Authors: Glenys O'Connell
Then the phone rang. Alex was in the other room of the suite, checking some tour details, and she picked up. “Anna, it’s a Mrs Rogers for you.”
Lord, did this woman read minds? “
Hello, Mrs Rogers. Anna Findlay here. I must say that I was very satisfied with the escort you assigned me.” She winced inwardly as she remembered just how satisfied Bob/Jed had made her feel. “Although, I have to say he did arrive late, but all’s well that ends well, yes?”
The frosty silence from the other end of the phone line made Anna jittery. Had Bob/Jed complained to Mrs Rogers? Had he told his boss what had happened in that king-sized bed, just for spite?
Pull yourself together, Annie girl. Take control. Be in charge.
“However, I’m afraid I won’t be needing any escort services in the foreseeable future.”
“Well, I can assure you that you won’t get them from this service, or from any other reputable agency if you persist in this kind of inconsiderate behaviour! That young man was all ready to do his job, and you left him hanging there!”
“What!” Anna could feel the red creeping up from her neck.
Surely that beast Bob/Jed hadn’t really told Mrs. Rogers what had happened in such detail?
“Your broke your agreement with us, Miss Findlay.”
Anna rubbed her temples. “I don’t think, technically, that I did break the agreement,” she began.
After all, they’d not actually really had sex…had they?
“He arrived just a few minutes late because of the traffic, and your doorman told him you’d already left – with another escort!”
Relief flooded through Anna. Jed/Bob hadn’t told his employer what had happened. She apologised profusely, agreed that Bob Goulding should still receive the payment that would have been his due if she’d not been so rude as to leave him behind, and said a strained goodbye to Mrs Rogers.
Was she ever going to get used to this breath stealing tingle that whooshed through her body every time she thought of Jed/Bob? And that was an awful lot of times. She would probably wind up with a heart attack, with all this crazy erratic beating going on…
Then it hit her. If Jed actually was Jed and not Bob, not the escort sent by the agency, then who the hell was he?
And more to the point, what was he doing pretending to be the agency escort?
***
Fortunately, she was flying home in two days,
so with a bit of kindness from the gods, she’d never actually know who that man had been. She told herself that the ache in her heart was simply a case of indigestion from too much rich food.
The phone rang as she was starting to pack, ready for her trip back to the safety of the dreaming towers of academia – Yorkshire, England, to be exact.
“Hey, Anna! Got some really good news for you. A television interview!”
Anna adored Alex, publicity guru extraordinaire. The woman was tough, focussed and relentless when it came to promoting and pushing her writing charges to conquer every hilltop they could.
She hated her for the same reason.
“Alex, Alex – you know I’m going home the day after tomorrow. I’ve got a magazine interview today, a book signing this afternoon, and I’d hoped to rest up, do a bit of sightseeing, tomorrow. I’m so tired, and this has been a long book tour – surely we’ve done enough?”
Alex was expert at the use of silence as an intimidatory technique. It usually worked. After a few moments, Anna asked anxiously: “Don’t tell me the sales figures are down, not after all the hard work and travel…”
Alex’s voice was triumphant. “No, dear, the sales are good. Very good. And if you do this interview, they’ll be even better. You can fit it in tomorrow and still do a tour of the city. You can shop before your flight – you’ve lots of time. You don’t embark until about 6 pm, do you?
And you wouldn’t believe the amount of work and the grovelling I had to do to get you this interview.”
Anna was smart enough to know when she was beat. The silent treatment followed by an ‘…after
all I’ve done for you’ speech was just too much. “Okay, okay – what, who, where and when?”
“You’ll be fine,” her agent told her. “Maureen Delgado is a great interviewer and very sympathetic to your book. Just look coy, avoid answering anything too academically, and you’ll rake in some more royalties.”
It was all Anna could do not to slam down the phone. She’d never wanted to get into this whole mess in the first place. Her book was supposed to be a serious study of the sexual habits of people in the 21
st
century – the Aids Aware Generation, as she called them. She’d sent it off to a raft of publishers without really considering who it went to – she needed to get publication just to hold onto her job as a lecturer in sociology at an English college.
So, she’d been shocked when her book came back, accepted, with a series of revisions and a hearty assurance from an editor that they’d hire someone to ‘tighten up the tone a little’. The very large advance and generous royalties package had meant Anna didn’t have to worry about finding a new job, which she was sure she’d have to do once her staid professors got a look at ‘Having It All: Sex & Generation X’ in its new and raunchy, rewritten form.
And the book became so popular so quickly that when the college admin saw how enrollment increased for Anna’s sociology courses, she didn’t have to look for another job, after all.
They’d even given her time off for this promotional tour.
***
She was busy reviewing a list of questions
Alexa had provided for her – with suggested answers – for the television interview when it hit her. Why on earth hadn’t she thought of this before?
If she hadn’t spent the night with the escort she’d hired from the agency – who had she spent the night with? What was Jed’s agenda?
The realisation of what she had done made her sick with shock.
She’d gone all the way to Knotting Grove with a man she didn’t know – she’d been hijacked! Kidnapped, by a stranger who’d made it plain to everyone that they had an intimate relationship – and had then managed to get her into bed! And Mrs. Rogers’ words came back to her.
You’d already left with another escort.
Anna rubbed her temple where a headache was beginning to bloom.
What if that other ‘escort’ was actually a reporter? Her fingers trembled so much she could hardly hit the speed-dial number of her agent.
“Alex, I think we need to talk…”
Alex arrived in a whiff of expensive perfume, carrying donuts & coffee as ‘emergency food’. Anna carefully told her a cleaned-up version of what had happened, skating around the bedroom scene but being sure she explained about the mix-up and how this reporter person had hijacked her.
“Oh, honey, this doesn’t look good. He may be one of these tabloid jockeys, anything to get a story – not that bedding a beautiful woman would be a hardship, of course. But he’ll make a fair bit of cash from the story if he sells it right – I wonder what he’s waiting for?”
Alexa stood up and stretched. “You’ve changed since you got to New York – maybe it’s with being on your home turf. Maggie at the London office told me she didn’t have an ounce of trouble with you back in England,” she complained.
“Well, maybe you should have been around a bit more – you should have been making sure everything went right. If you’d come to the reunion with me yourself, none of this would have happened.”
Alexa grinned. “Well, well, you’re at least fighting back. All that assertiveness training and personal coaching is paying off. Listen, love, I’ll ask around about this Jed, see if I can put a spoke in the wheel of any story he’s trying to sell. In the meantime, you’d better get your pretty ass down to the TV station and smile prettily for the cameras. You’ve got the notes that we made together, and the list of questions Miss Delgado sent over? Don’t worry too much – all publicity is good publicity. Even bad publicity, for someone who writes a sexy book like yours! Good luck, honey – see you at the station later.”
“Just one thing,
Alexa – I think we are wrong about him being a reporter. I overheard a phone conversation and he was talking about problems with an act, one that needed sexing up a bit with a woman showing more cleavage – I thought he was part of some tacky nightclub act. Doesn’t gel with being a reporter, somehow,” Anna said thoughtfully.
“Not unless he’s one of these opportunists – he could be hoping to use a story about spending a night in the hay with the newest sex-expert as a way of getting some publicity for himself. He may have been using you in more ways than one, dearie.”
They descended to street level in silence to meet the cab that Alexa had ordered to whisk Anna to her TV interview across town but Anna found it difficult to return her agent’s cheerful wave and grin as the vehicle swung out to join the busy traffic.
“You okay, Miss?” the cab driver asked. “Yeah, fine thanks,” Anna lied. One thing was certain – the next time she clapped eyes on Jed Walker, or whatever the rat’s name was – she was going to tell him a few home truths about her views on his deceptions.
Sex-expert.
That nauseous feeling rose back up in Anna’s stomach. She couldn’t think of anyone less an expert on sex than herself.
***
Jed Walker stirred sugar into his coffee, glad the station canteen was quiet for a change. The last thing he needed, after the awful interview with Maureen Delgado, was to have to put up with the usual raucous carry on of media folk in uproar.
Maureen hadn’t taken too well to the request that she add a little spice to her presentations – and frankly, he couldn’t say he blamed her. Maureen was a good interviewer, a calm and patient reporter who had an ability to draw the facts from the most reluctant of interviewees with her technique of using honey to trap the flies. He had not been surprised at her reaction when she took serious exception to the suggestion that she show more cleavage and conduct a more aggressive style of interviewing to bully or bludgeon her victim into making sensational statements that would up the ratings.
Maureen had gone storming off in tears, announcing that she intended to take early leave for her pregnancy and then consider her options when the baby was born.
Geez, that was the last thing he needed – to feel like a monster bullying a pregnant woman into a sexed up performance in order to boost his station’s ratings.
As it was, they were already short staffed because of the economy driven, freeze on hiring – which meant he’d have trouble filling Maureen’s regular daytime slot with temporary interviewers.
Lord knows, everybody and her sister wanted to be a TV chat show host – they’d be lined up at his door in droves when the word got out that he was short–staffed. But for every thousand willing wannabes, there was maybe one who could hold his or her own in front of the camera for 45 minutes without making a massive screw up.
The percentages fell even more dramatically when you were looking for someone who had interviewing skills, who could handle the camera, find and research their own interviewees, and generally not behave in a way that would get the station into law suits galore.
He sighed deeply, and thoughts of Anna Findlay flooded his brain. Now there was a face – and a personality – that could handle a TV spot. Yes, Anna Findlay would do just fine – and he could think of other positions he’d like to see her in, too.
Most notably beneath him in a nice, soft bed, her eyes wide with pleasure as she clung to him…
There he went again, growing hard at the memory of a woman he’d only known for a few hours.
And that few hours had taught me she was a conniving, self-centred user whose only thoughts were to promote herself.
Which was why, even if she was the last woman on earth, he would never allow her to take a job in his station – or into his bed.
End of story.
He pressed his secretary’s number on his cell phone. “Kathryn, could you find Maureen’s interview notes for the spot this afternoon? I’m going to have to see who I can browbeat to take over from her for now.”
“Yes, boss – your little chat with her didn’t go too well, eh?” Kathryn asked sympathetically.
“Oh, it went so well that she left the station in tears and says she won’t consider her next move until after the baby’s born – like, about six months from now.”
“Uh, uh. Guess you’re going to be looking for a new chat show host. I’ll get that material together for you – do you want me to put the word out?”
“Not yet. Maybe you’d ask personnel to dig out all recent applications – maybe there’ll be someone there we can use.”
“Oh, yes, using people is your thing, isn’t it?”
Jed jumped at the voice. It couldn’t be – he looked up to see Anna Findlay glaring down at him.
“Just what the hell are you doing here? And what do you mean saying I’m using people?” He was furious – especially as the attraction he’d felt for Anna sprang right back into life just looking at her.
“You were planning to tap into my fame as a writer by getting me into bed and then selling the story to get some publicity for your sordid little act. I heard you on the phone - scared your show would be cancelled if you didn’t get some spice into it.” Anna’s eyes flashed like iced diamonds.
“Well, believe me, if you so much as try to sell a story about Saturday night – any part of Saturday night – to the tabloids, or this television station, I will sue you for every nickel you’re worth. And I’ll make sure you never work again.”