“I fucked up. Okay, I know. It shouldn’t have happened. I could’ve cancelled the stuffing interview once we knew Gerry Ives wasn’t on the plane. I don’t need an excuse.”
“But we need the interview—if not this one, then with another paper. We need to influence the shareholders of Avalon to sell down to us.”
“I know. We’ll go with the Financial Record. Find a journalist there we can work with.”
Pete went for his desk phone. “We need to get Aileen in here.”
“Aileen doesn’t have to know the details. And I want you to meet Darcy Campbell when she gets here, not Aileen.”
Pete pressed the phone’s speaker button, “Aileen, can you come in?”
Her voice came back, “Is Will with you? Has he seen the talking points?”
“He’s here. Come and we’ll fill you in.”
Aileen said, “Why do I not like the sound of that?” and the phone went dead.
This wasn’t done with yet and already Will had a headache. He sat in Pete’s chair at Pete’s desk and earned himself another hard stare and a head shake, and Pete went back to the coffee machine.
When Aileen arrived she said, “Boys,” and took a seat opposite Will. “I gather we have a problem.”
Aileen had worked as Will’s head of corporate affairs for five years. Pete was convinced she’d prostitute herself for Will despite being happily married to a Yankee merchant banker. Will kept it strictly professional with her, just in case Pete was right, and since Pete was not so secretly madly in love with her, it was an interesting tangle that worked surprisingly well.
“Will has done something incredibly stupid so we need to cancel on Darcy Campbell this morning,” said Pete.
Aileen took that with a narrowing of her dark eyes. “Will?”
“What he said, Aileen.”
“Will, what did you do?”
”I fucked up. That’s all you need to know.”
“I’ll be the judge of what I need to know,” she said.
Will gave her a hard look. “That’s all you’re going to know.”
Aileen sighed. “It took months to convince you of the value of lifting your personal profile, and now you want me to revert to protecting it, making sure you fly under the radar all over again.”
“We’re just cancelling this particular interview, Aileen,” said Pete. “He’s still with the program, right Will?”
“Right. Just cancel the Campbell interview.”
“This won’t make us any friends at the Sydney Herald. Are you sure you want to do this?”
Will nodded. He’d known going ahead with the interview was a bust from the moment he’d started trading truths with Darcy and had chosen not to lie. Omit, hell yeah, but outright lie, no. He’d told the truth. It was something about pretending to be a stranger, about being in that artificial detention. And then, later in the suite, he hadn’t been able to help it but talk to her, really talk to her. He’d told her things he’d never told anyone. Things only Pete knew. Worse, he’d let her see parts of himself he kept walled off from the world, parts that could still wake him in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
And he’d loved every freaking minute of it. Even knowing it would come to this. To packing her off with her tail between her legs through no fault of her own. He pushed back in the chair. He wanted out of this room. Out of this morning. Out of this day. He was kidding about not lying to her. He’d promised he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her, but he was going to hurt her, possibly hurt what she cared most about; her career, her big break. Getting the first interview with the press-dodging Will Parker, and he was going to do it without a second thought.
“Will?”
“What?” he snapped at Aileen.
“Pete said you wanted him to meet Darcy.”
He looked around. Pete had decamped. “Yeah, as a courtesy. Is that okay with you? In fact I’d be happy if he’d just do the interview.”
“Pete’s briefed. Of course he can do it, but it’s supposed to be you. By rights, she’ll refuse. It’ll depend on how hard-nosed she is. I’ll prep Pete.” Aileen stood to go. “I wish you’d tell me what’s going on.”