‘What?’
‘I’m going to relaunch it as Claibourne’s. One snappy, modern name instead of two long-winded ones.’
‘Oh, fudge! I really wish you hadn’t told me that.’ Flora really wished she hadn’t asked. She wasn’t good at secrets. Not those kind of secrets. She’d used up her entire store of secrecy genes keeping just one. ‘I can see how that might be…um…’
‘Like waving a red rag at a bull? Inviting court injunctions and goodness knows what else?’
‘I shouldn’t think goodness would have much to do with it.’
‘Which is why you have to keep Bram Gifford occupied for the next month. Try and stun him with one of your flashes of genius—demonstrate just how indispensable you are to the success of the store. I don’t expect him to be on our side, but if he can be neutralised—’
‘You’re not suggesting I neutralise him the way Romana neutralised Niall?’ Flora asked. ‘Because I’m telling you now—’
‘Until they return from their honeymoon we won’t know who neutralised whom,’ she said. ‘I need you, Flora. I really need you.’
That her sister would admit to needing anyone had to be a first. India had always been entirely self-sufficient. But Flora had her own problems. ‘I just don’t see what I can do. I’m going to be working in the museum most of the time and when I’m not there I’m going to have to take a trip into the interior to look at the excavations. It’ll be very short on mod cons and it’s got nothing to do with the store.’ She hoped, if she kept repeating that, India might eventually realise the futility of involving her.
‘Bram Gifford doesn’t have to know that.’
‘Oh, please! His middle name is Farraday. He won’t be that easy to fool.’
‘Then don’t even try. The Tutankhamun treasure inspired the Egyptian look. With a bit of effort your “lost princess” could do the same. Just give us something to work with. And it won’t hurt Mr Gifford to work up a sweat following you through the rainforest.’
‘What about me?’
‘You won’t even notice the discomfort. You never do.’ India finally smiled. ‘It won’t be that bad, Flora. I’ve been doing a little research of my own and, believe me, Bram Gifford is at the top of every girl’s wish list.’
‘Not mine,’ she said, with feeling. She’d seen photographs of him in Celebrity magazine—a golden bear of a man, oozing wealth and power, with an endless succession of lovely women clinging to his arm.
Her mother would adore him.
‘Hey, I’m not suggesting anything serious, but it wouldn’t hurt to flirt with him a little. Just don’t, whatever you do, fall in love with the man.’
The warning was quite unnecessary. If he was going to be dogging her heels, the next month was going to be quite bad enough without making a total fool of herself. Once was more than enough. But she didn’t say that. What she said was, ‘Don’t be silly. There isn’t a girl alive who could meet him without falling in love with him. That’s what men like Bram Gifford are for.’ Her mother had an entire collection of them. But she pulled a face so that India would know she was joking.
India, realising that she’d won, laughed more with relief than amusement. ‘I have the feeling that meeting you will be a unique experience for him.’
Bram leafed through the thick file of newspaper cuttings and magazine articles that in one way or another touched on the life of Flora Claibourne. Other than the dreary formal portrait used on the jacket of her book, which made her look ten years older that she was, and the broadsheet reviews, few concerned her as an individual.
Mostly they included her as an add-on. She was a member of a well-known family whose loves and lives had always provided fodder for newspaper diarists. She didn’t appear to have had any affairs worth reporting, though. Unlike her mother, who was a tabloid editor’s dream.
Peter Claibourne’s second wife had been a model. Tall, leggy and stunningly good-looking in those early photographs. She hadn’t stayed with Claibourne long. She hadn’t stayed with anyone long. She must be in her forties now, although cosmetic surgery and kind lighting made her appear closer to Flora’s age. Maybe that was why they had rarely been seen together much once Flora had grown out of photogenic babyhood. The myth of endless youth would not survive the comparison, and since her latest husband—formerly her personal trainer—was considerably younger than her, that illusion was a necessity.
And Flora might prefer it that way too. It must be tough to be compared with your mother and found wanting.
On those rare occasions on which she’d been forced to put on a long frock and makeup she looked ill at ease, as if desperate to escape and return to the safety of her books. She looked, he decided, like a virgin who didn’t quite know what her body was for.
An innocent little fish just waiting for a cunningly tied fly to be drifted temptingly over the water? It seemed unlikely. She was twenty-six years old. There must be more to her than that.
There was a long ring at the doorbell.
He took one last look at the photograph. It was true that she was no Eve, but it was entirely possible she’d open up like a flower to the sun in response to a little attention. He wouldn’t be closing his eyes, though. He’d be watching her every minute of the day.
Picking up the overnight bag that contained his passport, along with the essentials for coping with a long flight, he went to answer it.
‘Mr Gifford? Your car for the airport, sir.’
Flora Claibourne barely looked up from the notes she was reading as he joined her in the rear of the limousine that was taking them to the airport. Just long enough to nod and say, ‘I’m sorry about dragging you away like this, Mr Gifford. I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you.’
She was wearing a crumpled linen trouser suit in some indescribably drab colour, her hair an untidy bird’s nest inadequately secured with pins and combs. If she’d tried, he thought, she couldn’t have looked less appealing.
He turned on a suitably low-wattage smile to match her cool businesslike manner. Maybe the sun would warm her up.
‘It’s Bram,’ he said. ‘And don’t apologise. A couple of weeks on a tropical island sounds a lot more attractive than following you around a department store.’
‘The whole purpose of this exercise is to demonstrate what it takes to run a department store,’ she pointed out, not bothering with a smile of any kind. Or a return invitation to use her given name.
Prickly, as well as plain. God, he hated women who made no attempt to look attractive, instead challenging the male of the species to hunt for inner beauty and gain his true reward. He had news for her. The average male wasn’t interested in inner beauty. But it wasn’t his job to tell her that. His brief was to find out what was going on behind the scenes at Claibourne & Farraday.
He didn’t think flattery would impress her much either, so he said, ‘If that were the case we’d both be wasting our time. You know nothing and since I’m a lawyer, not a shopkeeper, I’m not especially interested.’
The smile hadn’t made any impression; maybe he could disarm her with frankness. Okay, so he wasn’t being totally frank. He was very interested in getting the Claibournes out and the Farradays in with the minimum amount of fuss. Legally.
‘At least this way I’ll be wasting my time in the sun.’
She glanced at him again without raising her head, just a sideways look—a lift of lashes untroubled by mascara but long and dark enough without it. In any other woman he’d have taken it as the opening move in a game of flirtation, but Flora appeared to be totally oblivious