One Stolen Kiss (22 page)

* * * *

Christie had just finished helping her father fill his and her mother’s plates to take away from the buffet tables, when she was overcome by a hurricane of long hazelnut hair and smothered with Chanel No.5 scented kisses.

“
I missed you!” Roksana cried, nearly crushing Christie in an excited embrace.

“
Me too. Missed you.” Christie returned the hug happily. Roksana had been the sister she never had for the time they spent in Switzerland together. “I didn’t see you when Adrik’s uncles arrived – your Dad is already here, I mean. Did you come on your own?”

“
No, with Zory and Aleksandria Tamarkin. And Paolo.” Roksana averted her eyes and waved a hand dismissively, which Christie instantly recalled was a gesture she used when she wanted to pretend nothing important was afoot. “They’re catching up with Adrik. Oh my God! I can’t believe you two are engaged…”

“
Me neither,” Christie agreed with feeling.

“…
I knew there was a spark between you when I saw you dancing back then,” Roksana announced triumphantly. “I would have put money on it at the time. I almost wish I had.”

“
Really?” Christie blushed. “Wow… er… I’m glad you never shared that with me before… sorry, are you hungry? Can I get you a drink?”

“
Famished.” Roksana swiped a handful of cherry tomatoes and proceeded to polish them off like candy. “And, um, only orange juice for me. Can you put it in a mimosa glass? Don’t tell Adrik I’m not drinking. He’ll guess. And don’t say anything to Paolo, or anyone else. Um. I haven’t told him yet either…”

Christie’s hand flew to her mouth, and she checked quickly to make sure no-one was within earshot.

“Roksy…” she whispered. “Are you pregnant?”

Adrik’s cousin nodded.

“About ten weeks,” she replied. “Please – don’t tell. It’s complicated.”

“
Just make sure you eat.” Christie’s own problems evaporated for the time being, and she grabbed an empty plate and pushed it towards her. “I’ll get you some juice. Ah, here’s Philippe. Only an orange juice in the mimosa glass, please. My friend here is concealing a very big hangover…”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Christie was fairly certain that Paolo suspected something, because once he caught up and had said hello, he became immediately attentive to Roksana, even ensuring that he found her a comfortable space to sit and eat.

She couldn’t understand why her friend seemed so keen to avoid telling him.

“They are an odd couple,” Adrik agreed, noticing her look of slight concern. “Hopefully things will not be awkward between them for too long.”

Christie’s insides fluttered, thinking that things between her and Adrik didn’t exactly have a clear run of their own to celebrate yet.

“How are you managing?” he asked, taking a plate and starting to help himself to food in turn. “Not ready to run away yet?”

“
I’m coping,” she smiled, although the dread of Derek’s appearance was eating her away down to the bone by now. “Everyone is lovely. They keep asking me if I’m looking forward to the wedding.”

“
And are you?” he asked, grinning as she nudged him to keep his voice down.

“
All I can tell them is that you’re in charge and it’s a secret. I don’t know anything about it. Some of them have been giving me some very knowing looks.”

“
Good,” he replied, and accepted a mimosa from Philippe. “We know how to keep secrets in our family. Sometimes how to help other people keep them too. Let’s go and sit outside with Doug and his gang. I’m trying to figure out if any of them have come in hot.”

Deciding against asking him to confirm her suspicions regarding what that meant, Christie took her own plate and drink, and followed him out onto one of the terraces.

* * * *

Fortunately, all of Doug’s companions were established to be ‘cool’ on that occasion. It was late afternoon when the moment Christie had been truly dreading arrived. But things did not unravel in quite the way she expected.

“Adrik – Christie,” Eileen’s voice hailed them, right after they had submitted to another photo opportunity by the magazine team. “This is the PR expert – Derek Goldman. And his friend Olga.”

The bombshell had just become a double whammy.

The four of them shook hands. Derek’s memory had either been extremely affected by his transient ischemic attack, or his acting skills had been improved by it, as there was not a flicker of recognition on his face when he greeted Christie.

Oddly, it was the same between Adrik and Olga Rose.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Derek. He gestured between Olga and Adrik. “I believe you two know each other.”

His smarminess obviously remained unchanged.

“No,” said Adrik, and the model also shook her head.

Derek stared at his companion, nonplussed.

“I could have sworn…” He reddened, which Christie found hugely gratifying. She had never once seen Derek embarrassed. “Didn’t you say you – ran into Adrik Maksimov – at a Beijing China Fashion Week?”

“
What? No…” The girl laughed. “I ‘ran into’ lots of people there. But I’ve never seen this guy before in my life. Sorry…” Her apology was directed at Adrik and Christie.

“
No problem,” they said, in unison. Both curious about where this was leading, now with Derek at the centre of the confusion.

“
Yes, I’m sure of it.” Derek took out his phone. “On an email – about two weeks ago…”

“
Really, no,” Olga insisted, while he skimmed through his applications, setting his jaw. “You’re mistaken, Derek.”

“
Here it is,” he said, triumphantly. “You sent me an email asking for help after the Harry fiasco. And at the bottom you say you had once met ‘that Paparazzka guy’ everyone was currently talking about – see?”

Frowning, Olga looked at the message. While Christie’s heart slowly sank, the model’s face suddenly lit up.

“Aha – no. I know why that is,” she exclaimed. “Someone got his name wrong and texted me to ask if I knew about it. They said the news had reported that Paparazzka was Adriano Marcello. I definitely ‘ran into’ him, ha! I must have sent you that email and then forgotten about that bit by the time I heard the facts right.”

Derek’s colour deepened beneath his Bermuda tan as she continued talking, putting his phone away slowly as if it was burning him.

“…But when you replied to me and were talking about the guy and referring to him as
AM
, I thought you meant Adriano… you know, I thought it was strange when you mentioned he had a house in Holland Park. So not his style! He’s a penthouse apartment kinda guy…”

Adrik and Christie exchanged a look.

“Explains things,” Adrik muttered. “Gossip grapevine full of bad grapes.”

“…
Seriously,” Olga was nodding, while Derek was still shaking his head. “I mean, does this guy look anything like a black Italian footballer? Sorry again…”

“
It’s fine,” Adrik smirked. “I’ve been mistaken for many things before, but that’s a new one, at least.”

“
Well – that was embarrassing.” Derek took a swig of his whisky sour. “Please accept my apologies… Eileen thought perhaps we could talk business, but I’m guessing now, perhaps not.”

“
Not at all,” Adrik replied, to Christie’s returning dread. “Let’s talk.”

“
I’ll have to excuse myself,” Christie heard herself say. She’d planned this part, in the eventuality of being cornered. For her own sanity. To avoid risking everything, although the urge to throw a drink over Derek was tempting. “I’ll catch up on things with you later, Adrik. Derek – Olga – it was a pleasure.”

“
Definitely,” said Derek – and she immediately suspected, as she caught a sudden glint his eye before leaving, that any amnesia now on display was only a trick.

Feeling slightly sickened, she decided to find a bathroom upstairs out of the way until she felt safe to return again.
Say, in about three hours… or never…

She wandered along a first floor corridor until she spotted an en suite through an open bedroom door, where a member of staff was replenishing water for the flowers. Christie headed through, nodding to the maid as she passed.

Barely had she started to close the door behind her, when the size zero body of Olga Rose posted herself through the gap.

“
Can I talk to you?” the model asked, breathless from chasing after her.

Christie’s hand was over her heart, which had threatened to pop straight out of her ribs in alarm.

“Sure,” she said at last. “I didn’t really need to pee anyway.”

“
Oh good, because I do. Do you mind?”

“
Knock yourself out.” Christie turned away and went to look past the ornate claw-footed bathtub to the small Juliet balcony overlooking the lake. She could see Xaviér the macaw’s yacht moored only about two hundred yards offshore, his expletives thankfully out of earshot. “Thanks for what you said downstairs. For explaining things.”

“
Ah, don’t worry. Derek’s the one who’s got to recover his dignity now.”

Christie smiled out of the window, in spite of her fears. She had to admit she liked the sound of that, very much.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Olga continued. “I think he’s a bit of a dirty player.”

…
And he was my Mr Perfect only two weeks ago
, Christie thought.
What a joke…

“
Really?” she asked, remembering to keep up the act of not knowing him. “In what way?”

“
Well…” The toilet flushed, and Christie dared to look behind her as she heard the tap running at the sink. Olga was standing washing her hands, her dress straightened, her pageboy bob tucked neatly behind her ears out of the way, and her panties still inexplicably around her ankles. “He’s manipulative. He seems to think you can use the media to make things you want happen when there’s no likelihood of them happening.”

“
Oh. Er…”

Olga looked down.

“Sorry. I have a mild OCD.” She dried her hands thoroughly, and then hoisted her panties back up. “I have to wash my hands first… never mind. My shrink said if I ate carbs I would be less paranoid about things. But fatter and more unemployed, so what the toss.” She sat back down on the closed toilet seat, and crossed her legs, allowing a Louboutin pump to slip off and dangle from her toe. “I think sometimes you need to be a little bit paranoid. It’s to survive as a species.”

“
Or as an individual,” Christie suggested. She stepped back around the bathtub, and perched on the edge of it. “So what’s been making you paranoid about Derek Goldman?”

Olga squirmed slightly in a way Christie felt she empathised with. She remembered the early effects of Derek’s brainwashing. He made you think that disclosing anything about him was an actual sin that the media could send you to hell for.

“When I thought he was talking about Adriano – the footballer – he said that if we were linked in the gossip columns, and the response to the Press was positive, meaning that it got lots of hits online and lots of people talking about it, stars always try to make those relationships happen because it gets them unbelievable amounts of extra coverage. Their own front covers. Their own reality shows. He made me think I could actually end up with Adriano. So I gave him
ad hoc
permission to spread the rumours.”

Christie’s lips parted as she started to realise what she was being told. Olga swung her leg and the shoe hanging from it nervously as she continued.

“It wasn’t working. I never heard anything from Adriano in the next couple of days, and I couldn’t find any new Google matches for us either – not since Beijing last year. Derek said usually there’s an immediate reaction, or at worst a public denial – but there was nothing. He said there were news stories, but I couldn’t find them. Now I know why. He was trying to set me up with the wrong person.”

Christie nodded.

“Then he had his TIA the morning after a party in London, when he came over from New York to help me with my PR. A mini stroke, he said it was. He claimed he had forgotten some stuff. Said he had to Google himself to find out if he was married or in a relationship. But he insisted he still knew his job, and there was this other party coming up where there would be the opportunity to confront
AM –
Adriano, I thought he meant – and get a reaction. When he said the party was in Italy, I believed him straight away because Adriano Marcello is Italian, so it seemed to make sense… but I only found out he was talking about some completely different guy five minutes ago. And that you’re engaged. Why would Derek be trying to set me up with a guy who’s engaged? I’m starting to get really creeped out.”

“
It’s okay,” Christie reassured her. “Trust me. I know what you’re going through.”

“
It’s PR gone titties up, is what it is,” Olga pouted. She reached down her own cleavage, rummaged around and drew out a tiny brown glass bottle. “That’s not trying to clean up a person’s image. That’s trying to ruin one.” She unscrewed the cap of the bottle and held it to her nose, not too close, only wafting it underneath. “And Derek’s crap in the sack too.” She brandished the bottle. “Even with poppers.”

“
That I don’t know,” Christie admitted, honestly.

Playing hard to get for two years, hoping he’d fall in love with her?
Lucky escape, more like…

But something was now clear. There had never been any danger of Derek flying in from New York to come to her rescue. He’d come over to destroy her instead.

* * * *

“
It does sound as though you don’t really need my help,” said Derek. “If you don’t read the gossip columns, or engage with the daily Press – what you don’t know won’t hurt you. But what about Christie?”

“
She’s taken a lot of persuading to even be photographed officially,” Adrik replied. “I don’t think she cares for it, but we’ll manage the attention, if there is any.”

“
All sorts can come out of the woodwork, hoping to spoil a happy ending,” Derek went on, pausing to smile a much-rehearsed smile at a passing photographer, and dutifully checking the preview screen before nodding his approval, vanity apparently satisfied. “She’s not concerned about bitter work colleagues, ex-boyfriends…?”

“
I was the ex-boyfriend,” Adrik told him, with a shrug. “I just haven’t made the same mistake all the others do.”

Derek looked surprised. As if he had just received some highly unexpected news.

“Well… good for you, fella,” he said at last. “Indulge me – what mistake would that be?”

“
Letting her get away.”

Derek became thoughtful, and studied his shoes for a moment.

“Wise words,” he mused. “I guess – some guys string a girl along, and it never occurs to them that they might wake up one day to find her gone.”

“
Hmmm.” Adrik chose not to comment.

Waking up at any point and finding Christie gone was not something he cared to relive again.