A book in the Simply The Best series, 1997

'Oh, hang this rain!' Lee Meredith muttered. 'What possessed me to drive in the pitch-dark in the middle of a downpour?'

But she knew she'd had no choice. It had seemed a good idea when the fashion editor of Modern Lady had said she wanted the autumn clothes photographed by a waterfall. But the waterfall had been a hundred miles away, and as Lee had clicked the shutter for the last time the heavens had opened. Despite the treacherous conditions she had to get home tonight. She was due at her studio the next morning.

The rhythmic dunk-dunk of the windscreen wipers was hypnotic, and she had to fight to stay alert as she stared into the darkness. At last she stopped at a transport cafe and had a cup of coffee to keep herself awake. To complete the job she went into the rest room and splashed cold water onto her face. Then she freshened her make-up and drew a comb through her blonde shoulder-length hair, with such vigour that the curls danced. It might seem illogical, since there was no one to see her, but it was a matter of pride.

Lee had found that the company of models could become intimidating, so now she used the tricks she'd learned from the glamorous young women to transform her attractive face into beauty. She was five feet two, built on dainty lines, and presented an appearance of feminine fragility that came from another age.

The inner reality was a shrewd woman who'd learned survival in a hard school.

The cast of her face was naturally youthful, which had once annoyed her. It had been maddening to be taken for fourteen when she'd been a wife of seventeen and the mother of a year-old child. But now, at twenty-nine, there was a certain satisfaction in knowing she looked several years younger. Her petite figure and mass of honey-blonde hair completed the effect. It would be a clever man who could guess Lee Meredith's true age, and he would have to get close enough to look into her dark blue eyes and see the pain and disillusion that she concealed behind laughter.