‘Good work,’ she said to Abby, slipping into the seat reserved for her in the front row. ‘That felt real easy. Very casual. Just what the punters like. You’re good at this, aren’t you?’
‘So are you,’ said Abby with respect.
The film star pulled a face. ‘I’ll be ragged by tonight, though. Have you looked at the programme?’
Abby was sympathetic. ‘Do you want to skip the next show?’
Diane sighed. ‘I want to skip the whole damn afternoon.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘You know, maybe that’s not such a bad idea.’
But Abby was distracted. She had just caught sight of the last person she wanted to see.
It was a horrible shock. She could not believe it. What on earth was Justine doing here? She was supposed to be in Yorkshire, waiting for her husband to come home from his travels.
Abby bit her lip. What on earth was she going to do? Every instinct urged her to look hard in the opposite direction and pray that Justine didn’t see her. It was cowardly, she knew. But she had no idea what to say to a stepmother who openly disliked her.
She was still frowning over the problem when the music throbbed into life. The lights swung into action and the first models sashayed down the catwalk. Abby sank back and tried to concentrate on the clothes.
Afterwards, Diane wanted to place an order. Abby waited for her, not looking at the third row where her stepmother had been sitting. The room emptied fast as people stampeded for the next prestige show.
Justine would have gone with them, Abby assured herself. She would not be late for a high fashion event. Especially not just to exchange words with her unwanted stepdaughter.
But Abby was wrong.
‘There you are,’ Justine said behind her. It was the tone she dreaded. Sharp and cold and critical, even when there was nothing to criticise. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here. Does that job of yours give you time off to go to fashion shows?’
Abby felt herself freeze at the naked dislike. It was a sensation she had never felt until six months ago. Now she was all too familiar with it.
She turned slowly, taking deep careful breaths. ‘Hello, Justine,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m here for my job.’
‘Oh.’ Justine’s purple-painted mouth thinned with discontent. ‘Doing what?’
‘With a client,’ said Abby uninformatively.
It was her job to protect Diane from unwanted contact with fans, as much as it was to make sure the star got maximum media exposure. Justine, as Abby had found out painfully, was avid to meet celebrities. The problem was, she could not be relied on to be civilised when she did.
‘Which client?’
But Diane answered that herself, emerging from the curtained changing area with the beaming designer. Justine’s eyes popped at the Hollywood star. With the premiere of her new film set for tonight, Diane’s postered image was on every hoarding in London.
Justine took a step forward.
Mindful of her duty and Diane’s punishing schedule, Abby interposed her shoulder before Justine could advance.
‘Sorry, no time.’
Justine glared at her. Except when Abby’s father was there, Justine did not bother to disguise her hostility.
‘You think you’re so clever, don’t you?’
‘No,’ said Abby. She could not say anything else. She had no time and anyway the pit of her stomach was making threatening noises. She was beginning to feel sick, as she always did after a few minutes of Justine’s company.
‘Everyone thinks butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.’ Spite made Justine’s eyes gleam. ‘But I know better. You just battened off your poor father until I put a stop to it.’
This was so far from the truth that Abby was not even hurt. Even nauseous as she was, she laughed in Justine’s face. And forgot that she had promised herself not to answer Justine back.
‘I was the best unpaid secretary Dad ever had.’
‘Unpaid!’ Justine’s voice rose to a screech.
Across the room even the designer, absorbed in her starry client, looked up, startled.
Justine took a step forward and stuck her face up towards Abby. Her head jerked backwards and forwards like an angry goose pecking at an intruder. It was somehow both ridiculous and frightening, thought Abby, recoiling.
‘You’re a parasite. Your father has never stopped paying you off. Even now,’ Justine hissed.
‘Now?’ Abby was blank.
‘Any normal girl would have found herself some friends to share a flat with. A man of her own. But not you. You’re going to cling on under his roof until someone kicks you out, aren’t you?’
Abby sighed. ‘If this is about the garden flat…’
When his children were still at school, Lord Nunnington bought a family home in a garden square just south of the river. As they left university and moved through various careers and relationships, all the boys had made their home there at some time or another. Lord Nunnington, who hated London, spent as little time there as possible, preferring to head straight for his Yorkshire home when he returned from his international trips.
So when Abby came to London, he had said, ‘Better take over the garden flat.’ And she had.
Justine had made it clear from the start that she resented it. Now she said cruelly, ‘Any normal girl would want her independence.’
‘I am independent…’
‘And privacy.’
‘I have my own front door. My own living quarters, my own kitchen. That is privacy.’
Justine ignored that. ‘When I was your age, I couldn’t have borne to live under my father’s nose. Girls ought to have somewhere to take their friends back without their parents knowing every move.’
Abby set her teeth. Justine had needled her on this subject before.
‘If by friends you mean boyfriends, why don’t you say so?’ Abby said crisply
Justine gave her a pitying smile. It did not reach her eyes.
‘All right. If you don’t mind, why should I?’ She sighed elaborately. ‘That’s why I thought it would be so good for you to come to London.’
Abby was politely incredulous.
Justine’s smile slipped. ‘Well, you’ll never get a boyfriend if you carry on like you did in Yorkshire. You dress like your grandmother. You even behave as if you’re ninety.’
Abby stared. She felt more and more sick. This was ridiculous, she thought. But ridiculous or not, it was frighteningly nasty.
Justine could have read her mind. Quite suddenly, she lost all vestige of control. Abby had seen it before and flinched. That seemed to infuriate Justine even more.
‘Don’t think you can look down on me, you lumbering lamppost,’ she spat. ‘If no one else will give you your marching orders, I will.’
The malice was naked. Abby stood her ground but only just.
‘Oh, please,’ she said in distaste.
She turned away.
‘Don’t turn your back on me,’ screeched Justine.
She was now thoroughly enraged. There were two little red spots on her cheekbones. They did not coincide with her careful blusher. It made her look like a witch.
But she did not seem to care or even to know. They were attracting an interested audience of the designer, her assistants and Diane Ladrot. But Justine did not seem to notice them, either. She hauled Abby back round to face her with a scarlet-painted claw. The Nunnington diamond and several ornate rings weighed it down.
In a last desperate attempt to avert the unforgivable, Abby said brusquely, ‘I haven’t got time for this. I’ve got a job to do.’
‘Job! Huh!’
‘It’s how I earn my living.’
‘Earn! You don’t earn one damn thing and never have. You wouldn’t even have a job if your father hadn’t pulled strings.’
Abby whitened.
Justine saw she had struck home at last.
‘If you had any pride, you’d get out of our house and stand on your own two feet.’
I
t was then that Abby lashed back at last. Fatally.
‘You mean like you do?’ she suggested with poisonous sweetness.
Their eyes locked.
Plenty of people had speculated on Lord Nunnington’s hasty marriage. But no one had called Justine a gold digger to her face before. In particular his children, well brought up and very fond of him, had been meticulously polite, no matter how hard Justine pushed them. To find that Abby was not as dumbly docile as she appeared was a shock to Justine. Ugly colour rose, swamping her expensively imported make-up.
Her mouth snapped tight as a trap. ‘I want you out,’ she said between clenched teeth. ‘Today.’
She dashed off, leaving Abby more shaken than she wanted to admit.
After that Abby did not find it easy to concentrate on the job in hand. Oh, she got Diane to successive fashion shows and then back to her hotel. But she was only listening with half an ear to the star’s conversation.
Your father pulled strings…Dress like your grandmother…They echoed in her head. Behave as if you’re ninety…
But then she remembered what she had said herself. She had more or less accused Justine of marrying her father for his money. Justine was never going to forget that. Still less forgive. What was more, she was quite capable of telling Abby’s father unless Abby did what she wanted.
And back came that last, cruellest cut.
I want you out. Today.
She would have to leave the garden flat. But how could she manage it today? Justine would have to give her a few days to sort herself out. Surely she would do that, Abby told herself. Not with much conviction.
‘You’ve not heard a word, have you?’ said Diane, with more tolerance than might have been expected from a world-famous star.
Abby jumped. ‘Sorry,’ she apologised.
‘No sweat. That woman with the rings really upset you, huh?’
‘Yes,’ Abby admitted. She pulled herself together. ‘But that’s no reason for not doing my job. Let me—’
But Diane was interested. ‘What did she say?’
That I’m out on the street.
No she couldn’t say that. Abby picked one at random.
‘Dress like your grandmother?’ echoed Diane, amused. She surveyed the silky top under Abby’s trim jacket and grinned. ‘You must have had a hell of a grandmother.’
Abby smiled gratefully. ‘This is just dress up for today,’ she admitted.
‘OK. So you need a bit more permanent razzmatazz. That can be arranged.’ A naughty glint came in to Diane’s eyes. ‘In fact, that might fit in very well.’
She pushed aside her plate of salad and leaned forward confidentially.
‘Now, here’s my idea…’
CHAPTER FOUR
SO FAR Emilio was not impressed by Culp and Christopher. He did not like the expensive premises, the tortured artwork in the foyer or the clipped English voices which thought they were so superior. Above all, he hated the titles on the staff. He knew all about that sort of snobbery and it infuriated him. Did they think he was going to pay them good money for shoddy work, just so that he could say Lady Abigail Wotsit was working for him?
No one would have known from his contained demeanour that he was furious though. He sat down, read his presentation folder and took notes just as if he was really considering renewing the agency’s contract. It was a sham.
There was no way this bunch of incompetents was going to get a new contract out of Traynor, Emilio promised himself. The agenda they had set out for the meeting was way off the point. The chief account officer, fair-haired Englishman wearing a purple silk shirt and too much cologne, waffled for forty minutes without saying anything. And half the Culp and Christopher agency’s account team had not even bothered to turn up.
Emilio turned his folder round for one last glance at the papers they had prepared. Then he took charge.
‘I think,’ he said crisply, ‘that I have heard enough.’
It took the purple silk shirt some time to wind down. Emilio did not even pretend to listen. He was reviewing the notes he had made during the first forty minutes of the meeting. There were not enough of them. Proof, if he needed it, of the high waffle to substance content.
‘We are here to establish only two things,’ he said now. ‘Where Traynor’s negative publicity came from. And how we turn it around.’
The purple silk shirt, who had been listing the press releases he had issued and the media attention he had attracted, started again.
Emilio shut him up him with a look. ‘I’m not querying the work you’ve done. I’m asking why it has had zero effect.’
There was a nasty little silence.
At this unpropitious moment Abby opened the door. Every single eye turned. So when she tried to slide into the room unnoticed, it was hopeless. She might as well have brought her own spotlight.
Not, thought Sam Smith, shaken, that she would have stayed unnoticed for long anyway. For since her departure this morning Abby had undergone a transformation. Oh, she was still wearing her stylish black trousers and jacket. She probably still had the shoelace-backed top on underneath but fortunately it did not show under the conservative jacket. It was not her tanned back that set jaws dropping It was her hair!
The hair was Diane’s brilliant idea. ‘I need a rest,’ she had told the celebrity hair dresser when he came to her suite. ‘I’ll wear the stylist’s dress but I don’t want my hair changed. Just give me a wash and blow dry later. But as you’re here, will you please help my assistant,’ waving a hand at Abby. ‘She wants,’ she added naughtily, ‘some permanent razzmatazz to liven up her boring life.’
So Abby returned to Culp and Christopher with her soft dark hair transformed into haystack spikes of turquoise, streaked with rich plum.
Emilio looked at her and his eyes widened. Just for a moment and totally out of character, he forgot what he was saying. He stared. So did everyone else; but he did not notice that.
The girl looked as if she was going to a party. No, it was worse than that. She looked as if she had just got in from a party. A wild party. He had been to parties like that himself when he was on the tennis circuit.
Emilio frowned. There had been a time, before he set up his business, when he had partied as hard as any of them. It was not a memory he wanted to recall in the middle of a business meeting.
Well, that settled it! The moment he walked in he knew this damned firm was pretentious. The meeting had demonstrated that it was incompetent. Now a member of their staff wandered into the meeting late, looking as if she would be happier in a nightclub. Incompetent, pretentious and covering it up with phoney glamour. How on earth could Traynor ever have thought they would get a serious job out of Culp and Christopher?
He closed his briefing folder decisively.
The purple silk shirt came out of his trance with a jump.
‘Oh Lady Abigail. You’re back.’
Lady Abigail! It was the last straw.
Emilio’s eyes glittered dangerously. He stood up. The others followed suit.
‘Let me introduce the newest member of our team,’ said the account office quickly before Emilio could march out of the door. ‘Lady Abigail Templeton Burke.’
There was a dangerous moment when Emilio did absolutely nothing at all. His eyes narrowed to slits. Everyone held their breath.
Then he gave a short nod.
‘Lady Abigail,’ he said curtly.
Abby was unnerved to find everyone looking at her. It distracted her briefly from her own problems.
‘Er—sorry I’m late.’
It did not occur to Emilio that her clipped voice was the result of nerves. Still less did he detect shyness. To him it sounded like the last word in upper-class indifference. For once, his face was not expressionless.
Abby felt that familiar lurch of the stomach. Oh, no, not twice in one day, she thought. That was just not fair. Justine had been bad enough, but this dark man glaring at her for no reason at all was more than she
would put up with. Unconsciously, her chin tilted.
He looked absolutely thunderous, thought Sam Smith, alarmed. Fighting mad and dangerous with it. She began to realise why the Traynor’s team were looking shell-shocked. And Abby was eyeballing the man as if she was about to go twenty rounds with him!
Hurriedly Sam pulled out the seat next to her and hauled Abby into it. She slid a briefing folder in front of her and hissed, ‘Read! This is sticky!’
Abby bent her head obediently over several pages of Day-Glo slogans. She hardly saw them. That momentary locking of glances had shaken her. Though she would never have admitted it for a second, she was still vibrating.
Emilio smouldered. Women did not defy him and then ignore him! Never had done. Certainly didn’t these days; not now that his wealth could move mountains. But the tall girl with the turquoise hair was doing just that. She even shuffled the briefing sheets as if she had just dismissed him from her mind. Slowly he sank back into his seat.
The Traynor’s team watched him nearly as anxiously as Culp and Christopher. He was oblivious. He did not take his eyes off Abby.
‘Have we interrupted your day, Lady Abigail?’
Hitherto, his English had been perfect Mid-Atlantic in phrase and tone. Now suddenly the husky voice was heavy with Spanish consonants. Why did a Latin accent always sound so threatening? thought Sam.
Abby raised her head as if she had been shot.
Sam could see that the girl was struggling not to quail. That was when she realised that Abby, exceptionally, was wearing quite heavy make-up. And under it she was pale. She wished suddenly that she had not asked Abby to join the meeting.
Abby was fighting back though. She pulled herself together and gave him one of her pleasant smiles. ‘No.’
‘You’re sure?’
Abby felt as if she was on one of those moving floors at funfairs. You thought you’d got yourself standing upright and the damned thing slipped sideways again. This was actually much nastier than Justine. This man, whoever he was, had no right to harangue her like a machine gun. For some reason, he set all her nerves jangling as if she already knew him. And had reason to fear him.
More Than A Millionaire (Contemporary Romance) Page 5