The Cinderella Factor Read online

  She stood very still.

  And then he shifted, broke the contact, turned and walked to the window. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his dark trousers.

  Without looking at her, he said, ‘Do you know why I don’t allow girls to work for me?’

  Jo was so shaken by that moment and its abrupt termination that she could hardly find her voice. She shook her head. He looked round, impatiently.

  ‘No,’ she said in a croak. ‘But—’

  ‘Eight years ago, when I began to be something of a celebrity,’ he said evenly, ‘a girl of very much your age decided she would like to be a celebrity, too.’

  Jo was hardly listening to his story. So he was a celebrity, she thought. What sort of celebrity? Why, oh, why had she never bothered to question Crispin about what his absent brother did for a living?

  ‘She thought the best way—well, maybe not the best, but the quickest—was to attach herself to me. Preferably permanently. If not that, then as publicly as possible, however brief the encounter.’

  His voice was quite without emotion. He might have been talking about someone else. Jo was puzzled.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She joined my staff as a researcher. She was too young, of course. Still only in her second year at college.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jo, with foreboding. ‘Like you thought I was?’

  ‘Like you, yes. But I knew her father in Washington, and he asked me to give her a vacation job.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  He looked at her briefly. ‘It’s interesting that you think it was she who did something rather than me. You are right, of course.’

  He withdrew his gaze to the immaculate lawns again.

  ‘She made it plain that she was attracted to me. More than that, that she wanted an affair with me. I didn’t take it seriously. I was very busy. I didn’t really pay enough attention, I suppose. I told her it was an adolescent crush and forgot about the whole thing. Even eight years ago,’ he added remotely, ‘I was too old for college girls.’

  Jo winced. She nearly said, I’m not a college girl, but then thought better of it. Patrick Burns was still too old for her. Not just in age. In all his experience of games that he knew the rules of and she didn’t.

  It was just as well he was taking the trouble to kill those embryo fantasies of hers. They would not have done her any good at all.

  Instead, she said, ‘You forgot, but she didn’t?’

  ‘Yes. One night we were in Washington. Not just the two of us, of course. The whole team. I was doing an all-night commentary. She told the others she had a date and went off about midnight.’

  Suddenly, Jo could see what was coming. ‘Oh, Lord.’

  This time he did not look at her. ‘It was about four when I got back to my room. I saw a couple of photographers in the corridor, but, hell, they could have been linking with Japan, Singapore—anything. I didn’t particularly notice them. When I got into my room, Maddie, of course, was waiting for me. All curled up in bed. No clothes, but full make-up.’

  His voice was not emotionless now. Jo could hear the anger.

  ‘She was even watching television to keep her awake.’ He was cynical. ‘She claimed she’d been watching me, of course, but it looked more like a late-night movie to me.’

  ‘Why did she need to be kept awake?’ Jo asked.

  If she were curled up naked in Patrick Burns’s bed, waiting for him to come home, she wouldn’t have any trouble in keeping awake, she thought involuntarily. And she wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on a movie, either.

  She had a strange sense of suffocation at the thought. She pushed it away from her. That image walking around in her subconscious was not going to do her any good at all.

  ‘So she could make the position plain. Either I took up her generous offer or she cried rape,’ he said brutally.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She wasn’t joking, either. I lost my temper. I was tired, of course. I could probably have been kinder. Some of it may have been my fault. I asked myself that over and over again—and so did the lawyers. But the plain fact was that I told her to get her clothes on and get back to her own room. When she wouldn’t, I hauled her out of bed, dressed her myself and shoved her out into the corridor. To a reception committee with cameras and notebooks poised for my on-the-spot comments.’

  ‘She told them you’d raped her?’ Jo said in horror.

  ‘She didn’t have to,’ Patrick said dryly. ‘She was in tears, with her clothes all over the place, and I was manhandling her out of my room at four in the morning. The photographs made me look brutal enough for anything.’

  ‘What happened?’

  He shrugged, turning away from the window. ‘I lost my job. Her father threatened all sorts of violence. I didn’t blame him. He was a nice guy.’

  ‘Were you prosecuted?’ Jo was appalled.

  ‘No. The thing never really stood up. As my lawyers kept pointing out, the guys from the newspaper had no reason to be in that corridor unless they were waiting for something. The photographers even admitted as much. And there were plenty of witnesses that she had been chasing me.’ He made a sudden grimace of distaste. ‘It became a political thing as well, of course, because she had worked for me.’

  ‘Political?’

  ‘There is a keen market for how-my-boss-harassed-me articles. Maddie did quite well out of it, I’m told. Although she still swears revenge.’

  Jo thought suddenly that she would not like to be in Maddie’s shoes if she ever met Patrick Burns again.

  ‘And, of course, there are people all over the States who think I did it and should have gone to jail. Including my old friend, her father.’

  That had hurt. You could see it had hurt. Jo made a small move towards him. She curbed it immediately. Whoever might be permitted to offer him sympathy, Patrick Burns was not going to allow a young girl to touch him again ever.

  She said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was not a good time,’ he agreed. ‘For a while I thought my career was over. Then I got the job with Mercury News and hit the really big time. It’s not just celebrity in the States now. I’m recognised in every city where they have satellite television. Statesmen ask my advice. Rock stars ask me to their parties.’ He sounded deeply cynical.

  ‘And what do the young girls do?’ Jo asked quietly. Because that was the point of this, wasn’t it? He was telling her she had to go, after all.

  ‘The nice ones run like hell. They know my reputation, you see. It’s there in every profile in every magazine. I counted once. It’s been written up in twenty-three languages.’

  She did not commiserate. This was too important. She was not quite sure why.

  ‘Okay,’ she said levelly. ‘And what do the others do? The girls who aren’t nice?’

  ‘They run like hell, too. But in the opposite direction. They turn up as interpreters, chauffeurs, chambermaids…I thought I’d seen it all. But not one of them ever turned up pretending to be a boy before.’

  Jo’s spine flicked straight as steel. She said, ‘I’ll go tomorrow.’

  There was a long pause. Then he said quietly, ‘Do you know, I think you’ve convinced me?’

  She was turning away. She looked over her shoulder ‘What?’

  ‘I find I’m believing that you’re only interested in the cars. That you’re not preparing a story on “My Night with Dracula”.’

  Jo shivered again. She could not help it.

  He said, ‘It might just work.’

  She said nothing. But she didn’t leave the room, either. She looked at him, half resigned, half hopeful. And she really did not know what she was hoping for.

  ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll give it a try. You can stay. And God help both of us if I’m wrong.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BUT it came at a price, of course.

  ‘You’ve got to tell Nanny Morrison that you’re a girl.’

  It was almost a relief.
But, ‘She’ll think I’m a real bitch—deceiving her like that when she can’t see properly.’

  ‘You should have thought of that when you started it,’ Patrick said unsympathetically. ‘Serves you right.’

  ‘I wish I’d never set eyes on your stupid brother or your stupid cars,’ she raged.

  ‘Confess or move on,’ he said, unmoved.

  At least she had no illusions, Jo thought sourly. Patrick Burns didn’t give a damn if she stayed or went. That little flicker of awareness had all been in her own head. As far as he was concerned she was not only a gargoyle with big feet, she was a liar and a cheat as well.

  ‘I’ll confess.’

  ‘You’d better. I’ll check.’

  ‘I’ll just bet you will,’ muttered Jo.

  He had picked up some papers from the big mahogany desk, but he looked up at that, his eyes glinting.

  ‘Count on it.’ He gave a nod. It was clear Jo was dismissed. She went, grinding her teeth. But she knew what she had to do.

  It was horribly difficult. She cornered Mrs Morrison in the kitchen and had the worst time getting the kind cook to stop offering her food and listen. She stood first on one leg, then the other, muttered inaudibly, and at last got it out.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she finished. ‘I never meant— It’s just that when you made the mistake in the first place, Crispin said that it was heaven sent. He said if you knew I was a girl you’d write and tell Patrick.’ It sounded lame, even in her own ears.

  Mrs Morrison said nothing.

  Jo went on desperately, ‘So the job sort of depended on it. And I really need this job.’

  Mrs Morrison patted her hand. ‘Don’t worry, my dear. I’ve needed a job, too, in my time.’

  Jo felt worse and worse. ‘I never thought what a horrid position it would put you in,’ she said wretchedly. ‘I’ve felt a pig. It’s the one thing that’s spoiled this place ever since I started here.’ Now, of course, there was arrogant Patrick Burns to spoil it. But she wasn’t going into that now. ‘I am so sorry.’

  Mrs Morrison put an arm round her and gave her shoulders a quick squeeze. ‘There, there. No need for a drama. We all make mistakes.’

  ‘You,’ said Jo shakily, ‘must have been an absolutely fabulous nanny.’

  She had to dive for the garage or she would have burst into tears on the spot.

  George Morrison was more inclined to take offence than his wife. He did not ask Jo to wheel him to the river that evening, like he usually did. But his wife was just puzzled.

  ‘Why on earth did Crispin think I’d mind a girl coming here to work in the first place?’ she said that evening over a kitchen supper.

  George was not talking. Jo could not really blame him.

  She said, ‘I—er—I don’t think it was you he was worried about. It was arro—’ She caught herself. ‘He said his brother wouldn’t have a girl in the place.’

  ‘Patrick? But why on earth? He has plenty of ladies come to see him and they stay as long as they want. George always says he’s a bit of a rake, in fact. Don’t you, George?’

  George’s offence dissolved a bit.

  ‘I expect it’s that business of the Kaufman girl,’ he said, interested. ‘Got him drummed out of America, that did. If Mercury News hadn’t headhunted him he would have been down the Labour Exchange.’

  Jo was puzzled. ‘Labour Exchange?’

  ‘Job Centre is what you call it these days,’ translated George, thawing a bit more.

  ‘George follows all the economic stuff,’ Mrs Morrison said, proudly. ‘Patrick says he’s a walking encyclopedia—doesn’t he, George?’ She stopped, shaking her head. ‘But that business with Maddie Kaufman was ages ago,’ she added comfortably. ‘And you can’t say Patrick took against women because of it. He’s always out with one or the other. I see photographs in the magazines.’

  ‘In London, maybe,’ said the shrewder George. ‘When he can send them home. Remember how he insisted that Mercury get him a male PA? I reckon he’s not going to let any of them get their claws into him again.’

  ‘You’re exaggerating,’ Mrs Morrison said calmly. ‘Anyway, Madame Legrain comes here. Stays the night, too.’

  Jo nearly jumped. Then she caught herself. Of course Patrick Burns would have a lover. He was sexy as hell. Rich, too. And clearly successful at whatever he did. That arrogance told its own story. There was bound to be someone for sexy, glamorous Patrick Burns.

  George sent his wife a minatory look. ‘Gossip does no one any good. Patrick has had more than his fair share of it, I’d say.’

  Mrs Morrison was unrepentant. ‘It isn’t gossip to say he’s got a girlfriend,’ she said placidly. ‘I expect they’ll get married one day. People just don’t seem to do things in the same order these days.’

  Jo thought suddenly, This is for my benefit. Ouch.

  Could she have betrayed what had happened by the river somehow? That zing of awareness? Double ouch.

  Outwardly, she intensified her boredom signals.

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said, helping herself to more salad with concentration. ‘All sounds a bit elderly for me.’

  The housekeeper was convinced.

  ‘Will you still be staying over in the barn? It’s bleak for a lass.’

  Jo, to whom the Spartan lines of the bedsitter over the garage were an undreamed-of luxury, laughed aloud.

  ‘It’s great. I love it. Patrick—er, Mr Burns—never said anything about moving.’

  George and his wife exchanged glances.

  ‘Oh, well then,’ said Mrs Morrison, after an odd pause. ‘I won’t make up a room in the house just yet.’

  Jo said goodbye, and left.

  It was just as well the motherly housekeeper didn’t know how her heart jumped and dived whenever she looked at Patrick Burns, she thought. How just the turn of his head made something under her breastbone clench hard with fierce longing.

  ‘Remember Madame Legrain,’ she told herself robustly. ‘And what happened the last time you let yourself get wistful over a man. Jacques couldn’t run fast enough. You can’t let Patrick Burns get to you.’

  But there was nothing wistful about the way her blood leaped when those tiger’s eyes rested on her. Worse, she was almost certain that he knew it.

  Okay, then. She was going to have to be very, very careful.

  ‘I can do that,’ she said aloud. Though for a moment she almost wondered if the job and the roof over her head were worth it.

  The evening had nearly turned to full night as she made her way across the raked gravel to the barn. The house cast a long shadow. It enfolded the vegetable garden, the overgrown herb garden, the tangle of nettles and meadow grasses at the very end of the garden before it touched the open fields. The air was still, except for the sound of a distant bird.

  Gorgeous, thought Jo. Her mouth tilted as she remembered the grubby streets and crowded pizza parlours she had left behind. Yes, it was definitely worth it. She would just have to find a way to neutralise arrogant Patrick.

  She gave a choke of laughter at the thought. Fat chance. Patrick was not the sort of man to let anyone neutralise him. Even on the strength of two meetings she knew that.

  She was still chuckling at the thought when she realised the barn door was open. Alarmed, she felt for her keys. But they were still there, safe in the pocket of her jeans. And she was sure she had locked up properly before she went to the farm. So someone with a key must have opened the door.

  Her heart looped down and up as if it were on a yo-yo.

  Friend or foe? Stranger or someone she knew?

  Jo remembered how bravely she had told Patrick that you had to turn and face the enemy. Over-confidence, or what? She could have laughed aloud at her own naïveté. She had never felt this sort of fear before—half trepidation, half a sweet, tremulous excitement. With a strong lashing of embarrassment thrown in.

  Who am I kidding? I’m ninety-eight per cent certain it’s Patrick in there! And it scares me to deat
h.

  She straightened her shoulders and went inside, treading as softly as she knew how. After the hot twilit courtyard, the cool interior struck black. Jo blinked, staggered, and put out a hand to steady herself.

  ‘Made your peace?’ asked Patrick Burns’s voice from the shadows.

  She nearly screamed. Only years of learning to keep a lid on alarm stopped her. She swallowed hard and took hold of herself.

  ‘Yes. She was very kind.’

  Her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. He was standing by the old Rolls-Royce, one foot on the running board.

  ‘So you’re forgiven?’ The quiet voice was ironic.

  ‘Mr Morrison hasn’t made his mind up yet.’

  ‘He’ll come round.’ He sounded equivocal, as if he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted George Morrison to come round.

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll charm him into forgiving you in time.’ There was a faint edge to his voice. ‘Now, show me your living quarters.’

  Jo looked at him doubtfully.

  ‘You mean the apartment upstairs?’

  ‘From what I remember, “apartment” is a bit of an exaggeration,’ he said dryly. ‘It was an attic when I last saw it.’

  ‘Oh, no, it’s much better than that,’ Jo assured him. ‘Come and see.’

  He took his foot off the running board and came round the gleaming car to her. He was limping slightly.

  ‘You’ve been standing in one position too long,’ Jo said, leading the way to the stairs at the end of the garage.

  He stopped at the bottom and looked up them, frowning. Then he looked back at the main doors, as if gauging the distance.

  ‘Oh, the limp,’ he said absently. ‘No, I brought that with me. Anyone who comes into the garage has access to the flat, don’t they?’

  Jo wanted to ask about his limp, but he was clearly not going to talk about it. So she shrugged and answered his question.

  ‘I think that’s the point,’ she said dryly. ‘If you have someone living over the shop you want to be able to talk to them whenever you want to use one of the cars. I thought that was why you had the flat built in the first place. Keep the chauffeur on call?’