Sweet Vixen

Max Wilde must have been telling the truth about the anxious look. Sarah hesitated. 'That you'd explained about this morning. I think we cleared the air.' She crossed her fingers.

'Terrific.' Julie beamed. 'He was very reasonable about it, you know, considering it wasn't his fault. We had a little laugh over it and everything was as smooth as apple pie.'

Had a little laugh about it! Sarah repeated savagely to herself as she rode down in the lift, changing a frown to a polite smile as a clutch of Japanese businessmen boarded at the next floor. Smooth as apple pie! What did Julie know? He hadn't withered her with sarcasm, or snubbed her, or laughed at her! Julie liked him.

Sarah didn't. Not at all.

CHAPTER FOUR

As the week came to a close Sarah told herself that at least she had tried. Julie couldn't fault her for that. She had attempted to be as pleasant, co-operative and efficient as usual, but the good ship Resolution foundered in the sea of unpredictability that was Max Wilde. Self-effacement didn't work with him, he liked to make waves, get opin­ions—provoke them, if necessary. He certainly seemed to take delight in provoking Sarah out of her cool composure.

The constricting self-consciousness she felt in his pres­ence got worse. She dropped things, and forgot things, and made stupid mistakes, all of which made her even more nervous. It was a vicious circle.

Grudgingly she had to admit that as an Executive Editor he knew his stuff. He immersed himself in the job as though it was the most challenging of his career, and in doing so challenged the Rags team to keep up with him. He worked with aggressive speed, absorbing information like a sponge, tapping the minds around him and handling the reins of command with easy confidence. He made himself approachable, yet had sufficient presence to instil respect. And he was a master at the art of persuasive reasoning, the subtle manipulation of argument in his own favour.

By Friday the tacit agreement was that however dyna­mic a brain he was, Max Wilde wasn't an easy man to work for. He was uncomfortably impatient - smiling one minute and snapping the next. Wherever he went he created a natural surface tension which Sarah found as irritating as it was stimulating.

After the first burst of hyper-activity he settled down to mere over-activity. Surely he didn't work at this sort of intensity all the time? Not even the devil himself could keep that up, thought Sarah, appalled by his sheer drive. No wonder he had been curious about her ambitions, and so sceptical when she said she hadn't any. Work to him was as natural as breathing and he regarded everything in the light of a debit or credit.

He was generous with praise where it was due, quick to appreciate a good idea. But he was also extremely caustic in his criticisms, and brusque to the point of rudeness with excuses, however justified. He did not suffer fools gladly and at times used words like weapons, striking straight to the heart of the matter regardless of personal feeling, exposing hidden weaknesses and dealing with them ruth­lessly. It was unpleasantly like a trial by ordeal to be on the receiving end of his critical dissection, as Sarah found out on several occasions.

It didn't help that he continued to make derogatory remarks about Sarah's clothes or that he seemed to be amused by the references to the manner of their meeting. He may have forgiven, but he wasn't forgetting!

On Friday morning Sarah arrived at work to find that Julie and Chris, together with two more colleagues, Nora and Mike, were already settled around the big oval oak table in the interview-cum-conference room. Sarah was about to take the seat nearest the door when Marie and Keith arrived and Sarah took a playful swing at the art director with her note pad. He executed a neat side-step and to her horror she ended up hitting Max Wilde himself, who was following close behind. It was only a light tap but it hit him squarely in the chest.

'Sorry,' she blushed, and hurriedly sat down, trying to avoid seeing Keith's smirk.

Max Wilde, in a grey suit and shirt but without a tie, looked slowly around the table before uncapping the nib of a silver pen. Like unsheathing a sword, Sarah thought.

'Let's get straight down to business, shall we? I'm impressed, both by your obvious commitment and by some of the ideas you have put forward for this.' He indicated the artist's board beside him displaying the Rags mock-up. 'However, I have some points to make. The emphasis I question. You're changing masthead, layout, typeface—all the things that are your signature. All right, change the cover to indicate your new affiliation, change the order of your columns and add new ones, but not the type. It's clear, it's clean, it's Rags. Changing it would be too much of a shock for your readers. Certainly we want to startle, to challenge, but not to shock.

'The content is a different story. You have tried to broaden the base of your appeal, but you haven't gone far enough. You've put in furniture, interior decoration— why not food and wine? They're also part of ambience.'

'But we're a fashion magazine, a specialist magazine,' Nora interjected.

'How specialist is fashion? It's custom; not only of dress, but of manners, of tastes in everything—even thought. Th

ink of your name. You're not only Rags you're Riches too. Money and everything that it can buy. In fact, why not have a regular financial column, money from a woman's point of view—how to get it, invest it, enjoy it?'

That interested Chris, who was knowledgeable about stocks and shares and bought jewellery as an investment. She was always telling Sarah that it was important to make your money work for you. But her advice fell on stony ground. To Sarah money was something you either banked or spent.

Having tossed his suggestions into the ring, Max Wilde now sat back and watched the dogfights that ensued. The pale eyes followed the rapid exchanges with a piercing intensity and the slim fingers played ceaselessly with the pen. Sarah found her eyes drawn to that little bar of silver as it was twisted and twirled, rolled back and forth and occasionally used to make notes. She had rarely seen him completely still, except just before he pounced on an unfortunate victim of his displeasure, like a predator pausing to judge speed and distance.

Although she wasn't taking any part in the discussion herself, Sarah listened closely. She had heard these argu­ments many times before faut seldom with the sense of urgency they had now. This time what they said would have meaning and effect, it wasn't just letting off steam, stirring the creative juices with complaint and argument.

Sarah began doodling on her pad with her very prosaic ballpoint, sketching the man at the end of the table with reasonable proficiency. Simon had been quite helpful when she had mentioned she would like to learn to draw, but his fiercely professional criticisms of her dabblings had defeated their own purpose. The enclosed room was very warm and Sarah blinked hard as she added horns and a tail to complete the picture. For some reason she hadn't been sleeping very well lately.

'Are we boring you, Sarah?'

Her pen slid off the paper and she straightened in her chair.

'Of course not.' The give-away was her voice, squeezed high by the yawning bubble that had frozen in her throat. 'Just making notes.' She tilted her pad sharply away from Keith who was craning for a look.

'Good,' came the crisp reply. 'Then you can make a few comments.'

'I . . . really haven't been involved in the new develop­ments. I was away—'

'I know. But you must have formed an opinion. You have some very definite opinions, and you have been making copious notes. Enlighten us, please.'