Free An Affair to Forget by Evelyn Hood Page A

when Sam arrived. Now the seat-belt sign flickered on and the plane’s nose began to tilt earthwards. Whether she liked it or not Morrin was stuck with Gareth for the rest of the trip.
    “ Vicki Queen,” he reminded her patiently.
    “ I’ve never met her. She and Sam were students together and he says she’s extremely talented. She gave up the stage when she married, and now that she’s divorced he thinks a new play would kick-start her career. Why don’t you ask him that question, since he knows more about her than I do?”
    The plane gave a sudden sharp lurch, then recovered itself. “Because Sam may be a businessman but he sees Vicki as a woman rather than an actress, and that clouds his vision.”
    “ I doubt it.”
    “ When he talked to me about her he was definitely a man talking about a woman. I’d say he reckons that she can play any part from Cleopatra to Mary Poppins and back again without having to stop for breath.”
    “ Were you always as cynical as you are now?”
    “ I don’t know – was I, when you knew me?” he challenged, then, when she said nothing, “I’m only cynical where my work is concerned. Otherwise I’m as weak and impressionable as the next man. Do you think I should do what your Sam wants, and write the stage play of my book?”
    “ He is not my Sam, he is my employer… though I don’t suppose for a moment that you’ll believe that.”
    The plane lurched again and his shoulder came up hard against hers. As she turned, startled, she realised that his mouth was no more than an inch from hers.
    “ Dear Morrin,” he said gently. “You’re quite right… I don’t believe a word of it.” Then, again, “Do you think I should write a stage play for him?”
    “ I expect you’ll do what you think best,” she said at last, feebly.
    “ But I want your opinion, Morrin. You know Sam Kennedy and you know me, probably more than most people do.”
    “ Surely Alison knows you better than I ever could.”
    “ Don’t be coy, dear,” he reprimanded. “Alison knows what I allow her to know, whereas you’ve worked with me. You’ve seen me in all my moods, you were there when things went wrong and when things went right. So answer my question, please.”
    He was right, she did know him well, and yet, like Alison and, she suspected, everyone else, she had never been allowed to know everything about him.
    “ Sam knows his job very well, and when he says the book would adapt very well to the stage I believe him.”
    “ That was Morrin the personal assistant talking. What does the real Morrin think?”
    “ I think you should do what you want. It’s your book.”
    He laughed. “So you’re determined to stay on the fence. The thing is, could Vicki Queen play Charlotte? Even more important, could she be Charlotte?”
    “ Gareth, I know nothing about Vicki Queen, and I’ve only glanced through the book.”
    Her attempt to snub him failed. “Now that you’ve done so well for yourself in the theatrical world,” he said mildly, “I can appreciate that my type of work is too lowbrow for you.”
    She looked at him sharply but he gazed back at her with innocent eyes. The plane seemed to lift for a second before slamming back down again, and she gasped and caught at the arms of her seat.
    “ It’s going to be a bumpy landing,” Gareth said happily. “Look at the cloud out there.”
    As they descended through layer upon layer of thick white cloud the plane seemed to Morrin to be plunging too steeply, bumping and jolting as it went. The other passengers had fallen into a tense silence and Morrin’s fingers had begun to ache with the intensity of her grip on the padded arms.
    “ It’s just like a bobsleigh run,” she heard Gareth say in her ear, “only we can’t see ahead. Once when I was the front man in a bobsleigh team the sleigh was taking the bends like a bird, and – ”
    Morrin dragged her gaze from the window and tried to fix it on something that wasn’t moving