“So am I.” He didn’t look at her, and his tone was short.
“Look,” she began, feeling goaded by his lack of understanding, “are you going to want to beat me for it? I did my best.”
“Let’s just forget it, all right?” he snapped, his blue eyes and rigid jawline showing frustration. He half turned away from her and began to scan the papers held in his hand as he continued, “Your best just didn’t happen to be what I needed.”
Diana began to whistle soundlessly through her teeth. “Why do I feel like excess baggage?” she remarked to the room in general.
“What do you want me to do—pat you on the back for something you failed to do?” Alex threw down the papers and swivelled back to face her, his face ominous.
“Hey, I didn’t fail at anything,” she responded swiftly, stabbing the air in front of her with one hand. “There was just too much material for one evening.”
“If you can’t handle the work load…” he began nastily. Enough was enough, Diana decided abruptly. If she didn’t get out right away, she would say something she would regret.
“Get out of the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat, is that it?” she asked stiffly. Without another word she pivoted on her heel and headed for the door. She heard a groan behind her.
“Diana!” Alex called. She kept on going, partly for fear of what she might say to him if she stayed, partly from fear of what he might say to her. Every step got faster and faster and her temper got closer and closer to the edge of control. By the time she had reached the door, she was walking very fast, and she wrenched it open, stormed through and slammed the door shut behind her. Eyes glowing with fury, she barely took in the fact that Carrie was standing behind her desk in the act of taking off a sweater. She swept by, ignoring Carrie’s greeting, and threw open the outer door. By this time Alex had the first door open and he called again, “Diana! Come back a moment—damn it, girl, I said come back!”
Chapter Two
Diana was out into the corridor and going swiftly down the hall before he caught up with her. She felt something grab hold of her arm and suddenly she was jerked around to face a very big man.
She hissed at him, “Will you let go of my arm, please, before I say something to you that I shouldn’t!” He was silent, and she stared up into his face with a puzzled anger.
He seemed infuriatingly calm as his eyes went over her face. Diana was breathing rather heavily from her temper and her colour was higher than usual. Eyes emanating sparks glared back at him. She looked very beautiful.
He turned back to the office and started walking back, never letting go of her arm. Diana immediately began to pull back and resist.
He growled, “Not now, all right?” and kept going.
Back at the outer office, Carrie sat behind her desk with her mouth lightly open as they stomped back through to the inner room. Neither one paid any attention, though, and the door slammed one more time as Alex and Diana disappeared.
He let go of her arm when they reached the privacy of his office and moved to the front of the desk to lean against it, rubbing his eyes. “I’m a bad-tempered son of a bitch.” This brought Diana’s eyes to him quickly, and she looked at him more closely. She saw lines radiating from tired looking eyes, lines she hadn’t noticed before, and a faint stubble of beard. She suddenly thought to herself, Good lord, it doesn’t look as if he got any sleep last night!
She said abruptly and aloud, “How much sleep did you get last night? Any at all?”
He peered at her from over the hand covering his face and said flatly, “None.”
“What happened?” Diana responded immediately. He didn’t reply for a moment.
Then he said, “The workers at the Pittsburgh factory went on strike last night unexpectedly. They’d been threatening it for a few weeks, but Dobson, the factory foreman, had told me they were settling down. That contract for Steve Anderson was to have been shipped by the end of the week. Now I’m not sure we can even get enough steel poured by the end of this week, let alone put on freight cars and shipped to Anderson’s factories.”
Diana, in a swift, comprehending flash, took in all the unsaid implications. There was a great deal of money that the company could lose, besides the irrevocable blemish of a contract unfulfilled. She let out her breath in a long sigh as she stared at nothing. Alex’s voice brought her eyes to focus on him.
He asked quietly, “If I tell you I’m sorry for yelling at you like I did, and say what a rotten-tempered pig I am, will you forgive me for being so rude?”
She considered him with her head cocked to one side. Her eyes crinkled in a smile as she replied humorously, “Yes—only if you say you’re a rotten pig!”
One side of his mouth tugged upwards. “Consider it done.”
Diana had never worked so furiously in all her life as she worked that day. Alex was planning to take an early evening flight to Pittsburgh, which made the day even shorter for them. She had panicked when he had told her that he was to be gone for a few days, and that he would relay instructions to her from there. She had a horrible feeling of inadequacy, a feeling that any decision she made would end up being wrong, terribly wrong.
She said as much to Alex as they drove the company car to the airport. “I feel very unsure of myself,” she confessed to him, watching his hands on the steering wheel. They looked strong and capable as he handled the car patiently in the midst of traffic. “I know virtually nothing about what to do if a crisis comes up.”
Alex flicked her a glance, and she caught the flash of blue eyes. “All you need to do is to relay instructions that I give you. Nothing should come up in the next two days that’s out of the ordinary. If you have a problem deciding what needs to be done, ask either Owen Bradshaw, Carrie, or call my number in Pittsburgh. I don’t expect any major problems, or else I wouldn’t be going. Besides, Diana, I respect your judgment.”
Diana looked out the window and wished she felt as confident as Alex. “Thank you, Mr. Mason,” she said quietly. “I hope I can live up to that respect.”
Half laughing with exasperation, he asked her, “Everyone else in the office is on a first-name basis, Diana. I’ve even noticed you called Carrie by her first name today. Do you think you could bring yourself to call me by my first name? And please make it ‘Alex’ and not ‘Alexander’!”
Diana smiled and asked, “What happens to people who call you Alexander?”
He started to grin. “Well,” he drawled in a deliberating tone, “I used to beat up anyone at school who tried to tease me by calling me Alexander. I suppose now I’d turn anyone smaller than me over my knee, since it’s almost as bad as calling me ‘sir’.” Stopped at a redlight, he turned his head, and Diana could see the proud lines of his posture. “Are you thinking about trying out my full name to see if you can get away with it?”
She ignored the challenging tone in his voice and ejected a note of shock in her own. “Good heavens, no!” she exclaimed haughtily. “I wouldn’t dream of calling you anything but Alex, Mr. Mason.”
The light turned green, and Alex looked at her for a long moment with a smile before he pulled out.
At the airport, he pulled into a space at the kerb that was used for loading and unloading passengers, and turned the car engine off. He said quickly, “I’d appreciate it if you drove this car while I’m gone, and do you think you could pick me up when I get back?”
She replied, “Of course.”
“Good. And Diana?” She looked at him with a questioning lift of her eyebrows. Alex smiled crookedly and said, “You did well on the Nelson proposal. I looked at it when I went home to pack. Use it tomorrow at the business meeting.” At her startled protest, he raised a hand imperiously. “I’ve already told Owen that I wanted him there, so if you have any problems, rely on his help. All right?” He was looking at her hard.
Diana’s mouth was open to protest and she closed it with a resigned nod.
“That’s my girl,” he affirmed. He opened up t
he car door and got out, and she watched his long body unfold itself. Waiting until she had slid over to sit in the driver’s seat, he reached in the back to pick up his suitcase. Then he turned back to her and leaned in through the open window. “Wish me luck,” he said to her.
Staring into those blue, blue eyes so close to her, she laughed a rather unsteady laugh.
“Wish me luck, you mean,” she replied wryly. Alex smiled, a deep steady glow in his eyes.
“To both of us, then,” he offered, and as she nodded, he kissed her swiftly on the side of the mouth. “I’ll call you,” he promised, and strode swiftly away.
Diana sat for some time in the car, staring straight ahead at nothing. Alex’s mouth had felt warm and firm on her cheek and it had evoked a strange response within her. Just for a moment she had felt like laughing, like crying, like putting her arms around him and kissing him back…she jerked her thoughts away from that direction. Emotions, she told herself as calmly as possible, were transitory. Physical responses have nothing to do with the intellect. She put the car into drive and started away, still trying to convince herself that she believed what she was saying. On her way back to the office, she was struck with an icy cold wave of hard thought. “Snap out of it, my girl,” she spoke out loud to emphasise her own words. They echoed too loudly in the confines of the car. “You’re not being rational. You were in a vicious argument with him less than five hours ago. You didn’t know him the day before yesterday. What are you thinking?”
* * *
At the office, she spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for the business meeting the next morning. She tried to tell herself that there was nothing to be nervous about, but her stomach called herself a liar. It was all twisted in knots, growling and grumbling like a bad-tempered bear.
Stacking the papers once more to make sure she had everything, she looked at her watch. Six o’clock. She looked around the office to see if there was anything she could put in order before she left. The room, big and comfortable, was panelled in a muted dark brown with a light beige carpeting and two armchairs facing Alex’s desk. Her smaller desk was positioned on the other side of the room with a filing cabinet pushed up against the wall behind. A large picture window facing the door leading to the outer office let in a great deal of light and added a touch of spaciousness to the room. Diana privately thought the room was bare and empty without the man for whom it was designed. Closing the curtains, she turned and left, a little depressed. Carrie was gone again; late hours seemed to be the normal state of things for Diana around here.
She drove the company car carefully home and parked it beside the house where she lived. She noticed that Terry and Brenda, the people who rented the ground floor of the house, were gone, and she remembered them saying something about going to visit Brenda’s grandparents for a few days. It gave her a lonely feeling to know that she was the only one in the house, for it was big and made strange noises late at night. She ate a light supper and got ready for an early night, telling herself that she didn’t really expect Alex to call tonight anyway and that the creaking of the big house was what made her feel all alone. She slept badly.
* * *
The alarm clock and the phone went off simultaneously. At first, Diana was at a loss, for she couldn’t distinguish between the two noises. Then, with a bound, she was out of bed, switching off the alarm, and lurching to grab the phone before its sixth ring.
“Hello,” she mumbled tiredly into the receiver, rubbing her eyes and trying not to yawn. The voice on the other end was irritatingly fresh and crisp.
“Hello, sleepyhead,” Alex’s disembodied voice sounded startlingly close and clear.
“If you call at—what is it?—good lord, five o’clock in the morning, you can’t expect a whole lot else,” Diana, giving in, yawned as she spoke. “I didn’t really expect you to call until tonight to see how the business meeting went.”
“I didn’t really need to call until tonight. I just called to give you a boost of self-confidence. You’ll do fine today, Diana.”
She felt suddenly reassured at the tone in Alex’s voice as he spoke. It was just the right mixture of briskness, businesslike and calm, yet with a note of warmth that made the loneliness of the night a shadowy thing of the past, half forgotten in the events of the day. She sighed. “Oh, do you think so? I’ve been almost sick with worry.”
A thread of amusement was in his voice, this time as he answered, “I thought that would probably be the case. Dear Diana, so anxious to do well and so worried that you won’t. How you made it through life without my reassurance, I don’t know. Life must have been tough.”
Diana stirred a little as she took in his words. She knew Alex was merely teasing her in a light way to ease her own tension, but he inadvertently only managed to evoke memories that were better left buried. He had hit too close to home. She had always lived with a slight uneasiness that maybe, if she wasn’t careful, she would mess up, make a fool of herself, and this fear of failure had always goaded her into perfectionism. As she thought of this, she remembered yesterday’s argument with Alex, and her own response, her lack of control. She also remembered how she had reacted to his lighthearted kiss of farewell at the airport, and suddenly realised why she couldn’t seem to keep her cool around him. He saw too much. He saw beyond the illusion of her thick wall, and got under her skin. Distance must be put between them.
All this flashed through her head in a split second. She asked quickly, “How are things going there?”
There was a brief pause, then Alex said starkly, “Bad. I’ve been meeting some of the labour spokesmen and they seem to be riled about something rumoured to have been cut from the Philadelphia factory’s pay benefits. They think it’s going to happen to them next. I haven’t figured out just exactly what’s going on here, but what I’ve heard doesn’t make sense. There’s something wrong and that something smells like the proverbial kettle of fish. Why would a rumour like that get started when it has no basis? And if it has no basis, why are the men upset?”
Diana wrinkled her brow, “It just doesn’t make any sense! It’s illogical.”
He replied, and there was a hard note that she hadn’t yet heard in his voice, a note of steel. “What I’m afraid of is that it’s all too logical and I’m not going to like whatever it is. Something is wrong, and I intend to find out what it is, and when I do, there’s going to be hell to pay!”
Diana felt a little of Alex’s baffled anger at the apparently senseless actions of the men who, just recently, had had the best record in that state for behaviour and performance.
They talked a few minutes more before Alex told her he was due back for another conference in five minutes. “I’ll call again tonight to see how your meeting went,” he concluded. “Good luck, and be good today, Diana.”
“Alex?” she spoke seriously. “Try to rest when you can, all right? Working two nights through is no good for the body, and the brain is only flesh too. Rest up, okay?”
“Will do, ma’am. Owen told me you seemed to have a firm hand. Do you flog people too?” Alex chuckled as he spoke.
Diana ordered exasperatedly, “Just say goodbye and go, will you?”
“I’ll talk to you later. Diana?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks.”
* * *
She met Owen Bradshaw in Alex’s office before they went down to the conference room on the third floor. They were to meet the Nelson representatives at eleven o’clock to reach an agreement over the two conflicting contract proposals. She was glad Owen was to be there, for he was a tower of strength and an invaluable source of information. Diana watched him as he talked with her, her mind vaguely registering the incongruity of the man.
Owen Bradshaw was indeed an interesting and complex man, surprisingly so, for the one impression that people invariably received was one of simplicity. He had very neat hands and feet, and a plumpish body that bounced as he walked. His face was an unassuming and unspectacular sort tha
t wore a perpetual and sunny expression of vagueness as if the mind behind it had no intelligence whatsoever. Owen Bradshaw had the keenest and quickest mind in the business with the exception of Alex Mason. He had a particular talent for being able to rattle off ideas, facts and theories faster than his listeners could follow, and all the while wearing the same benign, idiotic expression.
He was talking to her now as they headed to the elevator. “The fellows from the Nelson manufacturers are a bigger nuisance than their orders are worth,” Owen sighed with exasperation. “They’re like scared rabbits who jump at the slightest noise of unrest in the economy. Chances are that since Alex isn’t here, they’re going to be hellish to handle.”
They stepped into the elevator, still talking. After nodding a greeting to Jerry, Diana asked Owen, “Are they likely to be upset with having to deal with a woman?”
He hesitated. “Probably,” he admitted after a moment. “It’s unavoidable, of course, because we wouldn’t dream of discriminating on the basis of sex, and we stand behind all our employees. You, Diana, are the one who should conduct this meeting, and if others can’t handle it, they can take their business somewhere else. Real professionals deal with charts and facts, not skirts or pants.”
“But what if I lose the contract?” she protested. They were heading towards the conference doors now. Owen paused with his hand on the knob.
“Most people are too smart to cut their own throats by refusing to deal with us. We’re the best suppliers of steel in this part of the nation. They may resent you, but they won’t do anything too foolish,” he whispered. Then he opened the door and politely allowed Diana to precede him.
He then turned to the group of men already at the table who had risen at their entrance. “Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to Mr. Mason’s executive assistant, Miss Diana Carrington.” Owen gave Diana a warm smile as he spoke. “We’re very proud of her.”
Diana allowed none of the warmth that she felt as she heard these words to show. She surveyed the five men who were being introduced to her. There was an unconsciously regal incline to the tilt of her head that hadn’t been there before, and her eyes calmly met those of each of the men, showing no hint of intimidation or trepidation. Her voice was brisk as she greeted them all, allowing and receiving no nonsense.
A Deeper Dimension: A Vintage Contemporary Romance Page 3
