Wicked Ambition (32 page)

‘I must have got my appointments crossed,’ she managed weakly. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She went to put the drink down but there were no surfaces, and every movement she made, every word she said, in that awful, cloying silence, was beyond suspicious.

‘You’re not staying?’ Ava asked, confused. She shot her husband a quizzical, accusatory glance.
Was it something you said?

‘Of course she is.’ Cosmo went to take Turquoise’s arm
and she flinched, allowing him to because she could only imagine how Ava was taking in this scene and it broke her heart to guess at her best friend’s bewilderment. Ava was the innocent here; she had no idea what tensions she was witnessing. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Darling, are we ready?’

Turquoise didn’t think she had heard correctly. ‘Ready for what?’

‘For your surprise,’ said Cosmo, as though it were obvious. Turquoise turned to her friend but Ava’s expression gave nothing away. ‘See,’ her nemesis continued, ‘I don’t keep secrets from my wife. I don’t believe in it.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Ours is an honest marriage. Ava knows everything about me…and so by rights she knows everything about you. Am I beginning to make sense?’

The world skewed on its axis. Frantically she turned to Ava but the gaze she received was vacant, a different Ava, not her friend at all.

‘Surprise,’ said Ava.

She produced something from behind her back with lightning speed, something long and dark and heavy, just a flash before it was too late, and the last thing Turquoise felt was a short hard slam to her head before the world evaporated in a sheet of total black.

40

K
ristin flew to Alaska on Valentine’s Day. It was a slog of a trip, changing at Seattle and Fairbanks to the final plane that would take her to Fort Yukon, a far-flung city just north of the Arctic Circle. Jax had been at elite-level training camp since Monday, steeling his body against the freezing air and cruel elements, and while girlfriends were discouraged—a distraction to the almost inhuman focus needed to race—she had to see him, just for the night.

This trip was a chance to put a stop to the romantic horrors of the past year and an opportunity for the word ‘Valentine’ to mean something new. Right now she yearned for Jax’s company more than ever: following her row with Ramona, Kristin had been unable to return to The White House and was beyond worried about Bunny. Jax would listen to her, he’d hear her out, he’d make her better—and if he couldn’t do that, he’d make her forget.

As the tiny plane bumped uncertainly on to the runway Kristin switched on her cell, struggled to find a signal and,
when she did, located a message from Joey. Was Scotty OK? He hadn’t turned up for a conference that day and neither had Fenton.

She made a mental note to get in touch with her ex in the morning. With Jax she had found strength, and despite the hurt it was time to bury the hatchet. Scotty’s infidelity had wrecked her but she wished him no ill—they had been through too much together to sacrifice their friendship completely. She could only guess at what it would mean to both men if she told them she had no intention of spilling their secret. Tomorrow. Yes. She’d do it then.

Her hotel was a wooden lodge surrounded by murky, looming firs. In summer it must have been beautiful—the Yukon and Porcupine Rivers twinkling in the sunshine and the bobbing fishing boats coming into land—but winters here were long and harsh and it felt as if she had arrived in the middle of nowhere. After settling into her cosy room, warming her hands at the flickering fire and pulling the patchwork over her sheets, imagining what she and Jax might get up to when they returned here tonight, she took her car to the road and headed out to a never-ending wilderness. After several kilometres the camp came into sight.

Kristin stayed by her car, folding her arms against the chill as she watched Jax race. There was nothing else like it. As soon as he hit the track he was a beast, fast and powerful and raw, and it was
so
damn sexy. How had she ever been so devoted to Scotty’s looks? Compared with Jax he was effeminate, a pretty boy, and now she knew where his preferences lay it seemed a miracle she hadn’t spotted the signs before.

‘Hi.’ An athlete walked past her on the way to the circuit,
smiling as he placed her, a kit bag slung over his shoulder. ‘You OK there?’

‘Sure.’ She raised a hand in acknowledgement, recognising him as Leon Sway, Jax’s archenemy, and though Jax had only ever fed her disparaging lines about Leon’s physique and ability she couldn’t help feeling tongue-tied. His eyes were so…
green
.

‘You want me to tell Jax you’re here?’

‘That’s all right; I’ll catch him after. It’s a surprise visit.’

‘No kidding,’ he said with a smile.

She found herself blushing. Leon was lovely: he had a crescent-moon dimple in one cheek, and was taller and trimmer than his adversary, a sword to Jax’s canon. ‘Thanks.’

When she saw Leon powering across the asphalt minutes later, Kristin couldn’t help sensing that Jax hadn’t given her the full picture when it came to the conflict. It was so easy when you read or heard about someone to assume they were a certain way, but until you met them yourself it was impossible to be sure. Look at her own PR: people criticised her new look, said she’d abandoned her fans, but there was no way they could know why or how she’d taken that leap—and that her discretion was a sacrifice purely for their protection.

She decided to wait inside the warmth of the car, listening to songs on the crackly radio and flicking through a magazine, until an hour later the athletes began to disperse. She saw Jax disappear inside the club, but when the others came by minutes later, Leon knocking hello on his way past her window, her boyfriend was nowhere to be found. Where was he?

She pulled open the door, wrapped up tight and headed down to the building, calling his name. Silence. All around
was deserted landscape; scarred, shrubbed plains that banked on to distant mountains and lakes still as mirrors. He couldn’t have gone anywhere.

Inside, the club smelled of sweat and adrenalin, a seductive contrast to the bitter fresh air. It reminded her of the gym Ramona used to force her and Bunny to attend, all plastic notice boards and linoleum and the perpetual, antiseptic stench of chlorine. Faintly she detected muted voices and smiled to herself as she crept closer to them: she couldn’t wait to throw her arms around Jax and kiss him endlessly.

At the threshold to the changing room, she hovered. Was he showering? She imagined joining him, enlaced in wafts of steam, citrusy and sharp, and Jax’s rippling torso, slick with water and pristine as a carving. She heard his voice and wondered if he was on the cell.

Barely able to contain her excitement, Kristin pushed open the door.

The sight that met her eyes was as alarming as it was brutally recognisable. It was like watching her own sex life with Jax, except instead of Kristin on her knees, holding the back of Jax’s thighs as he rutted back and forth with a stopwatch in his hand, there was another woman: a petite, honey-limbed, perfectly proportioned blonde.

Across the walls a museum of trophies and medals was slammed, gold and silver and bronze, so that it was like entering a cave of pirate treasure; a basement devoted to the team’s victories. Jax had slung a batch of medals around the blonde’s neck and a winner’s plate was discarded on the floor, practically still bearing the handprint where Jax had seized it and slapped it across his lover’s ass. He’d done that with her before.

This couldn’t be happening to her again. It couldn’t. Not again.

‘That’s it!’ Jax was yelling, the stopwatch held aloft his head like the Holy Grail. ‘Come on, come on, come on!’

‘Excuse me for interrupting the party.’

Jax bucked to an abrupt halt as he clapped eyes on his girlfriend. ‘Jeez, what the
fuck
—?’ The blonde fell backwards and Jax brought the watch irritably to his face, more concerned with a failure to meet his record than with the fact he’d just been rumbled.

‘You make me sick,’ Kristin said evenly, shocked at how her composure never trembled. This was how guys were, and it wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t anything to do with her. ‘How many, Jax? How many women? Go on, I can take it.’

The blonde was scrambling to retrieve her clothes. Nauseatingly Kristin identified her: Jax’s PA, she was like a Chihuahua in a pink ruff, the way she followed him around so self-importantly but with the constant impression that she was about to pee herself.

‘Whatever,’ he grumbled, standing there naked as the day he was born.

‘
Whatever?
That’s all you’ve got to say?’

Incredibly, Jax shrugged. ‘I was gonna break up with you anyhow. Don’t go getting all heavy on my ass about it, it’s not like I asked you to marry me.’

‘Seriously?’ She wanted to laugh. ‘You’re too good.’

‘Not the first time I’ve been told it.’

‘After everything I confided in you,’ she spluttered, ‘this is how you repay me?’

‘I never asked you to spill about your fairy ex-boyfriend.’
Jax wrapped a towel around his waist. He shook the watch, checking it wasn’t broken. ‘As it goes I’d sooner you hadn’t.’

‘What, because you’re not man enough to handle it?’

‘I’m man enough for anything!’ he roared, a claim rendered even more pointless for the overbaked passion behind it. He collected himself. ‘Quit gettin’ up on my back.’

‘Piss off, Jax. You know what?’ She threw at him the only weapon she had. ‘I met Leon Sway today and that guy’s got more class in his little finger than you have in your whole body. He was looking hot out there, in more ways than one. You want my prediction? It’s over. You’re flagging. You’re not long for this, despite what the bloody stopwatch says. Sway’s set to overtake you and then what? Who will you be then? Some washed up has-been who can’t do anything except fuck and bitch and cheat on girls.’

Jax was apoplectic with rage.

‘And if you think you’ve got a career carved out in my world,’ she concluded, ‘you can think again.
You can’t sing
, Jax, except everyone’s too afraid to tell you.’

Kristin slammed the door on his baffled expression and stormed back to her car.

By the time she arrived back in LA the news had already broken. Stands blared with the obliterating headlines, and it was plastered across the web like a disease.

PERV & THE PRETTY BOY

FRATERNITY GAY SEX SHOCKER

SCOTTY VALENTINE & FENTON FEAR: LOVERS REVEALED!

EXPOSED! MANAGER’S GAY SEX ADDICTION

SCOTTY VALENTINE FAKED IT TO FANS

Everywhere Kristin turned, all through the airport, all across the concourse, reporters were jostling for her reaction, desperate to get a comment because now it had become clear—searingly, splinteringly clear—why the golden couple had split in the first place.

The truth was beyond all imaginings.

She battled through the flashing cameras and demands for her attention, and was bundled into the waiting car by her PA, who had insisted on meeting her at the airport.

‘How did it break?’ she gasped as the vehicle sped off.

‘Anonymous tip-off. Any ideas?’

It didn’t take a genius to work it out. Jax’s final revenge…

Kristin swallowed her outrage. All she could think about, the only thing she could focus on to get her through each second, each minute, was getting home to Bunny. She could only pray that the news hadn’t reached her baby sister, and yet she knew that Bunny Google-checked Fraternity daily and would have done so even more in her hour of need.

When they pulled up at The White House, an army of paparazzi was already waiting in the drive, pushing over each other with microphones and cameras and shouting her name.

She struggled through. Inside, the mansion was cold with the blast of air con. Kristin shivered. Ramona was nowhere to be seen and instinctively she padded upstairs. A terrible urgency dragged her on, a feeling she couldn’t quite pinpoint but knew was awful, unambiguously awful, and the way it was so quiet, so still, yet she wasn’t alone…

Upstairs, Bunny’s bedroom was wide open. She walked in, closer, always closer, not knowing what it was she was close to but compelled to see it through. Her sister’s en-suite was ajar. Pink light shone through the coral curtains. Kristin
pushed and suddenly it was no longer pink but red, chillingly red, bath water dyed red, full of red syrup, and at its surface the crown of a small blonde head emerged, matted at the edges, wigless, young, just a little girl.

Bunny White was as quiet and still as an angel, surely asleep…dreaming in a pool of her own blood. Her wrists floated at the surface like deadwood.

A soggy note was plastered to the stool next to her.

It doesn’t matter, Scotty. I’ll always love you
.

Kristin dropped to her knees. She couldn’t even cry; she had nothing left to give.

41

T
he dinner was held at the Manhattan Regency Ballroom in New York.

Leon pulled up outside the entrance and stepped from the car, tailored to perfection in a dark suit, stiff white shirt and bow tie. He’d never worn a bow tie before and his sister had teased him ruthlessly, but it was an important night and he had to make the right impression. Following the Puff City single and the awareness of street crime it had raised, an event was being hosted in promotion of change. Politicians from every state were gathered and press had flocked from all over the country. Finally, here was a practical reason to have got involved in that charade. Needless to say, Jax hadn’t bothered attending.

He took his date’s hand. Lisa Carmichael was a trainee lawyer. She hung art on the walls of her redbrick apartment; she drank wine, read books and listened to old records. She worked out five days a week and had a lithe, smooth-skinned body. She was clever and kind. She supported him unconditionally.
If he had been a man with boxes, she ticked every one. They had been dating for three weeks and tonight was their first appearance as a couple.

‘What’s up, my man?’ In the foyer, Gordon Rimeaux clasped his hand and shook it. Now they were friends, Leon no longer thought of him as G-Money. ‘Good t’see you.’