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‘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.
