Beautiful People (14 page)

    Puccini's looked unexceptional to Darcy, a long, low building swathed in vines and with tables outside with cream shades. But then everything exploded in shouts, grinding and zooming noises, and blasts of white light.

    Paparazzi, she swiftly realised as a sashaying waiter led them to a table. Not for her, thankfully, but for Jennifer Aniston just behind. Darcy was amazed both by the way the lights exploded—fast, furious, noisy, frightening—and the way the actress, far smaller and thinner even than she appeared in magazines, just smiled her way through it and walked to her table with her companion, seemingly undisturbed by the fuss.

    "Like this place?" Mitch reached for a breadstick. The table they had been given was one of the worst; restaurants of this sort, he suspected, had a Fame Board like his agency's in the back somewhere too. He would be somewhere way down the bottom of it. Darcy, on the other hand, wouldn't yet be on it at all. But she would, Mitch was certain.

    Darcy was examining the menu. It was enormous, although it had far few dishes than expected on it. None of which were as Italian as expected either.

    The champagne arrived. Darcy picked hers up gingerly; her head still felt slightly tight and thick from that on the plane.

    "To you!" Mitch declared, in a voice so loud that she cringed. She chinked back, reddening, desperate for people not to stare. Mitch, on the other hand, was desperate to attract as much attention to his client as possible.

    The champagne having helped suffuse her embarrassment, Darcy started to look about her again. Her wandering eye caught a well-known face. She leaned over to Mitch. "Is that…?"

    "Drew Barrymore, yes,"

    "And that…?"

    "Is Cameron Diaz." Mitch grinned delightedly. This was fun.

    A waiter glided to the table. "May I take your order?"

    "Oh, yes. Sorry," Darcy beamed. She applied herself conscientiously to the vast menu, then raised her head. "This is an Italian restaurant?"

    Mitch and the waiter affirmed that this was indeed the case.

    "But there isn't any pasta on the menu."

    The waiter's eyebrow arched upwards. The agent put a fat paw on Darcy's small, slim hand.

    "This is Hollywood," he reminded her. "No one eats pasta here. Carbs are a no-no."

    "Perhaps Madam would like the steamed fish with lemon," put in the waiter acidly.

    Darcy scanned the menu again. Her face lit up suddenly. "Hey. I've found some pasta. Nude ravioli. What's that?" she asked, her voice dropping slightly. "What's, erm, nude about it?"

    "It doesn't have any pasta." The waiter spoke with a touch of triumph. "It's just the stuffing."

    "Which is?" Darcy asked hopefully, her hungry imagination conjuring up rich patties of red-wine ragu. Or something deliciously cheesy and herby…

    "Steamed spinach balls," the waiter said flatly.

    "I'll have the shark risotto," Mitch said. It was the standard power order. Shark—for sharks. The nearest Hollywood restaurants got to a joke.

    As he handed the vast bill of fare over, Darcy watched, amused, as the waiter struggled to incorporate it about his person. There was nowhere to put it apart from under his arm.

    "An Italian restaurant without pasta!" she exclaimed as the waiter disappeared.

    "You don't get it," Mitch grinned at her. "Restaurants in Hollywood aren't for eating in. They're to avoid eating."

    The black eyes staring into his widened in amazement. "But you eat."

    "Yeah, but not in restaurants." Mitch thought guiltily of the jelly doughnuts and the doctor's advice he routinely ignored. He resolved to change the subject. "This meeting with Jack Saint," he began, deciding to get straight on to the important business, rather than waiting.

    Darcy nodded, tilting her head slightly and attentively. Her eyes slid slightly to the right of Mitch's face. It was then that it happened.

    The chat and buzz of the restaurant disappeared. Mitch's voice faded to nothing. The remains of her hangover vanished. Darcy was aware of nothing but a singing sensation in her every nerve-ending— and the eyes she was looking into. In which she felt caught, unable to move, almost unable to breathe.

    They were ridiculous blue even from this distance, drilling into hers. He was, she managed to absorb, almost stupidly handsome, all cheekbones and lips and glossy, ruffled black hair. He looked like something from a perfume advert, one of those bulging crotches in white underwear that women crashed their cars into walls straining to look at. He ought to have made her laugh.

    But Darcy had never felt less like laughing. Her heart leapt in mixed terror and excitement as he rose to his feet. Her scrambled senses realizing a few seconds later that he was leaving. The two people he was with led the way: a man and a woman. The woman was thin and fiftysomething, not lover material, Darcy quickly noted. His agent, maybe? The man looked businesslike too, tanned, grey-haired, trim, sharp-eyed, the Hollywood player type she had imagined Mitch being. Her eyes followed him; his remained locked to hers. For all she was focused on his face, she could sense the power of his body: broad shoulders and a graceful animal muscularity, like some jungle big cat. She felt a pulsing in her groin.

    "Hey, are you listening to me?" Mitch interrupted. His eyes followed Darcy's; he breathed a sharp inward breath. His small eyes narrowed in dislike. Oh no. Not that guy. Anyone but him.

    Darcy glanced at him vaguely. "Yes, of course, I'm listening. Go on. But before you do," she leant over and hissed, "tell me who that man is."

    Mitch's heart sank at the urgency in her voice. He had heard it before. He spoke stonily into the wooden table. "Christian Harlow."

    "And who's he?" Darcy asked, her eyes following Christian through the restaurant, her heart steadily sinking because any moment now he would disappear through the door. Then, to her delight, he stopped, paused at the entrance, and, eyes still on her, raised two fingers to his lips and kissed them. Then he disappeared into a hail of flashbulbs.

    Darcy whirled back to Mitch, her eyes blazing. "He's famous?"

    "Famous for being an asshole," Mitch growled, his good mood severely dissipated. Famous too, he added to himself, for being the man who had caused all Belle Murphy's problems. Ruined her career, pretty much. And, to endear himself to Mitch ever further, Christian had just this week joined Greg Cucarachi at Associated Artists; Greg having pried Christian away from the agent he had been with since the beginning. Although given Christian's loyalty record, that was, Mitch imagined, probably as difficult as prying apart two halves of a cheese sandwich.

    Darcy was still gawping at the door through which Harlow had just departed. Then something clicked in her head. She blinked and felt a strange sensation, as if released from a spell. She felt a wave of sickening guilt. Where was Niall in all this? Where was her loyalty? She felt hot with self-disgust. How could one glimpse of a stranger wipe out so completely all thoughts of the man she loved?

    She had called Niall repeatedly on landing, but he had not answered. He had an audition today, she knew—yet another. She desperately hoped it would go well. Or, at least, not as badly as the others. Sitting in the L.A. restaurant, sickened and ashamed, Darcy concentrated all her love and thoughts on her boyfriend and, from eight-thousand miles away, wished him luck from the bottom of her anguished heart.

"Cow!"

"Pig!"

    The children's angry-sounding shouts were the first thing James heard as he opened the front door. He closed his eyes briefly. A wave of misery swept through him, followed by the reflection that perhaps it was only to be expected. The honeymoon period with the new nanny was over.

    Hero and Cosmo were arguing. Chaos had come again. He'd known Emma was too good to be true, and now here was the proof—she'd lost control of the children, just like every other nanny before her. From now on, it would be the familiar downward spiral to her inevitable sacking. If she didn't walk first, that was. He'd seen it many times before.

    Only this time, he wasn't going to.

    Soaring into James's mood of glum acceptance now came a thunderbolt of determination. Usually he just watched the collapse of their childcare regimes from the sidelines, but this time he couldn't. The other nannies hadn't been much of a loss anyway, but Emma was different. The fact that she cared about the children, loved the job, and was brilliant at it meant that on no account was she to be let go.

    He would talk to Vanessa about it as soon as she got back. But the fact that his wife seemed inexplicably irritated by Emma had not escaped James. The thought had flitted briefly across James's mind then that his wife suspected him of more than strictly professional interest in the new nanny, but he had dismissed it instantly. How could Vanessa imagine anything of the sort? He was, admittedly, scared of her, but he was also devoted to her and always would be.

    It was with a clear conscience and pure motives, therefore, that had James consistently shored up Emma's position within the household, praising her to Vanessa whenever he could, and in the strongest terms.

    "Pig!" Cosmo now screamed, derailing his father's train of thought.

    "Cow!" yelled back Hero.

    The situation was clearly deteriorating. James set a determined foot on the bottom-most stair.

    "Dog!"

    He couldn't hear Emma's voice at all, James realised. Panic seized him at the thought that she had gone already, before she was pushed. For if he himself, notoriously unobservant as he was, had picked up the vibes from Vanessa, it seemed likely Emma had too.

    "Elephant!" screamed Cosmo.

    James had gained the landing now. A great sense of relief flooded through him as he saw, on the sisal floor of the upstairs hall, his children in clean pyjamas—pink gingham for Hero, blue gingham for Cosmo, hair neatly brushed and no doubt teeth too, sitting opposite each other with great grins on their faces and their legs stretched out. Between those legs was a pile of cards with animals printed on the back.

    At a movement behind him, James turned. Emma, drying her hands on a floral tea towel, was hurrying up the stairs behind him. She smiled apologetically. "Sorry, didn't hear you come in. I was in the kitchen." She looked happily at the children. "I've just taught them to play Snap, and they're having a quick game before bed. They love it. I didn't realise they didn't know how…"

    James did not reply. There was, despite the private child care they had enjoyed—if that was the word—since birth, so much the children didn't know. Emma's methods, her constant engagement with the children, showed in sharp relief the extent to which the other nannies had not bothered at all, unless it was to dump them both in front of a DVD or shove Cosmo in the direction of his PlayStation.

    Since Emma had come, the DVDs had largely been phased out, access to computer games rigidly controlled, and the children taught Snakes and Ladders and Tiddly Winks, both of which they had quickly taken to. In addition, besides teaching Hero and Cosmo the beginnings of reading and some rudimentary arithmetic, Emma had taken them out into the world and showed them how buses worked, the Tube, post offices, and shops.

    It was, James said admiringly to Vanessa, nothing short of a miracle. She had sharply pointed out that Emma was not the first of their caregivers to take the children shopping. James remembered that one three nannies ago had, indeed, taken Hero and Cosmo to Oxford Street Topshop almost every other day. Only not, he suspected, for their benefit.

    "Mouse!" shrieked Hero, slamming her card on the pile, on top of which Cosmo had just put down a mouse. "Sna-a-ap!"

    As Cosmo groaned with the agony of losing, Emma bent down, gathered up the cards—"Yes, children, you help. We tidy up our playthings."—and shooed them off to bed.

    "Come on, Hero," Emma urged the silver-haired three-year-old as she lingered over a card with a cat on it. Of all animals, cats were Hero's absolute favourite. "You need your sleep. It's a big day for you tomorrow. What day is it?" she enquired gently, dropping to her knees before the child and taking both white, chubby hands in her own.

    Hero's big blue eyes looked shyly into Emma's pretty, ruddy, beaming face. "Birthday," she whispered, before collapsing with an excited squeal on Emma's white-cottoned chest.

    A surge of horror possessed James. While he had not forgotten it was Hero's fourth birthday, he now remembered he had heard nothing about the arrangements for it. Usually, when the children's birthdays loomed, Vanessa was storming about the house in a blue funk as she and whatever nanny was resident at the time tried to secure the real-life Charlie and Lola, the cast of
High School Musical,
or whatever that year's must-have happened to be.

    But there had been no such scenes recently. That Vanessa had forgotten was surely impossible, but James resolved to talk to Emma after bedtime nonetheless. If Hero's birthday party had somehow slipped through the net, perhaps they could come up with something together. Emma was a resourceful woman, and he had absolute faith in her.

    "Bed!" Emma was commanding the children. There was a flurry of movement and laughter, a blur of blue and pink gingham, and almost before James realised, his children had pressed warm, flannelcovered, bath-scented little bodies to his, deposited hard wet kisses on his cheek, and tumbled into their room, from whence the comforting sound of Emma singing nursery rhymes now issued.