скачать книгу бесплатно
‘Now, ma cherie. What are you wearing to the party?’
‘What? Oh, I haven’t decided …’ said Cassandra, still lost in thought.
‘Well perhaps I can help,’ said Guillaume with relish, tearing the layer of plastic off the package. Cassandra gasped.
‘For you,’ smiled Guillaume. It was a beautiful sculpted tulle gown, the very same show-stopping gown Guillaume had used to end the catwalk show, except this version had been created in the most glorious pale biscuit colour, its neckline sprinkled with delicate seed pearl embroidery. She reached out a finger to touch the beading.
‘Lesage?’ she said recognizing the work of the great French artisan house.
He nodded and she beamed. The colour was the perfect complement to her skin.
But it was more than that: this was a dress that would be fêted by journalists in thousands of column inches and be worn by A-list stars on the red carpets of the Oscars or Cannes – except they wouldn’t be the first to wear it. Cassandra Grand would be, even before it had its official debut at Guillaume Riche’s Autumn/Winter collection.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, ‘just so, so, beautiful!’ Carried away by the moment, Cassandra dropped her guard and embraced Guillaume, kissing him on both cheeks.
‘And it will fit perfectly.’
Cassandra smiled. She knew it would. It would fit her lithe body perfectly and it would fit her new plan perfectly, her new plan which started tonight.
‘Maintenant,’ screamed the sexy blonde, grabbing onto the bed-sheets.
‘Sure thing, baby …’
Tom Grand had dropped French as soon as he could at Shrewsbury school and he could barely remember how to say hello let alone decipher the ramblings of someone in the throes of orgasm, but he didn’t need a dictionary to know the girl currently astride him was having a good time. Her small tits, glistening with sweat, were jiggling up and down as she slid herself along his cock, twisting her pelvis to grind her springy bush into him. Frankly, she was a wild-cat. Her name was Sophie. She was French, an actress, and when he had met her that afternoon in a café in the Bastille, where she’d been drinking espresso and painting her fingernails black, he’d suspected she’d be a right goer. He hadn’t minded that she wasn’t the most groomed girl he had ever seen. She had stringy blonde hair tied back in a ponytail and had been wearing a green parka coat and flip-flops despite the cold. But she had a delicious way of holding her cigarette, a filthy laugh and beautiful, dark, flinty eyes. Almost immediately he’d wanted to take her back to his swanky room at the super-chic Hôtel Costes. It was being paid for by Rive magazine and he wanted to make full use of the mini-bar and room service. But Sophie wasn’t impressed and besides, she wanted to feed her cat. So before Tom knew where he was, they were in bed in her tiny one-bedroom apartment in Montmartre improving Anglo-French relations.
Sophie lifted herself off him, stroking her clitoris with the tip of his throbbing cock. When Tom could stand it no more he grabbed her hips, pulling her back down so that they were rocking in tandem harder and faster until they both came together in a spine-jolting explosion that made Tom cry out so loudly, it made his throat hurt.
‘You’re fucking good,’ he said finally, exhaling deeply and collapsing onto the mattress.
‘Good at fucking?’ she replied in rather rickety English.
Tom laughed.
‘Yes, I suppose that’s exactly what I meant,’ he said, propping his head up on the pillow and thinking that if it hadn’t been for his mother he’d be halfway to India by now. He’d been finally evicted from his Camden flat for non-payment of rent just before Christmas and while he’d managed to extend his time in London looking up old girlfriends, he’d finally accepted his fate and moved back in with his mother just before Saul’s funeral. When the chance of a trip to Goa came along-his friend Mungo said he could get him work at an ‘amazing’ full moon party – Julia had given him such a hard time about it all that when Cassandra had asked him to DJ at some do in Paris he’d quickly accepted. He knew his mother would have put her up to it, but he was slightly less angry when Cassandra had indicated that she could introduce him to fashion show producers and other people who might finally get his music career going. Plus, Rive were putting him up at the Costes, which was never a chore.
Although he and his sister weren’t particularly close – Cassandra was too wrapped up in her shallow little world to really care about anyone else – every now and then she would throw him a bone. His mother and his friends were forever reminding him how lucky he was to have someone that connected and that powerful as a sibling, but Tom didn’t see it that way. Yes, he had a wardrobe full of Dior Homme suits, Tom Ford shirts and Bill Amberg bags, none of which he had paid a penny for. His friends called him the best-dressed loser in town and that was exactly the point. Every opportunity Cassandra gave him, simply fuelled his sense of inadequacy and every job he fucked up just showed him up in sharp contrast to his sister’s brilliant career. He used to think that he was just as creative as Cassandra and that he just hadn’t found the right outlet yet, but at 26, finding himself jobless and back at his mother’s, well, maybe he wasn’t really good at anything. Still, at least he was successful with the ladies.
Suddenly he remembered the party and sat up.
‘Shit! What time is it?’ Predictably, he didn’t have a watch.
Sophie shrugged. ‘Perhaps 9 o’clock.’
He was due at the Rive party at 10 p.m.
‘Bugger. How far is the Marais? I have to be at this party for ten.’
Sophie’s apartment was up eight flights of stairs in a run-down block overlooking Sacre Coeur. She shrugged again. ‘Ten minutes. Maybe.’
He pursed his lips. He wasn’t exactly sure where Montmartre was but he had a clue it was in the north of the city. The Marais was also on the right bank but closer to the Seine. Fuck it, he had to trust the local when she said it was close by, didn’t he?
‘Are you sure about that?’
Sophie didn’t even bother to shrug this time, simply rolled towards him and took his nipple between her lips.
‘Ooh,’ he smiled to himself, ‘no reply necessary.’
He put his arm behind his head and watched her slide off the futon.
Light poured in from the illuminated Sacre Coeur behind them. She had a beautiful long body, a slim, sinuous back and smooth round buttocks that looked like marble in the half-light.
‘Do you want some … ’ow do you say in English – GHB?’ she said, fiddling with a glass vial on her cluttered dresser.
Tom guffawed. ‘Shit, you get better all the time.’
Then he froze. There was a head poking round the bedroom door.
‘Allo.’
Tom sat up and grabbed the duvet to cover his exposed body.
Christ! Who’s this? He thought in a panic, imagining all sorts of knife-wielding boyfriend scenarios. Then he got a better look at the intruder. Hey, she’s a corker.
‘This is Sabine,’ said Sophie distractedly.
Sabine was even more startling than Sophie, her black hair looked as if it had been cut with a pair of shears into an uneven bob, but her face was exquisite enough to take it. She walked into the room holding a ginger cat which Tom could see had three legs.
Sabine saw Tom looking and smiled. ‘She fell from the window there onto the street. She survived so we call her Lucky.’
He liked this one too.
‘Er. Who is she?’ he asked, turning to Sophie. ‘Your flatmate?’ It was, however, a one-bedroom apartment.
‘My girlfriend,’ she said casually putting the GHB into a small tumbler of water and handing it to him before lying naked across the bed.
Blimey, thought Tom, I can’t remember getting a hard on again so quickly.
Sabine put the cat on the floor and kicked off her shoes before joining them on the bed, reaching over to kiss Sophie gently on the lips.
‘What time did you say it was again?’ said Tom, in no rush to leave.
Sabine looked at her watch. ‘9.15.’
The Marais was only ten minutes away Tom thought to himself as he moved forward to lie beside Sophie. She reached towards him and curled her black-tipped fingers around his hand and Tom knew that, for a short while at least, he wasn’t going anywhere.
Giles Banks, Rive magazine’s editor-at-large, stepped from the limousine outside the gorgeous Parisian hôtel particulier and offered a hand to the woman still in the car. As one pale caramel Manolo heel hit the pavement, even Giles, who had no interest in the opposite sex, recognized that she was a magnetic beauty. Dozens of flashbulbs went off like firecrackers. He stepped back out of the line of the cameras, knowing that nobody wanted a picture of him. This was Cassandra’s night. The final part of a quartet of big nights held during the international collections that had seen her host parties in New York, London, Milan and Paris to celebrate Rive’s tenth anniversary. Sure, Giles himself had been the one she had entrusted to organize the parties and it had been a mammoth operation pulling in every contact to make sure every A-list star in town was going to be there, but tonight it would still be Cassandra at the centre of everyone’s attention. So far the parties had all been enormous successes. The supper in New York, in a yet-to-be-opened restaurant in the Meatpacking District. In Milan, Cassandra’s good friends, the Count and Contessa of Benari, had lent her their pocket-sized palazzo on the shores of Lake Como, while in London she had taken over Spitalfields Market for the night, draping the vast Victorian warehouse with white silk. They had all been very, very exclusive with invitations strictly specifying ‘No plus ones’ and they had all been a triumph. His efforts had been worth it.
Giles was aware that his boss had a difficult reputation; she was the most demanding and particular woman he had ever met, but she was also brilliant and had been good to him: very good. He had learnt so much from her, been given so many opportunities and in helping transform UK Rive he now had an international reputation as one of the most talented fashion journalists in the world.
He watched Cassandra’s face break into a small composed and elegant smile as they walked through the doors of the beautiful hôtel. Its grand atrium was twinkling in the glow of a thousand tea-lights. Huge glass vases were filled with scarlet and gold pomegranate halves and the perfumed air smelt like spiced nectar, sweet, rich and heady.
Giles could see Cassandra’s eyes scan the crowd, looking for names. There were plenty to choose from. Françoise Henri Pinault and Salma Hayek. Sonia Rykiel, perched on a hot-pink sofa laughing with a friend. Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH and his beautiful daughter Delphine were talking to John Galliano whose elaborate plumed hat set him apart from the crowd – as usual.
Everyone knew the importance of tonight’s party. Paris was fashion. All its main players were here. Nothing could go wrong.
‘Oh, darling. Everybody’s here.’
Cassandra kissed him on the cheek.
‘You’ve outdone yourself,’ she purred, swinging her dark hair over her shoulders. ‘Although didn’t Muffy Dayton have pomegranate vases at her divorce shower?’
Giles flushed a little. ‘Did she?’
Still looking nervous, Giles’s eyes darted behind her.
‘Look out. Toxic is coming this way,’ he said quickly.
Cassandra had just accepted a flute of pink champagne from a waiter when her publishing director Jason Tostvig, also known as ‘Toxic’ due to his unpopularity with the editorial team, appeared at her side.
He kissed Cassandra on the cheek and shook Giles’s hand awkwardly. Despite – or perhaps because of – his job, Jason was not a man completely comfortable in the world of fashion. He’d been drafted over from newspapers, was resolutely heterosexual, bullishly macho and seemed to think that even talking to somebody openly homosexual would somehow impact on his own masculinity.
‘Quite impressive,’ he smiled thinly looking around the room before raking his eyes over her dress. ‘How much is this shindig costing me?’
‘Whatever the invoice says, it’s worth it,’ smiled Cassandra, still glancing around the room. ‘Throwing parties is a branding exercise.’
‘Yes, but did we need four of them in as many weeks?’
‘Perhaps you don’t want to send the message that Rive is rich, exclusive and international. Perhaps I’ll bring that up with Isaac Grey next time I see him,’ she said, namechecking the CEO of their company.
Jason narrowed his dark eyes. Traditionally publishers and editors were mortal enemies, regarding each other as tight-fisted Neanderthals and irresponsible decadents, respectively. But Cassandra had a particular loathing for Jason. Not only did she think he was mediocre at his job, he had no handle on the fashion world beyond his cack-handed attempts at picking up models.
‘Is that a threat?’ he hissed.
‘Merely an observation that you and I might have different agendas,’ said Cassandra coolly. ‘Personally I don’t think you can put a price on goodwill.’
Jason puffed out his chest and popped a canapé into his mouth.
‘Well, I hope some of that ‘goodwill’ is directed at Oscar Braun,’ he said, nodding his head over at the CEO of the Austrian fashion house Forden. ‘They’re threatening to pull £250,000 worth of advertising over the next two quarters. Perhaps you’d like to tell Isaac Grey that the next time you see him.’
Cassandra chuckled.
‘Oscar is always saying that,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he’d help his own cause if he started showing decent collections. I have to put the fashion team in a headlock to get Forden’s revolting things in the magazine.’
‘I think we managed to get the mint bouclé jacket into the March issue,’ said Giles helpfully.
‘This time I think he’s serious,’ said Jason with a hint of relish. ‘You’d better do some serious schmoozing because if his ad revenue gets pulled we’re going to have to start looking at cutting editorial budget.’
Finally Cassandra turned to look at him.
‘Leave the editorial out of this,’ she snapped.
‘Speaking of which,’ said Jason looking up at the giant Phoebe Fenton cover. ‘Has anybody actually read that interview yet?’
‘It’s embargoed till Monday,’ said Cassandra quickly.
‘Funny, I thought the plan was to give the issue out to guests after the party.’
‘We never agreed that.’
‘Well, I read the issue on the Eurostar and you gave poor Phoebe a right old kicking, didn’t you? I was just thinking that perhaps you might be nervous about all these actors and models and socialites reading about their friend and what a coke-snorting whore she is, when you’re right there to take the flak? I mean, Phoebe might be down, but she’s not out. There’s still a lot of “goodwill” around for her.’
Cassandra flashed him a furious look, then took a breath to compose herself. What did Toxic care about ‘poor’ Phoebe Fenton? More likely he wanted there to be an uproar. He wanted trouble from the Fenton camp and wanted Cassandra to be held accountable. She was convinced he didn’t like the fact that she was the star of the Rive operation while not one celebrity or CEO in this room would even know his name. He was a snake. She knew she was going to have to get rid of him at some point but Cassandra always thought tactically. While Tostvig was ambitious and spiteful, he wasn’t the brightest candle on the cake and she’d rather be up against someone toxic and foolish than someone ruthless and clever.
‘Cassandra, could I have a word?’
‘What’s wrong?’ she said impatiently, turning see Sadie her junior assistant holding out a mobile phone. Jason looked over, his lips curling gleefully as he smelled trouble. Satisfied that Cassandra’s perfectly-groomed feathers had been ruffled, he took a flute from a waiter and headed off to try and chat up Naomi Campbell.
‘It’s your brother,’ whispered Sadie when he had gone.
‘What on earth is the problem? Why is he on the mobile? Shouldn’t he be here?’
She glanced at the DJ booth where a man with long dreadlocks appeared to be packing up his records.
‘That DJ finishes in ten minutes,’ explained Sadie. ‘Your brother is on until twelve and Jeremy Healy has only just got off the Eurostar and won’t be here for at least another forty-five minutes.’
‘Well, get that man to stay,’ she snapped, pointing up to the DJ booth.
Sadie had a look of sheer panic on her face.
‘I’ve tried that! He’s playing at Les Bains Douche in half an hour. His car is already outside waiting to take him there.’
Sadie thrust the phone towards Cassandra again. ‘Do you want to speak to Tom? He says he’s stuck in traffic near Galeries Lafayette.’
Cassandra shut her eyes momentarily, willing herself to be calm but feeling such a sense of fury and betrayal that she felt her cheeks begin to sting hot. He was her brother. How could he let her down so badly yet again?
‘Tell him that if he’s not here in five minutes not only will Rive refuse to pay his expenses at the Hôtel Costes but that I, personally, will make sure that everyone even remotely connected to the music industry knows what a irresponsible moron he is. He won’t be able to get a job sweeping the floor of a rat’s cage by the time I’ve finished with him.’
‘You want me to say all that to your brother?’
‘If you don’t, you can join him in the cage.’
Giles was already making calls on his mobile.
‘I’ve just called Queen,’ he said, covering the mouthpiece. ‘They’re sending one of their DJ’s over immediately. He only lives on the Rue des Rosiers, so we should be OK.’
Cassandra grabbed Giles’s hand and mouthed ‘Thank you’. Then, in the blink of an eye, her legendary poise was back and she was gliding away smiling and waving at people in the crowd, as if nothing had taken place.
‘Marvellous party, Cassandra. I don’t think there is anybody more beautiful at the party.’
