certainly wasn’t about to surface and take the flak.
It was a beautiful spring morning, cold but sunny. Perfect for a spot of shopping in South West London and then maybe coffee at a pavement café. Chance would be a fine thing. The way things were right now any beverage drunk in public might very well be tipped over her head by an indignant pensioner. Jack Trent’s supporters were everywhere and age was no boundary.
‘We’re meeting the executive producer of Miss Knightsbridge and some of the production team,’ Chester briefed her as the car nosed its way through the London morning traffic. ‘They want to talk through the situation, explore some options.’
‘You mean they want to sack me.’
His lack of reply didn’t instil confidence.
She followed Chester through the glossy reception of Purple Productions, its walls festooned with glossy stills from its string of über-successful shows. Behind the reception desk she saw a shot taken from Miss Knightsbridge of herself walking down Brompton Road with armfuls of designer carrier bags. Unfortunately a few rows along her eyes fell on a photo of Jack Trent, up to his neck in hideous river water as he manoeuvred his way with a machete through dense reeds and river debris. His face was smeared with mud. Her stomach gave a nervous churn.
She could feel the disapproving eyes of the rubbernecking office staff boring into her as she walked. It felt as if she were about to be lynched. Right now she wished she’d bitten off her own tongue before she’d spoken so recklessly.
It was immediately obvious on entering the boardroom why the typing pool had been looking at her as if she were an interesting new species of worm. Jack Trent was leaning back in his chair on the opposite side of the meeting table with an expression on his face that implied he’d quite like to see her head on a spike. Her stomach plummeted like a stone. The photo in Reception and the glimpses she’d caught of him on TV or in the odd magazine hadn’t done him justice. He had the broadest chest of any man she’d ever seen, solid muscle beneath the tailored shoulders of his dark jacket. His light brown hair was very short, not much more than military buzz cut, and his face sported a small scar high on the left chiselled cheekbone and a tan the depth of which could only be achieved from spending days on end outdoors without wearing anything so namby-pamby as sunblock. He met her gaze with green eyes that might have been stomach-melting if they hadn’t been furious. He was without a shred of doubt gorgeous eye candy of the highest order. If you liked the cold-hearted, detached, wants-to-kill-you soldier look, that was.
She didn’t.
Also around the table she recognised members of the Miss Knightsbridge production team. Hostility radiated from them and she curled her hands into damp fists at her sides and averted her eyes from the antagonistic expressions. She’d made a stupid smartass comment; she’d never meant it to be repeated publicly; it was a mistake, nothing more. She did not deserve to be hung out to dry. She gritted her teeth, determined not to give away that she was upset. She would brazen it out, exactly the way she always did. Defiant brave face, that was the thing. Tried and tested, relied on throughout her life.
Even so, humiliation bubbled hotly upward from her neck and and boiled in her cheeks as she took a chair as close to the door as possible, in case the brave-face thing didn’t work and the suppressed urge to bolt and just hide for the next ten years in her flat in Chelsea got the better of her.
* * *
Jack Trent watched Evie walk into the boardroom with her perfectly coiffed head held high. She wore her hair loose, its glossy waves threaded with perfect tones of toffee and gold that looked deliciously touchable but which surely depended on endless wasted hours in a top salon. Her eyes were wide and baby blue, there was a tiny spray of freckles on her nose, and her mouth with its deliciously full lower lip was painted pale pink. She was the perfect example of English rose. She was tall and slender in the beautifully cut pink suit with short skirt and his mind insisted on treating him to a delectable flash of the photos he’d seen of her in the press on the way here, wearing a silk slip and a very cute smile.
He looked away, not without some difficulty, and refocused his mind carefully on the unbelievable mess she’d single-handedly made of his reputation with a couple of sentences.
‘Jack, this is Evangeline Staverton-Lynch,’ the company PR said at his elbow.
He took a breath and met her gaze across the table. She held his eyes with her own clear blue defiant ones, and if he’d been expecting a grovelling apology he’d apparently be waiting a long time. Clearly she was just another vacuous self-obsessed TV wannabe—only interested in her own fame and fortune. He knew the type only too well.
She nodded at him from across the table and beamed a perfect smile as if she hadn’t thrown the survival of his pet project into the balance. Four years ago this month since he’d left the army, and it had taken this long to reach a point where he could maybe begin to siphon off some of the guilt at what had happened while he’d been away. He’d believed enlisting would be the answer to all his problems, and it had been. His own slate wiped clean, a fresh start for him. The payoff had been the life left behind for his mother and sister and the nightmare Helen had drifted into without him there to look out for her. Too late now to change the past for Helen, but his work could still make a difference to others like her. He’d put his heart and soul into it and now, thanks to this diva, it looked as if the whole thing was going to fail before it even got off the ground.
‘I should be in Scotland right now,’ he snapped before anyone else could speak. ‘Working on the final kit list for my kids’ twenty-four-hour survival-skills course. It’s meant to be piloting in schools next month. I’ve been working towards this for the past two years, it’s the sole reason I’ve kept up the TV shows, and now I find the whole thing is hanging by a thread because of some libellous comment made by you. You don’t even know me.’
Evie straightened her back and pressed her teeth together to keep the not-my-fault smile in place. It would have been so much easier somehow if his TV show were the limit of his remit. A small twist of envy knotted her stomach at the thought of his survival business, at his drive and direction in life. The Jack Trent that existed outside the TV screen clearly had a lot more substance than Evie Staverton-Lynch did when you stripped away her own media image.
She resorted to the method that had dug her out of many a scrape throughout school: do not admit responsibility. And followed it up by pasting on a smile and mustering up as much charm as she could manage.
She leaned forward in her chair and offered him a demure smile.
‘Look, Jack—can I call you Jack?’
He stared at her incredulous but she carried on regardless.
‘This has all been a vile misunderstanding. It was a private comment, taken completely out of context. Filmed without my knowledge or consent. Honestly, these people have no respect for anyone’s privacy. But please don’t worry.’ She sat back and nodded reassuringly as if she had the whole ridiculous debacle under some level of control. In her dreams. ‘I issued an immediate retraction via social media.’
‘Are you having some kind of a laugh?’ he shouted. ‘A retraction via social media? Too little, too bloody late.’ He held her gaze angrily until she finally dropped her eyes. ‘Half the country have heard you bad-mouthing me. The papers are full of it. Mud like that sticks.’
She pushed her hands into her hair and stared down at the table.
‘I’m truly sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you but I can’t be responsible for something filmed without my knowledge. It wasn’t
