Fire With Fire

She had chosen her interview outfit with care. It was a beautifully cut fine wool suit in a sludgy nondescript olive that was a perfect foil for her hair and skin. The jacket was tailored and workmanlike, the skirt slim with a provocative slit at the front and back, just long enough to give a glimpse of her long legs—the suit combined both provocation and discretion, and it had amused her to buy it, knowing as she did that it was a contradiction of itself. If nothing else it should keep them guessing she thought drily, trying to concentrate on everything that Robert was telling her.

When she got home that night there was a letter from Drake Harwood’s solicitors waiting for her. Mr Harwood was agreeable to seeing her, it told her. An appointment had been made on the day and at the time she had requested and that was a relief.

When she told Camilla, her sister pouted sulkily and complained that Emma was trying to make her feel guilty. ‘I’m trying to forget all about that …’ she told her, shuddering, ‘and now you’re trying to make me remember.’

‘I should have thought that was all too easy,’ Emma said drily, ‘especially when it involved a bill of several thousand pounds. Have you tried to talk to David about it.’

‘I can’t. He’d understand, but his mother wouldn’t. Do you know what she said to me today…?’

Emma closed her ears while Camilla set off on a long diatribe against David’s mother. The newly married couple were to make their home at the Manor with her. They were going to have their own wing, and Camilla was already planning how she would re-decorate and re-furnish it. If Mrs T. allowed her to have anything other than very traditional Colefax and Fowler plus assorted antiques, she would be very surprised, Emma thought, but kept her thoughts to herself. Camilla thought that by marrying David she was gaining the freedom to spend his money and buy herself all the things she had never had, but what she was really doing was entering a prison … However, it was her own choice.

She had decided to spend the night before her interview in London—that would save arriving there with her clothes all creased from the train journey. She had booked herself a room at a fairly inexpensive hotel. Her father was busy writing his sermon when she went to tell him she was going. He looked up and smiled at her. The Reverend Richard Court had a vague, appealing smile. There had been several female parishioners eager to step into her mother’s shoes, but he had managed to evade them all. Her father rather liked his bachelordom, Emma suspected. He had several friends at Oxford, dons with whom he spent long weekends re-living the days of their youth. He was also an avid reader. Outwardly gentle and mild, he possessed a core of inner steel. Emma suspected she had inherited from him. No one would ever persuade her father to do something he didn’t wish to do. In many ways he was extremely selfish, but he was so gentle and mild, that very few people realised it. He was kind though and extremely adept at distancing himself from arguments and trouble. He could always see both sides of an argument—something else she had inherited from him Emma thought.

‘I should be back tomorrow evening.’ Her interview with the TV people was in the morning and she was seeing Drake Harwood after lunch.

‘Camilla seems very anxious. I suppose it’s all this fuss over the wedding.’

‘She’ll make a lovely bride…’

‘Yes. Her one redeeming feature in Mrs T’s eyes, no doubt,’ he agreed, surprising Emma as he so often did by seeing what one had not believed that he had seen. ‘It’s lucky for her that she’s so malleable. Marriage to a man like David would never do for you Emma.’

‘No,’ she agreed with a smile, ‘I’m more likely to turn into another Mrs T.’

‘I don’t think so. No one could ever accuse you of being narrow-minded. I hope you get the job.’

Emma knew that he meant it, which was generous of him, because if she did she would have to find somewhere to live in London, and by removing herself from the vicarage she would deprive him of a housekeeper/secretary/general dogsbody. Being her father though, no doubt he would find someone else to take her place, with the minimum of fuss and inconvenience to himself.

She drove herself down to the station. It was only tiny and Joe the stationmaster promised to keep an eye on her car for her. ‘Hope you get the job,’ he told her, as he sold her her ticket. Everyone in the village probably knew why she was going to London—or at least thought they did. None of them knew of her appointment with Drake Harwood. It was ridiculous but she almost felt more apprehensive about that than she did about her interview for her new job.

The train arrived ten minutes late but was relatively empty. It took just over an hour and a half to reach London. Emma was both bored and stiff when it did. She allowed herself the extravagance of a taxi to her hotel, although she noticed that the driver looked less than impressed by its address. It seemed strange to think that if she got this job her face would be so familiar that almost everyone would recognise her. She wasn’t sure yet how she would handle that sort of exposure. She liked her privacy and working for the local station had been able to preserve it. Robert had warned her against stressing too much how she felt about that. Perhaps it was something that one just grew accustomed to.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_ac599af7-cc65-563d-b7e1-6fbd0149f59e)

CONGRATULATING herself on her good timing Emma sat down gracefully in the chair indicated by the hovering secretary. Exactly three minutes to spare before the time appointed for her interview.

Across the other side of the room she caught sight of her own reflection in a mirrored section of wall surrounding an almost tropical plant display. The cool, graceful woman staring back at her was almost a stranger. She had never quite grown accustomed to the image she had learned to project during her years in the media, Emma reflected, hiding a rueful smile. As a teenager she had been gangly and awkward, lacking Camilla’s blonde prettiness. It had been during her first job that an older colleague had suggested a grooming course at a local modelling school might be a good idea. At first she had been dismissive, but the advice had taken root and now she considered the money the course had cost her to be one of her best investments. She wasn’t pretty and never would be, but knowing that she had learned to make the best of herself gave her a calm confidence which was reflected in the way she held her body and moved. What she never saw when she looked at herself was the purity of her bone structure and the sensual lure of the contrast between the dark russet of her hair, and her pale Celtic skin.

One or two curious glances came her way from people passing through the foyer but Emma ignored them. She knew she wasn’t the only candidate for the job, but they must have decided to interview them all on separate days because she was the only person waiting.

Having been kept waiting for the obligatory ten minutes the discreet sound of a buzzer on the secretary’s desk heralded the commencement of her ordeal.

The room she was shown into was large and furnished in a modern high tech style. Three people were already in the room. All of them men. Robert had warned her against adopting a sexual approach to the interview. ‘I know you won’t anyway,’ he had added, ‘but just remember it’s brains they’re looking for as well as looks.’

Emma hadn’t needed the warning. She had scorned using her sex to get her own way all her life. In fact her father had once commented that she was almost too direct. ‘Men, on the whole, enjoy having their egos massaged, my dear,’ had been his mild comment, one afternoon when she had delivered a blisteringly disdainful look in the direction of one of his parishioners. She had tried to explain that she hadn’t liked the way the man had looked at her, or appreciated his heavy-handed compliments, but her father had simply shaken his head. ‘Emma I suspect you’re always going to take the hard route through life. Something in you demands that you meet situations head on. Try to learn that sometimes it’s useful to have the ability to side-step them.’ She had now mastered the art, but it had been a hard-won mastery, and she often had to bite her tongue to stop herself from saying what she thought. ‘Too direct’ other people had called her, while Camilla made no bones of her verdict. ‘You’re always so aggressive Emma,’ she had told her once, ‘and men don’t like it.’

The interview progressed smoothly; she was able to answer all the questions put to her and she was also given the chance to air some of her own views, which she did cautiously. It was difficult to appear natural, when she knew that every movement, every inflection of her voice and manner was being studied to assess how appealing or otherwise it would appear to a viewer. Because that was what it all came down to—viewers, audience ratings … popularity.

She had promised herself before she left that she would be herself and that was what she tried to do. She was rewarded when her three interviewers stood up, signalling the end of her ordeal, and the most senior of them smiled broadly at her.

‘I think you’ll do us very nicely Emma,’ he told her. ‘I take it there won’t be any problems with contracts or commitments to your present post?’

Her eyes widened fractionally. Was he offering her the job? What about the other applicants?

‘None at all,’ she managed to assure him crisply, ‘but surely you’ll want to …’

‘You were our final interviewee, Emma,’ another member of the trio interrupted. ‘John here always believes in saving the best for last. In this case, I think he was right. If you have the time I’d like to take you down to our legal department so that we can run through a contract with you. There’ll be a brief training period before you actually go on camera; we already know that you come across well. We’ll have to take some publicity shots of you. There’ll be a good deal of media interest of course. And a final word of warning … unfair though this sounds, the public expect our women newsreaders to be, for the lack of a better description, morally sound, I think you know what I mean?’

Emma did. As Robert had told her she had nothing to fear on that score. ‘You’re not involved with a married man and you don’t have any dubious lovers lurking in your past, so you should be okay there.’

She had remarked at the time on the unfairness of the double standard, but Robert had merely shaken his head and told her that that was the way things were.

‘You’ll come under a lot of pressure from the media, but anything you’re dubious about, refer to us.’

She spent a further hour going over her contract; the salary she was being offered was reasonable rather than generous, but it should be enough to enable her to live in London, and there was a good wardrobe allowance.

‘Initially at least, we’d like you to consult our wardrobe department about what you wear on screen.’

Nodding her head, Emma reflected wryly that even her taste had to be checked; nothing was going to be left to chance, but then the slot she was going to occupy on the new early evening programme was an important one, and it would be fighting for viewers against a long-established and very popular show on another channel.

‘Now we’ll leave you in peace,’ she was told when they left the legal office. ‘You’ll need time to mull over everything that’s happened. We won’t need you here for another fortnight. Can you be ready to start then?’

They were in a corridor now and Emma automatically stepped to one side as a door opened and a man stepped through it. Tall and broad, he exuded an air of power and vitality. He nodded to the man accompanying Emma and then switched his attention to her, studying her with almost brutally open sexual appreciation. Strong though her control was, it wasn’t strong enough to prevent the seep of angry colour into her skin. Her eyes fiercely grey in the frame of her face glared her resentment at him. The amused smile curling his mouth softened his features momentarily before his glance dropped to her breasts and lingered there quite blatantly.

Emma couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so angry. She could feel the tension of it curling her fingers into talons, her tension increasing as she was forced to swallow her resentment down and force a coolly indifferent expression into her eyes as they met the knowing mockery in his. She had never seen anyone with such darkly green eyes before, she thought, hypnotised by them. Weren’t green eyes a sign of a changeable, untrustworthy personality? The thought brought her a brief measure of satisfaction, quickly banished in the rage that almost choked her as he moved down the corridor and past her, deliberately allowing his body to brush against hers. There had been room for him to squeeze past without touching her, but he had not done so.

‘I’m sorry we can’t offer you lunch,’ her companion was saying, ‘but we have a busy schedule this afternoon discussing a new series we’re thinking of buying.’

‘That’s all right,’ Emma smiled automatically. ‘I have another appointment anyway.’

Outside the television building she debated whether or not to go and ring Robert, and then glancing at her watch decided not to. He would be involved in preparations for the evening news programme now, and besides her news would wait until she got home. She wanted to savour it, to relish the knowledge that she had succeeded, but for some reason she could not.

It must be because she was so tensed up about her interview with Drake Harwood, she decided, looking round for a taxi. Once that was behind her then she could relax and congratulate herself. As she found one and waited for it to stop she recalled the man in the corridor and her mouth compressed.

Who on earth was he? Someone quite important. She hadn’t missed the vaguely subservient response of her companion to his greeting. She frowned as she stepped into her taxi. Why waste time thinking about a man she was hardly likely to see again; he wasn’t the first man who had irritated her with his attitude to her sex and he wouldn’t be the last.

Not the first, but certainly the most blatant. Her skin tingled with renewed impotent rage as she recalled the mockery in his jade eyes. He had known exactly how furious she was and he had enjoyed her fury. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen such an aggressively sexual male. Not her type at all, she thought disdainfully, giving the driver the address of the modest restaurant where she had decided to have lunch.

She was quite content to lunch alone. She had a lot to think about and a lot to plan. She would have to find somewhere to live; sharing at first perhaps, and then later, she could find her own place. She did some quick sums on the back of an old envelope. She would need new clothes, but hopefully not too many. She had quite a good wardrobe, preferring to buy classic rather than fashion clothes and suspected that these would be in keeping with the image she would be expected to project. Her full mouth compressed slightly as she remembered what she had been told. Why was it perfectly acceptable for a man to possess a murky past but not for a woman? Luckily there was nothing at all in her past or present that could be used by the press. Her thoughts flashed to the man in the corridor. Undoubtedly the same could not be said for him. Her mouth curved in a cynical smile. Stop thinking about him, she chided herself eating the seafood salad she had ordered.

She took her time over her lunch, forcing down the jittery nerves clamouring in her stomach. She was more tense over this coming interview than she had been over this morning’s. Damn Camilla, she thought exasperatedly, not for the first time. What on earth had possessed her to take the man’s car in the first place, never mind crashing it?

She grimaced faintly to herself. She could just imagine her younger sister’s reaction on wakening to find herself in a strange bed. Mrs T. held very strong views on what she considered to be the lack of morals among the younger generation. In time David would be very like his mother; humourless and rigorously strait-laced. Cynically she wondered if Camilla was telling her the entire truth. Her sister had had a positive phalanx of boyfriends before she became engaged to David. She enjoyed flirting with and teasing the male sex and was nowhere near as innocent as her blonde delicacy implied. She had admitted that Drake Harwood had shown an interest in her. On the other hand it could be perfectly feasible that she had simply had too much to drink and that he had dumped her in a spare bedroom to sleep it off. It all depended. Whatever the case he certainly didn’t appear to be inclined to treat Camilla with indulgence now. His solicitor’s letter had been starkly uncompromising. Finishing her coffee and settling her bill Emma stood up, and glanced at her watch. She had half an hour before her appointment with him … it was time to go.

The block of offices her taxi driver took her to was everything one would expect for a going-places entrepreneur. Brashly new, the impressive foyer was designed to intimidate and impress. The receptionist looked as though she had just stepped out of Vogue, and eyed Emma unresponsively as she walked towards her.

At the sound of Drake Harwood’s name she perked up a little. No doubt she was a far cry from the women normally asking to see him Emma reflected dourly. He had been mentioned in the gossip columns quite a lot recently, and she had read that he was currently escorting one of the ‘models’ featured in his newly acquired magazine. Although she had no deep-rooted objection to members of her sex making a living from capitalising on whatever they considered their most saleable assets to be, she viewed the men who made their living selling the female form both in the flesh and on celluloid with considerable distaste. It was true that Drake Harwood had merely gained control of his girlie magazine as part of a larger package, but he had been quick to accept the challenge thrown down by the rival magazine and to boast that he would soon boost its ailing circulation.

Emma didn’t doubt that most of the women who posed for such magazines did so with their eyes open—witness Fiona’s determined attempts to catch Drake Harwood’s attention—but for herself … Only last summer Camilla had commented on what she called her ‘prudishness’ when she had refused to go topless during their holiday in France. ‘Everyone does …’ had been her younger sister’s critical comment. Maybe, but Emma had never been one to follow the general herd. Her own body was something she rarely thought about. Camilla had laughed when she insisted on wearing a swimsuit, but her skin was fair and burned easily.