PRAISE FOR JACKIE COLLINS
‘Collins is in a class of her own and beyond criticism’ Now
‘Dysfunctional relationships, feuding families and simmering vendettas, punctuated by lusty liaisons. One for fans of The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives and The O. C.’ Daily Telegraph
‘Pure joy from beginning to end’ Daily Express
‘We love you, Jackie Collins!’ Look
‘Her style is pure escapism, her heroine’s strong and ambitious and her men, well, like the book, they’ll keep you up all night!’ Company Magazine
‘A generation of women have learnt more about how to handle their men from Jackie’s books than from any kind of manual…Jackie is very much her own person: a total one off’ Daily Mail
‘Bartender, pour us a dirty martini and keep them coming. This is vintage Jackie Collins and we’ll be here ’til closin” Heat
‘Jackie is still the queen of sexy stories. Perfect’ OK!
‘Cancel all engagements, take the phone off the hook and indulge yourself’ Mirror
Also by Jackie Collins
Lovers & Players
Hollywood Divorces
Deadly Embrace
Hollywood Wives–The New Generation
Lethal Seduction
Thrill!
L.A. Connections–Power, Obsession, Murder, Revenge
Hollywood Kids
American Star
Rock Star
Hollywood Husbands
Lovers & Gamblers
Hollywood Wives
The World Is Full Of Divorced Women
The Love Killers
Sinners
The Bitch
The Stud
The World Is Full Of Married Men
THE SANTANGELO NOVELS
Drop Dead Beautiful
Dangerous Kiss
Vendetta: Lucky’s Revenge
Lady Boss
Lucky
Chances
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2008
This edition published by Pocket Books UK, 2009
An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Jackie Collins, 2008
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention
No reproduction without permission
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Pocket Books & Design is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The right of Jackie Collins to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB
www.simonsays.co.uk
Simon & Schuster Australia
Sydney
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 13: 978-1-84739-889-5
ISBN 10: 1-84739-889-8
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
For my three daughters—
Tracy, Tiffany and Rory.
My greatest achievements.
Contents
ANYA
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
ANYA
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
ANYA
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
ANYA
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
ANYA
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
ANYA
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
ANYA
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Amsterdam
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
ANYA
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
ANYA
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
ANYA
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
ANYA
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
ANYA
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
ANYA
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
ANYA
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
ANYA
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Epilogue
ANYA
Anya Anastaskia was an exquisite child. From the moment she was born in a small village outside the city of Grozny, in the Republic of Chechnya, people commented on her fair looks. Her mother–a former Russian ballerina–was not surprised, for she had fallen in love and left Moscow to spend her life with Vlad Anastaskia–a farmer–and the most handsome man she had ever laid eyes on. Anya was born on 1 August 1985, a home birth with no complications. Not only was she beautiful, she was also a sunny-dispositioned and extraordinarily sweet child. The Anastaskia family lived a peaceful life, that is until the Chechen-Russian war, which started in 1994 when Anya was just nine years old. At first it seemed as if the fierce fighting between the Chechens and the Russians would not affect the Anastaskia family. But that was not to be; Anya’s father was called to the city to fight and never returned.
Anya’s mother was heartbroken. She seemed to lose all will to live, and before the war ended in 1996 she went to sleep one night and never woke up. Anya was eleven, alone and petrified. A neighboring family took her in, but they were not kindly people and treated her harshly. It did not help that Anya’s ethereal and somewhat delicate beauty–inherited from her mother–upset Svetlana, the daughter of the family–a stocky, darkly vicious girl with a cruel tongue. Although Svetlana was only a few years older than Anya, she treated the younger girl as if she were her personal slave. Svetlana’s parents were not much better; they gave Anya all the hard jobs, such as cleaning out the pig pens, scrubbing the cold stone floors and other menial tasks. They might have taken her in, but they used her for their own purposes, and made her sleep on an old blanket in a corner of the kitchen. At night, when the lights were turned off, cockroaches and mice roamed the kitchen floor-sometimes a rat or two. Anya huddled beneath her blanket too scared to move.
Eventually the inevitable happened; the mother of the household became pregnant, and the father took the opportunity to force himself on Anya, appearing night after night with an erection, ready for her to service him any way he wanted. At first she resisted, but what was the point? She had no money, nowhere to run, this was her home n
ow, so she gritted her teeth and endured the sexual abuse. It began when she was twelve and ended two years later when the war started up again with air strikes and ground troops.
One night seven soldiers invaded the house. Seven drunk, out of control rebel soldiers with nothing but destruction on their minds. They beat up the father, raped the mother, and then set upon Anya and Svetlana. Anya was the lucky one, they merely raped her–taking their turns one by one. But with Svetlana they played vile sexual games until they finally ended up slitting the young girl’s throat. Then, laughing drunkenly, they shot the parents in the head and set the house on fire, leaving everyone for dead.
Huddled in a corner, frozen to the spot, Anya waited until she was sure the soldiers were gone, then somehow or other she willed herself to move and was able to escape the burning house.
She had no idea why she’d been spared death, but the fact that she was still alive forced her to try and forget about her ordeal and concentrate on survival. She joined a procession of Chechen refugees who were fleeing across the border to the neighboring province of Ingushetia. Befriending a young mother with three children, she tried to pretend she was part of a family again. But she knew that this wasn’t so. She was half-starving, all alone in the world, and she had no idea what would happen to her next.
Chapter One
Present day, Los Angeles
Cameron Paradise hit Bounce, the private Members Only fitness club, running–literally.
“’Morning,” she said breathlessly, waving at Lynda, the pretty Latina girl perched behind the white wicker reception desk. “Am I late? Is my eight o’clock here yet?”
“Of course he is,” Lynda said, rolling her expressive brown eyes in an exaggerated fashion. “Mister Old Fart himself is ready and waiting with the same filthy mouth as usual. Nothing changes.”
“Great,” Cameron sighed, brushing back a lock of natural blonde hair from her eyes. “Can someone please tell me why he always manages to get here early?”
“’Cause it gives him more time to sharpen his twisted old tongue,” Lynda answered knowingly. “Besides, you know he loooves you.”
“Thanks a lot,” Cameron murmured, making a face.
“That man talks nothing but sex, sex, sex,” Lynda complained. “I dunno how you take it.”
“I take it,” Cameron replied patiently, “’cause he pays over the top, and very soon I’ll have enough money stashed away to open my own place, and when I do, you’ll come work for me, and any client who talks dirty to either of us is history. How’s that?”
“You’d better make it soon, before I slap his disgusting mouth shut once an’ for all,” Lynda said, reaching for her nail file.
“Now, now,” Cameron chided. “We all know that violence is not an option.”
“Hmm…” Lynda mused, playing with one of her gold hoop earrings. “If my boyfriend, Carlos, ever heard the things that perv says to me, he’d break both his spindly little legs.”
“Tune him out, that’s what I do,” Cameron said, stretching her arms above her head.
“I try,” Lynda wailed, “but c’mon, sister, y’know it’s impossible!”
“Nothing’s impossible,” Cameron shot back, heading for the staff changing room.
“Maybe for you,” Lynda yelled after her.
Cameron was a stunningly beautiful woman in a sporty casual way. Five feet eight inches tall with a well-toned body, flawless skin, high cheekbones and dirty blonde hair worn short and spiky with long bangs that drifted sexily above her pale green eyes.
She’d worked at Bounce for almost three years, ever since fleeing Hawaii and an abusive relationship with her Australian husband, Gregg. Bounce was the perfect place for her; she paid the owner rent to use the facilities, plus a commission on each of the clients she brought in. Everything else went straight into her pocket, which meant that she could charge what she liked, and she did.
She was twenty-one when she’d first landed in L.A., and because of her exceptional looks she could’ve easily followed the actress or modeling route. But that kind of career was not for her, she was after something more substantial, so what better plan than working toward eventually opening her own fitness studio? And since everyone in L.A. seemed to be obsessed with the way they looked, it was a business she could definitely tap into. She knew plenty about health and how to be in optimum shape–at least Gregg had taught her something. And best of all she was smart enough to realize that she could achieve her goal if she worked hard and didn’t allow herself to get caught up in the whole L.A. scene of recreational drugs, too many late-night clubs and endless parties.
“Hey, beauty,” Dorian, a buff trainer with a Fabio-style mane of flaxen hair and several flamboyant tattoos, called out as she pulled on a fresh tank top. “That old dude of yours is gettin’ impatient. He’s mutterin’ obscenities under his breath.”
“Oh God!” Cameron exclaimed. “That man is such a wanker.”
“Somebody needs to put him down,” Dorian warned. “And I do not mean in a good way.”
“I’d love to,” Cameron quipped, hurrying toward the main work-out area. “Only I suspect he’d get off on it.”
“She’s so right,” Dorian agreed, tossing back his precious mane.
Her un-favorite client, Mr Lord, was indeed waiting. A bizarre figure in red and black bicycle shorts stuffed with what could only be described as a fake penis; a Rat Pack T-shirt circa tour 1965; and a crooked slime-brown toupée perched jauntily on top of his head. He was the author of crap biographies, stuffed with information gleaned from newspaper files, all out-of-date and totally inaccurate. The celebrities he’d written about regarded him as a pathetic joke who couldn’t write his way out of a corner, but he kept on trying.
He threw her a disapproving look while tapping the dial of his fake gold Rolex. “You’re late,” he grumbled. “If I wasn’t so hot t’ fuck you, I’d find myself another trainer.”
What an asshole, she thought, smiling brightly. She had a mind to dump him as a client, but right now she needed all the money she could get, so she charged him double her hourly rate, and gritted her teeth while trying not to listen to his obscene ramblings.
“My bad, Mr L.,” she said, attempting to avert her eyes from the fake bulge in his bicycle shorts. “Let’s get you started. As you’re always telling me–no time to waste, right?”
“You need a boyfriend,” Mr Lord said, leering at her breasts. “And I’m talkin’ about a man, not some boy. A real man who knows how to lick your pussy, an’ finger your—”
Cameron tuned him out as he began pontificating about the joys of oral sex–at which he was–according to him–the absolute master. The very idea of Mr Lord giving head to anyone was repugnant.
Her thoughts drifted to Gregg as they often did, and the memories that came up were still painful and difficult to think about.
She and Gregg had met in his native Australia when she was nineteen and backpacking across the country. She’d left her Chicago home at eighteen shortly after burying her mother who’d died of cancer. Her dad was long gone, and since she couldn’t stand her stepfather, she’d decided to take off. For the year before hooking up with Gregg she’d indulged her wanderlust, exploring Asia with Katie, a friend from school. They’d stayed in youth hostels and beach communes, working as part-time waitresses and babysitters, until they’d decided to be even more adventurous and head for Australia. Pooling their money, they’d purchased a couple of cheap plane tickets to Sydney, and from there they’d made their way to the Great Barrier Reef.
Within days she’d run into Gregg at a beach party. It was lust at first sight. He was six feet three, a muscled twenty-five year old, and quite a big deal in the surfer world.
She was just nineteen and surprisingly still a virgin.
Gregg went after her with a vengeance, soon dropping the several girlfriends he was seeing at the time. It wasn’t long before he’d invited her to move into his ramshackle house on the beach. She’d agree
d, providing that Katie could move in with her, and that moving in certainly didn’t mean she was going to sleep with him.
Hmm…wishful thinking. Gregg was not a man to take no for an answer.
The first time they made love was not so brilliant, she was shy and intimidated and trying too hard to please him. But the second time it was explosions all round.
After a few months Gregg received an offer of a highly paid job at one of the big luxury hotels in Maui, and since the money was too tempting to turn down they’d taken off for Hawaii, full of plans for their future. Six weeks later they were married on the beach at Sunset, and Cameron had felt truly happy for the first time in her life.
Everyone regarded them as the golden couple, both so bronzed and tall and blond and beautiful, both so crazy about each other.
For two years it was all more or less perfect, until one day–after a surfing accident which put Gregg out of commission for several months–he began to change, turning from a sunny-dispositioned champion surfer into a mean and miserable shut-in who seemed to get his kicks from barraging her with endless tirades of verbal abuse.
At first she was too shocked to do anything. But after a series of vicious screaming and yelling attacks, she’d decided to fight back.
Gregg hadn’t liked that, and soon he’d turned violent, which was enough to make her know for sure that things were veering totally out of control. Her mom had been trapped in an abusive relationship with Cameron’s stepdad, and over the years she’d watched her mom change from a vibrant outgoing woman into a cowering frightened wreck. She’d vowed she would never allow it to happen to her, so even though she still had feelings for Gregg, it was time to get out.
In her mind she’d worked out an escape plan, but before she could put it into action she discovered she was pregnant. It was a surprise, and after the initial shock she’d thought that maybe she could turn it into a blessing. Naively she’d convinced herself that having a baby would change everything, so feeling pretty sure about things she’d decided to give Gregg one more chance.