The Greek's Secret Heir

‘Seriously, Celeste. Go sit in the green room with your laptop, and work on that book of yours. Not the academic treatise on whatever it was. The fun one. The popular one.’

‘Two things I’ve never been in my life,’ Celeste joked, but even she could hear the edge to it.

‘That’s what you’re worrying about?’ Richard sighed again. He was a big guy, in his late fifties, with a bushy beard that was more salt than p

epper. When he sighed, his whole body moved, like a sad-faced dog. Even though she couldn’t see him, just imagining it made Celeste feel a little better.

‘If Tim and Fiona from the production company watch this...what if they decide I’m not enough? That I don’t have...whatever it takes to be good at this.’ That elusive X factor, she supposed.

‘Have you ever not been good at something before?’ Richard asked.

‘Not really.’ Apart from making friends and not boring people. Her best friend, Rachel, was the solitary exception to the rule. Even her brother, Damon, who she was pretty sure at least loved her, found her dull, she was sure. And her parents...well. They were pleased by her academic successes anyway. She hoped.

They certainly weren’t pleased by any of her media successes. Apparently, she was ‘dumbing down important research until all you have to say is derivative and reductive’.

‘Then have faith that you’ll be good at this, too. Theo Montgomery’s hosting, yeah? Follow his lead if you feel lost. He’s good at charming a room, whatever the papers are saying about him at the moment.’

Celeste pulled a face. She didn’t know what the papers were saying particularly, but she knew of Theo Montgomery. The sort of guy who got where he was because of his name, his face, and surface charm—but nothing underneath it. No substance.

Whereas she was nothing but substance.

Yeah, she really couldn’t see Theo Montgomery being her new role model, whatever Richard thought.

Sighing, Celeste looked down at the Christmas jumper the wardrobe department had forced her into—worlds away from her usual, safe black outfits. Maybe that was the trick—to pretend this wasn’t her here at all. She could be TV Celeste, instead of University Celeste.

Except she’d never really been very good at pretending to be something she wasn’t.

Perhaps it was time to learn. If she wanted that show...

And she did. She couldn’t explain why—especially not to her academic parents, who would be horrified she was contemplating something so...pedestrian. But she loved teaching history at the university, loved sharing her knowledge about her specialist area—women in classical literature and ancient history. And the idea of spreading that knowledge further, of getting people who might never have even thought about the subject before excited about those historical and mythical figures she loved, that excited her.

She just wasn’t sure that she was the right person to do it.

‘You’re right. I’ll go work on the book.’ Working—whether it was researching or writing or teaching—always calmed her down. She knew what she was doing there.

It was only outside that safe world where she had all the answers that she struggled.

‘Good. And, Celeste?’ Richard said. ‘Try to smile, yeah?’

Celeste scowled again, an automatic response to being asked to smile, honed after years of men telling her how much prettier she’d be if she did. And then she hung up, since her agent was clearly out of useful information.

She was just going to have to do this her own way. Starting with mentally preparing herself by focussing on something she knew she was good at. Writing her book.

And woe betide anyone who interrupted her.

* * *

Theo Montgomery was on a mission. Or a dare. A bet, perhaps. No, mission sounded better. More exciting, yes. But also more...official. As if it gave him a reason for being there, sneaking around the green room instead of hanging out in his private dressing room as he normally would for a show like this.

And there had been a lot of shows like this. Well, not exactly the same—the Christmas Cracker Cranium Quiz was definitely a one-off. But he’d presented a lot of special occasion quiz shows, or entertainment specials. Apparently his was the face the network liked to trot out for this kind of thing.

He wasn’t going to complain about that—especially right now. He knew that, after everything that had been published about him in the papers lately, he was lucky to still have the show. Even if it might be nice, every now and again, to be wanted for something other than his face, or his family name, Theo was under no illusions that the combination of both were what had got him where he was—TV darling, never short of work, or a date, or someone asking for his autograph.

Or where he’d been, before this mess of a break-up with Tania that was all anyone seemed to be talking about lately.

But overall, he had what he’d always wanted. What his family wanted for him, after a fashion. And he wasn’t so bloody ungrateful as to complain about it now. Not when he had a lot of viewers to bring back on side, too. Viewers who’d listened to Tania’s side of the story and jumped to the wrong conclusions.

The break-up had been amicable enough, Theo had thought. They hadn’t even been together all that long. But the British press had loved the whole alliterative relationship, Tania and Theo, the reality TV star and the presenter, so they’d earned a lot of column inches.