Private Lives Part 7

'Are you threatening me, Sam?' she hissed. 'Because I don't think you want to do that in your position.'

Sam winced. Clearly confrontation was not the way to go.

'Why not let me help you, then?' he said. 'You're an actress. A pretty good one apparently. If you go to the papers, it's not going to look good for you either. You've got so much to lose.'

She snorted. 'Have I? From where I'm standing, I've got nothing to lose.'

She slurred the word 'nothing' and Sam realised she was drunk. No wonder she wasn't buying into the rational argument. Still he pressed on.

'Listen, I told you in London these things take time. I know it's hard. It's frustrating, and you just need that lucky break ...'

'Like meeting a movie star at a party. Then having s.e.x with him. That was pretty lucky, huh?'

Despite his anger, he felt a pang of sympathy for her.

'You're better than this, Katie. You're worth more than this.'

'Yeah, I know,' she said. 'Which is why my price has just gone up to six hundred thousand.'

'This is ridiculous,' he said, finally losing his cool. And where was his b.l.o.o.d.y lawyer when he needed her?

'What's ridiculous?' said Katie. 'Getting money for s.e.x? It wouldn't be the first time.'

He felt his heart skip a beat. Had he heard her right?

'You're a ... a prost.i.tute prost.i.tute?' he whispered. He felt sure the room was spinning.

'I prefer to call it escort work. How else am I supposed to live between auditions?'

'Oh Jesus ...'

He sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed his temples. He could see the headlines now. Hollywood Star In Seedy Vice Girl Scandal. Lying Love Rat Shows True Colours. Slimy Brit Breaks Jess's Heart Hollywood Star In Seedy Vice Girl Scandal. Lying Love Rat Shows True Colours. Slimy Brit Breaks Jess's Heart. And all because he wanted a nice night out, free from all this fairy-tale b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, where he could drop the mask and be himself. There is no 'you' any more, he thought grimly. You're public property. A business. A machine to make money for other people.

'It's okay for you, isn't it?' said Katie. 'You've forgotten what it's like to have no idea where the next rent cheque is coming from. To have to walk five miles into the West End because you can't afford the bus fare. Don't tell me you haven't pulled a few tricks to get on.'

'You want a part, I can get you some auditions,' he said desperately.

'And I'm supposed to believe you?'

'Trust me, Katie.'

He heard her suck her teeth dismissively.

'I'll tell you who I trust. Blake Stanhope. I spoke to him this afternoon.'

'Stanhope?' The name of London's most notorious kiss-and-tell publicist sent Sam cold.

'He says the escort angle helps our cause. He thinks it makes the story worth over a million worldwide; he can maybe even get me on those American chat shows. So I'm thinking maybe it's actually a better move to spill the beans.'

'Please, Katie, Eli's getting you the money,' said Sam. 'Don't do anything rash.'

'You know what I want. I'm meeting Blake at nine o'clock tomorrow morning to take things further. I don't want to do it that way. But I will if I have to.'

'Katie, don't. Please,' he said, but the phone had gone dead.

Sam stared down at the handset for a moment, then with a curse, he threw it on the bed. He yanked the door open.

'Josh!' he shouted. 'Get me another phone. And where's that b.l.o.o.d.y lawyer?'

7

'Ecco! Ecco! Taxi! Taxi!'

Anna walked down the ramp as the hydrofoil clunked into dock in Capri's Marina Grande and pulled her sungla.s.ses down from the top of her head.

Wow, she thought, taking in the pastel sugar-cube houses clinging to the towering cliff, watching the streams of chic daytrippers chattering excitedly as they disembarked from the boat. Thirty minutes earlier she had left Naples, one of Italy's poorest cities, with its crumbling tenements, and now she was here, the sparkling sea to her left and a branch of Roberto Cavalli to her right. She felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz The Wizard of Oz, swept up, whisked away and deposited in a fantasy land.

Where, though, she wondered, were Sam Charles's people? She picked up her overnight bag and wandered away from the dock. Thankfully she was travelling super-light there had only been time to grab her pyjamas and her pa.s.sport when she had stopped at her house on the way to the airport. But arrangements had been worryingly loose about how she was supposed to find her client.

'Don't worry, Sam's people will find you,' his manager Eli had told her breezily. All right for you to say, thought Anna, feeling the heat in her frankly impractical lawyer's suit. You're in an air-conditioned office in LA.

'Hey there!'

She turned to see a short, skinny guy running down the dock towards her. He was wearing shorts and one of those fancy Bluetooth headsets. He definitely looked like one of Sam's people.

'Anna, right?' he said, holding out his hand. 'I'm Josh, Sam's PA. I'm gonna take you to him.'

'Well, I hope we're going in one of those things,' she said, pointing to a line of open-topped taxis with bright striped awnings.

'Uh-uh,' said Josh. 'Even better.'

He took her bag and led her down some stone steps. At the bottom was a beautiful wooden motor launch, all polished wood and chrome.

Oh yes, very Sophia Loren, thought Anna as Josh helped her inside.

'So where's Sam?' she called over the roar of the engine as the boat zoomed out of the bay leaving a trail of foaming white wake behind it.

'Just around this headland,' replied Josh, pointing to a white yacht moored about two hundred metres from the sh.o.r.eline.

'He's not staying in a hotel?' said Anna, surprised.

'He's working. Under the circ.u.mstances, it's best he's out there rather than on land.'

She wondered if Josh knew about 'the incident', and if he did, who else had been informed. She had no reason to doubt Josh's loyalty, but as she understood it, he was a new addition to Sam's team, and that posed a security risk. No doubt he was being well paid, but a story this explosive was worth hundreds of thousands.

'I hear you've just joined Sam,' said Anna casually.

'Yes, great way to start off, huh?' smiled Josh. 'And Sam's such a sweetheart too.'

Anna nodded non-committally. She hadn't made up her mind about Sam Charles quite yet. She always made a point of swotting up on her clients before she met them, so she had spent the entire flight to Naples reading a file of interviews, bios and news stories about the actor. Sifting through the gushing profile features, the overall impression she came away with was that Sam Charles was an operator. One minute he was just another member of some university revue show, the next he was making indie Brit movies and in the s.p.a.ce of just a few years had graduated to Hollywood. That sort of meteroic rise didn't happen by accident. Even with the right contacts, management and partner, it took more than luck to get on in the most cut-throat town in the world. All the evidence says 'ruthless player', but I'm prepared to be proved wrong, she smiled to herself, thinking of Ilina Miranova, and the preconceived ideas of what she would be like before she met her.

The speedboat moored at the back of the yacht.

'No heels on board, I'm afraid,' said Josh, looking down at Anna's shoes.

She slipped them off and with Josh's help clambered awkwardly aboard.

'Sam's aft that's the back of the boat to you and me.' Josh smiled.

Anna found Sam Charles leaning against the railings. His towelling robe hung open. His hair was damp, his tanned feet bare, and he was staring out to sea with a cigarette dangling between two fingers. She couldn't help but think he looked like a post-coital gigolo, but there was no mistaking that he was absolutely beautiful. It was a moment before he realised she was there.

'h.e.l.lo,' he said uncertainly.

'Anna Kennedy,' she said, stepping forward with her hand out. When he still looked confused, she added, 'Solicitor from Donovan Pierce?'

'I thought Helen Pierce was coming?' he said.

'Helen's tied up in London, I'm afraid.' His look of worry was unmistakable. 'Don't worry. This is what I do. Injunctions. Privacy matters.'

She stopped herself from giving him a potted version of her CV. She knew he was a.s.sessing her, wondering if she was up to the job. She didn't take it personally. In all her years working in media law, she had learned that celebrities always wanted the best, and that meant the partner with their name above the door. Of course, the figurehead was not necessarily the person most suited to the task, but it was the perception of getting the very best that was important.

'Well I guess we'd better make a start,' said Anna quickly. She didn't want to give him time to start questioning her suitability. She was under strict instructions to get the job done as speedily as possible. 'Maybe we should go somewhere private?' she added.

'Sure,' he said, stubbing out his cigarette. 'Come over to my stateroom.'

Anna hadn't been on many yachts, so she was surprised and a little disappointed to find that Sam Charles's grandly t.i.tled stateroom was just a rather compact bedroom. She sat down at the small desk and opened her notebook as Sam paced about, distracted and anxious.

'She called me twenty minutes ago, you know,' he said, running his hand through his damp dirty-blond hair.

For a minute she couldn't stop looking at him. She'd met models before who looked other-worldly, but that was because of their long, skinny bodies and their exaggerated features. But Sam's handsomeness, his flawless skin, the intense, extraordinary blueness of his eyes made him look a breed apart.

'Who?'

'Katie. The girl. She said she'd been talking to Blake Stanhope.'

Anna nodded. She could well have done without Stanhope's involvement, but with a story this big, it was only to be expected.

'What else did she say?'

'She demanded more money, can you believe that?'

'You didn't tell her to eff off again, did you?'

Sam chuckled, the atmosphere between them thawing a little. 'Not this time.'

He sat down on the bed.

'Okay, coach,' he said. 'What do we do now?'

His gaze unsettled her. In the small room, surrounded by sea, it felt too intimate to be professional.

'Now you tell me everything. From the beginning.'

He smiled. 'I was worried you were going to say that.'

Despite his reluctance, Sam told her as much as he could remember about his encounter with Katie. Every now and then Anna would stop him to ask for more detail, scribbling down notes as she went. As she listened, she asked herself how someone so good-looking and successful could be so stupid. But then she had seen this kind of behaviour dozens of times. Whether it was an actor or a sportsman or a singer, celebrities thought they were bulletproof; they didn't think normal rules applied to them. She wondered how many other women Sam had slept with. Actresses, extras, models, wives. It didn't matter that he had Jessica Carr, one of the world's most desirable women, waiting at home for him. The bottom line was always the same: they did it because they could.

'So you had penetrative s.e.x with her?' she asked. She felt her face flush; she was glad the light on board was peachy and low.

Sam pulled a face. 'Yes. We had s.e.x. Well, very probably. But it's worse than that.'

'Kinky s.e.x?'

'No!' said Sam defensively. 'She's a hooker.'

'You paid her?'

'No. Yes. Well sort of. I gave her some money to get a cab home and for the hotel. I was trying to be nice.'

Anna frowned.

'So if you didn't pay her for s.e.x, why do you say she's a hooker?'

'She told me when she phoned just now. She said she's worked as an escort in the past. That's not going to look good, is it?'

Anna shook her head. 'It isn't ideal, no.'

'What can we do?'

For a second he didn't look like the c.o.c.ksure, arrogant celebrity she had pegged him down as.

'We get an injunction to stop publication of the story.'

'For libel? But I slept with her.'

'She has to prove it.'

'She's got a photo on her mobile that shows us in bed. Who knows when she took it? Probably after the tenth tequila.'

'Can I see it?'

He pa.s.sed the mobile across.

'Well, it shows you in bed, it doesn't show you having s.e.x. Anyway, we won't get an injunction to prevent the libel, we'll get a gagging order on the grounds of privacy.'