"What?" Ruth asked, appalled at his sweeping assumptions.
How had they swerved off onto this topic anyway? She thought that they had been discussing his idea to do a spot of reporting. Now here they were on the subject of her personal life, and her non-existent love-life at that.
"I asked you whether..."
"I heard you! No! Of course not! Jack and I are friends! I wouldn't dream of... No."
Franco tried not to smile with satisfaction. He couldn't have explained why, but from the minute he had come upon the two of them in the office, clearly at ease with one another, he had been determined to find out what was going on. The surprise on her face at the thought of being romantically involved with the boy was enough to persuade him of the honesty of her reply.
In some part of him he could feel that this was getting out of hand. Mild interest was fine, but she was getting under his skin, making him want more of her... He shifted his position and abruptly sat down, because his body was responding to her with its now familiar obstinate refusal to obey the commands of his head.
"Good, because for what I have in mind romantic involvement is not such a good idea." He glanced up at her and asked casually. "You're not involved with anyone, are you? I mean, no lovers on the scene?" He knew that he was shamelessly exploiting his situation, taking advantage of his position to prise answers out of her that he wanted to know and she, quite possibly, did not want to reveal, but he blithely squashed any guilt.
"No!" Her face was flushed and she fought down her instinctive embarrassment at his forthrightness to say, somewhat belatedly. "And you have no right to ask me questions like that. What I do in my private life is..."
"I know, I know..." he said, ready to apologize now that he had heard what he needed to know. "And I'm deeply sorry at having to intrude into your privacy, but my proposition... I want you to work alongside me on a certain project I have in mind."
Ruth thought that she must have misheard what he had said, but, when no further clarification was forthcoming, she said, with a regretful smile. "I thought I'd made it perfectly clear. I'm hopeless at writing. I don't think I'd be any good at all."
"You won't be asked to write anything. I intend to commence a new series of insights into twenty-first-century life in this so called civilized county of ours by running a selection of interviews with young girls who find themselves lured into teenage prostitution."
At what point, Ruth wondered, was she supposed to roar with laughter at this outrageous idea of his? Or at least outrageous if he intended to include her in it.
Hadn't she told him that she was a vicar's daughter?
She could no more work on such a project than she could strip off all her clothes and streak through a football ground.
"No, I'm very sorry, but I can't..."
"Why not?"
"I'm afraid I'm totally unsuitable for any such assignment," she amended, smiling. "Not the right kind of girl at all..."
"Why don't you let me be the judge of that?"
Wasn't he listening to a word she was saying?
"What do you think the right kind of girl is?" he asked, walking towards her and then stopping directly in front of her, so that now she had to virtually bend her neck backwards to see his face.
"B...Bold, brassy," Ruth stammered. "Self-confident. Perhaps you should ask Jan to do it..."
"That's not the sort of girl I have in mind for this at all," he said, brutally bulldozing her input without qualm. Then he leaned forward and propped himself up against her chair, gripping either side so that she found herself suffocatingly trapped by him. "In fact, he continued softly, his face close enough now so that she could feel his warm breath against her cheek and see the dark flecks streaking the blue irises of his eyes, "the minute I laid eyes on you I knew that you were the woman I wanted..." He paused, relishing her discomfort.
"For the job."
At last he stood back, massaging the back of his neck with one hand before taking a more orthodox position on the chair behind the desk.
"My parents..." she protested weakly.
"Would, I'm sure, like to see you spread your wings. It is why you came to London, isn't it? Wasn't that what you told me?"
Ruth glared at him, resenting the fact that he had homed in on a passing remark and was now capitalizing on it to justify what he wanted her to do.
"You're a big girl now, Ruth," he pressed on mercilessly. "Time for you to stop running to Mummy and Daddy whenever you need to make a decision. Time for you to face the big, bad world out there and stop 'trying to hide away from it."
"I am not trying to hide from anything." Ruth dug her heels in stubbornly. "I am just being realistic. My background hasn't prepared me for dealing with a job of that nature..."
"So what do you intend to do with your life? Has it ever occurred to you that the most interesting challenges in life are also often the most threatening?"
He was conscious that what he was trying to do was toe a very delicate line. On the one hand he wanted to coerce her into accepting his offer, into working with him. Partly because he genuinely thought that she would be well suited to what he had in mind; partly because the temptation of being close to her was virtually irresistible. On the other hand he was aware that if he pushed too hard she would set her soft mouth in that mute, obstinate line, avert her eyes and simply not budge an inch.
"I'm not going to ask you to do anything dangerous, Ruth," he said in a gentler voice, resisting the urge to steamroller her into doing what he wanted, even though he knew full well that, underneath the shy exterior, this woman was probably immune to being steamrollered. "I just know that we'll be dealing with young girls, asking them questions of a personal nature. They would respond to you far more quickly than they ever would to someone brash and self-assertive. You're gentle and calm enough to draw confidences out of the kind of girls we'll bb dealing with, and...who knows? you might even sway one or two of them to reconsider the road they've chosen."
Ruth went pink. She couldn't help it. She could feel her soft nature being played on by a master musician, but then he was right. She couldn't run away from everything that had a ring of adventure or risk about it.
He could see the indecision in her eyes and pressed on smoothly, effortlessly, tasting victory. "Most of our work will be done at night, which is why it's important that you don't have a partner. I wouldn't want to be accused of taking you away from your loved one. You'll be able to work here normally a couple of days a week, but you might find that as your body adjusts to working by night you just want to sleep during the days. And it won't be an assignment that lasts for ever.
Two weeks at the most, probably less. Just enough time for us to gain an accurate picture of what's happening to our young people out there and what's being done by the government to put an end to it."
"Why ate you so keen to get involved?" she asked, buying time while she mulled over the possibilities in her head. "Any one of your reporters out there would be more than capable of handling the job."
"I like to lead from the front." He shot her a wry smile. "And maybe you're right about that remark you made to me about being bored." He shrugged expressively and tried to look humble. "I have all that I could ever need...or want, for that matter. I started out as a reporter myself, you know."
He linked his fingers behind his head and leaned back into his hands, staring broodingly up at the ceiling.
"First on a provincial newspaper, ferreting out dirt and scandal, then on a city newspaper as a financial reporter. Good fun and, as it turned out, a useful passport when I decided to branch out and play around with the money markets myself. Since then I've made my money and now...who knows? maybe I fancy getting back to my roots. Or maybe what I'm looking for is a little..." he leveled his eyes to hers "...excitement."