Last Resort

by Susan Lewis

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, going to sit down. ‘But most of the credit belongs to you and Marielle. You certainly don’t waste any time, either of you.’

  ‘Except in the afternoons,’ he remarked drily.

  Penny slanted her eyes as she looked at him. ‘I hope I made myself clear about that,’ she said. ‘It’s not on, David. It’s unprofessional and—’

  ‘OK, OK,’ he laughed. ‘We just got carried away. It won’t happen again, I swear.’

  ‘At least not in the afternoons,’ she muttered.

  His grin widened and, despite herself, Penny laughed. The uneasy moments since asking him to order Marielle back to the office had continued throughout the afternoon as she’d wondered if a part of her had done it out of some kind of misguided jealousy. But sitting here looking at him now, as attractive as he was, she no longer feared that to be the case.

  ‘Incidentally,’ he said, ‘I like your idea of getting the gossip and reviews straight from LA. When do you intend to go?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she answered. ‘Probably just after the launch.’

  ‘You don’t want it in the first issue?’

  ‘I do, but I don’t think I’ll have the time to go between now and then.’

  He shrugged. ‘Well, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I’ll make some calls if you like, see if we can get something to cover before you go out there. And when you do go I’ll give you some contacts.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, her head to one side. ‘How come you know so many people?’ she asked, curiously.

  He grimaced. ‘I guess I’ve just been around.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘You name it.’

  ‘No, why don’t you?’

  ‘Hey, come on,’ he laughed, ‘what are you asking for here, my CV?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that’s about the measure of it. I’d like to know who I’m working with.’

  ‘Is that so?’ he remarked, with a suggestive lift of his eyebrows.

  Scowling, Penny got to her feet and headed back to the kitchen. ‘Are you trying to hide something or do you just get off on irritating me?’ she called out to him.

  ‘Now, why would I want to irritate you?’ he said, from the doorway.

  ‘Why would you want to avoid the question?’ she challenged. ‘Do you mind if we eat here?’ she added, putting the pizzas on the kitchen table.

  ‘Not a bit,’ he answered. ‘And I’m not avoiding anything. Neither do I have anything to hide, but I’m afraid if you want to know about me you’re going to have to ask someone else ’cos I’m a pretty modest sort of chap at heart.’

  ‘OK, I’ll do that,’ she said, thinking she’d give Sylvia a call in the morning while wishing that suitable putdowns didn’t always come to her when it was too late. ‘But, tell me, how committed are you to making this magazine work?’

  He seemed surprised by the question. ‘I’d say about a hundred per cent,’ he answered.

  Penny’s eyes came up to his. ‘Why?’

  He smiled. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I wish you’d stop answering questions with questions,’ she snapped.

  ‘OK. I want to see it work because you want it to work,’ he said, sitting down at the table.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ she cried. ‘You’re not dealing with one of your stupid little airheads here, so stop treating me like one.’

  ‘And what would you know about the way I treat them?’ he grinned.

  ‘David stop it!’ she shouted. ‘I want us to build a good working relationship, but you’re making it impossible.’

  ‘I am?’ he said, tucking into his pizza. ‘Then tell me what you want me to do.’

  ‘I want you to be straight with me.’

  ‘OK.’ He thought about it for a minute, then said, ‘Well, I reckon what you’re really aiming to find out is how come we’ve managed to get so far so fast? Am I right?’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Then that’s easy,’ he told her. ‘I put Pierre to work on finding out about The Coast as soon as Sylvia told me she was interested in Fieldstone. So your suspicions are correct that I’ve been involved in this a lot longer than you, and they’re also correct where the editor of the Nice-Matin is concerned,’ he added, thereby confirming that Pierre had reported his conversation with her.

  ‘So the contacts Monsieur Couval gave me actually came from you?’ Penny said curtly.

  ‘Not really. They came from him originally, but the list was a lot longer then and by the time you came along I’d already narrowed it down to those I considered to be the best.’

  Penny’s anger was making it hard for her to swallow. ‘So in other words,’ she said, ‘I was duped into believing that I had managed, as you put it, to charm the contacts out of Monsieur Couval myself?’

  That’s right,’ he answered, completely unabashed.

  ‘Then I don’t see how we can possibly continue working together,’ Penny said coldly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean, why?’ she cried. ‘Because you’re doing things your way without even so much as consulting me and you’re deceiving me into the bargain.’

  ‘You are in charge, Penny,’ he assured her. ‘I just used what little know-how I have to get things moving. And I’m sorry about not being straight with you from the start.’

  Penny was silent for a while, finding all this as difficult to digest as the pizza now that he’d managed to rob her of her appetite by making her see that in truth she was working for him, rather than with him.

  ‘Not true,’ he said when she challenged him. ‘We both work for Sylvia. We’ve got equal power, which I think she told you and,’ he said, starting to grin, ‘you look great when you’re confused.’

  Penny’s eyes flashed with temper. ‘It doesn’t work with me, David,’ she told him angrily. ‘I’m as unmoved by your charm as I’m upset by your deceit.’

  Swallowing a mouthful of pizza, he picked up his wine. ‘Deceit’s a pretty strong word,’ he said. ‘The way I see it is that I just did what Sylvia asked me to do and when you came along I didn’t want you to think I was trying to run off with all the glory when we’re a fifty-fifty partnership. So that’s why I didn’t tell you right off about the editor of the Nice-Matin, or that I’d been working on setting things up for so long.’

  ‘Did you seriously think I’d be so stupid that I wouldn’t see through it?’ Penny demanded.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I thought you might be,’ he answered frankly. ‘But now I know you I have rather a different opinion, which is why I’m no longer trying to deny it. In fact I’d have told you sooner if I’d been able to get over to London during the couple of weeks you went back, but I had to go over to the States to wrap a few things up there. And I reckon the worst you can accuse me of here is patronizing you, which I readily hold my hands up to and swear it won’t happen again.’

  ‘So why me?’ Penny said after a pause. ‘Why do you need me when you’re obviously perfectly capable of running the magazine without me and could take all the power if you installed Marielle as editor?’

  ‘Two reasons,’ he answered. ‘First, it’s not me who makes the decisions, it’s Sylvia. Second, Marielle doesn’t have what it takes and Sylvia’s convinced you do.’

  Tearing her eyes away from him, Penny got up to go and get more wine from the fridge.

  ‘Hey, come on,’ he said, watching her go. ‘I’m really sorry I’ve made you feel so bad. It wasn’t my intention, honest. I mean, I don’t suppose I thought about it one way or the other before we met, I was just doing a job . . . But now we’ve met, well, I’m kind of looking forward to working with you. So, what do you say we put this behind us and start over?’

  ‘You’ve made me feel such a fool,’ Penny told him bluntly as she refilled their glasses.

  ‘If anyone’s a fool around here,’ he said, ‘it’s me, for insulting your intelligence. It won’t happen again.’

  For some reason the dark intensi
ty of his eyes and the convincing concern that had deepened his voice made Penny smile. ‘It had just better not,’ she said.

  He took a mouthful of food and continued watching her as he chewed it; then, following it with a sip of wine, he said, ‘Look, I know you’re telling yourself you don’t like me very much, but it’s still early days and I reckon you might find that I’m not so bad when it comes right down to it. And,’ he went on, giving her a mischievous wink, ‘I can tell already that you’re finding it pretty hard to resist m—’

  ‘That’s it!’ she cried, jumping to her feet. ‘You’ve gone too far now and I’ve had just about all I can take from you for one day.’

  His smile vanished as he looked up at her in profound astonishment. ‘What have I said now?’ he cried.

  ‘It’s what you were about to say!’ she seethed.

  ‘That you can’t resist my jokes?’ he said, starting to grin as he belatedly realized what she’d thought he was going to say.

  Penny looked away as the blood came rushing to her cheeks.

  ‘Hey, you’re not telling me you fancy me, are you?’ he teased. Then, as her eyes came furiously back to his, ‘Oh shit, I feel a tiramisu heading my way.’

  With one arm pointing towards the door she glared down at him, determined not to show how very close to laughing she was despite her anger.

  ‘I reckon you’re kicking me out,’ he said, faking amazement.

  ‘How very astute of you.’

  ‘But I haven’t finished my pizza,’ he pointed out. ‘And I’m kind of enjoying myself.’

  Giving herself a moment to get both her laughter and her frustration under control, she said, ‘If you stay I don’t want to discuss anything other than the magazine. Is that clear?’

  ‘Perfectly. Do you have any hot sauce?’

  ‘No.’

  They ate in silence for a while. Then, leaning back in his chair and picking up his wine, he said, ‘So where do you hail from, Penny Moon? Somewhere up north I can tell by that little trace of an accent. Let me guess . . . No? Oh shit, I forgot, the magazine.’ He took a sip of his wine. ‘Got any ideas for a title yet? If you do, you might just end up winning a dinner with yourself.’

  Rolling her eyes, Penny put down her knife and fork and dabbed her mouth with a napkin.

  ‘You could fling a tiramisu in your own face at the end,’ he suggested helpfully.

  ‘Stop it,’ Penny laughed. ‘You’re really milking that one now.’

  ‘I swear, I’ll never mention it again,’ he vowed, hand on heart. ‘So what do you want to talk about?’

  ‘Distribution,’ she answered.

  ‘OK, what do you want to know?’

  At first, as he filled her in on his initial plans for distribution, Penny almost regretted asking, for it was such a complicated business and one he so clearly had under control that it was only highlighting her ignorance. However, she soon found that she was enjoying listening to him and was gaining a great deal of pleasure from the way her own editorial plans, outlined just that morning, were about to effect so many changes in his plans. There was no question about it, Sylvia was right: he really did have a head for business and when it came to ambition he almost took Penny’s breath away. He appeared to have no conception of what it was to be conservative and there was no doubt at all that big business and high finance were nothing new to him – in fact Penny had the distinct impression they were much closer to being second nature. It made her wonder again what he had been doing in the States, but as he talked her on through the ever-expanding circle of a European-wide distribution, of what she’d be required to put into the magazine to make it all cost-effective, she could only listen and marvel at how effortless he made it all sound. As effortless as changing the subject and getting her to talk about herself, and to discover that they had nothing at all in common besides the magazine. They enjoyed neither the same music nor the same literature, were diametrically opposed in both politics and philosophy, and were so irreconcilably at odds over, of all things, the ethics and origins of humour that it was some time before Penny realized he was teasing her.

  ‘OK, you win –’ she laughed ‘– the basic amoral principle stands, but if you think you’re getting away with Dante’s Commedia as being the first serious literature ever to make you laugh, then—’

  ‘I didn’t say it was the first.’ He grinned. ‘What I said was that these days it generally comes to mind first. But if you want to go right back, I have to confess to having had a murky pubescent passion for Henry Miller.’

  ‘Show me a schoolboy who hasn’t,’ Penny commented wryly. ‘And I thought we were discussing first laughs, not first erections.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Well, it might surprise you to learn that my first erection had nothing to do with Miller and everything to do with—’

  ‘No, no, spare me!’ Penny laughed. ‘I know you’re going to say something outrageous like Beatrix Potter or—’

  ‘You too?’ he cried incredulously. ‘It was that damned Peter Rabbit – got me every time. I thought I was gay until I worked out he was an animal; then I knew I was really in trouble.’

  Laughing and shaking her head, Penny looked at him across the table and felt oddly as if she’d known him for a very long time. There was such an easiness between them now, sitting there in the soft, flickering light with the gentle heat of the Aga warming them. Sylvia was right again: he was a hard man to alienate and even harder to stay mad at. Come to think of it, she couldn’t quite remember why she was mad at him, but no doubt it would come back to her in the fullness of time. As would the moments when she had got up to light the candles and open the second bottle of wine.

  ‘Well, I guess it’s time I was on my way,’ he said, gazing deep into her eyes.

  When he made no attempt to move, Penny’s eyes dropped to his hands, which were resting on the table between them. Her heartbeat was quickening as the heady effect of the wine swirled through her senses and she looked at his fingers. They were long and powerful, and so very close to her own. A warm bum of desire drew itself slowly through her body and, lifting her eyes back to his, she was already taking breath to ask him to stay, when the madness of the situation suddenly reached her and she stopped.

  But it was too late . . . He had obviously read her mind, had sensed the extent of his power over her, and his eyes were gently mocking her.

  Penny got to her feet, appalled that she had allowed herself to be so taken in by his charm. Even worse was the feeling that if she had asked him to stay he’d have turned her down, for why would he want to spend the night with someone like her when there was Marielle, who was very likely warming his bed even now.

  Not trusting herself to speak, Penny led the way to the door. Her head was perfectly clear now and her anger at the way she had almost humiliated herself was directed solely at him. He had known what he was doing, had set out to seduce her to the point he had, and she could only thank God that she had had the self-control to pull back when she did. At least the words had not passed her lips, even if her eyes had betrayed her.

  ‘By the way,’ he said as they reached the front door, ‘I meant to say this before; if you find yourself being approached by any dubious characters asking dubious questions, put them on to me, OK? I’ll deal with it.’

  A quick fury sparked in Penny’s eyes. ‘Would you like to be a little more explicit about that?’ she said tightly.

  He frowned, thought about it for a moment, then said, ‘No, I reckon you can work it out,’ and tossing his keys in the air, he caught them, and tripped lightly down the steps to kick-start his moped.

  Penny was on the point of closing the door, when something brushed against her leg and, looking down, she saw that the puppy from next door was back. Scooping him up in her arms she cuddled him against her face and watching David ride out through the gates, she whispered, ‘Well, I might not have any problem in the future resisting him, but I think I might well have one with you, you silly little thing.’<
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  In reply the puppy licked her cheek and peed on her shoulder.

  After changing her sweater, Penny put on her coat and carried him back down the drive and along the few yards of lane to the secluded villa next door. There was no sound coming from within the house, but two Mercedes were parked in the car port and slivers of light were showing through the cracks in the shutters.

  Placing the puppy gingerly on the grass with its siblings Penny crept quietly back into the lane. So far she had managed to avoid actually meeting Colonel Blimp’s wife, even though the woman had phoned three or four times to invite Sammy and her for dinner or drinks. It wasn’t that Penny wanted to offend them, but the idea of exchanging her London social life for canapés and double gins with the expatriate haw-haw brigade most certainly did not appeal. Especially having met Wally Delaney, who was as much of a bore as he was an anachronistic joke and who had irritated her beyond words by trying to arouse her interest in him with cryptic allusions to his antique shop not being quite what it appeared to be.

  Still, she thought, as she walked back into the house she’d have to go over there sooner or later, if for no other reason than she was running out of excuses not to. And maybe it was worth looking into that antique shop of his for if he was using it as some kind of cover for something there was a chance she might get a story out of it.

  Chapter 7

  YES!’ PENNY CHEERED, springing up from the chair in triumph.

  ‘You cheated!’ David cried.

  ‘Rubbish! Did I cheat?’ she demanded, looking around at the rest of the team who were grouped round the computer with them.

  ‘He’s just a bad loser,’ Paul Smith, the freelancer, grinned at David.

  ‘You’re going to have to face it, David,’ Penny told him, her cheeks flushed with laughter: ‘I’m better at these games than you are. That’s the third time I’ve won . . .’

  ‘Because you cheated!’ he declared.