The Bedroom Incident

Freddie’s enthusiasm meant she had barely managed to exchange two words with Matthew Lingard, who was seated on her left, let alone attempt to charm him. Though as soon as they had taken their places a matronly brunette who was on his other side had claimed his attention and she had been talking to him—at him—ever since.

Kristin ran her fingers pensively up and down the stem of her glass. The vibrations which came from Matthew were not so good. He had plainly been shocked to discover she was in line for a job on the newspaper—and his anger was thinly veiled. But it was not her fault if Sir George had kept quiet about her interview, she thought rebelliously. Her brow crimped. Though it could be her problem.

‘How long have you known Emily?’ a low male voice asked, and she turned to find that the subject of her thoughts had been released from his verbal barracking, too.

She smiled. ‘Since Wednesday.’

‘Wednesday?’ Matthew repeated, and frowned. He had decided to do some probing to discover how serious the proprietor’s promotion of Kristin Blake was likely to be—which would enable him to mount an appropriate offensive. ‘But I thought you said the two of you were friends.’

Kristin looked along to the other end of the table where a dark-haired girl in a demure white broderie anglaise dress was chatting with guests. Chatting gamely, she noticed.

‘I said I was friendly with her and I am. When we met at the interview on Wednesday—’

‘Emily was there?’ he enquired, in astonishment.

‘Yes. She was eager to meet me—’

‘Hang on,’ Matthew instructed, cutting in again. ‘If you didn’t know his daughter, how come Sir George decided to interview you?’

‘Serendipity.’

‘You mean it was your lucky day at the job centre?’ he asked sardonically.

‘I mean he interviewed me because Emily reads my column, likes it and she’d suggested to him that I might be a suitable applicant for—’

‘Emily suggested you?’ he said, incredulity written all over his face.

‘Correct. And when we met at the interview we immediately hit it off,’ Kristin said, finally managing to complete at least one sentence.

‘So this is what makes you a special case,’ he muttered.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Which paper do you work for?’ he enquired, lifting up his glass.

‘I don’t work for a newspaper, I work for Trend.’

‘T-Trend?’ he spluttered. He had taken a mouthful of wine and suddenly seemed in danger of choking.

‘It’s a women’s magazine.’

Matthew swallowed. ‘I know, I’ve seen it on the newsstands. Trend?’ he repeated. ‘Sweet mercy.’

Kristin’s hackles rose. Typical male response, she thought. He was casually mocking her work—as it had been mocked by men before. She reminded herself of the hundreds of thousands of women who read and enjoyed the magazine, and tried not to care, but she did. The mockery hurt—and irritated.

Keep calm, she told herself. No matter how tempted you are to retaliate—and a high-heeled jab at his shins would be immensely satisfying—you want to charm him, so a smile has to be the wisest option.

‘Poke fun if you must,’ Kristin said, her tone light, then stopped as a young waitress appeared at her shoulder.

‘Are you taking the pudding, miss, or the cheeseboard?’ the girl enquired.

‘Pudding, please,’ she replied, and a cut-crystal dish of chocolate mousse in a coffee sauce was placed before her.

She eyed it with rueful delight, thinking of the calories it must contain and the extra miles she would need to cycle on the bike at the gym.

‘For you, sir?’

‘The cheeseboard,’ Matthew said.

‘Have you ever opened a copy of Trend?’ Kristin enquired, after he had made his selection and the waitress had moved on.

‘No.’

‘Have you ever read anything I’ve written?’

‘So far as I’m aware, I haven’t had the pleasure.’

‘Then why such knee-jerk horror?’ she asked, with a smile.

He slung her an impatient look. ‘Writing a column for a women’s weekly magazine is a little different to running the features section of a national daily newspaper. A quality daily newspaper.’

‘I do realise that.’

‘Alleluia,’ he muttered.

Her smile became forced. He did a good line in sarcasm.

‘However, I don’t just write a column,’ she went on determinedly. ‘I also—’

‘I’m in the throes of offering the job to someone else,’ Matthew declared.

He was bending the truth. He had yet to contact Angela Carr, but he would, he vowed, speak to her the minute he got back to London.

Kristin frowned. ‘Sir George told me about the first woman you’d hired pulling out, but he never said another person had been approached.’

‘Sir George didn’t know. But—’ his eyes met hers in a cool look which contained a warning ‘—I’m the one who makes the choices.’

‘Obviously,’ she murmured.

‘Excuse me,’ said a sandy-haired man who was sitting across from them, ‘but did I hear you say you work on Trend magazine?’

Kristin nodded. ‘That’s right.’

As they had taken their seats, the man had introduced himself to her as ‘getting ready to head the foreign news desk’. She had smiled, said her name, and been claimed by the garrulous Freddie again.

‘My wife reads Trend,’ he said, indicating a bespectacled woman further down the table. ‘She reckons it’s a cut above the other weeklies and there’s a column in it which always has her chuckling. It describes events in the life of the writer, a rather madcap girl.’ He grinned. ‘That wouldn’t be you?’

Kristin hesitated. Because she occasionally mentioned her family and did not wish them to be identified, she wrote under the initials KB. As far as the public at large were concerned, she was anonymous and she wanted to stay that way. She glanced at Matthew. Neither did she wish to be labelled in his mind as ‘madcap’. But her questioner was another journalist and if she worked alongside him—when she worked alongside him—concealing the truth might be tricky.