and simple,’ smiled Serena.
Michael looked her up and down with a deep penetrating stare that unnerved her. Slowly running one finger up and down the stem of his glass, he gave her a slow, flirtatious smile. ‘So, how are you such an expert on wine?’ he asked, taking a sip of his drink.
‘My father’s a wine buff,’ said Serena, unconsciously tracing her lip with her finger.
‘Lord Balcon?’ asked Michael, lifting a bushy black eyebrow into a scruffy arch.
‘That’s right, do you know him?’
‘Not really,’ replied Michael, his brow furrowing. ‘He’s on the committee of a club in London that just turned me down.’
Serena watched a dark cloud cross his face and realized instantly that Michael Sarkis was a man not used to being turned down for anything. ‘Which one? White’s? Annabel’s?’
‘Hamilton’s, actually.’
She picked up a canapé and laughed out loud. ‘What do you want to go there for? Full of stiffs my father knows from school. I had you down as a Bungalow 8 or Billionaire kind of guy.’
‘I have my own clubs, too,’ he smiled, ‘but sometimes you want to try something new.’
He moved nearer to her and rested his hand on her hip. It was a sudden and intimate gesture that sparked a jolt of desire through her. Unsettled, she struggled to rationalize it. Wasn’t he too old? It was hard to place an age on the dark-haired man. He could be forty, maybe even fifty. She’d hardly call him good looking: the hooked nose was too long, the dark eyes narrow and beady, his head too small for his body; but like so many older, more powerful men she had met through her father, he oozed an arrogant, almost dangerous allure that was definitely sexy.
‘Where are you going after the cruise?’ he asked in a way that suggested an imminent offer.
‘It’s not as hectic as usual,’ she smiled coyly, trying to leave herself open. ‘Got to do some press for To Catch a Thief but, other than that, the world is my oyster.’
‘Oh, I heard you were doing that remake.’ He smiled appreciatively. ‘The Grace Kelly role, of course.’
‘Of course,’ smiled Serena, flattered that he knew about her work. ‘And David Clooney as Roby the handsome jewel thief. It’s a great cast.’
‘Where are the junkets?’
‘Oh, it’s tedious. London, New York, LA,’ she said, showing a fashionable lack of interest at being flown privately all around the world and having half the world’s press fawn at her feet.
‘When you’re in LA, give me a ring so we can hook up. Where do you live?’
Serena flushed slightly and pushed a stray tendril of hair behind her ear. ‘Actually I live in London at the moment. But I’m thinking of getting a couple of other places: go bicoastal. In the meantime I’m staying at The Viceroy.’
She looked up at his face, which lay somewhere between disappointment and puzzlement.
‘What’s the matter?’
He smiled. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘No, what?’ she repeated almost petulantly.
‘I just wondered why you still live in London.’
‘What’s wrong with that? I live just off Cheyne Walk.’
His look bordered on bemusement. ‘I thought a woman like you would be thinking bigger.’
Her brow fell into a sharp crease. ‘I don’t quite understand.’
Michael paused. His head was bowed and he was smiling to himself, as if in an internal dialogue he was telling a joke.
‘I was at dinner last week in LA. My friend Lawrence owns Clerc, the jeweller’s. Do you know them?’
She nodded. They had lent her a pair of yellow diamond drop earrings for last year’s Oscars.
‘They’re looking for a “face”, a spokesperson, whatever you want to call it. They’re talking about the obvious names: Julia, Gwyneth, Catherine. Someone mentioned you and, having met you now, I would say you’d be the perfect choice.’ He stroked her cheek lightly. ‘You are incredibly beautiful.’
Serena looked away.
‘But … your name was dismissed for not having – ah, shall we say – international appeal.’
Her mouth immediately curled into a wounded, pained expression. ‘For your information I have a lot of visibility in the States,’ she retorted, straightening her back. ‘Vanity Fair are desperate to do a profile. I’d hardly say that was parochial.’
Michael spread his hands in a gesture of appeasement. ‘My mistake, I just thought you’d like to know.’
‘Well, thank you for your opinion,’ said Serena frostily. ‘Now, I think I’d better go and see Roman.’ She turned away, suddenly consumed with a fury about Tom’s irrational obsession: to stay living in London. And how dare she be overlooked for a major advertising campaign? She was a huge star. She had breeding – didn’t the Americans love all that ‘lady of the manor’ stuff?
A dark flicker of insecurity exploded in her consciousness.
Serena moved purposefully through the crowd, her mind already working on meetings with agents, real-estate buyers and publicists, her ambition to conquer Hollywood completely refuelled.
Three thousand miles away, a 747 touched down on the Heathrow tarmac, wobbling from side to side, its wheels screeching to the ground and forcing business-class passenger and nervous flyer Cate Balcon to reach out and squeeze the hand of her grateful neighbour.
‘Sorry,’ she smiled at the old man in a Harris tweed jacket, aware that it was the first contact she’d had with him during the entire trip. The man, who had recognized her from Richard Kay’s page in the Daily Mail as soon as he’d boarded, gave her fingers a little squeeze back. ‘Crosswinds,’ he smiled kindly, ‘nothing to worry about.’
Mildly embarrassed, Cate was on her feet as soon as the engines wound down. That’s the beauty of business class, she thought, slipping her Jimmy Choos back on: the quick getaway. She grabbed her leather holdall from the overhead compartment, peered through the window at the grey, drizzling London day and politely pushed her way to the front of the queue, looking at her watch anxiously. She hated the overnight red-eye flights from New York in the working week; they brought her back into London just too late to slip home for a quick sleep, yet too early to blow out the day’s work altogether. Still, she thought as she darted for the arrivals hall, if her PA had booked a car and it was waiting for her, she might just get back for the twelve noon production meeting.
‘Cate Balcon?’ asked a young, tanned driver as Cate charged through the automatic doors.
‘Yes.
