Unguarded Moment (2 page)

Alix kept her face straight. When she had first come to work here, she had been unnerved by Monty's inexplicable but thinly veiled hostility. Later, when she became more settled, she had been able to reason it out. Monty wasn't a young woman. Her face was thin and lined, and she made no attempt to disguise the liberal streaks of grey in her hair. But she had a close relationship with Bianca, and perhaps she thought having her niece working as a secretary and actually living in the house might be a threat to that relationship. Alix had had to walk on eggshells for several months in an attempt to convince Monty that she had nothing to worry about, that although she had accepted the job she wasn't trying to muscle in on anything else. She supposed she had succeeded up to a point. They had achieved a kind of armed truce, but she had stopped hoping that Monty would regard her with any real warmth or approval.

Now she smiled more widely than she felt inclined to do, and said, 'Yes, I am. How are things? Any crises during my absence?'

'We've had our ups and downs,' Monty said drily. 'But you're just in time for the row of the year.'

'Oh, hell!' Alix was apprehensive. 'It isn't the film, surely? It hasn't fallen through?'

'No, that's still very much on the cards. Veronese is coming over here shortly to talk to her about it.' Monty paused heavily. 'No, it's this biography.'

'Oh?' Alix's voice sharpened. This was something she hadn't foreseen. Before she'd gone away, Bianca had been all for the suggestion that her life story should be written. She had even had boxes of ancient photographs brought down from the attic to look for suitable prints of herself as baby and small child for the inevitable illustrations. 'What's gone wrong?'

'They don't want her to write it.' Monty gave a resigned shrug. 'She thought it would simply be a matter of hiring someone to listen to her talk through her reminiscences, and then ghost them, but now it seems the publishers have commissioned someone—a Liam Brant. Have you heard of him?'

Alix thought she had, but couldn't remember in what connection.

She said, 'What has she got against him?'

'He isn't her idea. She wanted that girl—the one who did the article about her in
Woman of Today
. She thought she was
simpatico
.'

'It was certainly a very flattering article,' Alix said drily. 'I doubt if the same note of unquestioning admiration could be sustained for a whole book. Has she met this Mr Brant? Perhaps he's
simpatico
too.'

'He's coming here this morning.' Monty sounded dour. 'And she says she won't see him. A nice start that is!'

A nice start indeed, Alix thought resignedly, bidding her holiday goodbye for ever. She was back in the thick of it, and no mistake.

She lifted the dark fall of hair wearily from her neck. 'If he's the publishers' choice, then we may be stuck with him, unless she can come up with a better reason for turning him down than she'd rather it was someone else. And it won't do to antagonise him. I'll talk to her.'

'I wish you would,' said Monty, and that was an admission coming from her. She sounded tired, Alix thought. Perhaps the last three weeks had been more trying than usual, although after all these years Monty should be used to Bianca's vagaries. 'Leave your cases. I'll get Harris to see to them.'

Harris and his wife occupied a small flat in the basement. They took care of the house when Bianca was away, and when she was in residence, Harris was a total manservant, doing most of the fetching and carrying around the household, but acting as butler when the occasion demanded, while Mrs Harris was a divine cook.

They had worked for Bianca for a long time too, and they seemed impervious to the storms which periodically rocked the household, or perhaps they stayed because the wages were good, and the perfect employer didn't exist anyway, Alix sometimes thought, amused.

She ran upstairs and paused outside the door of Bianca's first floor suite, wondering whether to knock. Bianca usually catnapped during the morning, and she hated being caught doing it. But even as Alix hesitated, she heard the unmistakable crash of shattering glass coming from behind the door. She smiled grimly, turned the handle and went into the room.

'I do hope that wasn't a mirror,' she said lightly. 'I don't think we can do with seven years' bad luck.'

It was a vase of flowers. Broken glass, water and sad-looking blooms were strewn across the carpet at Bianca's feet. Alix thought detachedly that she looked magnificent, even if the flush in her cheeks was caused by temper rather than excitement or good health.

The huge emerald eyes, which had been staring straight ahead, focussed on Alix and sharpened.

Bianca said, 'So it's you. Where the hell have you been?'

Alix suppressed a sigh. 'So nice to be needed,' she said drily. 'I've been on holiday, in case you've forgot—to Rhodes.
 
Didn't you get my card?'

'I may have done,' Bianca gave an irritable shrug. 'The girl they sent from the agency has been dealing with the mail. My God, what a mistake that was!'

'Wasn't she any good?' Alix fetched a discarded newspaper from the table beside the chaise-longue and began to gather the broken glass and wilted flowers on to it.

'Useless. It's all her fault that this frightful man is coming here this morning. She made the appointment without consulting me. Well, you'll just have to get rid of him, Alix. Telephone him. Tell him I'm ill—tell him anything. I won't see him. I won't!' There was an hysterical note in Bianca's voice and Alix glanced up at her, her brows drawing together in a faint frown.

She said equably, 'Very well. But what shall I say when he asks for another appointment? And he surely will. This is a commission, and he won't want to lose out,'

Bianca's perfectly painted mouth twisted sullenly. 'Oh God, you sound just like Seb! He won't help at all. He says I've agreed that my life story should be written, and the best thing I can do is co-operate.' She swore viciously. 'Some public relations man he turned out to be!'

'He's one of the best,' Alix said, faintly amused. 'And his advice is probably good.'

Bianca gestured wildly. 'But I don't want his advice. I just want him to get rid of this terrible man—this Brant.'

Alix retrieved a sliver of glass from the carpet with a certain amount of care.

'How do you know he's so terrible? He might be charming. If you met him you might like him.'

'I would not.' Bianca made it sound like a solemn vow. 'He writes the most awful things. He did the Kristen Wallace book last year, and he made her sound like a neurotic bitch.'

'Well, isn't she?' In spite of her care, Alix had cut her finger on a splinter, and she sucked the blood reflectively.

'Of course,' Bianca said impatiently. 'But he had no right to say so.'

Alix hadn't read the book, but she could remember Bianca doing so with gurgles of enjoyment, and she knew now why the name seemed familiar. The Wallace biography had caused a sensation because it had exploded a myth once and for all. Kristen Wallace had acquired a reputation for playing serious roles in films which relied heavily on prolonged silences and heavy symbolism for their impact. In the book, Kristen had been encouraged to talk about her work, which she had done at length, revealing in the process that she hadn't, in all probability, understood one word of the deeply significant lines she was called on to say. The real genius, it had been suggested, was Miss Wallace's dialogue coach. Alix remembered one critic had called the book, 'A devastating insight into a deeply trivial mind.' One thing was certain: Kristen Wallace had been a laughing stock afterwards, and she hadn't made a film since.

'He's a hatchet man—a real swine,' Bianca railed. 'I don't want that kind of thing written about me.'

Alix began to smile. She said, 'That's hardly likely. You're not a pretentious idiot like La Wallace.'

'I don't want anyone like that poking about in my private life,' Bianca said with finality.

One answer to that was that there was no aspect of Bianca's life which could be considered private, but Alix wasn't brave enough to suggest it. Her affairs, her marriages, and her divorces had all been conducted in the full glare of the publicity spotlight. There could be few details about them that the great reading public didn't already know,
ad nauseam
.

'So you'll telephone him now,' Bianca persisted. 'And when you've done that, you can phone Seb and tell him he's fired.'

'Just as you say,' Alix agreed cheerfully. There was no problem about the last instruction. Seb had a fireproof contract, and he was used to Bianca's tempers. He said they added further colour to life's rich tapestry.

She disposed of the broken glass and flowers, and told Monty regretfully about the soaked carpet, then went off to the room she used as an office.

The agency girl might have roused Bianca's ire, but she seemed to be a neat worker. The desk was immaculate, and the carbons of the correspondence she had dealt with were all clipped together by the typewriter so Alix could familiarise herself with everything that had happened while she was away.

The filing had all been done too, and she found Liam Brant's letter without difficulty. It was a polite enough request for an interview, she thought, as she dialled his number, but the signature was a give-away—a slash of black ink, harsh and arrogant, across the creamy paper.

His line was engaged, so she re-dialled and spoke to Seb.

'You're fired.'

'That's the fourth time this year,' Seb said mournfully. 'One day I'll take her at her word, and then where will she be? And how are you, my honey flower? Did you enjoy your happy hols?'

'I wish I could remember,' Alix sighed. 'I've now got to gently but firmly get rid of Mr Brant.'

There was a startled .sound, then Seb said, 'I can tell you now that you won't. I tried to indicate that to Bianca, but there was no reasoning with her. She put the phone down on me in a hell of a rage.'

'And broke a vase,' Alix said ruefully. 'I've just been picking the pieces up.'

'Well, my advice is still to co-operate with Mr Brant, or you may have more than the pieces of a vase to pick up,' Seb assured her. 'Have you come across any of his books?'

'Only by hearsay. I gather Bianca's been reading some of them—the Kristen Wallace biography in particular.'

'Well, I suggest you read them too, so that you know what you're up against.'

When she had replaced the receiver, Alix sat for a moment or two staring at the phone as if it might bite her. Then slowly and carefully she re-dialled Liam Brant's number. She did not know whether to be sorry or relieved when it was still engaged.

She looked at the internal telephone on her desk, wondering if she should ring Bianca's suite to warn her she had been unable to get through to Liam Brant as yet, or whether she should go up and tell her in person, passing on at the same time Seb's rather terse advice.

She needed to go upstairs anyway. She had her unto do, and she needed to change. Bianca had been too overwrought to notice her brief cream denim skirt and sleeveless black top, and her bare tanned legs culminating in flimsy leather sandals bought from a street market, but she would notice eventually, and not be pleased.

When Alix had first come to work there, she had been so dazzled to find herself the possessor of a salary which exceeded anything she could reasonably have hoped for that she had plunged into an orgy of buying. She didn't want the way-out things displayed in so many of the boutiques, but it was fun to choose things which enhanced her young slenderness, clothes which whispered to her entranced image in fitting room mirrors that she could be more than merely attractive—that she might even have the promise of beauty.

She had entirely forgotten what had happened after her first visit to the house, when she had been brought into this very room to meet her predecessor, whose abrupt departure had provided the reason for her being offered the job.

The girl had been tight-lipped and hostile, and Alix had been unsure how to defuse the situation, wishing very much that Lester Marchant who had brought her here and introduced them had remained to ease the way for her. But of course he hadn't, she thought, her mouth lifting in a smile of wry reminiscence. Lester had problems of his own, even then.

'So you're the new secretary.' The other girl had surveyed her from head to toe. 'I don't think you'll last long. You're not bad looking and Bianca doesn't brook any possible rivals, you know. That's why I'm going. I could handle the job, but someone bothered to give me a word and a smile at one of her cocktail parties when he should have been devoting all his attention to her, and that's fatal.'

Hot with embarrassment, Alix said, 'Perhaps you ought to know that Miss Layton is my aunt.'

'She is?' The other girl sounded astonished, rather than abashed. 'Well, that's probably the last time you'll ever be allowed to tell anyone that. And it won't save you from the limitations Bianca likes to put on her staff. Niece or not, you'll submit to the image she wants, or you'll be out. Now, I suppose I'd better show you how the filing system works.'

Alix had been too dazed by the harshness of the words to pay much attention to the demonstration that followed. She was torn with doubts anyway, knowing how her mother would react to the news that she had accepted a post as Bianca's secretary, however high-powered and well paid, and beyond the wildest dreams of anyone as relatively young and inexperienced as she was. Whatever the trouble was between Bianca and her mother, she had an uneasy feeling that her decision to work for Bianca, to live in her house, to devote her waking hours to her interests, would improve nothing between the sisters.

Now, it seemed, she would have problems at work as well as at home. She had known a momentary impulse to cut and run, but now an older, wiser Alix knew that she would have regretted it bitterly if she had done so.

Even a few weeks afterwards when Bianca, her smiling lips belying her narrowed eyes, had suggested charmingly that perhaps some of her new clothes were more suitable to her leisure hours rather than an office environment, she had learned to swallow her humiliation. Because by that time she knew that nothing—not Bianca's moods, or Monty's hostility, or the silences at home which disturbed her most of all—could persuade her to abandon the sheer stimulation of her new job. And if Bianca wanted her hair tied demurely back instead of flowing freely over her shoulders, and preferred her to dress in quiet drab styles, which were both businesslike and unobtrusive, then she would not argue. It might be weak-willed, but Bianca was paying the piper, and handsomely too, and Alix had no real objection to her calling the tune.