Waiting Game

‘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.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_dfbd5815-e965-5b60-b3b9-9ad22de6e1a7)

‘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 intractable as ever. She still stubbornly refuses to make her home with us and insists that “Young Elspeth” can look after her. “Young Elspeth” must be knocking eighty!’ He puffed out his cheeks in exasperation. ‘Talk about the blind leading the blind! But never mind that; Jean’s given me a whole list of things we have to do, places we have to be seen at. Shall we chew them over now, with a nice mug of drinking chocolate, or would you rather we left them to the morning?’

‘They’ll keep,’ Fenella told him with a sick smile. Before they worked out tactics for the coming two weeks she would have to confess that they would be a complete waste of time. After her outburst to Saul Ackerman earlier this evening Alex’s programme would be trashed—no matter what happened! No need to depress him tonight. Tomorrow would be soon enough.

‘We did it, sweetheart!’ Alex bounced into the kitchen, his arms full of newspapers. ‘This one’s a blinder!’ He dropped a folded tabloid on the table in front of her. ‘Any coffee left in that pot?’

‘Plenty.’ Fenella made a gulping sound in her throat. When she’d crawled out of bed half an hour ago the flat had been silent. Believing her uncle to be safely asleep, she’d sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and trying to decide exactly how she would tell him of her run-in with his boss.

It wasn’t going to be easy, especially as he was looking so pleased with himself, delighted now because the plan to kick him back into the public eye seemed to be working.

‘Well—aren’t you going to read it?’ He had pulled out a chair opposite her, cradling his coffee-cup, his eager grin and boyishly rumpled blond-streaked grey hair reminding her of how attractive to women audiences he had been in his heyday.

Feeling sick inside, she unfolded the paper and ran her fingers over the newsprint. Foreign wars, the balance of payments deficit and the latest cowardly IRA bomb attack had been relegated to a few square inches of print, the majority of the front page sporting the moment when the cameras had caught her hiding her mischievous smile in Alex’s jacket. It came over as a snuggling embrace, Alex’s arms curved protectively around her slinkily clad body and the huge caption read: “Has-Been Has-Got?”

‘Don’t look so shattered!’ Alex grinned, swinging the paper round on the table-top, and read out the article, with plenty of hysterical expression.

Alex Fairbourne, whose top-spot TV show is to be axed—or so rumour has it—pictured outside one of London’s most exclusive restaurants, finally sheds his dull-dog image. His lovely young companion coyly refused to state her name or business. Maybe his wife could throw light on the identity of the Mystery Mistress? But poor old Jean, we hear, has been conveniently banished to the wilds of Scotland. Did she go willingly, or was she pushed?

‘Grief! “Mystery Mistress”! How tacky can you get?’ Fenella giggled. ‘But Aunty’s not going to like that “poor old Jean” bit.’

‘She’s going to love it,’ Alex contradicted. ‘And since when did you ever call her Aunty?’

Since never, Fenella admitted, her face straightening out. Alex, her mother’s younger brother, and Jean had always seemed more like an older brother and sister. It had nothing to do with their ages, more to do with their boundless capacity to enjoy life. Only people as perpetually optimistic as they could have devised such a scheme when faced with the persistent rumours—plus a very definite hint from Saul Ackerman himself—that Evening With Alex was to be axed. And, what was more, put it into practice.

And now she was going to have to tell him that she, who had promised to help, had thrown a ten-ton spanner into the works!

‘We’ll put in an appearance at Tinkers tonight,’ Alex told her, pouring more coffee for them both. ‘You won’t have heard of it—how long is it since you were last in England? But it’s the night-spot of the moment,’ he burbled on jovially. ‘The newshounds are always sniffing around, waiting for something to happen. Only a couple of weeks ago there was a deplorable fracas involving a minor Royal and a lady whose credentials are far from being unimpeachable. One of the pack earned himself quite a scoop that night. Since then there’s always someone hanging around, waiting for something they can blow up into a scandal.’ He pushed his chair away from the table. ‘Now, what shall we have for breakfast?’

‘Wait; there’s something you should know,’ Fenella said heavily. She felt awful. She’d let him and Jean down. She hadn’t felt happy about the idea of putting on a deception for the sake of the more gutter-bound Press but once Jean had talked him round Alex had been just as enthusiastic as his wife, pointing out that Fen was the only answer—part of the family, utterly trustworthy and, almost as important, she looked the part.

‘Well?’ Alex prodded. ‘What should I know?’

‘I argued with Ackerman last night.’ She took the plunge, her tongue feeling like wood. ‘In the rest-room corridor, of all places. He accused me of being rude when he invited us to join his party.’ She met his eyes miserably. ‘And he was right. I was rude. Then I lost my head and accused him of being blinkered. I said there was nothing stopping you working with another company where your talents would be appreciated. I’m sorry if I’ve blown it.’ She lowered her head dejectedly. ‘He didn’t come over as the type of man who would take any kind of rudeness or criticism lying down. There’ll probably be a letter in tomorrow morning’s post telling you your contract won’t be renewed. So carrying on with this—’ she flicked the tabloid disgustedly with her fingernail ‘—would be a total waste of time and effort.’

There were two more pre-recorded shows to run before the end of the current—and rumoured final— series. He would be on tenterhooks to see if all this publicity halted the abysmally falling ratings. ‘Nothing will save the show, after what I said. A flicker of public interest because you appear to be running around with a woman young enough to be your daughter won’t alter a thing.’

She had said as much when her aunt had first enlisted her help but once Jean had persuaded Alex to take the idea on board there had been no dampening their enthusiastic optimism.

And no dampening now, either, she thought despairingly as Alex hooted, ‘Rubbish!’ and started to make the belated breakfast. All that stuff in the papers this morning had made him see himself as a celebrity again; he was, once more, the idol women had scratched each other’s eyes out to be first in the queue for his autograph, a lock of his hair, the clothes off his back!

‘Saul’s too astute a businessman to let something like an insubordinate female affect his judgement. He was probably intrigued by the way you stood up to him. He’s used to having females at his feet, not at his throat. And I’d lay odds you were the first ever to turn down an invitation from him!’

‘If you say so.’ Fenella was too dejected to argue. Alex might be her uncle but right at this moment she felt more like his grandmother. Pushing her fringe out of her eyes, she laid the table while he toasted wholemeal bread and scrambled the eggs; she took over as the phone in the living-room warbled out and was still half-heartedly stirring when he rushed back in again, rubbing his hands.

‘What did I tell you? That was Saul on the phonenot his secretary, mark you—the great man himself. I am commanded to attend the open day tomorrow in my best bib and tucker. And you, my dear Fen, are likewise commanded! “Bring your niece”, he said!’ He bounced over and ruffled her hair affectionately then snatched the pan from the burner. ‘Good God, Fen, these eggs are like case-hardened rubber!’

But even the ruination of his breakfast couldn’t wipe the beam from his face and she felt a complete spoiler as she pointed out, ‘He doesn’t believe I am your niece.’