‘Get out.’
Her voice rose to a pitch of hysteria.
Kayley couldn’t think of anything to do. She looked for Jason, but he didn’t seem to be anywhere nearby. Jenna’s face was rigid with fury and something a bit like fear, as if she wasn’t sure she could control what she might do.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I hope you change your mind.’
‘Out!’
Kayley wasn’t going to beg. She had her pride.
She opened the door and slammed it shut behind her, stalking with her head held high all the way to the gate, where she expected to find the usual throng of camera-wielding jackals … but where were they? Oh, right.
At the corner of the street, Deano was holding court, waving his hands, doing the charm-school body language. Well, he wouldn’t be feeling so charming once she was done with him. She was having a word with that flash git.
She put her head down and began a determined progress towards the corner.
But she hadn’t gone far when a car pulled up to the kerb beside her and the tinted window lowered.
‘Get in.’
‘What? Who are you?’
‘Do it.’
She was still frowning, bewildered at this latest development, when the back door of the car opened and an arm, heavily tattooed and even more heavily muscled, shot out and grabbed her, forcing her into the car.
‘What the fuck?’ she shouted, but the door was shut and locked and the car already in motion. As they passed the street corner, bulbs flashed and popped, but not for her.
For Deano Diamond.
Chapter Nine
‘YOU DID WHAT?’
Jason turned from his frescoes, to which he had retreated while Deano was in the house, and gave Jenna a look that combined astonishment, confusion and outrage in one wide-eyed package.
‘Well, what else could I have done? She betrayed me.’
‘Betrayed you?’ Jason put his brush in a water jar and ran paint-streaked fingers through his hair. ‘Jenna, I’m only here now because of her. Because of the brave, unselfish thing she did for us.’
His words took the hot wind out of Jenna’s sails.
How could she have forgotten that? How had her privacy and her need to avoid Deano have come before the great debt she owed Kayley?
She tried to justify herself. ‘Well, she just did what was right. She just stopped doing what was wrong. Everyone would have done the same.’
Jason shook his head.
‘They fucking wouldn’t. As far as I’m concerned, that girl is number one on my guest list for life. She deserves it.’
‘But she was … colluding … with Deano.’
‘Oh yeah? Got proof, have you?’
‘She told me she’d been on the phone to him earlier today. She invited him here! I can’t trust her.’
‘Jen, she’s allowed to take phone calls from whoever she likes. And she probably didn’t even want him to phone. He’s probably been pestering her just as badly as his PR people have been pestering yours. Did you even let her give her side of the story?’