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Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not using it.” She pointed to his bare chest. “You never wear shirts.”
Flynn was past caring. He wanted her gone. His head was starting to ache from the mental gymnastics of dealing with her. “Fine. You win. Take it. Take whatever you want. Just leave me alone.” She beamed at him. He opened his wallet and pulled out two fifty-pound notes. “Here. Go buy Barbies. And don’t come back.”
She grabbed the money, spun away from him and ran towards her house without another word, taking his favourite shirt with her.
Flynn plopped back in the lounger. He wanted a beer, but he sure as hell didn’t want to drag his backside in to get one. He was having a bad leg day. Every time he moved pain sliced through him, making his stomach lurch.
“We should never have agreed to exclude the girl from the show.” The weasel’s voice sliced right into Flynn’s already aching brain.
“Don’t even think about it. She isn’t part of the programme.”
The weasel pointed at Abby’s house. “The kid’s visit is the most interesting thing to happen here all day. If you don’t do something soon, this will be the most boring documentary ever made.”
Flynn shrugged. “Fine with me.” He shut his eyes and listened to the slimy guy stomp away.
Brian the weasel was short and skinny. A guy who was made up of lots of sharp angles, kind of like a Picasso painting Flynn had seen once at some hoity-toity party. Brian had perpetually narrowed eyes and a disdainful smirk on his face. He was the guy other men felt nervous turning their backs on. Nothing about Brian engendered loyalty or respect. If the weasel was having problems with the shoot then that was fine with Flynn. He didn’t want to do the show anyway. His agent had sold it to him as a serious piece, an interview on his career with some life shots for filler. It was the exact opposite. He felt like Matthew McConaughey in that movie—EDtv. He glanced down at himself and wondered if his abs were better than Matthew’s.
The answer wasn’t forthcoming.
???
Brian Flannigan watched Flynn laze on the lounger in the middle of the perfectly nice field he’d turned into a dump. He sneered. Must be good to have so much money you could bum around all day, every day. It pissed him off. Guys like Flynn got all the luck. All they did was kick a ball around and look pretty, while men like Brian, men with brains and talent, had to work damn hard to make it through the month. It made him sick.
“What did you dig up on the neighbour?” he asked his whiny, terrified assistant. She was the walking, talking equivalent of beige wallpaper.
She cleared her throat and addressed her answer to her shoes. Her dull brown shoes.
“There isn’t much. She comes from a wealthy, connected family. Her mother is still alive; her father passed away a few years ago and his title went to her older brother. She doesn’t have any contact with her family. The rumour is they disowned her when she married her late husband. He was an agriculture graduate who moved here to open a mushroom farm in the old mine. As far as I can tell, he was hardworking and well liked. People were really upset when he died. It was a brain tumour. Abby tried running the business herself, but it was going under even before the explosion a few months ago made the mine collapse.”
Brian stilled. “Wait a minute. Go back a bit. You said ‘his title’? Her father was a peer?”
The beige wonder nodded, still unable to meet his eyes. “A lord. Her brother is now Lord Montgomery-Clark. The family estate is in Kent.”
“A lord?” He felt his heart race. He could see the documentary title now: Class Warfare in the Highlands. It was the edge he needed to take his documentary from mundane to spectacular. Instead of ninety minutes featuring a self-obsessed pretty boy, the programme would be a social commentary on the struggles of a failing British class system and the lower class’ obsession with football. His mouth salivated at the thought of all the accolades that were bound to come his way.
“They’re distant cousins of the Queen,” the mouse said, breaking into his vivid daydream.
Holy hell. Brian bit back a laugh. This couldn’t get any better even if he wrote it himself. After this, people would be queuing up to get him in on their projects. His name would be gold.
“Does the family know their daughter is slumming with the bad boy of UK soccer?”
The beige wonder’s eyes snapped up to his, briefly. It made him wonder if she had a backbone after all. “She isn’t doing anything with Flynn. They’re just neighbours.”
He couldn’t contain the grin that split his face. “The family doesn’t know what Flynn is to Abby. If her family disowned her for marrying an educated and respectable working-class man, they’ll go ballistic when they find out she’s setting up home with that waste of space.” He smiled over at Flynn. It was cold. He knew it. He didn’t care.
“I, I don’t think—” the mouse started.
“You’re right. You don’t think.” He spun towards her, deliberately crowding her space. “I want you to make sure the unedited footage of Abby’s meltdown gets to the family. I want this to happen anonymously. And I want you to include a note saying you’re worried about the child growing up around all this debauchery. You can hint about Abby’s parenting skills being substandard. Let’s see what the Montgomery-Clarks do with that.”
The mouse paled. Her pasty skin turned ashen. “I can’t. You can’t—”
“Get it done.” He stared at her, letting his feelings for her leach into his gaze. She was nothing. Less than nothing. He held her career in his hands. “If you can’t get it done, I can find someone who can.”
She swallowed hard. Her eyes were back on her shoes, where they belonged. “I’ll do it.” Her words were barely a whisper.
“Now, mouse, do it now.” He spun on his heels and headed for his car. This was turning out to be the best job of his career. He would make his name on this job. He’d be set for life. Fame. Fortune. It was all his for the taking—as it should be.
Watching Flynn Boyle crash and burn on national TV was just the icing on the cake.
