Chapter Ten
A table had been booked for dinner that night at the glamorous-sounding Coco Bay, a trendy Thai restaurant near the casino.
Luxe had agreed to cover a daily food allowance of twenty-five euros, which I assumed probably wouldn’t even cover a starter, so I’d made a mental note not to get carried away with the food ordering, although things were likely to get awkward if everyone wanted to split the bill.
I’d have to ask my accountant afterwards if I could write this off as a taxable expense if worst came to worst. It was part of my research, wasn’t it, watching how Marcus interacted with his team while off-duty?
And Dean’s other client, Mia Stephens, was coming – I wanted to observe Marcus with another player.
Would he feel instantly more connected to someone in the same industry?
Were they close, given they had the same agent?
Would anybody talk about anything other than tennis?
When I arrived at the hotel, Dean and Marcus were waiting on the soft chairs in the lobby. Dean looked pleased to see me, even if Marcus didn’t.
‘Ava! We were just talking about you!’
‘Were you, now?’ I said, taking a seat next to them.
‘I was explaining to Marcus that I need you two to be more openly affectionate,’ said Dean. ‘The momentum from the first paparazzi shots is waning and we don’t want people thinking your relationship is fizzling out before it’s even begun.’
He had a point. So far, I didn’t think we’d done a particularly good job of getting photographed together again – a family had snapped some photos of us as we’d talked on the beach earlier, but I hardly thought they had a hotline to Hello!
magazine. Perhaps Dean had been a little optimistic in thinking that me being spotted with Marcus once on a plane was going to make people think he was suddenly relationship material.
‘So what are you saying?’ asked Marcus, looking pissed off.
‘I’ve arranged for you to give Ava a tennis lesson tomorrow morning. It’s the kind of cute thing couples do,’ Dean declared.
‘Are you sure about that?’ I protested. ‘Because believe it or not I’ve been in a couple before, and tennis has literally never crossed my mind.’
‘First time for everything,’ said Dean. ‘And the photos will look great.’
I glanced at Marcus, who looked about as unhappy with the idea as I was.
‘And I need you to touch each other. Stare into each other’s eyes. Hold hands, for Christ’s sake. I’ve also tipped off the paparazzi at Coco Bay,’ said Dean, swiping up a glass of what looked like Scotch and taking a large mouthful.
I swallowed hard. Suddenly, things were happening really fast. Marcus and I could barely even look at each other, never mind hold hands – even if we did, it was going to look very obviously staged, surely?
‘Oh, and I’ve told Mia you’re an item. So for God’s sake ham it up in front of her when she comes down to join us.’
Marcus looked appalled. ‘Why on earth would you do that?’ he asked.
‘We’d already decided that we weren’t going to lie to people,’ I added, also getting slightly concerned. Marcus and I had had this discussion, and now Dean was going all rogue on us, putting us in positions neither of us felt comfortable in.
Dean shrugged. ‘This entire exercise will have been for nothing if someone finds out it’s not real. We need to stick to our story, and that means having to tell little white lies to friends, family, ex-lovers, whatever.’
I raised my eyebrows, suddenly on high alert. Had he said ex-lovers? Presumably he wasn’t talking about me and Charlie, so he could only have meant there’d once been something between Marcus and Mia? I had a million questions in my mind, none of which a fed-up Marcus looked up for answering.
‘Talk of the devil,’ said Dean, standing up as Mia approached, gliding her way across the foyer like something out of a Victoria’s Secret runway show.
She had a body to die for, of course, with long slim legs that were made even more impressive by the silver micro mini and heels she was rocking.
I snuck a glance at Marcus to see if he looked in any way uncomfortable – talk about a baptism of fire.
Not only was he going to have to pretend to be into me, he was going to have to do it in front of somebody he’d once had a fling with.
How long ago had it ended, I wondered? Had it been a hookup, or something more?
‘Mia, let me introduce you to Ava Whitfield,’ crooned Dean.
I held out my hand to greet her warmly – there was no reason for me to assume she’d be anything other than lovely.
‘Great to meet you, Mia.’
She gave me a stiff smile, swiftly extricating her hand from mine. If she could have got away with it, I reckoned she would have shaken me off in disgust.
‘You too, Ava,’ she said, for some reason elongating the first syllable of my name, putting an unusual emphasis on it, and I didn’t think it was just because of her American accent.
Then she eyeballed Marcus.
‘Evening,’ he said with a nod.
‘Well, Marcus, you certainly kept that one quiet,’ said Mia. ‘Dean tells me you and Ava are an item now.’
I really thought this was where Marcus would pull the plug.
He’d said it himself, he was a straight-up kind of guy who said things as he saw them, but here we were, trying to fabricate a connection that simply wasn’t there.
I mentally prepared for him to come clean in front of Mia, upset Dean and then we’d have to deal with the fallout.
But to my surprise, Marcus leaned forward in his seat, reached out and tucked my hair behind my right ear, letting his fingers linger on my neck for a few seconds, just behind the lowest point of my drop earring.
‘Well,’ he said, holding my gaze as I tried to remember to breathe. ‘It kind of took me by surprise, to be honest.’
Even though my mind was reeling, I was aware of two things: the fact my skin was now burning where he’d briefly touched me, because it had been so unexpected, I supposed, and because Charlie hadn’t touched me like that for months, fake or not.
And the other thing was that Mia Stephens was currently giving me daggers, indicating that if something had happened between her and Marcus, it had been him who ended it.
Dean had ordered us two cars to get to the restaurant, which was only fifteen minutes away by foot according to Google Maps, so I didn’t see why we couldn’t have walked. On the other hand, I was wearing heels, so I’d probably thank them later.
We all filed out to the front of the hotel and Dean ushered Mia into the first car with him, Patrick and Nick, conveniently leaving Marcus and I to share the second.
‘That wasn’t at all set up,’ I grumbled under my breath as Marcus held open the taxi’s door so that I could slide easily inside.
‘Not exactly being subtle about it, is he?’ said Marcus, shutting the door behind me as I strapped myself in and then striding around to get in on the other side.
We sat in silence to begin with. I was still in awe of Monaco, and this street we were driving down was like something out of a video game: smooth and straight, the strangely appealing central reservation filled with plants and palm trees.
But then, after a while, it felt like somebody should acknowledge what had happened in the bar, how we’d upped our pretending-to-be-a-couple game.
I wondered if it had been a moment of madness that he was now massively regretting.
‘Hope that was all right?’ he said eventually. ‘That little display in there?’
I winced internally. How to even begin discussing that he’d just pretended to be so into me that he’d just had to reach out and touch me tenderly in front of a room full of people, one of whom, presumably, was his ex.
I cleared my throat. ‘I suppose if we’re going to do this, we may as well do it properly.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ he said. ‘Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.’
I nodded, looking out of the window as our car snaked off the main road and up into a tangle of winding streets, away from the sea and into what I presumed was central Monte Carlo.
The impeccable streets were lined with brightly lit designer shops – Dior, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci, high-end household names that I could only ever imagine being able to afford.
I’d found some random statistics for my article earlier, each one more surprising than the last: Monaco was smaller in size than New York’s Central Park; over twelve thousand millionaires lived in less than one square mile, presumably due mainly to the country’s zero income tax policy; there was supposedly a curse on the monarchy, otherwise known as the Grimaldi family, whose framed pictures I’d seen displayed proudly all over the city – photos of Prince Albert and his wife, Princess Charlene, were behind glass cabinets in hotel foyers, and beautiful black-and-white shots of his late mother, Princess Grace, took pride of place in every other shop window.
‘Mia didn’t seem happy,’ I said, testing the waters. ‘Did you two used to be an item?’
Marcus sighed. ‘Is this off the record or on? Because I’m losing track here.’
‘That’s what happens when you mix business with pleasure,’ I said with a shrug.
‘And exactly which part of this arrangement are you finding pleasurable, Ava?’ he asked, glancing sideways at me.
‘Pleasure was the wrong choice of word.’
‘Was it, now?’ he said.
I could almost hear the smile playing on his lips, like he didn’t believe me.
Why would he, with an ego as big as his?
He probably thought that I was finding every minute of being linked with him an absolute delight.
And the truth was, part of me, the part of myself I was used to ignoring, was feeling more alive than I’d felt in months, but not for the reasons Marcus thought.
It was more that I was fired up by the people I’d met, the way they didn’t try to hide their ambition, that the players essentially put their souls on the line every time they stepped out on to that court.
It was actually quite inspiring – shame they all had to be so arrogant about it.
‘Mia and I spent one night together last season,’ said Marcus, pinching the top of his nose as though telling me this was in some way difficult. ‘I suspect she wanted more, but unfortunately that wasn’t something I could give.’
Great. No wonder she was livid at the thought of him dating me.
As the taxi pulled up outside the restaurant, I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, albeit with a slightly more salubrious job.
The restaurant was housed in an ornate building that looked exactly like the photos I’d seen of the casino.
It had been front-lit in a sultry red light and looked like something out of a movie, with its sweeping staircase and firepits blazing on either side of the entrance.
Uniformed valets scurried about outside as a string of unbelievably expensive cars waited ahead of us to be parked – they were out in force tonight, the Ferraris, the Lamborghinis, their engines roaring, their reds and yellows and golds popping against the night sky.
‘Wow,’ I said.
‘Flashy, isn’t it?’ said Marcus, as our car came to a stop.
‘Are we really going to do this?’ I blurted out as he reached for the door handle.
A cluster of paparazzi was already crouched at the bottom of the steps, ready to pounce, and I realised that if we were photographed together now there would be no going back.
And I didn’t want us to have a sort of will-we/won’t-we moment in full view of everyone, I wanted to be clear – were we walking into the restaurant as ourselves, as Marcus Taylor, tennis star, and the anonymous woman who was interviewing him?
Or were we pretending to be something more?
Something more intimate? Something that would require me to revisit my somewhat rusty acting skills?
‘We’re doing it,’ he said, catching my eye. ‘Aren’t we?’
I breathed in sharply, my heart suddenly racing, although I wasn’t sure why.
This could get back to my family now; to Charlie.
And I was going to have to be prepared to lie – or at least avoid telling the truth – to the people closest to me.
Could I really do that? It felt like maybe I could, but what kind of person did that make me?
‘Let’s go, then,’ I said, bracing myself and swinging open my door.