The Hating Game (5 page)

Nate drifted into the lift, wearing a goofy grin. Baz wanted to hang with
him
? Obviously word was out about Nate’s new show. He looked in the mirrored panel and ran his fingers through his hair, fixing it like Baz’s. No. Ugh, he looked more like a giant turnip with an Afro than a hip media type. Maybe it was time for a fresh image – something more befitting his great new job. First chance he got he’d hit the shops and get himself all geared up for his future.

Who knows, h
e might even pull a girl!

Or two.

*

The minute Nate
was out the door, Mattie pounced on the contract he’d left behind. First things first: the money. She turned the pages, looking for the pound sign. There it was, two hundred thousand pounds, the juicy prize in all its glory.

Leaning back in her chair, she
stared at the number. Sure, there’d been years when she’d made a whole lot more than that – in fact, the business often raked in that amount in one quarter. But right now, two hundred thousand pounds would be her saviour.

Skimming
the fine print, she began looking for catches. Production companies could be notoriously cheap, she knew that from dealing with them on behalf of her clients. But they’d never been able to talk her down, Mattie thought victoriously. That’s why people kept coming to her. Or used to, anyway.

Now it seemed they preferred Kyle’s soft touch.

Bastard.

W
hoa! Her eyes flicked from the prize money to the section below. What the hell was this?

Please list, in chronological order, the names and dates of any previous relationships.

Screw that.
There was no way she was divulging that information to God knows who. Like she could remember all the names, anyway!

She left the section blank and scanned the remaining pages. Health and safety,
rules and regulations, blah blah blah. As long as the prize money was in the bag, she could deal with everything else. She signed and dated where indicated, bundled a copy of the document into a courier bag and sent it off.

Done. She loo
ked around the empty office and took a deep breath. The business and her reputation would remain intact; no one would be able to say Kyle had ruined her. Just thinking of the rumours that circulated after the incident with Kyle made her clench her fists again.

Bastard!

She stretched out her fingers and tried to relax.

All she needed
was to get through the next few weeks, collect her two hundred grand and life would return to normal.

CHAPTER FIVE

The average British woman has twenty
sexual partners in a lifetime;

the average British male, ten.

NATE STRUGGLED INTO THE OFFICE
the next day just in time for his eight a.m. meeting with Silver. After a stellar night with Baz and the blokes, his head ached and his tongue felt furry. The hang-over was more than worth it, though. It’d been bloody brilliant.

Determined to measure up to Baz,
before hitting the club Nate had made a beeline to Firetrap for some cool new threads, forcing himself not to think about the equivalent hoard he could net at the trusty Marks & Spencer outlet he frequented. Kitted out in a trendy shirt and loose fitting jeans, he’d popped into Punkz for a trim. His usual number three buzz didn’t seem to be an option, so he just sat back and let the butch red-haired woman – more like a dominatrix than a hairdresser – take charge. He emerged with something which to him looked like he’d just got out of the shower but which made everyone else in the salon nod approvingly.

He got to Movida early and downed a few shots to ease his nerves. Then Baz showed up, told a cluster of hot girls he could get them work on reality shows and the girls were all over them – even buying
him
drinks! Nate left the club buzzing and happy, clutching a handful of mobile numbers.

Now it was back to work, and his new career.

Almost skipping, he appeared in front of Ginny.

‘
Go on
in,’ she said, not even looking at him.

Self-assuredly he pushed through the glass doors of Silver’s inner sanctum.

Silver was attached to her
BlackBerry and waved him into a chair. Was that Mattie’s signed contract on top of the pile on her desk, just next to the half-eaten cocktail sausage? Nate’s lips lifted in a smile.
This
was it, surely. The moment he became an executive producer. He leaned forward in anticipation.

‘
We have a problem, Nate.’ Silver fixed her
steely eyes on his.

Nate blinked. That wasn’t what she was supposed to say. ‘A problem?’ he croaked. ‘Didn’t she sign?’

‘
See for yourself.’
She threw the papers at him. He reached to grab them but missed and they fluttered to the floor. Nate bent down to retrieve them, already feeling damp patches spreading under his arms. Turning to the last page, he saw Mattie’s signature, scrawled so determinately it almost tore the paper.

‘
But she signed,’ he said, looking up at Silver and wondering what was wrong.

‘
Sure, she signed all right. Well done.’ Silver’s mouth twisted around the words. ‘But she didn’t fill in the most important bit!’

Nate was confused
. ‘The most important bit?’

‘
The men!’ Silver hissed. Spit
and a fleck of sausage flew from her mouth and lay glistening on the glass desk. ‘She didn’t complete the part on her ex-boyfriends. Without that, how are we supposed to do the show, Nate? Tell me that. TELL ME!’

‘
I’ll sort it out,’
Nate mumbled, his eyes moving back and forth across her face as if the answer was written there. ‘I’ll talk to her. Right now.’

Silver grimaced
. ‘That’s just the problem. You can’t
talk
to her about it, can you, Nate? If she gets any whiff of interest in her exes, we could blow it.’

‘
I’ll come up with something,’ Nate babbled, his mind desperately trying to formulate a plan.

‘
We don’t have time for you to monkey around
.’ Silver locked onto his glasses with distaste. ‘X-ACT has already started selling advertising slots for the show. As EP – and believe me, if you want to stay one – you’d better find out who those men are, asap.’

Nate nodded. EP!
Executive producer!
He’d done it!

He sat up straight, a broad grin stretching across his equally broad features.

‘
I don’t know what the hell you’re smiling about. Just track down her exes. And she’d better have a long list to choose from. The audience needs to care, to invest in these men as much as they do Mattie. If they’re all duds like you – if there’s no chemistry – forget it.’

‘
Oh, she has plenty of exes
. Don’t worry about that.’ And by the sounds of things, the difficulty would be narrowing down the list.

Silver rustled around in
her desk drawer. ‘Here.’ She handed Nate a business card. ‘Ring him up and tell him I told you to call. He’ll help.’

Nate stared at the card
.
Harry Horne, Private Investigator
.
Because ignorance isn’t bliss.
Was Silver for real? Nate hadn’t thought anyone other than jealous TV housewives used PIs. Especially ones called Horne.

‘
Go get those men. And if any of them need a little extra – shall we say,
incentive
– to come on the show, tell them they’ll get half Mattie’s prize money. If she chooses them, of course, and if they stick out the two weeks together until the end.’

‘
Half the
two hundred thousand? But I already told Mattie she’d get the money. And the contract says–’

‘
The contract says she only gets h
alf the money. Didn’t you read it?’ Silver bared her teeth in a smile. ‘It’s all in the fine print, Nate, in the Health and Safety part. Nobody reads that shit.’ Silver grabbed the contract and flipped to that section. ‘See?’ She pointed to a clause and handed it back.

Nate squinted. Yes, there it was, right underneath the bit about the mandatory pre-show psychological assessment:

In relation to the financial reward, the Contestant shall forfeit half the total amount
to the winning Male Contestant to ensure his continuing mental and physical wellbeing.

Wow. Nate never would have thought to read the Health and Safety section for information on the prize money. Obviously Mattie hadn’t either.

‘
The network and I agreed there needed to be a bit more
punch
to the concept. This isn’t kids’ TV any more.’ Silver looked at him closely. ‘If you can’t handle it, you should go back to La La Land.’

Nate held up chubby
hands in protest. ‘No, no, it’s fine. Great idea!’ As executive producer he’d get behind it one-hundred and ten per cent, even though his gut was feeling a bit queasy. He probably just needed to eat breakfast. Or another breakfast, anyway.

‘
Now go get those men. I need them signed up by Friday. And don’t let me down.’

‘
Friday?’ Nate stared. That was only two days away!

‘
Friday, are you deaf?’

‘
No Silver, yes Silver, consider it done.’

There was a pause.

‘
Then get the hell out of my office and do it!’

Nate rose and scurried from the room. Two days! This Harry Horne bloke better work fast.

*

‘
Oh my G
od.’ Jess’s eyes bulged out of her head. ‘You’re not?’

Mattie nodded and eyed th
e buzzing crowd at Boheme. Leaning back on the leather banquette, she sipped at her whisky, letting the smoky smoothness burn her throat.

‘
Why is it so hard to believe?’
She raised her eyebrows, enjoying Jess’s reaction.

Jess continued staring. ‘You. YOU! On a dating show! How on Earth did that happen?’

Mattie
shrugged. ‘The producer just said I had everything they were looking for. Charisma, good looks, the sort of things TV stars have. I couldn’t argue with that, could I?’ She winked at a nerdy guy in brown polyester who was attempting to squeeze in beside them on the banquette. He flushed and gave her a small nod in return. ‘See?’ she said to Jess.

Jess snorted
and shifted to make room for the man, who was busying himself with the menu and desperately trying not to make eye contact. ‘I think you scared him. Do they know you’ve gone through more men than there are in, I dunno, Scotland?’

‘
Come on, Jess. More like Ireland. Give me some credit.’ Mattie grinned. There was nothing shameful about dating lots of men. Anyway, it wasn’t her fault if they always turned out to be such morons.

‘
I bet you can’t even remember half of them!’ Her friend shook her head and sipped a lychee martini.

‘
Too right
!’ Mattie laughed. ‘Funny, the game show contract asked me that too. They wanted to know all the names of my exes for, like, ever! As if!’

‘
I hope you didn’t
try to write a list!’ Jess dropped her eyes. ‘It might make you look a bit, well . . .’

‘
What?’
Mattie gave Jess a challenging look. So what if she’d had a lot of short term – okay, miniscule term – relationships. It didn’t mean there was anything wrong with
her
! All it meant was there were loads of idiot men roaming about.

‘
Unstable,’ Jess said finally. ‘Like you can’t commit. And it’s a
dating show, right? They’ll want to know you’re at least
open
to a relationship.’

‘
I am open to a relationship.’ Mattie jerked the glass to her lips. ‘It’s not my fault all those losers had something wrong with them. And what about Kyle? I was going to commit for life. He screwed it up, remember? Fucking
Chloe Collins.
’ Her mouth twisted. She’d never forget that blonde bimbo’s name.

It was hard
not to give in to the hurt and anger. Kyle was the one man Mattie had been with longer than a month – they’d lasted two years. He was the only man who made her feel comfortable; the only man she knew would never interfere with her ambition because he had it too. Together, in business and life, they were unstoppable.

Until he cheated on her.

Staring
hard at a watermark staining the table, she couldn’t stop her mind from flipping back to the moment when she had walked unannounced into Kyle’s office to find him throwing himself at Chloe on his sofa.