by Penny Jordan
‘She’s a man-hater, a real ball-breaker...’
‘Oh, Chris, that’s not fair,’ Sally had reproved her husband. ‘Star had an awfully difficult childhood,’ she had told Kyle. ‘She adored her father and the way he rejected her was so cruel...
‘Well, you already know the story,’ she’d finished awkwardly as Chris had given a derisive snort.
Then Chris had demanded, ‘Can we please talk about something a little more pleasant than your socially dysfunctional friend?’ He had proceeded to tell Kyle, ‘She’s like one of those spiders—the ones that destroy their mates after they’ve been bedded by them. And they talk about men being sexually predatory...’
‘Chris, that’s not fair,’ Sally had protested defensively.
‘Oh, come on,’ Chris had retorted, then had quickly explained to Kyle Star’s complete rejection of the idea that catching Sally’s wedding bouquet could alter her decision never to marry or commit herself to a relationship.
‘It’s only because she’s so desperately afraid of being hurt again the way her father hurt her, don’t you agree?’ Sally had appealed to Kyle.
‘Yes,’ he’d confirmed. ‘You’ve only got to look at the animal world to see how often the need for self-protection leads to the masking of fear by an outward show of aggression.’
He mentally recalled that conversation now, and about the way Star had crushed the ice-cold remnant of her bitten ice cream against the obnoxious man’s shirt.
As she waited in Tim’s outer office, Star noticed that several changes had been made since she had last seen it—all of them an improvement, she noted approvingly as she observed how the pile of untidy, ancient magazines on the coffee-table had been removed and replaced by fresh, glossy ones and how, in fact, the whole waiting area had been changed around and now had far more comfortable, up-market furnishings, plus a self-service coffee and cold drinks machine and a TV screen showing a video of the American factory, including various technical specifications and details of the air conditioning units they made.
There was even, Star saw with some surprise, a display of fresh flowers, and the lighting seemed better, less harsh and yet at the same time giving more light.
Tim’s middle-aged secretary-cum-receptionist smiled as she saw Star studying her surroundings and commented, ‘Quite an improvement...’
‘Very much so,’ Star agreed, and glanced at her watch before asking, ‘Do I have time for a cup of coffee before I see Tim or...?’
‘Oh, no, it won’t be—’
The other woman broke off as the door to the inner office opened and a well-remembered American voice announced calmly, ‘Star, it’s good to see you again. Won’t you please come through...?’
Kyle! Star stood up warily.
‘My appointment was with Tim...’ she began challengingly, but Kyle was already taking hold of her arm and drawing her into the inner office, leaving her with no alternative but to go with him.
Immediately they were inside, as he turned to close the door, she shook herself free of his hold and demanded, ‘Where’s Tim?’
‘On leave,’ Kyle responded quietly.
‘On leave...?’ Star stared at him. ‘For how long?’
‘It hasn’t been decided yet. Brad felt that he would benefit from a month, possibly six weeks...’
Six weeks!
‘So who’s taking his place whilst he’s away?’ Star asked, but she suspected that she already knew the answer.
Even so, her heart plummeted as she heard Kyle say, ‘I am.’
‘But that’s not possible; you can’t be,’ she protested, an unfamiliar sensation burning her face as she realised that her own gaucherie had made her colour up betray-ingly. ‘You aren’t employed by the company,’ she amended. ‘You’re not a salesman. I was told that you were coming over here to sort out the technical side of things. If I’d known that I’d...’ She paused.
Kyle told her calmly, ‘I’m sorry if you think you’ve been misled; it certainly wasn’t intentional...’
‘But you knew before you came here that you were going to be taking over from Tim?’
‘Standing in for him, yes,’ Kyle corrected her. He paused and frowned slightly before continuing. ‘I don’t want to break any confidences but I’m sure that Tim wouldn’t mind you knowing that the reason he’s taking this period of extended leave is because he wants to update his management skills. On Brad’s recommendation he’s flying out to the US next week to take several courses at a specialised and very highly acclaimed personal development centre over there.’
‘I see. I can’t understand why Brad didn’t tell me any of this before I signed the contract.’
‘Perhaps he thought it wasn’t important,’ Kyle told her.
Behind him Star caught sight of her story-boards. Shrugging aside her anger at being caught off guard by Kyle’s unexpected disclosures, she gestured towards them and said curtly, ‘I’d better take those with me. Obviously the PR campaign will have to be put on hold now until Tim returns.’
‘Why should you think that? On the contrary,’ Kyle corrected her with maddening authority, ‘Brad is keen for it to go ahead as quickly as possible. However...’ he paused and looked from Star’s angry face to the story-boards behind him ‘...whilst I can see the direction you’re planning on taking with the campaign, I do have several problems with what you’re proposing.’
Stonily Star glared at him. She had anticipated having one or two small tussles with Tim over the campaign, primarily over the ambitiousness and cost of what she was planning rather than anything else, but she had been reasonably confident of persuading him to add the weight of his consent to what she wanted to do when she ultimately put her proposal forward to Brad.
‘If you’re worried about the cost...’ she began, but Kyle shook his head, not allowing her to continue.
‘The cost isn’t an issue at this juncture, but what does concern me is the degree of sexual stereotyping and the smutty, even pornographic slant to the ads. At home this kind of sexual innuendo, and indeed harassment, would never get past the censors and I—’
Star couldn’t believe her ears.
‘You’re crazy,’ she interrupted him angrily. ‘There is nothing smutty about my work, and as for it being pornographic ... How dare you suggest...? Might I remind you that my campaign is targeting the British market—a market which you are not, after all, familiar with? I can assure you that my campaign would have no problems with the censors here, and, as a matter of fact, a recent national campaign run on similar lines for another product has—’
‘The coffee campaign,’ Kyle interrupted her grimly. ‘Yes, I know. I may not as yet be familiar with the British market, but I have been doing my research. That campaign, so far as I have seen, did not portray seminaked male and female bodies in poses which might be considered more suitable for a crude seaside postcard.’
Star stared at him, almost too furious to be able to give vent to the angry words jamming her throat. ‘My campaign has been carefully planned and thought out and is directed at a specific target market. It’s a parody; it expresses tongue-in-cheek humour. It’s a joke...’
‘A joke? To portray a group of hard-working men stripping off to be taunted and mocked by their female colleagues? Would you think it a joke if the roles were reversed and it was a group of women removing their clothes to be leered at and catcalled by their male coworkers...?’
Star had heard enough.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ she exclaimed, darting behind him to start gathering together her story-boards, her face flushed with fury.
‘Don’t think I don’t know why you’re doing this,’ she told him cuttingly. ‘I bet you just couldn’t wait to get over here and start making things difficult for me, could you? Don’t think I don’t know that this is your way of getting back at me because your male ego couldn’t take the fact that—’
‘That what?’ Kyle challenged her, his eyes suddenly so steely and compelling that Star
found herself unable to drag her own gaze away from them. ‘That I declined to take you up on your offer of sex? Hasn’t anyone ever told you that the male animal likes to do his own hunting?’
‘You claimed that you were different from other men,’ Star reminded him, valiantly fighting back.
‘No, I didn’t say that,’ Kyle corrected her. ‘A psychiatrist would have a field day with you, you really are a textbook case. The young girl-child, abandoned and rejected by her father, who grows up to become a man-hater as a means of rejecting and separating herself from her pain. It even shows up in your work. Don’t you ever get tired of it, Star? Don’t you ever want a holiday from finding new ways to punish and ridicule the male sex?’
‘My personal feelings have nothing to do with my work,’ Star denied.
No one had ever spoken so forthrightly to her, or so brutally. So much for the chivalrous nature that Sally had insisted Kyle possessed.
‘And neither have mine,’ Kyle informed her quietly.
Their glances locked, and Star discovered to her chagrin that she was the first to look away.
For all his apparent amiability there was something as tough as hardened steel inside Kyle. Something...some belief in himself that he would not allow anyone to breach.
She wasn’t going to give up so easily, though. She was convinced that her campaign would work. The trouble with Kyle was that he didn’t understand the British psyche, the British sense of humour.
If necessary she would take her work to a higher authority, consult Brad direct... Either that or wait until Tim came back.
Drawing herself up to her full height, she glared haughtily at Kyle, burning him to cinders with the full furnace-blast of her contempt as she told him, ‘I think, in the circumstances, it would be better if I put the campaign on hold until Tim returns. I can’t—’
‘No.’
‘No...?’ Star stared at him.
‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking,’ Kyle told her. ‘You think you can wheedle your way round Tim and get him to give his agreement to your proposals, but it won’t work. Brad is anxious to get things moving as quickly as possible. He’s given me the authority to take on board any extra help I think I might need in doing that if necessary.’
Any extra help. Star gave him a suspicious, narrow-eyed look. Was he threatening to go over her head and employ someone else to run the PR campaign?
‘I have a contract,’ she reminded him, just in case he had forgotten.
‘Indeed,’ Kyle agreed blandly, ‘and I think if you read it you will discover that there are certain time clauses in it and certain contractual agreements which include the right of the company’s representatives to veto your work...
‘I do understand how you feel about my sex, Star,’ Kyle added, more gently, ‘and why you’re letting your prejudices distort reality... Have you ever thought that counselling might help you to get things more into perspective, to let go of the past and—?’
‘Go to hell,’ Star told him rudely, picking up her work, her muscles straining against its weight as she manoeuvred herself towards the door.
When she reached it she turned back and looked at Kyle, determined not to let him have the last word or to feel that he had vanquished her in any way...any way!
‘I don’t care what you say, Kyle, you are just like all the rest of your sex—quite happy to cheat and lie, to deceive and hurt people, to do anything just as long as it allows you to do what you want to do—and I’m not deceived. I know what you’re really like and I’m going to prove it to everyone else as well...’
Kyle had started to frown as he listened to her passionately angry outburst, looking not at her any longer but down at his desk. Only when she had finished did he raise his head again, his expression unreadable as he commented calmly, ‘I see. So it’s war, then, I take it...?’
‘To the death,’ Star vowed, and meant it.
CHAPTER FIVE
STAR was still fuming over Kyle’s criticism of her campaign when she arrived home, and carrying the heavy story-boards upstairs to her second-floor flat did not help to improve her temper.
The communal landing which she shared with the other residents was not really designed to accommodate a woman of five feet six and weighing just a tad over eight stone plus two unwieldy, rigid pieces of board just that bit too deep to fit comfortably under her arm and too long to fit within her arm-span, and Star cursed under her breath as she banged her elbow on the wall.
She knew, of course, that it would have made much more sense for her to carry the boards upstairs singly instead of trying to move them both together, but she was still so infuriated by what Kyle had said to her that she just wasn’t in the mood for behaving logically.
Once inside her own flat she inspected her elbow and grimaced as she realised that she had broken the skin. By tomorrow she would have a terrific bruise there—one of the penalties of her particular type of skin colouring, something else to count as a black mark against Kyle. Well, he wasn’t the final authority and she would show him that she wasn’t going to let him push her around. Quickly she looked up Brad’s number, her fingers curling impatiently around the receiver, her voice crisply firm as she asked the telephonist who answered her call for Brad.
‘I’m sorry,’ the girl apologised, ‘but I’m afraid he isn’t available.’
When Star asked when he would be available and learned that Brad had taken Claire on a honeymoon trip sailing round the Virgin Islands, she thanked the girl and replaced the receiver.
No wonder Kyle had felt so confident about rejecting her work. He must have known that she wouldn’t be able to go over his head to Brad.
She frowned as she heard her doorbell ring, and went to open the door.
Sally was standing outside and her eyebrows lifted questioningly as she asked, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’ve just been trying to ring Brad,’ Star told her. ‘But he isn’t there.’
‘No, he and Claire are spending some time sailing around the Virgin Islands,’ Sally confirmed. ‘Lucky things... What did you want him for?’ she enquired curiously, her attention distracted by the story-boards propped up against the wall. ‘Are these for the campaign?’ she asked Star interestedly. ‘May I have a look or—?’
‘Go ahead,’ Star told her curtly.
‘Mmm...very sexy,’ Sally commented after she had studied them.
‘Sexy? According to Kyle they’re sexist,’ Star told her bitterly.
‘He doesn’t like them?’ Sally asked sympathetically.
‘He doesn’t like me,’ Star corrected her grimly. ‘If I’d known that I was going to have to work so closely with him...’ She pushed her fingers into her hair angrily.
‘God, when I think how he must have been smirking to himself there in Brad’s office, knowing that he was coming over here to take over from Tim and knowing, as well, that I didn’t know. It wouldn’t have mattered what kind of campaign I’d come up with; he would have rejected it.
‘My campaign is good, Sally. I know it will work...’
‘Mmm...well, couldn’t you perhaps compromise a little... perhaps have just a little less emphasis on the...?’
She made a sketchy gesture in the direction of the story-boards, causing Star to demand suspiciously, ‘What are you trying to say—that you think he’s right...that you agree with him...?’
‘No...of course not. I was just meaning that you could perhaps meet him halfway and—’
‘Give in to him, you mean. Pander to his male ego. Let him think that he’s won. Never!’ Star told her fiercely. ‘Men are all the same,’ she proclaimed bitterly.
Sally sighed.
‘Star, isn’t it time you let go of the past?’ she suggested gently. ‘Kyle was saying only the other night that—’
‘You were talking about me to him?’ Star pounced on her words, her face suddenly flushing angrily. ‘What were you saying? What did he say?’ she demanded peremptorily.
‘No, Star, it wasn’t�
��’ Sally protested, but Star wouldn’t let her finish.
‘No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I don’t care what he thinks about me or—’
‘Look,’ Sally cut in quickly, ‘I only came round to tell you that we’re having a barbecue next weekend so that we can introduce Kyle to a few people. It will be lonely for him living over here and you remember what I was saying about trying to find someone nice for him...? Well, what about Lindsay? She’s on her own now, isn’t she? And she’d be perfect for him. She’s such a wonderful home-maker and so sweet and gentle, and now that her marriage is over—’
‘It isn’t over,’ Star snapped. ‘They’re only separated, not divorced.’
She had no idea why the thought of Lindsay as a potential partner for Kyle should make her feel so... so...so intensely antagonistic—probably because she disliked him so much herself.
‘You will be able to make it, won’t you?’ Sally was asking her. ‘I know it’s short notice but—’
‘No, I won’t,’ Star told her shortly, and refused to meet Sally’s eyes as she told her, ‘I...I’m going to see Mother. I owe her a visit and—’
‘It’s all right; I understand,’ Sally told her quietly. ‘I’d better go; I’m going to visit a friend who’s just had a baby boy. He’s so sweet and everyone who meets him just adores him...even Chris. I think he’s beginning to come round to the idea of us starting our own family...’
Star was surprised to find her eyes stinging with hot tears after Sally had said goodbye.
She knew that Sally had not believed her when she had claimed that she was going to see her mother, but it wasn’t just that. Somehow, these days, their friendship just wasn’t the same, and she knew who to blame. How dared Kyle take it upon himself to discuss her with her friends? And what exactly was it that he had said to them about her?