Page 85 of The Payback Plan
After photographs emerged of Oliver Prendergast, son of famed British actor Roger Prendergast (deceased), attending a local WI meeting in St Ives with a certain golden statue a few weeks ago, our photographer was in the right place at the right time to catch Redondo’s runaway groom making out with a mystery woman on Porthmeor Beach where he’s been holed away in his father’s beach house since jilting his bride-to-be last year.
Olly was set to marry Bella Carmichael of the wealthy Upstate New York Carmichael family at their country estate in the Hamptons but changed his mind on the morning of their wedding. Soon after he fled America for his country of birth, creating a massive scandal and leaving behind a huge mess for his distraught bride-to-be to clean up.
No official statement outlining the reasons for the wedding being called off has ever been released but it was rumoured at the time that, like his father, Oliver Prendergast wasn’t good at keeping his fly zipped and he’d been caught in flagrante the night before with the bride’s maid-of-honour.
Or maybe the buxom beach babe whose identity is unknown, had something to do with it? Did he leave because there was another woman? Is she next in line to be Mrs Oliver Prendergast? We’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
Paige scrolled to the pictures that were speaking very freaking loud.
Her brain scrambling, Paige put her phone on the table and tapped on the laptop keyboard to wake it up. She’d been just about to shut it down to pack it into her hand luggage for the flight. Minimising Oliver’s book doc she’d been doing some last-minute work on, she opened a new window and typedOliver Prendergast, buxom beach babeinto the search bar.
Her gut sank as the screen filled with the images she’d already seen. It appeared as though every online publication on the planet had picked them up and were proudly displaying them on home pages. People had shared them on social media.
Hell, apparently #redondosrunawaygroom was a thing on TikTok and videos were already being posted with the latest development.
Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
They were everywhere. Just like last time. Was she naked? No. But were they intimate and private?Yes.And had she given her permission for them to be taken and/or published?Hell fucking no.
Paige’s head pounded and her breathing quickened as nausea threatened. How long would it take them? She was amysterynow but how long until someone somewhere recognised her from a random porn site or from images they’d saved and put in a file on their desktop labelled spank bank. Or until some publication used facial recognition software to identify her?
And then she would be exposed all over again – literally and figuratively.
But it would be worse this time because now her name was associated with a guy who the paparazzi followed around and was a fucking TikTok hashtag! Those photos could well goviralthis time.
Snapping the screen of her laptop shut, she yelled, ‘Oliver!’
Wanting to be as far away from the pictures as possible, Paige stalked from the table and started to pace, her mind spinning a million miles a minute, her arms hugged around her middle. She should have known something like this was going to happen. That the universe hadn’t stopped screwing with her yet.
What a fool she’d been this past week, floating around in this blissful little bubble. An occasional thought about sleeping with Oliver under false pretences had needled her brain but Bella’s acceptance of their relationship had lulled her into a false sense of security. She’d started to think she could actually pull this off. That she could go to Scotland for the month then come back and confess her sins and they’d both laugh and everything would be okay.
But she should have known that wasn’t the way it worked. Not only had days of amazing sex made her completely forget the reason her and Oliver couldn’t be together in the first place –photographersfollowed him around – worse still, she only had herself to blame for this debacle. The first time she’d popped her head above the parapet had been to engage in a deception and now it was biting her on the ass.
Whoever said karma was a bitch sure as shit knew what they were on about. She’d set out to get some karmic payback for Bella and the tables had turned.
The payback was on her.
‘You bellowed,’ Oliver said, breaking into her self-flagellation as he stepped into the living room, his smile fading the second he saw her face. ‘What’s wrong?’
He strode towards her, his brow furrowed in consternation but Paige waved him back. Unable to articulate a sentence right now, she tipped her chin at the table. ‘Laptop.’
Changing direction, Oliver crossed to the table, opened the laptop lid and touched the mouse pad, instantly bringing up the screen with those photos. ‘What the fuck?’ Glancing quickly at her, Oliver returned his attention to the screen, sinking into the chair while Paige paced miserably.
‘Thoseassholes,’ he said eventually as he shut the lid down.
For a posh Brit he sounded very American when saying that word, giving it the right amount of sassy emphasis. Paige might have even laughed out loud had she not overwhelmingly wanted to cry.
‘Don’t worry.’ He stood and faced her. ‘I can fix this.’
Paige did laugh then, a harsh and bitter snort-laugh. ‘It’s too late now.’ She knew it and she knew he knew it too. There’d been a lot of valuable lessons from her last brush with this kind of thing but the biggest one had been that things lived onforeveron the internet.
She buried her hands in her face. ‘God,’ she groaned. ‘This is a disaster.’
‘No.’ He took a step towards her but halted when she shook her head vigorously. ‘I’m not going to lie to you, it might be kinda intense for a while. It’ll be open season on me again and they’ll be knocking at this door and every other door on the damn street every day hoping to find someone with a juicy bit of gossip about us.’
Yeah, but what happened when that juicy bit of gossip was aboutherand notus?
‘You going away for a couple of days before the vultures descend is actually perfect timing,’ he continued, oblivious to her inner turmoil. ‘By then some other poor unfortunate celeb will do something they deem newsworthy and they’ll go away.’
