Tales Of Temptation: Rivals / Pride / Ambition. Victoria Fox

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      Emily took against Nina Tarot on sight. The woman was grotesquely Californiafied, all candyfloss blonde hair and huge white teeth and a chest that looked like a baby’s bum stuffed into her corset. She also had this really grating accent that you could hear a mile off and sounded like a bird squawking in distress.

      But the worst thing of all was that Christopher Fenwick had the hots for her.

      It was so obvious! Never did it fail to astound her how predictable men were. She supposed it was the slutty demeanour—Nina was, after all, playing a tawdry madam—but it was also the novelty: Emily wasn’t idiotic enough to believe she and Christopher were indulging in a heartfelt love affair; it was sex, plain and simple.

      ‘Cut her some slack,’ Christopher mooned as they made their way to the drawing room, already adopting these bizarre Americanisms that made her skin crawl.

      ‘You sound like you’re having a mid-life crisis,’ she threw back, cracking her face into a smile for the director before turning to Christopher, whereupon it vanished completely. ‘Haven’t you a sufficient sense of self to desist from modifying your behaviour whenever you think it’ll help you get a leg over?’

      Christopher regarded her blankly. ‘Nina’s been through a tough time—’

      ‘Oh, spare me!’ Emily waved a hand, drifting across to a mahogany chaise longue and gracefully reclining across it. ‘We all know she’s been in rehab, why such a song and dance? What was it this time? Drink? Sex? Over-the-counter drugs? So LA.’

      Christopher smirked. He came closer. ‘This is a change from the obedient little thing I had in my bed last night,’ he hissed excitedly in her ear. ‘As I remember she seemed perfectly content with a mouthful of cock.’

      Emily’s face burned up—she hated how he did that to her right before a take! He did it on purpose.

      As sound and lighting were finalised, her flustered gaze landed on Julia Chambers hovering anxiously in the corner, clad in an infinitely morose maid’s outfit that did nothing for her pasty colouring. Julia had a crush; it was achingly clear. Milking the moment, Emily looked longingly after Christopher as though their last exchange had been in affection, and adjusted her position on the chaise to appear more alluring. Like the runt of the litter sniffing at her heels, Julia never failed to serve as a convenient reminder of Emily’s uncontested superiority—what a dreadful curse plainness was! Well, at least that made her good for something.

      Instantly she felt better. Why should she care a jot about Nina Tarot? Let them go ahead and get their knickers in a twist if that was what they wanted. Emily was the star of this production and no one, least of all a brassy American, was going to compromise that.

      ‘Isn’t she great?’

      Emily yawned. ‘Who?’ she asked boredly, though she knew full well.

      ‘Nina, of course.’ The boy was as captivated as everyone else gathered in the parlour. Emily recognised him as one of the footmen but had never bothered to register his name: he had floppy brown hair and would probably be handsome in a couple of years. ‘She’s been telling us about her rehabilitation—it’s inspiring.’

      ‘I’m sure,’ Emily responded drily, sipping her slimline tonic. Drinks had been arranged post-shoot to welcome their new addition and the way they were all hanging on to Nina’s every word was sickmaking.

      ‘This is a fresh start for her,’ the footman wittered on. ‘Her first job since she came back from the island.’

      ‘What island?’

      The footman seemed surprised to have engaged her in conversation.

      ‘I don’t remember the name,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to ask Nina.’

      Emily made a face. ‘I’m sure I’ll survive not knowing.’

      As far as Emily was concerned, the less she had to endure concerning Nina Tarot, the better. The actress’s execution of the drawing-room scene had inspired a litany of adoring praise from cast and crew—Emily grudgingly admitted she was talented—and now her speaking to the extras and assistants was securing the lowlies’ devotion as well. Who on earth was she, Mother bloody Teresa?

      Christopher certainly seemed to think so. All through their scene he’d been eating out of the palm of Nina’s hand—undoubtedly he’d be eating out of her lap soon enough if Emily didn’t put a stop to things—and now he was rapt at Nina’s side, abandoning his leading lady in favour of some cheap American trash.

      ‘Well,’ Nina was saying, and for some reason that accent was ten thousand decibels louder than an ordinary one, ‘I just feel incredible. That place…it’s magical. It made me feel—’ a toss of the head, a bat of the eyelids—what a performer! ‘—I can’t describe it: alive, again, I guess.’

      ‘I’ve heard about it,’ piped up one of the scullery maids. ‘Isn’t it, like, the most exclusive place on the planet?’

      Nina giggled. ‘That depends, honey. The island is paradise—and paradise doesn’t come cheap.’

      ‘But it’s more than that…right?’ Now meek Julia Chambers was getting involved. ‘I read an article. You have to be someone important for them to let you in.’ Julia chewed her lip. ‘You have to be someone, at least.’

      Christopher drained his glass of Scotch. ‘And Nina most certainly is someone, so I’d say that was a fair observation.’

      Emily despised both the remark and Julia’s flushed reaction to it.

      There followed a string of excited speculations:

      ‘Apparently you have to be on a waiting list for, like, five years—’

      ‘I heard you’ve got to be royalty, or related to royalty, or—’

      ‘You need to have fifty million dollars in the bank—’

      ‘You need to get a secret password—’

      ‘You’ve got to own a small country—’

      ‘You’ve got to own a jet—’

      ‘All I’ll say,’ Nina interrupted, waiting for the thrill to subside, ‘is that the island changed my life. There’s nowhere like it.’ She paused till once more the limelight came to rest.

      ‘I swear to God, you’ve got to see this place to believe it…’

      Emily excused herself to visit the bathroom. She stayed a long time fussing over her appearance, with each strand tweaked and dab of gloss reapplied reminding herself that she was the prime cut on this movie. Just because Nina Tarot had been a big Hollywood star in the nineties, just because she’d worked alongside legends, it didn’t detract from the fact she’d fallen spectacularly off the rails and her career had shot down the pan. What kind of actress let that happen?

      All that made Nina ‘someone’, did it?

      Well, Emily was more of a someone than she’d ever be—and if it took gaining access to some silly little island to prove it, then so be it.

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