Page 71 of Guilty Pleasures

‘No, thank God,’ smiled Madeline, warming up slightly. ‘I was just out of college when we met. Rob had just started working for his father’s record company, which to my impressionable 22-year-old mind seemed rather cool.’ She half laughed, half winced at the memory. ‘I stayed the night at his loft in Tribeca and never moved out. But by the time I was 26 I felt a different person. Rob is adorable but immature and our relationship was breaking up just as I found out I was pregnant.’

‘Were you not tempted to stay together?’

‘For the sake of our child?’ said Madeline. ‘He asked me but I knew we were doing the right thing for Polly by splitting up.’

Madeline paused and examined Emma critically.

‘Are you and he …’ Madeline wagged her finger between the two of them.

Emma shook her head, embarrassed that she had been asking so many questions. But she’d been interested to find out about the Rob Holland she hadn’t so far seen. The man who proposed to his pregnant girlfriend even though they were not in love. The man who, unlike every other man on the shoot, was ignoring Clover Connor to run up and down the lawns with a little girl on his shoulders.

‘I didn’t think so,’ said Madeline briskly. ‘And take it as a compliment.’

Light was fading from the sky, the clouds were stung with pink while the spread of oak trees to one side of Winterfold looked as if they had been dipped in molten copper. It was a lovely evening. They’d been shooting for almost twelve hours but not even exhaustion could dampen Stella’s mood. Today was the first day she’d really felt she had made the right decision moving back to England. After the fraught meetings with the bank, after the coldness Roger Milford and many of the factory workers had shown towards her, after spending 75 per cent of her time locked away in a studio, she finally felt as if they were getting somewhere. And more than that, Stella really felt that she was something to do with it all.

‘That was wicked,’ said Clover, handing Stella the tight tweed jacket she’d been wearing for the last shot of the day. ‘Bret was fabulous, plus he told Ste he’d love do the next Kowalski video too, so you can imagine how chuffed he is.’

‘Not as pleased as I am, the way the shoot has gone today. You were wonderful,’ smiled Stella. Although Clover seemed down-to-earth with her Northern accent, chain-smoking and frequent cackles, Stella had been in the fashion industry long enough to know that talent had to be fawned over all the time and she was sure Emma was too naïve to do it.

‘I’m going to Cannes for the film festival in a couple of weeks,’ said Clover. ‘Karl has made me this wonderful dress. You couldn’t make me a bag to go with it?’

Stella’s heart leapt, but she tried to keep cool. Clover asking me to make her a bag! She knew that Ruan

would scream at her that the workshops were already at full stretch, but this was huge; it was gold-dust to have a big star walk the red carpet with one of your products. Stella knew Clover would look amazing, that the look would be dissected and talked about in a hundred magazines and newspapers around the globe and that her two-minute appearance outside Cannes’ Palais des Festivals would be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds in advertising for Milford.

‘Sure, babes,’ she said casually, as Clover ran off to her trailer. As soon as she was out of earshot, Stella buried her face in the tweed jacket and screamed with delight.

‘So what did you think?’

Stella was heading back into the main house, her mind fixed on the hot coffee that Emma had said was waiting there, when she heard the voice behind her.

Stella turned round to see Johnny Brinton who she had spotted as soon as he’d arrived with Emma’s cousin Tom that morning. Her whirring overworked brain had registered then how ridiculously good-looking he was, but here and now, up close, without the distractions of the shoot, he was something else. Johnny was tall, rangy and tanned; the collar on his polo shirt looked brilliant white against his golden brown skin. His dark blond hair was swept back, showing off his enormous ice-blue eyes, while his cheekbones could cut paper. Back in LA, beautiful men just looked vain and overly pampered; Johnny had a casualness about him that was confident and incredibly sexy. Stella actually felt her knees shake. It was the first time in a long time she had felt that powerful lurch of instant sexual attraction. In the last three years she’d had one longish relationship with Ed, a surfer from Laguna Beach, who’d had the same sort of louche good looks as Johnny if not quite as exquisite. She had fallen deeply in love with Ed, but she was never entirely sure it was reciprocated. She’d put up with his dawn starts to catch the tide, the evenings spent on the beach playing touch football or smoking weed, even his regular disappearances with his surf crowd chasing the big waves and swells around the globe. She’d held on until there was nothing left to hold on to. And now she was ready for someone else; Stella knew that she wanted to fall in love.

‘I thought you looked great,’ said Stella realizing, too late, that in speaking her mind she’d sounded incredibly flirty. ‘Sorry!’ she gasped, blushing. ‘I didn’t mean that, although yes, you did look great. Oh, just ignore me. It’s been a long day.’

A wide smile spread across Johnny’s face and he touched her arm making her shiver.

‘So which magazines is the campaign going in?’ he smiled, ‘I did this as a favour to Tom and he tells me nothing. For all I know it could be some jodhpur fetish magazine for bored country housewives.’

‘Nothing so exotic,’ smiled Stella. ‘Vogue, Elle, I’m not sure they have finalized the plan yet.’

‘Well, you must let me know so I can tell my PR.’

‘PR? What are you promoting?’

‘Just myself,’ he smiled. ‘I’m in a film that comes out in a week’s time.’

‘Wow.’

‘You should see it. I think the press, cast and crew screenings are finished, but the premiere’s next Thursday. Would you like to come?’

Stella felt a rush of excitement at his choice of words. Would you like to come. It was a more personal proposition than asking her if she’d like to go.

‘I’d love to.’

When Stella played the exchange back in her mind later that evening, it sounded like such a line. It was, of course, but Stella didn’t care, she wanted to get swept up in it. He looked her age but had the confidence of someone older. She’d heard a rumour on set that he had a famous father. Hey, who doesn’t? she thought.

‘Here, give me your number,’ he continued.