Simply Divine Read Free

Canyon that she, acutely conscious of her own rather more Cotswoldesque embonpoint, had no difficulty pinpointing the root of Champagne's attractions. 'She's famous for having huge tits,' she said finally. 'And for being fantastically posh. A lethal combination, wouldn't you say?'
    'Well, you should know,' Nick sneered. 'That's your department, all that frothy, titsy, celebrity stuff. Great campaigning journalism, I must say.'
    Jane flinched. Her career wasn't all it might be but did Nick have to be so nasty about it? Working on an upmarket glossy magazine might not be the socialist ideal but it was undoubtedly something a lot of people would kill for. The problem was, after six months at Gorgeous, Jane rather wanted to kill herself. Commissioning endless in-depth investigations into the contents of celebrity fridges and the dinner party games of the rich and famous was a soul-destroying business.
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    The sound of footsteps in the kitchen overhead derailed her train of thought. She wondered what the man upstairs was doing.
    As she had passed him in the doorway last night, her all-quivering senses had caught a whiff of his aftershave — a delicious, clean, sharp scent the other end of the smell spectrum from the aspirational, peppery Jermyn Street potions Nick seemed so fond of.
    By now, Nick had disappeared into the bedroom to get dressed. Jane could hear him rattling through the rail of expensive Egyptian cotton shirts that he had recently wheedled out of her for a birthday present, any one of which cost almost as much as her best office jacket. He emerged eventually, his bullet-hole smeared over with what looked suspiciously like her expensive new MAC spot cover.
    'Good luck with celebrity underwear drawers,' Nick sniped as she went to kiss him goodbye at the front door. 'I wouldn't ring up Champagne D'Vyne about those,' he added. 'I can't imagine she has much use for knickers. She's obviously dropping them for every chinless wonder in town.'
    Lucky old her, thought Jane as the door slammed in Nick's wake. She heard the click of his Church's shoes receding down the path as she headed towards the bathroom. Time to get ready for work. Make herself Gorgeous. There must be some hot water now.
    Jane went into the bathroom and shot out again instantly. The air was filled with an ear-splitting shriek which she realised, after a few seconds, was her own. To accompany it, a series of crashing thuds from upstairs shook the flat above. But Jane hardly noticed. The last thing to register with any of her senses was the huge
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    spider crouched in the bottom of the bath. Vast^ malevolent and murderous-looking, with terrifying markings on its back, it had evidently marched in from the garden while they were reading the papers.
    Still screaming, Jane bolted through the hall and out into the entrance passageway, leaving the door of the flat wide open. As she paused for breath, she heard it click shut behind her.
    'Need any help?'
    Head spinning with fear of the hideous beast in the tub and the dawning, dreadful awareness that she was locked out of the flat, Jane stared wildly up the stairwell to the next floor. The man from upstairs was leaning over the banister. Grinning at her. Grinning, it had to be said, more widely than the circumstances merited.
    Jane gasped as she remembered she was wearing nothing but Nick's bathrobe. As she looked down at it, lolling off her shoulders and gaping open, she realised she wasn't even really wearing that. Mortified, she clutched the edges of towelling tightly to her and felt a warm tide of embarrassed crimson flood her face. How much had those knowing racing-green eyes managed to see of her? Had he spotted her spare tyre? The way her unsupported breasts scraped the floor? He must think her a loose woman in every sense of the word. Talk about the woman who put the common in Clapham.
    'Well, aren't you going to tell me what's happened?' asked the man upstairs on the stairs, by now slowly descending the