‘Games?’ Heather raised one immaculate eyebrow.
‘Come off it, you know what I mean,’ Jennifer interrupted crossly. ‘Look, honey, I’ve seen you in action; the come-on and then the put-down; the whole bit. There hasn’t been a man in your life since Brad who’s even come close to touching your emotions, but with every one you let them think you’ve fallen—hard—and then you pull the rug out from under.’
Heather frowned at this accurate and rather unattractive picture her cousin drew. ‘Oh, look, I’m not criticising,’ Jennifer assured her, ‘far from it, I’m just saying that Race Williams isn’t like all the others. He’s hard, Heather, and he won’t let you get away with it, so if that’s what you’re planning on doing, don’t, please.’
‘I wasn’t planning on doing anything,’ Heather assured her cousin. It was true, Heather always let the men do the running, and not until she was sure they deserved it did she let them see her contempt for them. They were all the same; all so egotistically sure of themselves and her ultimate surrender to them that they deserved the treatment she handed out.
‘When do you get to hear about the Rio contract?’ Jennifer asked her, changing the subject.
‘Oh, I think they’re making the final decision within the next few days. Four of us are shortlisted, and I’m the only brunette.’
‘They’re bound to choose you,’ Jennifer assured her warmly. ‘You’re so right for the image they want to promote.’
Privately Heather agreed, and she had already made up her mind that if she got this contract it would be her last. She would retire and concentrate on her book. She knew there had been a considerable degree of speculation in the fashion press about the contract and she was hotly tipped as favourite.
‘Come on, time to get ready,’ announced Jennifer, getting up. The party was to celebrate the television company’s first year in business and the appointment of Race Williams. Jennifer’s invitation had extended to cover a friend and Heather had agreed to go with her. One of the shareholders in the TV company was also a shareholder in Rio, and a little public relations work wouldn’t come amiss. Not that Heather ever used either her beauty or her body to further her career. It was the inviolateness of her body and mind that gave her the power to destroy the male sex; her strength came from the fact that secretly she despised them. She was glad Brad had left her a virgin, she thought fiercely, and she intended to stay that way, giving nothing of herself to any man, because giving meant receiving pain in return; and she’d had enough of that.
In her room she abandoned her thoughts and studied her reflection with professional scrutiny. Her face was heart-shaped, her eyes set wide apart, deeply green and tilted at the corners, her mouth warmly curved, her cloud of dark hair reaching down on to her shoulders. Hers was a sensual face, one which was used to market goods with a high degree of sexual appeal, but inwardly Heather felt her nature was completely at odds with her looks. Inwardly she was as cold and devoid of sensuality as a lump of ice, and it was this that made it so easy for her to revenge herself on the male sex; they took one look at her face and her tall languidly curved body and mentally docketed her as ‘easy’. She laughed mirthlessly. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and in time, with varying degrees of humiliation, they all discovered it. She had perfected a form of put-down that sliced into the delicate male ego like a knife through butter, and every time the look in their eyes was the same. But best of all, they never warned the next victim; never admitted their humiliation, leaving her free to repeat the whole process over and over again. She smiled when she read the names of her supposed ‘lovers’ in the press, smiled in genuine amusement, her reputation protected her from men who might have found her virginity a challenge they would commit rape to overcome, and that was the way she liked it.
Her dress for the evening was in fine black matt jersey; striking décolleté, sweeping down to her waist at the front revealing the smooth cream flesh of her rounded breasts and the narrow vulnerability of her rib cage. At the back it exposed her body right down to the base of her spine and it fitted her like another layer of skin. An advantage of her height was that she was able to carry off the ripe fullness of her breasts without seeming badly proportioned, their curves in direct contrast to the narrowness of her hips and the slender length of her legs. Black silk panties were the only thing she wore under her dress. Her legs were still slightly tanned from her last modelling trip abroad, her toenails painted a deeply vibrant pink.
So Race Williams had been asking about her… Heather quickly collated all that she knew about him. They had never met, she had no idea what he looked like, but the gossip columnists loved him; he had featured as an escort of many beautiful women, and he had a reputation for ending his affairs when they began to bore him that made her eyes gleam and harden with the anticipation of battle. It would be very pleasant to humiliate a man like that; a man who treated her sex so contemptuously. Perhaps he was already contemplating making her his latest conquest. The thought wasn’t formed through vanity—what man would want the girl she had been, the vulnerable woman she still was inside? Oh no, she didn’t delude herself on that issue. What Race Williams and men like him wanted was the outer shell she presented to the world; the looks that adorned the covers of magazines; the kudos of escorting a newsworthy female; or possessing her and subjugating her to their male power.
‘Heather, are you ready yet?’ she heard Jennifer call outside her door. ‘The taxi will be here soon!’
Quickly completing her make-up, Heather brushed her hair, watching it billow on to her bare shoulders, recognising the glitter in her eyes and the colour gleaming on her cheekbones, and knowing the reason for them.
‘Thank God Terry likes small blondes,’ Jennifer pronounced piously as Heather opened the door. ‘My God, you’re really going to town tonight!’ She watched as Heather slipped on high-heeled sandals, wondering how tall Race Williams was. In her high heels she topped six foot, and it always amused her to witness a man’s initial reaction to that fact. Some, she knew, found her height sexually exciting, visualising her as some sort of Amazon in bed, and initially she was careful not to disillusion them.
‘You’ll need your fur jacket,’ Jennifer told her, ‘the temperature was starting to drop when I came in. I hate January and February,’ she added, shuddering, ‘and we’re only just into January—brrr!’
Laughing, Heather reached inside her wardrobe for her jacket. Both girls had been presented with them as Christmas presents that year. Jennifer’s was a soft silky blue fox which suited her fair colouring, and Heather’s a richly dark silver fox, in which her uncle had told her fondly that she looked magnificent. Dear Uncle Bob; he and the twins were the only men she actually liked and felt at ease with. The twins were as close to her as brothers and her aunt and uncle had taken the place of her deceased parents, but still there was this sense of loss, of not truly belonging, of always, somehow, being on the outside. Which was why she had responded so passionately to Brad’s attentions; needing the commitment of sharing her feeling with someone else; needing to feel ‘special’ to another person. She sighed, pushing away all thoughts of the past, following Jennifer outside.
The television studio was several miles from their flat and they arrived to find it well lit, the car-park full of expensive, prestige pieces of metal. Male toys needed to boost fragile male egos.
The commissionaire recognised Jennifer and welcomed her with a grin, but it was on Heather that his eyes lingered admiringly.
‘Another conquest,’ Jennifer murmured as they got in the lift. ‘Oh, don’t look like that—I’m not a fool, Heather,’ she told her cousin. ‘I know you don’t give a damn for any of those men you go out with. I also know that when you’re supposed to be having mad flings with them, you’re tucked up safely in your own virginal bed.’ She saw Heather’s expression and said quietly, ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ Without waiting