‘What the hell is this supposed to mean, Miranda?’ she demanded.
Miranda’s face was a picture of unconvincing innocence. ‘You don’t like the piece? I thought we did Dublin justice.’
‘I’m not talking about the piece on Dublin and you know it, Miranda!’
‘Yes.’ Miranda’s face turned into one of editorial defiance. ‘The story was too good not to tell.’
‘But there was no story, Miranda!’ protested Catherine. ‘You know there wasn’t.’ Except that there was. Of course there was. And it was the oldest trick in the journalist’s book. Being creative with the facts.
The only facts that Miranda had gleaned from Catherine were that she had spent a wild night with Finn Delaney and that he had not asked to see her again. Miranda had discovered for herself that Catherine looked uncannily like an ex-lover of his, and from this had mushroomed a stomach-churningly awful piece all about Finn Delaney underneath Catherine’s article on Dublin.
It described him as an ‘unbelievable’ lover, and hinted that his sexual appetite was as gargantuan as his appetite for success. It described the view from his bedroom in loving detail—and she didn’t even remember telling Miranda about that! It did not actually come out and name Catherine as having been the recipient of his sexual favours, but it didn’t need to. Catherine knew. And a few others had guessed.
But the person she had been astonished not to hear from was Finn Delaney—and she thanked God for the silence from that quarter, and the fact that Pizazz! didn’t have a big circulation across the water.
‘You deceived me, Miranda,’ she told her editor quietly. ‘You’ve threatened my journalistic integrity! I should bloody well go to the Press Complaints Commission—and so will Finn Delaney if he ever reads it and if he has an ounce of sense!’
‘But it was in the public interest!’ crowed Miranda triumphantly. ‘A man who could be running a country—it’s our duty to inform our readers what he’s really like!’
‘You don’t have a clue what he’s really like!’ stormed Catherine. Though neither, in truth, did she. ‘You’ve just succeeded in making him sound like some kind of vacuous stud with his brain stuffed down the front of his trousers!’
And with that Catherine had flung down her letter of resignation and stomped out of the office into an unknown future, her stomach sinking as she told herself that she could always go freelance.
The doorbell rang again.
Now, who the hell was bothering her at this hour in the morning? At nine o’clock on a Saturday morning most people were in bed, surely?
‘Hello?’ she said into the inter
com, in a go-away kind of voice.
Downstairs, the petals of the scented flowers brushing against his cheek, Finn felt the slow build-up of tension. He had tried to pick a time when she would be in and it seemed that he had struck lucky.
His eyes glittered. He wanted to surprise her.
‘Catherine?’
A maelstrom of emotions swirled around like a whirlpool in her befuddled brain as that single word instantly gave her the identity of her caller. But of course it would. She would recognise that rich Irish brogue from a hundred miles away, even if her guilty conscience hadn’t been fighting a war with a suddenly stirring body.
Finn?
Finn?
Here?
He must have seen the article!
A fit of nerves assailed her. Catherine pressed her forehead against the door and closed her eyes. Oh, why the hell had she answered the wretched door in the first place? He knew now that she was here, and short of ignoring it and hoping he might go away…
She opened her eyes. Tried to imagine him shrugging those broad, powerful shoulders and just quietly leaving and failed miserably. She was trapped.
Presumably Finn Delaney had come here to wipe the floor with her. To tell her exactly what he thought of women who blabbed their tacky stories to middle-of-the-road magazines.
‘Catherine?’
She tried to work out if he sounded furiously angry or just quietly seething, but the rich, lilting voice sounded nothing more than deeply irresistible.
‘C-come up, Finn,’ she suggested falteringly.