The Independent Bride Page 7

  He leaned forward to the uniformed driver.

  ‘Are you sure this is the right place?’

  ‘That’s what they all say,’ said the driver with gloomy satisfaction. He eased the limousine into the tiniest possible space in the lee of the corrugated iron wall and cut the engine. ‘Back at two, right? Unless you want to stay on for the hospitality.’ It sounded as if he did not expect it.

  What sort of hospitality went with corrugated iron? Illegal moonshine and pork scratchings? Steven’s lips twitched in spite of himself.

  ‘Two o’clock will be fine.’

  The driver got out and opened the door with a flourish. Windflower scrambled out, then shivered in the cold air.

  ‘We must get you some warm clothes,’ said Steven, following her.

  A woman was coming through the yard as carefully as Courtney had picked her way round the bicycles. Steven had the brief impression of a bundle of wet mackintosh and a voluminous headscarf before the woman accosted him.

  ‘Hey, is this dump for real?’

  It was so much what he thought himself that he grinned.

  ‘Afraid so. Do I deduce that you’re another guest of Indigo Television?’

  ‘Guest?’ She snorted. ‘Victim, more like. What do they do to make you feel welcome? Not mug you?’

  The driver said, ‘This way sir, madam.’

  The door was narrow, but it gave onto a corridor that at least was pleasantly painted in pale colours, with pictures on the walls and some sophisticated concealed lighting.

  The lady in the mackintosh layers was not impressed. She stepped inside out of the wet but did not go down the corridor. Instead she raised her voice.

  ‘Hey! Junkyard TV! Anybody home?’

  Behind her, Windflower giggled. Steven looked down at her in surprise. It was the first time he had heard the child laugh, he realised.

  There was no reply. The lady in the mackintoshes sucked her teeth, considering. Then suddenly she stood on one leg and whipped off her shoe. And began to pound rhythmically on a convenient radiator.

  The noise was indescribable. Steven winced. Windflower hopped in sympathy and began to join in. A steel band in a subway would have been a whisper by comparison.

  ‘Enough,’ said Steven.

  Windflower stopped. But her evil genius went on, banging and hollering. The shoe with which she was hitting the radiator, Steven saw, was black patent leather, high-heeled and expensive, with a pirate buckle. So underneath the swathes of mackintosh there was another chic woman used to getting whatever she wanted.

  Steven decided that he didn’t have half as much sympathy with her as he’d thought he did.

  ‘I’ll deal with this,’ he said.

  He stalked down the corridor, throwing doors open as he went. At the third, he was successful.

  ‘You have guests,’ he told the two startled girls chatting in front of the ladies’ room mirror. ‘And hearing loss, apparently. Move.’

  They scurried out into the corridor. Mackintosh woman stopped pounding the ironwork when they appeared. But she eyed them with the look of one about to start again at the slightest provocation.

  ‘Give her a coffee, a seat and somewhere to leave her coat,’ Steven advised them.

  The girls rushed to comply—one in the direction of the coffee machine, the other urging the small party through one of the anonymous doors with unintelligible half-sentences of apology. Windflower skipped along happily. But mackintosh woman hung back.

  She looked at him broodingly. ‘Do people always do what you tell them to do?’

  ‘Always,’ said Steven with composure. ‘You’d better put your shoe on. Need a hand?’

  In the act of pushing her foot into its constricting pump, she stopped dead, arrested. Under the monster headscarf—was she wearing curlers under there?—her face was startled—and furious.

  He gave her his sudden, wicked, blinding smile. ‘Always,’ he said again. ‘You see, I’m always right.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ALWAYS right?

  Pepper could not believe he’d said that. Nobody ever said that, even if they thought it. Even if they were superior, British and male.

  Even if they were a superior British male who was built like a boxer and magicked television receptionists out of midair.

  She lowered her foot to the floor. ‘What planet did you stop ruling to be here?’ she flashed.

  At least it got rid of the smile. That I’m-the-Lord-of-the-Universe and Aren’t-you-lucky-I’m-so-charming smile. For a moment he looked absolutely blank. Good!

  He held out his hand. ‘Steven Konig. Here for In My Experience.’

  ‘I must be here on the wrong day, then.’

  It confused him. ‘What? Why?’

  ‘I’m here to do a programme on entrepreneurs,’ she told him innocently. ‘Not tyrants.’

  ‘Tyrants? Because I told you to put your shoe on?’

  Steven Konig, whoever he might turn out to be, shook his head. He stopped being taken aback and decided to be amused. Pepper could have danced with rage.

  ‘Isn’t that overreaction?’

  Pepper hated being laughed at. She felt the tension in her jaw. ‘You tell me. You’re the one who’s always right.’

  ‘Er—’ said the girl Steven had routed out from the restroom to act as guide. She was hopping on the spot. ‘Would you like to come this way? We do have a hospitality room.’

  Pepper’s eyes flamed at her. ‘And Lord Zog here told you to give me coffee, too, didn’t he? Sure. Let’s do what the High Command commands.’

  The girl gave her a scared smile. ‘I know Martin is anxious to meet you,’ she said unconvincingly. ‘This way…’

  The hospitality room turned out to be an airless, windowless room with basic chairs round the wall and a corner table full of used plastic cups. Steven Konig, whom Pepper was rapidly coming to loathe, raised his eyebrows.

  The girl gathered up the dirty cups rapidly. ‘Er—can I take your coat?’ She looked at Pepper’s bundled figure. ‘Coats?’

  But she went to stand behind Steven Konig, to receive his immaculately tailored grey coat. Pepper, it seemed, could shift for herself.

  In spite of her simmering rage, Pepper told herself not to be petty. It was not the girl’s fault that she leaped to do the bidding of Lord Zog. She’d bet just about everyone in the world did.

  He unloaded his coat, with a charming smile that clearly did not see the girl at all, and brought out his cellphone. Soon he had planted himself in the corner, where the reception seemed to be best, and was talking on it rapidly. And ignoring everyone else.

  Huh! No surprise there, then!

  Pepper put down her briefcase and shrugged out of her top layer. It was a serviceable hooded waterproof cape that Terry, professional that she was, had insisted on lending her. ‘You’ve got to keep your hair dry,’ Terry had said firmly. ‘Put it on top of your mac if you’re cold. But I haven’t spent hours on all those curls for you to go and let the rain ruin them.’ So now Pepper felt like a bag lady as she unpeeled her inelegant coverings.

  There was a sound, somewhere round her hip. Pepper looked down, startled. Lord Zog’s small girl looked back unwinkingly.

  It made Pepper uneasy. She didn’t know anything about small girls.

  The small girl pursed her lips. ‘Why are you wearing two coats?’

  It was a reasonable question. Even knowing nothing about children, Pepper could take reasonable questions in her stride.

  ‘Because my coat doesn’t have a hood and the cape does.’

  The small girl digested this. ‘But you’ve got a scarf. Why do you need a hood as well?’

  ‘Because the scarf isn’t waterproof and I’ve just had my hair done,’ said Pepper literally. She undid the knotted silk and drew the large scarf off her head with care, shaking out the red-gold mass.

  On his telephone, Lord Zog made a strangled sound. It sounded as if whoever he was talking to had just given him the shock of
his life. Good, thought Pepper.

  The small girl was not interested in her accompanying adult. Instead she transferred her gaze from Pepper’s face to the tumble of hair, now gleaming with Terry’s model-girl conditioner. Her expression stayed neutral.

  ‘Cor,’ said the girl with the dirty coffee cups, momentarily distracted. ‘Your hair is gorgeous.’

  Pepper was taken aback. ‘Thank you.’ She almost said, I’ll tell my cousin. Then decided that it didn’t sound cool enough.

  She looked round, but there was no mirror on the wall. Pepper put up a hand, blind. Miraculously, it seemed as if the pre-Raphaelite curls were still curling and bouncing. They responded to her Hair Alert Test—that was, they sprang back when tugged gently. Now all she had to do was make sure that the top had not been too flattened by the headscarf and she was ready to face the cameras.

  ‘Where did you find that colour?’

  Pepper stared. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to be a redhead. But whenever I try it ends up looking like a fire engine. Who does your colour?’

  ‘My parents.’

  ‘It’s natural?’ Disbelief.

  ‘Been a redhead all my life.’ Pepper was torn between amusement and embarrassment at the admiration. She fluffed up her hair, more self-conscious than she wanted to admit.

  The girl sucked her teeth. ‘You weren’t—er—expecting make-up or anything, were you?’ She looked covertly at Lord Zog, talking on his mobile telephone again, with his back to the room. ‘Indigo hasn’t been going very long. We haven’t got all the trimmings yet.’

  Pepper frowned. There was a message here, if she could only work it out. ‘So?’

  The girl shuffled under her burden. ‘You might want to go to the ladies’. Um—touch up your make-up,’ she volunteered reluctantly. ‘TV lights—you know.’

  ‘Your nose is shiny,’ the small girl interpreted dispassionately.

  Pepper curbed a strong inclination to swear. She hardly ever used make-up and today there had seemed no point; it would only have washed off. Terry’s shampooing technique was thorough and enthusiastic, but you came out of it looking like an Olympic swimmer. A trip in a chilly taxi, followed by a sprint through the rainswept obstacle course that was Indigo Television’s forecourt, would not have modified that. Of course her nose was shiny! Why on earth had that not occurred to her before?

  ‘Thank you,’ she said to the small girl. And to the other, ‘Where?’

  ‘I’ll show you.’

  The small girl hooked her hand firmly into Pepper’s. Pepper jumped. She could not remember holding hands with a child before. Come to that, she could not remember holding hands with anybody.

  The small girl, however, seemed to find holding hands with a perfect stranger perfectly normal. ‘Me, too,’ she said firmly.

  Lord Zog looked up from his telephone conversation. Whatever it was, it seemed as if it had shaken him. He looked stunned.

  Not stunned enough to be civil, though. ‘Where are you going?’ he said sharply.

  The small girl sent him a look of mingled contempt and warning. ‘I want to go.’

  He frowned irritably. ‘Go where?’ And then he clocked what the warning was about. ‘Oh. Go. Yes, of course. Will you be all right with Ms Er…?’

  Never mind whether Ms Er was all right with this unlooked for responsibility, thought Pepper, raging inwardly.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said coldly, ‘we’ll be fine.’

  She stuffed her briefcase under her arm and stalked out before he could reply. To her surprise, the small girl trotted beside her as if Pepper was a fully trained childminder.

  ‘Down here,’ said their guide. ‘It’s a bit dark, but…’

  She flicked a switch and a line of lights bright enough to guide down a jumbo jet came on round the biggest mirror Pepper had ever seen. In their pitiless glare she looked too pale, too windswept and—yes, scared. Damn!

  ‘You’ve got twenty minutes or so before we do the warm-up,’ said the girl helpfully. ‘But we’ll be running tight after that. It goes out live, you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pepper, trying to ignore the butterflies that had taken up residence under her ribcage. ‘I know.’

  ‘That’s all right, then. See you back at the hospitality room.’

  She went, leaving her two guests alone. Pepper looked at the child warily. But the small girl took herself composedly off to one of the cubicles without asking for assistance.

  Pepper heaved a sigh of relief. This whole thing was proving hard enough without having to turn herself into a mom out of a cake mix advert. She swallowed.

  You can do this, she told herself silently. You can do whatever you have to.

  She emerged from her own cubicle to find the small girl inspecting the hand-drier and a purple perfume dispenser.

  ‘Mummy,’ she announced, ‘says you should always wear the same scent. So when people smell it they think about you.’

  ‘Does she, indeed?’ said Pepper, who could not tell one scent from another. Mrs Lord Zog sounded a prize pain in the ass. ‘How original.’ She glared at herself in the mirror.

  Sharing a flat with her cousins had proved an education. Jemima was a highly paid model. She was hardly ever there, but only last week she had herded Pepper and Izzy into her bedroom and imparted a serious lesson on make-up.

  London had given Pepper a number of shocks. One of the biggest was that aspiring entrepreneurs had to look the part. As the favoured granddaughter of a retail dynasty she had never had to worry about how she looked before. She dressed in a dark business suit, kept her hair tidy and wore good, plain jewellery in gold or platinum. That was enough, or so she had always thought.

  Not any more. Potential investors looked at her business plan, her graphs and her product description and said, ‘Hmm, yes, maybe.’ And then they sat back and waited for her to charm them.

  ‘I don’t know anything about charm,’ she had wailed at her cousins, beginning to panic.

  That was when Jemima had launched into her crash course.

  So Pepper, a professional to her fingertips, had grimly mastered the art of twenty-first-century face painting. Now her armoury contained a complete kit of powders and colours and soft pencils, together with a couple of brushes. If she concentrated hard she could even remember what to do with them. She squared her shoulders and pulled the pack out of the briefcase.

  The small girl hauled herself up onto a stool beside Pepper and inspected the collection.

  ‘Mummy,’ she announced, considering and discarding a smoky lilac eyeshadow, ‘says colours are for the evening.’

  ‘Thank you for your advice,’ said Pepper, not meaning it. She took the lilac eye shadow up defiantly and leaned forward, peering.

  Her eyes were really her best feature, she thought. Unless you liked hair the colour of red squirrels, that was. But her eyes were velvety brown, slightly tilted, with the longest lashes in the world. She brushed a little lilac shadow onto one eyelid and inspected the result.

  The small girl said nothing.

  Pepper sighed and fished out a make-up removal pad. ‘Okay, I’ll give you that. It looks like I’ve been through ten rounds with an Olympic heavyweight.’ She scrubbed it off. ‘It will just have to be powder, then. Maybe a bit of blusher.’

  She brushed on porcelain face powder and surveyed herself critically. Well, it certainly took the wind-and-rain shine out of her face. Maybe it made her look just a little ghostly? But the last few weeks had taught her caution with blusher. It was all too easy to end up looking like Mrs Punch. She flicked the tiniest dusting of colour over her cheekbones and stood back.

  Maybe still too pale? Well, it would have to do. They had not asked her onto the programme for her glamour-girl looks, after all. She bit back a wry laugh at the thought. And at least her nose wasn’t shining any more.

  She flicked a comb through her hair, lifting the front where it had been flattened a bit by the headscarf. Pursed her lips. Gave up.
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  ‘That will have to do.’

  The small girl said, ‘Aren’t you going to spray your hair?’

  ‘No,’ said Pepper, revolted.

  ‘Mummy—’

  Pepper was beginning to loathe the sound of the word.

  ‘I’m sure she does, but I haven’t got time,’ she said crisply. ‘Come along.’

  Once again the child tucked her hand into Pepper’s uninvited. In spite of herself Pepper softened. Well, a bit. It wasn’t the child’s fault that Pepper was feeling jumpy and out of her depth.

  As they went along the corridor she tried to put herself in the child’s place. If she had been told that she was going to a television studio she would have expected a great treat. This airless bunker must be a real disappointment. Pepper could remember disappointments like that.

  She said with suddenly real sympathy, ‘Have you been looking forward to this for ages?’

  The child shook her head. ‘Uncle Steven said I had to come. Afterwards,’ she explained, ‘we are going shopping.’

  ‘Uncle! So Lord Zog—I mean, Mr Konig isn’t your daddy?’

  The small girl shook her head.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Janice,’ said the child, so quickly that Pepper blinked.

  She might not know much about children, but Pepper had been dealing with plausible businessmen all her life. She could smell an untruth a mile off. She knew, as sure as eggs was eggs, that the child’s name was not Janice. Interesting.

  Steven had cut the call the moment she walked out of the room. He snapped his cellphone shut. Then sat down rather hard.

  It was her! His golden goddess! That hair was unmistakable. Though its riotous tumble was clearly no longer due to a hard night courtesy of David Guber’s airline but several hours in some upmarket hair salon.

  But—her hair was not the only thing that was different. All these weeks he had been cherishing a private memory of fleeting tenderness. He had let himself dwell on it in snatched moments of quiet. Had found his lips curving into a smile, as if he were looking into her eyes, whenever he was alone for too long.

  Well, so much for tenderness! This woman was not the elusive creature of his dreams. This was a multi-mackintoshed harridan who banged radiators with her shoe and went to war as soon as look at you. She might not be sweetly manipulative like Courtney—she was worse.