Page 69 of All Summer Long

‘Good morning to you too,’ Marsh said, sounding pithy and bored.

‘I’m not in the mood for your games, Marsh. Did you do this?’

His manager sighed heavily down the phone. ‘I’ve done what needed to be done, Robinson, because you weren’t going to man up and do anything yourself any time soon.’

‘So what, you called every newspaper in the whole of goddamn England to tell them where I am, and then threw my estranged wife in to the mix for good measure?’

Behind him he heard Alice’s footsteps on the stairs and turned to glance at her. She looked stricken, and he wasn’t a bit surprised. The only thing she’d asked of him was that he didn’t bring the press to her door again, and here they were surrounded by long lens cameras. He mouthed sorry as she fastened her robe around her waist and sat on the bottom step of the stairs to wait for him to finish on the phone.

‘What the hell are you saying, Duff?’ Marsh barked. ‘The press are over there?’

‘Don’t even bother playing the innocent, Marsh.’

His manager fell silent for a minute and then, typically, started yelling at the top of his lungs. ‘Under no circumstances do you open that door until I get there, do you understand me? One sniff of there being truth to that infidelity story and your fans will throw you under the nearest goddamn bus!’

Marsh hung up, and from the way Robinson heard him cursing as he stabbed the end call button of his mobile he felt fairly confident that although Marsh had contacted Lena, he wasn’t the one responsible for the press invasion. But if not Marsh, then who?

‘Robinson! Let me in, for God’s sake,’ Lena hissed loudly through the waist-high letterbox. ‘If you don’t let me inside this house in the next thirty seconds I swear to God I’ll give them something to point their lenses at.’

Robinson crossed the hall and dropped down on his haunches in front of Alice. Reaching out, he cupped her cheek in his hand.

‘Alice, I’m so sorry. I’ll make this all go away, I promise you. By the end of today you’ll have your privacy back, okay?’

Her eyes were blue in every sense of the word; cornflower in colour, melancholy in mood. They both knew that the only way to get the press off the driveway of Borne Manor would be for Robinson to leave too.

‘You’re going to have to let her in,’ Alice said. ‘They’ll eat her alive.’

Robinson laughed sourly. ‘You haven’t met Lena.’

Alice stood up. ‘No. And I’m not planning on meeting her in my robe.’ She squinted through the bevelled window and saw the sea of press part to allow the tiny but mighty Marsh to march through the middle of them. ‘Marsh is here. I’m going to take a shower while you guys talk.’

‘Alice …’ Robinson caught hold of her hand as she turned to go upstairs and Marsh thumped heavily on the door. She stepped back down and kissed his cheek, lingering to breathe in the scent of him for a precious second.

‘It isn’t your fault, Robinson,’ she sighed, bringing his fingers to her mouth and kissing them. ‘This day has been coming from the moment you arrived. That’s the thing with holiday romances. They have to end.’

Across the village, Davina flicked the open sign over to closed as she locked the door and jumped into the waiting taxi. There’d be no catching the bus for her today, nor for the foreseeable future thanks to the tidy sum she’d received in exchange for revealing the whereabouts of Robinson Duff. After his performance on live breakfast TV he was the hottest story in the country; opportunity had come knocking and Davina hadn’t needed to think twice before answering. She was taking the morning off, and she might even buy Hazel’s stupid bird some fancy seeds as a thank-you for his insider info. She probably wouldn’t have trusted the intel from a human; she’d yet to meet one who didn’t lie for his own convenience. She wasn’t one bit sorry.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Alice bolted the bathroom door and after a moment’s thought turned on the bath taps instead of jumping in the shower. Whatever was going to happen downstairs was going to happen anyway, and she wasn’t in any hurry to meet Robinson’s wife or get caught up in the crossfire with Marsh. Sliding into the bubbles, she closed her eyes and tried to work out what on earth was going to happen next, how she could play it and come out with both her heart and her home intact. For a few weeks back there life really had been quite magical, long luxurious days of sunshine and exciting plans, and even longer, hotter nights in the Airstream with Robinson. It had only ever been an interlude, a decadent escape from reality for both of them. Looking back, Marsh’s arrival had marked the beginning of the end, and Brad turning up out of nowhere had further hastened the end of their idyll. And now there was Lena to contend with, not to mention the entire British press involved in the spectacle again too. She’d recognised a few of them when she’d peeped quickly out of an upstairs window just now, guys who had spent so much time on her driveway last year for her to know them by first name, faces she’d hoped never to need to see again. Every now and then she heard raised voices from the kitchen, snippets and tones that made her want to stay in the bathroom forever.

Marsh paced the kitchen floor, his jacket discarded and his steel grey hair all over the place from pushing his hands through it. He was in an absolute rage about the press involvement; he ruled the PR side of his client’s business with an iron rod and this situation had potential disaster written all over it. He needed a cast-iron damage-limitation strategy, one that definitely didn’t include Robinson and Lena having an all out slanging match within ear shot of England’s most influential hacks.

‘Will you two pipe the hell down?’ he shouted over them, waving his arms in the manner of a man landing a plane. Lena shook her glossy dark waves and flashed her eyes at him.

‘I’ll pipe down when I’ve said what I hauled my ass halfway across the world to say, Marshall,’ she shot back. ‘Or whatyouhauled my ass halfway across the world to say.’

‘I amnotlistening to her, Marsh,’ Robinson said. ‘I want her out of the house, out of this village and out of this country before nightfall, do you understand me? She has no place here.’ He sighed, infuriated and exasperated. ‘What did you think was going to happen?’

Marsh glowered at him. ‘I’m gonna ask you a question here, Robinson, and I suggest you think damn carefully before you open your mouth to answer it.’

Robinson stared back hotly. This shouldn’t be happening here. It shouldn’t be happening at all, but it certainly shouldn’t be happening in Alice’s house. Marsh pulled out a chair and attempted to look calm.

‘Robinson. Am I, or am I not, your business manager?’

Robinson sighed hard and looked out of the window. ‘Make your point.’

‘My point? My point? You pay me to manage your career, and I’m sure you don’t need me to point out the goddamn obvious about how this is gonna look in the press if the truth comes out, which it cata-fuckin’-gorically is not gonna, regardless of that pack of hounds out there.’ He jerked his thumb violently towards the front of the house.

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