The Sex War

'Did you?' Daniel repeated, his voice harsh.

'Did I what?' she-fenced.

'You haven't been at home all day, where have you been? I told you I was going to ring you.'

'I spent the day visiting Aston's sister, she lives in the country. It's a long drive, Aston picked me up at eight o'clock this morning.'

'Visiting his sister? How cosy—his intentions must be serious.' Daniel's voice held a sneer.

'You sound like a Victorian father.' Two could play at that game, if Daniel wanted to turn nasty Lindsay was more t

han happy to do the same.

'Can he lend Stephen enough to keep the factory going?' Daniel put a bite into that question and Lindsay winced. She didn't answer and after a brief silence, Daniel asked: 'Well, have you thought over my offer?'

'I've tried not to think about it at all,' she muttered, and he laughed shortly.

'I'm sure you have.'

'It's too disgusting!' Lindsay spat that at him, her hand gripping the phone so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

'Take it or leave it,' Daniel shrugged. 'Stephen's your brother, he isn't mine, nobody does anything without getting something back.' He sounded brisk and businesslike and she hated him, then his voice deepened and darkened. 'And Aston Hill's out of the picture, for a start,' he added. 'I don't want him around in future.'

Lindsay thought of the blonde actress he had been with last night and her skin burned with fury, 'You're not dictating my life to me—I had enough of that when we were married!'

'Up to you,' Daniel said tersely. 'If Stephen hasn't paid back that bank loan by next Friday he'll have to liquidate. You have until Thursday to decide.' He slammed the phone down and she jerked as her eardrum rang with the noise. She put back her own receiver, her hand fumbling, trembling, then looked at her watch. It was gone nine, too late to ring Stephen. She would have to talk to him tomorrow, he should have recovered a little by then.

When she got to her office next day she found her boss lying back in his chair with his feet on the table and his eyes closed, his face turned towards the sunshine streaming in at the window. Chris was a calm, lazy man who moved very rarely and when he did performed each action with the considered grace of a two-toed sloth. Small, slightly built, with smooth blond hair and bright blue eyes, he would have been exceptionally good-looking if it had not been for that lack of vitality. His face was happy but distinctly unimpressive.

'Busy as usual, I see,' Lindsay remarked, standing in the doorway of his office and watching him with resigned amusement.

Chris opened one eye to observe her. He flapped a welcoming hand, 'Hi.' The effort of speech apparently exhausted him, his eye closed and he sank back into golden slumber.

'Have those stills come yet?' Lindsay asked, cruelly insisting that he should make some pretence of working.

The hand flapped at his desk. She saw a large brown envelope lying on it and went over to pick it up, shooting a small pile of glossy photographs on to the desk. She leaned over, a hand propping her up, and spread them out, recognising some faces, looking at others with curiosity. Most of the girls in the photographs were models, some were actresses, and over the month Lindsay and Chris had seen hundreds of different girls without feeling that any one of them was the girl they were looking for, the girl whose face would fit an image they wanted.

Vivons were about to launch a new range of cosmetics and they wanted someone very special to appear in their advertising campaign. The managing director of the firm had begun to be impatient, because so far they hadn't come up with what he called 'The Face.'

'It's hopeless, Charles won't go for any of these,' Lindsay said gloomily. 'They don't say a thing to me—what about you?'

Chris turned a thumb downwards without opening his eyes. He didn't waste time or energy in pointless discussion, yet he always managed to get what he wanted, although Lindsay often wondered how he did it. Whatever magic he performed, he did it when nobody was looking. Every time you saw him he seemed to be asleep, but Vivons would have fought tooth and nail to keep him if another firm tried to steal him away.

'Perhaps we're going about this the wrong way,' said Lindsay, sitting down on the edge of the desk and swinging her legs. 'We're waiting for The Face to come and find us, maybe we should go out and find her.'

Chris opened both eyes, they looked at her, so blue they sparkled like clear sapphires, and she stared into them, raising her brows.

'What do you think?'

'Keep talking,' Chris encouraged, shifting very slightly in his chair and crossing his feet. He almost always wore jeans and a thin, tightly fitting shirt open at the neck and worn without a tie. Shoes were his one extravagance, he had them hand-made for him because his feet were incredibly small and thin for a man and he could never get mass-produced shoes that fitted. Today he was wearing soft, supple blue leather, so velvety it made you want to stroke it.

'Why don't we draw up a list of what we're looking for? Should she be brunette or…'

'Blonde,' Chris decided. With the sexy, sweet look of a Marilyn Monroe, we don't want to put women off buying the- range, they've got to like her, want to look like her.' For him that was an enormously long statement. He had obviously been thinking about it, he knew precisely what he was looking for, Lindsay should have known he wasn't just haphazard in his search.

'Why do you let me talk myself into looking silly?' she asked wryly. 'You had it all worked out already, didn't you? Why didn't you tell all the agencies you were looking for a sexy blonde? Then they wouldn't keep showering us with girls we can't use?'

'One of them might be perfect,' he said, his wide mouth amused. 'A brunette we can always dye into a blonde, it's the face that matters, not the hair colour,' he yawned, running a hand through his hair. 'I'll know her when I see her.'