restrained Eoin, he looked so angry.
The world came back into focus and Alana was stunned. Had she really just said all that? She looked around at the cameraman wildly. It wasn’t Derek, it was a new guy, young and scared-looking. Derek would have had the sense to stop filming. Her stomach went into free fall.
She said through stiff, cold lips, ‘Please tell me you stopped filming?’
He gulped and went puce, lowering the camera. ‘I—’
Alana raised a shaky hand to her face; her other one was still wrapped around the microphone. ‘Oh God.’
A low, threatening voice sounded near her ear, turning her blood cold. ‘Well done, Cusack. You’ve done it now; you’d better be prepared for the fallout.’
She took down her hand and watched as Eoin sauntered away. He hadn’t even tried to stitch her up. She’d done it all by herself. The minute he’d come out with his first provocative comment she should have wrapped up the interview and that would have been that. It was no worse than some of the barbed comments people had thrown at her since Ryan had died. Yet she’d never felt the need to defend herself till now.
In the temporary studio set up at the other end of the pitch for the after-match analysis, there was a deathly lull as the panel absorbed what had just happened. Luckily they had just cut to a commercial break, but the damage was done. Pascal’s face was like granite.
When she finally let herself into her house later, Alana felt shell shocked, as if she’d been put through a wringer and left flat and limp on the other side. When she’d walked back into the newsroom, she’d been summoned immediately to Rory’s office and had been fired on the spot. The entire slanging match had been aired on national television, in front of the country and in front of the panel of experts discussing the match. And Pascal. Apparently he’d held his tongue on air, but afterwards had voiced his concerns for the image of the tournament, and the image of his bank’s involvement in the face of the rapidly escalating scandal. That was what Rory had told her as he’d all but flung her contract at her.
‘I knew you were liable to be a problem when I hired you!’
‘And yet,’ Alana had pointed out in a desperate bid to try and save herself, ‘I proved myself to be reliable, well informed, and you even told me last week that I was the one you trusted most to do the hard-hitting interviews.’
‘Yes, Alana,’ he’d replied wearily, sitting down behind his desk. ‘But you brought your baggage with you, didn’t you?’
She’d kept it together and had just said quietly, ‘I guess I did.’ Even from the grave her husband was having the last laugh.
As Alana sat on her couch now and thought of everything that had just happened she couldn’t stop the nausea rising. She just made it to the bathroom in time and emptied the contents of her stomach. As she washed her face, she thought of something, and with a fatal air went back out to her bag and extracted the chemist’s bag. She went back into her tiny bathroom.
The day couldn’t get any worse.
And then it just did.
* * *
She tried to ignore the doorbell which was ringing persistently, the door-knocker banging violently. But the thought of her neighbours hearing the commotion finally made her move off her couch and out of the state of shock that had held her immobile for the past few minutes. She opened the door and didn’t wait to see who it was. She knew.
Pascal came in and towered over her, the door shut behind him.
‘What the hell was all that about?’
Alana moved around to her armchair and sat down, because she was afraid she might fall. ‘That was me, finally airing my dirty laundry. In front of the nation, no less.’
Pascal had moved to the centre of the small sitting-room, and glared down at her. ‘And in front of the entire Six Nations public too. I believe the news is hitting the airwaves as we speak. The hotel where the after-match party is being held has had to call for police assistance in dealing with the hordes of paparazzi already camped outside.’
Alana winced.
Pascal grunted something unintelligible and sat down on her couch. She was still a little too numb to react.
‘So? Are you going to tell me what happened?’
Alana shrugged. She looked at him, but didn’t really see him. ‘He pushed me too far. For months people have been making snide comments about how I was so cruel to Ryan—how could I have thrown him out?—and the truth was exactly what I said.’
Pascal drove a hand through his hair. ‘But it’s crazy. The things you said—’
‘Were all true.’ Alana felt life-force coming back into her bones, the shock wearing off. This man and his concern for appearances was the reason she’d just lost her job, and the reality of what that meant was beginning to sink in.
She stood up and crossed her arms. ‘I’m not really in the mood to discuss this actually, would you mind leaving? I think you’ve done enough for one day.’
He stood, too, bristling. He pointed at his chest. ‘Me? I’m not the one that has just ripped the rose-tinted glasses from a nation of mourners. Whatever your husband might have been, Alana, surely there was a more decorous time and place to tell the truth?’
She stepped up to him, shaking. ‘Do you really think I thought it through logically for one second Pascal—and then went ahead thinking it would all be OK?’ She stepped back again, breathing heavily. ‘Of course I didn’t. It just came out. And in all honesty, I probably couldn’t stop myself if it happened again. He provoked me.’
Pascal recalled what Eoin Donohoe had said, and recalled, too, his urge to go and lift Alana bodily out of his way so that he could shield her. He’d been genuinely concerned for her safety as he’d watched her confront the huge man. She’d looked so tiny and fragile, standing up to him. The protective instinct had caught him unawares as the events had unfolded in front of him, but then he’d also had to assess the potential damage as a barrage of calls had immediately jammed the phone lines in the studio.
Pascal couldn’t keep the censure from his voice. ‘He may have provoked you, but you’ve unleashed a storm now.’
He saw how Alana paled dramatically. But his own head was still ringing from the board of his bank wanting to know what on earth was going on, why a storm in a teacup was threatening to reduce the famous rugby-tournament to the level of a sideshow. And what it was already doing to their reputation on Europe’s stock markets.
Alana felt a wave of weariness. ‘It’ll die down soon enough. It’s not as if people are going to be faced with me, anyway; I’ve been sacked.’
Pascal’s head reared back. ‘Sacked?’
She nodded and looked at him, hardening her heart and insides to the way he made her feel, even now. The weariness fled and anger rose, hot and swift. How could he be so cavalier about her life? Her independence was gone, everything she’d built up destroyed. ‘Rory sacked me as soon as I got back. And as it was in part to do with your reaction, you needn’t act so surprised.’
Pascal’s face darkened ominously, features tight. ‘I didn’t know he’d done that.’
‘Well, he did.’ Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides.
‘I would have never have advocated that you lose your job over this. To suggest that is ridiculous.’
His words rang with conviction, and he seemed affronted that she thought he would be so petty. She knew she couldn’t blame him for the fact that Ireland was so small that the merest whiff of scandal could run for weeks and weeks and wreck a career overnight. The immediate future lay starkly ahead of her, especially with the brand-new knowledge that she held secret in her belly. The anger drained away and she felt weary again; it was too overwhelming to try