Power Play. PENNY JORDAN

full control of her life. Even so, she fought down her impatience; impatience made people careless and led to mistakes. Mistakes—unless they were other people’s—had no place in her life.

      It was so unusual for her to be late that the receptionist had already commented on it when Miranda went down to collect the post.

      “Perhaps she’s had a heavy weekend?” Helena murmured suggestively as she handed over the envelopes.

      Miranda was as curious as the other girl about Pepper’s sex life, but she was too well trained to show it. Gossiping about one’s boss had been the downfall of many a good personal secretary, and there wasn’t much that slipped Pepper’s attention.

      “I wonder if she’ll ever marry?” Helena mused, obviously reluctant to let the subject go.

      “A lot of successful business women do combine careers and marriage,” Miranda pointed out.

      “Um…I saw a photograph of her in one of the papers with Carl Viner. He’s terrifically sexy, isn’t he?”

      Miranda raised her eyebrows and said drily, “So’s she.”

      Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pepper come into the building. There was no mistaking that distinctive, deceptively languid walk, a lazy flowing movement of hips and legs.

      “Morning, Miranda—Helena.”

      Pepper acknowledged both young women and walked past them towards her office, leaving her secretary to follow her.

      “Miranda, I’m expecting four gentlemen at three o’clock this afternoon. I’ll see all of them together. Here are their names.” She passed a piece of typed paper to her secretary.

      “Right…would you like coffee now?”

      “Yes, please. Oh, and Miranda, you might alert the security guard to make sure he’s on the premises while they’re here, please.”

      Although she was far too well trained to betray any surprise, Miranda tried and failed to remember a single other occasion when Pepper had made such a request. Curiously she glanced at the names, recognising only two of them. An MP and an entrepreneur. Mmm. She shrugged her curiosity aside, knowing it would be satisfied when Pepper dictated to her her notes from the meeting. Pepper was meticulous about keeping records of all her conversations, both with her clients and with potential sponsors.

      Putting the piece of paper down on her desk, Miranda walked into the small kitchen hidden away behind her office. A staff room opened off it—an airy, attractively decorated room with bookshelves and comfortable seating. Minesse Management did not provide their staff with canteen facilities; the small number of employees did not merit it, although there was a formal dining room adjacent to Pepper’s office, where she sometimes lunched clients and sponsors. The food for these lunches was provided by a small firm that specialised in doing lunches and dinners for executive functions. It was often Miranda’s task on these occasions to check out their guests’ religions and preferences, and once Pepper had these facts to hand she would call in the caterers to discuss with them the type of meal she wanted them to serve.

      In this as in everything else Pepper always displayed an insight and authority that was almost intuitive. If Miranda had ever expressed this view to Pepper, Pepper would have told her that she had long ago learned that attention to even the smallest detail was important when you were gambling for high stakes.

      In the small kitchen Miranda made fresh coffee and poured it into a coffee pot. She set an elegant silver tray with the pot, a matching cup and saucer, and a tiny jug of cream. The china was part of the dinner service used in the clients’ dining room, white with a dense blue band and edged in gold. It was both very rich and severely restrained—rather like Pepper herself in many ways.

      When Miranda took in the coffee Pepper put down the papers she was working on to say,

      “If any of the men on that list telephone, Miranda, I don’t want to speak to them. If any of them cancel their appointments please let me know.”

      She didn’t say anything more and Miranda didn’t ask her any questions. Pepper didn’t delegate. The success or failure of Minesse Management lay in her hands and hers alone.

      She drank her coffee while she studied the newspaper clippings from the weekend’s newspapers. It was part of Miranda’s job to go through the papers and clip out any mention of their clients or sponsors.

      At quarter to twelve she cleared her desk and rang through to her secretary.

      “I have an appointment with John Fletcher at twelve, Miranda. I should be back around two, if anyone wants me.”

      John Fletcher was an up-and-coming designer. Pepper had seen some of his clothes in a Vogue feature on new designers, and she had commissioned him to make two outfits for her. As yet he was not very well known, but Pepper planned to change all that. She had on her books a young model who was being tipped to go far, and it was in her mind to link model and designer in a way that could promote and draw attention to them both.

      Louise Faber had introduced herself to Pepper at a cocktail party. She was eighteen years old, and knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. Her mother had been a model, and so through her Louise already had the looks and the contacts to get into the business. Several of her mother’s contemporaries had grown from modelling into other more powerful areas of fashion, and Rena Faber had been able to call on old loyalties to give her daughter a good start. But Louise was no ordinary dewy-eyed eighteen-year-old whose ambition was to get her face on the front cover of American Vogue.

      Louise had her own ambitions. She wanted to own and run a Michelin-star restaurant, but for that she needed money, and training. Without money and influence she would have very little chance of being taken on at the kind of restaurant where she could get the training to fulfil her ambitions. Women were not chefs, they were cooks, but Louise aimed to prove that that was wrong.

      Her parents had divorced while she was quite young, and from what she had told Pepper there was not enough money in the family anyway to finance either the training or the sort of restaurant she would eventually want to own. A chance remark by one of her mother’s friends, that she would make a good model, had led to her deciding that modelling would be an excellent way of earning the money she needed. Once having made that decision she was determined that if she was to model, then she wanted to be the best.

      She needed an image, she had confided to Pepper, something that made her stand out from the other pretty, ambitious girls, and remembering John Fletcher, it had occurred to Pepper that designer and model could well have something to offer one another. If in her off-duty hours Louise wore only John Fletcher models, both of them would benefit from the publicity. Pepper had the contacts to make sure the press picked up on the story. She had already discussed it with John, and today he was going to give her his decision.

      Initially she would make very little from the deal; but this was her forte, to spot original and new talent, whether in sport or any other field, and to nurture it towards success, and then to reap financial benefit.

      No sponsor would ever risk his money on an un-proven outsider, but only let one of her outsiders start winning and Pepper was then in a position to make her own terms. That was how she had started off—spotting a potential winner before anyone else.

      John Fletcher had premises just off Beauchamp Place, an enclave of designer and upmarket shops off the Brompton Road. Because of the lunch-time traffic, Pepper hadn’t used the Aston Martin, and her taxi dropped her off several doors away from her destination. Two model-thin girls emerging from Bruce Old-field’s premises turned to look at her. Neither of them was a day over nineteen.

      “Wow!” one exclaimed to the other. “Now that was real class!”

      There was no one in the foyer as Pepper walked up the stairs to John Fletcher’s showrooms. She knocked briefly before walking in.

      Two men were standing by the window, studying a bolt of scarlet fabric.

      “Pepper!” John Fletcher handed the silk to his assistant