Love and Liability (Dating Mr Darcy - Book 2) (5 page)

Puzzlement coloured his voice. “I don’t understand. You think you’re busy next week, but you’re not sure?”

“Oh, I’m busy,” she said quickly. “There’s no question of that.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with the thong, does it? As to that, I can explain—”

“Please don’t.” Her words were clipped. “It’s none of my business, after all.”

“But it’s not what you think.”

“What I think doesn’t matter.”

“Very well,” he said after a moment, “I’ll say goodbye, then. If you have any more questions, please call. Sorry if I was a bit of an arse today.”

“A bit of an arse?” she said. “You were a complete prat.”

To her surprise, he laughed. All right, it was a small laugh, not a loud guffaw, but still. He did have a sense of humour somewhere under all that starch and correctness. “I suppose I was, yes.”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” Of course, Holly had no intention of calling him again, no matter how attractive he was. What would she say?
Hello, Alex, it’s Ms James from BritTEEN. You remember…the girl you threw out of your office and who called you a prat. Oh, and by the way, did you find my tampon? I think it rolled under your desk…

“No, it’s fine. I think we had a mutually crap day today.”

“Really? Why was yours crap?”

“Bit of a long story.” He paused. “I’d much rather discuss it with you over dinner.”

She clicked open her interview document and stared at the photos of Alex. He was unquestionably sinful to look at. She couldn’t just hang up, never to see him again. Suddenly she found herself blurting, “Perhaps we could meet up for lunch one day next week. I think I could manage that.”

“Excellent.” His voice was tinged with amusement. “Glad you could fit me into your busy schedule, Ms James.”

“I’m a
very
busy girl, Mr Barrington,” she informed him as she ran his interview document through the spell checker. “I’ll see you next week, then.”

“I’ll have Jill check my schedule and get back to you on Monday morning, if that suits.”

“That suits perfectly,” Holly murmured. His voice — so warm and sexy and posh — had gone straight to her brain and frozen it, while making the rest of her feel decidedly warm. “I’ll talk to you then. Bye.”

Chapter 7

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Valery - Attached is Holly James’s “One Outrageous Question” interview with Henry Barrington, a City solicitor/financier. Not sure if Holly’s up to standard on this one, felt it didn’t quite suit our content, but she insisted, so here it is.

Personally, have my doubts.

Sasha

Sasha clicked “send”. There. Her email to Valery would hammer a nice, sharp nail in the coffin of Holly James’s soon-to-be-over career at
BritTEEN
. She grabbed her mobile, scrolled down the list of programmed numbers, and pressed the last.

“It’s done,” she said without preamble as the line was answered. “Meet you in twenty at the usual place.”

Sasha scanned her desk one last time and prepared to head out. She reapplied her lipstick, Chanel’s latest — she’d raided the magazine’s beauty closet — and pressed her lips together. As she tossed the lipstick and mobile in her bag and gathered up her things, her inbox pinged.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Go with it. It’s fresh and vibrant and exactly the kick in the arse
BritTEEN
needs. Guitar-smashing pop stars and flavour-of-the-week starlets are so bloody yesterday.

Want this as our featured Q&A article next month. Ensure it goes in the book before close of business Monday.

Afterwards, come to my office. We need to talk.

VB

Valery Beauchamp

Editor-in-Chief

BritTEEN
Magazine

“Damn it!” Rage suffused Sasha’s face as she reread the email from her boss. She slammed her laptop shut. Valery was supposed to
nix
Holly’s interview, not feature it in the next bloody issue! And what the hell did she want to talk about?

A tiny tremor of fear crept through her. Valery wanted to get rid of her; she was sure of it. Her boss had been distant and cold — not that she wasn’t normally distant and cold, but even more so than usual — convincing Sasha that Valery was displeased with her work performance. She’d heard rumours that Holly was being groomed to move up into another position…

Which might mean that Sasha was being replaced.

Sasha didn’t like Valery, but she loved her job. When she’d first arrived at the magazine, she’d been straight out of university and thrilled to be hired as a junior editorial assistant. Despite the long hours, low pay, and serious curtailment of her social life, she’d revelled in being a part of the editorial team.

And although she sometimes grew weary of Valery’s unceasing demands and the high-pressure deadlines, with her recent promotion to Features Editor she now had a crack staff — except for Holly
bloody
James — to oversee, and a sense of satisfaction at how far she’d come. No more council estates or crummy bedsits for her.

Despite its drawbacks, Sasha reminded herself, she liked her job and meant to keep it. She
had
to keep it, at least until she found something better — like a rich husband — or got a promotion or a hefty pay rise. She needed the money, after all; she had bills to pay. Crushing bills that she could barely keep up with…

Sasha clasped her hands together to stop them from shaking. She knew her team all thought she was a shallow, bloody-minded bitch. And perhaps, sometimes, she was. But she got things done. Despite everything, she got things done…

Her mobile phone rang.

“Hello?” she snapped. She listened for a moment, and her voice softened. “Hello, how are you? That’s great… I’m glad to hear it.” She paused. “No, I can’t see you tonight, love. Perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow. Yes, okay. I promise.”

She rang off and leaned back in the chair. A headache was brewing. As she rubbed her forehead in a vain attempt to ease the tightness, Sasha realized she couldn’t keep this up much longer. It was all getting to be too much.

As she glanced again at Valery’s email on her laptop screen, her resolve hardened. She had to find another way to sabotage Holly. She retrieved her mobile and hit redial.

“It’s me again. There’s been a change of plan. Meet me in my office as soon as you can.” She paused at the protests that filled her ear. “Just do it!” she snapped. “If you want to be the next features sub-editor — and if you don’t want me to tell Valery you didn’t actually graduate from business school — then you need to help me get rid of Holly. Or you’ll continue making copies and fetching coffee for a very long time. I’ll see to it.”

Sasha snapped the phone shut and strode to the smaller office adjoining hers. Scowling, she began to riffle through Holly’s desk, looking for her interview notes. There had to be something, somewhere in this mess of papers and folders and KitKat wrappers… How on earth did Holly stay so thin? She ate like a bloody horse…

“I’m here.”

Sasha barely glanced up. “Good. Get busy and help me find something — anything! — that’ll make Holly look bad. An unpaid parking ticket, a faked expense account, a secret love child with Phil from Accounting…”

“Okay. Move over.” Kate Ashby tossed her bag down and began to yank open desk drawers. “I doubt there’s anything here. Holly’s working on the interview at home, so her notes won’t be here.” She straightened. “I’ll go home and see what I can find. Perhaps she’ll leave her document open—”

“Never mind that,” Sasha said impatiently, “just find her notes. Look for something — anything — that we can use against her. An off-the-record comment, for instance.”

Kate looked at her doubtfully. “Holly told me she uses a mini-recorder to do interviews, as a back-up if she misses something in her notes.”

“There you are. Perfect. Find something, anything, that Holly — or, more importantly, Henry Barrington — wouldn’t want in print, and slip it into the interview.”

“But, Sasha — if we print an off-the-record comment,
BritTEEN
could be sued for libel.”

“That’s what libel insurance is for.” Sasha strode back into her office.

Kate followed her. “But…what about your job? You could get sacked for this.”

“I won’t get sacked,” Sasha said, “because only you and I know about this. And
you’re
not telling anyone, are you?” She flicked a glance at Kate and sat down behind her desk.

“Why do you have it in for Holly, anyway?” Kate asked, curious. “You’ve always said that if things ever go pear-shaped, you’ll marry money; so why do you care if she gets your job, then?”

“I don’t. She can have my bloody job, and welcome to it. I just can’t stand girls like her, that’s all.”

Sasha jerked her middle drawer open. Her position as Valery’s assistant was hard won, and often difficult, but it was
hers
. She’d always loathed the smart, clever girls in school, the ones who never struggled with maths or French the way she did, the ones who effortlessly earned top marks.

Instead, Sasha devoured fashion magazines and learned how to dress stylishly on a budget, how to use cosmetics to make the most of her features, who the top clothing and shoe designers were and what made their designs so sought after. She knew the fashion world like the back of her hand.

And she refused to let a pampered clever clogs like Holly James show up and take her hard-won success away from her.

Ever since Holly had joined the
BritTEEN
staff, Valery seemed to find favour with Sasha less and less, yet lavished praise on Holly.

And Sasha was bloody sick of it.

“Holly’s no threat to you,” Kate scoffed. “She hasn’t your experience, for one thing.”

“No, she hasn’t. And she’s never walked twelve blocks to a job interview, either, or shopped at Oxfam — not for fun, mind you, but because that’s all she could afford. She’s never lived in a bedsit in a dodgy neighbourhood, or eaten a jam sandwich for dinner because there was nothing else.”

Sasha clasped her hands tightly together, remembering. Had six-year-old Holly ever lain in bed, listening as her mother and a strange man went at it in the next room? Had she ever come home from school to find her mum passed out on the sofa, an empty bottle of gin lying beside her on the floor?

Of course she hadn’t.

“Still, she seems okay,” Kate added doubtfully. “She helped me get this job, after all.”

“She’s a posh little princess. She wouldn’t know hardship if it bit her on the arse.”

Kate opened her mouth to protest, then closed it.
“My dad and Nat’s grandfather are partners,”
Holly had said off-handedly, as if co-owning a major British department store were nothing special.

And even though she liked Holly, Kate felt, not for the first time, a tiny knife-twist of jealousy.

It wasn’t fair that while she struggled to make ends meet, borrowing money occasionally from a payday lender to cover her bills, Holly James worked, probably as a lark, so she could buy the latest handbag or an extra pair of designer shoes.

“Holly’s not posh,” Kate said, but her words lacked conviction. “Her family’s well off, that’s all. She can’t help that.”

“Perhaps not,” Sasha agreed, “but nor should her family name allow her any special considerations. Valery already thinks Holly’s ‘promising’ and ‘full of good ideas’.” She snorted. “Full of herself, more like.”

“But you’re Valery’s assistant, not Holly. You’ve nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, I’m not worried,” Sasha assured her smugly. “Once this interview with Henry Barrington hits the stands, Holly
bloody
James will find herself booted out of
BritTEEN
so fast her knickers will catch fire.”

Chapter 8

“Oh, shit,” Holly mumbled as she sat up in bed and groped on the table for her mobile. She squinted at the number on her screen and groaned.

Her father was the last person she wanted to talk to this morning. Because just now, it felt as though a DJ was spinning house music right inside her head.

Maybe she’d had one too many vodka and grapefruits last night.

“Hi, Dad.” She blinked against the sunshine streaming through a gap in the curtains. “What’s up?”

“Your mother asked me to call and invite you down to Oxfordshire this weekend. We’re having a few of the neighbours round for a dinner party.”

She winced. “Oh. Okay. I suppose I could.”

“Don’t sound so enthused.”

“I
am
enthused,” Holly told him as she went into the kitchen and switched on the kettle. “I’m not quite awake yet.”

“It’s nearly noon. Out late clubbing, were you?”

“I wish.” Holly took down a cup. “No, I was working.”

“You work the longest hours for the lowest pay of anyone I know—”

“Don’t start, Dad. Please?”

He sighed. “She’s invited John and Enid to stay the weekend as well. You remember — they lived next door when you were small.”

She didn’t, not really. “Right.”

“I can count on you, then? I’d like to spend some time with you over something other than a chequebook.”

John and Enid. Holly frowned. They had two sons, both grown. One was married, and the other was in banking or insurance or something equally boring.

She scanned the calendar on her mobile. “There’s nothing important going on. What time?”

“Shall we say seven? Get there a bit earlier and we can have a drink beforehand.”

“Great, I’ll see you on Friday.” As she ended the call Holly tried to picture John and Enid’s sons, and failed. One worked in the City and the other was…an architect? Actuary? Something with an ‘A’…

She plunked a tea bag in her cup and went back to her bedroom, noticing as she did that Kate’s door was firmly shut, and sat down at the desk. Her laptop was still open. She jiggled the mouse and the screen sprang to life.

She checked her email to see if there’d been any further response from Sasha about Alex’s interview, but there was nothing. Holly frowned. She
knew
she’d sent it. Perhaps she’d just have a quick look to make absolutely sure…