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Scandalous
Tilly Bagshawe
For the ultimate in glamour, it has to be Tilly Bagshawe. Perfect escapism for fans of Penny Vincenzi and Jilly Cooper.Sasha Miller comes to Cambridge with a dream and leaves on a mission. After falling for the lies and charms of her Director of Studies ‘Theo Dexter’ she finds herself betrayed, humiliated and nursing a bundle of broken dreams. Heading to the US she is determined to rebuild her life.Years later, Sasha emerges from Harvard Business School with one thing on her mind, the downfall of the now famous Professor Theo Dexter.Meanwhile Theo’s long suffering wife Theresa also finds herself betrayed and cast aside for a younger and prettier model. Unable to cope she returns to Cambridge a broken woman and tries to rebuild her life away from the scheming Theo Dexter.One night Sasha turns up at Theresa’s door, she wants revenge at any cost, will Theresa help her?From the deepest betrayal comes a shocking alliance.Two vengeful women, one very unlucky man…
Scandalous
Tilly Bagshawe
Copyright (#ulink_5a40230e-63af-5684-87cb-4559310b6f9e)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
A Paperback Original 2010
FIRST EDITION
Copyright © Tilly Bagshawe 2010
Tilly Bagshawe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EBook Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 9780007341870
Version date: 2018-07-18
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Dedication (#ulink_22e7525a-d889-5f2c-a2d4-836bcdbdab47)
For James Bagshawe, the best brother in the world
Contents
Title Page (#u7855b91d-440b-56c8-9e00-00fdf1be0f7d)
Copyright (#u6bcc9c17-4553-528f-b901-5baf9bcf0c3f)
Dedication
Prologue (#u932c67fe-3825-59f8-a6b6-80425f43c0e4)
PART ONE (#u4a795012-2d94-506c-bdf4-c63cb4f8c9b9)
CHAPTER ONE (#u01dfa8ba-7ce7-57bb-814b-35952d32c3eb)
CHAPTER TWO (#u00c80c55-7687-5aff-a88c-c0eefc643f1d)
CHAPTER THREE (#u41099375-1778-5f14-92e4-e23039f56695)
CHAPTER FOUR (#udbf2566b-9bf7-5285-83f7-5b90b767ac2d)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u7331e98d-8a6b-5563-a575-805487a62000)
CHAPTER SIX (#u6b0c1dd0-34e0-5392-8233-6364ac6d2a14)
PART TWO (#ub6a64a97-b403-557f-bbae-7d81c75bb9a7)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#uf15d66b9-c990-5d15-b311-02e6bbdb1a46)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
PART THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
PART FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Tilly Bagshawe (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_f8c4af05-14d0-57a8-91e1-62452225ff62)
In a private screening room in Beverly Hills, a beautiful woman stared intently at the man on the screen. Flicking a switch, she allowed her luxurious red velvet chair to recline. Languidly extending a hand dripping in Neil Lane diamonds, she reached for the remote, freeze-framing the shot on the man’s face. She smiled.
He was handsome, undoubtedly. Blond, blue-eyed, chisel-jawed, like every other television presenter in Los Angeles. But this woman had her pick of handsome men. Handsome, rich, powerful, she had had them all and grown bored of them all. Last month, for the third year in a row, People magazine had voted her ‘Sexiest Woman Alive’. It was the sort of label that meant little to her, but everything to the producers and directors who lined up to be the next piece of man candy on her perfectly sculpted arm. Her looks had made her famous, and they had made her rich. Men were stupid.
But not this man. This man was different. He was an intellectual. Some even called him a genius. She wondered what he would be like in bed? How it would feel to sleep with a man who, on one level at least, was her superior? She found the concept thrilling, albeit rather difficult to imagine.
Hitting play, she watched the man walk towards the camera, talking about deep space and the cosmos and things she did not understand in his divine English accent. Slipping a hand beneath her cream silk La Perla negligée, she began to touch herself, imagining him making love to her.
Theo! Oh Theo. Don’t stop.
As always when she pleasured herself, she came to orgasm almost instantly. Yet another thing she did better than the men in her life. Opening her eyes, she sighed. How inconvenient that she’d only just got married again.
She would have to do something about that…
Three thousand miles away and some years later, in New York, another wealthy, beautiful woman watched the same man on the cinema-sized plasma television in the master bedroom of her palatial Upper East Side apartment. Just as she had watched him every night for the last five years.
Unlike his admirer in LA, this woman did understand what Professor Theodore Dexter was saying. Listening to him pontificate in the fake, fireside-chat voice she knew so well, she thought, I hate you. Why are you still alive? Why aren’t you suffering, the way you made me suffer, you treacherous son of a bitch?
One day, she vowed, Theo Dexter would get what was coming to him.
When that day came, she would show him no mercy.
PART ONE (#ulink_3cb367ad-0a4e-5a06-84dc-b83557f304cd)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_c10f15d0-aec0-528f-b20e-a894a17ac376)
‘Are you sure you want to do this Sasha? It’s not too late to change your mind.’
Sasha Miller looked at Will Temple’s naked body – the six-pack stomach, broad rugby-player’s shoulders, sturdy legs, and of course it – and marvelled again that such an Adonis had chosen her to be his girlfriend.
‘I’m completely sure. I just…I hope you won’t be disappointed, that’s all.’
Will Temple was nineteen and very experienced. At least, that’s what he’d told Sasha. Oh God, yeah. I lost my virginity when I was twelve. It was with the au pair. Bodil. Gorgeous Swedish bird, couldn’t keep her hands off me. She’s a top model now. Sasha was wildly impressed. Not that that was why she had fallen for Will. All the girls loved him because he was captain of the rugby team at school, handsome, rich and insanely popular. But Sasha Miller was drawn to another side of Will Temple. He was funny, and spontaneous. When he wasn’t with ‘the lads’, his posse of sycophantic hangers-on from Tonbridge, the local public school, he could be loving and sweet.
Sasha and Will had been an item for three months now. If Sasha didn’t do the deed soon, she knew there’d be a queue of girls from St Agnes’s waiting to take her place. She’d only been putting it off because of the rumours.
Rumours about it.
For weeks Sasha had been hearing that it was so huge, an appendage of such superhuman girth and elephantine length that sex was bound to be agony. So it was with immense relief that Sasha had watched Will drop his Simpsons boxer shorts to reveal a modest five and a half inches of manhood. Eager, certainly. Ready for action, unquestionably. But hardly the Eiffel Tower.
‘You could never disappoint me, darling,’ Will assured her. ‘Just follow my lead. I’ll take care of you.’
Kicking aside a pile of dirty sports kit, Will led Sasha to the bed and started taking off her clothes. Sasha closed her eyes. Downstairs she could hear the thump, thump, thump of music from the party and wondered if all Will’s friends knew what he was up to. Did boys talk to each other about things like that? She tried not to think about it, or about the faint but pervasive smell of mildew rising from Will’s sheets.
‘What’s wrong with this thing?’ Will fumbled with the clasp of her bra. ‘Why won’t it…open?’
‘Sorry. It’s quite old.’ Hearing the exasperation in his voice Sasha wriggled out of the offending garment herself. Two perfectly round, full, eighteen-year-old breasts tumbled into Will’s hands like ripe fruit from the tree of heaven.
‘Bloody hell, you’re gorgeous,’ he gasped.
He was right. With her flawless, milky skin, gleaming mane of black hair and sparkling, intelligent eyes, the same pale green as mint ice cream, Sasha Miller was a knockout. But she was also…different. All Will Temple’s previous girlfriends had been the cool, popular girls at school. Standard-issue blondes with tight jeans and the latest Top Shop heels. With her Marks & Spencer’s cardigans and sensible lace-up shoes, and her nose permanently stuck in a science book, Sasha Miller was a card-carrying nerd. But that was what Will loved about her. He’d had his fill of dating prom queens. Sasha knew even less about fashion than Will did, and either didn’t know that she was beautiful or set no store by her looks. She also had no interest in the local Sussex party scene, a scene of which Will Temple was the undisputed king.
But even kings could get bored.
Sasha gazed up at him, naked and adoring.
‘Thank you. You’re gorgeous too Will. I…’
The pain was sharp but it was over in a second. Sasha didn’t even remember Will taking her knickers off, but he must have because before her head hit the pillow he was inside her, pounding away like a jackhammer. Tentatively Sasha ran a hand over his bare back. She was debating whether or not it would be bad form to reach lower and stroke his bum – perhaps she ought to have spent more time reading the Just Seventeen problem pages when she was younger like the rest of her friends? – when Will let out a strange, yelping noise and pulled out of her.
‘Would you like a condom?’ Sasha offered helpfully. ‘I’ve got one.’
‘A bit late for that, I’m afraid.’ Will grinned. ‘Sorry, darling. You’re so sexy I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t hurt you, did I?’
‘Erm, no. Not really.’
Wow. So that was sex. It was quite a lot shorter than I expected. But that’s probably only because Will’s so good at it, it doesn’t take him as long as other people.
‘Shall we go back down and join the party?’ Will was already pulling on his jeans. ‘Of course I’d much rather be here, making love to you.’ He kissed Sasha on the forehead. ‘But I feel a bit rude. You know, being the host and everything. Jago’s probably nicking the silverware as I speak.’
Will’s parents were on holiday in Spain. With a faith in their eldest son that owed more to love than judgement, they had left Will in charge of Chittenden, their beautiful sixteenth-century farmhouse in the Sussex Weald. Tonight’s party was his third in as many days.
‘Oh, gosh, totally. Of course. You should go down.’ Sasha scoured the floor for her underwear. ‘I have to get home anyway.’
‘You’re not staying over?’ Will looked genuinely crestfallen. Sasha sighed. He’s so lovely.
‘I can’t. It’s my dad’s birthday, remember? I promised him I’d be home for supper. Mum and I always watch him unwrap his presents.’
