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Could she trust Col? A newsroom could be a brutal place to work, competitive, cutthroat. She could try explain it, leave out the gory details, beg him to keep it quiet, but it was hard to explain away a dress like this. You didn’t give someone you’d met for five minutes an extravagant piece of clothing. You didn’t give almost anyone you knew a dress like this, unless you wanted it to mean something.
If she tried to explain it, she’d mess it up. She could hardly think straight. Will Parker had replaced the dress he’d torn from her body. The dress she’d left in tatters in the laundry hamper of the suite. The dress she’d had to exchange for one of the hotel’s silk robes because she had nothing to wear to get to back to her own room. It was exactly the dress, in exactly her size.
There was simply no way to explain it.
She’d have to trust Col to sit on whatever he was speculating. To let it go. He’d have bigger things to do. There’d be another scandal along tomorrow, and he’d forget it. And if he didn’t, if he tried to use it, get extra mileage out of the story by linking her to Will, she’d deny it, stick to her mistake excuse, and it would be her word against his.
“Darce,” Col called over the workstation. “Are you going to tell me what that was about?”
He wasn’t going to let it go. “It’s a mistake, Col. They sent me something by mistake.”
“Will Parker sent you a designer dress by mistake, with a card saying sorry.”
She stood up. She had to face him down on this, before it became its own story. “Will Parker sent someone a dress as a crawling apology, but I ended up with it. I told you, it’s a mistake. Watch me return it.”
Col did watch as she bundled up the box, the tissue, the card and the padded envelope. He watched as she stalked past towards the mailroom, and he had the look of a man who’d just been given a sensational tip.
19. Avalon
“The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come.
When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin.” — Confucius
“Bloody hell, Will. Look.”
Will heard Bo’s Australian curse words and abandoned the papers on his lap to peer out the front windscreen of the Audi. There was a crowd of people on the street outside number twenty-seven. He saw the China Central TV insignia.
“I don’t like it, Boss. I’ll take you in the back way.”
This was annoying. It would take a good twenty minutes in traffic for Bo to circle back around and drive into the loading dock at the back of the building. Will had been out at the number four plant all day. He only wanted half an hour at his desk, and fifteen minutes with Aileen, whose calls he’d been dodging. Then he planned on hitting the gym. It would be quicker to run the gauntlet, but the idea made his skin crawl.
His phone rang. Aileen again. He considered sending it through to his voicemail bank where all her other messages had gone unheard. It was unlike her to bug him like this, but she’d been on his case about the new strategy for Avalon, and he’d needed a day out of the office, away from it all, to think.
Lately, thinking time had been hard to come by, and that was annoying too. His productivity was off. He was having trouble focusing. Thoughts of a certain blonde journalist kept intruding. Having a beautiful woman in his dreams at night, hell that was perfectly acceptable, that kind of interruption he couldn’t fault. But thoughts of Darcy’s engaging wit and lush curves were invading his waking hours, and that had to stop.
He answered. “Aileen. Don’t hate me. I’ve been thinking.”
“Where are you?”
No preamble. Shit, she was really pissed with him. “With Bo.”
“Where?”
“One minute from the office, but there’s—”
“That’s why I’ve been ringing you all day. Don’t stop. Go to Pete’s place. We’ll meet you there.”
“Pete’s?” He looked at Bo who shrugged. “No, we’re coming in the back way.”
“Will, your picture. Darcy ran your picture.”
“What picture? I’ve got them. They’re on a memory card in my top right hand drawer. Go look.”
“I don’t know where she got them from. But she has pictures of you. It’s bad Will, really bad. And it’s everywhere. The media have camped outside the building all day. And you wouldn’t pick up your phone. I’ve been worried sick.”
It felt like a punch. Like a kick to the gut. Like a knife wound. “Fuck! Bo, take me to Pete’s.”
Bo did a Shanghai kamikaze, U-turning in the middle of the traffic stream. Cars and bicycles went left and right of him, curses flew. Someone thumped on the Audi’s roof. Will had banned Bo from driving like a Shanghai local years ago, but the blare of horns and the anxious looks on surprised pedestrian’s faces barely registered.
