'Jon Harriman has really done you proud, hasn't he? The phone hasn't stopped ringing this morning. Your diary's filling up fast. That's what I called to say. Everyone's curious about you.'
Lee woke up abruptly. 'People want me to take pictures because I was seen with Daniel in Miranda's? It doesn't make sense.'
'That's how celebrity works,' Gillian said cheerfully. 'You're as good as all the top names, and better than some, but they've been 'in' and you've been 'out'. At least, not 'out' exactly, but hovering on the fringes. Now you're 'in'.'
'I can't follow that when I've only just got up,' Lee complained.
'OK, finish waking up. Then come into work and enjoy your fame.'
Lee read the piece through. Jon Harriman had turned her into an overnight celebrity. Of course her fame would be fleeting, unless she made it last by building on it. Gillian was right. She was as good as the best, but they'd had fashionable contacts at work for them and she hadn't-until now.
She called Daniel and Phoebe answered. 'Dad's asleep,' she said. 'He left me a note saying he's not to be disturbed, but he'll call you at the studio later.'
She giggled. 'He also told me to find out what sort of mood you're in.'
'You can tell him grateful,' Lee said with a smile.
'I'm so excited,' Phoebe bubbled. 'You looked smashing in that dress.'
Lee's first act was to despatch the dress back to Carol Halden, the fashion editor who'd loaned it. She was on the phone to the studio within minutes of Lee's arrival.
'Aren't you a dark horse?' she drawled. 'Darling, he's the most exciting man in London. So when do we get the announcement?'
'You don't. We're just good friends.' As Lee said the traditional words she felt a blush go right through her body. Carol roared with laughter.
'All right, I'll wait patiently-or impatiently. Fancy you and Daniel Raife being a couple.'
'Yes,' Lee said slowly. 'Fancy.' It was dawning on her that perhaps there was more to this than met the eye.
She was sure of it later that evening, when Jimmy telephoned. He'd seen the paper. Sonya took the call and relayed her father's comments to Lee.
'Dad says he hopes Daniel Raife is loaded,' she said, 'because it would be a shame for you to miss out twice.'
'Tell your father, from me, not to be vulgar,' Lee retorted.
'Dad, Mum says don't be vulgar…Mum, he says it's too late now.'
'Don't you have homework to do?' Lee enquired frostily.
When Daniel called her his first words were, 'Are you mad at me?'
'For doing me a favour?' she asked lightly. 'Why should I be?'
'For showing you off to the world without asking you first.'
'No, I like it. Being known only as a rung on Phoebe Raife's ladder was undermining my self-confidence. After last night I can double my prices.'
'That's the spirit. And in a few years I'll be boasting that I once knew Lee Meredith-that is, if you still remember me by then.'
'Stop fishing,' she told him wryly. His self-confident chuckle was the last thing she heard before she put the phone down.
She sat musing for a while, recognising again what a very subtle operator Daniel was. Under cover of doing her a favour, he'd established them publicly as a couple-which meant he'd taken her a step further along the path to marriage than she'd meant to travel.
Lee had too much good sense to complain that she was famous for the wrong reason. Daniel, who knew the value of publicity, had done her a kindness and done it very thoroughly, and she was honestly grateful.
Just the same, he'd once more arranged matters the way he wanted them, and Lee couldn't help regarding her beloved somewhat wryly.
CHAPTER NINE
It seemed there was no end to the little pinpricks that Phoebe's success could deliver to her father. For his birthday she blew a hole in her budget by buying him a winter coat of black leather. When he protested at the expense she said airily, 'It's all right. Daddy. I got it wholesale. Turn around again. I want to see how fabulous you look.'
Then she, Sonya and Lee applauded while he showed his pleasure by grinning self-consciously. It was a happy scene, but he would gladly have given it up if only Phoebe had been able to spend the day with him. Unluckily an important booking was taking her in one direction just as he was setting out for a family party in the other.
Lee and Sonya accompanied him to his old home in the Midlands, where his mother still lived in the comfort he provided for her. Jean and Sarah, his sisters, also turned up, leaving Lee in no doubt that she was being looked over as a future addition to the family.
She liked the Raife women, who were all tall, like Phoebe, although without her beauty. They had her sharp wits too. They greeted Lee warmly and with a kind of relief, as though she was the long-awaited answer to prayers. She wished she knew what Daniel had told them about her.
She was particularly drawn to Jean, the eldest of the three siblings. At forty-three Jean was unmarried, stylish, and had a booming, abrupt voice that spared nobody, not even the brother she adored.
After lunch she showed Lee over the garden, which was only just losing its colour. 'What about this Phoebe business?' she demanded, coming straight to the point. 'Taking it hard, isn't he?'
'Very hard. He had his heart set on her going to Oxford.'
'Plenty of time for that later. Girls of sixteen don't yearn for the life of the mind.'
'But-didn't you?'
Jean roared with laughter. 'He tell you that? Well, of course I wanted to finish my education, and I minded that my father was a blithering idiot about it. But it wasn't the whole of life. Secretly I yearned to be drop-dead gorgeous and have men prostrating themselves at my feet-especially Jack Denis.'
'Who was Jack Denis?'
'Local heart-throb. My, he was handsome! An Adonis. Pity he was as thick as a plank.'
'Didn't he notice you?' Lee asked sympathetically.
'Not him. He married the daughter of a pig farmer. Now the place is theirs. She does the paperwork and he looks after the porkers-although I think he finds even that a bit mentally challenging.' She joined in Lee's laughter.
'If I'd had Phoebe's beauty I'd have wanted to make the most of it, not have my father droning on that there were more important things in life.'
'Yes, there's a lot Daniel doesn't understand.'
'My little brother is a very brilliant man-in his way,' Jean said drily. 'But when it comes to coping with a daughter about to leave the nest he's as big a fool as the rest of the male sex. He told me about the steak and chips fiasco. Luckily for him a first-class mind came to the rescue with some low-fat cooking.'
'Hey,' Lee said indignantly, 7 bought him that book.'
'Did I say otherwise?'
'You said a first-class mind.'
'I meant yours. A mind that can see straight to the heart of the problem and pinpoint the answer. You did that while he was still floundering.'
'That's the first time anyone's praised my mind,' Lee mused.
'Sonya has a good brain too. Gets it from you. Daniel won't go far wrong while he's got you to put him straight.'
'I'm not so sure,' Lee said sadly. 'He copes on the surface, but underneath he's tense and miserable. I can't reach him. In his heart I think he still blames me.'
