Read Online Friends & Rivals by Tilly Bagshawe - Free Book Online

with Kendall at one point engaging in a simulated orgy with all four of her leather-clad boys. Yes, it was cheesy, but it was also sexy as all hell. The audience lapped it up like cats in a room full of cream. Even Ivan got a hard-on watching her. When Kendall finally bounced backstage, her faced flushed with adrenaline and triumph and her hair tangled wildly down her sweat-soaked back, it was all he could do not to jump on her then and there.
    â€˜What’d you think?’ she panted, her green eyes gazing up into his, searching for approval. ‘It was good, right? They liked me?’
    â€˜They loved you,’ said Ivan truthfully. Pulling her into a bear hug, he started to laugh. ‘Poor old Adele. Talk about upstaging the star! I’ll bet her people are spitting blood right now.’
    Despite herself, Kendall grinned. ‘D’you really think so?’
    â€˜Definitely.’
    â€˜Jack would have hated all the sexual stuff,’ said Kendall. ‘But I think it worked, don’t you?’
    â€˜Everything worked,’ said Ivan. ‘And if Jack can’t see that, he’s an idiot.’
    He’s an idiot anyway, for leaving you here with me.
    Tonight confirmed what Ivan Charles already suspected. Kendall Bryce was more than just a pretty face. The girl had something very, very special. Something Ivan wanted, very, very badly.
    Boy was he looking forward to this weekend.
    â€˜I don’t understand it.’ Ned Williams ran a hand through his floppy brown hair and sighed. ‘How can she prefer that tosser to me? The new bloody Pavarotti indeed! Just because he’s fat. Badger can do a better Don Giovanni, can’t you boy?’
    The scruffy springer spaniel thumped his tail loyally on The Rookery kitchen floor.
    â€˜Armando bloody Lucci, I ask you, Cat. He’s a lard-arse, he’s boring and he’s as old as the hills.’
    â€˜He’s forty, Ned.’
    â€˜Exactly. What on earth does Diana see in him?’
    â€˜Erm, well …’ Catriona was too kind to say that perhaps Diana Grainger, Ned’s ex, saw a private jet, an exquisite palazzo in Tuscany and a Tiffany diamond the size of a cobnut on her finger. Whereas Ned’s idea of a romantic gesture was a day spent in the woods gathering
actual
cobnuts. Catriona had never much liked Diana. She was very beautiful, of course, but she’d always seemed to be on the lookout for what Jack Messenger referred to as a BBD – Bigger Better Deal. Apparently, in Armando Lucci, the biggest-selling tenor in the world, she’d found it. ‘I expect she just wasn’t ready to settle down, darling. She’s only twenty-two, after all.’
    Ned nodded glumly, helping himself to another industrial-sized slab of Catriona’s home-made fruit cake. A broken heart did not appear to have put him off his food.
    Only twenty-four himself, Ned Williams was another of Ivan’s clients, one of the few who lived locally. An immensely talented tenor, Ned was still in the early stages of a promising career. He was already well known in England as a pretender to Alfie Boe’s crown, and his debut CD had peaked at a respectable number six in the UK classical charts. But he was not yet in Armando Lucci’s league. So far his modest success had afforded him a charming but distinctly tumbledown cottage in Swinbrook, a battered old MG sports car that was older than he was, and Badger, his wildly unkempt and poorly trained springer spaniel, which accompanied him absolutely everywhere. Handsome in a dishevelled sort of way, Ned’s most striking feature was his height. At almost six foot five, he towered above other opera singers, and never seemed to quite know what to do with his ridiculously long limbs on stage – or anywhere else for that matter. Catriona adored him, but even she could have done without playing agony aunt this afternoon.
    It had been a long day. Starting at eight