Wicked Ambition (28 page)

‘Get out of my sight,’ said Ivy, disgusted. ‘And don’t come back.’

Overcome with a heady brew of longing and shame, Connor retreated, certain then that he would do just about anything this woman asked.

Ivy didn’t move until she heard his footsteps stumble across the yard. She resolved that if Connor insisted on
getting in the way then she would be forced to dispose of him. When it came to attaining her goal, everyone was expendable.

35

O
n the other side of town, tangled in a nest of sweat-soaked bed sheets, Turquoise surrendered to the rush of her orgasm and lifted her hips to drive her lover deep.

‘You’re amazing,’ Bronx murmured, grabbing a handful of coal-black hair and staring into her emerald eyes and wanting to say more but afraid that if he pushed her too far she’d vanish again. Turquoise cried out her climax, her throat exposed over the edge of the bed, and Bronx kissed it hungrily, burying his face and inhaling her scent.

They stayed with their arms wrapped round each other. Turquoise saw her body beached on a golden shore, blue sky above and green sea below. After months without sex she felt united, her soul and her self joined together once more.

Bronx’s lips trailed down her chest, tenderly grazing her nipples and kissing the small freckle on her ribcage. Gently his fingers traced a line south, brushing across the soft hair there and making her shiver. She widened her legs, wet from having come so fiercely, and felt his touch plunge between
them, pushing her apart and sliding in with a force that made her gasp. Next his mouth was on her, his tongue running across that sensitive swell over and over, sucking and teasing and tasting, a moan escaping his lips but muted in her warmth, and she widened again as she advanced on the flare of a second crescendo. Bronx increased his pace, the wet from his mouth as wet as her body until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. This time it hit Turquoise with the slam of a freight train, and she pulled Bronx’s head closer, her thighs gripping and shuddering as she rode the wave.

When Bronx’s lips met hers she could taste the salt of her yearning. He stroked her face with such affection that she felt a hot tear slip out of the corner of her eye.

‘Hey,’ he breathed, ‘you OK?’

‘I’m fine.’ She smiled, for a dangerous second filled with the need to tell him: about her history, about the murder, about Cosmo, about the tape…It would be so easy to blurt it, just to see if she could, and in a single moment of madness change her life irretrievably, like standing on the ledge of a skyscraper and thinking that one step was all it took.

That same self-preservation held her in place now. Instead she sat up, looping the ebony stream over one shoulder and turning her back to him.

Bronx propped himself up on one elbow, running a hand down her spine. ‘Talk to me,’ he implored. ‘Please.’

She dipped her head, her face hidden.

‘I know you’ve convinced yourself this is a bad idea,’ he said gently, ‘and yeah, maybe working together complicates things, but if that’s what’s eating you then you have my word we don’t have to ever again. But I’m not an idiot, Turquoise.
I know it’s more than that. Why’d you keep running out on me? Why’d you keep disappearing from my life?’

‘I’ve been busy.’

He joined her on the side of the bed, resting his chin in the nook of her shoulder. ‘I get that.’ One arm snaked round her belly and hauled her in. ‘But what
you
don’t get is that you’ve got me where I can’t let go. I don’t want to let go. I’m hooked on you, baby, I can’t pretend to be any other way. I just wish you knew how to open up to me…’

Turquoise shut her eyes. What could she say that would in any conceivable way be OK?
Y’know when I was on location with Cosmo? Actually, I was shooting my own project. It’s in my interests, see, because I used to be one of his whores—a murdering whore, as it goes—and as he won’t let me forget, I’ve been forced to take matters into my own hands…

It might as well be an ancient language for how impossible and nonsensical it was.

‘I’ve got to go.’ Turquoise grabbed her clothes and tugged them on.

Bronx frowned. ‘When can I see you again?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll call.’

‘You won’t, though, will you?’

She turned, bending briefly to kiss his cheek. ‘Thanks for last night.’

Before he could object, she was gone.

True Match
had at last finished filming and Turquoise was relieved to be back in LA. Not having to see Cosmo every day made her realise what an effect he’d had on her state of mind. Her appetite had returned, she had started sleeping
again, and the future, once so terrifying, had opened up, no longer on his terms but on hers.

Each morning, as soon as she woke, she would go into her office, feed an arm behind the cabinet and check it was still there: the evidence that would set her free. Always she kept a copy on her person, but the original stayed here. Back-up.

‘Sam mentioned you didn’t make the wrap party,’ Donna Cameron said over lunch at The Ivy. The terrace was bright with flowers and the warm scent of fish and ocean air. ‘You getting sick of Hollywood already?’

‘Surely it’s getting sick of me.’ Images of Turquoise and Cosmo on location had been plastered across the national papers and gossip rags, risking, in her opinion, burning out media interest before the movie had even hit box offices.

‘Never. Sam’s impressed. They all are. This is the beginning of something special.’

‘You’re considering another project, I can tell.’

Behind her shades Donna concealed her pleasure. ‘Let’s just say there are discussions that need to be had. Your profile’s never looked so hot.’

Turquoise wasn’t convinced that the PR was altogether positive, but she’d decided not to worry over the stuff people made up. While she had been praised for a ‘brave’ step into the movies, she had also been slated for her ‘greed’ and ‘dissatisfaction’. As much as they said she would excel in Holly wood as she had in the pop industry, they also vouched her venture would be a ‘shameful charade’ and ‘an embarrassing mistake’. One morning they maintained she was giving more to the fans by embracing new frontiers, the next she was neglecting them in vain pursuit of glory. Inevitably there’d been speculation that romance had flourished
onset, Brangelina-style, and that Cosmo’s marriage was on the rocks, a sensation cut short when Cosmo and Ava entertained a string of demonstrative public appearances. Turquoise had called Ava the minute the erroneous story had emerged and to her relief they had laughed about it, however sour that hilarity might have felt, lodged like a hiccup in her throat.

‘First,’ Donna resumed, piercing the orange yolk of her egg, ‘settle back into things here: we don’t want the fans to think your music’s coming second.’

Turquoise paused to sign her name for a passing admirer. ‘I’m all for new challenges,’ she agreed, ‘but this is where I belong. It’s good to be home.’

‘It’s good to have you back.’

Home wasn’t just LA: it was the music. Turquoise had returned to the studio, working with a British producer to record her new album, the much-anticipated
Renaissance
. During her time away the songs had descended on her like tunes on the wind, as if they weren’t being generated by her at all but gifted by a greater force, reminding her of an interview she’d read with a blues legend who believed that every guitar he picked up already contained all the songs it ever would, the melody flowing from the instrument of its own accord. Days passed where she imagined every song to already be in existence, written and complete on an unseen plane, just waiting to be discovered by the voice of its choosing.

‘Take time out to relax,’ Donna advised afterwards, as the women stepped on to Ocean Boulevard. ‘As of the movie’s release your schedule’s going to be unrelenting.’

‘Sure.’

Once Donna was out of sight, Turquoise dug a hand into her purse and removed her cell. She checked her inbox to make sure it was really there and she hadn’t invented it.

She hadn’t. The missive had come in that morning.

There it was at the top of the list: the simple, lonesome C that stood in her mind for so much—cruelty, callousness, coercion…

Cosmo
.

Drowning her fear, Turquoise opened the message and read it.

No one runs for ever. Come to me, sweetheart.

I’ve got a surprise…for old times’ sake.

He had named a date and hour. She clicked the phone shut.

If Cosmo wanted to invite destruction to his door, let him. She was the one with the goods and as soon as she revealed what she had against him it would put an end to this nightmare once and for all. Whatever his surprise, it would be nothing compared with hers.

Contrary to Donna’s counsel she had no intention of taking a break. She had a payload to deliver, and that payload was pivotal. It changed everything.

36

‘Y
ou need help!’
Scotty Valentine flounced out of Fenton Fear’s Hollywood mansion and charged blindly towards the tennis courts. ‘You’re a fucking schizoid! Can’t you let me
breathe
?’ The courts sat unused for most of the summer but Fenton kept them immaculate on account of the possibility he might one day embrace the sport he had always admired. Fenton could do with getting some exercise, Scotty thought bitchily, because he was fat.

He was a fat boyfriend: a fat,
old
boyfriend.

‘Come back! Please!’ Fenton wailed as he emerged, a towel wrapped around his sunburned gut, which was freckled from UV exposure. Normally Scotty doused his lover in Factor 50 lotion, meant for babies, because Fenton crackled like a pig on a spit as soon as show him the sun, but lately he had avoided touching Fenton at all—and Fenton knew it.

‘Where are you
going
?’ Fenton despaired, staggering after him.

Scotty pushed open the court gate and swept inside,
aware he was walking straight into a chicken coop but directionless in his anger.

‘Wait,’ Fenton gasped, ‘I beg of you.’ He appeared on the clay, blocking the exit, and bent to catch his breath. His hair was matted to his forehead and a pathetic look crouched in his eyes. ‘I just want to make you happy,’ he whimpered. ‘Don’t be mad at me.’

Scotty turned to face him, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun. Appraising Fenton from the other side of the net, he couldn’t believe that until recently he had been so obsessed by this man. Fenton had once been an untouchable hero, so assured, so adult, so in control, but now a different beast possessed him. His manager had become needy, governing Scotty’s every move with a jealousy that bordered on the psychotic.

‘I have to shout because you don’t
listen
,’ Scotty lashed. ‘And even then you don’t hear what I’m saying. How many times do I have to tell you I’m
suffocating
?’ He observed Fenton gather himself, as detached now as he had once been dependent, and thought how their bodies had grown in opposite directions as the stress had taken its toll. While Fenton had piled on the pounds, gorging on fast food and squatting like a pork pie in his office as he barked impatiently at clients, the skin on his chin wibbling with exertion, Fraternity fans were reeling at Scotty’s sudden weight loss, their heartthrob’s cheekbones sharp and his eyes huge as they stared blankly from a vampiric grimace. On dark days Scotty considered it akin to Fenton having consumed him, swallowed him whole, his manager licking his chops as with each hour that passed Scotty felt a little more of himself slipping away.

Where had it gone so wrong? Since Kristin’s discovery the men’s affair, formerly so breathtaking and clandestine, had become a real, dangerous thing, and they had been living in perpetual fear, day in, day out, that they were about to wake up to the biggest media storm of the century. Like worms on a hook they dangled on her goodwill, inexplicable given the circumstances and which convinced Scotty she was biding her time, never knowing when he went to sleep at night, oppressed by the clinging web of Fenton’s arms, if they would live to fight another day. And fight was truly the word—these days they couldn’t stop bickering.

‘It’s not working,’ said Scotty for the fiftieth time. ‘This isn’t how I want to live.’

‘Never think I don’t know how that feels,’ Fenton choked. ‘My love for you is sweet poison, a drop more every day…You’re my toxic addiction, Scotty Valentine. Always you.’

‘Stop saying that! I can’t fucking bear it!’

‘You used to love it when I expressed my affection. What’s changed, darling?’

‘
You
have!’ Scotty struggled to express his raging emotions. ‘When we first met it was an adventure, never knowing when we were going to see each other or what we were going to do, what you were going to teach me…It was a thrill—’

‘The thrill of the chase, my boy.’ Fenton shook his head. ‘You have a lot to learn about love. It isn’t all roses and surprise rendezvous…The heart mellows…’

‘Fuck the mellowing! I can’t even go to the bathroom by myself, for fuck’s sake!’

‘Is it any wonder?’ Fenton spat bitterly. ‘Don’t think I didn’t see the way you ogled that model on the “Once More
Baby” shoot last week. You could scarcely take your eyes off him! Practically drooling, you were. I’m surprised no one else picked up on it.’

‘Get a life, that guy was straight as an arrow.’

‘You don’t deny it, then!’

‘What are you now?’ he spluttered. ‘Just another groupie?’

‘Do you make a habit of sleeping with your groupies?’

They both knew that was a false claim. It had been weeks since they’d last made love.

‘This is your fault!’ Fenton cried, finding his temper. ‘All you had to do was find a way for Kristin to take you back and then we could have returned to how we were before.’

‘What, sneaking around and hiding in closets?’

‘It seems like you preferred it that way.’

‘Maybe I did. At least then I didn’t feel so trapped every minute of the goddamn day.’