Paradise
ruined by them taking about the marriage question again so she silenced any further questions by kissing him.
    ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mr Turner, but there seems to be a problem with your card,’ the saleswoman said discreetly. ‘D’you perhaps have another one?’
    ‘What do you mean, a problem?’ Ethan asked. ‘I don’t think I’m anywhere up to my limit. There must be some mistake.’ He seemed agitated and fumbled in his wallet, pulling out another card, ‘Try this one.’
    But that too was declined. ‘Let’s just leave it,’ Angel suggested. ‘Or, if you want, I can put it on my card.’ Oops, that had not been the right thing to say at all. Ethan’s male pride was not going to stand for that.
    He clenched his jaw. ‘Of course you can’t pay for your own gift. I’ve got another card I can use.’ And he handed the saleswoman yet another credit card. Thank God this one was accepted, but the whole payment fiasco had taken some of the shine off the moment.
    Ethan, especially, seemed downbeat when they exited the store. A teenage boy approached him for an autograph and picture. Usually Ethan was only too happy to oblige, but on this occasion he moodily signed the Dodgers’ programme and couldn’t even manage a smile for the camera.
    ‘I don’t know what the fuck’s going on,’ he muttered once they had settled into the chauffeur-driven Chrysler waiting for them. ‘I’ll have to speak to Benny, get him to sort out my cards.’
    Benny Sullivan was Ethan’s PR manager and agent and handled all his press, public engagements, sports sponsorship and advertising deals. He had managed Ethan for nearly ten years. While Angel liked pretty well all of Ethan’s friends, she had loathed Benny onsight. He was one of those men with the habit of stripping women naked with his eyes. Angel couldn’t believe how blatantly he leered at her whenever they met. It was almost as if he thought it was his right to treat her like that as she was a glamour model. Worse still, it was something Ethan seemed completely oblivious to, and Angel had had to endure Benny’s roving eye on many a night out.
    She also couldn’t help thinking that Ethan relied on his manager a little too much. Why couldn’t Ethan phone the credit-card companies himself, for instance? Angel had always kept things on a strictly professional basis with her own agent and wouldn’t have dreamt of allowing her to organise things like personal finances. But Ethan liked being looked after, and didn’t like bothering with the everyday trivia. He was forever saying to Angel, ‘Why sweat the small stuff, when someone else can do it for you?’ She didn’t like to reply that maybe, if you actually did things yourself rather than delegating everything, you stayed more grounded.
    While Ethan spoke to Benny, Angel stared out of the tinted-glass window. LA certainly was Plastic Surgery Central, which made people-watching here all the more entertaining. She was transfixed by a petite blonde in a tiny turquoise sundress and matching heels, who was dressed like a twenty-something but on closer inspection was more like late-fifties, her skin stretched and Botoxed to the limit, eyes almost disappearing into the sides of her head and lips with the swollen, bloated look of way too much collagen. On what planet was that supposed to be a good look? Angel would never criticise anyone for having surgery – she couldn’t as she’d had a boob job herself when she’d started out as a glamour model – but some people really seemed to have crossed the line and lost all idea of what actually looked good.
    Angel loved it in LA but at times was desperatelyhomesick for Brighton and her family and friends there. She wondered what they were up to right now. She checked her watch, 2 p.m. LA time, 10 p.m. UK time. Everyone she knew would be winding down for the day. Jez, one of her closest friends and also her hairdresser, would probably be out on the town with his husband Rufus.

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