Fire With Fire. Penny Jordan
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