had paid for Simone to go into rehab and had been seeing her regularly since she came out.

It was like an echo from her own past when Angel herself had got caught up with drug addiction, and it had been Cal who had got her straight. And look what had happened then . . . She had got together with him. Maybe that was going to happen with Cal and Simone? Angel was so jealous she felt physically sick. Cal had saved the poor fragile woman and got her life back on track, all ready to get back with him. And why hadn’t he told Angel about it? It must be because there was something more to their relationship than simply friendship.

There was a large picture of Simone post-rehab looking beautiful and fragile, along with several other pictures of her and Cal when they were an item. These were ones that Angel had seen before, but the sight of Cal with his arm around Simone sent a fresh surge of jealousy rushing through her, drowning all rational thought. She reached for the phone. Only talking to a
really good friend would help right now. She tried Gemma, but the call went straight to answerphone, and then she called Jez. It was nine o’clock Sunday morning UK time, the only day Jez ever got a lie in, but Angel was so wound up she didn’t stop to consider that.

‘Is Cal seeing Simone?’ she demanded as soon as Jez picked up with a sleepy ‘Hi’.

‘Angel? What are you talking about?’

‘It’s the front-page story in the
News
of
the
World
,’ she replied, frustrated that he was being so slow on the uptake, and went on to fill him in on the details, stumbling over her words in her hurry to tell him.

‘He’s just been a friend to her, as far as I know.’

‘Yeah, right!’

Jez ignored the bitter sarcasm and said, ‘And please don’t throw a hissy fit, but Rufus and me have met up with her a few times as well. We’ve had dinner, and Rufus is trying to get her back on track with her fitness. I was going to tell you next time we spoke. I knew you’d find it strange.’

‘Strange’ was the bloody understatement of the year! Angel was outraged. Simone was a woman who had gone out of her way to be as nasty and back-stabbing to Angel as it was possible to be. And now her best friends and Cal were getting up close and personal with her!

‘Well, thanks a lot!’ she exclaimed hotly. ‘Some best friend you are. Don’t you remember how vile she used to be towards me?’ She felt bitterly hurt at the betrayal.

‘I know that, Angel, and I’ll never forget it either, but you saw the state of the woman. We just feel sorry for her, that’s all, and underneath that hard image she likes to put out she’s actually vulnerable and quite sweet. I imagine sympathy is all that Cal feels as well. Simone’s a wreck. I know you two have a history but . . .’He paused. ‘We all love you best – even Cal.’

Some of the anger was ebbing away, but the jealousy
Angel felt about Cal’s new connection with Simone was still hanging on in there tenaciously. ‘I’m sorry, Jez, I probably did over-react. It’s just, being so far away from you all, I guess I felt left out and shocked by the story. I wish someone had told me.’