Page 18 of Be More Lucy

‘I’m still going to be presenting. But they’ve had a focus group, and they think we’ll get more viewers if a female presenter is working with me, particularly as the new series is about women pirates.‘

‘That’s reasonable, I suppose. But are there any female academics who specialise in your area?’

‘None that I know of.’Stop drumming your fingers on the arm of the sofa. She’ll know you’re nervous.

‘But they have they got someone in mind?’

‘Yes.’ Em was going to work it out any second now.

‘It’s Clara, isn’t it?’

Jack’s former friend Clara was a newsreader and TV presenter. They’d had been much more than friends for a while, but that had been way before Jack and Em had got together. And he’d kept Clara at a distance ever since she’d been rude about Em last year. Em didn’t know the whole story about that, though.

Jack sighed. ‘Ian said we needed someone with gravitas.’

Em hesitated for a second. ‘I don’t mean this nastily, but why has she agreed to work on your programme? It’s not as if it’s shown on the mainstream channels she’s used to.’

‘I thought the same, but Clara’s struggled to get a presenter role since that unfortunate interview with the animal trainer.’

‘The one where she punched the poor man’s chimpanzee in the face when it reached out to her? I’m surprised the RSPCA didn’t bring charges.’

‘In her defence, she said its hand was heading straight for her crotch.’

‘It didn’t look that way. Anyway, when did you have that conversation? I thought you’d been avoiding her for months?’ Em did not look happy.

‘She was in the meeting.’ He looked away. ‘And we had lunch afterwards.’

‘Lunch?’ Surely, Em didn’t think something was going on.Stop behaving so shiftily otherwise that’s precisely what she’ll think.

He looked her in the eye. ‘Just lunch. Nothing else, I promise. I thought I better offer an olive branch if we were going to be working together.’

Em relaxed slightly. ‘I guess Clara thought “I need a job, why not approach good old Jack Carver, who’s got a soft spot for me?”’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘Ok. Possibly. But she didn’t approach me. She contacted Ian.’

‘Knowing he’d ask you and you’d say yes.’

‘I didn’t have a choice.’ Which wasn’t entirely true. He could’ve said no and walked away, but this project was his baby, and he didn’t want to let it go, even if it did mean working with Clara.

‘I’m not interested in her. Not that way. She knows that.’

‘But you were once. Could she be hoping you could be again?’

‘I can’t help being irresistible.’ He grinned.

Em glared at him.

You misjudged that one, Carver.

‘I guess you could work in different places,’ Em suggested. ‘Clara could do the Italian episode, and you could be in Spain talking about another pirate.‘

‘We could, but Ian wants us both on screen together most of the time.’ He decided not to mention that Ian thought Jack and Clara had excellent chemistry.You should’ve put up more of a fight.If Em had just announced she was planning to work with that lecherous bastard of a personal trainer, Ben, he’d have exactly the same expression on his face as Em had now.

‘When is it going to happen?’ she asked.

---