Free Last Resort by Susan Lewis Page B

behind David's appointment, but so far she hadn't been able to come up with a credible scenario, or at least not one that took account of a magazine of such startling insignificance. In fact, she would have put her suspicions down to her own passion for intrigue if it hadn't been for the wall of silence she had come up against on enquiring when exactly David might be planning to grace them with his presence. It wasn't that she wanted to see him
    - she was experiencing an annoying turbulence in her nervous system at the very prospect - but she had expected to have at least received a telephone call by now.
    After finalizing what she could with the agent, Penny thanked her for the lift back and ran up the stairs to the production office. Her spirits were high, not only because of the house, but, perversely, because of the pleasure of knowing she would be back in London by this time tomorrow. In fact she was in such a good mood she was debating with the idea of inviting Marielle to dinner that night to fling a few more shots of friendship 61
    at her impenetrable reserve. However, she got no further than pushing open the door before her exuberance was brutally eclipsed by astonishment, which was in turn rapidly displaced by intense irritation. David Villers, in all his manly splendour and proprietorial audacity, was perched on the edge of Marielle's desk at the far end of the office.
    Penny remained standing where she was, bristling with resentment, but neither of them seemed to notice and, considering the gluey intimacy of their laughter and the sultry look in Marielle's eyes, it didn't appear they were going to.
    Penny's blood was rising to the boil. The fact that he had chosen to turn up unannounced like this, as though he was on some kind of checking-up mission, made her want to flatten his appalling, overblown ego for the sheer arrogance of it.
    As she continued to stare at them, for the moment unsure how to play this, she could only feel astounded at her own stupidity for not having realized that something like this would happen. Though he had his back to her and though Penny hadn't seen him for over a year, the look on Marielle's face was enough to bring flooding back to Penny's mind just how irresistible he was. His untidy, curly hair, as blond as her own, was a little shorter than the last time she'd seen him, and though he was sitting down it was easy to tell - and she remembered only too well - how tall and slender and nauseatingly muscular he was. Pursing her lips at one corner, Penny tried to swallow the shameful memory that was burgeoning inside her of how he had once described her and she was dreading the moment when he turned round and recognized her.
    "Ah, Penny,"
    Clothilde said, coming out of Penny's office,
    "you're back. How was the house? Any good?"
    "Perfect/ Penny said, assuming a nonchalance she was far from feeling as she slung her briefcase on a desk and hung her coat on the back of the door.
    62
    When she turned back, David was on his feet and watching her with a smile of curiosity in his narrowed blue eyes that Penny found intensely irritating.
    "So you're Penny/ he said, coming towards her with a hand held out to shake hers.
    "It's good to meet you at last."
    His voice held a strange mix of Scottish and American accents and Penny detested it instantly.
    "I've been hearing a lot about you,"
    he told her as she tried to assess whether he was simply pretending not to recognize her or whether his ignorance was, as it appeared to be, genuine.
    "Seems you made yourself a lot of fans over in London,"
    he went on as she reluctantly shook his hand.
    "And Marielle here's been telling me how you're racing ahead with the new magazine."
    Patronizing bastard, she was thinking, as, forcing a smile, she said,
    "I didn't realize you were intending to turn up today. If I had, I'd have been here to greet you myself."
    He shrugged.
    "It's OK,"
    and turning back to Marielle he added,
    "I've been well looked after."
    "You