'Perhaps I could plan my own interview?' Neil asked in exasperation. 'I would have thought you could sit back
a bit now, Natalie. You've more or less managed us out of our minds.'
Natalie flushed at his reprimand but Ray was there before she could speak.
'And how lucky for some of us who left our minds in bed this morning,' he rasped. 'Natalie's worked like a slave. It's not either easy nor safe at the back of his vehicle.'
Her eyes met Kip's and she suddenly found herself looking down at her toes like a schoolgirl. Had he been saving a refusal until the last "minute? She wouldn't put it past him. Apparently, though, he was prepared to back her up.
'I agree with Natalie,' he said coolly. 'There's a limit to what you can say about the surface of a dam. I'm pretty much at home among the turbines.' Neil looked about to say -something unforgivable but Kip took matters out of his hands.
'Let me see your questions,' he ordered.
Natalie looked up at him with a sort of awed gratitude. It would take some sort of suicidal desire on Neil's part to buck against Kip, and Neil was a television man first and last. He swallowed his temper and settled to the discussion.
'Right. I'll talk around that,' Kip agreed shortly, and that was that.
He was so easygoing in front of the camera that Natalie and Ray had no problems at all, and even Neil relaxed into his old manner. Down in the workings of the dam Kip fascinated them so much that Ray almost forgot to keep the camera rolling. It was exciting, brilliantly so, watching Kip's dark eyes, the changing expressions on his face, his wonderful dark voice. The lean, tanned
hands moved expressively, everything about him assured and elegant.
Later Ray admitted that he had hardly turned the camera on Neil at all.
'Kip should be in the movies,' he enthused. 'What a magnificent face—and the grand manner, so natural.' He grinned at Natalie. 'Excites you, doesn't he? I nearly dropped the damned camera when you took over so fervently.'
Natalie blushed. She could hardly forget it. She knew perfection when she saw it and she knew when to stop. Neil had been well into his stride, charmed by the sound of his own good voice, and he threw plenty of questions at Kip that had never even been mentioned. Kip hadn't turned a hair, although Natalie had wondered where Neil had got the sudden ideas. It would not have helped if Kip had floundered, although he didn't at all. He knew his work well.
It had been going on too long, though. She knew it instinctively and finally, after one of Kip's swift thrusts of humour that had them all grinning, she had been able to contain herself no longer. It was the perfect ending.
'Cut! We've got a wrap up!' She had just yelled it, banging Ray on the shoulder, getting instant obedience.
Neil had turned on her with a great deal of spiteful anger.
'Look! If you want to do everything just let me know and the rest of us will go home!'
'I'm sorry,' Natalie had murmured, trying to look placating. 'It was a perfect ending. I got carried away.' She had looked at Kip ruefully. 'Did you want to say anything else?'
'Not me.' He had grinned at her, the Kip she remembered, his laughing eyes almost warming her. He had glanced at his watch. 'Can the team take time off for tea?' he had enquired so pleasantly that even Neil's face had relaxed from rage. For a while, Kip had spoken to him with such charm that everything was smoothed over.
'Thanks,' Natalie murmured a moment later as they walked into the hotel for tea. 'I overstepped myself there.'
'I'm damned glad you did,' Kip said in a low voice. 'My smile was beginning to freeze.'
'You were simply wonderful,' Natalie assured him innocently, and he took her hand, looking down at her with sudden seriousness.
'Tell me that without all these people around us and I'll try my best to live up to it.'
For a second she seemed to be swimming in light, unable to look away, and Ray's words came so clearly back into her head, about grasping happiness. She would be grasping despair too, because she couldn't face any day afterwards if she gave herself to Kip and then had to forget him. As it was she would never, ever be able to forget him.