The Independent Bride Read online

So casual didn’t work. ‘Sandy, this is important to me,’ said Steven quietly.

  The journalist sighed. ‘Okay. I’ll ask around. But too many people keep the Calhouns’ secrets for them. If Pepper wants to maintain a low profile, I won’t find her.’

  And he didn’t.

  Steven stopped being discreet. He asked everyone he could think of if they knew Pepper Calhoun. Nobody did. Fortunately there wasn’t anyone who watched daytime television either, so nobody asked why he wanted to know.

  As far as he could tell, the only people who had picked up his uncharacteristic outburst were a couple of undergraduates. To his dismay, they seemed to be on his side.

  ‘Tell it like it is,’ one of them said, passing him in the chapel quad as he came back from his morning run.

  ‘The oppressed male fights back,’ said the other.

  They bowed gravely and passed on.

  Steven clutched his hair and pelted for his office.

  ‘I’ve got a couple of young fogies thinking I’m Iron John,’ he told Val, in despair.

  Val had also watched the programme, out of simple loyalty. She had not said a word about it. Also out of loyalty, Steven surmised.

  Now she sniffed. ‘More than a couple. There’s a motion in the junior common room suggestions book to invite you and Ms Calhoun to head up the End of Term Debate.’

  ‘Oh.’ Steven thought about it. Maybe the undergraduates would have more success at tracking her down than he had. ‘That sounds interesting.’

  Val’s face was expressionless. ‘Motion: This House holds that men are always wrong.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Steven in quite another voice. He leaned against the corner of his desk and ran his hands through his hair distractedly. ‘This is getting out of hand, isn’t it?’

  Valerie said carefully, ‘It does seem to be preying on your mind a lot. You nearly missed three meetings yesterday. And you do know that you’ve got the Fund-Raising Sub-Committee in ten minutes, don’t you?’

  Steven was still in his running gear, with the sweat stains to prove that it was not just for show. He laughed and got to his feet.

  ‘It’s okay. I hadn’t forgotten. Just cutting it a bit fine. Thank God for living above the shop.’

  He ran up the spiral staircase to his private rooms, pulling his running vest off as he went. Val shook her head after him. Why did a gorgeous man like that have the worst taste in the world in women? Courtney Underwood was a disaster, but at least she was beautiful. Pepper Calhoun looked as if she would flame him if he got anywhere near her. But the man was still driving himself mad trying to find her. Crazy!

  She went back to her own room, where Windflower was playing on the computer. Steven had found a school for her and the college staff were helping out as best they could.

  ‘Finishing your homework?’ asked Val, setting up for the day.

  Windflower shook her head. ‘Visiting my friend Pepper’s website.’

  ‘Nine-year-olds have websites now, do they?’ said Val, amused. Then she did a doubletake. ‘Pepper?’

  She went to look. The site seemed to be telling a story of some sort, with pictures of an old house and an orchard and a woman with wild red curls picking apples…

  Steven was running lightly down the stairs, on his way to the senior common room. She put her head out of the door.

  ‘Master, there’s something here I think you should see.’

  ‘I haven’t got time—’

  ‘I think I may have found a way of contacting Ms Calhoun.’

  The Fund-Raising Sub-Committee had to wait for the Master for nearly an hour.

  Out of the Attic had a great launch party. Even Pepper, who hated parties and never went to them unless she had to, agreed that it was a great party. Not a big party, but select. Everyone was there for a purpose—journalists, magazine editors, photographers. Pepper had worked hard at the guest list—and even harder at what she had to say to each one individually.

  ‘Just my sort of party,’ she told Izzy, looking round the small, full room with satisfaction.

  Izzy was working full time with Pepper on Out of the Attic these days. She grinned. ‘You mean it’s all work, no play.’

  Pepper was getting used to being teased. ‘I mean it has focus,’ she said loftily.

  Jemima, adding her lustrous presence and fashion model name for free, stopped beside them for a moment.

  ‘Everyone I’ve talked to is very impressed. You’re going to do it, Pepper.’

  Pepper nodded. ‘It’s looking good,’ she agreed. ‘Now, next I have to talk to—’ She scanned the room. And stiffened abruptly. ‘What is he doing here?’

  Izzy looked round, bewildered. ‘Who? Where?’

  ‘If you mean the hunk with the eyebrows,’ said Jemima, ‘he says you met on a plane.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve met all right,’ said Pepper grimly. ‘Though the only thing airborne was my temper.’

  The other two looked at her.

  ‘You mean that’s him?’ Izzy was incredulous. ‘How dare he show his face here?’

  Jemima subjected the interloper to a dispassionate assessment. ‘Looks as if he’d dare most things. You didn’t say he was so sexy, Pepper.’

  Her cousin’s look spoke volumes. Jemima threw up her hands, laughing.

  ‘Okay. Okay. I think he’s sexy. You think he’s a toad. What are you going to do about him?’

  ‘Throw him out,’ said Izzy with enthusiasm.

  But Pepper looked at all the photographers she had invited and ground her teeth.

  ‘We can’t do that. So far no one seems to have picked up on that terrible programme. Let’s keep it that way.’

  ‘How?’ asked Izzy, unversed in the codes of publicity.

  Jemima, however, lived by it. ‘Chat brightly. Make like he’s Pepper’s dearest friend. Or someone will pick up the atmosphere—and then you can say a big hello to tomorrow’s headlines. Isn’t that right, Pepper?’

  ‘It’s a risk,’ agreed Pepper.

  She narrowed her eyes. Across the room Steven Konig had accepted a glass of her champagne and was talking absorbedly to a financial columnist from one of the broadsheets. As if he felt her eyes on him, he looked up.

  And raised his glass in silent toast, as if they were friends. Intimate friends. As if they were lovers.

  Pepper drew a little hissing breath. Publicity or no publicity, she was going to get Steven Konig right between those devil’s eyebrows. She owed it to herself and all women.

  ‘I’ll deal with this,’ she said.

  She walked away from her cousins without a backward look. She left them open-mouthed.

  ‘Wow,’ said Jemima. ‘Fasten your seatbelts.’

  Two could play at the intimacy game. Pepper went bang up to Steven Konig and gave him a warm, false smile. He looked uncertain for a moment. She was glad.

  But he recovered fast. ‘So you got your funding. You certainly deserve to. I looked at the website. Very intriguing. I was impressed, I admit.’

  ‘Good,’ said Pepper, keeping her bright smile in place. ‘Drink to the success of Out of the Attic and go.’

  He raised his glass to her with deep, deep mockery. ‘World peace.’

  Pepper’s eyes glittered. She raised her glass in response. ‘Boils on your bum,’ she said, borrowing from Izzy, inspired. Her smile did not falter.

  Steven blinked. Her smile widened to genuine delight. Across the room, the photographer aimed his camera, snapping hard. Pepper saw it. It would look as if they were flirting. Good, she thought viciously. She hoped that whoever his partner in life was, she gave him hell over it.

  She leaned towards him and put a confiding hand on his arm. He had to bend his tall head to hear her.

  ‘You bastard,’ she said sweetly.

  Steven’s eyes gleamed. ‘That’s what I want to talk about.’

  It was Pepper’s turn to be confused. ‘What?’

  ‘Bastard I may be. Stupid I undoubtedly am. But I never meant that damned tel
evision programme to get personal.’

  He looked so honest. So remorseful.

  Just as well that she remembered the last man to look honest and remorseful. Ed had looked so convincing. She had thought he was a friend. And in the end he had just treated her like a commodity. She was not going to make that mistake again. Especially not with Lord Zog.

  Pepper snatched her hand away from his arm. She said chattily, ‘You know, men do that so well.’

  He was wary. ‘Do what?’

  ‘That I’m-so-sorry-I-sold-you-down-the-river thing.’

  Steven bit his lip. ‘I’m sorry you think that.’

  She gave a light, hard laugh. ‘And then you say, everything is allowed in business.’

  ‘No,’ he said, revolted.

  ‘And I have to learn not to be such a teen queen about it.’ Her mouth still smiled but her eyes were chips of ice. ‘Am I right?’

  Steven was getting his second wind. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No!’ He was genuinely indignant. ‘And what’s more I think I’ve just been getting the speech for some other chap’s prosecution.’

  Pepper was taken aback.

  He saw it and pressed his advantage home. ‘Look, I spoke without thinking. There’s some stuff going on in my private life and I—just went over the top. It was nothing to do with you, whatever it looked like.’

  She sniffed. But it was difficult to stay furious in the face of such a whole-hearted climb-down.

  Steven stepped closer. ‘It wasn’t fair. I’m really sorry.’

  Pepper wavered for a moment. Maybe this was genuine. Maybe he wasn’t playing some clever game with a useful commodity. Maybe—

  But then he said, ‘Look, have dinner with me. Let me make peace properly.’

  She was tempted. She was really tempted. And in the end that was what stopped her dead in her tracks. Temptation made you vulnerable.

  She thought, Hell, it’s a mercy date! He thinks I’m such a potato I’ll do anything for an evening with a man.

  On pure adrenaline, she rapped out, ‘No, thank you,’ before she had time to think about it.

  Steven was stunned. No doubt about it. His head went back as if she had hit him.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ he said blankly.

  Pepper retreated, breathing hard. ‘I mean no way; it’s not going to happen; forget it,’ she said crisply.

  ‘But—’

  ‘You’ve apologised. Thank you. Goodbye.’

  His eyes narrowed in what she thought of as his Lord Zog look. ‘I’m not leaving.’

  Pepper narrowed her eyes right back at him. ‘Oh, I think you are. This is my party, Professor Konig.’

  He smiled. ‘It is indeed. And stuffed to the gills with journalists. Do you really want to give them a gift like that?’

  ‘Huh?’

  Steven was amused. ‘Well, put it this way. I won’t go quietly.’

  Their eyes locked. Impasse. Pepper felt her pulse beat faster…There was something about his expression…Again she had that fierce stab of memory, as if she had met him before. More, as if he were important.

  Her face must have changed, because he closed the distance between them.

  ‘Unless you come, too,’ he said in a quick, urgent undervoice. ‘In fact, why don’t you do that? Come with me now. I know somewhere we can talk.’

  For a moment she was tempted. For a moment she looked into his dark eyes and all she could see was Steven Konig wanting her. Pepper’s mouth dried in a way it had not since she was a teenager.

  Teenager! Teen Queen! Mercy Date!

  She struggled back to the real world.

  ‘We talked,’ she said coldly. ‘Not a great experience for me. I’m not standing in line to do it again.’

  Even that didn’t crush the man. He was as tough as an alligator—and as tricky.

  ‘You’re missing a good thing.’ And he was smiling.

  As if she were a child having a tantrum—and would know better in a while!

  A red mist came up before Pepper’s eyes. She heard herself say, ‘Okay, if that’s what you want. Stick around. Get loaded on my champagne. Enjoy yourself.’

  ‘Thank you. I will. I am.’ Laughter bubbled in his voice.

  She ignored that. ‘Just keep away from me. Come near me again and I’ll throw something. Journalists, cameras—they can go jump! I’m warning you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Steven gravely. But his eyes danced.

  Pepper nearly emptied her glass over his head there and then. Only the thought that he would probably find that funny too stopped her.

  She made a noise like an infuriated wasp and turned on her heel.

  She was shaken. She had never lost her cool like that before. She was Penelope Anne Calhoun, the coolest head on campus, the girl who had gone to business receptions before she was out of hair ribbons. Yet she had forgotten her upbringing. Even forgotten what was at stake at this party. Just for a moment, all she had wanted to do was upend her glass of champagne over Steven Konig’s laughing face and dance with rage.

  She was disgusted with herself. She was behaving like some society beauty having a spat with a regency rake, instead of a responsible twenty-first-century businesswoman.

  Izzy came over, concerned. ‘What is it?’

  ‘This crazy country. It’s getting to me,’ Pepper muttered.

  Izzy looked past her shoulder. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Just the country? That’s a man on the prowl, if ever I saw one.’

  Pepper refused to look. ‘You’re joking.’

  Izzy pursed her lips. ‘Sexy, too. Maybe it’s time to play again? Just a little? I mean now that you know where you’re going, with Out of the Attic up and running, you’d have a bit more time.’

  Pepper was outraged. ‘Don’t even go there. That is so not going to happen.’

  Izzy was alarmed. After all, she worked for Pepper now. She had been looking forward to a summer that was more relaxed than the last hectic weeks.

  She said reproachfully, ‘You said once we’d got the first phase funding…’

  Pepper waved it aside. ‘That’s just the start. I told you. I’m a woman on a mission. No one is going to get in my way. Especially not Lord Zog.’

  And she stamped off to do some serious sucking up to one of her targeted editors.

  She had been working the room hard for more than an hour by the time Martin Tammery arrived. She was talking to Sandy Franks, one of the best-connected financial stringers in London. They both looked up as Martin waved ostentatiously.

  ‘Pepper!’ he called, heading towards them.

  Sandy Franks raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re on first-name terms?’

  ‘I went on his programme. I guess any guest who doesn’t end up suing him becomes a long-term buddy,’ said Pepper dryly.

  ‘Oh, this new thing of his. In My Experience. I heard about that.’ He looked at her shrewdly. ‘Got yourself in a bit of a pickle, I’m told.’

  She stiffened. ‘Oh?’

  ‘They say you went head to head with Steven Konig over a woman’s right to neurosis,’ said Sandy Franks, unperturbed.

  Pepper’s polite smile was rigid. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  He stopped teasing and grinned. ‘No need to look like that. People were bound to tell me. I’m too well connected. I doubt if anyone else in this room has heard a whisper. They don’t watch daytime television. And Indigo won’t run it again. Or sell on clips, either, from what I’ve heard.’

  She was still as tense as a steel hauser, but she frowned, momentarily distracted. ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Steven Konig put the fear of God into Tammery. And the board of Indigo, too, I hear.’

  ‘What?’ Pepper stared. ‘Steven Konig stopped them passing it round? I don’t believe you! I haven’t heard anything about it.’

  Franks’ grin widened. ‘I told you. I’m very well connected. I hear everything.’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘But why
would he bother? He wasn’t the one who looked like a total loser.’

  ‘Who knows? Maybe he has a conscience,’ said Franks airily. Steven had tracked him down only ten minutes ago and primed him comprehensively. ‘Better take it up with him yourself.’

  Pepper’s expression answered for her.

  Poor old Steven, thought Sandy Franks. The Tiger Cub was going to see the colour of his liver before she went to the funfair with him. But Steven was a mate. He would do his best for him.

  ‘He’s a good guy, you know. Principled. Could be a multimillionaire but he isn’t. His share of the profits of Kplant go into a trust fund to educate third-world farmers.’

  She showed no sign of being impressed. Sandy Franks sighed. Well, she wouldn’t be, would she? She was a profit-orientated capitalist down to her gleaming fingernails.

  He said, ‘Give the guy a break, Pepper.’

  Then Martin Tammery was upon them. Franks gave up. He stayed just long enough for a polite few words with him and moved on. He headed for the door and the next party on his evening engagement list.

  ‘Forget it, old chum,’ he said in Steven’s ear as he passed. ‘It’s hopeless. Women just don’t listen.’

  Steven looked across the room at Pepper. She was laughing at something that someone had said to her, and just for a moment she looked like his golden goddess again.

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ he said. ‘I won’t believe that. I’ll get through to her somehow.’

  Franks pulled a face. ‘Rather you than me. You’ll never get that one to climb down. Take it from a veteran dater of professional women.’

  But he was wrong.

  When the party was down to friends and family and the most determined party animals, Pepper made an unexpected move. Watching her, as he had watched all evening, Steven saw her put down her glass, brace herself, and turn resolutely. She marched across the floor as if she were going to face a firing squad. And she was coming to him.

  Steven went towards her. They met in the middle of the room. There was no one near. They might just as well have been on their own.

  Pepper’s chin was at a dangerous angle.

  ‘They tell me you stopped the broadcast.’ She shot it out at him like a duellist’s challenge.

  He said gently, ‘I stopped secondary sales, yes.’