The Mistresses Collection. Оливия Гейтс

my off-screen dramas elevated our name.’ She winced. ‘I couldn’t live up to it. The expectation, the pressure was huge. And there was no getting away from it. But my mistakes were my own. There’s no one to blame but me. I earned myself this diva-bitch label and it got fixed with perma-glue. And like all good stories mine were embroidered—some elements magnified. Some just plain made up. I wasn’t as bad as it began to appear.’

      ‘So what happened?’

      ‘I got fired, of course. I think, all along, that’s what I’d wanted. I haven’t been on stage or on a TV show since. Six years. That’s for ever in telly time.’ She’d escaped and gone to study. It was only recently that she’d been dragged back under. She wrinkled her nose. ‘Except for repeats. They like to repeat some episodes.’ She grimaced.

      ‘Where was your father?’

      Right in the centre. ‘He was my manager.’ Her father had let her down. He’d never stepped in to stop her. Never defended her. ‘That’s how it all started. With me. Hannah had always wanted to act—was dying to. But she’d not got any jobs. Instead I got them. It was the cute little blonde girl thing,’ she said cynically. ‘Eventually Hannah did a piece in an indie film. Wasn’t even paid for it. But she got spotted. They finally realised her talent. And she flew from there.’

      ‘And what did you do?’

      ‘Stuck on the show for another season. Hated it and got worse in terms of behaviour.’

      ‘Why didn’t you just quit?’

      ‘I couldn’t. We needed the money. Hannah hadn’t quite hit the jackpot then, she was a slow build before becoming an overnight sensation—that’s the way these things really work. I brought in regular money that we needed. So you can imagine how mad Dad was when they finally called time on me.’

      She’d lost all worth. All her value. He’d turned to Hannah. Helped Hannah. She supposed he’d had to.

      ‘But by then Hannah was hitting her stride?’

      Caitlin nodded. ‘She has that quirkiness that the camera loves. There’s no mistaking her for anyone else. She’s passionate about acting. It’s absolutely her thing and she is incredibly good at it. She disappears for weeks when she’s right into a part.’

      ‘You’re close?’

      Caitlin hesitated. ‘She’s very busy and I’m working on a new phase in my life.’ She read the disapproval in his eyes. ‘We really didn’t spend that much time together as kids. But she’s a darling,’ she rushed to add. ‘She deserves all her success. And she doesn’t need to be dragged down by me. It was because Hannah knows George that I got the loan of this place. She is supportive of me. But I think it’s better to keep some kind of distance.’

      ‘You’ve shut her out?’

      ‘No,’ she said defensively. ‘I just don’t think she needs to have my affairs thrust in her face. She doesn’t need to have her publicist deflecting questions about me. She needs to concentrate on her career and not have me as the sideshow.’

      ‘But that leaves you alone.’ He looked at her. ‘Because I’m guessing you and your dad aren’t close.’

      ‘He’s very busy too. He’s still Hannah’s manager,’ Caitlin said softly. ‘She has a whole team these days, but he’s still very involved. And that’s fine. I’m a big girl. I don’t need a manager. I’m loving being in New York and being anonymous.’ She glared at him, hating how exposed she felt right this instant in the face of his inscrutability. She didn’t want to go any further—not into the nightmare of the last few months and the real reason she’d had to run. ‘Anyway, you can’t talk. You’ve shut out your family.’

      ‘I haven’t shut them out.’ His smile went fixed.

      ‘Really? When you won’t even go and see them in the few days you have back in the country?’

      ‘You think they’d want to see me when I’m tired and grumpy?’ The smile disappeared altogether.

      ‘Would it be so bad if they saw you tired and grumpy? Or is your image too important to maintain?’

      ‘I don’t care about my image.’

      ‘No? So you have no problem with having that picture of you being sent around the world?’

      ‘Okay,’ he conceded with a sigh. ‘I hate that picture.’

      ‘Why?’ Didn’t he feel some kind of pride that he’d been able to help that girl?

      He shook his head. ‘I work as part of a team. No one person is a hero. We need each other. We’re there to do a job but we have each other’s backs. There’s no room for egos. We all do what we have to do. It’s never down to one person.’

      Sometimes it was. He was the one who’d found that girl and pulled her free. Sure, maybe others in his team had found others as well, but for that one little girl James Wolfe was her lone hero.

      ‘Are your colleagues bothered by the attention you receive?’ Was that where his ‘reluctant hero’ mode sprang from?

      He stepped back, his bottomless eyes fixed on her. ‘There was some ribbing. But no, I know they’d rather it were me than them. In many ways it was great—it raised the profile of the organisation and that helps with fundraising and stuff.’ He shrugged.

      It was clearly a line from the publicists that he’d repeated a hundred or more times. ‘And it’s only having your picture taken. It’s not that awful.’

      Sure, against the backdrop of things he must have seen, it wasn’t, but he couldn’t deny the impact on him personally. She wanted him to acknowledge it. ‘But it changes your life.’

      ‘Again,’ he noted, ‘it’s nothing compared to what some people go through.’

      ‘You’re being heroic again.’ She chuckled. ‘But you don’t like it.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘It’s so awful to be admired? To be adored?’ She’d far rather that than be thought of as the wicked witch.

      ‘People see what they want to see. But it’s not real. They don’t see through that image.’

      His words pierced her defence. They were words she’d say and mean. But she couldn’t believe he really meant then. That he could possibly understand. So she teased. ‘Maybe you don’t let them.’

      He chuckled. ‘Do you try to let them see through your image? Do you try to change what they think?’

      She waved a hand as if brushing off the idea. ‘People have this thing about leopards and spots.’

      ‘So once bad, always bad?’ He leaned forward, coming too close again.

      ‘Angels can fall from grace, though, so you better be careful,’ she whispered.

      He didn’t laugh, didn’t pull away as she expected him to. As she was warning him to.

      ‘I’m not afraid of what people think about me,’ he said.

      ‘Really?’ She turned, tapped the iPad back to life and entered his name in the search box.

      ‘You’re Googling me? Right now?’ he asked, sounding somewhat stunned.

      ‘Why not? I get the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me. What else is it you’re hiding from?’

      Something flickered in his eyes before he looked down so she couldn’t see into them.

      ‘Search away.’

      His careless drawl spurred her. To find something wicked about the so-perfect one? She wished.

      In a second she had a spate of webpages listed. A number of links to one article in particular. The one that had come first in the search