‘RACE Williams is going to be there tonight—I wonder what he’s like? Thirty-four is very young to be given overall control of the entire documentary section. He used to be a reporter, you know, before he started writing.’

‘Does Terry know about this burgeoning hero-worship for your new boss?’ Heather Martin asked her cousin dryly, surveying her petite form and clustering blonde curls.

No two girls could have been less alike. While Jennifer was petite and dainty, Heather stood five feet ten inches in her bare feet, her dark cloud of hair and long green eyes adding up to a gypsy sensuality that came across well when she was photographed. It was virtually impossible to open a magazine without seeing her own face, and she had grown used to other people’s reaction to her startling good looks. She had been modelling for three years, ever since she was twenty-one, and just recently had begun to wonder what the future held. She was currently on the short list for a prestige modelling job, promoting a brand new range of up-market cosmetics, but her real love was writing, and for the last few years she had been gathering material for her book. All she needed now was the time to write it.

‘Terry says Race has asked him about you,’ Jennifer announced, watching her reaction to her announcement. Terry was the art director of the television company Jennifer worked for—a new independent company which was fast gaining an excellent reputation, and which had recently ‘head-hunted’ Race Williams, whose reputation in the field of hard-fact documentary work was well known. He had been a Fleet Street reporter, before turning to writing ‘factional’ novels, and Jennifer, to judge by the amount of time she spent talking about him, seemed to be developing a crush on him.

Despite the fact that Jennifer was two years her senior, at twenty-four Heather was easily the more mature. She had lived with Jennifer, her twin brothers and her aunt and uncle since the deaths of her own parents when she was thirteen. Her father had been an explorer, her mother his researcher, and they had both been killed in an avalanche in the Andes, and Heather had never ceased to mourn their loss. Kind though her aunt and uncle were, she had always felt like a cuckoo in the nest, towering above her aunt and Jennifer, and even the twins until they suddenly started to shoot up at eighteen. Her height had always made her feel vulnerable. At school she had been the butt of cruel jokes, easily the tallest girl in the class, and she had been well on the way to developing a complex about it when she met Brad.

Brad! Her mouth tightened ominously. She had met him when she was seventeen and studying for her ‘A’ levels. He had just left school and started at university. He was a friend of the twins, and she hadn’t been able to believe it when he started paying attention to her, asking her for dates. He was the first boy-friend she had ever had; the first boy ever to pay her the slightest attention, and under it she blossomed.

Her aunt had been delighted but concerned. Heather remembered vividly an occasion when her aunt had taken her on one side and stumbled through a muddled speech about not taking Brad too seriously. She hadn’t listened. Brad loved her, he had told her so, and in her innocence and vulnerability she had thought he meant it, opening to him all the secrets of her heart and mind, content to let him dictate the pace of their relationship. She had never entered the giggled sexual discussions of her peers; she had always been an outsider, and Jennifer, in whom she might have confided, was already away at university. Brad made teasingly light love to her, and she had thought it was because he loved her that he only went so far. God, how naïve she had been!

She had found out the truth quite by accident. She and Brad had been invited to a party—a friend of Brad’s, and she had gone into the kitchen looking for a drink of water. She wasn’t used to alcohol, and the punch she had been given had made her acutely thirsty. She had seen Brad in the kitchen, talking to one of his friends as she approached, and was just about to greet him when she heard his friend ask, ‘Who’s the new girl? Hardly your type—all those muscles! What’s she like in bed?’

She remembered how vividly she had coloured, embarrassed by the other boy’s frankness, but nothing had prepared her for the cruelty of Brad’s response.

‘Who cares?’ he had responded carelessly. ‘Personally I prefer my women small and cuddly, but she’s got a fortune coming to her on her twenty-first birthday, and I aim to make sure that by then she’s my wife; I can always enjoy myself on the side.’

Heather hadn’t stayed to listen to any more. It was true that she was to inherit a good deal of money from her parents’ estate, but the thought that Brad deliberately intended to marry her for her money was something she found a bitter pill to accept. She hadn’t said anything when he took her home; some deep-seated instinct warned her against letting him see how badly she was hurt. In fact she hadn’t told anyone what she had overheard, but it had festered, aching inside her, giving her the strength to remain cool and aloof when she told Brad she didn’t want to go out with him again.

He had been persistent, she gave him that, but she remained resolute, deriving a bitter satisfaction from the thought that he would never know just how much it cost her to refuse him. She had loved him; trusted him; revealed her innermost thoughts and hopes to him believing he returned her feelings. Well, she would never let it happen again.

It had been Neil, her cousin, who had suggested she take up modelling. He was a very keen photographer and his photographs had won a competition in their local paper. With the encouragement of her family Heather had approached one of the well known model agencies, who had agreed with Neil’s judgment. Only to herself was Heather prepared to admit that her fierce determination to succeed had sprung from the pain she experienced when Brad derided her. She was consumed by a need to prove to him and the world at large that she was desirable, and she had proved it.

She smiled without mirth, thinking of the number of proposals and propositions she had received in the last three years, but none of them had touched her. They weren’t from men who loved her, who cared genuinely and deeply about her, all they had been interested in was the satisfaction of their own desire. Oh, they might wrap it up in pretty words and compliments, but Heather knew better. And now here was Jennifer telling her that Race Williams had been making enquiries about her.

She wasn’t totally surprised. As a model she was used to the interest she aroused in men. Only she knew that inside the cool detachment she showed to the outside world she was still the same vulnerable, hurting girl who had stood in the shadows and listened to the person she loved destroying her world.

‘What did Race Williams want to know about me?’ she asked her

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Wanting Penny Jordan

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

Wanting

Penny Jordan