by Penny Jordan
Fiercely she swallowed back her threatening tears and picked up the phone to ring her mother, leaving a message on the answering machine when there was no response.
Normally, she would have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to relax at one of Sally’s barbecues and would have gone early to help her friend with the preparations, but now, thanks to Kyle, even that small pleasure was denied her. There was no aspect of her life that he hadn’t somehow managed to invade, damage even, it seemed, to the extent of turning Sally, her oldest and closest friend, against her. Well, he hadn’t vanquished her yet. She had promised him war, and war was exactly what he was going to get, Star decided, gritting her teeth. Beginning with her campaign...
So Kyle thought her work was sexist, did he? Well, perhaps she could find another way of getting her point across—something he would find easier to relate to...something he would find easier to understand.
Her mind buzzing, fuelled by adrenalin and the challenge of getting the better of him, Star started to work.
Three hours later, her arm stiff from the speed with which she had been working, she finally sat back and studied what she had done, her mouth quirking in a surprisingly youthful and wicked grin.
The first drawing was very similar to the first part of the story-board she had submitted for approval—a factory setting with the workers wilting listlessly in the heat. He was followed by a second drawing showing the same workers looking refreshed and working energetically after the installation of Brad’s firm’s air-conditioning system. Both scenes were being observed by a Playboy-type model.
However, the next pair of drawings bore no resemblance to those she had submitted for the campaign and were strictly for private viewing, Star acknowledged as she surveyed them in triumph; the first of the pair featured the same Playboy-type female, partnered in bed by a man whose features were a caricature of Kyle’s—and even caricatured he managed to look unexpectedly attractive, Star noted with a frown as she wondered why her attempts to make his chin look weaker and his eyes less magnetic had not worked. He was lying on his back on the rumpled bed, his glance piously averted from his flaccid penis, whilst his partner told him happily that she knew exactly how to put things right.
The next drawing showed the pair of them in an extremely compromising position in the now deserted factory. The newly installed air-conditioning unit was blasting out cold air, but instead of smiling in triumph Kyle’s pneumatic lady-friend was eyeing his still unresponsive body dolefully, whilst underneath Star had pencilled in the caption, There are some overheated situations which even we cannot cool down.
What she had done was, Star knew, totally outrageous and would, of course, have to be destroyed. But, even so, it had been worth her aching wrist and the three hours that she had spent working on it just for the satisfaction the result had given her.
Ridiculing Kyle had helped her to get back her sense of perspective.
She still didn’t agree with his criticisms of her campaign, but at least now she felt able to reflect on them in a more detached manner, her mind already examining various ways in which she could tone down the elements of the campaign that he had objected to whilst still keeping its essence. She was still convinced that the campaign would work, that its tongue in cheek humour would appeal to potential customers.
It was gone six o’clock. She hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast and she had virtually no food in the flat either. Fortunately, the local supermarket didn’t close until eight.
An hour later, as she drove home, her shopping complete, her mood was still triumphantly buoyant. Perhaps she could attend Sally’s barbecue after all, she decided—if only to prove to Kyle that she wasn’t going to let him come between her and her friend.
She had just parked her car outside the block of flats and retrieved her shopping from the boot when she was hailed by one of her neighbours.
Amy Stevens was a widow in her early sixties, a small, vague sort of woman who always set Star’s teeth slightly on edge, although she berated herself for being so unresponsive to the other woman’s obvious attempts to be friendly, telling herself that it wasn’t Amy’s fault that she came across as being so irritatingly helpless and dependent and that she ought to be more sympathetic towards her loneliness.
‘I’ve just been talking to your new neighbour,’ she told Star now. ‘Such a charming man. So polite and well mannered. He’s an American.’
An American!
Star listened in foreboding as she looked from Amy’s face to the blank window of the second-floor flat next to her own.
‘He said he’d be staying for several months,’ Amy confided, and then added, ‘I told him how concerned I was about the fact that just about anyone can drive through the gates into our grounds and he agreed with me that we really ought to have proper security gates fitted.’
Star sighed. The installation of electronic security gates was one of Amy’s hobby-horses. Her box of groceries was beginning to make her arms ache, so she used them as an excuse to escape.
She had almost reached the top of the stairs when she heard a door opening onto the landing, followed by the sound of decisive male footsteps crossing the marble floor.
She reached the top of the steps just as he started to descend them and for once she was grateful for Amy’s need to chatter as she and Kyle came face to face.
His surprised, ‘Star, what are you doing here?’ as he automatically reached forward and took hold of her grocery box before she could protest caused her to bare her teeth.
She returned, ‘I live here, as if you didn’t know...’
‘No, actually I didn’t,’ he told her curtly, frowning. ‘If I had... Which is your flat?’ he asked her, glancing round the small hallway with its four doors.
“This one,’ Star told him grimly, indicating the door closest to his own.
She already had her key in her hand and as she stepped past him and unlocked her door she held out her arms for her groceries, but to her anger he ignored her, simply stepping past her and into her flat, announcing, ‘I’ll take these through into the kitchen for you.’
‘No, thanks...’ Star began, but he was already moving down the narrow hallway, leaving her with no option other than to follow him. She saw him pause as he passed the open door to her sitting room, openly appraising his surroundings.
Star had redecorated the whole flat the year before, choosing colours and fabrics which she felt most at home with—crisp, natural, crunchy linens, smooth, sensuous silks, clean cottons and soft wools, all in harmonising shades of cream and beige, her favourite colours.
Even Lindsay had been surprised the first time Star had allowed her to see all over the flat, marvelling slightly enviously at Star’s gift for blending colours and fabrics.
‘It’s perfect!’ she had exclaimed. ‘But it just seems so...so unlike you...’
‘What did you expect?’ Star had asked her wryly as she’d watched Lindsay smoothing down the padded toile cover on her bed. ‘A screaming mixture of clashing, angry colours?’
‘No, of course not,’ Lindsay had denied, but as her friend had studied the small pattern on the cream wallpaper that picked out the soft, muted dark red of the toile bedcover Star had seen that she was completely thrown by Star’s choice of decor and Star hadn’t felt it necessary to admit to her that her home, these colours, this soothing blend of fabrics and shades were, in fact, a reflection of that part of herself that she preferred to keep most private—that part of herself that was vulnerable and in need sometimes of the calm, soothing comfort of surroundings that provided her with the harmony and almost physical sensual comfort that she had missed as a child.
Sometimes, just to touch her fabrics, to feel their differing strengths and textures beneath her fingertips, to know that they all sprang from natural sources, was enough to soothe even her most turbulent thoughts and memories.
Normally, when she was expecting clients, she closed all the doors to her private rooms, and on their arrival ushered them str
aight into her work room, and now, as she watched Kyle studying her home, her defences immediately sprang into action so that when he turned to her and asked her quietly, ‘Did you choose all this yourself?’ she immediately lied.
‘No... I have a friend...a client who’s an interior designer. She did it.’
Why, when his immediate acceptance of her lie was exactly what she wanted, did she feel such an acute stab of unexpected chagrin at that acceptance?
‘You can give those to me now,’ she told him curtly, but she had forgotten that the door to her work room was open and that by moving she was almost deliberately inviting Kyle to look towards it and see the drawings that she had left on display.
She tried to close the door, but it was too late. He had already seen what she had done and was moving closer to inspect it more thoroughly.
Star held her breath as she watched him slowly examining all four drawings.
‘You’ve got a good eye for caricature,’ was all he said when he had finished. ‘But not, it seems, for proportion.’
Proportion?
Star frowned, not understanding until he reached out and indicated her character’s flaccid penis.
‘I’m just an average-sized guy,’ he told her lightly. ‘I take a regular size ten or eleven shoe, that’s all. I’m no superman!’
To her chagrin Star could feel herself starting to blush as she realised what he meant. If her male character was rather more than averagely well endowed, then she had not made him so on purpose, and, in fact, hadn’t been aware of it until he’d pointed it out. A Freudian slip, some might say.
‘And she certainly isn’t my type,’ he added. ‘What made you choose her?’
‘She’s the complete opposite of me,’ Star responded angrily before she could stop herself.
‘Meaning?’ he queried quietly, dangerously focusing on her, refusing to allow her to withdraw her gaze from his.
‘I know exactly why you rejected my proposals for the advertising campaign, Kyle, and it has nothing to do with them being sexist,’ Star told him angrily.
He was still watching her and for no reason she could name Star felt an odd thrill of high tension course hotly through her body.
‘You and I are never going to be able to work together,’ she cried out, frustrated by her failure to break free of his penetrating gaze. ‘Your male pride, your shallow male ego will never allow you to forget that I showed you to be sexually incompetent.’
As she hurled the insult at him Star had the same sensation in the pit of her stomach as though she had stepped into a lift which had descended too fast, the shock of hearing her own words, of knowing how uncharacteristically out of control she was getting making her feel sick and weak, appalled by what she had said and by the frightening surge of her temper.
It was so unlike her; she was normally so calm and controlled, so logical and coolly incisive in everything she said and did, despite the colour of her hair. Losing one’s temper was a sign of weakness, a sign of vulnerability, an admission of self-doubt; she knew that and yet it was too late now to step back from the precipice she herself had so dangerously created. Her pride left her with no other course than to take a deep breath and fling herself over it as she heard Kyle saying with ominous calm, ‘Is that a fact? Well, for your information—’
‘Whatever you want to say, I don’t want to hear,’ she cut him off. ‘What exactly is it you’re trying to prove, Kyle? You come over here...you move into my apartment block...you talk about me...criticise me to my friends, telling them—’
‘Oh, no, I’m not letting you get away with that one,’ Kyle interrupted her grimly. ‘For starters, I’d already agreed to help Brad out over here long before I ever knew you existed, and as for me renting an apartment... It just so happens that the one I’d originally rented fell through—the owners decided not to go abroad as they’d planned, after all—and this was the only suitable vacancy the agents had on their books. If I’d known that you lived here—’ He broke off and then told her acidly, ‘Get a life, Star. Stop using your past and your father as a stick to beat the rest of the male sex with and an excuse for your emotional immaturity.’
‘What emotional immaturity?’ Star exploded, her self-control finally giving way beneath the combined pressure of Kyle’s unexpectedly skilful attack and her own shock.
‘Do I really need to tell you? You’re the one who said that the only kind of intimacy you wanted to share with a man was a sexual one, that you were too afraid of the potential pain any kind of emotional intimacy might cause to risk—’
‘I never said that,’ Star interrupted him furiously.
‘Not in so many words,’ Kyle agreed with a shrug. ‘But it’s obvious that you are afraid—’
‘No. That isn’t true,’ Star denied vehemently, shaking her head. ‘It isn’t true. And I don’t... You can’t... I want you to leave,’ she managed to calm down enough to tell him shakily as she tried to control the way her body was starting to tremble inwardly as well as outwardly.
She started to turn her back on him, terrified of him seeing how traumatically his quietly voiced words had affected her, but before she could he reached out and took hold of her wrist, the expression in his eyes suddenly changing as his thumb registered the too fast, nervous race of her pulse.
Her strangled, ‘Let go of me,’ was ignored as he insisted,
‘Look at me, Star! Look at me!’
She wanted to refuse, but somehow she could not do so, her gaze lifting angrily and defiantly to meet his as she tensed her muscles against his mental invasion of her emotions in much the same way as a nervous young virgin might have tensed her body against a more physical intrusion.
‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ he challenged her softly. ‘You are afraid of committing yourself emotionally to a man...to a relationship...’
‘Go to hell,’ Star hurled inelegantly at him as she finally managed to pull her wrist free. ‘And get out of my flat...’
To her relief he began to walk back towards the front door, but before he got there he paused, then turned round and simply looked at her, subjecting her whole body—from the tips of her toes to the top of her head—to a slow, seeking inspection of such unexpected and open sensuality that Star actually felt herself starting to curl her toes—an instinctive feminine reaction to the effect he was having on her.
She had been appraised sexually by men before, many, many times, but she had never experienced anything like this. It was like comparing... It was like comparing sex to making love, she acknowledged unwillingly as she heard Kyle saying softly to her, ‘And for your information, Star, I didn’t walk away from you that night because I didn’t want you, but because I did. Just like I do right now. Just like I do right now... Oh, yes,’ he continued, when he heard her indrawn breath, ‘right now there is nothing...nothing that the most primitive, basic male part of me wants more than to pick you up and carry you into your bedroom and lay your beautiful, naked body beneath mine whilst I prove to you just how very, very wrong you are...’
‘Really?’ Suddenly Star was back on safer, familiar ground, her voice gaining strength and developing a cynically mocking undertone as she challenged him, ‘So what’s stopping you? Surely not the fear that you don’t compare well with my...drawing?’
Star slid him a tantalising, slant-eyed look of laughing invitation but instead of taking her up on it Kyle shook his head and told her gently, ‘No! You are...or rather your fear, your refusal to let yourself let go of the past and to stop punishing yourself for your father’s faults. You aren’t to blame because he wasn’t there for you, Star. He is, and when the day finally comes when you can accept that, when you can share real intimacy with me instead of wanting to use sex as a means of punishing me for being a man, then—’
‘Don’t hold your breath,’ Star advised him bitingly. Did he really think that she was stupid enough to believe in what he was saying?
When she could share real intimacy... Any woman who thought that s
he could do that with a man had to be a fool. It was like opening your door and inviting a thief to walk in and help himself.
As Kyle closed her front door behind him, Star’s telephone started to ring. She went to answer it, frowning as she heard her mother’s voice, her frown deepening as her mother explained that Star could not visit her over the weekend as she was going away with a ‘friend’.
Her mother’s coy use of the word made Star grimly demand to know just who her ‘friend’ was, but her mother, characteristically, refused to answer her.
Another man, Star guessed, but refrained from saying so.
Well, there was no way she was going to change her mind and go to Sally’s barbecue now, she decided when she hung up. She would just have to pretend that she was still going to her mother’s; after all, it wasn’t as though she didn’t have plenty of work to occupy her, she acknowledged as she glanced towards the drawings which had caused her such amusement and release earlier.
Now that the adrenalin buzz of excitement had drained away, leaving her feeling irritated with herself and deflated, she viewed the sketches in a different light, grimacing in distaste as she removed them and ripped them up. It had been a childish thing to do and something which she was now uncomfortably aware had, in a way, backfired on her and degraded her more than it had Kyle.
What it had also done, though, was give her several ideas on how she could subtly alter her original campaign. Quickly she retrieved her box of groceries and took them into the kitchen. Food first and then work, she promised herself.
And that was another advantage of working from home. There were no problems about working late into the night, nor did she have to get up early in the morning to get to an office. She could work all night and then drop into bed with the dawn if she wanted—and indeed had done so on occasion.
As she unpacked her groceries, she tried not to think about the fact that Kyle was now living right next door, his bedroom separated from hers by only a single internal wall.
His bedroom... Now why the hell should she be thinking about that...? Angrily she slammed the fridge door closed. There was no reason, none at all. She didn’t want him...she just wanted to prove to herself that she was right... Not that she had any doubts on that score, she assured herself hastily. Of course she didn’t. How could she have? No, of course she didn’t... It was just...