Tiger Man

Tiger Man
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘COME on in, Storm,’ David Winters invited, when he saw the familiar female shape of his Advertising Controller hovering anxiously outside his office door.

‘I’ve only been back a few minutes,’ he added, as Storm did as she was bid, dropping a light kiss on her cheek.

‘Yes, I know,’ Storm agreed, too preoccupied to question the almost passionless embrace and her own lack of reaction to it. She and David had been going out together for over a year and although Storm had no doubts about her love for him she acknowledged that it did lack the passionate intensity she had heard discussed among her contemporaries. But this was how she wanted it. With David she felt safe; their relationship was as comfortable as a well worn shoe. And as boring? She dismissed the thought as disloyal and concentrated instead on the news which had brought her to his office in the first place.

David was the controller and one of the shareholders in the independent radio station, he and his team ran from the small market town of Wyechester, broadcasting throughout the Cotswolds. Still in its very early infancy, the station had been going through a bad patch lately, with audience ratings dropping and complaints from several of their backers who had looked upon the venture as a potential source of unlimited revenue. Privately Storm thought David could have done far better in his choice of co-shareholders, but she was far too loyal to him to say so.

Three weeks ago he had been summoned to London for a discussion concerning the future of the radio station, with the Independent Broadcasting Authority, and it was the results of this discussion that had brought Storm hot-foot to David’s office. Passionately dedicated to the success of their venture, she asked anxiously.

‘Well, how did it go? Are they going to revoke our licence?’

David shook his head.

‘It’s not quite as bad as that,’ he assured her.

‘Oh, David! You managed to persuade them to give us another chance!’

For a moment he seemed about to agree, and then he admitted unhappily:

‘Not me. It was all Jago Marsh’s doing.’

‘Jago Marsh?’ Storm stared at him. ‘How did he come to be involved? I should have thought the great white wonder of the media was far too lordly to involve himself in our paltry affairs,’ she said bitterly.

Jago Marsh had an unparalleled reputation in the world of independent television and radio. Storm had only seen him in the flesh once. She had been a student at the time and he had visited her college to give a lecture.

How excited she had been at the time! He had been something of a hero to her in those days. Everyone who knew anything about the media knew of his meteoric rise to fame and fortune. He had started with the B.B.C. and then progressed to various independent radio stations before starting up his own channel in London and turning it into an overnight success.

Storm had soon been disillusioned, though. Oh, his lecture had been stimulating enough, and his darkly handsome face and athletic physique had given him a presence it was hard to ignore. However, he had concluded his lecture on a note which Storm personally thought unwarranted and cheap.

Her own interest in advertising had developed while she was still at school, coupled with an enthusiasm for local radio which had led to her wholehearted belief that for the small, local business, there was no better form of advertising, and to this end she was determined to find herself the sort of job that would give free rein to her enthusiasm.

It had come rather as a douche of cold water, therefore, to hear Jago Marsh, whose career she had followed with such interest, announce in his crisply autocratic voice that by and large he considered that the field of local radio was best left to the male sex.

He had elaborated on this claim by adding that it was his experience that girls looked upon local radio as a stepping stone to a television career with all its attendant glamour.

His accusations had stung and Storm considered them grossly unfair. She had wanted to tell him as much, but the length of his lecture had left no time for questions.

Still nursing her indignation, she had seen him leaving the college. A long, sleek car was waiting for him and in it sat a perfectly groomed blonde, her voice clearly audible to Storm as she murmured seductively, ‘Ah, there you are at last, darling. I thought you must have been detained by one of those wretchedly adoring little girls one always meets at these places.’

Jago Marsh’s reply had been equally clear.

‘They wouldn’t have detained me for long. Adoration has always bored me, although most of the time I suspect that it’s merely a means to an end—you can have my body if I can have a job. If I had my way women would be banned from the media entirely.’

He was despicable, Storm had seethed, watching him drive carelessly away, but from that day on she had doubled her efforts to do well at college, determined that if and when she was fortunate enough to get a job she would do it as well as—and better than—any man.

Aware of her anger, David wondered where she got her unbounded energy from. Hair the colour of sun-warmed beech leaves curled riotously round a small heart-shaped face. Eyes of a deep, misty-violet frowned determinedly behind a fringe of thick dark lashes, her small chin tilted firmly as she waited for his reply.

‘It was unfortunate that he should be there.’ David admitted. ‘I bumped into him in the foyer. We started in the B.B.C. together. He asked me what I was doing in town.’ He shrugged tiredly. ‘He could have found out easily enough anyhow, so I told him, and the next thing I knew he’d taken over.’

Typical of the man, Storm thought briefly.

‘I suppose I ought to be grateful to him for salvaging something. I’m sure the Authority were going to revoke our licence. Those last opinion poll results about our programmes were pretty damning. Of course Jago didn’t lose any time in pointing out to me that we were badly under-capitalised.’

Privately Storm had to acknowledge that this was quite true. Apart from the small amount of shares held by David the major proportion of the remainder were held by a local businessman, Sam Townley, who owned a large supermarket chain. Storm did not like Sam. She thought him both grasping and inclined to cut corners where he thought it might be to his own advantage, and he was very begrudging of the money spent on what was really basic equipment for the radio station. It had been Storm’s opinion for a long time that David should seek another investor, but he had not seemed inclined to agree, and in some ways she blamed their present problems on this reluctance, although she would never have admitted it to a soul. The shortage of money had made it impossible for them to branch out in ways that might have ensured their success, but it didn’t help to hear her own views reinforced by Jago Marsh.

‘Does he have any suggestions as to how we might improve our capital?’ Storm enquired sarcastically.

David regarded her unhappily.

’Not our capital, perhaps, but as far as our services go, he had plenty to say.’

He paused, and something in his expression communicated itself to Storm.

‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ she asked slowly. ‘Something you haven’t told me.’

David had his back to her. At thirty-two he had already developed a vaguely defensive stoop, his fair hair falling untidily over his eyes, the suit he had worn for his journey to London, hanging a little loosely on his narrow frame.

‘The only way the I.B.A. would agree to continue our licence was if Jago came in with us in an advisory capacity.’

For a moment Storm was too taken aback to speak, and then she rallied, exclaiming bitterly:

‘And how is he supposed to do that? The last thing I heard was that he was off on a lecture tour of the States—I read it in the paper only the other week. But I suppose he’s so egotistical that he thinks he can advise us, give his lecture tour and run his own station all at the same time. After all, a small venture like ours shouldn’t take up more than half an hour or so of his time every other week. Is that it? I suppose we ought to be grateful,’ she added before David could speak. ‘At least he’ll be out of our hair, but it makes me so mad. When we eventually do make a success of the station—and we will, I know we will, he’ll collect all the congratulations and we’ll have done all the work.’

‘It’s not going to be quite like that, Storm,’ David told her. ‘Jago isn’t going to the States. He’s cancelled his tour, and he says the London station is running perfectly now. He’s pretty confident of the management he’s got down there. He’s got interests in television too, of course, but right now what he’s looking for, so he told me, is a new challenge, a chance to get back to the roots of local radio and see how it’s changed in the last decade. He’s coming down here, Storm, to run the station himself.’

Storm had grown steadily paler as David delivered this speech. Now she stared at him in disbelief.

‘He can’t be!’ she objected. ‘Oh, David, surely you didn’t agree to that!’

‘I didn’t have much chance,’ he told her defensively. ‘The I.B.A. were all for it. As far as they’re concerned he can’t do any wrong. He had plenty of pull with them, I could tell that right away. How could I make them listen to me? They’ve given us another three months to try and turn the corner and…’

‘They?’ Storm asked dangerously, her eyes flashing. ‘Or Jago Marsh? What does he hope to prove by doing this?’

‘It’s the challenge that attracts him.’ David replied a little bitterly. ‘He hasn’t changed since we were at the B.B.C. together, unless it’s to become even more ruthless.’

‘I suppose he think’s he’s going to trample all over us, acting the big “I am”,’ Storm complained. How well she remembered the cool mockery with which he had outlined his objections to women in the media, somehow subtly conveying the opinion that women had only one role in his life. Well, if he thought he was going to treat her as a sex object he had another thing coming!

‘Why did you let the Authority foist him off on you?’ she asked David unhappily. ‘If they have to put someone in to monitor our progress, why not someone else?’

‘If it had been left up to them I think they would have revoked our licence altogether,’ David admitted, not willing to admit that the Authority, far from giving him the opportunity to state his reluctance to have Jago join them, had seemed to expect him to be overwhelmed with gratitude for his intervention.

‘Your own job should be safe enough,’ David told her. ‘You’re very highly qualified, Storm, and your references from Frampton’s were excellent.’

‘But I haven’t exactly achieved great success since I’ve been here, have I?’ Storm said bitterly.

She had come to the job from her previous position as an accounts assistant with a large advertising agency in Oxford, full of enthusiasm and ideas, a plan of campaign carefully mapped out from judicious observation of the way in which other successful radio stations handled their advertising. But the last twelve months had not proved as promising as she had hoped.

‘Time we weren’t here, Storm,’ David announced, glancing at his watch. ‘Meet you downstairs in ten minutes?’

Storm nodded. David often gave her a lift home and it was these shared journeys which had initially given rise to their romance.

‘When are you going to tell the others?’ Storm asked from the door.

‘They already know,’ David told her tiredly. ‘Pete was waiting for me when I got back, and there didn’t seem any point in keeping it a secret.’

Pete Calder was one of their two D.J.s, something of a live wire, who made no bones about the fact that he found Storm attractive. An easy friendship had developed between them, and Storm sensed that Pete would have liked to take it a stage farther had she been agreeable.

It was five to six when she walked into the cluttered, boxy room that doubled as an office-cum-staff room-cum-canteen, to collect her coat and bag. Four people were lounging round a table drinking mugs of coffee and munching broken biscuits; the two technicians who worked on the evening shift—Radio Wyechester operated twenty-four hours a day—the disc jockey for that evening, who was Pete, and one of the typists, a small fair-haired girl named Sue Barker.

The buzz of gossip faded a little when Storm walked in. Pete beckoned her over, brandishing his cup.

‘Got time for one before you go, my lovely?’ he asked Storm. ‘Or is the great man waiting?’

Storm’s eyes sparkled a little at this sarcastic reference to David, but wisely she let it go. It wasn’t possible to keep their personal relationship private in such a compact group and sometimes Storm bitterly resented Pete’s contention that because David was quiet and introverted, he must also be weak and spineless. She loved David’s gentleness, she often told herself, and if at times he seemed to bow down to others, it was because he was innately too considerate to argue. Personally she could not think of anything worse than the type of man who dominated with his personality.

‘I’ve got a few minutes yet,’ she told Pete, guessing from his excited air what had been the topic of conversation before she walked in.

‘What do you think about Jago Marsh joining us?’ Pete asked confirming her thoughts.

He had deep blue eyes and wildly curling fair hair. Under his air of casual bonhomie lurked a keen brain and an acid sense of humour, but Storm refused to let him get under her guard, and a certain sense of mutual respect had grown up between them. Pete was the more popular of their two D.J.s, and at twenty-three a year older than Storm.

She was too angry for caution and answered furiously, ‘That the I.B.A. have a nerve off loading him on us!’

‘Come on, Storm,’ Pete objected. ‘We ought to be down on our knees thanking God that we’ve got him. Face it, David might be a nice guy, but there was no way he was going to make this station work. With Jago Marsh in charge…’

‘In charge! He’s coming in in an advisory capacity, that’s all,’ Storm reminded him. ‘David’s still in charge.’

For a moment there was silence from the others, and then Pete’s eyes crinkled in amusement.

‘That’s our Storm! Faithful to old David until the last. Jago’s going to have to watch himself with you around, honey!’

General laughter greeted this sally, and Pete slipped a friendly arm round Storm’s shoulders, pulling her against him.

‘Don’t go into a sulk on me,’ he teased. ‘Even you can’t deny that our David isn’t exactly the dynamic type. He’s a nice guy, Storm—no one denies that—but you’ve only got to look at our ratings—at the way he refuses to stand up to Sam Townley and tell him outright that we won’t get anywhere until we get some decent equipment, to see that he just isn’t cut out for this game. You need to be tough!’

‘Like Jago Marsh, I suppose you mean?’ Storm interrupted bitterly.

‘Be fair!’ Pete objected. ‘You’ve only got to look at our ratings to see how badly we’re doing. No one knows that better than you.’ Pete was ambitious and his eyes were hard as he looked at her mutinous face. ‘Come on, Storm, you can’t have forgotten what happened when you went to see old man Harmer already.’

Storm had not! John Harmer’s comments had rankled and she was still smarting from her interview with him. Harmer Brothers were the largest local employers. They owned two woollen mills, turning out fine cloth in a small and exclusive range of tweeds, using Cotswold wool. Storm had spent weeks preparing an advertising campaign to put before Mr Harmer, but she had got scant response. Despite the rates she had offered—pared down to the bone—and the fact that she had pointed out their widespread audience and limitless possibilities, John Harmer’s reception had been the opposite of enthusiastic.

‘Waste money advertising on a two-bit outfit that only appeals to kids and housewives?’ he had scoffed. ‘I’m a businessman, my dear, not a philanthropist.’

His words had stung and continued to do so, because his comments held an element of truth. Many, many times Storm had tried to persuade David to adopt a more forward-thinking attitude; to develop their range so that they could include more topical subjects; to promote a weekly disco as the other, more successful stations did, but all her suggestions had been met with a gentle but definite rebuff. However, she chose not to remember her past disappointments now, concentrating fiercely instead on her loyalty to David, ignoring the small voice inside her asking if their ‘adviser’ had been anyone but Jago Marsh she would have reacted more favourably.

She despised the man, she told herself angrily, taking no part in the excited conversation going on around her as the others discussed the changes likely to be made.

‘I can tell you one thing,’ Pete announced confidently. ‘He won’t put up with Sam Townley’s tricks for very long. I mean, just look at this place for a start…’

Their studios were shabby and ill-equipped, Storm was forced to admit.

Initially it had been David’s intention to house the venture in purpose-built offices just outside Wyechester, but Sam Townley had soon put a stop to such ambitious thoughts. As the main investor he claimed that he should have the greatest say in how their capital was spent, and David found himself forced to take up a tenancy of some cramped offices over one of Sam’s supermarkets.

‘What do you think Jago Marsh is going to do?’ Storm asked Pete angrily, infuriated by his contemptuous dismissal of all that David had tried to do. ‘Wave a magic wand and produce a modern, fully equipped radio station?’

‘Well, whatever he does it can’t be worse than David’s efforts.’ Pete fought back. ‘For God’s sake, Storm! You might be in love with the guy, but when are you going to see him how he really is? You feel sorry for him because he’s always the under-dog, but whose fault is that? I don’t know what you see in him…’

They had had this argument before, and as always it put Storm on the defensive. She could not explain to Pete, with all his frank appreciation of the modern approach towards sex, that with David she did not feel threatened, forced to give more of herself than she wished, either emotionally or physically, and that she loved him for his gentle acceptance of this.

As she got up to leave she was frowning unhappily. Just what did they think Jago Marsh was? A magician? Well, they would soon be disillusioned. He was a cold, ruthless man, incapable of understanding the feelings of others, arrogant and overbearing. Without the slightest effort she could remember every line of his hard-boned face, every inflection of his voice as he denounced her sex, and she was almost trembling with anger as she stepped out into the street to meet David.

He was sitting in his car waiting for her, and Storm smiled at him as he opened the passenger door of the homely little Ford. He made no attempt to kiss or touch her despite the fact that the car-park was deserted and he had been away from her all day.

It was just over half an hour’s drive to the village where she lived with her parents, and they normally sat in a companionable silence listening to Radio Wyechester.

Storm’s father was a lecturer at the local university and Storm had grown up in the Cotswolds and loved them very dearly.

It was October, one of Storm’s favourite months. Summer had lingered on this year, and the trees were just beginning to turn, the harvested fields a bright, lush green where the new growth showed through. Opening her window, Storm relaxed in her seat, enjoying the fresh air. It was colder today, with a sharp little breeze that heralded the end of their Indian Summer. She shivered suddenly with a presentiment that the wind of change was blowing into their lives in more ways than one. Jago Marsh! Why did it have to be him of all people?

‘Something wrong, Storm?’ David asked gently.

‘It’s just this business of Jago Marsh,’ she admitted uneasily. ‘I can’t help wishing you’d never met him…’

‘You’ll be more than a match for him,’ David assured her. ‘He isn’t used to women standing up to him.’

‘No, I suppose they’re more likely to fall prone at his feet,’ Storm retorted caustically.

‘Or on his bed,’ David said very dryly.

So she hadn’t been mistaken in her impression that Jago Marsh was a man who considered women were put on earth to serve only one purpose, Storm reflected wrathfully, turning up the volume of the radio as a news broadcast finished.

The next programme was a current affairs discussion, hosted by Mike Varnom, their other D.J. It was a relatively new departure for them and Storm was anxious to hear how it went.

The subject under discussion was the Common Market and the problems of exporting English lamb to France. The discussion, involving a couple of local farmers and their Euro M.P., should have been interesting, but somehow the speakers lacked conviction. Mike was constantly deferring to the politician, and Storm’s brow creased as she listened to the broadcast, the lovely countryside through which they were driving forgotten.

‘Oh no, Mike!’ she protested in dismay at one point, when he cut right across one of the farmer’s angry arguments.

‘The discussion was getting pretty heated, Storm,’ David pointed out mildly when she turned to him.

‘But that’s the whole point,’ she objected. ‘Involvement—that’s what we’re all about.’

David laughed.

‘Such a fierce little thing! I suppose if you were conducting the interview you’d be making mincemeat out of our Euro friend?’

‘Well, we are talking about the farmers’ livelihood. You know how high feeling is running locally against the Common Market subsidies.’

‘Umm—well, nothing can be achieved by attacking him broadside on, Storm. He isn’t a free agent, you know. Governments dictate policy…’

‘And governments are made up of men and women—like you or me. If we make our protests loud enough and long enough…’ she sighed in fond exasperation when David shook his head.

‘I’m not going to argue with you,’ he told her mildly. ‘Sit back and enjoy the scenery. I refuse to have my journey home ruined by a discussion on politics. I’ve got enough of that to contend with during the day.’

Storm was instantly remorseful, remembering his discussions with the Authority, but the ineffectualness of the programme lingered on, niggling, when she tried to relax her mind into other channels.

‘Shall I see you tonight?’ she asked David casually.

He shook his head.

“Fraid not. I’ve got to get some work done if I’m going to be ready to face the sort of inquisition Jago will have in mind. Why don’t you go out with Pete and that crowd?’ he asked her.

That was another good thing about David, Storm reflected. He wasn’t at all possessive. In a mature, well-balanced relationship there should be no need for jealousy.

The duck-egg blue sky was turning primrose when David stopped the car at the end of her parents’ drive. Leaning across her to open the door, he kissed her lightly.

Storm’s mother was in the garden. A placid, plump woman in her late fifties, she often found it difficult to understand how she had managed to produce such a turbulent firebrand.

Storm was the youngest of the family and the only girl. Both her brothers had left home several years earlier. John, the elder, was a mining engineer who lived and worked in Australia, making very infrequent trips home. Ian, three years older than Storm, was an oil technician who spent half his life commuting between various far-flung outposts of the world, looking for oil, and consequently he too was a rare visitor to the sprawling old house, nestling against the protective lee of the Cotswolds.

‘I thought I ought to cut the last of the roses before the frost gets them,’ Mrs Templeton said to Storm. ‘It makes the garden look so bare, though,’ she added, looking regretfully at her denuded bushes. ‘David drop you off?’

‘Mm. Let me carry those for you,’ Storm offered, relieving her mother of her secateurs and gloves. Although her parents were quite fond of David, Storm sensed that they did not entirely favour her relationship with him. They were such a pair of romantics, she thought affectionately, no doubt they would have preferred her to fall fathoms deep in love. Her mind shied away from the prospect, apprehension shivering through her, as she admitted that she was frightened of the commitment such a relationship would entail. Deep waters were not for her, she decided firmly as she followed her mother into the house.

‘Dinner won’t be long,’ Mrs Templeton warned as Storm headed for the stairs.

‘I’ll just have a quick shower, then,’ Storm replied.

Because of the amount of equipment crammed into their inadequate premises it was always uncomfortably warm in the studios and Storm liked to refresh herself with a shower before sitting down for her evening meal.

What would Jago Marsh make of their premises? she wondered, a sardonic smile touching her lips as she prepared for dinner. The offices themselves were bad enough, but worse by far was their outdated and hopelessly inefficient equipment. Their outside broadcast van had barely passed its M.O.T., in fact Pete had sworn that it was purely on account of Storm’s pleading violet eyes that it had scraped through at all, and so it was with all their gear. Mikes failed to operate, turntables refused to turn; splicers tangled the tapes, and it was always the exhausted staff who had to work on painstakingly righting the faults caused by unreliable equipment. Storm’s lip curled as she thought of Jago Marsh sitting up nursing a faulty transmitter. Well, he was in for a few shocks if he expected his existence to be cushioned with velvet once he joined Radio Wyechester, she thought with grim satisfaction.

Her parents were already seated when she entered the dining room. Storm’s father was a lecturer at the local university, a tall, still handsome man in his late fifties, with a pronounced sense of humour, and a comprehensive understanding of the young.

Although there were only the three of them left at home, Mrs Templeton insisted on a certain degree of formality for their evening meal, and although breakfast was normally a rushed affair with Storm swallowing a quick cup of coffee, standing up in the kitchen, and Mr Templeton munching toast, hidden behind his newspaper, dinner was always a leisurely meal, eaten with due regard for the digestion.

Her mother was an excellent cook, and since Storm had no need to worry about her weight, she tucked into her steak and kidney pie with every evidence of enjoyment.

Richard Templeton lectured in economics and had the dissecting mind of the intellectual. The Templeton household had never suffered from a lack of stimulating conversation, and the dinner table had been a favourite platform for the younger generation to launch its attacks on the elder throughout the boys’ and Storm’s adolescence. Nowadays there were no longer heated discussions about pop singers and curfews, nevertheless Storm enjoyed pitting her wits against her father’s razor-sharp mind—Templeton Père had the disquieting knack of sniffing out the weaker points of an argument, although what she lost in logic Storm more than made up for in vehemence.

‘Had a good day, Storm?’ Mrs Templeton enquired when she had served the apple pie. Storm had been somewhat subdued during the meal, and it struck her that she was looking far from happy.

‘Not really,’ Storm admitted. Her parents knew all about the problems suffered by the station, and both waited sympathetically to hear her news.

‘We’re being allowed to keep our licence,’ she told them, ‘but with certain provisos—one of which is Jago Marsh.’

‘The Jago Marsh?’ her father enquired with some interest. ‘Well, I don’t know why that should make you look so miserable. If you ask me he’s just what your outfit needs. Incredible, the progress he’s made during the last few years. There can’t be many people more experienced in the media today, and I’m sure he’ll be able to do a damned sight more for you than David’s ineffectual…’ He broke off as his wife kicked him warningly under the table.

‘I’m sorry, Storm,’ he apologised, ‘but although I like David, I don’t think he’s cut out for such a competitive business. I never have done…’

‘But you admire a man like Jago Marsh,’ Storm said bitterly, ‘a man who constantly features in the gossip columns—changes his girl-friends like other men change their shirts, is known to be completely ruthless and.…’

‘Most reprehensible,’ her father agreed, surveying her flushed cheeks with twinkling eyes. ‘What is it that you object to most, Storm? That he’s been appointed to try and make some order out of David’s chaos, or his romantic proclivities?’