She steeled herself to answer his questions coolly and concisely trying not to give any of her personal feelings away.
‘And you don’t like him,’ Roger said when she’d finished, proving that she was no actress.
‘Do I have to?’ Cass asked rather sourly. ‘I wasn’t too keen on Randy Sid, King of the Stainless Steel Sink either, but it made no difference to the campaign.’
‘So you’d put the high-flying Mr Grant in the same category, would you?’ Roger gave her a thoughtful glance. ‘What happened Cass? Don’t tell me he made a pass at you,’ he added grinning.
‘All right, I won’t.’ She made a business of searching in her desk drawer for something.
‘You mean he did?’ He sounded almost awed. ‘Dear God.’ He whistled. ‘The guy’s supposed to have an eye for women, but he must have laser vision if he could penetrate that battle dress top, and all the other ethnic layers you’re usually cocooned in. How do you turn him on, Cassie? With the dance of the seven Greenham Common ponchos?’
‘Very amusing.’ Cass slammed the drawer, narrowly missing removing her own finger in the process. ‘I had no idea that my love life, or lack of it, was of such consuming interest to everyone here.’
Roger said quietly, ‘Actually, I was joking, but if I’ve offended you, Cass, then I’m truly sorry.’ He paused. ‘Has it happened at last? Has someone—some man really got to you?’
‘No,’ she said controlledly. ‘Why do you ask?’
He shrugged. ‘Because it has to happen sometime.’ He frowned swiftly. ‘Yet not, I’d have thought, with Rohan Grant.’ He gave her a troubled look. ‘He’s the big league, Cass. His reputation says he likes to love them and leave them. Any relationship with him would be high on passion and good times, but lacking in anything else, including longevity.’
She smiled coolly. ‘My sentiments entirely, so I’m in no danger.’ She picked up some of the papers on her desk. ‘This fireplace company. It seems to me the designs they want to feature in their ads are the really ugly ones. How can we explain that tactfully?’
She was passing Accounts on her way out to lunch later when a man came out. She recognised him as the one who’d spoken to her about the bill for her dress at the lunch party, and spontaneously they smiled at each other. He fell in beside her.
‘Have you given it to the jumble sale yet?’
She laughed. ‘I’m waiting for a good cause.’ She was trying to remember his name. They’d been introduced when he joined Finiston Webber just before Christmas. Lloyd, she thought. That was it—Lloyd Haswell.
He said, ‘Where do you go for lunch?’
She shook her head. ‘I rarely do. I cook in the evenings for myself and my daughter, and I generally use my lunch hours for shopping.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I was going to ask you if you’d join me. There’s a pub I go to that does a marvellous steak and kidney pie. Unless, of course, you’re a vegetarian,’ he added doubtfully.
‘No,’ Cass said cheerfully. ‘I’m an unashamed carnivore still.’ She stole a fleeting look at him under her lashes. He was about her own age or slightly older, nice looking, slightly diffident in his manner. Almost as different from Rohan Grant as it was possible to get. She added, ‘Actually, I am quite hungry. I’m getting over ‘flu, and I haven’t felt like eating a great deal over the weekend.’
His face lit up. ‘Does that mean I have company?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ she returned gaily, refusing to feel guilty at his obvious pleasure. If the consensus of opinion was that she needed a man in her life, then she would have one, she decided coldly and clinically. Someone nice and inoffensive like this Lloyd, whom she could keep at arm’s length when it mattered. She wanted someone to be seen with; someone to convince Rohan Grant that he was wasting his time.
It might not be fair to Lloyd, she thought with compunction, but it wouldn’t do him any lasting damage either.
In the event, she found him good company, with a ready sense of humour. When he mentioned a new West End comedy, and said he was thinking of getting tickets, it was no hardship at all to agree to go with him.
They arrived back at the agency together, and she guessed that the news would spread rapidly. At one time she would have found this painful, but there were worse threats hovering over her now than a little office gossip.
When she got to her own office, Roger was there, just replacing the telephone receiver.
He said ‘McDowell’s been on from Eve.’ He paused. ‘He wanted to know if we’d definitely signed Tracey Kent for the perfume commercial.’
‘Why did he want to know that?’ Cass frowned slightly. ‘Both he and Handson thought she was perfect.’
Roger sighed. ‘Orders from above,’ he said laconically. ‘Apparently the big boss wants Serena Vance to do the launch.’
‘And does he know we haven’t an icicle’s chance in hell of getting Serena Vance?’ Cass asked crisply.
Roger shrugged. ‘He thinks we have. Apparently he and Miss Vance—know each other very well, and she will be happy to star in the Eve commercial as a favour to him.’ He leered. ‘Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, just what he did for her?’
Cass said with distaste, ‘I’d prefer not to.’ She managed a little laugh. ‘So—we’re stuck with the Randy Sid syndrome all over again.’
‘Well, hardly,’ Roger objected. ‘At least Serena Vance can act. But we’ll have to re-jig her script. The words that would have been acceptable from someone who looked as dewily innocent as Tracey would be ludicrous spoken by Miss Vance.’
Cass fiddled with her pen. ‘Of course, we don’t really know if she’ll do it,’ she pointed out. ‘Perhaps Rohan Grant is just—shooting a line.’
‘Perhaps, but I don’t think so,’ Roger said drily. ‘What would be the point? No, I bet when shooting starts, the camera will be lingering over Miss Vance’s deservedly famous attributes, instead of Tracey’s innocent charms.’ He sighed enviously. ‘What a thing it is to have power, as well as good looks and charisma. I wish Serena Vance owed me a favour,’ he added disconsolately.
When she got home that night, Cass went through a pile of old colour supplements which she had put out for collection by the dustmen, until she found the one, dated a few months earlier, which she wanted. Serena Vance’s challenging beauty stared up from the cover beneath the legend—‘Serena Vance—sex symbol or serious actress?’ Cass couldn’t remember what, if any, conclusion the article inside had come to, but she did recall the other full page photograph which had accompanied it, showing the actress naked except for a few discreetly placed folds of an opulent wild mink cloak. A present, the caption had stated, from an admirer.
‘I wonder who that was!’ Cass muttered to herself, thrusting the magazine back into the pile.
It had come, she told herself, as no great surprise to learn that Rohan Grant had been the lover of someone like the voluptuous Serena. Nevertheless it made his subsequent behaviour towards herself all the more baffling and ridiculous. Unless, of course, he was just amusing himself at her expense—tormenting her to see how she would react. A young widow with a reputation as a loner would seem easy game for a man used to finding his pleasures with sophisticated beauties.
It was a train of thought which should have made her angry, but instead she found herself getting more and more depressed, although she reminded herself that was probably the aftermath of the ’flu.
She cooked supper, had a game