The Baby Scandal(11)

"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.