do you want?’ She made herself sound cool, as if nothing he had to say could possibly interest her, and heard him laugh, a warm sound low in his throat. She hadn’t expected that and, just for a moment, it threw her, so when he said,
‘To know who you are, for starters. There’s much more you could supply me with, but that can wait,’ she was unguarded enough to turn again and seek his eyes, her own wide beneath the thick golden fringe.
‘You know who I am. My uncle—’ her tongue tripped over the word but she ploughed quickly on before her teeth started to chatter in her head ‘—Alex introduced us. And if you don’t mind, he’ll be waiting. I—’
‘But I do mind,’ he cut across her. ‘I didn’t swallow that old chestnut. What kind of fool do you take me for? And the thought of that delectable firm white flesh tangled up with the folds and wrinkles of an ageing pop star does not bring tears of joy to my eyes.’ The voice was infinitely sharper now, the silver eyes glinting like the edge of a bright steel blade.
‘You’re obscene!’ He made her feel literally ill. ‘Unc—Alex is in his prime! Pop star doesn’t come into it, ageing or otherwise.’
She threw her head back, the better to glare up at him along the length of her nose, unaware that the defiant gesture afforded him an unimpeded view of her long, slender throat, the tantalisingly revealed upper curves of her breasts.
‘He’s a highly talented, all-round entertainer. All he needs is a new vehicle for those talents, but you’re too blinkered to see it!’ She drew in a great, shuddering breath, almost sobbing with the hatefulness of being held so near to that vibrant body. She had never encountered a man who exuded such power. It came off him in waves, swamping her.
But she wasn’t going to drown in such a potent deluge without struggling, and she ground out between her teeth, ‘VisonWest’s not the only TV company in the land. There’s not a damn thing stopping him from moving on and up—going where he’ll be appreciated!’
‘Such loyalty. I envy the man his ability to earn it,’ he said grimly. The hand on her arm dropped away and his face was rigid, his eyes bitter as he subjected her to one lancing look before he turned on his heels and strode away.
Fenella knuckled her mouth, her eyes anguished as she watched the door back into the restaurant swing to behind him. Oh, God, she had probably killed off any faint hope Alex had had for his programme! She, with her big mouth, had finally wielded the axe that had been hovering over his head ever since Saul Ackerman’s lot had taken over the franchise!
And even an abject, squirming apology would do no good. Ackerman’s mind had already been made up. He simply hadn’t got around to burying Evening With Alex yet. All she had done was drive the final nail in the coffin with her outspoken tongue!
She didn’t know how she was going to tell Alex what she had done.
‘I’M SORRY, you probably wanted to join Ackerman’s party,’ Fenella mumbled unhappily as the taxi sped towards Hampstead. Alex hadn’t said a word since they’d left the restaurant and, in view of her rudeness in refusing to accept his boss’s invitation, was probably deeply regretting ever having let Jean talk him into this.
‘About as much as a sharp kick up the backside!’ Alex sighed gloomily, giving her hand a gently reassuring pat. ‘We were both brilliant, all evening, but I doubt if we could have actually sat down with them and socialised without giving the game away. We need a whole load more confidence for that.’
‘I expect you’re right,’ she conceded, sagging back against the upholstery and closing her eyes. But she didn’t feel any less miserable. Alex didn’t know what had been said out in the corridor and she didn’t know how she was going to tell him.
‘We achieved what we set out to do—one of the sleazier tabloids will pick up on the “scandal” and splash it all over the front page. And I’ll be famous—or rather, notorious—for all of five minutes. And Ackerman himself saw us together. So the old has-been who once pulled record-breaking female audiences with his sex-appeal will be judged to have regained some of his touch,’ he said, sounding tired and uncharacteristically cynical. ‘As they say, even bad publicity is good publicity. I thought Jean was mad when she came up with the idea but I think we were even crazier to go along with it.’
Fenella couldn’t argue with that so she said nothing. But as soon as they were back in the flat her aunt Jean had bought with a minor part of her inheritance from her father she drew the curtains in the long living-room, poured her uncle a large slug of whisky and pointed him at the telephone.
‘Phone her now; she’ll be dying to know how everything went. I’ll lay a penny to a pound she’s sitting up in Edinburgh quite convinced we didn’t have the bottle to go through with it because she wasn’t around to make sure we did.’
Easing her feet out of her ridiculous shoes, she said goodnight and left him to it, confident that a nice long natter with his wife would cheer him up. She hated to see him so depressed. She thought the world of both of them; in some ways they meant more to her than her own parents. Which was why she’d agreed to go along with the crazy scheme in the first placemuch against her better judgement.
The guest bedroom was furnished with Jean’s unmistakable stamp of elegant style and home-fromhome comfort. Six years ago, when her uncle had been signed up for the hour-long, prime-time Evening With Alex—a combination of his light-hearted interviews with celebrities from the entertainment world, plus a couple of comedy sketches and, naturally, half a dozen of his own songs performed in his own inimitable style—the couple had bought a house on the outskirts of Tavistock to be near the main studios in Plymouth.
But Alex had missed London and when Jean had received her inheritance she had immediately bought this flat, which they used when he wasn’t recording his show.
They were a devoted couple, and it showed. And that, Jean had stated, was half the problem. The viewing public saw him as a middle-aged pipe, slippers and comfortable old cardigan man, never seen anywhere without his equally middle-aged and unspectacular wife. Now, if they could see him as a bit of a dog, some lovely young thing on his arm as they emerged from some rackety night-spot or other, then people might sit up and take notice, and his female audience might again tune in to his show and realise he hadn’t lost all the sex-appeal that had drawn them in adoring droves in the first place!
And it might have worked, too, if she hadn’t wrecked everything by the way she’d reacted to Saul Ackerman, she thought wearily, padding out of the en-suite bathroom packaged in an old towelling robe as she heard a light knock on her bedroom door.
‘She’s put us to the top of the class!’ Alex was smiling now. He looked relaxed and a good ten years younger. He and Jean had never spent a night apart in the whole of the thirty years of their marriage and he was missing her.
When Jean had stated firmly that she would visit her aged mother in Edinburgh—alone—leaving the field clear for him to ‘misbehave’ at home he had almost vetoed the whole idea, she remembered, forcing herself to return his smile.
‘Good. How is her mother?’ She had only met the old lady once, years ago, and remembered her as being quite alarming, and she couldn’t have changed much because Alex pulled a face as he told her,
‘As
