The Baby Scandal

‘No,’ she denied quickly, staring back into his blue eyes. ‘I blush with everyone…no discrimination there, I’m afraid…I’m just hopeless when it comes to that kind of thing. Anyway, you never said what you wanted to talk to me about…’

‘Oh, didn’t I?’

‘No,’ she said drily, ‘you didn’t.’

He flashed her a smile. ‘Perhaps that’s because I’ve been beating about the bush trying to think of how best I can put my suggestion to you. And, before you ask, it has nothing to do with writing articles for the magazine.’

‘Then what?’

‘Like I said to you, I think we need to get back to hard-hitting articles, the sort of stories that people are interested in and can identify with.’ He rubbed his chin thoughtfully with his finger, then stood up and began pacing through the room, as though his brain needed the physical movement to work clearly. ‘And I intend to lead by example.’

‘Oh?’ Ruth felt like someone who had accidentally strayed into a maze and was in the process of getting more and more lost.

‘I intend to tackle the first article myself—get a feel for what’s out there and what our best vantage point is when it comes to reporting it…’

‘I thought you were a businessman,’ Ruth said, aware that she must have missed something vital but not too sure what it could be.

‘I have lots of strings to my bow,’ he murmured, waiting for her to ask for clarification and then disproportionately irked when she simply nodded and informed him that diving in the deep end and doing some reporting himself sounded a very good idea to her.

‘Was that your intention when you bought the magazine?’ she asked, and he frowned his incomprehension at her question. ‘I mean,’ she elaborated slowly, ‘to get involved in the reporting side of things. Must make quite a change from working in an office…’

‘I don’t work in an office!’ he growled. ‘I run companies.’

‘I know. But from the inside of an office.’

‘Yes, admittedly, I have a desk, and all the usual accoutrements of my trade, but…’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.’

He muttered something inaudible under his breath and wondered how on earth he could have such chokingly erotic fantasies about someone whose eyes barely rested on him long enough to establish that he was a man. Never mind an immensely rich and powerful one.

‘I just wondered,’ she ploughed on, ‘whether your decision to get involved has to do with your boredom at the office…’

This time the indecipherable noise was somewhat louder and more alarming.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ruth said a little desperately, wondering how she had managed to put both feet in it with such apparent ease. ‘I forgot. You don’t work at an office. Well, you more or less own the office, and you’re not bored. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said what I did. I must be tired. It’s been an awfully tiring weekend.’

‘Has it? Doing what, Ruth?’ he asked slyly. ‘Are you and that boy out there involved? Because I tell you from now that I don’t encourage office romances. The first thing to suffer is usually the work.’

‘What?’ Ruth asked, appalled at his sweeping assumptions. How had they swerved off onto this topic anyway? She thought that they had been discussing his idea to do a spot of reporting. Now here they were on the subject of her personal life, and her non-existent love-life at that.

‘I asked you whether—’

‘I heard you! No! Of course not! Jack and I are friends! I wouldn’t dream of… No…’

Franco tried not to smile with satisfaction. He couldn’t have explained why, but from the minute he had come upon the two of them in the office, clearly at ease with one another, he had been determined to find out what was going on. The surprise on her face at the thought of being romantically involved with the boy was enough to persuade him of the honesty of her reply.

In some part of him he could feel that this was getting out of hand. Mild interest was fine, but she was getting under his skin, making him want more of her… He shifted his position and abruptly sat down, because his body was responding to her with its now familiar obstinate refusal to obey the commands of his head.

‘Good, because for what I have in mind romantic involvement is not such a good idea.’ He glanced up at her and asked casually, ‘You’re not involved with anyone, are you? I mean, no lovers on the scene?’ He knew that he was shamelessly exploiting his situation, taking advantage of his position to prise answers out of her that he wanted to know and she, quite possibly, did not want to reveal, but he blithely squashed any guilt.

‘No!’ Her face was flushed and she fought down her instinctive embarrassment at his forthrightness to say, somewhat belatedly, ‘And you have no right to ask me questions like that. What I do in my private life is…’

‘I know, I know…’ he said, ready to apologise now that he had heard what he needed to know. ‘And I’m deeply sorry at having to intrude into your privacy, but my proposition… I want you to work alongside me on a certain project I have in mind.’

Ruth thought that she must have misheard what he had said, but, when no further clarification was forthcoming, she said, with a regretful smile, ‘I thought I’d made it perfectly clear. I’m hopeless at writing. I don’t think I’d be any good at all.’

‘You won’t be asked to write anything. I intend to commence a new series of insights into twenty-first-century life in this so called civilised country of ours by running a selection of interviews with young girls who find themselves lured into teenage prostitution.’

At what point, Ruth wondered, was she supposed to roar with laughter at this outrageous idea of his? Or at least outrageous if he intended to include her in it.

Hadn’t she told him that she was a vicar’s daughter?

She could no more work on such a project than she could strip off all her clothes and streak through a football ground.

‘No, I’m very sorry, but I can’t…’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m afraid I’m totally unsuitable for any such assignment,’ she amended, smiling. ‘Not the right kind of girl at all…’

‘Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?’

Wasn’t he listening to a word she was saying?

‘What do you think the right kind of girl is?’ he asked, walking towards her and then stopping directly in front of her, so that now she had to virtually bend her neck backwards to see his face.

‘B-Bold, brassy,’ Ruth stammered. ‘Self-confident. Perhaps you should ask Jan to do it…’

‘That’s not the sort of girl I have in mind for this at all,’ he said, brutally bulldozing her input without qualm. Then he leaned forward and propped himself up against her chair, gripping either side so that she found herself suffocatingly trapped by him. ‘In fact,’ he continued softly, his face close enough now so that she could feel his warm breath against her cheek and see the dark flecks streaking the blue irises of his eyes, ‘the minute I laid eyes on you I knew that you were the woman I wanted…’ He paused, relishing her discomfort. ‘For the job.’

At last he stood back, massaging the back of his neck with one hand before taking a more orthodox position on the chair behind the desk.

‘My parents…’ she protested weakly.

‘Would, I’m sure, like to see you spread your wings. It is why you came to London, isn’t it? Wasn’t that what you told me?’

Ruth glared at him, resenting the fact that he had homed in on a passing remark and was now capitalising on it to justify what he wanted her to do.

‘You’re a big girl now, Ruth,’ he pressed on mercilessly. ‘Time for you to stop running to Mummy and Daddy whenever you need to make a decision. Time for you to face the big, bad world out there and stop trying to hide away from it.’

‘I am not trying to hide from anything.’ Ruth dug her heels in stubbornly. ‘I am just being realistic. My background hasn’t prepared me for dealing with a job of that nature…’

‘So what do you intend to do with your life? Has it ever occurred to you that the most interesting challenges in life are also often the most threatening?’

He was conscious that what he was trying to do was toe a very delicate line. On the one hand he wanted to coerce her into accepting his offer, into working with him. Partly because he genuinely thought that she would be well suited to what he had in mind; partly because the temptation of being close to her was virtually irresistible. On the other hand he was aware that if he pushed too hard she would set her soft mouth in that mute, obstinate line, avert her eyes and simply not budge an inch.

‘I’m not going to ask you to do anything dangerous, Ruth,’ he said in a gentler voice, resisting the urge to steamroller her into doing what he wanted, even though he knew full well that, underneath the shy exterior, this woman was probably immune to being steamrollered. ‘I just know that we’ll be dealing with young girls, asking them questions of a personal nature. They would respond to you far more quickly than they ever would to someone brash and self-assertive. You’re gentle and calm enough to draw confidences out of the kind of girls we’ll be dealing with, and—who knows?—you might even sway one or two of them to reconsider the road they’ve chosen.’

Ruth went pink. She couldn’t help it. She could feel her soft nature being played on by a master musician, but then he was right. She couldn’t run away from everything that had a ring of adventure or risk about it.

He could see the indecision in her eyes and pressed on smoothly, effortlessly, tasting victory. ‘Most of our work will be done at night, which is why it’s important that you don’t have a partner. I wouldn’t want to be accused of taking you away from your loved one. You’ll be able to work here normally a couple of days a week, but you might find that as your body adjusts to working by night you just want to sleep during the days. And it won’t be an assignment that lasts for ever. Two weeks at the most, probably less. Just enough time for us to gain an accurate picture of what’s happening to our young people out there and what’s being done by the government to put an end to it.’

‘Why are you so keen to get involved?’ she asked, buying time while she mulled over the possibilities in her head. ‘Any one of your reporters out there would be more than capable of handling the job.’

‘I like to lead from the front.’ He shot her a wry smile. ‘And maybe you’re right about that remark you made to me about being bored.’ He shrugged expressively and tried to look humble. ‘I have all that I could ever need—or want, for that matter. I started out as a reporter myself, you know.’

He linked his fingers behind his head and leaned back into his hands, staring broodingly up at the ceiling. ‘First on a provincial newspaper, ferreting out dirt and scandal, then on a city newspaper as a financial reporter. Good fun and, as it turned out, a useful passport when I decided to branch out and play around with the money markets myself. Since then I’ve made my money and now—who knows?—maybe I fancy getting back to my roots. Or maybe what I’m looking for is a little…’ he leveled his eyes to hers ‘…excitement.’

Ruth, inexperienced, marvelled at how he could invest a single word with so many hidden, tantalising possibilities.

‘Have you told Alison about your idea…for me? I wouldn’t want to rub anyone’s back up the wrong way…’

‘Absolutely,’ he said expansively, bringing the palms of his hands to rest on the desk and adopting a businesslike expression. ‘Alison thinks it’s a fabulous idea, and she’s going to rally the other reporters to start working on similar contentious issues so that we can pull something together for the issue due at the end of next month. When you’ve finished your stint with me, you’ll be pulled into a more responsible position—maybe occasionally working alongside one of the reporters as back-up.’

‘Oh!’ Ruth said breathlessly, a little awed by the suggestion of such a tremendous promotion.

‘Naturally, this unexpected change of job will be reflected in your pay.’ He whipped a sheet of paper from underneath a paperweight on the desk and waved it in the air, talking at the same time. ‘An immediate increase in your salary, to be followed by another increase in three months’ time if you prove yourself up to your additional responsibilities—if, indeed, you want additional responsibility.

‘All you have to do…’ he leant across the desk and rapped his finger imperiously at the bottom of the sheet of paper ‘…is sign here…’ He produced a fountain pen, seemingly from thin air, and handed it to her before she could open her mouth to protest at the sudden speed of things.

Ruth’s eyes scurried over the closely typed page, briefly taking in the description of her new role, containing an undignified gasp at the enormity of her salary increase.

‘At the bottom,’ he said. ‘Your signature. And then everything’s formalised.’

‘I’m still not sure…’ she said on a deep breath, shifting her eyes away from the piece of paper in front of her with its frightening promises of adventure and money and excitement.

‘Of course you are,’ he said gently. ‘Apprehensive, but sure.’

Ruth frowned, uncertain whether she cared for his ten-second summary of her reaction and then irritated because he was right.

He looked at his watch. ‘You’re not putting your life on the line with this assignment,’ he urged her, raking his long fingers through his hair. ‘A week—and if you hate it, believe me, I won’t force you to carry on. But give yourself the chance to see whether this kind of thing appeals to you.’

A few more seconds of hesitation and then she put her name at the bottom of the piece of paper. Okay, so she wasn’t signing her life away, but the minute she pushed the piece of paper across the desk back to him she felt as though she was signing something away, though what she wasn’t too sure.

Or maybe it was just that trace of smugness tugging the corners of his mouth that made her feel just a tad nervous about what she had agreed to. She was very nearly tempted to snatch the piece of paper out of his hands, rip it into a thousand pieces and then hustle back to her desk. But, with a speed that left her wondering whether the man was a mind-reader, he folded the paper in half, stuck it into his open briefcase, which was perched on the side of the desk, and decisively slammed it shut.

‘Now that’s all settled,’ he said, standing up and shrugging on his jacket, ‘just one or two suggestions before we start work on Wednesday.’

‘On Wednesday?’ she squeaked.

‘Why waste valuable time? No point meeting here. Meet me at The Breakfast Bar in Soho. Here’s the address.’ He scribbled it down for her and she took the paper from him. ‘Eight p.m. sharp. I gather it’s where a lot of young girls hang out when they hit London for the first time. It’s cheap, in the centre of things, and has a reputation for being a useful place to meet people.’

‘How on earth did you find all that out?’

‘I’m clever and talented. Hadn’t you noticed?’ he said in a silky voice, addressing, as it turned out, her downturned head. ‘Anyway,’ he continued crisply, ‘just a couple of suggestions.’

That got her attention. She looked up at him with her peach-smooth skin and wide grey eyes, now holding a hint of a question in them.

‘Dress casually. Jeans, trainers, nothing too…formal. If anything, you’ll want to blend in with some of the girls we’ll be meeting…that way they’ll be more relaxed and more expansive about revealing themselves to a couple of reporters…’

‘How do you know they won’t laugh in our faces and walk away?’

‘I think, actually, they’ll either be flattered or relieved that someone’s taking an interest in them.’ He was by the door now, hand on the doorknob. ‘The way we’ll play this is: questions in the night, and the following evening we’ll debrief over dinner before we start again.’ He smiled at her. ‘And don’t be scared. I’ll look after you.’

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