CHAPTER ONE
‘RACE Williams is going to be there tonight—I wonder what he’s like? Thirty-four is very young to be given overall control of the entire documentary section. He used to be a reporter, you know, before he started writing.’
‘Does Terry know about this burgeoning hero-worship for your new boss?’ Heather Martin asked her cousin dryly, surveying her petite form and clustering blonde curls.
No two girls could have been less alike. While Jennifer was petite and dainty, Heather stood five feet ten inches in her bare feet, her dark cloud of hair and long green eyes adding up to a gypsy sensuality that came across well when she was photographed. It was virtually impossible to open a magazine without seeing her own face, and she had grown used to other people’s reaction to her startling good looks. She had been modelling for three years, ever since she was twenty-one, and just recently had begun to wonder what the future held. She was currently on the short list for a prestige modelling job, promoting a brand new range of up-market cosmetics, but her real love was writing, and for the last few years she had been gathering material for her book. All she needed now was the time to write it.
‘Terry says Race has asked him about you,’ Jennifer announced, watching her reaction to her announcement. Terry was the art director of the television company Jennifer worked for—a new independent company which was fast gaining an excellent reputation, and which had recently ‘head-hunted’ Race Williams, whose reputation in the field of hard-fact documentary work was well known. He had been a Fleet Street reporter, before turning to writing ‘factional’ novels, and Jennifer, to judge by the amount of time she spent talking about him, seemed to be developing a crush on him.
Despite the fact that Jennifer was two years her senior, at twenty-four Heather was easily the more mature. She had lived with Jennifer, her twin brothers and her aunt and uncle since the deaths of her own parents when she was thirteen. Her father had been an explorer, her mother his researcher, and they had both been killed in an avalanche in the Andes, and Heather had never ceased to mourn their loss. Kind though her aunt and uncle were, she had always felt like a cuckoo in the nest, towering above her aunt and Jennifer, and even the twins until they suddenly started to shoot up at eighteen. Her height had always made her feel vulnerable. At school she had been the butt of cruel jokes, easily the tallest girl in the class, and she had been well on the way to developing a complex about it when she met Brad.
Brad! Her mouth tightened ominously. She had met him when she was seventeen and studying for her ‘A’ levels. He had just left school and started at university. He was a friend of the twins, and she hadn’t been able to believe it when he started paying attention to her, asking her for dates. He was the first boy-friend she had ever had; the first boy ever to pay her the slightest attention, and under it she blossomed.
Her aunt had been delighted but concerned. Heather remembered vividly an occasion when her aunt had taken her on one side and stumbled through a muddled speech about not taking Brad too seriously. She hadn’t listened. Brad loved her, he had told her so, and in her innocence and vulnerability she had thought he meant it, opening to him all the secrets of her heart and mind, content to let him dictate the pace of their relationship. She had never entered the giggled sexual discussions of her peers; she had always been an outsider, and Jennifer, in whom she might have confided, was already away at university. Brad made teasingly light love to her, and she had thought it was because he loved her that he only went so far. God, how naïve she had been!
She had found out the truth quite by accident. She and Brad had been invited to a party—a friend of Brad’s, and she had gone into the kitchen looking for a drink of water. She wasn’t used to alcohol, and the punch she had been given had made her acutely thirsty. She had seen Brad in the kitchen, talking to one of his friends as she approached, and was just about to greet him when she heard his friend ask, ‘Who’s the new girl? Hardly your type—all those muscles! What’s she like in bed?’
She remembered how vividly she had coloured, embarrassed by the other boy’s frankness, but nothing had prepared her for the cruelty of Brad’s response.
‘Who cares?’ he had responded carelessly. ‘Personally I prefer my women small and cuddly, but she’s got a fortune coming to her on her twenty-first birthday, and I aim to make sure that by then she’s my wife; I can always enjoy myself on the side.’
Heather hadn’t stayed to listen to any more. It was true that she was to inherit a good deal of money from her parents’ estate, but the thought that Brad deliberately intended to marry her for her money was something she found a bitter pill to accept. She hadn’t said anything when he took her home; some deep-seated instinct warned her against letting him see how badly she was hurt. In fact she hadn’t told anyone what she had overheard, but it had festered, aching inside her, giving her the strength to remain cool and aloof when she told Brad she didn’t want to go out with him again.
He had been persistent, she gave him that, but she remained resolute, deriving a bitter satisfaction from the thought that he would never know just how much it cost her to refuse him. She had loved him; trusted him; revealed her innermost thoughts and hopes to him believing he returned her feelings. Well, she would never let it happen again.
It had been Neil, her cousin, who had suggested she take up modelling. He was a very keen photographer and his photographs had won a competition in their local paper. With the encouragement of her family Heather had approached one of the well known model agencies, who had agreed with Neil’s judgment. Only to herself was Heather prepared to admit that her fierce determination to succeed had sprung from the pain she experienced when Brad derided her. She was consumed by a need to prove to him and the world at large that she was desirable, and she had proved it.
She smiled without mirth, thinking of the number of proposals and propositions she had received in the last three years, but none of them had touched her. They weren’t from men who loved her, who cared genuinely and deeply about her, all they had been interested in was the satisfaction of their own desire. Oh, they might wrap it up in pretty words and compliments, but Heather knew better. And now here was Jennifer telling her that Race Williams had been making enquiries about her.
She wasn’t totally surprised. As a model she was used to the interest she aroused in men. Only she knew that inside the cool detachment she showed to the outside world she was still the same vulnerable, hurting girl who had stood in the shadows and listened to the person she loved destroying her world.
‘What did Race Williams want to know about me?’ she asked her cousin. They were both eating their evening meal. Heather didn’t need to diet to keep her lissom shape, and she drank her coffee, grateful for its fragrant warmth as Jennifer studied her.
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‘Oh, the usual things,’ she grinned, ‘were you attached, etc., etc. Terry must have told him you were my cousin….’ She saw the look on Heather’s face and warned anxiously, ‘Heather, he isn’t one of your usual men, you can’t play the same games with him you do with them.’
‘Games?’ Heather raised one immaculate eyebrow.
‘Come off it, you know what I mean,’ Jennifer interrupted crossly. ‘Look, honey, I’ve seen you in action; the come-on and then the put-down; the whole bit. There hasn’t been a man in your life since Brad who’s even come close to touching your emotions, but with every one you let them think you’ve fallen—hard—and then you pull the rug out from under.’
Heather frowned at this accurate and rather unattractive picture her cousin drew. ‘Oh, look, I’m not criticising,’ Jennifer assured her, ‘far from it, I’m just saying that Race Williams isn’t like all the others. He’s hard, Heather, and he won’t let you get away with it, so if that’s what you’re planning on doing, don’t, please.’
‘I wasn’t planning on doing anything,’ Heather assured her cousin. It was true, Heather always let the men do the running, and not until she was sure they deserved it did she let them see her contempt for them. They were all the same; all so egotistically sure of themselves and her ultimate surrender to them that they deserved the treatment she handed out.
‘When do you get to hear about the Rio contract?’ Jennifer asked her, changing the subject.
‘Oh, I think they’re making the final decision within the next few days. Four of us are shortlisted, and I’m the only brunette.’
‘They’re bound to choose you,’ Jennifer assured her warmly. ‘You’re so right for the image they want to promote.’
Privately Heather agreed, and she had already made up her mind that if she got this contract it would be her last. She would retire and concentrate on her book. She knew there had been a considerable degree of speculation in the fashion press about the contract and she was hotly tipped as favourite.
‘Come on, time to get ready,’ announced Jennifer, getting up. The party was to celebrate the television company’s first year in business and the appointment of Race Williams. Jennifer’s invitation had extended to cover a friend and Heather had agreed to go with her. One of the shareholders in the TV company was also a shareholder in Rio, and a little public relations work wouldn’t come amiss. Not that Heather ever used either her beauty or her body to further her career. It was the inviolateness of her body and mind that gave her the power to destroy the male sex; her strength came from the fact that secretly she despised them. She was glad Brad had left her a virgin, she thought fiercely, and she intended to stay that way, giving nothing of herself to any man, because giving meant receiving pain in return; and she’d had enough of that.
In her room she abandoned her thoughts and studied her reflection with professional scrutiny. Her face was heart-shaped, her eyes set wide apart, deeply green and tilted at the corners, her mouth warmly curved, her cloud of dark hair reaching down on to her shoulders. Hers was a sensual face, one which was used to market goods with a high degree of sexual appeal, but inwardly Heather felt her nature was completely at odds with her looks. Inwardly she was as cold and devoid of sensuality as a lump of ice, and it was this that made it so easy for her to revenge herself on the male sex; they took one look at her face and her tall languidly curved body and mentally docketed her as ‘easy’. She laughed mirthlessly. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and in time, with varying degrees of humiliation, they all discovered it. She had perfected a form of put-down that sliced into the delicate male ego like a knife through butter, and every time the look in their eyes was the same. But best of all, they never warned the next victim; never admitted their humiliation, leaving her free to repeat the whole process over and over again. She smiled when she read the names of her supposed ‘lovers’ in the press, smiled in genuine amusement, her reputation protected her from men who might have found her virginity a challenge they would commit rape to overcome, and that was the way she liked it.
Her dress for the evening was in fine black matt jersey; striking décolleté, sweeping down to her waist at the front revealing the smooth cream flesh of her rounded breasts and the narrow vulnerability of her rib cage. At the back it exposed her body right down to the base of her spine and it fitted her like another layer of skin. An advantage of her height was that she was able to carry off the ripe fullness of her breasts without seeming badly proportioned, their curves in direct contrast to the narrowness of her hips and the slender length of her legs. Black silk panties were the only thing she wore under her dress. Her legs were still slightly tanned from her last modelling trip abroad, her toenails painted a deeply vibrant pink.
So Race Williams had been asking about her… Heather quickly collated all that she knew about him. They had never met, she had no idea what he looked like, but the gossip columnists loved him; he had featured as an escort of many beautiful women, and he had a reputation for ending his affairs when they began to bore him that made her eyes gleam and harden with the anticipation of battle. It would be very pleasant to humiliate a man like that; a man who treated her sex so contemptuously. Perhaps he was already contemplating making her his latest conquest. The thought wasn’t formed through vanity—what man would want the girl she had been, the vulnerable woman she still was inside? Oh no, she didn’t delude herself on that issue. What Race Williams and men like him wanted was the outer shell she presented to the world; the looks that adorned the covers of magazines; the kudos of escorting a newsworthy female; or possessing her and subjugating her to their male power.
‘Heather, are you ready yet?’ she heard Jennifer call outside her door. ‘The taxi will be here soon!’
Quickly completing her make-up, Heather brushed her hair, watching it billow on to her bare shoulders, recognising the glitter in her eyes and the colour gleaming on her cheekbones, and knowing the reason for them.
‘Thank God Terry likes small blondes,’ Jennifer pronounced piously as Heather opened the door. ‘My God, you’re really going to town tonight!’ She watched as Heather slipped on high-heeled sandals, wondering how tall Race Williams was. In her high heels she topped six foot, and it always amused her to witness a man’s initial reaction to that fact. Some, she knew, found her height sexually exciting, visualising her as some sort of Amazon in bed, and initially she was careful not to disillusion them.
‘You’ll need your fur jacket,’ Jennifer told her, ‘the temperature was starting to drop when I came in. I hate January and February,’ she added, shuddering, ‘and we’re only just into January—brrr!’
Laughing, Heather reached inside her wardrobe for her jacket. Both girls had been presented with them as Christmas presents that year. Jennifer’s was a soft silky blue fox which suited her fair colouring, and Heather’s a richly dark silver fox, in which her uncle had told her fondly that she looked magnificent. Dear Uncle Bob; he and the twins were the only men she actually liked and felt at ease with. The twins were as close to her as brothers and her aunt and uncle had taken the place of her deceased parents, but still there was this sense of loss, of not truly belonging, of always, somehow, being on the outside. Which was why she had responded so passionately to Brad’s attentions; needing the commitment of sharing her feeling with someone else; needing to feel ‘special’ to another person. She sighed, pushing away all thoughts of the past, following Jennifer outside.
The television studio was several miles from their flat and they arrived to find it well lit, the car-park full of expensive, prestige pieces of metal. Male toys needed to boost fragile male egos.
The commissionaire recognised Jennifer and welcomed her with a grin, but it was on Heather that his eyes lingered admiringly.
‘Another conquest,’ Jennifer murmured as they got in the lift. ‘Oh, don’t look like that—I’m not a fool, Heather,’ she told her cousin. ‘I know you don’t give a damn for any of those men you go out with. I al
so know that when you’re supposed to be having mad flings with them, you’re tucked up safely in your own virginal bed.’ She saw Heather’s expression and said quietly, ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ Without waiting for an answer she went on, ‘I’m not going to pry, but Heather, you’re heading for trouble, honey. One day a man’s going to come along who you can’t play with, and he’s going to think it’s all for real. By the time he finds out the truth, it’s going to be too late. You know what I’m trying to say, don’t you?’
‘Yes, and you needn’t worry. I’m immune to sexual come-ons, Jen; frigid, if you prefer me to use that term.’
‘Frigid? Or frightened?’ Jennifer asked acutely as they stepped out of the lift. ‘I’m two years older than you, cos, and I can remember quite vividly how shy and sensitive you were in your teens. That girl hasn’t completely disappeared. I know you, you’re already plotting the downfall of the next poor victim, but take care the roles aren’t reversed—if you’re thinking in terms of Race Williams, remember he eats women for breakfast!’
‘And changes them as frequently as he changes his pure silk shirts—yes, I know, but I never make the running, Jen. If Race Williams wants me he’s going to have to let me know it.’
‘And once he does you’re going to put him down, humiliate him like you’ve done the others. Heather, I’ve watched you. Oh, you’ve got away with it because none of them want to admit the truth, but Race Williams isn’t like that. He’s tough, and he’s got a temper. He doesn’t play the game by the rules, and with him civilisation is just a veneer.’
‘You seem to know a lot about him,’ commented Heather.
‘I’ve heard the rumours, Terry knows him quite well. They were at Oxford together, apparently.’
‘Bully for Terry,’ Heather muttered in a voice that made her cousin raise her eyebrows, although she refrained from saying anything because the lift doors had opened and half a dozen people were already milling around in the small space outside.