“My friend is very special, Sophia, I think that you are really going to like her.” Looking up at him not quite sure what to make of what he was saying, he continued:
“Her name’s Kate; she is a real princess, just like you.”
“Wow, will she be wearing a princess dress like me?” Sophia seemed to be excited now; she had always wanted to meet a real princess.
“She hasn’t got a lovely princess dress like you but she is very, very pretty, and she is very kind. Maybe we can have a look in your bedroom and see if she can borrow something of yours to wear, I bet she will love your dress.”
Bouncing off of her daddy’s lap, Sophia ran to her bedroom as if her life depended on it, desperate to find something for her daddy’s princess friend to wear.
Smiling at her innocence, Paul couldn’t shake an anxious feeling. This was a big step. He had decided, years ago, that he would never let anyone close again, but then that was before he had met someone as special as Kate. He had never felt like this, not even about his ex, Caroline. Caroline hadn’t batted an eyelid when they had separated; she continued to go out partying and coming home at all hours of the morning. She had treated Sophia like she were a big inconvenience and it had broken Paul’s heart to see his baby left to cry in her cot, ignored by her own mother.
When he left, she had told him to take Sophia with him; she had dismissed Sophia as if she were nothing, as if Caroline had not a single maternal bone in her body. Paul had done that. He had never heard from Caroline again and knew in his heart of hearts that he never would. He had got over her, that was for sure, but it hurt that his little girl was growing up without a mummy. Since Sophia was nine months old he had brought her up, with the help of the nanny. Sophia was the love of his life; his sole reason for living. Building up a reputation and a business in the clubbing world was hardly a place for a small, beautiful baby; he had always kept them separate. He never spoke of his personal life; the less people knew about him, the less chance they would be able to hurt him. But he had fallen for Kate, and he wanted her, and he knew that it was time to let someone in. Tonight, the two most important girls in his life would meet. And he just prayed that after tonight, Kate would feel the same as he did.
53
There were moments when Tanya thought about her disloyalty to Jay, but they were so fleeting that they passed almost as quickly as they came; she certainly didn’t lose a moment’s sleep over it: far from it, as a matter of fact. Tanya had been living the high life. The life she was convinced she was born for. To some people, a quarter of a million pounds would be a lot of cash, the sort of money that would allow them to put a nice-sized down payment on a little house where they could settle down, maybe buy a flash car and new clothes, and generally be quite content with their new-found fortune. It was a decent start. But Tanya wasn’t “some people”. She wanted five-star luxuries all the way: a penthouse in London, somewhere upmarket like Mayfair, a Bentley with a personalised number plate, and designer clothes. A quarter of a mill was just a taste of what she thought she needed in order to get by. It wouldn’t last five minutes with the plans she had, she needed to use it wisely. Tanya had always believed that money came to money, and now she had a little it was her chance to get more. So she had come up with quite a plan. In order to find a nice rich man, she would have to go to where the rich men were and to appear as if she had come from money. Tanya, never short of male attention, expected to catch the attention of a rich guy looking for a woman on whom he could spend his fortune.
Tanya had checked into the Dorchester, a hotel she had always wanted to stay at, in the hub of London and she actually felt quite at home there, she drank endless amounts of champagne and indulged in treatments at their top-class spa, figuring that she wasn’t frittering away the money, it was an investment. These rich men could be quite clued up on gold-diggers, there were plenty of them about, even she knew that, and although a young girl may think she was in with a chance with a man, often they would be on to them in a heartbeat, and they would get what they want from the girl, with no real intention of losing a single penny of their cash to her.
Tanya was acting as if she was loaded; spending her money as if it were limitless. That way, when she fluttered her eyes and flashed her cleavage at some unsuspecting old bore at the bar, they might actually believe that she was interested in them and not just after their hard-earned cash; her motive would be concealed, as she so obviously had enough of her own wealth.
So far, she had gained admiring glances from most of the guys staying there, single and attached, much to her amusement. Men were so fickle, she thought. Normally she played it cool, letting men come to her; that way she wouldn’t come across as if she had initiated anything or seemed desperate. There had been a few men who had approached her, but they had turned out to be dirty old men with a wife in tow somewhere else in the hotel, trying their luck while they thought they might have a chance. One even hinted that he knew she was a call girclass="underline" top class, of course; it took a lot of effort not to get out of her chair and lump him one. She had decided to be very bold this afternoon and had taken it upon herself to send a glass of champagne over to a very good-looking guy at the other side of the terrace bar who had kept catching her eye. She figured he must be shy as every time she had caught him staring, he had looked away, so she decided to take the initiative. Waiting for a rich, eligible bachelor wasn’t working out quite the way she had anticipated and Tanya decided that she would have to do a bit of catching and reeling in herself. She could see that the guy had been very surprised by the drink and had looked uncomfortable accepting it, but Tanya was sure that she was in for a chance with him, he had been watching her from the minute she came into the bar. Raising her own glass to him and smiling, she took a long sip of her drink and enjoyed the bubbles fizzing on her tongue whilst she thought about what a catch she had stumbled upon, he was much younger and much better-looking than the old farts around here that had been on her ‘hit-list’ so far.
Interrupting her thoughts, the hotel’s duty manager approached her and asked if he could have a word with her, she felt that it was most inconvenient right at this moment in time and asked if she could pop to reception and see him a little later on, but he insisted it was urgent. Reluctantly following him to the desk, she felt like a naughty schoolgirl; picking up on the attitude of the manager, it was as if she had done something wrong. She assumed it was to do with her payment, as she had no card to put down as a deposit when she had checked in she had told them she would be settling up in cash. There must be a lack of communication or something going on as she had already paid for the room up-front for a week, just to keep them sweet, and she had only been here two days. So she couldn’t imagine why he seemed so grumpy with her.
As she reached reception she could see several of the staff looking at her as if she had two heads growing out of her neck; she was starting to get a little pissed off now.
“Do you mind telling me exactly what is going on here? I was in the middle of a drink.” She gestured to the bar.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind stepping into my office.” The manager nodded towards the door next to the main desk, and Tanya went in, eager to get whatever issue the guy wanted to discuss over and done with so she could get back to her drink and, more importantly, back to that dishy bloke.
“Miss Wright… it is Miss Wright, isn’t it?”
Tanya, sitting in the chair opposite his desk, picked up on his tone which implied that he was in fact questioning if her name was actually what she had booked herself in as and was not a friendly question that he wanted an answer to confirm.
“Look, if this is about my bill, then there’s been some sort of mistake; I paid it two days ago when I arrived; in cash; in full.” How dare he drag her in here like this and talk to her in this manner?
“Well, you see, ‘Miss Wright’, that is exactly why you are here.” He coughed and looked uncomfortable.
“Your bill so far has been paid for just the room, it does not include your spa treatments, and all the bottles of wine and champagne,” he emphasised the word ‘all’, much to her annoyance. He coughed again, and she could sense that he was having a bit of a dig at her. lt was her choice how much she bloody drank: the cheek of him.
“Your suite is three and a half thousand for the week and so far all the extras bring your entire bill to five thousand one hundred pounds,” he continued, ignoring her look of disbelief that he was speaking to her in such a way. Tapping her foot impatiently, she wanted him to stop dragging whatever he had to say out and get to the bloody point.
“Yes, and I paid the receptionist three thousand and five hundred pounds when I arrived; if I need to pay more than I will, but as I keep telling you the room is all paid for.”
“Well, you see, that’s our problem, actually; unfortunately it was Sally, our new girl, who checked you in on Monday night, and she is not really very well trained when it comes to these matters.”
“Matters? What matters do you mean exactly?” Tanya was starting to get really fed up with this guy, he was wasting her time, and his attitude towards her stank; making a note of the name on his badge, she decided to make a formal complaint. What an arrogant little prick: clearly having a little bit of power round here had gone right to his thick little head.
The phone on the manager’s desk rang and, turning his back on Tanya, he answered it and spoke in a hushed tone. How fucking rude, thought Tanya, as she heard him tell the person on the end of the phone to ‘send them in’: what the hell was going on?
“I’m afraid, Miss Wright, that the money that you paid us with is counterfeit.”
Tanya stared at him in complete disbelief; he may as well have been talking in another language, because she didn’t understand what he was talking about. Her ears had heard the words, but there was definitely some kind of a mistake going on.
“And unfortunately it was undetected by Sally when she checked you in two days ago; otherwise, we would never have let you book in. I’m sure that you can appreciate our concerns about your now unpaid bill.”
Tanya’s mouth was on the floor: she was speechless.
“And I’m afraid, Miss Wright, that it is also my duty to inform the police, not only because of the outstanding balance but because you have committed a criminal offence.”
As if on cue, there was a knock at the door and in came the young, good-looking man who Tanya had been giving the eye to at the bar for most of the afternoon. Clearly he had been interested in her for reasons other than the obvious. He was followed closely by a similarly dressed in smart dark suits, older man. Realising now that they both had that familiar cop look about them, Tanya wanted the ground to swallow her up. Feeling all her hopes crash down around her, she fought to stop herself from smashing up the fucking room in anger. Fucking Billy O’Connell, she should have known that he would never have let her walk away with all that cash; trying to gather her thoughts she went to start on a long elaborate story of how she had obviously been conned herself, maybe she could say that she had sold something and the guy who had bought it had clearly ripped her off, but she stopped as she saw the older officer placing her holdall, with all the money in, down in front of her, her room had obviously already been searched.
“Would you care to explain how you came into possession of this bag and its contents, Miss Wright?”
How the hell was she going to talk her way out of this one? A few dodgy notes were one thing, but a quarter of a million pounds in a holdall was not a very good look. She could hardly say that she had been ripped off by some bloke after she had kidnapped his sister. She hung her head in defeat.
“I want a solicitor, and in the meantime no comment.”