lovely.’
‘No.’ Lottie backed away. ‘Stop it. You’re drunk. This isn’t fair.’
‘I am drunk,’ Jackson admitted. ‘But I’m drunk for the last time. As of today, I’m gonna be a changed man. No more booze. No more partying. No more sexploits.’ He was still moving closer. Lottie pressed her back against the kitchen counter.
‘I’m happy to hear that, Jackson, I really am. But …’
He kissed her. ‘I think we should be together.’ Lottie started to protest but he stopped her. ‘Please, hear me out. You’re good for me. When I’m around you I feel calm. I feel content.’
And when I’m around you I feel like I’m about to burst into flames. Oh God, Jackson, I want you so much, can’t you see it?
‘I thought you said you’d make a lousy husband?’ Lottie whispered. Jackson’s body was pressed against hers now. She could feel what little resolve she’d had crumbling like stale wedding cake.
‘We’ll work up to the husband part,’ he grinned. ‘One step at a time.’ Slipping a hand under Lottie’s sweater he reached for her bra strap, unclasping it with consummate ease. Lottie tried not to think about how many times he’d done that before and with how many women. There were a hundred and one reasons not to do this: Jackson was her boss, he was drunk, he was vulnerable, he was an inveterate womanizer who would sleep with her once, regret it and move on. Then his other hand slipped beneath her panties and none of the reasons meant anything.
‘Jesus.’ He looked up at her, startled. ‘When did you get that done?’
Lottie blushed. She’d forgotten about the rather extreme Brazilian wax she’d had in Park City, the same day she dyed her hair. She’d been on such a high that day. But perhaps it was a bit slutty. ‘Don’t you like it?’
Jackson grinned. ‘Are you kidding? I love it. It wasn’t what I was expecting, that’s all.’
Lottie closed her eyes and surrendered herself to the heavenly feelings washing over her. ‘That makes two of us!’ she gasped.
It was the last words either of them spoke that night.
Across town, Sasha lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, whipsawed with frustration. It should have been one of the happiest nights of her life, the start of an exciting new chapter. But instead of focusing on her bright future, Sasha’s head was full of images of two men.
Professor Theo Dexter: still happy, still rich and famous and successful, still living the dream that he stole from her.
And Jackson Amory Dupree, who’d kissed her, whose lips she could still taste on her own, whose body heat still burned every inch of her skin. Jackson who had threatened to destroy her.
‘I’m going to crush you. I’m go to blow Ceres out of the water.’
Sasha closed her eyes and said a silent prayer, the same prayer she’d said every night for the last ten years. Help me, Lord. Help me to destroy Theo Dexter. But this time she added a codicil. And if it’s not too much trouble Lord, help me forget about Jackson Dupree.
Theo Dexter looked straight at camera, raising one eyebrow like Roger Moore’s Bond and smouldering as only he knew how.
‘Driven,’ he whispered huskily, holding up a bottle of cheap-looking cologne. ‘The smell of success.’ He stood for five more seconds, his face frozen mid-smoulder, till the energetic Japanese director yelled, ‘Cut!’ Instantly Theo’s features relaxed into their more familiar, petulant scowl.
‘Very good, very good.’ The director clapped his hands enthusiastically, and the Japanese crew did the same. ‘All finish. Very good take, all finish.’
Thank Christ for that. Theo loathed Japan. A few years ago, Asia had excited him with its otherworldliness, its air of adventure. But by this point in his career, the novelty had well and truly worn off. If he closed his eyes and said the word Asia, four things sprang to mind. Humidity, cockroaches, stinking traffic and carbohydrates. (How the Japanese stayed so thin was a mystery to Theo. They seemed to eat rice or noodles with everything. He’d even come across a chicken noodle toothpaste, although that might have been intended as a joke item. You could never tell in Japan.) Despite staying at the uber-luxurious Park Hyatt, the hotel featured in the movie Lost in Translation, in a penthouse suite with spectacular views across the city all the way to Mount Fuji, he felt distinctly hard done by. Not least because Dita and the children were with him.
‘Just think of the money,’ Ed Gilliam told him cheerfully. Now in his late sixties and richer than ever thanks to his star client, Theo’s agent still had the hunger for the next big deal. ‘This commercial’s earning you more than your entire last season’s paycheck on Dexter’s Universe, and three times what you made on Space Suits.’
Mentioning the name of Theo’s last, ill-fated, straight-to-DVD feature film put him in an even worse mood. That was another thing he had to blame Dita for, pushing him into movies like some goddamn dancing monkey.
‘I don’t care. It’s embarrassing. I feel like a used-car salesman.’
‘Yes, well, get over it,’ said Ed. ‘All the big stars endorse over here. Clooney, Pitt, Cruise.’
‘Maybe. But they don’t have to live with Dita while they’re doing it.’
After seven years with Dita, six of them married, the novelty of her celebrity had well and truly worn off. Not that Theo didn’t still revel in the attention, the ubiquitous paparazzi who followed them everywhere, the throngs of screaming fans. But he resented the fact that his fame and Dita’s had become so inextricably linked in the public imagination. Being one half of Hollywood’s golden couple was wearing, particularly when the reality of Theo and Dita’s domestic life was, at best, strained.
Sexually Dita could still do it for him. Unlike most exceptionally beautiful women, Dita was good in bed, a skilled and exciting lover. But although she remained a huge box office draw, physically she was past her prime. The tabloids and gossip magazines ruthlessly scrutinized her every, tiny flaw, photographing her at point-blank range and then printing the shots with red circles drawn around every incipient laughter line or prominent vein. Already deeply insecure, such criticism sent Dita into a frenzy of panicked exercising, Botox injecting and sarong buying. It also made her more than usually demanding of Theo’s attention, a sure-fire way for her to lose it.
Theo couldn’t remember exactly when he’d started cheating on Dita. Probably while she was pregnant with Milo, their eldest, now five. A sweet, sensitive but sickly child, Milo Dexter was allergic to everything and seemed mysteriously to have been born with the lung capacity of a gnat, necessitating frequent, stressful late-night trips to the Emergency Room, often followed by lengthy hospital stays. Dita doted on the boy, transferring all the attention she had previously lavished on Theo to their son. Of course, she still employed nannies, legions of them, which grew into full-scale battalions when their second child, Francesca, arrived two years later. It wasn’t so much the time Dita spent with Milo, reasoned Theo. It was more the way she looked at him, the way they looked at each other, an exclusive little club of two from which he, Theo, would forever be excluded.
Francesca, known as Fran, was much more the sort of child that Theo could identify with. Confident, sensible and utterly self-reliant, she neither needed his love, nor asked for it, but rather accepted his affection as and when he chose to bestow it. If he’d known kids could turn out like this, he’d have adopted with Theresa years ago. Back then Theo would never have believed a three-year-old