Man vs. Socialite. Charlotte Phillips

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СКАЧАТЬ up at him, the blue eyes giving nothing away.

      ‘If it cleans any smears from your reputation, what do you care which it is?’ she asked.

      He shrugged.

      ‘I don’t. Not really. Just trying to get the measure of you.’

      Jack watched as she abandoned the pile of kit, as if she’d had any interest in it anyway, and turned to face him, giving him her full attention. She was close enough now for him to pick up the scent of her perfume. She smelled delicious and expensive. She watched him steadily with wide blue eyes that sparked off a slow burn low in his abdomen. She was seriously cute.

      ‘I’d really like it if we could put any bad feeling behind us,’ she said. ‘I know the situation is difficult but I really am doing all I can to put it right. I think we could both focus on the weekend ahead a lot more effectively if we made some kind of truce.’

      If she thought she’d be able to charm him into going easy on her by suggesting he might not be totally focused, she was way wrong.

      ‘How I feel about you has no effect whatsoever on my responsibility to you in the field,’ he said. ‘I’m a professional. Your safety is my priority.’

      ‘So a truce isn’t out of the question, then?’ she pressed.

      ‘Depends on the terms,’ he said, just to see what she would do next. She was clearly used to getting her own way.

      He saw her eyes widen briefly in surprise. She obviously hadn’t expected him to give in so easily. She rushed on quickly while the going was good.

      ‘Thing is, Jack,’ she said, ‘we both want the same thing.’

      ‘Which is?’

      She shrugged.

      ‘To get through this weekend without any hitches,’ she said. ‘I know perfectly well the public want to see me slip up but would that really be the best showcase for your survival courses? Isn’t the whole point that the candidates survive? With that in mind, maybe it might be...prudent...for both of us to approach the tasks in a way that shows the situation in the best light.’

      That showed her in the best light, in other words. Oh, she really was something else. Her we’re-on-the-same-side-here persuasion might work on other people but he’d had enough dealings with TV luvvies to develop immunity to that kind of manipulation. Fame and fortune mattered only inasmuch as they furthered what he considered to be his real work: his charity initiatives and the courses he’d developed for kids.

      She smiled winningly at him and he wondered vaguely if she’d ever encountered a situation in her cushy existence without an expectation that she would somehow come out on top no matter what. Charm held no weight with him when held up against hard graft. And looking at her soft, beautifully manicured hands, he doubted there’d been much of that in her life. She was from a totally different world.

      She held his gaze with wide blue eyes, waiting for him to just fling himself at her designer-clad feet and agree to her every whim.

      ‘I think we understand each other,’ he said.

      ‘Good.’ She smiled at him. He smiled broadly back at her.

      ‘Despite your brushing it off as a—what was it?—“revved-up camping trip”,’ he said, ‘you still want me to go easy on you this weekend. Sorry, sweetheart, the clue’s in the name. It’s a survival course, it’s not meant to be a piece of cake.’

      She stared at him as he headed for the door.

      ‘I thought you came up here to check through any concerns I might have,’ she said.

      ‘I did. I meant legitimate ones, like your swimming ability or maybe questions about the kit. Not schmoozy concerns about getting an easy ride. No can do. I’ll see you at the base at dawn.’

      He closed the door behind him and smiled at the plastic number plate on the door. He’d give it until lunchtime tomorrow before she walked off set.

       THREE

      ‘So we start at Jack’s base camp with him talking through the kit you need. Then you head out with him into the wilderness on foot.’

      Evie clutched desperately at the sides of the passenger seat as a production assistant dressed in head to toe waterproofs bumped the Jeep along what barely passed for a muddy track. The silver-grey tendrils of dawn were creeping in across the Scottish Highlands and the landscape was soaked by a relentless drizzle of fine rain, the kind that lulled you into thinking it was nothing while insidiously soaking you to the bone. Leaving the awful hotel in the small hours had felt like leaving civilisation.

      ‘There’s a support team though—right?’ she said. ‘I mean, he doesn’t film himself doing all this stuff, does he? It wouldn’t just be the two of us with no backup.’

      She’d made time for a bit more research after last night’s encounter, courtesy of the hotel’s erratic Wi-Fi. Footage of Jack Trent neck deep in icy water, Jack Trent eating mealworms, Jack Trent manoeuvring his way down a treacherous rock face with accompanying waterfall. The thought of spending even one night camping alone in the middle of this freezing craggy landscape with Jack Trent made nerves flutter crazily in her stomach, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he looked like an Adonis.

      ‘He has a cameraman tag along at various locations to film the survival-skills demonstrations, river crossings, game preparation, that kind of thing,’ she said, glancing briefly across from the mud-flecked windscreen.

      The words ‘game preparation’ rebounded sickly through Evie’s mind.

      ‘Minimal crew though—the programme isn’t meant to look glossy. It’s meant to look like it’s thrown together. It all adds realism. Any night filming he does by himself on a handheld camera. Some of it’s in diary format where he talks direct to camera. He really is on his own out there, not holed up in some hotel.’

      There was a decidedly pointed tone to that last sentence. Was there a single member of the female species who wasn’t sappily in love with Jack Trent?

      ‘Yeah, I got that.’

      If she had a quid for every time someone told her how wrong she’d got it...

      ‘And if anything were to go wrong, which it can’t possibly, the guy’s ex-special forces. He’s survived in some of the most punishing terrain in the world. He led a hostage-rescue mission in Colombia. I think he’s up to managing a weekend in the Scottish Highlands with you.’

      * * *

      The camera was rolling even as she climbed out of the mud-splashed Jeep. Her feet in their new vice-gripping walking boots immediately sank to the ankle into the boggy ground. She followed the production assistant into a sparse brick building outside which were parked a variety of outward-bound vehicles. Crew moved around, shifting film-making equipment. So it sounded as if they took running footage and edited it down later. Fine as long as you didn’t speak before thinking. She resolved to keep her wits about her.

      ‘Have you seen any of Jack’s shows before?’

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