Waking Up (21 page)

“You, my dear, are lying through your perfect white teeth and we both know it,” he told her bluntly. “I’ve known you too long and too well. Don’t you think I could sense that something was wrong the moment I walked in that door?”

“What a terrible day it is outside!” she said with a sudden viciousness. “I hate rain; I always gloom about the apartment, moping horribly, putting lines on my face and being a bitch. It must be menopause.”

She sensed him jerking with surprise and then he was laughing at her. “The awful things you manage to come up with! All of twenty-seven, aren’t you?”

She sipped tea, eyes down. “Twenty-eight, but don’t start counting, will you? So hateful to be reminded…” Twenty-eight. Perhaps, if she was lucky, she had seven years left of her present career. Then the lines, those inevitable signs of ageing, would come. Oh, she had money enough, but the boredom! And, she admitted reluctantly, the possible rejection…

“Tell me,” she asked, in an effort to stop her flow of thought, “are you going to the Trevors’ engagement party tonight? I hear it is to be quite a social event.” Her voice as she said that last part was dry.

He smiled. “That depends. Will Damien be there?” Rain pattered down endlessly from a lowering, sullen sky.

She watched the cascade with a mild look of distaste. “If that infernal rain doesn’t quit, I do believe I’m going to be flooded, even though I’m twenty-five storeys up! Just look at that balcony, will you?” She caught sight of his patient, knowledgeable eyes and sighed. It was no use prevaricating with Justin. Ten years is a long time to know someone and he knew her too well. “Darling, Damien is Damien, and by definition is completely unpredictable from one moment to the next. I have no idea if he plans to go or not.” Her gaze shifted away from his and back again, piercingly. “He’s unpredictable, except perhaps that he quite hates the sight of you and any mention of you. Puzzling.”

“Not so puzzling. He dislikes our friendship and would love to make sure that I never set eyes on you again. Jealousy, Jessica, that green-eyed monster. He is a very possessive man, and that’s why I’m wondering just a little at your unexpected invitation to me today. You’ve always gone out of your way to keep peace and distance between Damien and me, and I believe that this is only the second time I’ve been in this apartment. Are you being careless, or reckless, darling?”

Her eyes shot to his and something flared in them before it was extinguished, like a candle being blown out. “You see too much,” she murmured as she clasped her hands rigidly together, below his line of sight. “Just be sure that Damien doesn’t come between us, Justin Marsh. I value you too highly as a friend, and in fact am quite convinced that ours is the most ideal relationship of all. It’s supportive, trusting and mutually affectionate, unclouded by nasty sex.” Her deliberate attempt at audacity earned her another laugh.

“But there is a great deal to be said for sex…” Justin’s eyes travelled down her figure appreciatively. Very tall and willowy graceful, Jessica nevertheless had a slight, suggestive curve to her breasts and hips that hinted at the sensuality in her lower lip. “You know that Damien, for all his power and ambition, has no earthly claim on me. It makes him angry. He’d love to be able to order me to stay away from you and he can’t. It’s very frustrating for a man unused to opposition. No, my dear, he simply has to come to terms with the fact that you and I are fast friends and will always remain so, for you know I adore you. How is that devil, anyway?”

“The same as always, which is to say, different from day to day. When he is around, that is. Last week he was off to France and has only just returned.” She had herself well in control, proud of her unruffled voice, her serene expression.

Justin was not fooled and his hand tightened into a fist on the table. “He’s a bastard to treat you like he does! I’ll bet he didn’t even inform you of his departure as usual, carelessly leaving a scrawled note if you’re lucky, not telling you when or if he’d be back! I can’t stand the way he treats you!”

Neither can I, she thought, and closed her eyes, aghast at how she had nearly said it aloud. She made an effort, opened her eyes, and tried to speak calmly. It came out slightly ragged. “You know that Damien and I started our relationship strictly on a no-strings basis. If I were to throw a childish fit and demand to know his every move, he would suffocate and I’d only be driving him away from me. As it is, he leaves for a time, but always eventually comes back. It’s something I have to accept if I want to have a relationship with him.” She smiled mockingly. “And what I feel cannot compare with the pain that I must make you feel. If I had any unselfishness at all, I’d send you out that door and tell you to never come back. I value your friendship so highly that I cause you pain.”

This time it was his turn to smile and his fingers reached out to pat her on the cheek. “You know I appreciate our friendship above all things. I would marry you in a minute if you would have me and you know it. But as it happens, I want your friendship too much to spoil everything by my masculine pride and injured ego! You don’t hurt me, you only bring me happiness. I just wish that Damien would give you the happiness that you deserve.” Under his gentle touch, she jerked, her composure cracking slightly. Justin stared at her, worried. “You know that you aren’t happy,” he said abruptly. “And it’s that scoundrel, I’ll bet. What’s he done this time? You can’t hide from me that you’re upset about something, for all you try. What’s happened now?”

She brooded, stirring her tea endlessly, around and around. “Damien’s a troubled man. And who knows him very deeply? I don’t, and would be the first to admit it. I don’t know his compulsions. He never talks about himself or his past—oh, the superficial things, I know, but never anything revealingly. Black hair, black eyes, black murky shadowed past. He’s driven. He never slows down, never lets up on himself, and never quits until he has what he wants. And he’s good. He beats them in business, very fairly. Even you admit that. He’s a brilliant man and I love him, but as for knowing him? Well, who knows Damien, after all?”

Justin stared at her. She looked very composed, Madonna-like, pure. She returned his gaze unfalteringly, golden eyes glowing against white skin, hair aflame against the muted background of the room behind her. “I regret,” he murmured, “ever teaching you the art of evasion, though you should know as a former lawyer, I could not help but notice it. Fess up, my dear. What has he done?”

“Done?” she replied, splaying out her slender hands and looking over her nails carefully. “Damien has taken into his head the notion that he must marry, that’s all. He has yet to do anything about it, though.”

Her rueful gaze lifted to meet Justin’s. His face had darkened angrily at her words. “Marry! And who, pray tell, is he contemplating marriage with? Surely you?”

A light silvery tinkle of laughter, unamused, jarred on both of their nerves. She quieted quickly and said, “Really, my dear, I expected more sophistication from you, of all people. One doesn’t marry one’s mistress. One finds a dull, suitable wife and then plays around. Quite a lingering fashion, though I must say I always felt so sorry for the mouse of a wife that had to stay at home, breeding like a cow, never having any fun.” She abruptly dropped her pose and leaned against one hand tiredly, something stark in her eyes. “No, darling, Damien would never marry me. Unsuitable family background, no ties or money—he’ll marry in the business, if I’m not mistaken.”

The blond man across from her was watching her with a strange, sad expression on his rather stern face. “Jessica, Jessica,” he said with a queer moan. “I’ve known you so long, and in the past three years you’ve changed almost beyond recognition. Where is that girl who told me so tempestuously that she’d never marry without love? Where is the girl who had stars in her eyes and a wonderful, simplistic way of looking at life and her ideals? Where is the girl whose flamingly explosive temper used to ignite almost instantaneously, at any given moment? Jessica, where did that splendid creature go?”

She regarded him wryly, with a small shake of her shapely head. Something in his words touched a part of her that quivered in response, but for the most part she was in disagreement with him. Once she had been that person he had described, but he didn’t see the entirety of that past girl. He preferred to remember the good and forget the bad, and that was always a dangerous thing to do with the past. She’d once been every bit as tempestuous and explosive as Justin had described, but it was an unprincipled sort of high-spiritedness that had caused many problems. Along with the impetuosity had come a bit of indiscretion and along with the glorious red hair a vile temper. And the simplistic way of looking at life had never had a chance. One can’t exist in this world, she thought, with a simplistic view of life. It can’t be done; the world is too complex, too tangled and demanding. Black and white are good for ideals and religion, but people are varying shades of grey and even the most saintly have the dirt of sin on their hands.

She would never go back to what she had been before. That extreme youthfulness had been too uncomfortable. She was older and more experienced now, and more in control. She no longer flew off the handle at everything that went wrong. She was a pure professional at her job, hardworking, conscientious and dedicated, and it had got her a sterling reputation which was highly respected. She wouldn’t deliberately throw that away, and it had all been learned and earned with the control of her temper and that gloss and public poise that was both legendary and envied.

Lights! Camera! Sadness…

Golden Girl

© 2013 Anne Beverley

Most girls would jump at the opportunity to model for a brand new cosmetics line, but Lisa Morgan is different.
 
She resists being the “face” of Golden Girl until she learns it’s the only way she can save the career of the man she has come to love.
 

Within days her new and glamorous lifestyle leads her into a web of jealousy and competition that she doesn’t understand. The man she loves is fighting with another for power over the company, while the old man in charge prepares to die. And when Lisa realizes that his last wish is to see the Golden Girl campaign succeed, she knows she’ll never be able to back out of the agreement, even though it is tearing her apart.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Golden Girl:

Lisa paused by her bedroom door. The room looked strangely empty despite the white furniture and the pink, sprigged curtains that exactly matched the dusky rose of the carpet. Bereft of its usual scatter of bottles on the dressing table and without a pile of books beside the bed, it proclaimed her imminent departure.

Closing the door gently behind her, she made her way down the wide staircase into the hall. Her leather suitcases, their very newness accentuated by shiny brass buckles and the fresh white labels in Perspex holders, stood by the front door.

Her mother was waiting for her; a small, frail figure in a grey dress. Lisa repressed a surge of guilt as their eyes met. She knew how much her mother would miss her, but this opportunity to work in London was too good to refuse.

When she had started work with Newton and May, a small firm manufacturing skin creams, she had been determined to carve a successful career for herself. At eighteen, a junior shorthand typist fresh from secretarial college, she had worked hard and had seen her efforts rewarded until, at twenty-two, she was personal assistant to Charles Graham, the technical director.

Several months previously Newton and May had been bought out by Genet Matthieu, a large private company with factories in England and France. A household name on both sides of the Channel, Genet Matthieu manufactured inexpensive skin and hair-care products and small range of cosmetics.

Within weeks of the merger Charles Graham had moved to the London head office in order to consolidate the whole manufacturing operation, and Lisa had been delighted when he asked her to join him. She knew that she was a good secretary and she felt she had earned this proof of her ability.

Her mother had been less pleased. Widowed when Lisa was twelve, she had come to rely on her daughter’s company and friendship. She had rarely interfered with Lisa’s social life, but had taken pleasure in having her at home at a time when many of her friends’ children were leaving the nest.

She spoiled and cosseted Lisa. A wealthy woman, she had never been able to deny her only daughter anything; but her fragile sensitivity had always prevented Lisa from taking advantage of her generosity. Indeed, in recent years her mother had often amused a strongly protective instinct in her, and this surfaced again now as she reached the bottom stair. Mother and daughter gazed mutely at one another as the impatient horn of a taxi sounded outside.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to see you off, darling?” Mrs. Morgan’s eyes were bright with unshed tears as she opened the door.

“No, Mother!” Lisa’s voice was firm as they followed the taxi driver down the neatly bordered front path to the waiting car. “You’d only be unhappy, and anyway, I’ll be home to see you again in a few weeks.”

Her luggage safely stowed in the boot, she turned, a gentle smile on her lovely face. She put her arm round her mother’s thin shoulders and hugged her. Mrs. Morgan clung to her for a moment, her tiny frame fragile and pale beside Lisa’s tall, vivid beauty. Then, with a visible straightening of her back, she drew away and held open the car door.

The taxi driver revved the engine impatiently as Lisa sank into the seat. “You’ll miss the train, luv,” he said, his hand pushing the gear lever into place. She realised that he was anxious to be at the station in plenty of time to meet travellers from the incoming train, and she smiled apologetically as she leaned through the window to kiss her mother.