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‘We shall see. But I fully intend to.’
And there was no need to ask how he proposed doing that. Jade shivered, the sensual undertones of his murmured words creating vividly erotic pic- tures in her mind.
Although the car was big, it was none the less claustrophobic and she was intensely aware of his presence beside her. Such a strong and dominating presence. More to keep her mind off his undeniable physical attraction, she asked him a question which had been bugging her since they’d left the building. ’What made you change the policy on the Daily View’s pin-ups? Don’t you approve of those kind of photographs?’
An expression of distaste masked his face and he crossed one long leg over the other. He stared out of the window at the slow-moving traffic. ‘Of course I don’t approve!’
Jade shrugged. ‘But lots of men do.’
‘Not this kind of man, Jade,’ he said softly.
‘And why do they offend you?’ she persisted. ‘Do all nudes offend your proprieties, or just some? Do Rubens or Renoir offend you? How about Botticelli’s Venus, for example?’
He made an impatient sound. ‘Nudity in art is different—that embraces and celebrates the female form; these others merely titillate, and of that I do not approve.’
‘On purely moral grounds, then?’
He shook his head. ‘I concern mys
elf with welfare, too. Those women who pose—they all have mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters—maybe even young children of their own. How do you think that they must feel about it?’
She should have guessed! ‘How very paternal- istic of you!’
He shrugged. ‘And what about you, Jade?’ he queried coolly. ‘Do you approve of such pictures?’
Jade sighed. ‘No, of course I don’t approve of them. I absolutely hate them! What woman wouldn’t?’
He turned his head to face her, the black eyes piercing and direct. ‘And yet you chose to work there?’
‘Perhaps it was my only option. Lots of people do jobs they aren’t particularly proud of.’
‘Is that why you lied to me?’ he asked, the timbre of his voice dangerously soft. ‘Or do you just enjoy lying for the sake of it?’
Jade met his disapproving stare face on. ‘You listen to me for a moment, Constantine! All your censure for my having lied about my job, and yet you were guilty of a similar lie. You allowed me to carry on thinking that you were no more than a humble restaurateur. Didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I’m guilty,’ he grated. ‘Of being foolish enough to fall for the innocent act you presented to me; foolish enough to believe that you had fallen for the man, and not all the trappings. For me, for the first time in my life, it was a delight to play at being two ordinary people, without all the press- ures of wealth. If only—’ his mouth twisted ‘—you hadn’t happened to be a mercenary little bitch who knew exactly who I was—who would go to bed with me in order to get the story she wanted.’
Jade felt sick. ‘But I didn’t know who you were, I keep telling you! What do I have to do to make you believe me?’
‘Hell will be frozen over before ever I do!’ The black eyes narrowed to shards of jet. ‘If you hated, as you claim, your job so much—then why do it in the first place?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Really?’ he queried with an almost polite dis- belief. ‘I’ll bet it is! You must tell it to me some time.’
And she made up her mind to tell him right then because she simply couldn’t bear anyone thinking so poorly of her, and it suddenly became tremen- dously important that he should know that things weren’t quite as black and white as he seemed to see them, that she wasn’t the hard-hearted vil- lainess of the piece he thought she was. ‘I’ll tell it to you right now!’ she announced, then, exasper- ated by his disparaging stare, ‘But only if you stop glaring at me!’
Their eyes fused in a long gaze, the corner of his mouth tilted upwards by a mere millimetre. ‘Very well.’ And he leaned forward to close the glass par- tition between them and the two men in the front.
Jade laced her fingers together in her lap, re- membering when she’d thought that the compe- tition had been the answer to all her dreams. Some dreams! ‘When I was seventeen and still at school, the Daily View ran a competition to find the country’s most promising journalist. My teacher persuaded me to enter it, and, to my amazement— I won.’
‘Congratulations,’ he interjected mockingly.
Jade glowered at the implied criticism. ‘Well, ac- tually—I was proud of winning, and of the article I wrote. When they offered me a job on the staff—’ She saw the expression on his face.‘Of course I accepted it! Who wouldn’t have done?’
‘I would have thought about it very carefully.’
‘Well, you’re a different kettle of fish, aren’t you?’ she retorted. ‘You were rich and I was poor! You probably could have got your father to buy you a damned newspaper—the way you’ve just bought the Daily View! But this was like the answer to all my dreams—I’d imagined starting work on the local paper, so to be offered a job on one of the nationals’
