As she headed back into the office, her mouth was curved into a small smile at her ludicrous but amusing secret plan.
‘Share the joke?’
She raised her eyes to his but she didn’t see him. What she saw, in fact, was a stage in a darkened room on which she wove with sensuous, semi-naked abandon, watched hungrily by the man sitting opposite her at the desk. Her mind was filled suddenly and sickening with an erotic image that was strong enough to blow her off her feet. She very quickly sat down, just in case, and delved blindly into the black diary on her lap, furiously flicking through the pages until her trembling fingers lighted onto the correct one.
She mumbled something about there being no joke to share, making sure that she kept her eyes firmly averted from his face, and then said crisply, ‘Tuesday looks fine. If you tell me what clients you’d like to visit, then I can try and arrange them.’ She was still speaking to the diary. In a minute, when her head had completely cleared of its treacherous suggestion, she would resume normal behaviour patterns.
‘If we meet the first, Prior and Truman, at nine, then we can probably fit Robins in before lunch. Make sure that you leave a two-hour window for lunch, say between one and three, then a couple more and we can call it a day.’
‘And which client would you like to take to lunch?’ Her heart rate was getting back to its normal speed, thankfully, and she risked a look at him.
‘None. I think you and I could benefit from a bit of uninterrupted time together.’ He let the words sink in, then added, ‘To go through any little work problems you might have encountered that you need to ask me about.’ He wasn’t smiling, she noticed, when he said this, but there was the feeling of a smile tugging at his mouth and she shot him a quenchingly professional look, just in case there was anything there that needed snuffing out.
Shaun had made her wise to the manipulations of the flirt. He himself had used more obvious tactics. He had often spread himself across her desk, before she’d insisted that he no longer come into her workplace, making sure that she’d had nowhere else to look but at some part of his reclining body; then, later, the big gestures of extravagant flowers and expensive dinners in the places where to be seen was to step up two notches on your street cred rating. The showy manoeuvres had lasted the length of time it had taken to get her into bed, then gradually they had dwindled, until the day had arrived when the flowers and expensive dinners became things of the past. She would always, at the back of her mind, equate pregnancy with misery, because it was then that the seriously destructive verbal abuse had really begun, the taunts that would reduce her to uncontrollable weeping, the slamming of doors and jeering that had made her want to disappear from the face of the earth.
She wondered whether Max Forbes was cut from the same cloth, just a different pattern. The more she saw of him, the more confused she was becoming, because her instincts were telling her that he was nothing like his brother, even though she was disillusioned enough to know that instincts had a nasty way of being wrong.
Then, when her irritating speculations had reached a peak, she told herself that none of it mattered a jot anyway because, whether he was like his brother or in fact a saint in the making, he was still a dangerous and unwanted intruder in her life.
‘Right. Anything else?’ he asked, pushing his chair back and stretching. He walked across to the door, on the back of which hung his jacket, slung negligently over the hook despite the hanger that was sitting there gathering dust. ‘I’ve got a couple of important meetings and, as you know, I’ll be out of the office tomorrow. Think you can cope?’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Vicky told him. She could feel an unwelcome stir of excitement at the prospect of all the work that lay ahead of her. If Max Forbes thought that months of unsatisfactory temps was frustrating, then she could deliver a sermon of her own on the dissatisfaction of one very proficient temp, namely herself, who had spent the past few months photocopying, photocopying and doing yet more photocopying. In between she had managed to run errands that no one else wanted to run, do filing that had been studiously avoided for decades and transferred enough tedious information from sheets of paper to computer to make her goggle-eyed.
‘You know where you can reach me. All my numbers, including the one for my flat in Fulham, are at the front of your diary.’
‘I shouldn’t think that anything that urgent will come up that requires me to get in touch with you at your home.’
‘You can never tell,’ he said, slinging on his jacket and patting the pocket to make sure that his cellular phone was present and correct.
Vicky, who had automatically followed him to the door, now said with wry amusement, ‘You’re a company director, not a highly pressurised neurosurgeon on call. Don’t you think that life might go on if you aren’t around for a couple of days?’ Then she suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be working for him. When she wasn’t on guard, it was all too easy to relax with him. Considering that one of the few advantages to taking this job, so she’d repeatedly told herself, was the fact that she would be keyed up and mentally alert to spot and ward off any potential danger, allowing herself to relax was not on the agenda.
‘Maybe,’ he admitted reluctantly, favouring her with one of those slow, specialty smiles which he seemed to do unconsciously. He opened the door and turned to look down at her. ‘Maybe not. But don’t worry, anyway. I’ll be back soon enough.’
The words sounded like an ominous warning in the sunlit office and attached themselves to the growing line of worries complicating her life.
Or so it suddenly seemed.
CHAPTER FOUR
NEXT TUESDAY, which had seemed a million years away, arrived with stupendous speed.
During his two days out of the office, Vicky had jumped into the deep waters of bad filing, customer queries, letters to be typed, memos and phone calls and e-mails and faxes and things to sort out so that they were understandable to her. The time had whisked by. Every so often she would dutifully tell herself that she wouldn’t be around long enough to see the benefits of some of the systems she was putting in place, but already a little voice at the back of her mind was beginning to sing a different tune.
Well, why would he find out about Chloe? He hadn’t so far, and he had stopped asking difficult questions. Perhaps his nosy curiosity had all been part of his interviewing methods, to make sure that she could handle his temperament. Of course, she wouldn’t stay there forever, but why not for a bit longer than she had planned? Why not? The money was brilliant, better than anything she could ever hope to earn in a million years around Warwick. Or around London, for that matter. She would be able to put a bit aside, and wouldn’t that come in handy for all the building work that needed doing on her house? The place seemed to be falling down around her ears and she had to find the money to do repair work from somewhere. Hadn’t she? And the work was going to be exciting. She was so sick of being given the dross as a temp; why not enjoy the sudden opportunity to have a few responsibilities? Yes, of course it was dangerous being around the man, even though he knew nothing of her personal life. But it was a danger she could handle. The fact that she was aware of it would be enough to deaden its force. She would keep him at a distance. In effect, she would use him, use him for the fabulous pay cheque at the end of the month and the fantastic chance to satisfy her need for an invigorating career, and if he started asking questions again or prying into her personal life, then she would dump the job immediately. And what was wrong with that? Hadn’t she been well and truly used by that brother of his? In fact, she could look on it as a kind of game, with her in possession of all the rules. She knew, after all, all about him, but he knew nothing about her. So who was going to have the last laugh? All she needed was to be careful and she could enjoy the situation instead of being petrified.
By the following Monday, she’d made significant inroads into some of the backlog that had stockpiled on her desk, including various dusty letters which had been forgotten or ig
nored during the rapid succession of unsuccessful temps.
Max was out of the office more than he was in it, and when he was in, he spent most of his time locked in his office, on the phone or on the fax or in front of his computer, frowning at rows upon rows of numbers.
Now, as she cleared her desk in anticipation of going home, she stole a quick look at him through the smoked glass partition. Seen like this, he was less intimidating than he was in the flesh. He was reduced to a darkish shape which she could easily handle.
Not, she thought smugly, whisking her pens and pencils into the drawer and clicking it shut, that he was proving to be a problem at all. In fact, there were times when she very nearly forgot the dark connection that ran between them like an unseen, pulsating vein. She still couldn’t quite manage to slot him into the harmless category that she would have liked, he was just too overwhelming for that, but at least she no longer looked at him with the terror of a rabbit caught in headlights.
And Chloe was happier and more relaxed than she had been since they returned to England.
Vicky pondered this for a minute. The only explanation she could find was that her daughter had somehow picked up her inexplicable contentment at work with her efficient, childish antennae and was happier for it.
She knocked briefly on Max’s interconnecting door, while slinging on her jacket and poked her head around it to tell him that she was off.
He crooked his finger at her, beckoning her to enter, and Vicky quickly glanced at her watch, estimating how much time she could spare for a quick chat. She was accustomed to picking up Chloe from the childminder at a little after five-thirty, which didn’t give her very long in terms of travel. She could, she knew, leave her there longer, but she hated doing that. It was enough of a wrench not being able to collect her directly from school at three-thirty, without prolonging her absence. And she didn’t want to start taking advantage of Brenda’s good nature.
‘If you can spare the time,’ he said drily, tilting back in the chair with his hands clasped behind his head.
Vicky went in, but remained standing and didn’t shut the door behind her. The point was not lost on her boss, who looked at her with wry amusement.
‘How are you enjoying the job so far?’
‘It’s early days yet.’ No point committing herself to an enthusiastic response just yet. For starters, if she decided to leave in the very near future, she wanted to be able to hang on to the tried and tested excuse about it not being her cup of tea after all. And, additionally, she didn’t want to give him the opportunity to imagine that he had been right all along.
‘You seem to have picked it up very well, from what I’ve seen.’
‘You’ve been out of the office most of the time,’ Vicky pointed out.
‘I’ve accessed some of the files you were due to update on the computer and it’s all been done, and unless you’ve eaten the outstanding paperwork most of that has been done as well.’ He sat forward and began fiddling with his fountain pen, a burgundy Mont Blanc with a solid gold trim. ‘And tomorrow we’ve got your first introduction to clients. Nervous?’
Vicky, who couldn’t reasonably look at her watch without it being obvious, fidgeted from one foot to the other and tried not to think about the dash she would have to get to her childminder by five-thirty.
‘Looking forward to it.’
‘I apologise for not being around a bit more to show you the ropes, considering it’s early days here for you…’ He began tapping the closed fountain pen on the surface of his desk and she wondered why he had bothered to ask her into his office and enquire about her levels of happiness if he was that impatient to get going. Was he under the mistaken impression that she wanted to see him?
‘It’s no problem.’
‘You must have a lot of questions to ask.’ His grey eyes swept over her, taking in her neat uniform of knee-length skirt, crisp cotton blouse and grey jacket which was now in place, obliterating all traces of femininity.
The world of fashion had a lot to answer for when it came to suits for women, he thought. It was difficult to imagine anything more conducive to killing the male imagination. He decided that his office would be far better served were she to wear something a little less military, perhaps a silky short mini skirt and a clinging wet shirt, worn braless.
He grinned inwardly at the chauvinistic irreverence of his thoughts. He personally knew several extremely high-powered female executives who would hang, draw and quarter him had they any insight into his current line of thinking. They would all be particularly disgusted, since he had always led the way when it came to equality between the sexes. He’d made it a company policy that pay reflected talent rather than gender, and females in positions of power had always been actively condoned within the various branches of his huge, global network of companies.
As far as he was concerned, the work environment was not a cat-walk and inappropriate dressing was discouraged.
Right now, however, he thought that some inappropriate dressing would do just nicely.
‘No, none that I can think of offhand.’
‘Sorry?’ He realised sheepishly that his drifting thoughts had gone further than he thought.
‘I said—’
‘We can discuss them over dinner.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Your questions. We can discuss them over dinner. Fewer interruptions than if we tried to sort them out here, during the day. I could pick you up around seven-thirty. How does that sound?’
‘No, thank you.’
The blunt refusal was like a bucket of cold water thrown gaily over his head. The worst thing was that he shouldn’t have asked her out in the first place. He might tell himself that it was business, but he knew that that couldn’t have been further from the truth. He looked at her stubborn, shuttered face, her full mouth drawn into a firm, disapproving line, and felt the kick of adolescent disappointment.
Except for the fact that he wasn’t an adolescent.
‘Why not?’ he heard himself ask. ‘Don’t imagine that this is anything other than work.’ With a trace of satisfaction, he saw her translucent skin suffuse with pink colour and some vague notion of reestablishing his bruised male pride made him pursue the point with more tenacity than was warranted. ‘Your virtue is absolutely secure with me, my dear.’ Pale pink was becoming a shade darker. He noted that she was no longer looking at him but staring fixedly in the region of her shoes. ‘In fact, I’ve always believed it vitally important that sex and work don’t mix. The combination is usually lethal. I simply thought that you might feel a bit more relaxed away from the office, might find it easier to concentrate on any problems you might have without the constant interruption of telephones and people popping in and out. Naturally, if you have other, more pressing engagements…’
He glanced idly down at a sheaf of paper on the desk, letting her know, without putting it in so many words, that her reply was fairly unimportant but that he was, at the end of the day, her boss.
‘Yes, I have actually,’ Vicky told him. ‘In fact, I really must be on my way…’ There was a trace of guilty apology in her voice that made him clench his teeth together in frustration.
‘I don’t approve of clock-watching,’ he said grimly. Now his jaw was beginning to ache and he slowly relaxed his muscles. He could tell that she was frazzled by his attitude but really, what, at this hour of the afternoon, could possibly be so important? He could understand that she might have plans later on in the evening, but at five-fifteen in the afternoon? And those plans obviously weren’t innocent. If she had to scurry off to the dentist or the hairdresser or to the corner shop before it closed, then she would have said so.
He felt that spark of intense curiosity and allied with it was something more disturbing. Jealousy. Jealousy! It seemed that the woman was stirring up a viper’s nest of unprecedented emotions. He stared at her with brooding resentment and thought that the only thing that could bring a guilty flush like that to a wom
an’s cheeks was a man. Illicit afternoon sex. All that baloney about no skeletons in the cupboard and having nothing to hide had been pure fabrication. Did she imagine that he would care one way or another whether she was having an affair with a married man? Did she think that he was moralistic enough to sack her because she might be behaving inappropriately? Didn’t the woman know that this was no longer the Victorian era?
Illicit afternoon sex. Illicit sex in the afternoon. Illicit, frantic, steamy sex in the afternoon, with the curtains drawn. Or maybe with the curtains undrawn. Who knew? A quiet knock on the door and she would let him in. A small, insignificant office worker with no personality to speak of and a drastically receding hairline, and upstairs they would go, to fling off their clothes and get down to the pressing business of illicit afternoon sex.
His mind played with the evolving scenario until he was forced to break the lengthening silence.
‘Perhaps I should give you a few days’ notice if I intend to keep you five minutes after you’re due to leave.’ His voice was laced with cold sarcasm and he unobtrusively tried to massage his jawline with his hand.
‘Oh, five minutes is no problem,’ Vicky said awkwardly. ‘I just…you know, I’m very busy with the house…there’s always someone due to come round…plumbers…electricians…you know…’ Her voice trailed away into awkward silence and he nodded briefly at her.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow. You’ll have to be here by eight-thirty if we’re to get to Prior and Truman by nine.’
Vicky nodded, relieved that she had received her signal to depart. She drove like a maniac back to her child-minder’s house, but even when she and Chloe were back home, doing all the usual stuff they did in the evening, she carried on feeling a little jumpy. As though any minute, and without notice, she would look up and see Max Forbes’s dark, mocking face staring at her through the sitting room window. Like an avenging angel, but with nothing of the angel about him. An avenging devil.
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