City Woman (56 page)

‘I can’t handle this, Luke,’ Devlin sobbed. ‘I just can’t!’

Luke’s face was like granite. ‘You don’t have to,’ he said. ‘I will . . .’

Fifty

‘No, I won’t be home today. I won’t be home for a few days, Dianne. Devlin needs me here.’ Devlin heard Luke talking to his PA. ‘Just tell Van der
Voek that I’m sorry, I’m unavoidably delayed in Dublin and I’ll call him when I get back. I’ll keep in touch, Dianne. Bye.’ He hung up and smiled at Devlin.
‘That’s that settled. Now, let’s get your solicitor on the line and then we’ll have a cup of coffee and plan our strategy. I’m sure we’ll have no problem getting
a court injunction.’

‘Can you believe it!’ Devlin shook her head, still in a state of shock. ‘How can they do that to me? How can they put my private life up there for everybody to read about? Have
I no rights? Oh God, I feel sick.’ Devlin began pacing up and down her sitting-room floor.

‘Give me your solicitor’s number,’ Luke said firmly, ‘and let’s get her over here so that we can see what she makes of it.’

‘Luke, you should go home,’ Devlin said agitatedly. ‘What about your meeting? I don’t expect you to cancel all your engagements because of a mess I’m in.’

‘I’d expect you to cancel your engagements and come to my aid if I was in a fix,’ Luke remarked calmly.

‘Oh!’ Devlin was taken aback.

He shot her a questioning look. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘Of course I would, Luke. Thank you for that.’ Devlin walked over to him and hugged him. ‘You mean an awful lot to me, I couldn’t imagine life without you. I love you,
Luke.’ She held him tight, knowing that having him by her side would keep her going no matter what she had to face.

‘I never thought I’d hear you say that, Devlin,’ he confessed, smiling down at her upturned face. ‘All those months that I was crazy about you and you kept pushing me
back, I thought: Reilly, you don’t stand a chance. When you tell me you love me, Devlin, it just blows me away. I’ll never be able to hear it often enough.’ He bent his head and
kissed her very lovingly and tenderly, and in the circle of his arms Devlin suddenly felt serene and safe. Having had to fend for herself for so long, it was such a comfort to have someone special
to share the burden. To hell with the
Sunday Echo
and its readers.

The phone rang and Devlin almost jumped. ‘I’ll get it,’ said Luke. ‘It’s your mother.’ He held out the phone to her.

‘Devlin, did you hear the radio?’ Lydia sounded not far from hysterics.

‘It’s all right, Mum. Calm down! I’m calling my solicitor. Luke is here with me and we’re going to get an injunction to stop the paper from publishing the
article.’

‘They don’t need to publish any article,’ Lydia fumed. ‘That advertisement was enough. Devlin, I really feel this is all my fault . . .’

‘Mum, that’s enough of that! It’s nobody’s fault. That paper is a rag and don’t you dare let it get to you. Go to work today as normal and forget about
it.’

‘Will you be in today or are you going to take the day off?’ Lydia asked miserably.

Devlin was silent for a minute. To tell the truth, City Girl was the last place she wanted to be after what she had heard on the radio. It would be hard to face everybody, knowing there would be
talk.

‘Maybe you shouldn’t, dear. Maybe you should go away for the weekend: get out of Dublin for a few days until this has all blown over.’

For one moment Devlin was tempted to do just what Lydia suggested, tempted to turn to Luke and say, to hell with it all – let’s go to London. But that would have been running away
and Devlin had never run away from anything in her life. A sudden sense of resolve stiffened her spine. They weren’t going to have the satisfaction of seeing her fleeing or hiding, as if she
had something to be ashamed of. It was they who should be ashamed – not her.

‘Of course I’m going into the office, Mum. I’ll be a bit late because I have to talk to my solicitor but I’ll see you later and we’ll have coffee in the Coffee
Dock. Maybe you and Dad would like to have dinner with Luke and me tomorrow night. I’ll see if I can book somewhere nice.’ She could sense her mother’s surprise and see
Luke’s face breaking into a grin as he gave her the thumbs-up sign.

‘I . . . do you think . . . are you up to it, Devlin?’

‘Of course I am. I never felt more like going out for a meal in my life.’ Now that Devlin had decided on a course of action, she was feeling much more positive.

‘I’ll phone your father and see what he has to say and I’ll see you later then,’ Lydia promised.

‘I like the way you’re handling things,’ Luke declared. ‘Why don’t we up the ante and have drinks in the Horseshoe Bar before we go to dinner? Now
that
would really give the glitterati something to talk about!’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Luke.’

‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘You’ve the right idea about going into work and going out to dinner. Take it a step further by going for drinks in
the
place to be. Let
people see you don’t give a damn about the
Sunday Echo
and its grotty little story.’

‘Do you know what you remind me of? Do you remember when Rhett Butler dragged Scarlett out of the bed and made her go to Melanie’s party for Ashley after India Wilkes had caught
Scarlett kissing him?’

‘It worked, didn’t it,’ Luke retorted. ‘If you want to come down to the foyer, I’ll sweep you up into my arms and run up the stairs with you and ravish you as
well.’ His eyes twinkled.

‘After that ad, I suppose I
am
a bit of a Scarlet Woman!’

‘Ouch,’ Luke grimaced. ‘Another pun like that and I’ll need resuscitation. Here.’ He handed her the phone. ‘Call your solicitor.’

Devlin
needed
him! Did you ever hear anything so pathetic? Dianne paced the office with a face like thunder. What kind of businessman cancelled important engagements
because a wishy-washy, pea-brained, clinging bimbo needed him?

Why was Luke so besotted with that Delaney creature when right at his side, day in, day out, he had a woman with brains, class, and beauty, who was his intellectual equal, understood all the
stresses and strains of his busy lifestyle and, most importantly, worshipped the ground he walked on. Dianne would
never
insist that Luke cancel business appointments because she
‘needed’ him, she thought furiously. She didn’t blame Luke. Oh Lord, no. His trouble was that he was far too kind, far too softhearted. Didn’t she have experience of that?
Dianne’s cheeks burned in mortification at the memory. It could have been her greatest moment of happiness; instead, it had been the moment of her greatest humiliation.

It had happened the day she left the office early, after she had finally made up her mind to let him know how she felt. She successfully selected some gorgeous sexy underwear, went home and
decided to spend the afternoon beautifying herself. She had treated herself to some bath-oils and essences from the Body Shop and she ran herself a scorching hot bath. It was a bitterly cold day
and she had been frozen to the bone. Her cleaning woman, Mrs Foster, was hoovering and it pleased Dianne to lie back in the hot scented water and listen to the muted sounds of the Electrolux. Mrs
Foster was her greatest luxury. Dianne had always hated hoovering and polishing and doing the ironing and when she had got the job as Luke’s PA and started earning a generous salary, moving
to a posh apartment block and employing Mrs Foster had been her priorities.

‘I’m off, Miss Westwood.’ Dianne came back to reality, hearing the cleaner make her goodbyes. She had been having one of her fantasies, the one in which she was a famous
pop-singer and Luke was her bodyguard fighting his attraction to her, and she had just come to the bit where he could contain his feelings no longer and was making throbbing, passionate love to her
in her jacuzzi. The water had gone cold and, shivering, she jumped out of the bath and wrapped herself in a warm towel. Remembering that she had forgotten to buy coffee and knowing that she would
never survive more than two hours without a cup, she stuck her head out the door and asked the obliging Mrs Foster to pop into the supermarket down the road and get her a jar.

Despite the central heating, Dianne felt slightly chilly. She was a very cold creature and hated winter with a vengeance. She slipped into a pair of passion-killer flannelette pyjamas that were
worn only on the coldest nights, and wrapped herself in an old but exceedingly warm woolly dressing-gown that her mother had given her when she had first come to London. While she was waiting for
Mrs Foster to return she decided to remove the blonde hairs that grew along her upper lip and just at the base of her chin. They were very very faint, but she was conscious of them and wanted
everything to be smooth and silky for Luke’s kiss. She had bought a new depilatory cream that promised very long-lasting results.

The phone rang and it was Rodney, a merchant banker whom she was using as a stop-gap until Luke came to his senses. He tried to persuade her to let him come and stay the night but she
wasn’t in the humour and spent ten minutes putting him off. When she had removed the cream, she had discovered to her horror that she had a bright red rash all around her upper lip and chin.
She had left the cream on for far too long and the world and his mother would know that she had been using a depilatory on her lip and chin. Dianne was furious. The marks wouldn’t fade for at
least two or three days so she’d have to stay out of work. Even make-up wouldn’t cover it.

A knock on the door had made her curse loudly. Why hadn’t Mrs Foster taken her damned keys? In a thoroughly bad humour, she flung open the door to find Luke standing there.

Even now, days later, Dianne felt a rush of heat to her face and her stomach lurch at the memory.

‘Lord, Dianne, you don’t look at all well. Maybe you’ve got an allergy of some sort,’ he said in concern, staring at her flushed and red-blotched face, as he handed her a
bouquet of roses and a huge box of chocolates.

‘I think it was shellfish,’ she had the presence of mind to mutter, hiding her face in the flowers and making a pretence of smelling them, as great knife-stabs of humiliation
penetrated her heart.

‘Can I do anything? Do you need a doctor?’ Luke asked anxiously. Dianne could have wept. This should have been the fantasy of fantasies coming true. She should have met him at the
door in her silk négligée wearing the lovely new underwear underneath. She should have done her dying swan act and pretended to be faint and he’d have had to carry her inside in
those strong muscled arms that made her drool. Instead he’d found her in a woolly dressing-gown that had little balls of fluff all over it, and a big blob of spaghetti sauce on the front. The
bottoms of her flannelette pyjamas were sticking out, and she had a moustache and beard of raw red skin that were too mortifying even to contemplate.

Luke handed Dianne a jar of coffee and explained that he’d met her cleaner outside and offered to bring up her message. That’s how he’d got into the building without disturbing
her.

‘Go to bed, Dianne, and don’t come back for a week,’ he said kindly. ‘And if you need anything, shout.’ She watched him run lithely down the stairs and felt like
throwing his flowers and chocolates and the coffee down after him. Then she went back into her apartment, slammed the door behind her, flung everything on the sofa, stubbed her toe on the leg of
the coffee table and bawled her eyes out.

Standing in Luke’s office, compiling a list of calls to make to people he would not be seeing because Devlin Delaney ‘needed’ him, Dianne felt like crying all over again. He
really was so kind. To think that he had come out all the way from the office to visit her and make sure that she was all right; and to think he had bought beautiful roses and the biggest box of
handmade chocolates she had ever seen! It must mean that he cared for her. And to think he had seen her looking like a complete ragbag! It was too much to bear. Sitting in Luke’s big leather
chair, Dianne wept. Through eyes blurred with tears she caught sight of the framed photo of Devlin that Luke kept on his desk. She could feel anger and jealousy brewing up into a hot, bubbling
rage. Picking up the photograph, she smashed it across the desk.

‘Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!’ she swore, as the glass smashed into a thousand tiny pieces all around her.

‘Certainly I can try to obtain an injunction against the paper, to prevent them from publishing the interview,’ Monica Finlay, Devlin’s solicitor, said in her
crisp no-nonsense manner. ‘And I’m fairly sure I’ll be successful. But I’ve been thinking, Devlin . . . you’ve heard the radio advertisement. That will have whetted
plenty of appetites. If we get the injunction we’re going to have to go to court. The press are going to be camping on your doorstep. Every other gutter publication is going to take up the
story. I’m just wondering if you’d be better off to let them publish their damn interview and get it over with . . .’ She gave a wry smile. ‘You’re really in a no-win
situation, Devlin. I know they’ll be getting away with it, but I’m trying to think what’s best for you in the long term.’

‘It’s so infuriating,’ Devlin replied. ‘I understand what you’re saying, Monica, but I just don’t want those bastards to get away with it. What do you think,
Luke?’ She turned to where he was sitting over by the window.

Luke looked her straight in the eye. ‘I feel the same as you, Devlin, but I can see Monica’s point. Do you want to be stuck with legal wrangling for months on end? Do you want to
have every newspaper in the country annoying you? That ad was very clever but its shock value and that of the interview will last just for the weekend. Next week, it will be someone else, and
everybody will have forgotten about you. You’ll probably get a few odd looks from the clients in City Girl, but that will wear off. But if you take legal action, be prepared for a long hard
slog.’

‘I don’t want them to get away with it,’ Devlin repeated.

‘Right then. If you feel
that
strongly, we’ll go for the injunction,’ Monica declared.

Devlin was really torn. She didn’t want months of legal hassle. She was already getting so many calls that she’d had to take the phone off the hook. The thoughts of being harassed by
reporters and photographers was making her ill but, damn them, she wasn’t going to let them walk all over her. A thought struck her; a slow smile touched her lips.