No Need for Love

by Sandra Marton

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and put it to her lips.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind sharing the glass,’ he said.

  She looked up quickly, but his face was expressionless.

  ‘No,’ she said, and gave him a tiny smile. ‘Not at all.’

  She sipped at the water, not because she wanted it but because it seemed safer to do that than to try and understand what in heaven’s name was going on. After she’d managed a couple of swallows, she handed the glass to him.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said pleasantly. ‘The colour’s coming back into your cheeks.’

  ‘Mr MacLean…’

  ‘Grant,’ he said, and smiled.

  She looked at him. If she didn’t confront him in the next few seconds, it would be too late. But how could she, without making herself look more foolish than she already felt? How could she make an indignant speech about an incident so meaningless to him that he’d already forgotten it?

  ‘Hannah?’

  Say something, she thought furiously. Dammit, Hannah, say something. Anything.

  ‘It’s just occurred to me…’ He frowned. ‘Are you ill because of something you had last night? The wine, perhaps?’

  The wine. Of course. She seized on the thought the way a drowning man would grasp a bit of driftwood. They’d both been under a strain to begin with, he worried about Magda Karolyi, she about the act she’d been forced into. And they’d both had some wine. Too much, perhaps. He had been aggressive, and she had been abrasive. Yes. It made sense—more sense than going off half-cocked, making a scene and losing the best job she’d ever had.

  ‘Hannah?’

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m fine, Mr…’ His brows rose. ‘Thank you, Grant,’ she said with a polite smile. Her hand closed tightly around the letter of resignation and she crumpled it up and stuffed it into her pocket. ‘Really.’

  ‘Good.’ He rose to his feet and she did, too. ‘Now, then,’ he said, his tone brisk and businesslike, ‘do you think you can manage to go through those files by one o’clock?’

  She nodded as they reached the door to the outer office. ‘Of course. I’ll get right to it.’

  ‘Perhaps you should take some aspirin.’ He opened the door and stepped aside. ‘You might be coming down with the flu. Everyone seems to be catching it.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ she said, her tone as pleasant and impersonal as his. ‘I don’t feel ill at all.’

  ‘Tired, then,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Just a little…’

  The words caught in her throat. The expression on his face had not changed, but his eyes had gone dark and smoky, and all at once she felt that same light-headedness she’d felt when he’d taken her in his arms and kissed her.

  ‘Didn’t you sleep well last night, Hannah?’ She didn’t answer, and his smile tilted just a fraction of an inch, hinting at something intimate and shared. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you didn’t. And neither did I.’

  His gaze swept over her face, lingered on her parted lips. Hannah held her breath. God. Oh, God…

  ‘Hannah?’ Sally rapped lightly against the half-open door and smiled brightly. ‘Oh. Mr MacLean. Sorry to bother you, sir. I didn’t realise you were in yet. I was going to ask Hannah if she wanted to take her coffeebreak now, but if she’s busy…’

  Sally’s words faded as Grant swung towards her, his face a cold mask.

  ‘At this hour?’ He frowned as he looked past the two women to the wall clock in the outer office.

  Sally cleared her throat. ‘Well, sir, those of us who get in early usually go to the lunch room for coffee and a Danish just about—’

  ‘Spare me the details, please. I don’t care what you have or where you have it, just as long as it doesn’t interfere with your work. You will have the material I want on my desk by one, Hannah, won’t you?’

  Somehow, Hannah nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  The door swung closed. Sally stared at it in silence, and then she gave a dramatic shudder.

  ‘Brrr,’ she said. ‘The temperature goes down fifty degrees when he’s around. Honestly, I don’t know how you put up with it! Well, never mind. Listen, wait until I tell you what Betty said when she saw that nightgown…’

  Hannah smiled faintly as she followed the other girl into the corridor, even managing to look as if she was listening to Sally’s story and laugh when the other girl laughed. But she didn’t really hear anything she was saying. She was, indeed, still caught in that moment when Grant had looked at her with the memory of last night burning deep in his eyes.

  What might have happened if Sally hadn’t come bursting in?

  She dug into her pocket, and her fingers clasped the crinkled letter of resignation.

  Go back into his office and give it to him, a voice within her whispered, go on, dammit!

  ‘Here we are,’ Sally said. She moved towards a platter of pastries laid out near a coffee urn. ‘Which do you want? Strawberry or cheese?’

  Hannah hesitated, and then she straightened her shoulders.

  Don’t be a fool, she thought, and she drew her hand from her pocket, balled up the letter, and dumped it into the wastebasket beside the lunch room door.

  ‘Strawberry’s fine,’ she said. She gave Sally a big, beaming smile and hurried on.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘HANNAH?’ Hannah looked up. Sally was standing in the doorway. ‘Got a minute?’

  Hannah smiled, pushed back from her computer, and slipped her eyeglasses from her nose.

  ‘Hello, stranger,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen you in days. Come in and visit for a while.’

  The other girl made a face. ‘Is he here?’ she hissed. She made a great show of peering inside Hannah’s office and checking the corners. ‘I’m not putting one foot inside that room unless the coast is clear.’

  ‘You’re safe.’ Hannah nodded towards the closed door between her office and Grant MacLean’s. ‘He’s on the phone long-distance. I doubt if he’ll surface again until after six.’

  ‘Long after six. Doesn’t he ever go home?’

  ‘He’s been working on the Hungarian thing.’ Hannah gestured to the papers strewn across her desk. ‘Tying it up has been endless.’

  Sally nodded. ‘So I gather. But you’d think he’d remember that you have a life to lead. When was the last time you left this place on time?’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ Hannah said with a smile. She pushed back her chair and rose to her feet. ‘Want some coffee?’

  ‘Ugh.’ The other girl grimaced. ‘I’m on caffeine overload already. How about tonight?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are you working overtime tonight, too?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m pretty much caught up, and—’

  ‘Great. A new club opened on the next street. One of the girls in Personnel said it’s packed with cute guys. I told her we’d——’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘But you just said—’

  ‘I said I wasn’t working late. But—’

  ‘You’ve got a date already?’

  Hannah touched her tongue to her lips. The only date she had for tonight was with a warm bath and the latest Robert Parker mystery, but she knew from experience that telling that to Sally would be a mistake.

  ‘Sort of,’ she said with a little shrug.

  ‘Great!’ Sally smiled. ‘It’s about time you started stepping out a little.’

  ‘I’ve been busy,’ Hannah said evasively. ‘School five nights a week doesn’t leave time for much else.’

  ‘I know. But you gotta remember that old saw about all work and no play making Jack a dull boy. Or Hannah a dull girl.’ Sally smiled. ‘I’ll expect to hear all the details tomorrow.’

  Hannah’s smile was vague. ‘Well…’

  ‘Ah, I get it. This one’s a hot date, and the down-and-dirty might be too steamy for my tender ears.’ Sally laughed, and, after a second, Hannah laughed along with her. ‘You have fun
tonight.’ Sally stepped into the hallway, then popped her head back into the room. ‘And we’ll double another time, OK?’

  ‘Yes. Sure. Another…’ the door swung shut ‘…time,’ Hannah murmured, and then she blew out her breath.

  Terrific. Now she was telling lies to Sally, but what else could she do? They’d known each other for almost a year, and the other girl still didn’t understand that searching for the perfect soulmate was rather like playing blind man’s buff. You’d find somebody eventually, but when the blindfold came off, what then?

  ‘But what about sex?’ Sally had said once, her tone careless but her eyes bright with questions. ‘Don’t you—you know, don’t you get lonely?’

  Hannah’s cheeks had flushed but she’d answered honestly. ‘No,’ she’d said—but, of course, she hadn’t added that sex lost its lustre when you felt nothing for the man in your arms. She had never been the sort of girl to get turned on easily anyway. Towards the end, her ex-husband had accused her of being frigid.

  ‘You’re a lump of ice,’ he’d complained nastily, and she couldn’t deny it. She had felt like ice, cold to everything, wanting nothing…

  Until that night more than two weeks ago, when she’d stood in the hallway of her apartment building, fumbling in the darkness with Grant MacLean as if she were a randy teenager, for God’s sake, as if——

  Hannah drew a deep breath. Whatever had made her think of that? The incident had been a temporary aberration on both their parts, that was all, and whatever she’d imagined in those few last moments before Sally had interrupted them the next morning had been just that—imaginings. She had only to look at the way Grant had treated her since to know that.

  Not that he wasn’t polite, she thought as she bent over her work. He was. He was also cooler than ever, as if to make certain she understood that what had happened that night had meant nothing. When Mr Holtz offered a smile and a ‘Good girl!’ by way of complimenting her on how well she’d represented the firm at the reception, Grant made it clear it had not been he who’d praised her but some of the Hungarian women.

  ‘Not Magda Karolyi,’ he’d said, with a little smile, and Hannah had, after the barest hesitation, smiled in return.

  ‘Hannah?’

  She spun around. Grant was standing in the middle of her office, watching her.

  ‘Oh!’ She gave a breathless little laugh. ‘You startled me.’

  He nodded towards the files lying beside her computer. ‘I take it you’ve finished with those.’

  She looked from him to the scattered documents, then to him again. His face was expressionless, but she was sure she heard a note of irritation in his voice.

  ‘No, no, I haven’t.’

  ‘But you’re almost done?’ She nodded. ‘I hope so.’ He frowned down at his wristwatch. ‘In fact, I’d like you to stay and finish those tonight. I’m leaving, but—’

  ‘You’re leaving?’

  He looked at her. ‘Is there a problem with that?’

  ‘No, sir, of course not. I just thought that, since you were leaving, I——’

  ‘Ah. I see. You assumed that you could leave if I were. Is that correct?’

  ‘Well…’ She hesitated. Why was he looking at her that way, as if she’d said or done something that had infuriated him? Just a minute ago, she’d been thinking about how polite he’d been lately, and now——

  ‘Come, come, Hannah, I’m not a villain.’ He crossed his arms over his chest and gave her a smile that was all teeth. ‘If you can’t work late this evening, just say so.’

  Hannah’s brows rose. ‘I didn’t say—’

  ‘If you have a heavy date, I certainly wouldn’t expect you to break it out of loyalty to me.’ Grant’s mouth twisted. ‘Or is it a hot date? I’m afraid I find it impossible to keep up with the vernacular.’

  She stared at him. ‘You were listening to my conversation with Sally,’ she said incredulously.

  ‘I must say,’ he said, distaste visible in the narrowed dark eyes, ‘I would have thought better of you.’

  Her face flushed. ‘That makes two of us. What right had you to eavesdrop on——?’

  ‘For God’s sake, you needn’t make it sound as if I had a glass to the wall!’ He strode briskly across the room and snatched a paper from her desk. ‘I started out of my office to see if you’d gotten anywhere with this report, but you and she had your heads together in an exchange of girlish confidences.’ He snapped the paper straight and glared down at it. ‘I thought it best not to interrupt, even though——’

  ‘I’d have preferred you had, instead of——’

  ‘—even though you were gabbing away on time I’m paying for.’

  ‘I was not “gabbing away”,’ she said coldly. ‘As for what you think you overheard——’

  ‘I’m waiting for your answer,’ he said, his voice sharp as it interrupted hers.

  Hannah stared at him. ‘My answer to what?’

  ‘Can you manage to get that report done, or will it interfere with your plans for tonight?’

  ‘My plans for tonight are——’

  ‘Spare me the details, please. Can you finish the report, or can’t you?’

  The bastard! Hannah’s breasts rose and fell with the swiftness of her breathing. Who did he think he was, passing judgement on her private life? Or was it the fact that she had a private life that so enraged him? How dared he speak to her this way?

  She stared into his cold eyes, then squared her shoulders.

  ‘It will be on your desk before I leave, sir.’

  And so would her letter of resignation by the week’s end. There was no sense in kidding herself. She couldn’t work for such an impossibly arrogant s.o.b. This was exactly how he’d behaved that night he’d dragged her off to the reception at the Mark Hopkins, as if he were in charge of her every breathing moment.

  ‘In that case, you’d better phone your date and tell him you’re cancelling your plans for the evening.’

  She smiled through her teeth. ‘That’s unnecessary. He won’t mind waiting an hour.’

  Grant’s mouth narrowed. ‘Two hours, perhaps.’ He turned and strode towards his office. ‘Or even longer. That report won’t be finished until I’ve read it and approved it.’

  She stared after him. ‘You said you were leaving.’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘But——’

  He swung around and faced her. ‘Just get it done, please,’ he said coldly. ‘The sooner you do, the sooner we can get out of here.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said. Her voice was every bit as cold as his, which was a miracle because she didn’t feel cold at all. She felt hot with rage; what she wanted to do was snatch the damned report from her desk and hurl it at his head. ‘Mr MacLean?’

  He spun to face her. ‘What is it now?’ he demanded, and she smiled; at least she hoped that was what she was doing. It was hard to be sure, because her lips felt as if they were sticking to her teeth.

  ‘You were right.’

  ‘Right? About what?’

  ‘About getting the phrase wrong,’ she said. ‘I had a hot date tonight, not a heavy one.’ She spoke pleasantly, even though she was so angry that her heart was galloping. ‘People stopped saying “heavy date” years ago.’ She paused, just long enough for maximum impact. ‘Before I was born, I think.’

  She had the satisfaction of seeing his face colour before she turned her back to him, walked to her desk, and sat down before her computer. It took all her determination not to look around again. Instead, she began typing, very quickly and, she knew, very erratically.

  But it worked. After a few seconds, she heard him mutter something under his breath, and then his door slammed shut. Hannah dropped her hands to her lap.

  All right. It was time to do what had to be done. She would finish out this week, then hand in her notice.

  One way or another, Grant MacLean was an impossible man to work for.

  It took exactly an hour and ten m
inutes to finish the report. When she was done, she ran it off on the printer, read it thoroughly, then placed it neatly in a folder and rose from her desk.

  She knocked at her boss’s door, then opened it. His chair was turned so that he faced the window and the darkening sky. ‘The report’s ready,’ she said stiffly as she made her way towards his desk. ‘You said you wanted to—’

  He swung towards her and she fell silent. He was on the telephone, his expression intent.

  ‘Marilyn,’ he said, ‘for goodness’ sake, what do I know about——? Just put it on my desk, Hannah. No, Marilyn. No, I’m not ignoring you. I——’

  Hannah strode across the carpet and out of the door. Another woman, she thought coldly. Marilyn this time, not Magda. She stabbed a hand at her computer and the screen turned black. Perhaps he had a thing for women whose names started with the letter M, she thought as she yanked her jacket from the corner coatrack and slipped it on, although why any woman in her right mind would——

  ‘Hannah!’

  She spun around. ‘The report is on your desk,’ she said tightly. ‘I just put it there. You saw me do it.’

  ‘I have the report,’ he said, holding out his hand and showing her the folder. ‘What I need to know is what time you’re meeting your date?’

  ‘My date?’ She stared at him. ‘My… ?’ And then she remembered. ‘Oh.’ Her gaze flew to the clock on the wall behind him. It was almost half-past six. ‘Uh—at seven.’

  ‘I suppose it would destroy your plans completely if you phoned him and said you’d meet him at eight.’

  Hannah’s shoulders slumped. Of course. He’d said the report wouldn’t be finished until he’d read and approved it.

  ‘Well?’

  She looked up. He was watching her coldly. For a moment she almost blurted out what he could do with this job, but then she reminded herself that she only had to get to the end of the week, put in a letter of resignation, and walk off with a good reference.

  ‘No, sir,’ she said evenly, ‘it wouldn’t.’

  ‘Do it, then.’

  She stared at him, waiting for him to give her some privacy, but he just stood there, glaring at her. Finally, she snatched up the phone and dialled her own number.