The Bachelor: Racy, pacy and very funny!

‘Don’t lie to me!’ Eva screamed. ‘Just how stupid do you think I am?’

Then suddenly, and without warning, she burst into explosive tears.

‘Oh gosh. Oh, no, please don’t. This is my fault. I didn’t know you were coming back today.’

‘Evidently!’

‘No! No, no, no. Look, Henry really isn’t here. He’s at a meeting. In Birmingham. Mrs French has gone with him.’

Eva looked confused. ‘Mary? How do you know Mary?’

‘She let me in, when I arrived last weekend,’ said Flora. ‘She gave me a cup of tea and I spilled it on your rug. Look, I really am the designer. And I really was measuring your bed height. For the view. There’s nothing … Henry and I … I mean I would never … I’m engaged!’ she finished desperately, waving Mason’s stunning ring in Eva’s general direction.

Eva looked from Flora’s ring to her face and back again. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands.

‘Oh God. I’m sorry. Of course you are. I’m turning into one of those women.’

‘What women?’ asked Flora.

‘Pathetic, jealous, paranoid women. Women who don’t trust their own partner.’ She looked up at Flora miserably. ‘You must think I’m such a fool.’

‘Not at all,’ said Flora truthfully. ‘It’s my fault entirely. I can only imagine what I’d do if I came back to my apartment and found a strange chick in my fiancé’s bed.’

Eva giggled. It all seemed rather ridiculous suddenly.

‘Flora, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Eva.’ They shook hands. ‘Let’s never tell Henry about this.’

‘Never!’

Flora smiled broadly. She had a funny feeling that she and Eva were going to become friends. She just wondered how someone so vulnerable and nice had ever made it to the top in the cut-throat world of modelling? Or why she would choose to throw herself away on a smug, arrogant jerk like Henry Saxton Brae.

‘We’re having a dinner party next Saturday night,’ Eva announced suddenly. ‘Just a few local friends, nothing fancy. You must come.’

‘Oh no. I mean, thank you. But I wouldn’t want to intrude,’ Flora said, remembering Henry’s graceless comment about he and Eva ‘valuing their privacy’ and Hanborough not being a commune. Clearly he wasn’t the sort of man who considered his interior designer to be a social equal. ‘Besides, I have a ton of work to do. I’m still playing catch-up on the project. You have an incredible home, and I want to do it justice.’

‘And I’m sure you will,’ Eva said kindly. ‘But you have to eat. We’ll expect you next Saturday. Eight o’clock.’

‘I still don’t understand why you had to invite her,’ Henry grumbled.

It was an hour before the party, and he was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, shaving. Stark naked after a shower, other than the white beard of shaving foam covering the lower half of his face, he looked as beautiful as ever, a Michelangelo sculpture in warm, damp flesh.

I’ll never stop wanting him, Eva thought. Never.

‘I didn’t have to invite her. I wanted to. She’s nice.’

‘She’s stroppy,’ said Henry. ‘More to the point, she’s an employee.’

Eva frowned, adjusting the straps on her pretty, vintage sundress. ‘You sound like a Victorian. She’s a designer, not the man who comes to empty the bins. And, by the way, her fiancé’s very rich. Mason Parker. I googled him. He comes from a very upper-class American family.’

‘There’s no such thing,’ Henry said dismissively. ‘Americans don’t understand about class. And who’s this other bod you’ve asked?’ he added, before Eva could object to this last remark. ‘The random dog-walker?’

‘He’s a writer. His name’s Barney, and he’s also nice.’

‘How do you know?’ Henry asked reasonably. ‘You’ve only met him once.’

‘Twice,’ Eva corrected him. ‘I ran into him again the day before yesterday. So tonight will make three times. We need to meet some new people, darling.’ Walking up behind him, she ran a hand lovingly over Henry’s bottom.

‘I don’t see why,’ said Henry, rinsing off his face. Splashing on some aftershave, he started to get dressed.

He wasn’t thrilled about spending an evening with Graydon James’s number two and some random Paddy whose only claim to fame was that he obviously fancied Eva. But the real fly in tonight’s ointment was the fact that George Savile and her deathly dull husband Robert were coming. Evidently Henry had invited them months ago, to show off Hanborough, and forgotten all about it. But after his recent relapse, the thought of having Georgina – loose-lipped and drunk – under his roof and at the same table as Eva was enough to make him want to break out in hives.

As far as Henry was concerned, this evening couldn’t end soon enough.

‘Good to see you, mate.’ Richard Smart handed Henry an embarrassingly cheap bottle of wine as he stood in front of Hanborough’s grand portcullis. ‘Shame about this place, though. Bit of a shithole, isn’t it? Did you realize that bit’s actually falling down?’

He gestured behind him to the ruined northern tower and battlements.

Henry grinned. He loved Richard. Other than gaining a few inches in height, and a seriously fun and amazing wife, Lucy, he hadn’t changed at all since Henry first met him at pre-prep school when they were both five years old. He had the same cheeky smile, the same sandy blond hair that managed to look permanently dirty and unbrushed, no matter what he did to it, the same puerile but undeniably funny sense of humour. As a country GP, with a modest inheritance from his oil-executive father, Richard was comfortably off, but he’d never come close to the sort of fame and success that Henry had enjoyed. Not that he cared. Richard Smart didn’t have an envious bone in his body. In fact it was Henry who sometimes begrudged Richard his perpetually sunny nature. As Lucy put it, ‘If Rich got any more optimistic, he’d have to be sectioned.’

‘You’re late,’ said Henry.

‘Naturally,’ said Richard. ‘That’s how you know it’s us and not aliens who’ve stolen our bodies.’

‘Archie threw up,’ Lucy added helpfully over his shoulder.

Archie was either one of their sons or one of their dogs. Henry couldn’t keep up with the Smart menagerie. Every time you turned around some new yet-to-be-domesticated creature seemed to have joined the household.

‘Well, thank God you’re here,’ said Henry. ‘It’s like the house of bloody horrors in there.’

Richard leaned forward to hug him, but Henry assumed a look of mock disgust. ‘Not you,you big pleb. No one’s pleased to see you. It’s your wife I’m interested in. You don’t think anyone would ask you to dinner if it weren’t for Lucy, do you?’

‘Probably not,’ Richard admitted, watching impassively as Henry scooped Lucy up into his arms and made a big show of kissing her while she laughingly told him to get lost. In cut-off jeans and a slightly stained Madonna T-shirt, Lucy Smart had taken the evening’s casual dress code to its limits, but she still managed to look lovely, exuding warmth and mischief like a naughty schoolgirl. With her short, tomboyish haircut and long, slightly off-kilter nose, Lucy was sexy rather than pretty. But she had the sort of confidence that made both men and women love her. Henry had also always got the impression that Lucy was seriously highly sexed, although Richard had never said so, and that was one question even Henry didn’t have the balls to ask.

Putting Lucy down, he read the label on Richard’s wine. Then he led the two of them into the castle, holding the bottle at arm’s length and dropping it into the moat with a satisfying plop on the way, without breaking stride.

‘Oi!’ complained Richard. ‘That was Tesco Finest!’

‘Exactly,’ drawled Henry. ‘I love you, Rich, but I can’t let you poison us. Not all of us anyway.’

Leading them into the kitchen – they still didn’t have a table large enough for the formal banqueting hall, and Eva preferred kitchen suppers anyway – Henry made the introductions.

‘Everyone, this is Lucy Smart and some guy she took pity on.’

Richard walked around the table, smiling and shaking hands with everyone.