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‘Sally, I’m a PR consultant, not a dating agency or a marriage bureau,’ Star snapped. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said when she saw Sally biting her lip. ‘I’m just feeling a bit on edge.’
‘A bit!’ Sally exclaimed, feelingly. ‘When Claire told me that Brad was definitely going to offer you a contract I thought you’d be on top of the world. After all, you’ve talked of nothing else for weeks.’
‘I know,’ Star agreed contritely.
What Sally had said was true. When she had first discussed the possibility of organising a PR campaign with Brad and Tim in England she had told Sally that if Brad did give her a contract it would be the biggest step forward in her solo professional career that she was ever likely to take.
She had worked on big accounts before but only as part of a team, and her clients now were, in the main, small, fledgling businesses very much like her own. The mere fact that she would be working with such a male-dominated business would also add the kind of gravitas to her business portfolio that she might otherwise have spent years trying to achieve. It wasn’t just a matter of the additional income she would earn, it was the fact that doors to other business opportunities would open for her if she mounted a successful nationwide campaign for Brad’s company.
She knew that she had a strong flair for her work and that her ideas were innovative and fresh. To have Brad confirm that, not just verbally as he had done this morning but materially as well in offering her a contract, should have filled her with exultation and pride, but instead all she could think of was the fact that Kyle wasn’t going to be an unwanted memory that she could leave behind her when she flew home but a very intrusive presence in her life, and that no matter how hard she tried to ignore him...
Star started to frown. There were always two ways of looking at a problem: one was to see it as an obstacle to be overcome, something that used up valuable energy and time, the other was to look at it in a more positive light, to turn it into something that could be used to one’s own advantage.
She remembered how seethingly angry she had been at the way that Kyle had managed to turn the tables on her and how much it had galled her knowing that she would have to walk away, allowing him to cling to his false piety and morality, secretly laughing at her, but the fact that he was going to be working in Britain, even if only for a short time, meant that she would have a second chance to prove herself right, to make good her angry claim to Sally that he was not the knight in shining armour that Sally believed.
‘I’m sorry if I don’t seem very enthusiastic,’ she apologised to Sally, acknowledging that. ‘I suppose I still haven’t quite taken it all in.’
‘Well, it’s only natural that you’ll worry a little bit about it now that the initial euphoria’s worn off,’ Sally comforted her. ‘But at least you’ll have Kyle on hand to turn to... I know that Tim’s a dear but he isn’t exactly... He doesn’t...’ She paused and made a small face.
‘I doubt very much that I’ shall have much contact with Kyle,’ Star returned crisply as Sally indicated the door which led to their private dining room. ‘After all, it is Tim Burbridge who is in charge of the distribution side of things and Kyle’s role is only peripheral to my work, so I—’
‘Oh, but Tim won’t—’ Sally began, only to break off as her stepmother opened the door and exclaimed warmly,
‘Star, my dear! Come on in!’
By the time she boarded her home-bound flight Star’s mood had been mellowed by the delicious surprise lunch that Claire had given for her and the equally delicious vintage champagne she had consumed.
She settled herself in her seat and closed her eyes, opening them again when she heard an attractive male voice enquiring, ‘Er...mind if I sit here next to you?’
Thoughtfully Star subjected him to a brief inspection. He was certainly good-looking but for some reason she felt less than enthusiastic at the thought of enduring several hours of heavily seductive flirtation.
Refusing to return his smile, Star claimed untruthfully, ‘I’m sorry, that seat’s already taken by my mother.’
Whilst Star was crossing the Atlantic, Kyle was standing at the window of his office in one of the town’s most prestigious blocks, staring frowningly through it.
It would be a simple enough matter to pick up the phone and tell Brad that he had changed his mind; that he couldn’t, after all, help him and fly out to Britain; it was, after all, what all his instincts warned him to do—but he already knew that he wasn’t going to make that phone call, that he couldn’t bring himself to go back on his agreement to help Brad.
He had known, even before they had met this morning, that Star would not forgive him easily either for last night or for withholding from her the fact that he’d known that they would be working together—two strikes against him already. One more and he would be totally and completely out of the game, which, where a woman like Star was concerned, was surely his safer and saner option, he comforted himself.
So why, then, was he so reluctant to embrace it...? As reluctant, in fact, as Star assumed he had been to embrace her—assumed so erroneously, so very, very erroneously. If only she knew...
Thank the Lord she didn’t, he mused; he was going to have enough problems to contend with as it was.
CHAPTER FOUR
IN THE fortnight following her return from America Star was too busy professionally to have any time to spend working on her campaign to prove that Kyle was not the saintly, exemplary male that he liked to pretend he was.
Her hectic schedule culminated in an overnight stay in London whilst she attended a trade fair with one of her clients—a young and very talented interior designer. Having persuaded a highly acclaimed local builder of prestige houses to allow Lindsay a free hand in the interior design of one of his show houses, Star had then used her contacts to get the house featured in the new homes supplement of one of the national dailies.
As a result, not only had the builder sold every single one of the houses on his small, exclusive development but Lindsay had also been inundated with new commissions and couldn’t heap enough praise on Star for what she had done.
‘At least let me redesign your flat...as a bonus,’ she begged Star now as they travelled home together in Star’s car, Star at the wheel.
‘I’m very tempted,’ Star acknowledged, ‘but there’s the problem of where I would live and, more important, where I would work in the meantime.’
‘Mmm...I’d forgotten for a moment that you work from home,’ Lindsay said and added curiously, ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to rent an office somewhere and keep your work separate from your private life?’
‘My work is my private life,’ Star told her and meant it. ‘And I can see no point in passing the expensive and unnecessary overheads involved in maintaining a fully equipped office on to my clients when I can work just as easily from home and be there on hand whenever they need me. My flat has two good-sized double bedrooms and it was no hardship to convert one of them into an office.’
‘Mmm...Carey’s built your flat, didn’t they?’ Lindsay asked her.
‘Yes,’ Star agreed. ‘That was how I first came into contact with them. I went to look at the site when I first saw the flats advertised. At that stage Frank Carey was planning to build one-bedroom apartments plus some slightly larger flats with one double bedroom and a box room... I pointed out to him that so far as most people were concerned a box room served only one purpose and that was for the storage of junk and that he’d sell the properties far more easily if he cut down on the number of flats by one and increased the floor space of all the others to include a good-sized double bedroom.
‘He refused to listen to me at first...’
Frank Carey was a man in his early sixties who had been in the building trade since he left school and was, it had to be said, just ever so slightly tinged with an old-fashioned attitude towards women, to put it politely. Lindsay, with her own experience of just how stubborn he could be, asked Star curiously, ‘How did you ma
nage to get him to change his mind?’
Star grinned at her.
‘I persuaded twenty of my friends to make interested noises about the rest of the flats with a proviso that he increased the size of the box room.’
‘And it worked...? He didn’t suspect?’ Lindsay asked, awed.
Star laughed.
‘Oh, yes, he guessed what I was up to all right, but in the end he gave in, and out of the twenty people who originally showed interest in the flats he eventually got seven sales.’
Whilst Lindsay stared at her in round-eyed respect, Star gave a small, self-deprecatory shrug and told her, ‘That, like getting your designs featured in the national press, was more good luck than anything else. However, when Frank eventually offered me a good discount on my own flat, I didn’t turn him down.’
‘I suppose I ought to be thinking of moving to somewhere smaller and more easily manageable,’ Lindsay acknowledged dolefully.
