Tilly Bagshawe 3-book Bundle: Scandalous, Fame, Friends and Rivals

‘I’m afraid so. One of them concerns the ratio of your revenues to earnings.’

‘You don’t say. Well, what does it say?’

Bob Massey lifted a piece of paper from the pile in front of him. He began to read, slowly, savouring every word. Around the table, his colleagues smiled and nodded. By the time Bob had finished, they were positively glowing with triumph. ‘I have your numbers here, Jackson. And I’m sorry to say, they don’t look good.’

Lucius Monroe got to his feet. ‘Well, in the light of this, I suppose it’s my duty to put Jackson’s promotion to a vote. Would all those in favour of appointing Jackson Dupree to full membership of this board, with immediate effect, please raise their hands now.’

Nobody moved.

Bob Massey looked as if he might spontaneously combust with joy.

‘I see. And all those against?’

Twelve hands shot into the air.

‘Well,’ Lucius Monroe sat down again, ‘I realize this must be quite a shock for you, Jackson. You’ll need some time to consider your options. Whether you wish to continue at Wrexall, in a more junior position of course, or …’

‘If I could just interrupt you there, Lucius.’ Jackson got calmly to his feet. ‘No discredit to the detailed research that you’ve obviously done, Bob.’ He smiled sweetly at Massey. ‘But I think you’ll find you’ve made a small error in your figures.’ The door opened and Liana sashayed into the room, carrying twelve newly bound documents. ‘Thank you, angel.’ Jackson kissed her on the cheek, eliciting a blush of pleasure. He passed the documents around the table.

‘What’s this?’ Bob Massey snarled. He’d been over those figures hundreds, thousands of times. There was no mistake.

‘A new transaction I’ve been working on, turning around a chain of failing beach hotels in Hawaii. Great land, crappy businesses. I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull it off. But as you can see, it’s a whopper. Two hundred and eighty-five million dollars, to be precise.’

Jackson watched as the twelve men turned the pages. With each line they read, more colour drained from their faces. Fucking Rita Halston last night had been fun. But it was nothing compared to this.

‘But how …’ spluttered Dan Peters.

‘This price … it makes no sense,’ said Darryl Jeffries. ‘Why would anyone pay that for these hotels? They’ve been making a loss for five years.’

‘Yes. It was rather a good price, wasn’t it?’ Jackson beamed. ‘I had to put in a lot of … what should I call it? Ground work. Yes. A lot of ground work with the buyer. But she was happy to do the deal in the end.’

She. Of course it was a she.

Bob Massey’s face had turned a colour that Jackson had never seen before. He was pretty sure it didn’t occur in nature.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said through tight lips. ‘It’s too late. The deadline for your revenues to improve was this morning. There’s no way the fund could have cleared in that time.’

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ said Jackson. ‘But Alana’s been terribly organized about it all. We closed the deal on Wednesday. The money hit Wrexall’s account at eleven o’clock last night.’

‘Alana?’ Lucius Monroe looked up. ‘You don’t mean Alana Davis? Senator Davis’s wife?’

‘That’s right.’ Jackson smiled. ‘It turns out she’s hugely wealthy in her own right. Why? Do you know her? I’m meeting her tonight as it happens for a celebration dinner. I’ll give her your best, shall I?’

Later that night, in bed at Jackson’s apartment, Alana Davis closed her eyes and tried to remember the last time she had felt so alive. Feeling Jackson’s huge dick inside her and his powerful thighs clamped around her own, rippling with strength and power and virility and youth, she gasped with pleasure, surrendering to her third orgasm of the night.

‘That was incredible, baby,’ she purred.

‘You’re incredible,’ said Jackson, nuzzling into her neck.

At forty-five Alana Davis had believed that the days of mind-blowing sex were behind her. But in the space of a few short weeks Jackson Dupree had changed all that. On the night stand, her cellphone started to buzz. Alana turned it off.

‘The senator?’

‘No. My lawyer. He’s been getting dreadfully antsy about this hotel deal. You are going to do that buy-back on Monday, aren’t you, darling?’

‘Of course,’ Jackson assured her. ‘As soon as my board approval’s official, I’ll take them off your hands. I’m sure I can turn them around for a small profit eventually. Somewhere in the twenty-million range with any luck.’

‘If you turn me around,’ Alana looked at him naughtily, ‘you can make a big profit right away.’

Jackson Dupree grinned. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_af756024-9eb7-5a3c-ad5e-cea162cbcfa1)

Theresa Dexter strolled across the UCLA campus towards the parking lot, where her hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes convertible gleamed in the sunshine. Above her, a perfectly blue California sky stretched cloudlessly to the horizon. Theresa thought, I’ve just given a seminar on Shakespeare to a packed lecture hall. I’m rich. I’m healthy. I’m doing my dream job in a beautiful, sun-drenched city and I’m married to the most gorgeous man in the world.

She had never felt more unhappy in her life.

It was four years since Theresa and Theo Dexter had moved out to LA. Four years in which Theo had gone from being a minor British celebrity (his first TV series for Channel Four, Space, started shooting days after his dispute with Sasha Miller ended and had quickly become a ratings winner) to a world-famous television star. At first Theo had been reluctant to leave England. Dividing his time between Cambridge, where he still taught a half-weekly schedule at St Michael’s, and London, he revelled in the sensation of being the biggest fish in a relatively small pond. Unlike Theresa, who avoided it as much as possible, Theo found the London media scene wildly exciting. He joined the Groucho Club and Soho House, and got invited to private screenings at the BBC and book launch parties at the V&A. His book, The New Universe, had kept its position in the Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller List for a record twenty-two consecutive weeks, and ITV were already bidding against Channel Four for a second series of Space. It was only after TV Times magazine described him, much to Theo’s chagrin, as ‘Science’s answer to Alan Titchmarsh’ that he began to take Ed Gilliam’s entreaties seriously.

‘You’re wasting your time over here, Theo. We need to take you to America. Start flirting with the big boys, NBC, CBS. Unless of course you’re happy to end your career as a guest DJ for Radio 2.’

The Dexters’ ‘Goodbye to Cambridge’ party was filled with enough celebrities to warrant a full page in the Daily Mail and a six-page photo special in Hello! magazine. Theo looked blonder and more glamorous than ever, his newly streaked hair perfectly offsetting the blue linen of his Paul Smith suit. Theresa, swollen-eyed from crying, stood beside him in an orange Next maxi-dress that did nothing for her figure, a lone ugly duckling amidst the twenty-something TV present ers in their Luella mini-dresses and Vivienne Westwood boots.

‘For God’s sake, cheer up, T,’ Theo snapped at her between photo calls. ‘Anyone would think I was dragging you to Beirut, not Bel Air.’

He was right, of course. LA would be an amazing opportunity. Theresa already had a teaching job lined up at UCLA that paid three times what she was earning now, and a grant to continue her Shakespeare research. Just because Los Angeles didn’t have thousand-year-old libraries, or original Shakespeare folios, or churches with entombed medieval knights, or dry-stone walls, or Christmas carols in King’s College Chapel … She started to cry again.

They flew out first class on Virgin. That part was fun. Theresa got tipsy on free champagne and blubbed loudly watching chick flicks on her personal in-flight movie screen, in between stuffing her face with warmed (warmed!) cashew nuts. Theo, doing his best to look like a world-weary, regular first-class traveller, put in his earplugs and pretended to go to sleep. He longed to make his bed go flat so he could rest properly, but didn’t want the sexy Asian stewardess to think he didn’t know how to operate the seat. As a result, by the time they landed at LAX, Theo was tired and irritable and Theresa badly hungover. It took them an hour to hire a rental car, and another two to reach their rented property in Bel Air, thanks to traffic on the 405 and Theresa’s poor map-reading skills. On first impressions LA seemed to be little more that a giant network of freeways, vast, supersized eight-lane roads endlessly intersecting beneath a flawless blue sky. It’s hideous, thought Theresa bleakly. It wasn’t until they reached Sunset Boulevard that the city began to look more like the tourist brochures. Tall, skinny palm trees swayed regally above them, and on both sides of the road, immaculately manicured mansions vied to out-do each other in the conspicuous consumption stakes. The West Gate of Bel Air was, it turned out, conveniently situated directly opposite the UCLA campus. As Theo and Theresa’s car weaved its way up the hillside into the confusing maze of streets – Chalon, Somera, Roscomare, back to Chalon – the properties seemed to become more and more sumptuous. Theresa spotted two with what looked like gold-plated gates, and one that appeared to be an exact replica of the Disneyland castle. When they finally arrived at the address they’d been given, they both thought it was the wrong house.

‘This can’t be it,’ gasped Theresa. ‘It’s enormous. It looks like the Ritz Carlton.’ But a telephone call to Ed Gilliam confirmed that the sprawling, French country mansion was indeed ‘home’.

‘Welcome to the big time, Theo. Now get some sleep, for God’s sake. You’ve got a meeting at NBC at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. Six months’ rent is paid but if you want to stay there longer than that, you’re going to have to start earning.’

And Theo did. Within three weeks, the contracts were inked on his new American science series, Dexter’s Universe. The combination of his unquestioned genius as a physicist, his telegenic looks and, best of all, his panty-melting British accent had the commissioning editors at NBC salivating with excitement. People magazine gave Dexter’s Universe’s pilot episode a five-star review, dubbing Theo ‘Brad Pitt with Brains’. Theo was ecstatic. It sure beat ‘Science’s answer to Alan Titchmarsh’. He celebrated by going out to Hyde, Hollywood’s hottest nightclub, and getting off very publicly with Molly Meyer, the nineteen-year-old star of Disney’s latest hit show What Molly Did Next. The following week, the pictures were all over US Weekly. Theresa was horrified, but Theo was unapologetic.

‘You were the one who didn’t want to come out with me.’

‘I was working! I had fifteen papers to mark that night! Besides, does that give you the right to go and snog whoever you like? Look at her. You’re old enough to be her father.’

‘I can’t help it if young women are attracted to me,’ said Theo, crossly. ‘Anyway it was only a kiss. Stop overreacting.’

Theresa thought, Am I overreacting? Countless people had warned her that Theo being on network television would mean him getting a lot of unwanted attention. Lisa Jay, the wife of Howard Jay, Dexter’s Universe’s executive producer, told Theresa over dinner, ‘You need the hide of a rhino to survive in this town. Women here are shameless. They’ll throw themselves at your husband right in front of you. I get it with Howard all the time.’ Theresa looked over at the five-foot, bald figure of Howard Jay as he slurped his soup and tried to picture him being hounded by Hollywood hotties. ‘As long as you and Theo trust each other. That’s the key,’ Lisa smiled.

Since the affair with Sasha Miller, Theresa had worked hard to rebuild her trust in her husband. In the immediate aftermath, it was easy. Theo was remorseful and grateful and had made a real effort to get things back on track between them. But as the months went by and his fame and confidence grew, things began to change. Theo spent more and more time shooting on location, or at the studio, and less and less at home. Since they moved to LA, being at work meant being surrounded by model-perfect women 24/7. Researchers, PR girls, stylists, every single one of them seemed to Theresa to have walked off the pages of Sports Illustrated. Even at UCLA, where Theo taught one day a week to ‘keep his hand in’ and his academic credentials current, his students all looked like cheerleaders.

What happened to all the nerds? Theresa wondered. Were they exterminated at birth? Or sent to some secret farm-of-shame beyond the borders of Southern California? It was the same story with the staff as with the students. At Cambridge, most professors rode knackered old bicycles, had arthritis or piles or both, wore shoes with holes to match their socks and held their trousers up with string. At UCLA, the teachers all looked like newsreaders, rich, shiny and as polished as their expensive sports cars. Worse still was the faux, have-a-nice-day friendliness. Everyone on campus sucked up to Theresa, because she was Theo Dexter’s wife. But even after a year working there, there was no one whom Theresa could confide in or share a laugh with the way she used to with Jenny and Jean Paul, or her colleagues in the English faculty at Cambridge. Nor was she buffered by the cocoon of protective silence that had kept her in the dark about Theo’s affairs back home. Cambridge was like a giant family. People were kind and tactful and discreet. UCLA was the opposite, sleek and cut-throat and riven with politics, like a corporation. Here, no one shielded Theresa from the gossip about Theo’s philandering. Eventually it reached a point where even Theresa could no longer ignore it. Theo was sleeping with every good-looking woman who crossed his path: students, colleagues at work, waitresses, models, air stewardesses (on his long trips to promote Dexter’s Universe in Europe and Asia), fans, journalists. When she challenged him about a specific rumour he would either deny the liaison outright, or turn things around to try to blame his wandering eye on Theresa. She was unsupportive. She was miserable. She embarrassed him with her frumpy clothes. She never made an effort. Depressed, lonely and demoralized, Theresa had started comfort eating, and drinking, knocking back her first strong gin and tonic the second the clock struck six each night. By the end of their second year in LA, she had gained almost forty pounds.

‘Dr Dexter!’