All That Glitters by Ilana Fox Read Free Book Online

wives.’
    ‘Wow,’ Ella marvelled. All thoughts of working at Cerise were forgotten. ‘That’s amazing. I thought you were going to tell me I had to do something awful.’
    ‘Would we ever ask you to do something awful?’ Danny teased. ‘The thing about this is, if you can win over the journalist and get them to write a really good profile of you, Cerise will probably want you even more. Or other magazines.’
    Ella bit her lip. ‘Really? How does that work if I’m not going to have a job?’
    ‘Aaron said that if a quality newspaper does a piece on you, that it makes you look like quality. He says all the other WAGs just want bikini shots in the Daily Mail and the Sun , so this will make you stand out. Plus, the Sunday Times has a fashion magazine or something—’
    ‘ Style ?’ interrupted Ella.
    ‘Yes, that’s the one. Well, Aaron says if Cerise isn’t interested in having you do stuff every so often, Style probably will be. So by agreeing to be in the newspaper it looks like you’re talking to lots of publications. Apparently it will make Cerise – or any other magazine – quicker to say yes every time Aaron wants you to do stuff for them.’
    Ella nodded thoughtfully. She could see how that would work.
    ‘Aaron’s PR offensive seems to be working with you, but now that he’s looking after both of us, he’s really busy. He’s thinking about taking someone on to help out. What do you think? Do you think you could be comfortable with someone else handling you, so long as Aaron oversees whoever does it?’
    ‘Of course I would,’ Ella said, and it was true. Even though Aaron was a bully, she respected him, and they both had the same goal: to make sure Danny’s career was as successful as it could be.
    ‘Great, I’ll tell Aaron you’re cool with it, and he’ll start looking for someone to hire. It will probably be a man; is that okay with you?’
    Ella leant back in her chair. ‘Sounds good to me,’ she said honestly. If she could get some work at Cerise – even if it was on Aaron’s terms and timings – she was going to be even busier, and having someone around to keep her organised and help would be brilliant.
    God, she thought. She really was lucky. Now all she had to do was win over the journalist from the paper, and take it from there.
    ‘Wow, this is some place,’ Jim remarked as he looked around the Ridings’ drawing room. The Palladian-style high ceilings showed off understated, decorative cornicing, and the room’s perfect symmetry – along with the pale colour scheme of ivory and Wedgwood blue – made it feel effortlessly chic. Oriental rugs had been laid carefully on the oak floor, and pieces by Chippendale and Hepplewhite faced the marble fireplace. It was a ridiculously formal room, and Ella felt a little uncomfortable in it.
    ‘Can I get you some tea? Some coffee?’ Ella asked the journalist nervously, as Jim pulled his MP3 recorder and a notebook from his satchel. He was a big, burly man and he looked a little out of place on the delicate wooden chair he was sitting on.
    ‘I’m fine,’ he assured Ella. He’d interviewed all sorts of people – mainly footballers, sporting heroes, or movie stars – but he’d never come across anyone like Ella Riding before. He normally got the measure of people pretty quickly, but he couldn’t quite work her out. She wasn’t the sort of WAG he usually encountered. ‘Tell me a bit about yourself, just to get you relaxed.’
    Ella bit her lip thoughtfully. Where to begin? She nervously rattled off some bullet points about her childhood (born in Essex, grew up in Hertfordshire), and then let herself trail off. Jim saw she wasn’t quite sure what to say and jumped in with a question.
    ‘Rumour has it Danny’s in line to be the new England captain next year – what’s it like being married to him right now, while he’s on the cusp of turning into a Three Lions legend?’
    Ella smiled. ‘It’s a dream come true,’ she said