Best of Bosses 2008: In Bed With Her Italian Boss\Taken by Her Greek Boss\Blind Date With the Boss (32 page)

‘Including those ridiculous souvenirs you insisted on buying at the market a couple of days ago?'

‘They weren't ridiculous. You'll be sorry you didn't invest in a couple yourself when you get back to England and realise that they would have looked very fetching on your walls.' She kept her voice as light as she could, but now the bantering that had led her to think of what they had as something special hurt beyond endurance.

‘Name two places where colourful masks would have blended in.'

‘You mean against the stark white walls and expensive abstracts?'

Rose heard herself conducting this perfectly normal conversation from a distance, almost as though she were hovering over herself, watchful and detached.

When they were finally standing outside their rooms, she smiled at him, gratefully, she hoped, and stuck out her hand, which he pointedly ignored.

‘That's a bit ridiculous,' he drawled. ‘Yes, we've both reached the same conclusion that this was a holiday fling best left on the island, but I think shaking hands is slightly ludicrous.' He bent and kissed her on the mouth, but this was a fond, farewell kiss, devoid of the urgency and hunger she had become accustomed to, and it hurt like hell.

It did, however, set the tone for the next day, during which they were affable, polite and very, very busy. Flights, work that Nick suddenly remembered needed to be done and books that Rose decided should have been read.

She could already feel the mantle of England settling back over her long before the plane finally touched down at Heathrow.

She had feverishly wondered how they would actually part company when the moment arrived, but in all events it was an anticlimax. Nick spotted someone he knew and, before she could brace herself for the hellishness of the final goodbye, he was kissing her fondly on the cheek and excusing himself. Would she be okay to handle a taxi back herself? Just a couple of things he wanted to talk to Ed Duggins about…take care of yourself…hope the house lives up to expectations…The usual platitudes, but his mind was already somewhere else. He had moved on.

Rose went directly to her house. She had been there almost every day to supervise the work in progress and had left her painter and decorator in charge of replastering and wallpapering over the mess made by the builders.

At any rate, that was exciting. She was delivered to her door in a black cab and, once inside the house, wandered around taking in the changes, and there were a fair few of those. Terry had done an excellent job. Everywhere looked new and smelt new.

And it was all paid for. She told herself that she should be over the moon, but as it turned out the only thing she had to smile about was her phone call to her sister.

Lily was coming home. Just for a couple of weeks because the leading man had apparently done something unfortunate to his ankle. Filming would skirt around him, but her scenes were already shot.

Her voice down the other end of the phone was like a tonic and Rose couldn't help herself. For once she wasn't the one holding everything together. And for once Lily was the strong half, soothing, reassuring, safe in her own area of expertise—namely men.

‘Don't worry, Rosie. I'm coming home and everything's gonna be fine. Wait and see.'

Somewhere in middle America, Lily smiled to herself as she hung up the phone—Rose needed her and that felt good, and, even better, she was going to make sure that everything really was all right for her sister.

‘N
OW
that you've been back nearly two weeks, I think it's time we went out and had a good time. I'm heading back to America next Wednesday and I can't bear the thought of leaving you alone here when you're so miserable.'

Rose looked at her sister and tried to imagine whether she was capable of ever having a good time again. Not a word from Nick since they had returned to England. Not a phone call, not a message left on the answering machine, nothing. It was as though she had never existed in his eyes.

For Lily's sake, she had played down her feelings, but her talents as an actor must have been less successful than she had thought because here was her sister now, looking at her worriedly, in fact the way she had looked at Lily many a time in the past. The shoe was very securely on the other foot.

‘I'm not miserable, Lily. I'm tired. And, besides, I haven't got time to have a good time.' Rose looked at her sister over the rim of her mug.

‘That doesn't make sense.'

‘Sure it does. I mean, I've only been back at my old job a few days and you wouldn't believe the stack of work that was waiting for me. A lovely little collection of jobs no one else wanted to do.' Every single one of which was utterly boring,
she was tempted to add, but didn't because she was determined, after her initial confession and shameful blubbing down the phone, not to make a fuss. She had lost her head and had her moment of madness and now was time to pick up the pieces and not wallow in a tide of self-pity. At least, not in public.

‘But it's a Saturday, Rose.' Lily sighed dramatically.

‘Don't worry about me, I want you to go out and have fun. As you said, Lily, you'll be heading back in a few days. You want to catch up with all your fans before you go.' Rose smiled at her sister. The phone had not stopped ringing since Lily had arrived back. Friends wanting to meet up and, according to Lily, who had developed a healthy streak of cynicism since working in America, not-nearly-friends who wanted to rub shoulders with someone in the movie business.

‘No. You and I are going to go out tonight. Nice little jazz club in the West End. You can get your glad rags on and I'll ask a couple of people I met when I was in America who are over here as well. We'll make it a cosy evening.' Lily was not about to take no for an answer. She had promised herself that she would make sure that Rose was just fine by the time she returned to America and she wasn't about to jettison that goal. She gave her a coaxing but implacable smile.

Several hours later and Rose wasn't sure whether to be amused or alarmed by her sister's newly acquired ability to chivvy.

Chivvied from shop to shop because retail therapy was, apparently, the best form of therapy. Then from shop to beauty parlour where Rose's short nails were turned into works of art with pearly pink nail polish. Then onward from the beauty parlour to the hairdresser's, conveniently and suspiciously pre-booked, where her naturally curly hair underwent some weird metamorphosis and emerged a fabulous tumble of
windblown curls rather than her usual unkempt, unmanageable mess. And brilliantly gold, thanks to some clever mixing of dyes. Lots of highlights everywhere.

Lily pronounced herself satisfied and they returned to the house energised with several carrier bags and, in Rose's case, a complete makeover.

Course, she thought, she would never be lean and glamorous like her sister, but she hadn't exactly looked fat in the dressing rooms.

‘You've lost weight,' Lily announced airily, not for the first time reading her sister's mind as she dumped the bags on the kitchen table. She poured Rose a glass of wine to get her in the mood, and plonked herself down on one of the chairs. ‘I kinda liked the old you,' Lily said wistfully. ‘Cuddly and comfortable.'

Rose wondered whether that was how Nick had seen her. As cuddly and comfortable, like an old cushion that was just right for sleeping with when nothing better was available. She rescued herself from pointlessly worrying the thought and smiled as Lily went on to talk about the people she had met in America, and their obsession with food. They either seemed to eat too much or eat too little. Doughnut emporiums squatted alongside organic health food shops and she had seen people leaving their gyms, still perspiring from their workouts, to head directly to the nearest hot-dog stand where they would proceed to order the largest of everything.

Rose was quietly convinced that Lily would return to England. She had confided on more than one occasion, looking over her shoulder as though one of those Bigwigs she kept mentioning might pop out from behind a bush, that there was too much pressure in America to be thin, to be competitive, to suck up to the right people. Lily, having inherited
Tony and Flora's basic bohemian disregard for personal wealth, couldn't understand why everyone seemed so willing to jump through hoops for yet more money, which they obviously didn't need.

‘Anyway, you're sick of me going on about this.' She grinned. ‘Maybe I'll just return to London when I'm done there. My CV will be a whole lot healthier, thanks to Nick, and I can just get a nice little job in a soap opera.'

Nick. Not once had she asked her sister whether she had seen Nick. She had told herself that she wasn't interested, that the past was the past, but she knew, really, that she was just scared. Scared that she might want her sister to tell her too much. Scared that the floodgates, which she was trying hard to close, would crash open again and she would be lost.

‘Right.' All assertive once again, Lily stood up, topped Rose's glass of wine with a fraction more, and ordered her to go and get changed but to do absolutely nothing with her make-up because she, Lily, would do it for her.

‘You wouldn't believe the tips I've got from the girls who make me up.' She laughed. ‘Believe me, it's all in the brush strokes.'

‘You're chivvying again.' But Rose laughed because it was just so good not to be on her own. She had missed Lily, but only now was she realising by how much.

‘And it feels good. Now I can understand why you spent your life chivvying me around as a kid.'

There was no rush and Rose took her time getting dressed. Yes, she really had lost weight and it suited her. She had also been coerced into buying a little black number that she would never have dared to have worn a few months ago. It had a plunging neckline, one of her great no-noes previously, and exposed more than a generous eyeful of cleavage. With high
heels, she felt quite pleased with herself. The dress fitted snugly to the waist, then flared out to just above the knees.

By the time Lily had sorted out her costume jewellery and applied the make-up, Rose felt her spirits lift. She could almost believe her own mantra that she was well rid of Nick, that life was just about to begin, that all experience, in hindsight, was good experience, that he was little more than a dot on her learning curve brought on by temporary insanity. Of course, the two and a half glasses of white wine helped.

They took a taxi and just when Rose was beginning to warm to the idea of not staying in, Lily dropped the bombshell.

Nick was going to be there. Well, he might be there. But don't worry about it. Wouldn't it be good to prove to him how much she had managed to get her act together? There was no need to fuss. She looked fabulous. She couldn't spend her days scuttling away from the possibility of seeing him again. Sooner or later the time would come when she would meet him because she, Lily, remained good friends with him and grateful for everything he had done to help her with her career. Never run scared, that was the key thing.

Rose, despairingly, toyed with the idea of demanding that the taxi driver turn around and take her back home.

Then, if not back home, at least to the nearest pub so that she could fortify her nerves with a couple more glasses of wine.

But she was given little opportunity to object because Lily, with all her newly acquired bossiness, kept up a never-ending monologue for most of the trip, and Rose glumly took on board that her sister had a point. Why should she be scared? It wasn't as if Nick had guessed her shameful secret. He had no idea that what to him had been a fling had, for her, been the love of a lifetime. She looked good and if there was one thing he had done for her, it had been to inject a level of con
fidence in her appearance that she had never really had. He had made her feel sexy and the residue of that confidence was still there. The little black dress looked great and if he did turn up, big if because, as Lily had pointed out, he was mega busy and the invite had been last-minute, then she would damn well show him that she was doing fine.

The jazz club was tucked away in a side road a million miles away on the other side of London. Rose had no idea how her sister had managed to discover the place, but it was certainly popular. Despite being early, the venue was already beginning to fill up. She had no time to wonder whether she was feeling nervous about meeting Nick because over the next hour or so she was wrapped up in the business of meeting Lily's friends, a fair few of whom were American and flatteringly thrilled to be in a genuine British club and not one of those that catered for the loaded tourists.

This was new for Rose, this feeling of blending in with a crowd of people, all strangers to her. She was determined not to drink too much, but the music was sexy and, although she stuck to wine, she found her glass being replaced without her having to ask or even make her way to the bar.

The dress, she thought, was proving even more effective than she could ever have dared to hope.

Several men seemed to find her fascinating, although it was hard to tell because the atmospheric lighting bordered on downright dark. Certainly one in particular had taken her under his wing and had been responsible for at least two glasses of wine, the last of which Rose was now drinking very slowly indeed as she listened to him tell her about his latest film, a short
film noir
, which had had a very successful première at the Cannes festival.

Lily had asked a lot of her old friends, but most of the new
faces belonged to the world of film and media. Rose had never met so many men who seemed to be film producers. They were very entertaining, even if she had never heard of a single one of the films they had produced. A lot of them, she noticed, sported pony-tails, which looked very trendy. Miles apart, she thought nastily, from Nick, who was as traditional as they went when it came to fashion. Long hair and jewellery on men, he had told her, were strictly for hippies, and she had laughed and accused him of being narrow-minded.

The memory made her heart constrict.

At least he wasn't around. She had kept one beady eye open so that she could take appropriate measures to avoid him, but it was now after ten and he was nowhere in sight, obviously too busy to get away.

Disappointment bit into her and she favoured her companion with a wide, reckless smile.

Which was when she spotted him, standing on the other side of the room, with a leggy red-haired woman on his arm. She looked as though she had been poured into her small silver dress.

Rose felt her heart skip a beat and, weirdly, the noise, the people, even the band playing a slow number on the little raised podium, seemed to fade away, leaving just the sight of him, as sexy as she remembered, in a pair of dark-coloured trousers and a white shirt, casually rolled to the elbows.

Well, he seemed to have managed to relegate her to the history books in no time at all, Rose thought bitterly. Less than a month and he was back to his cover-girl babes.

She gulped down what was left in her glass and concentrated on what the man by her side was saying. His name was Ted, although his friends, for reasons that escaped her, called him Splice, and he was giving her the low-down on the people
he had met at the Cannes Festival, a warts-and-all account that would have been hilarious had her attention not been suddenly hijacked by her ex-lover, now excusing himself and heading for the bar while the red-haired beauty sashayed over to the nearest group of men, one of whom she clearly knew. The world of actors, models and musicians was a very small one, Lily had told her.

Rose gaily accepted another drink from Ted Splice, as she called him in her head, and was making sure not to look in the direction of the redhead just in case Nick returned to his date and noticed her staring, when she felt the tap on her shoulder.

She spun round and there he was. She'd been certain she hadn't been noticed, but he must have seen her as he was making his way back from the bar.

Rose felt her heart skip a beat, then she produced the same sparkly smile she had perfected with Ted.

‘Good heavens. Fancy seeing you here. How are you?' She noticed that he failed to produce a reciprocal smile. In fact, his expression was cool and Rose was suddenly enraged that he should chuck her aside and then, as if that weren't bad enough, treat her to the cold shoulder.

‘You seem to be having a good time,' Nick drawled, giving her a leisurely appraisal.

‘Oh, I am.'

‘Bit of a change for you, isn't it? This kind of thing?'

‘Well, you know what they say about a change being as good as a rest. I hadn't expected it to be quite as large as this, but I'm having a brilliant time, meeting loads of really interesting people.'