"Possibly," he said with a shrug. He drained the contents of his glass in one long gulp, deposited the glass on the table and said. "You'll have to change.
You're going to stand out in clothes like that where we're going this evening."
"Where exactly is that?"
"It's the sort of place where good girls don't go.
Which is why tonight you're going to have to look like a bad girl so that you can blend in."
"Look like a bad girl?" she asked faintly, her face, registering the impossibility of achieving any such look. "How does a person look like a bad girl? I haven't got that sort of face," Ruth continued, anxiously contemplating the task and wondering whether this was another well-disguised leg-pulling exercise.
"Would I have to snarl a lot? Bare my teeth? Chew gum? I don't smoke, so that's out."
"A simple change of outfit should do it. The sort of girls we'll be seeing will be older than the two last night, older, more experienced, and if we want to try and engage their conversation then I suggest you get rid of the buttoned-up shirt and the knee-length skirt."
"What difference will it make?" Ruth persisted stubbornly.
Her skirt, she wanted to point out, was actually a couple of inches above the knee, but he clearly hadn't noticed that.
"It'll be the difference between a possible interview and the possible giving of confidences. A fine but important line if we're to humanize this article we'll be working on." He stood up and she hurriedly followed suit. "So. To Your Place."
"There's no need for you to come with me," she said dubiously, eyeing the tall, masculine figure slinging on his battered tan airforce-style bomber jacket and experiencing just the smallest twinge of unease at the prospect of this man being under her roof. "I can always meet you there...if you give me the address."
Absolutely no way.
"We'll take a taxi to your place. Where do you live?"
It's ridiculous to feel nervous, she lectured herself sternly on the drive over to the flat. It's hardly as though you haven't worked alongside the man now.
And...anyway, there won't be anything of the social visit about him being in the flat. He'll just be there, waiting while you change. If you change quickly enough you can leave him standing by the front door, even. Maybe. Certainly there won't be any cups of coffee being offered or Please have a seat; I won't be a minute.
Why had she thought that he might obligingly remain rooted to the front door while she dashed into the bedroom to change? No sooner had she unlocked the front door and pushed it open than the man was inside the flat, strolling around it with undisguised curiosity, inspecting the books on the single bookshelf over the television set, peering at the family pictures on the mantelpiece by the blocked-up fireplace. Ruth watched from the open doorway, then she stepped inside and said sarcastically. "Make yourself at home."
"This isn't too bad at all, is it?" He made that sound as though his expectations of her place had run along the lines of rat-infested basement studio flat with mould-encrusted lino flooring and peeling paint on the walls.
"What had you expected?" Ruth asked, clicking shut the door and looking at him with her arms folded.
"Nothing as big as this, for a start. Flats in London aren't cheap to rent and I wouldn't have expected that you could afford a decent-sized one-bedroom place."
He looked around him in the manner of an estate agent summing up a potential property. "With a pretty big kitchen in a respectable area."
"Actually, Mum and Dad do help me out with the rent," Ruth admitted.
"Ah."
Their eyes met and she looked away, nettled by what she felt was going through his head. "I'll just go and change," she informed him, scuttling past him towards her bedroom.
She would show him that she wasn't the ineffectual child he seemed to think she was. She glared at her wardrobe, daring it to let her down in her moment of need, desperate to do something, project some kind of image that would blast a great big gaping hole in his preconceived ideas of her as little Miss Goody-Two-Shoes who thought that a good game of Scrabble was as exciting as sex and who couldn't even make it on her own in the Big Bad World without her parents propping her up on either side.
Useless to explain to him that her parents' financial help was something she accepted because it afforded them peace of mind rather than because she was scared of living somewhere dingier.
Her assortment of clothing was, she was forced to admit, sensible and practical rather than sexy. In the end she made do with a pair of jeans, which she omitted to cinch at the waist with a belt so that they hung low against her slender hips, exposing her belly button.
She teamed these with a black and white cropped bra that revealed most of her stomach, over which she flung a cream-colored cheesecloth shirt which looked the essence of respectability when buttoned up and twinned with one of her pleated skirts, but which reeked of wildness when left hanging open to reveal bare stomach underneath.
She gazed, wonderingly, at her reflection in the mirror and felt a surge of heady abandon.
The girl staring back at her, with the make-up and the mascara and the figure-hugging, body-exposing clothes, was not Ruth Jacobs. Oh, no. The girl staring back at her was someone wild and sexy and utterly daring.
Well, just for the night anyway.
Ruth grinned at her reflection and stuck her tongue out, then she took a deep breath and went outside.
Franco, staring out of the bay window to the pool of illuminated pavement outside, into which came and went the hurrying figures of people on their way to homes, families, lover so turned around at the sound of the bedroom door opening.
He'd been thinking how right she was. He was having a good time, chasing behind this story with the sort of fervor that reminded him of himself ten years ago, before the acquisition of money had jaded his palate and turned his enthusiasm into dry tongued cynicism.
And he had to admit that having her along for the ride made things infinitely spicier. Looking at her, enjoying the way she aroused his imagination, succumbing to the novelty of having to take cold showers every night because the slightest passing thought of her turned effortlessly into a network of complex fantasies that would not have gone amiss on the pages of a men's magazine. Yes, he had to admit that his tired soul had been re-ignited in more ways than one.
Even so, it had still surprised him how disproportionately thrown he had been by her suggestion of leaving. He didn't care to question the insanity of his response.
"Well?"
He realised that he had been staring at her. For how long? He couldn't have said. He knew that his mouth was hanging open, though, and he shut it.
Bad girl. In the low-slung jeans and the small top with enough bare skin peeping through the crack in the unbuttoned blouse to make any red-blooded man need several cold showers on the trot. And, worse than that, there was still enough of the blushingly shy Ruth Jacobs evident to make the picture she presented more hauntingly erotic.
He felt a steady flush creep into his face and he hurriedly cleared his throat
"Definitely more of a...suitable...suitably appropriate...look. Yes."
"I haven't overdone it, have I?" Ruth inquired anxiously, peering down at herself, twisting so that she could try and achieve an overall view of herself.
Her fair hair swung over her face and Franco savored the image she presented of slender, unconscious beauty, moving with the natural grace of youth.
Her breasts, he saw, were much bigger than they appeared beneath her normal garb of buttoned-up blouse.
The close-cropped top barely provided restraint, and they bounced gently as she inspected herself. He could feel himself begin to perspire and he cleared his throat nosily in an attempt to take control of the situation before he found himself hunting down the nearest shower.
"Not at all. Now, shall we head off?"
Ruth straightened immediately.
His voice was curt, and when she glanced at his face she could see that his expression matched his tone of voice.
Of course she had overdone it. She had been stupidly trying to prove something and now resembled a clown of sorts, right down to the ridiculous clothing and the painted face. As some token gesture to modesty she slung on her denim jacket, so that at least the top half of her body was covered, and then trailed behind him, hovering self-consciously in the background while he summoned a taxi.