. Читать онлайн книгу.
keeping to themselves.’
‘Turns out there are rules to being an outcast. Some social niceties that even hermits are expected to deliver on.’ He glanced at her expression. ‘I may not have made quite the effort that they were expecting.’
Kitty slid him a sideways glance. ‘You shock me.’
On anyone else, that slight twisting of his lips might have been a smile. On Will, it never paid to assume. But her heart flip-flopped regardless. ‘Still, the airport lady seemed to think well enough of you.’
‘I’m working on it. So what was in Zurich?’ he asked, artfully moving the conversation on. ‘A story or a man?’
There was nothing in the impassive question to give her pause, yet it did. Maybe it was the irony of this man asking her about other men. Will Margrave was precisely the reason she’d had no meaningful relationships since the last time she’d seen him. She’d thrown herself into her work for the twelve months after being so rudely ejected from Pokhara, and soon she’d been way too busy escalating her career to entertain more than the most casual of relationships. Too caught up globetrotting and network-hopping and hunting down the big stories.
She’d gone to Nepal in search of a powerful story, not a powerful attraction. Regardless, afterwards she’d struggled to find a man who could reach the very high bar Will had set.
Perhaps she should thank him for her successful career. He’d given her the shove she needed to be great. Greater.
‘I was in Zurich shooting a story about Switzerland’s textile industry. Tax haven meets innovation.’
‘Industry?’ He frowned. ‘Doesn’t seem like your kind of thing.’
He would say that. The woman he’d met five years ago was into human-interest stories and spectacular natural places, not commercial ventures and tax law.
She pressed her lips together. ‘We all change.’
Especially when you were as highly motivated as she had been. Focusing on your career to the exclusion of anything else. ‘I’m a foreign correspondent for a Chinese TV network now, CNTV. Their business programmes. Based in LA.’
If by ‘based’ you meant a postage stamp of an apartment that she rarely ever returned to because she was on the road so much. The world’s most expensive storage facility.
‘Foreign correspondent makes a little more sense, I guess.’
Was that a compliment or a criticism? It was impossible to tell from Will.
‘Nothing wrong with ambition,’ she huffed. ‘And I go where the stories are.’
Certainly, her career had gone where the promotions were. Hopping from network to network as opportunities presented themselves. The closest she came, these days, to the hobo-like habits of her past.
Lord how she missed the hobo days, sometimes. When her boss’s boss was hammering them for a particular angle or cutting a deadline by days it was hard not to long for the freedom she used to enjoy creating her own stories, following her nose, rolling with her instincts.
But she’d traded all that for a steady income and a bigger font on her credit.
‘Plenty of stories to be found up here,’ Will murmured. ‘Maybe you can knock off a few while you wait for your airlift out. Though you might struggle to find something to interest the business set.’
‘You don’t think cashed-up people want to see polar bears?’
‘I know they do. I’ve escorted some of them around the district. Though I am curious why you don’t seem to want to. Most people would have started nagging hours ago.’
Didn’t want to? Was that what he thought? The truth was so much more complicated. If she saw a polar bear, how would she stop wanting to see polar bears? Or eagles. Or manatees. Or deserts.
She’d gone for a clean break—and for corporate stories—for a reason.
‘I’d like to see a bear,’ she breathed on a puff of mist before hurriedly adding, ‘Though not out here.’
Again that tiny mouth twist. ‘So take a few days to look around.’
Easy for him to say. It wasn’t Will’s heart aching at the potential of this place. It wasn’t his soul trilling to be standing here, knee-deep in lichens and moss. It wasn’t his lungs aching with so much more than the coldness of the air around them.
Will wasn’t the one who had to leave Churchill the moment her number came up.
She’d already felt what it was like to be banished from somewhere that had rapidly started feeling like her soul home. Why would she set herself up for that again?
‘I’m on deadline for the Zurich piece. If I’m not back in the studio within a few days, this story is going to get cut and aired without me.’
And then who knew what angle it would take? There was no shortage of producers who would love to steal the feature slot she’d fought for. A slot that was scheduled just eight days from now.
Will frowned. ‘There’s every chance you won’t be, Kitty. You need to be prepared for that.’
She chewed her lip. ‘Maybe I can cut a rough from here on my laptop, and file that as a starter...’
‘I have the best comms outside of the Port because of my rescue work,’ Will went on. ‘There’s a satellite set up out back of the cabin. If you need to be talking to your network in China or sending them rough cuts this is the place to do it from. Mi data es su data.’
The man certainly knew how to appeal to a woman’s sense of duty... But it didn’t stop her chewing her lip.
‘Or shoot something entirely else.’
‘I’m not sure the business types at CNTV will be queuing up for an exposé on the hidden delights of the fifty-eighth parallel.’
‘So don’t do it for them, do it for you. Call it research if you truly can’t bring yourself to just relax and enjoy a few days of downtime.’
Relax? No, not while Will was around. She wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
Old Kitty would have chased whatever story excited her and would have told it in whatever way she wanted and then sold it to whoever had the most sympathetic vision. And if no one wanted to buy it she would have whacked it online, free, for the world to enjoy. Because the story was king back then. Money came much further down the list. Back in her idealistic, self-determined, passionate freelance days. Back before she was employed by particular networks to tell particular kinds of stories with particular kinds of agendas for particular kinds of audiences...
Back before New Kitty was born.
But wasn’t there some saying about making hay while the sun shone? Or the snow fell, in Churchill’s case. She was in the sub-arctic, cut off from the rest of the world, forced to take some time off from her competitive, all-consuming career. If there was a better opportunity to take a few days out of being Action Kitty to just remember how it felt to be Hobo Kitty she really couldn’t imagine it.
And keeping busy...now that definitely held a heap of appeal. But she made a last-ditch effort to say no.
‘Your plane practically fell from the sky, Kit. As excuses go that one is both solid and on public record. You’re stuck here for days, and insurance is picking up the tab...’
Kit.
Time had done nothing to dispel the fluttering of her heart when he used the diminutive form of her name. A presumption he’d made five years ago and she’d never been inclined to correct. She’d come to like it. Wait for it, even.
The reality was she was stuck here until tomorrow, if not later. Given how much work she yet had to do on the footage still on her hard drive, she’d be spending most of it in her room, tinkering on her laptop. If she stayed