Roberta Leigh - Not a Marrying Man Read online

  Roberta Leigh - Not a Marrying Man

  Sara concentrated on her reply. "Of course," she lied, "he's charming!"

  And Madame Rosa, who had such romantic high hopes for them, knew that her assistant did not like her nephew, Bruno—heir to the vast cosmetic industry she had built.

  Handsome, overbearing, perceptive, passionate—Sara conceded he was all of these. But, brought up by his domineering aunt, Bruno Lyn valued his freedom more than anything. And his opinion of clever career women was obvious!

  CHAPTER ONE

  'If this is your idea of a pink lipstick,' a woman's guttural voice rasped, 'then you are colour-blind! It's the colour of mud!'

  'I can lighten it,' a man's voice said, quick and placatory.

  ‘You can throw it out,' came the answer. 'And you can go with it. Madre mia!'

  The woman's rage was in full spate and a burst of Italian resounded through the carpeted corridors of Rosalyn Beauty Products. Sara Vale, publicity manager for the company for the past two years, though she had worked here for six, pulled a face at her secretary.

  'I'd better go and smooth her down,' she said. 'Otherwise she'll have a fit.'

  Pushing her chair back from her desk, she stood up and went across the corridor into Madame's room. On the threshold she paused, as she always did before she entered it. It was a symphony of yellows: ochre gold carpet, pales yellow walls, deeper coloured satin curtains and silver birch-wood fitments and desk. In a yellow suede chair behind it sat Madame herself: fat, squat and ugly as a toad until one saw the fine dark eyes. They were still as clear a? those of a girl, with chocolate brown irises and clear white retinas. Generally they were half hidden behind heavy crepy lids which lifted only to focus an observe with a fixed stare, but now they rose to watch the young woman coming across the carpet and the hardness in them softened, as they always did when they rested on Sarah.

  'Come to pacify me, eh?' said Madame Rosa accurately. 'Well, you won't get me to change my mind. I've fired that fool MacGregor. I should have done it ten years ago.'

  'You did.' Sara sat in a chair and crossed one long, beautifully shaped leg over the other. 'If I remember correctly you fire him on average once a month. We call it your cyclical rage!'

  'You lack deference to your elders.' Madame's gnarled hand, the arthritic fingers covered in a mass of ruby, diamond and emerald rings, picked up a three-inch cylinder and tossed it across the space between them to land on the girl's skirt. Sara opened it and twirled up the lipstick.

  'It is the colour of mud,' she agreed. 'Maybe we should market it as a face-pack!'

  'Since when do I pay you to be my court jester?'

  Sara grinned and reluctantly Madame responded, her large thin mouth, reminiscent of a frog's, parting to show small, sharp teeth. It was difficult not to respond when Sara Vale smiled, for it was one of her nicest assets and very infectious, turning her from an exquisitely groomed young woman into the gamine she was at heart. She was a girl who had gone far in her career and would go further still, Madame knew; and knew too that had it not been for Bruno—infuriating, volatile Bruno whom she adored and who would inherit her empire when she was gone—she would have made Sara her successor. Still, when the time came Bruno would have sense enough to utilise her brains. If he weren't so obstinate he would do more than utilise Sara, Madame thought, but knew that to have given him a hint of her wish would have immediately destroyed any chance of it ever happening. Once before, long ago, she had tried to tell Bruno the sort of girl he should marry and had been dismayed by the fury that had erupted around her.

  'You ruled my childhood and my boyhood,' he had stormed. 'And since I left college and joined the company you've ruled my business life too. But I'll never let you rule my manhood. If you try, I'll walk out on you.'

  From then on she had kept her wishes to herself, but she could still harbour them and she did.

  'You can tell MacGregor he can have his job back,' she muttered aloud, and waited for Sara to pick up the telephone and do so. 'What did he say?' she demanded when the call came to an end.

  That you were a day late in firing him this month, and next month you should be more careful!'

  'He is as rude as you,' Madame snorted, and then tried to look pathetic. 'Everyone takes advantage of an old woman.'

  That'll be the day when anyone takes advantage of you,' Sara said promptly. 'But now I have your attention, would you like to tell me if you've given any more thought to the advertising campaign Nevil has suggested?'

  'Nevil?'

  Sara sighed, aware that Madame Rosa knew exactly whom she meant; aware too that the old lady's forgetfulness was deliberate and her way of showing that she disliked Sara's friendship with him.

  'Mr Maine has been the chief executive on the Rosalyn Beauty Account since Parrish & Gee took over our advertising four years ago.' She stopped and waited for an answer to her original question.

  'It's not a badly worked out promotion,' Madame said grudgingly, "but I don't want to spend much money on it; only enough to keep our name in front of the public. What we need is a new product. It's a long time since we came up with something revolutionary.' The old lady shifted irritably in her chair and cracked her knuckles one by one. 'I'm losing my touch.'

  'We brought out the Second Skin range for the older woman last year and the factory still can't keep up with the demand.'

  'It was a new name for an old product,' came the testy reply. 'The public don't know it, but you and I do. No, Sara, it's time we brought out something different. I pay a fortune to my chemists and get nothing in return.'

  'I'm seeing a man this afternoon who may have something,' Sara said. 'He's a Scotsman like MacGregor. He's a chemist with a food company and he wrote and said he's created some fantastic product in the beauty field.'

  'Breakfast cereal for hungry pores, I suppose!'

  'It could be a waste of time,' Sara admitted. 'I only wanted you to know I don't ignore anything that comes in—no matter how unlikely it seems.'

  'Let me know if it's any good.'

  Madame Rosa levered herself up. Her movements were slow and gave her pain, though no one dared to offer her help, as clasping a black malacca cane for support, she laboriously made her way over the thick yellow carpet. Standing, she was taller than one would have imagined, but it was merely an illusion created by her erect carriage. She was magnificently gowned in yellow, a colour she favoured above all others—as could be seen by the yellow rinse on the grey hair. On anyone else it would have looked appalling: on Madame Rosa it was perfect.

  Peasant's hair, she always called it, and she wore it in a peasant's style too: pulled away from a centre parting into a tight knot on the nape of her squat neck. How old was she ? Sara mused. Sixty-five or seventy ? She gave so many different answers when asked the question that no one knew the truth.

  'Are you free to have dinner with me tonight?' Madame asked from the door.

  'I'm afraid I can't, Madame. I'm going out with Nevil —Mr Maine.'

  The door opened and closed and Sara shook her head, half smiling. No one could use a door more expressively than her employer. She followed her out and saw the gilded elevator door closing on the squat little figure. She went into her own office and resumed the work she had been doing before she had been called away from it by Madame's tantrum. They had been getting more frequent of late and the staff were disturbed by them. Even Sara herself found it disturbing and she wondered if Madame Rosa was finding it a strain to run the business.

  She had been well into her forties before she had started the company which bore her name and, before that, had peddled her potions in some obscure mountain village in Southern Italy. It was imposs
ible to imagine her retiring completely, but it was feasible that she might be persuaded to relinquish part of the reins. That would mean the advent of Bruno Lyn, nephew and heir.

  Sara frowned. She had been with the company six years but had only been in her present position for two of them, since when the man had been in the New York office with only fleeting trips to England. Occasionally Madame met him in Rome or Paris and though she often asked Sara to accompany her, things had always cropped up to prevent her going. But she had heard enough about him not to like him. After all, how could one like a man who made no secret that he regarded women as playmates and disliked having them in business? To him they were dolls to be discarded when he became tired of them, which—according to his aunt—rarely took longer than a couple of months. At frequent intervals Madame proclaimed that she would not rest easy in her grave if she died without seeing several great-nephews and nieces toddling around her, and the fact that her sole living relative was thirty-four and still unmarried was a constant source of irritation to her.

  'Always he tells me he hasn't yet found the woman who will be a suitable mother for his children,' Madame had told Sara only a few months ago, after her nephew had made an overnight stop in London to see her on his way from York to Rome. 'But how will he find the right woman if he only goes out with film stars and models?'

  Sara had neither known nor cared, but forbore to say so.

  'And do you know what else he said to me?' Madame had continued. That he won't marry someone who wants to run his life. "When I do settle down, it will be with a mouse." Those were his exact words! Mamma mia!' The gnarled hands, heavy with rings, had waved in the air. 'My magnificent Bruno—married to a mouse! Always I've seen him marrying someone who would help him keep the company alive; who could even follow in my footsteps.'

  'No one could do that,' Sara had said quickly.

  Then what will become of Rosalyn?'

  'I'm sure Mr Lyn is capable of running it on his own. Look how fantastically well he has done in the States.'

  'He has a good head for business.' Madam's eyes lost their snap and became gentle. 'He takes after me. My sister was quite different, you know. Quiet like a lamb.'

  'Or a mouse,' Sara had thought silently, and felt she knew the reason Bruno Lyn did not want to marry a woman of spirit. Having been dominated in his youth by his tempestuous aunt, he looked forward to a quieter future.

  Many times she had heard the story of his childhood from Madame's lips, yet each time it fascinated her more. He had been five when his aunt—already successful in England—had sent for her widowed sister and nephew to make their home with her. Perhaps the boy inside the man still hankered for the village where he had been born; for a life of quietness instead of competition and for a gentle woman whom he could cherish in place of the domineering aunt who had done the cherishing for him.

  Sara thought of this again as she tried to concentrate on the publicity handout she was supposed to be approving. It was because she had heard so much about Bruno Lyn that she had never sought to meet him. But thinking of her future here she saw she had been unwise. When the nephew took over she would have to work for him, and the sooner she met him and judged him for herself, the better.

  Her intercom buzzed and her secretary informed her that Mr Maine was waiting to see her. 'Give me five minutes and then send him in,' said Sara.

  Quickly she went into the bathroom adjoining her office to freshen her make-up and comb her hair. Though she pretended to be blase about Nevil's attraction to her, her anxiety to look her best when she saw him gave the lie to the sophisticated veneer she presented to everyone who met her. No matter how svelte she was on the surface, deep down she still felt herself to be gawky little Sara—Mrs Vale's eldest—who had cooked breakfast for her brothers and sisters before she went to school and helped in the shop when she came home. Little Sara, who had tried so hard to take her father's place after he had died and who had managed to keep the newsagent's shop going and her brothers at school even though she had barely completed her own education.

  How happy she had been when Mike, the brother closest to her in age, had left school and taken over the shop, giving her the opportunity to go to secretarial college. Six months later she started work as a copy typist at Rosalyn, knowing full well that spotty teenagers would never be allowed to show their faces behind the gilt and glass counters in the showroom. Gradually her desire to be there had faded, replaced by a genuine interest in what went on behind the scenes rather than in the glamour of the frontage. Within two years she became assistant to the Publicity Director and eighteen months later took over his job when he retired. She had now held the position for two years and could not envisage doing anything else.

  Looking back on herself as she had been when she had first come here she found it hard to reconcile the spotty teenager with the present-day young woman. But it was only a surface difference, manufactured by Rosalyn, she thought wryly. If anyone was a product of the company it was herself, owing it both her successful career and her appearance, from the top of her smooth blonde head —highlighted with Rosalyn Silver—to the tip of her narrow arched feet, their toenails Rosalyn Pink Ice. Take away the make-up and what was left? It was a question Sara often asked herself, though she was no longer sure of the answer, for the veneer had been worn so long that it was ingrained and she was afraid that if it were removed she would vanish. Maybe that was why she could not think of a future away from here; with this company she had grown up and without it she would die.

  Irritated at her fanciful thoughts, she concentrated on applying more lip colour, then rubbed soft green on her eyelids to deepen irises that were already the colour of woodland moss. Mirrors of the soul, eyes had been called, and Sara always feared hers would give her away to a discerning observer, for they could still sparkle with quick anger, glint with Cockney mischief or grow bright and hard when she felt her security threatened. Now they were wide-eyed and ingenuous behind their barrage of eyelashes, thick curling ones that looked so false that Nevil had painfully tweaked one because he had refused to believe they did not come off.

  'Whoever heard of a blonde with long black lashes?' he had said in amusement. 'No wonder they swept me off my feet!'

  It had been an exaggeration that had pleased her, as did all his compliments, even though she knew many of them to be far-fetched. But then of late she had become susceptible to flattery. Twenty-four was too old an age to have reached without a love affair. It was this that was making her restless. Yet she had been unable to accept the intimacy of a sexual relationship without being truly in love; and so far love had passed her by. Perhaps she was on the wrong road. The thought brought a smile to her mouth. It was a wide and generous one with a full lower lip. Her delicately curved chin had sufficient strength to combat any sensuality, as had the straight firm nose, matt with its covering of Rosalyn Pearl Beige foundation.

  Returning to her desk, she pressed the buzzer and then settled back in the yellow leather armchair which was a perfect foil for her cool, silver blonde looks.

  Coming into the room, Nevil Maine let his eyes move slowly over her, making her aware of every curve she had.

  'Beautiful as ever,' he said softly.

  'Is that the business for the day?' The words were brusque though her smile was not, and he immediately sat down, took a folder from his briefcase, and opened it.

  'I have the layout for the new scent. Given the fact that I dislike the name and the packaging, I think we've done quite a good job.'

  'For the fees your agency charge you should be ashamed to use the word "quite"!'

  'I was being modest,' he smiled. 'Have a look for yourself.'

  She did so and knew he had indeed been modest. 'These are excellent. Almost too good to waste on something which I don't think will be a big seller. I wish we had a really super product to push.'

  'So do I. If you had something you believed in and gave us a substantial budget to spend on it, you could make a bomb. But wi
th this scent you're just flogging a dead horse.'

  'Or a dead skunk,' she said dryly.

  'Mr Roster to see you,' her secretary's voice came through the intercom.

  'I'll be with him in a moment,' Sara said, and motioned Nevil not to go. 'You may be interested in sitting in on this. There's one chance in a million it could lead to the advertising campaign you were just talking about.'

  'Really?' Nevil's pale blue eyes kindled, giving him a warm look at variance with his cool manner. Always when she saw him she was surprised he should be an advertising executive: with his smooth fawn hair and clipped moustache he looked more like an army officer. His voice was as cultured as his appearance but he was as alert as a fox terrier and had the same tenacity, deciding on something and sticking to it until he had achieved it. Yet like herself, much of Nevil was a facade, and though she did not know all that lay behind it, she was beginning to get glimpses. The first time he kissed her had afforded her one, for he had shown an almost brutal passion that had astonished her. Even now when he kissed her although he was more careful, there was still iron in his grip and enough fierceness in his mouth to bruise her.

  'Rosalyn's got a new product up its sleeve?' he said.

  'Not our sleeve,' she corrected. 'I'm hoping it's up Mr Roster's.'

  'Is he one of your backroom boys?'

  'Not yet.'

  She pressed the buzzer and a moment later Hamish Roster was shown in. He was so exactly as she had imagined that she smiled and he took it as a greeting and came forward to pump her hand vigorously in a thick- fingered, freckled one. His face was freckled too, and tanned ruddy, which made his greying hair look greyer than it was.

  'All my life I've been fiddling about with lotions and creams,' he explained after the introductions had been made. 'You could say it's a hobby of mine. A bit of an odd hobby for a bachelor to have, eh ?'

  'An excellent hobby,' Nevil interjected, and the Scotsman chuckled his agreement and, from his pocket, produced a lipstick case.