Читать книгу Daddy’s Girls - Tasmina Perry, Tasmina Perry - Страница 18

It was 9.30 p.m. and Nick Douglas had still not arrived. The Flask pub on the edge of Highgate’s tiny green had been cranked up to full Sunday-night volume, the air full of loud laughter, weekend gossip and the smell of beer and cigarettes. Cate had been lucky to find a seat in the corner where she sipped a glass of white wine and pretended to read a leaflet advertising yoga classes. She glanced at the Cartier Tank watch on her wrist and considered going home. She usually gave up waiting for people at half an hour, and if any of her other publishing contacts had shown the slightest interest in joining her fledgling company she’d have given up long ago and slunk back to her flat to watch Midsomer Murders. As it was, Cate was feeling very alone. The three publishers that she had approached had told her that they were unhappy in their jobs. The thing was, none of them were that unhappy that they wanted to take a risk with Cate. Even Cecil Bradley, while supportive of Cate’s ambition, had declined to come out of retirement. There was frankly only one person left: Nick Douglas. And even he couldn’t be bothered to turn up.

‘Cate Balcon?’

She looked up to see a tall, slim man wearing jeans and a long, grey wool coat. His light brown hair was cropped, his hazel eyes were intense and his wide, full-lipped mouth was unsmiling. Nick Douglas had the sort of broody handsomeness and the lean skier’s build that usually made Cate drool. But without a word of apology or even a smile, Nick Douglas looked like the typical arrogant public schoolboy nightmare of her teenage years.

‘Nick? I was just about to go.’ She couldn’t stop the words coming out spitefully.

‘We said half past nine.’

‘It was nine, actually,’ said Cate, her smile thin and fixed. She took a deep breath. She didn’t want this to get off to a bad start. Nick certainly didn’t look particularly enamoured by his first impressions either.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ she said, trying to thaw the atmosphere.

‘No, no, I’ll get them,’ said Nick. ‘They know me here. White wine, is it?’

‘No more wine,’ said Cate, shaking her head, aware that she was feeling a little light-headed after drinking two large glasses of Chardonnay in quick succession. ‘Just a Diet Coke, please. Ice and lemon.’

‘A Diet Coke girl.’ He smiled and swaggered off. Cate felt her dislike of Nick Douglas increase. As he headed to the bar, Cate noticed that he had instantly attracted the attention of a pretty blonde barmaid. Maybe she had agreed to the meeting too hastily. He might be a friend of Tom’s, but Cate didn’t know Nick Douglas from Adam and now, here she was, half drunk in a London pub, about to show this cocky upstart her precious magazine dummy. How did she know that this Nick Douglas wasn’t going to steal all her ideas and then drop her like a hot potato?

By the time she had drained the remnants of her wine, Nick had brought the drinks, pulled his coat off and squeezed into the tiny space beside her, the warm leg of his jeans pressing against hers.

‘This is a bit odd, isn’t it?’ he smiled for the first time.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Feels like a blind date.’

Cate laughed nervously. ‘Well, it certainly felt as if I’d been stood up.’

He took a sip of his Guinness, leaving a frothy white-foam moustache on his top lip. ‘Sorry about that. I did know it was nine o’clock.’ He grinned. ‘I was just watching, well, the end of Midsomer Murders, actually.’

Cate snorted quietly, clinking her glass of Coke against his dark pint glass sarcastically. ‘Thank you. Glad to see you just couldn’t wait to meet me.’

Nick bristled. He knew he’d been out of order arriving late, but he was the one doing her the favour, wasn’t he? He was only here because Tom had asked him to be. He was sure that Cate was going to be the career-bitch twin of her sister Serena, all blonde highlights and blue-blooded attitude. He’d witnessed his old schoolmate Tom being henpecked by Serena for years. He had no intention of falling into a similar pattern, but without any of the bedtime benefits.

‘Tom says you’ve been in America. Why did you leave?’ asked Cate.

Nick looked at her. He could see no reason to try and impress this over-privileged princess, so he just shrugged and told her the truth. ‘Same reason as most people who leave a ridiculously well-paid job in New York for unemployment in London.’

Cate smiled at him. ‘Fired?’

‘Got it in one.’

‘Well, you and me both,’ she smiled with a hint of embarrassment.

Nick softened, looking at her wide smiling mouth. Her trying-to-hide-it nervousness was actually quite endearing, he thought. Shame she was such a pompous cow.

Nick took a big gulp of Guinness and continued. ‘The funny thing is, it’s terrible being fired and all that, but I’m sort of glad. I was bored shitless, but I could have carried on for another ten years, with my nice West Village apartment and summer weekends in the Hamptons. It was nice. Really nice. But when things are too nice, you don’t take any chances.’ When he grinned at Cate, faint little creases crinkled around the corners of his eyes.

‘So, how far have you got with your publishing company?’ asked Cate, feeling as if she was interviewing him.

‘Is that what Tom told you? I had a publishing company?’ Nick laughed, draining his pint glass. ‘It’s less a company, more of an idea. You see, I’ve got great contacts in the ad world and I know some people in the City who might be interested in backing a media venture, but I don’t think I’ve quite got the product to present to them yet. When you’re a start-up company, the first product has got to be absolutely right, and I don’t think that Your Parrot magazine is going to set the City on fire.’

‘Your idea is for a bird magazine?’ said Cate, her heart sinking.

‘Parrots.’

‘Well, the pet market is huge,’ she acknowledged, not wanting to mock his idea.

Nick started laughing – a deep, loud laugh. ‘No, I’m not doing a bloody parrot magazine. That was a joke.’

It was Cate’s turn to feel riled. How dare he make her feel stupid when she was only trying to be kind? She bowed her head to stop him seeing her cheeks burn red and began to rummage around in her bag, trying to find her mobile to call a taxi. She’d had enough of this. Nick Douglas was obviously not the charmer Tom had described. Unable to find the phone, she pulled out a thin portfolio she had put together, full of layouts and mood boards, and put it on the table.

‘Is this it?’ asked Nick, craning his neck over to the side of the table.

Before Cate could stop him, Nick was reaching for the black leather portfolio. She shot out her hand and put it on top of his.

‘I wasn’t giving you that,’ she snapped pulling it back.

‘Then why are we here?’ He looked up at the angry, determined line of her mouth, which he found, against his better judgement, quite cute.

‘Hey, don’t look so worried,’ laughed Nick more softly, putting his palms up in surrender. ‘I’m not the KGB! If you’re worried about me pinching your idea, which of course I won’t, I am quite happy to sign a NDA.’

‘A what?’

‘Non-disclosure agreement. Not that they are worth the paper they are written on, but I’m happy to sign one.’

Cate took a deep breath and looked into Nick’s intense eyes. ‘OK,’ she said, pushing the folder across to him. ‘I trust you,’ she added, not very convincingly. Nick returned her gaze, then nodded.

He opened the folder and sat patiently and methodically working his way through the layouts, spreading them out onto the battered wood of the pub table as Cate launched into a passionate description of her vision and her belief that there was a real niche in the market.

He carried on flipping the pages, occasionally glancing up at Cate. She was sitting under a wall-lamp, the light spilling down on her face. She looked as if she was glowing in happiness.

‘I love this,’ said Nick at last, ‘I’m genuinely impressed. It’s so fresh. Makes all those dull travel magazines look so bloody boring and personality-free. And the fashion is gorgeous,’ he said, pointing at a picture of Serena astride an elephant, a late-evening Indian sun shining on her skin. ‘It makes the fashion mags look so po-faced.’

‘Well, that is a Mario Testino shot,’ shrugged Cate, trying not to burst with pride. ‘He makes people look so exotic and luscious.’

‘Even so, this is brilliant, Cate. I know the advertisers will just love it. It’s glamorous, it’s escapist, it’s new. And there’s certainly nothing on the shelves like it.’

He shut the file, which closed with a whispering thud.

‘So?’ Cate had gathered he liked it, but wasn’t sure whether he thought of it as a business opportunity.

‘It’s exactly what I, sorry, we, need,’ he continued carefully. ‘From a business point of view, it would be madness for a small start-up publishing company to launch a mainstream women’s magazine like Marie Claire or InStyle. Our pockets just wouldn’t be deep enough to compete. And if we did try, the big publishing companies like Alliance would just try and destroy us with their muscle at the news-stand. But this,’ he clinked his empty pint of Guinness against Cate’s glass, ‘this is brilliant. A travel and fashion magazine is niche enough for us to build a thriving business under everyone else’s radar. But it’s also commercial enough that I think we could easily shift fifty thousand a month. And we’d get good advertising too.’

Cate was tingling all over. ‘So what does that all mean?’ she asked.

‘It means it could work.’

She felt her tummy leap with excitement. ‘That’s fantastic. So what’s the next step?’

‘The first thing we need is a business plan to take to potential backers. I’ll do the figures and draw up a publishing strategy. You need to prepare a really slick presentation of what you’ve just shown me. All this is great editorial stuff, but we’ve got to demonstrate a gap in the market so I need all the facts, figures and circulation figures of any competitors we can think of.’

Ideas started to bounce between them like a Wimbledon tennis rally.

‘I’ll get a list of all celebrities, publicists and photographers we can get on board.’

‘And I’ll get in touch with my ad contacts. If we could just get Armani, British Airways, Chanel – any of the major advertisers – on board before we go to the City, that would be fantastic.’

Cate furiously scribbled down everything into her little black Moleskin notebook. When she looked up, she saw him smiling at her.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘You. Like a little beaver.’

In all the excitement and planning, she had almost forgotten that Nick Douglas was the most smug, cocky man she had met in ages.

‘Well, Mr Douglas, if you think I’m so funny, forgive me for spoiling your little cabaret show. I have to be going.’

Nick looked around and, noticing that the pub was emptying out quickly, slipped his arm into the scarlet silk lining of his coat. ‘I’ve got to be off, too. The girlfriend gets nervous if I’m out too late with other ladies,’ he teased, sensing she was a little cross. ‘If it’s all to her honourable’s approval, does that mean the pair of us are in business?’

He flashed her a smile that would have been heart-meltingly sexy if it hadn’t been coming from such an arrogant face.

Against her better judgement, Cate extended her hand and gave him something resembling a smile. She was angry all right, but something about tonight’s planning had made her prickle with excitement. If it was a choice between him or her magazine – well, she was just going to have to take her chances.

She put out her hand. ‘Nick Douglas, I think you just might have a deal.’