Sarah would have liked to slap his supercilious face. Instead she gave him a brief vitriolic look which completely passed him by, and subsided into rigid silence.
Shortly afterwards Tom Forest arrived back, and together the two men loaded the three bags into the boot of the car. Max Wilde then got into the back seat with his briefcase while the other man eased himself in beside Sarah.
'You're Julie Somerville's assistant, aren't you?' he asked. 'Have you worked for Rags & Riches long?'
'Three years,' said Sarah, concentrating on her driving. An accident would really round off the morning! 'I started off as a secretary, the rest was sort of gradually accidental. Julie seemed to think I had the potential to do more than type letters and answer phones.'
'With the idea being that you eventually graduate to editor?'
'Oh no.' She had never ever thought about it. 'It's a job for a journalist and I'm no writer. I prefer what I do, which is a bit of everything and everything of little bits.'
'More managerial than creative.'
'Yes. But management involves creativity, too.'
The large head nodded thoughtfully. 'I'm glad you think so. Too often organisational skills are underrated. Not everyone has the flexibility to do it well, particularly when control involves the interaction of artistic temperaments.'
Sarah grinned. A very subtle way of saying the crazies who inhabit the extended world of fashion journalism.
They discussed the point in general terms for a while, then moved on to specifics—Sarah's job at Rags and the magazine itself. Aware she was being sounded out, she spoke honestly and intelligently, hoping the man in the back seat was listening. At least he wouldn't be able to dismiss her as brainless.
She could see him in the oblong of the rear-view mirror, head tipped back on the seat, eyes closed. The lines of tension around his mouth and eyes were quite pronounced and the rigidity of the jaw showed that even now he wasn't relaxed. She felt a moment's uncertainty. She should have made allowances for the fact that he had just spent nearly twenty-four hours in the air, been effusively humble instead of being offended at his sarcasm. Then she remembered that Tom Forest had been on the same trip and he had managed polite civilities at the end of it. Flashing another look at the closed face behind her, Sarah shivered. For all the charm that had lit his face when he had smiled at that stewardess, there had also been a certain cool calculation. Not a man given to impulse. Not a man to make an enemy of.
If only she hadn't been so hasty. She cringed to think of his incredulity when he realised she thought he was trying to pick her up. She would have to try and put it from her mind, try to forget, too, that instinctive dislike she had felt. It could make her job over the next few weeks very difficult and could even jeopardise her future with the magazine.
When they reached the hotel Sarah double-parked and offered to check in for them, but Tom Forest declined with thanks.
'We'll sort ourselves out and give Mrs. Somerville a phone call,' he said. 'Thank you for meeting us, we'll see you again soon.'
Back at the office Sarah resigned herself to a wasted morning. Everyone wanted to know what the advance guard had discovered about the new arrivals. With difficulty Sarah managed a fairly accurate physical description and a less accurate description, because of the deliberate omissions, of her own feelings on meeting the great man himself. One by one her colleagues trotted back to their departments in the mistaken belief that they had pumped Sarah dry of information.
It wasn't until Julie got back from her meeting at ten-thirty that she really spilled the beans. Reluctant as she was to confess her stupidity, it was better that Julie heard it from her than from the Wilde man.
Wondering how to present her case Sarah had finally decided on a bald statement. Julie's sense of humour was a bit unpredictable and trying to dress up the facts as a funny story could well backfire.
Disbelief, annoyance, mock-sobs and heavy sarcasm was the result, followed by a short, sharp homily on the merits of being polite to strangers, even importunate ones. Quite mild for Julie, really.
'Honestly, Sarah, you are the limit,' she finished up. 'The one person I thought I could rely on not to foul up! What happened to your celebrated soft answer . . . the Carter trademark?'
How to explain about the prickle on the back of her neck? The instinct. The 'feeling'. She could imagine the beautiful blue eyes widen at such impracticality from practical Sarah. Besides, her complaint was quite justified, Sarah's job was to smooth down feathers that other people had ruffled, not do the ruffling herself.
'He should have introduced himself first,' she said, unwilling to take the entire blame. 'He definitely didn't look my idea of an English tycoon. More like a male model.'
'What did you expect—bowler hat and umbrella? Don't let the Hollywood looks fool you, honey. Men have done that before now and gone on to commit commercial suicide. He's got a brain with a capital B—commercial degrees up to here and the Midas touch as far as money's concerned. Let's just hope he lists a sense of humour amongst his other attributes. I hope you apologised.'
'Of course I did!' She was not going to enlarge on that conversation.
Julie slammed drawers and shuffled papers noisily for a few more minutes and then to Sarah's relief she began to laugh.
'Here. You'd better take this.'
She tossed over a large green envelope. It landed with a soft 'phlop' on Sarah's desk, disgorging some of its contents—light cardboard sheets to which printed clippings were pasted. 'It's the file on Wilde's, you'd better do some homework.'
It took a while for Julie's mirth to subside. Sarah closed her eyes and ears to the distraction and settled down to read the file in front of her. It was certainly comprehensive. There were clippings from overseas newspapers and magazines, press-releases, notes and sketches from the various Wilde fashion collections as well as cross-references to letter and photographic files, which Sarah also looked through. She read through everything once, putting her speed reading to good use, sifting out the references to Max Wilde and putting them aside for further study.
From the tenor of the news reports she could deduce that his attitude to the press was ambivalent. When he wanted publicity for his ventures he appeared charmingly frank and forthcoming, welcoming questions. But equally, he could be a reporter's nightmare. 'Mr. Wilde had no comment to make', 'Mr. Wilde was unavailable for comment', 'Mr. Wilde refused to answer further questions'.
Where his private life was concerned there wasn't even a 'no comment'. There were plenty of photographs— smiling, stern, frowning, quizzical—action flashes grabbed on the run, of him at nightclubs and theatres, fashion shows and functions. Always there was a beautiful woman on his elbow, or the suggestion of one just outside the frame, a slender hand clutching his, a wisp of skirt, the direction of his gaze. The captions were all gossip and heresay of the 'Millionaire Max's Latest Love' type. Sometimes there were coy little comments from the women in question but discretion was obviously something he expected from his female companions. Max himself never bothered to deny or confirm anything from what she could gather—not even the stories that were patently outrageous. Perhaps he knew that nothing generated publicity power like the suggestion of secrecy. His reticence made him a gossip columnist's dre