Charlotte Phillips - Man vs. Socialite

‘I made that comment without thinking about the consequences,’ she said. She spun round to face the camera head-on. Might as well get the apology out of the way upfront. ‘None of it was true,’ she said clearly to the camera. ‘I was stressed. It was taken out of context. I didn’t make it to get at you.’ She stole a look at Jack. He was watching her intently and she knew this was the part where to really regain the upper hand she should be giving a proper explanation but she simply couldn’t. She wasn’t about to discuss her skewed relationship with her father, not with the camera picking up every stupid nuance.

Jack kept watching her as she turned away from the camera, the blonde hair tied back, tendrils escaping and curling around her fine-boned face. His eyes strayed to the softness of her mouth before he could stop them. The full lower lip was delectable and a rush of heat sparked in his veins. He snapped his gaze away and focused hard on the kit list in front of him. He had no time for women in his life and that went double for high-maintenance ones like her. Perhaps if he put a conscious mental effort in, his body might actually get that message instead of being distracted by her.

Last night had been about playing him, about trying to charm him into making her life easier, the way she’d undoubtedly done with everyone throughout her life when things didn’t go her way. He’d lost out to that kind of behaviour in the past. He certainly wouldn’t be putting his trust in a TV personality with their own publicity agenda again any time soon. The way she looked was completely irrelevant.

He strengthened his resolve. After last night’s attempts to manipulate him, he had the measure of her. There would be no making this easy on her, no special concessions. She was just like any other course attendee, she just happened to make a duvet jacket look sexy for once.

The camera continued to roll regardless and from the corner of his eye Jack clocked her rucksack with its gold pattern and pink straps as she hefted it onto the trestle table. She’d never make it through the weekend without walking out. There was absolutely no way.

‘First rule of survival,’ he said, sticking to the remit of the TV show. ‘Blend in. Just how far do you think you’d get in hostile territory with that thing?’ He nodded at the bag. ‘You might as well have a neon flashing arrow pointing at your head.’

‘It’s designer,’ she said, in incredulous tones, as if that gave the wearer the power of invisibility.

He strode across the sparse and draughty room, pulled a sturdy camouflage-green backpack from the stack of kit near the door and threw it to her. She caught it on reflex to stop it hitting her in the chops. It was identical to his own. He could see from the expression on her face that she loathed it on sight.

He waited expectantly until she made an irritated noise and unzipped her bulging designer rucksack. The kit list he’d provided had included no provision whatsoever for personal items. Left to him and she’d barely be allowed a toothbrush, which was really rather the point. Roughing it rather lost its mojo when you let your candidates pack luxury items.

He watched as she proceeded to remove a ludicrous selection of cosmetic items and unsuitable clothing from the rucksack, which had probably cost more than his car. Was she for real?

‘Where did you think you were going?’ he couldn’t help saying. ‘To lie by a pool in the Caribbean? You don’t need a ton of designer stuff. No one does.’

‘This isn’t designer stuff.’ She shrugged. ‘Except for the rucksack. It’s just everyday hygiene stuff. Lip balm, sunblock... You should be wearing Factor twenty-five, you spend so much time outdoors, or you’ll look like a pensioner by the time you’re fifty.’ She pointed at him with the tube to press her point.

He stared at her.

‘You can put it all back in your designer rucksack and hand it over to the team,’ he said. ‘You’ll get it back when you return to base. The standard-issue kit is inside the green backpack.’

She unzipped the standard-issue backpack and peered into it.

‘What the hell is this?’

He winked at her and she tried to ignore the fact that when he smiled his green eyes took on a hint of wicked melt because it made her stomach go soft. Why couldn’t he have looked like some gnarly mountain man, perhaps with a beard big enough for a rodent to live in? It would make concentration on the task at hand much easier without her stomach in knots. Then again, he surely wouldn’t be such a darling of the public if he looked like some hairy hillbilly.

‘Torch, water bottle, purification tablets, matches, basic food rations... This is the kit I issue to all attendees of my survival course. Since you’ve single-handedly sabotaged my very successful business, I thought we’d use this weekend to showcase it and drum up some interest for the special kids’ survival courses I’m about to launch. Essentially, you’re trying out one of my courses and you owe me. So hand over the lip balm and let’s get on with it.’

He held her gaze with his own, and was there a hint of enjoyment in the green eyes? Was he actually getting off on this? She noticed, not without a touch of admiration, that he’d managed to get in a plug for the kids’ initiative thing that he was so hung up on. Maybe she should have smuggled along a bit of her jewellery and tried for a bit of product placement.

He whipped the tube of lip balm out of her hand with a flourish, lobbed it into the designer handbag and threw the whole thing to the production minion.

Then again, she’d have been hard pressed to get as much as a necklace past him.

‘And cut.’

She wheeled around, so absorbed in her standoff with Jack-bloody-Trent that she’d forgotten the camera was even there. Which was probably the point.

‘Fantastic banter, exactly what we’re looking for. Keep that up for the next couple of days and we’ll be talking TV gold.’

Terrific. So all she had to do to make this stupid programme a success was to spend the entire weekend at Jack Trent’s throat. Shouldn’t be too difficult since he was obviously not going to cut her an inch of slack.

‘Shall we?’ he said, ushering her towards the door with a flourish and a wicked grin.

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