Power Games. Victoria Fox

      ‘Fifteen seconds before you went for the story.’

      Playfully, she smacked him. He grabbed her, kissed her again.

      He was right, though. Eve had worked in this business ten years, yet she never tired of the buzz; what it was to chase a scandal. Today, millions across the globe read her work. Her biting appraisals were infamous. She took no prisoners, she refused to sugarcoat and her allegiance couldn’t be bought—she wrote what she thought and she was faithful to her instinct, whether her subject liked it or not. Over the years she had gained a fearsome reputation. Eve wasn’t out to hurt these celebrities, or to sabotage them, but she believed that if you were going to put yourself up for scrutiny, to use the media to your own ends, then you had to be prepared for it to use you back. Stars who crowed on about privacy didn’t seem to mind so much when they were summoning paparazzi to the opening of their new perfume, or when they had a hot date on their arm or a radical new look to unveil.

      Teen superstar Kevin Chase was a prime example. His success was so closely entwined with his courtship of the press that it was impossible to separate the two, yet when Eve had challenged him on the issue of sex (Kevin’s stance had, until recently, been emphatically chaste), he had fumbled his way through a confused, tetchy, half-baked response before barking at her to fuck off because it was none of her business.

      None of her business … It was a red rag to a bull. Eve intended to make it her business, whatever it was, and she would stop at nothing until she got there.

      ‘So?’ she tried again.

      Orlando ground out his smoke.

      ‘Don’t want to talk about it,’ he said. ‘It’s complicated.’

      ‘Come on,’ she urged, ‘give me something.’

      ‘I’m forever giving you something.’

      ‘And I’m not?’ She raised herself up on one elbow. ‘What about that exclusive I kept back on the Mitzlar Brothers—?’

      ‘You were planning to hold fire anyway.’

      ‘I wasn’t. My editor would kill me if she knew—sex dens, strippers, a world-class banking family …’

      ‘We needed their sponsorship. This story would have ruined them.’

      ‘Exactly.’ Eve trailed her fingers down his stomach, felt him harden once more. ‘So what do I get in return? I did it because you asked me …’

      ‘You don’t do anything you’re asked.’

      ‘That depends who’s asking.’

      He threw her off the scent. ‘Tawny Lascelles just signed for my sister’s label.’

      Eve leaned over, reached into her bag and pulled out her pad. ‘And?’

      ‘And what?’

      ‘D’you know Tawny?’

      ‘She was at the launch a couple of weeks back.’

      ‘Yeah, I figured that part out. Who was she with?’

      ‘No one, I don’t think.’

      ‘Does Angela run checks on models before she employs them?’

      ‘Why?’ he scoffed.

      ‘Tawny’s press people are like Rottweilers, she’s giving nothing away—but I know, I just know there’s something there, if I could just …’

      Orlando touched the end of her nose. ‘You never let up, do you?’

      ‘I came from the gala,’ she explained. ‘Tawny and I chatted.’

      ‘Why didn’t you ask her?’

      ‘Don’t be facetious.’

      ‘Don’t use long words.’

      She stuck up her finger. ‘That short enough for you?’

      ‘Cute.’

      Eve got up. She fixed herself a drink, raised the carafe in question. He nodded.

      ‘Come on,’ she said, leaning back against the mahogany dresser, ‘I already had it in the bag about Tawny and Fit for NYC. What else?’

      Orlando narrowed his eyes. ‘What if I just wanted to see you?’

      ‘Crap. I know you see other women.’

      ‘Do you see other men?’

      ‘What’s it to you?’ But she didn’t see other men. She didn’t have time.

       And I don’t want to.

      He pulled her back to the couch.

      ‘For chasing other people’s secrets, Harley,’ he murmured, ‘you’ve sure got some mysteries of your own.’

      Orlando held her down, his tongue tracing its practised route down her neck and across her breasts. She didn’t answer, but then he didn’t require it.

      Suffice to say, there was a good reason why Eve did this job, and she wasn’t about to compromise for anyone. Not even for him.

       4

      Tawny Lascelles took the red-eye back to LA. She was tired and crabby, pissed off at that bitch reporter for sticking her fat beak in where it wasn’t wanted and then later at some piglet-faced model she had never worked with telling her she’d gone too fast down the catwalk. The nerve! Tawny wanted to slap her. The last thing she felt like doing now was getting stuck on an airplane for hours, but such was her schedule these days that she seemed to spend half her life zooming back and forth over the Atlantic.

      Everything in the supermodel’s first-class cabin was as requested, which helped soften the blow. Tawny’s rider went everywhere with her—road, sea or air, she was never without her essentials: chamomile and echinacea tea, a cashmere blanket (silver, never grey), three bouquets of lightly scented peonies, a bottle of Coco Mademoiselle, her music station (Gaga for when she needed to hype up, Taylor for when she needed to wind down), and the only food she ate with any frequency, or indeed with any relish, a jumbo-sized bag of Haribo Sours.

      Two thousand miles across the Atlantic, she stuck her arm above the parapet.

      Immediately a glass of water was brought—carbonated but with just the right amount of fizz: Tawny hated to get burpy. She sipped carefully to avoid bloating, then without saying thank you settled back in her recliner booth and flipped open a magazine. A stinging flick brought the page open on a column by Eve Harley.

       Prying tramp!

      It was all Tawny could do not to rip the paper to shreds. She scowled at the reporter’s name and at what unsuspecting prey had been targeted this time.

      Kevin Chase.

      The article accompanied a picture on stage during his latest World Tour.

      My opinion? Kevin Chase is an out-of-control teenage brat. So he’s young, so people make mistakes, so we should cut him some slack—but the fact is there are countless young kids out there with nothing, no money, no job, no support, no future, and still we’re supposed to feel sorry for this guy? A nineteen year old who set fire to a stack of hundred-dollar bills last week as a PR stunt? Give me a break …

      It was a shame about Kevin, Tawny thought, assessing the superstar’s dwarfed yet rippling torso—it was like all the ingredients were there, like he had the potential to be hot, only everything about him was so … well, small. It was as if he had gone through a photocopier and been reduced by forty per cent.

      Give him a few years, she decided. The handsome part wasn’t nearly as important anyway, since there