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‘Exciting times,’ murmured the journalist sarcastically.
‘Those bits I loved,’ Amber defended staunchly. ‘And I started reading, too. Devouring books which filled in the education I’d missed.’
‘Then what?’
Amber shrugged. ‘Too many people kept telling me that I had a beautiful face—’
‘And that was a problem?’
She shook her head. ‘No, of course it wasn’t a problem—I’ d grown up seeing real problems, and having a sympathetically proportioned face certainly didn’t qualify! But after a while it becomes a little difficult to ignore, especially when the novelty of having your own place wears off. The hours at the hotel were long and tedious, and the money was lousy, and all of a sudden my poky little room began to look less like a palace and more of a prison.’ And there had been more men to fight off. Rich, slick businessmen whose rooms she’d cleaned, who’d thought that their fat wallets and fat stomachs would make them appealing to a young girl with only her looks and her natural intelligence as assets.
The whirr of the tape recorder was the only sound in the room. It was a hypnotic sound. ‘Go on,’ said Paul smoothly.
It was strangely cathartic to be able to talk so honestly about her past. Amber narrowed her navy eyes and let the words come spilling out, shuddering as she remembered the corpulent company director who had asked her to become his mistress!
‘I found myself looking into the future,’ she said slowly. ‘And I realised that, if I wasn’t careful, then I was consigning myself to a life of drudgery just like my mother’s had been. Only things were different for me. I wasn’t a widow with two children—I didn’t have to live like that I was limiting my horizons for no other reason than that I feared my attraction to the opposite sex.’
The journalist gave a cynical laugh. ‘So you really threw yourself in at the deep end by getting hooked up to a man like Finn Fitzgerald?’
Amber shook her head. ‘I didn’t get “hooked up” with Finn for ages. First of all, I went along to the Allure agency—’
‘What made you choose Allure? You’d seen a picture of the owner, right?’
‘Wrong. I had no idea that Finn existed—I just knew that Allure was the biggest and the best agency in London, and the most central. I walked in, and...and...’
‘And?’
It was difficult to put into words just how she had felt when she had first set eyes on Finn. She had been dressed to kill. Or so she had thought. Her sister had told her that if she was planning to visit a modelling agency, then she had better do something dramatic about her appearance.
So she had.
Out had gone the stark pony-tail and the layered clothes. The amber-gold hair which had given her her name had been washed and crimped, so that it had blazed around her shoulders like a pleated golden cloud. But she had committed the cardinal crime of the novice where her make-up was concerned. She had borrowed bright blue eye-shadow and boot-black mascara and shiny cyclamen lipstick and had ladled them on freely. If she had had a best friend, then the best friend might have told her that she resembled a pantomime dame. But there had been no one other than Ursula, and her sister had had even less idea about make-up than she had.
Her clothes had been her own—bought specially for the occasion. A skirt which had been too short and a blouse which had been too tight. Market clothes, both of them—and as cheap as you could buy. It made her shudder now to think what she must have looked like. She had tottered into the Allure office on high, squeaky shoes which hurt her feet, and...
‘And?’ prompted the journalist again.
Amber sighed as she remembered the impact of first meeting Finn. Of meeting the kind of man she never would have thought existed, not in real life. Not in her life, anyway...
Her heart picked up speed as she remembered. ‘I walked into the Allure office and Finn Fitzgerald was sitting there, dressed entirely in black. Black polo-neck sweater. Black jeans. Black hair. And his hair was all ruffled. There was just something about him—I can’t describe it. Something which drew your eye to him, and only him—no matter who else was in the room. As though he had a special, inner illumination all of his own. He was—’ She bit her lip as she tried to think of a way to describe Finn.
‘The sexiest thing on two legs?’ Paul Millington suggested. ‘Testosterone personified?’
Amber burst out laughing. It was an outrageous way of putting it. But true. ‘Well, yes,’ she conceded. ‘But his appeal goes much deeper than his good looks. He’s very charismatic.’
‘Well, that goes without saying!’
‘Mmm,’ agreed Amber dreamily. ‘It does. Anyway, he was sitting at this circular desk, talking into the phone, with pictures of the most beautiful women all over the walls behind him. I nearly walked out at that point.’
‘Why?’
Amber shrugged. ‘Oh, it all looked so daunting—he looked so daunting. I felt like a fish out of water.’
‘So he took one look at you, and he said...?’
Amber took a mouthful of champagne. This part of her recollection still hurt, despite her ability now to see the humour in it. And the truth. ‘He put the phone down and looked at me for what seemed like an awfully long time, and said that if I started wearing high white stilettos, then I would probably make a reasonable amount of money—’
The journalist frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Neither did I, at first. It was his idea of a joke, you see. Implying that I looked like...like...’
‘Like?’
‘A streetwalker,’ she admitted reluctantly.
‘He said that?’
‘Implied that.’
‘So what did you say?’
‘I told him that his eyes looked like traffic lights—’
‘Traffic lights?’
Amber giggled. ‘Well, yes. His eyes are green, you see—very, very green—only this time they were red as well. He’d had a terrible bout of flu, apparently—first time he’d ever been sick in his adult life. Everyone there said what a terrible patient he had made.’
‘I can’t imagine anyone saying something negative about Finn Fitzgerald’s looks. That must have been a first. Did he mind?’
‘No. He laughed. Just threw back his head and laughed, and said, “Touché,” and everyone stopped what they were doing and just stared at me. At first I thought they were staring because I must have looked such a state. It wasn’t until much later that they told me they had been amazed to see Finn laughing so uninhibitedly. They nicknamed him “Grin” Fitzgerald for a while after that, until he put a stop to it.’
‘You mean he’s a sourpuss usually?’
‘I don’t know if I’d put it quite that way. I mean that not many people can make him laugh.’
‘But you can?’
Amber let her gaze fall demurely to her lap. ‘I hope so.’
‘So he signed you up and asked you out?’
Amber shook her head. ‘No. He told me that I wasn’t tall enough to be a model.’
The journalist let his eyes roam over her. She looked pretty damn good from where he was sitting. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘Not really. I’m just over five seven, and most models top six foot these days.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I told him he wasn’t polite enough to be my boss, anyway. And that made him laugh. Again.’
‘So you left?’
Amber shook her head. ‘I was about to. Then a phone rang and he started speaking into it, and another one rang and he started gesturing impatiently with his hand, so I picked it up and answered it. I took a message and wrote it down and then started walking out.’
‘So then what happened?’
‘He called me back and asked if I could type and I told him that I could, after a fashion. Then he asked if I could make coffee and I said yes, could he?’
‘And he laughed again, right?’
Amber smiled. ‘That’s right.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then he offered me a job.’
‘As?’
‘A general dogsbody, really—only he gave it a fancy name.’
‘And you told him what he could do with his job?’
‘I was very tempted,’ admitted Amber. And not just by the job, either. ‘But intrigued, at the same time. The atmosphere in this place was wild. And buzzy. I told him that I’d think about it and he said that he didn’t have time to discuss it then, but would I meet him later that evening?’
‘And he took you out for dinner, right?’
‘That’s right,’ smiled Amber. ‘But he brought two models along with him.’
‘So it wasn’t the romantic evening of a lifetime?’
‘Not at all. These two women spent their time being bitchy to one another and trying to compete for his attention.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘I let them get on with it. Just sat there enjoying my supper.’
‘And he was surprised?’
‘Amazed. First of all he sent the two models home, then he looked at my empty plate and said he’d never seen a woman put away that much food before. And I told him that was because I didn’t get to eat in restaurants like that every day, and if he didn’t appreciate the yummy things on the menu then maybe his palate was jaded and perhaps he should try a diet of simple food for a while.’
‘And he laughed again, right?’
‘Yes, he did. And he asked me whether I could cook and I told him that, yes, of course I could cook—but was he looking for an assistant or a wife?’
‘Let me guess—he stared into your big blue eyes and said it was the latter and he’d been waiting all his life for a girl like you?’
‘He did not. He frowned at me and told me that if I went to work for him I’d have to do something about my image, and I said, “Like what?” So he told me to report to him first thing the following morning and all would be revealed.’ Amber took another mouthful of wine, really enjoying herself now. Thinking what uncomplicated fun it had been back then. ‘So I turned to him and asked, “Does this mean you’re offering me the job?” and he glared at me and said of course it did.’
‘So you jumped for joy?’
‘I did not I told him that I couldn’t accept a job unless there was accommodation involved, because my job at the hotel was a living-in job. And he said that shouldn’t be a problem—that he could find me accommodation.’
‘Meaning you could move in with him, I suppose, which was where love first blossomed?’
Amber shook her head. ‘Oh, no. He was offering me the grotty old flat above the agency—well, I say grotty. It wasn’t that bad, and Finn had it decorated for me.’ She remembered how he had insisted on choosing the colours and how it had rankled. Colours which would not have been her choice at all. But in the end it seemed that Finn had known best, because Amber had grown to love the decor he had picked out. As in so many other areas of her life, he had been her guide and her mentor. ‘So I moved in.’
The journalist licked his lips. ‘And he joined you?’
Amber shook her head and laughed. ‘Oh, no! I couldn’t have imagined Finn living there! He had a much grander apartment overlooking Hyde Park.’
The journalist looked around him. ‘That’s this apartment?’
Amber nodded. ‘Uh-huh—and eventually I moved in here. With him. But that’s how it all started.’
The journalist swallowed down another mouthful of wine. ‘So it was like—a red-hot romance straight away?’
‘Certainly not!’ Amber’s mouth pursed into a prim little line. ‘I worked for Finn for two years before he even laid a finger on me.’ Until she had grown to want him so much that she’d thought she would die with the wanting. And had convinced herself that a man like that wouldn’t look twice at a working-class girl from the council estate. But in that she had been completely wrong. A smile played around the lush curves of her mouth. ‘He played Pygmalion instead.’
‘And how did he do that?’ asked the journalist casually.
‘Oh, he sent me to a make-up artist and a hairdresser. Then I had my colours done by a colour therapist, and after that I saw a stylist and she advised me about what kind of clothes to wear.’
‘She advised you pretty well,’ murmured the journalist, running his eyes over the gold silk-knitted tunic dress she wore, which showed off the best pair of legs he had ever seen.
‘Well, Finn certainly thinks so,’ said Amber, an unmistakable note of reproof in her voice which told the journalist in no uncertain terms to back off.
‘Er, yes. Finn.’ Averting his eyes from the milky-white stockings which made her legs sheen so provocatively, the journalist took another sip of his champagne instead. ‘He’s doing pretty well for himself.’
Amber nodded. Sometimes she thought he was doing a little too well. The business was booming—and so successful that Finn rarely seemed to have time to draw breath just lately. Even acquiring a partner hadn’t helped, not really—even though Jackson Geering was a faultless choice. In fact, maybe Jackson was just too good.
He had been taken on by Finn to ease some of the workload at Allure—but such was Jackson’s talent for the business that he had succeeded in drumming up a whole load of new openings! He was currently in New York, looking into the possibility of opening a branch of Allure over there. Amber knew that Finn was excited by the prospect and she was worried. How far did a man have to drive himself before he could accept his own success?
But, while she might suggest that he was in danger of overdosing on stress, she couldn’t tell a man of nearly thirty-four how to live his life...
She sneaked a quick glance at her watch. It was getting on for five o’clock. And once Paul Millington had left she would be free to start cooking, which she loved so much that Finn often teased her about it. She liked to prepare robust food—full of vegetables and pulses. Hearty, healthy, economical meals, and, even though Finn told her time and time again that they were rich enough to eat caviare non-stop if they wanted to, some part of her loved concocting the simple meals which had been a part of both their childhoods.
The journalist saw her looking at her watch, recognising that she wanted to end the interview. Good. When the subject was impatient for him to leave, that was when they were often at their most indiscreet. And indiscretions made the best stories, no doubt about it...
‘So how did Finn propose?’
Amber laughed and shook her head, the thick hair swaying as fluidly as golden syrup. ‘Oh, no—I’m not falling for that one! He’d kill me if I told you!’
‘In bed, then?’ he quizzed mischievously.
Amber blushed like a thousand sunrises, and then could have kicked herself. ‘I’m not saying!’
Actually, they hadn’t been in bed at the time. They had been closeted in a sumptuous downstairs bathroom at a weekend house party which neither of them had really wanted to attend, hosted by the owner of one of the country’s best-selling glossy magazines.
