Man vs. Socialite. Charlotte Phillips

the rucksack. It’s just everyday hygiene stuff. Lip balm, sunblock... You should be wearing Factor twenty-five, you spend so much time outdoors, or you’ll look like a pensioner by the time you’re fifty.’ She pointed at him with the tube to press her point.

      He stared at her.

      ‘You can put it all back in your designer rucksack and hand it over to the team,’ he said. ‘You’ll get it back when you return to base. The standard-issue kit is inside the green backpack.’

      She unzipped the standard-issue backpack and peered into it.

      ‘What the hell is this?’

      He winked at her and she tried to ignore the fact that when he smiled his green eyes took on a hint of wicked melt because it made her stomach go soft. Why couldn’t he have looked like some gnarly mountain man, perhaps with a beard big enough for a rodent to live in? It would make concentration on the task at hand much easier without her stomach in knots. Then again, he surely wouldn’t be such a darling of the public if he looked like some hairy hillbilly.

      ‘Torch, water bottle, purification tablets, matches, basic food rations... This is the kit I issue to all attendees of my survival course. Since you’ve single-handedly sabotaged my very successful business, I thought we’d use this weekend to showcase it and drum up some interest for the special kids’ survival courses I’m about to launch. Essentially, you’re trying out one of my courses and you owe me. So hand over the lip balm and let’s get on with it.’

      He held her gaze with his own, and was there a hint of enjoyment in the green eyes? Was he actually getting off on this? She noticed, not without a touch of admiration, that he’d managed to get in a plug for the kids’ initiative thing that he was so hung up on. Maybe she should have smuggled along a bit of her jewellery and tried for a bit of product placement.

      He whipped the tube of lip balm out of her hand with a flourish, lobbed it into the designer handbag and threw the whole thing to the production minion.

      Then again, she’d have been hard pressed to get as much as a necklace past him.

      ‘And cut.’

      She wheeled around, so absorbed in her standoff with Jack-bloody-Trent that she’d forgotten the camera was even there. Which was probably the point.

      ‘Fantastic banter, exactly what we’re looking for. Keep that up for the next couple of days and we’ll be talking TV gold.’

      Terrific. So all she had to do to make this stupid programme a success was to spend the entire weekend at Jack Trent’s throat. Shouldn’t be too difficult since he was obviously not going to cut her an inch of slack.

      ‘Shall we?’ he said, ushering her towards the door with a flourish and a wicked grin.