Sweet Vixen

by Susan Napier

  'Well, that's one thing you don't have to lie about. You certainly seem to get job satisfaction.' He wiped the redness from his mouth with the back of his hand as though the taste of her revolted him.

  Sarah steadied herself against the wall, the only stable thing in a shifting universe. She sought his face for some indication of passion, of softness, but there was none. Savage lines of satisfaction grained the skin around his mouth and his eyes were like knives, cold and merciless, dissecting her.

  Her stomach lurched violently. She felt bruised, violated. What had happened to her self-respect? He had treated her with the same contempt that a rapist must feel for his victim; with anger and disgust. And she had enjoyed it! Invited it even, for she had provoked him to breaking point. God, what was the matter with her? She was acting as if every vile thing he said about her was true!

  She watched, hypnotised as he tore a tissue out of the large box on the make-up table and wiped his mouth and hand. Then he began to sort through the lipsticks until he matched one with the smear on the tissue.

  'No!' Her skin crawled as she realised what he intended to do.

  He smiled cruelly. 'Lost your taste for being touched? If you prefer, you can wait for Teresa . . . explain to her how you smudged her good works.'

  Sarah submitted frozenly as he tilted her chin to the light and skilfully re-coloured her bloodless lips. She could see the faint beading of sweat on his upper lip, but his hand performed its task without a tremor. He was inhu­man. How could he do it. . . while she stood there beaten, humiliated . . . she remembered her wrap and scrabbled blindly for the gaping edges.

  'Thanks for letting me test the merchandise.' He threw the lipstick back on to the table. 'But I think you've over­estimated its value. You ought to consider the strategic advantages of withholding your assets.'

  Sarah didn't have the strength to fight back, she leaned her head tiredly against the wall and stayed unmoving until she heard him leave.

  She collapsed at last on to the chair, blinking fiercely. It would take ages to repair the damage if she cried, and he would know the reason for the delay. She would not give him such a complete triumph.

  She hated him. He was arrogant and crude and so wrong. She wasn't promiscuous . . . she didn't think ... at least, only with him. But why? Was it only because he had been the first to tap the deep well of her suppressed sexuality? She could see, from the bleak vantage point of a new physical maturity, that Simon had never done more than skim the surface of her passions. He had been too selfishly concerned with his own needs to be able to fully satisfy hers. Max, on the other hand, confident of his prowess, had been willing to wait on her, taking as much pleasure in discovering what pleased her as in fulfilling his own desires ... in fact they had seemed inseparable.

  Sarah buried her face in her hands and groaned. Her hands felt icy, her body numb. That was twice in two days Max had brought her to the pitch of desire then aban­doned her, though this second time was by far the worst. She shouldn't have tried to fight him, he could always annihilate her physically and verbally. She couldn't even feel angry at him, though she had every reason to be . . . just this terrible numbness.

  It was pride alone that saw her through the nightmare session that followed. Pride made her smile, and sparkle and project by order of the shadowy figure beyond the half-circle of bright lights, when inside she felt shrivelled and old.

  Afterwards, in the semblance of normality, she allowed herself to be bullied into going to lunch with Tom, though the thought of food was nauseating. They went to a tiny coffee bar not far from the office, one they had been to several times before, situated below street level, down a narrow flight of stairs.

  Playing with her salad Sarah let Tom's ramblings about the new contract with Rags' printer, the busy London schedule he would be returning to at the end of the week, and other inconsequentials flow soothingly around her. Suddenly, out of the blue, he said something that riveted her attention.

  'Max came under duress? What kind of duress?' It was no use telling herself she wasn't interested.

  'He only agreed to come out to New Zealand in ex­change for certain . . . ah . . . concessions in the board­room,' Tom explained, seemingly absorbed in the disposi­tion of tea-leaves in the bottom of his cup. 'Sir Richard insisted that he take a break from his rigorous routine, but Max would have none of that, so Rags & Riches was a compromise on both sides.' Tom paused maddeningly. He was being uncharacteristically indiscreet and Sarah prayed he wasn't going to realise it now and clam up. If she had been thinking more clearly she might have won­dered about his sudden desire to impart gratuitous in­formation on a hitherto avoided subject.

  'Max resigned himself, if only because he knew it was basically his own fault. When he came out of hospital after his accident he was ordered to convalesce for at least a month. Instead he put himself under psychological press­ure to perform, and at a level which exceeded even his pre-accident optimum.'

  He lost interest in reading tea-leaves and watched Sarah as she grappled with the one fact that she had plucked out of his statement. He had told her—but she hadn't believed—those scars hadn't looked so awful. . .

  'Accident?' came out shrill and cracked.

  Blue, blue eyes, calm and unfathomable as the sea, looked into hers. 'It was played down at the time: these things can and do upset the balance of the market. Last April Max crashed his plane on a flight from Paris to London. Nearly killed himself—'

  Somebody was operating a drill in her head. The bright red-flocked wallpaper of the coffee bar sprang at her, sharp, vivid, threatening suffocation, and the warm, spicy coffee-laden air grew strong and bitter in her nostrils, a sour bitterness that also flooded the back of her throat.

  'I'm sorry, love, but at least it was quick. They said he would have been killed on impact. . .' Roy's caring voice floated through her chaotic mind. Killed? Had Max been killed? Her whole body was one silent, suffering, scream.

  No. Nearly. That's what Tom had said. Nearly. A year ago she hadn't even been aware of Max's existence, let alone . . . The world began to revolve slowly around her, then faster, and cold sweat broke out on her forehead as she groped for meaning. She laid her head in her arms on the table, waiting for the turbulence to subside, hoping she wasn't going to disgrace herself by being sick. If he had died, she would never have met him. Never have fought those exhilarating battles; and won, and lost, and hated, and loved. And loved.

  The numbness of the past hour dissolved as a wave of terrible futility washed over her, flooding her with ex­quisite pain. She loved him! That was why she lit up like a torch whenever he touched her, that was why his indiffer­ence, his rejection had been so utterly devastating. She loved him. In spite of herself, in spite of him . . . the man who never used the word love, except in the physical sense. God, it was almost funny!

  'Sarah, are you all right?' A voice penetrated the fog.

  She lifted her head. 'Yes. Yes. I just felt a bit odd there for a moment.' An odd kind of love, indeed.

  'Sure? You're very pale?'

  She nodded, though it hurt. Everything hurt.

  'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you.' The round face was gentle, understanding. Appallingly so.

  'I . . . that's how my husband died, you see. In a plane crash. It was a shock,' she improvised, a transparent half-truth.

  'I know, Julie told me,' he said, unembarrassed, and she was aware that she hadn't fooled him one bit. Was he offering his shoulder to cry on? What had prompted him to draw his bow at the venture? 'A shock for Max, too. People tend to think of Max as being invulnerable—I think he had even come to believe it himself. He lost something in that crash, an ability to enjoy. I think he might have found it again, here.'

  Sarah looked at him, pain in her heart—for herselfand for Max. Perhaps that explained his savagery. She had taunted with weakness and that barb must have sunk far deeper than those he had hooked into her flesh, for she knew their falsity. She shook her head wearily, not
really knowing why. If Tom was implying that Max had found it with her. . . but there was no reason for him to think that. Max must flirt with hundreds of women. The pain intensi­fied—she was one of hundreds. No, not even that now!

  Tom appeared quite concerned about her lack of colour and Sarah found herself meekly allowing him to shoo her on home. Overwork, he said; the strain of doing two jobs at once. He would square it with Julie.

  At home she roamed restlessly around the house, wishing it was possible to go to bed and pull the covers up over her head and summon up those calm, uncomplicated days so recent, yet so far behind her.

  She dragged herself into the bathroom and was hor­rified when she looked in the mirror. A wraith! Dark, burning eyes in a white face. No wonder Tom guessed. Her hot eyes felt dry and sore, her mouth parched, her body feverish, as if pain had absorbed all the moisture from her system.

  Maybe it wasn't love, she thought desperately. Maybe it was infatuation, hormonal imbalance—something you could take pills for. All she had to do was hold out until the end of the week, until Max left. Plod on, endure, hide the pain—she was good at doing that. Could she trust Tom? Yes. He understood, he was sorry for her. Curious he might be, but not Cruel, not like Max would be if he ever found out. He would laugh, his triumph complete; he would delight in making her suffer. And she would suffer enough without his help. The two things she wanted most in the world right now were the two things he would never give her. His love, and his trust.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  'I don't believe this!'

  In a luxury suite at the Intercontinental Hotel Sarah confronted a tall, lean, hazel-eyed man over the remains of a luncheon trolley. She was gripped by an uncanny sense of déjà vu ; this had happened to her before, a little over a month ago. Was the nightmare going to begin all over again?

  'You can't—' She stopped, a hand lifting to her heavy head, mesmerised by that familiar expression of hauteur, by the quizzical lift of the brow.

  'Can't?' Slowly. Exploring the new word. 'Are there laws in this country of which I am unaware? Are you not a free agent?'

  'Of course—I—' Sarah put a hand over her heart. It was beating at an alarming rate. 'But you can't possibly ask me to work for you on the basis of four days' acquaint­ance! It's not—'

  'My dear child,' Sir Richard Wilde looked deeply pained, one thin hand lifting languidly from the arm of his chair, 'if you're going to work for me you must learn to stop thinking in clichéd terms. Originality is my trademark. One must not allow oneself to be hidebound by convention, it stifles creative thinking. It is because I have acted on intuitive decisions that I am where I am today. Would you have me abandon my formula for success now, on your behalf?'

  'No . . . no, of course not,' said Sarah hurriedly, still finding the conversation difficult to believe. She had received a casual job offer once before, from a member of the same family—one which, not surprisingly, had never been renewed. She doubted that Sir Richard would de­liberately mislead her, but over the past few days she had learned something of his penchant for whimsicality. 'But there is a question of suitability—'

  'Ahh.' Shoulders moved expressively under the dark velvet jacket. 'I would never have brought the subject up if I did not think you were suitable,' he said, dismissing the point with his own unique brand of logic. 'And you wear my clothes so well; I knew as soon as I saw your photo­graphs that if we ever met we would be . . . sympathetic'

  He had said as much on his first visit to the Rags offices. Sarah, though having had plenty of time to prepare herself, had still been winded by his likeness to Max, and flustered by having her hand kissed instead of shaken.

  'You do not have to introduce her,' he had told Julie, who had brought him in from the airport. 'I recognised her at once. But that is not mine,' frowning at Sarah's apricot voile dress, 'and you have lost weight.'

  'I'm dieting,' Sarah had lied. She couldn't very well have said, 'I'm pining for your son.'

  'It does not suit you,' she was informed, with an exquisite disregard for tact. 'You have height, you need the proportions to match. If you lose any more weight my clothes, which make you look so chic, will be useless to you. An ill-fitting garment is an abomination, do you not think?' ,

  It was skilfully phrased so that in agreeing to the last Sarah was agreeing to the whole. Sir Richard Wilde, she had since discovered, was adept at getting people to agree with him. Not that it made any difference, for if they did not, he ignored them.

  'Looking good in your designs is unavoidable,' Sarah pulled herself back to the present, sitting earnestly for­ward in her chair. 'And it's scarcely a recommendation for a personal assistant.'

  'For me it is. You will be constantly at my side; of necessity you must be a discreet advertisement for my talent.'

  'But, I have no experience—'

  'I should soon give you that. Tell me,' he changed tack with disarming smoothness, 'are these . . . trivialities an attempt to hide from me the real reason for your refusal?'

  'What?' Sarah only just prevented herself from leaping to her feet in shock.

  'Do you have a personal dislike of me?' came the bland reply. 'I had the impression that you had enjoyed the last few days, in spite of your reluctance to oblige me. Was I wrong?'

  His observance disconcerted her. She had been greatly reluctant, too aware of the poignancy of the situation. Every now and then an intonation, a turn of the head, a phrase would strike a responsive chord and she would be shaken by helpless, hopeless longing. However, she had been given little choice. When Julie had heard that Sir Richard's private secretary had suffered an attack of food poisoning the evening they arrived in Auckland she had immediately offered Jane's services.

  'No, no.' Sir Richard had dismissed the possibility with an imperious wave. 'I cannot work with a stranger. Sarah will do—we are already acquainted by proxy. Do you take shorthand?' And when she nodded slowly. 'Good. That is settled.'

  A complete autocrat, but a charmer. He had a grass­hopper mind and an uneven temper which he made valiant efforts to control for Sarah's benefit. She was surprised by his thoughtfulness, the small considerations he gave her, and disarmed by his elegant manners. Max had called him a despot, but he was a benevolent despot and not half as formidable as his son had suggested. But then, she thought bitterly, Max's judgements about people had not proved infallible.

  Sir Richard was a formidable showman, though. He had been delighted at the stir he had created by deciding to come to New Zealand for the Images preview and it had taken little persuasion from Julie to get him to say a few light and witty words at the christening party for the new Rags & Riches, held the following day.

  Sarah had obediently trailed everywhere after him, jotting down his constant flow of ideas and memos to himself and to his staff", and watched in awe as he effort­lessly extracted every ounce of publicity from his brief visit. Controversial comment and bons mots were scat­tered in a manner carefully calculated to reach a max­imum audience. Sir Richard seemed to positively encour­age the pursuit of journalists and photographers.

  'Fame, wealth, success—these things I have sought all my life,' he told Sarah confidently. 'In my younger days I struggled against poverty and anonymity in a fiercely competitive field. It took more than just talent to achieve my aims. Why should I now seek to hide from fortune? —that is the action of the weak, the insecure. Privacy —bah! Only what is inside the head and the heart is private, the rest is window-dressing—meant to be seen.'

  He spoke, gesturing with passionate intensity—the same intensity with which he approached life. Everything was related to the senses, to feeling, to instinct, to percep­tion. Like now.

  'No, you weren't wrong. I like working for you very much . . . you've been very kind.' A faint smile of amuse­ment lit hazel eyes. 'But what about Kevin Matlock?' She had only glimpsed the untidy, bespectacled young man briefly, confined as he was to his hotel bed, but he had looked nice. She would hate to think she was doing him out of
his job.

  'What about him? You do not imagine that I could function without additional assistance? I have several secretaries, although admittedly I shall be shedding most of them when Max takes over the chairmanship of Wilde's at the end of the month. He will inherit them, or rather disinherit them if I know my son's mania for efficiency.'

  Sarah tensed inwardly. Would she never get used to the mention of that name? Thankfully Sir Richard didn't mention him often. She watched warily as the aristocratic figure leaned forward to pour himself another glass of champagne from the chilled bottle on the trolley.

  'You seem surprised. Did he not mention his imminent elevation while he was here?' he continued casually.

  'No. Tom did, Tom Forest. . . indirectly,' said Sarah, remembering that momentous conversation in the coffee bar.

  'Ah yes, Tom. He gave me a report. He was very impressed with you ... as I am. I have been thinking along the lines of a personal assistant for some time—it is fate that brings us together, perhaps.'

  Lately Sarah had regarded fate with a jaundiced eye.

  'What would I be doing, in this job?'

  'More or less what you have been doing for the past few days.'

  'Oh.' Dare she mention her misgivings? She had no need to, for they were shrewdly analysed.

  'Of course, I am limited here. My real work, my only work from now on, is designing, but on a scale which you may yet find difficult to appreciate. I travel the world in search of inspiration, I attend showings, receive clients, visit the factories that make my exclusive fabrics, enter­tain the rich and famous, all in the cause of fashion. I think you will find your job sufficiently challenging and cer­tainly it will be educational. Why, in ten years' time you may be utilising the valuable experience you have ac­quired with me in the running of your own fashion empire.'

  'As long as I don't aim for yours?' murmured Sarah, half laughingly, then quailed at his expression, fearing she had presumed too much.