by Penny Jordan
After he had gone, she found her attention wandering from the work in front of her. Was it her imagination, or had Ryan actually been implying something more than the fact that he had selected her to handle the liquidation?
She got up and walked over to stare out of the window. She knew his reputation, of course, but she had made her position plain enough and basically she suspected that she wasn’t really his type. He could be good fun when he set his mind to it, but it was very obvious that he was the one who liked to hold centre-stage, who liked and needed to control those around him, and that kind of man, even if he had been available, even if she had been attracted to him, was not for her.
No… she could never become involved with a man like Ryan, not without losing her respect for him… and for herself.
Ryan had already made one or two taunting comments about her relationship with Mark, implying that she was the more dominant partner, but that simply wasn’t true. She and Mark respected as well as loved one another.
She had been so lucky to meet Mark. The depth of her love for him was something that sometimes surprised even her. He was quite literally the rock on which she had built the foundations of her life, and it hurt her unbearably when Ryan tried to put him down.
But, much as she longed to jump to his defence, she resisted doing so, knowing how Ryan would interpret such an action. In his view men did not need their woman to champion or protect them; they did that for themselves.
He was archaic really, a dinosaur, Deborah reflected, but these Chinese whispers infiltrating the office that he had promoted her as a means of getting her into his bed didn’t really have any truth to them, surely?
She knew, of course, that he wanted to bed her, but to promote her in order to put pressure on her to do so? No, he wouldn’t do anything like that. He must know that she would never give in to that kind of sexual blackmail.
It was just as well they had the Easter weekend coming up, Deborah reflected grimly as she focused her attention back on her work. The liquidation was proving rather more drawn-out than any of them had initially imagined, and she suspected that she was going to have to spend at least part of the weekend catching up with her other paperwork.
It worried her that Mark was taking the becalming of his own career so badly. She knew how he must feel, of course, but it was, after all, a logical effect of the recession and one which he surely must have been anticipating.
‘Have you any idea what it feels like sitting there at an empty desk three days out of five?’ he had demanded angrily two evenings ago. ‘No, of course you haven’t,’ he had gone on, answering his own question, ‘because you made the right choice, the clever, wise career decision… Ryan’s right—you are better than me, Deborah…’
‘I went into liquidation because it was the only avenue open to me,’ Deborah reminded him. ‘You were the one who made the original decision to move here, Mark. I was quite happy in London. I only switched to liquidation and receivership because that was the only job open to me up here—you know that.’
They had, after all, discussed it thoroughly enough before she’d accepted the job, but then Mark had been the one with the promising career and the promotions ahead of him and, as he had explained to her, she might find that she would simply be treading water if she came north to join him, because of the rather old-fashioned attitude the firm had to female professionals.
‘Then I shall have to change that attitude, shan’t I?’ she had said robustly.
Then they had both laughed; then they had ended up in bed, making love, the serious matter of their careers pushed impatiently to one side in the heat of their urgent need for one another.
‘Be careful,’ an older, harder woman colleague had warned her. ‘Otherwise you’re going to fall into the trap of allowing him to believe that his career, his needs have priority over yours.’
‘It isn’t like that,’ Deborah had protested. ‘I want to go, and it is a good career move for me.’
‘This time, maybe,’ the other woman had responded drily.
‘Mark isn’t the kind of man who would ever expect me to put my career on hold; he knows how important it is to me,’ Deborah had told her.
‘Yeah… that’s what they all say at first.’ She was in her late forties with a bad divorce behind her, and sometimes the scars had still showed despite the good camouflage job she had done on them. ‘In my day they used to try to get you into bed with them by telling you that of course they’d still respect you in the morning. That was when we were stupid and brainwashed enough to believe that we needed respect from them. Now they tell you that of course they respect your independence, of course they believe in equality; the only difference is that, while my generation knew fine well they were lying, yours believes them.’
Deborah had laughed, as much at the thought of Mark ever needing to deceive her as at the irony in the other woman’s voice.
‘It might be a hell of a long way from the kitchen to the boardroom and it’s certainly a hell of a hard slog, but what real difference does that journey make when emotionally too many of us are still attached by a piece of elastic to some man who we claim loves us? It hurts like hell when they pull on that elastic, which all of them do… Is that love?’
The bitterness of her divorce had made her overly cynical, Deborah had told herself.
* * *
Irritably Mark opened his office door. He was tired of spending half his day sitting at his desk shuffling paper around pretending to be busy.
As he stepped out into the corridor he saw that the blonde temporary clerk was walking towards him, her arms full of files.
‘Which way?’ he asked her with a grin, his irritation lifting as he watched the deliberately provocative sway of her hips.
Perhaps Deborah was right when she claimed that the girl made deliberate use of her sexuality, but there was something about the sensual sway of those curving hips and the pout of the lipsticked mouth that made a man feel good about his sexuality, Mark acknowledged as he went to open the fire-doors for her.
The fact that both of them knew that she could quite easily have pushed them open herself didn’t matter. What mattered was the way she looked at Mark as she thanked him, pausing deliberately in the doorway where there was the least room for both of them and where his arm still curved behind her, holding open the door.
‘Thanks… I hadn’t realised how heavy these things are.’
As she jiggled them in her arms, the fabric of her blouse pulled taut against her breasts, outlining her nipples. They looked pert and hard, as though…
Hurriedly, Mark withdrew his gaze from her body, offering, ‘Let me give you a hand with them.’
‘I hope it’s the files you mean,’ she responded coquettishly, and then giggled as she moved closer to him so that he could take some of the files from her.
She was being quite deliberately and openly provocative, Mark recognised, flirting with him quite outrageously, in fact…
‘Goodness, aren’t you strong?’ she murmured as he relieved her of all the files. ‘I suppose you spend a lot of time at the gym; you can always tell a man who takes care of his body. Not that I like anyone who’s too muscular…’ She pulled a pouting face while she watched him archly, and Mark, who knew quite well that when it came to male physique he was simply average, albeit with the advantages of being six feet in height and having the shoulders that came from playing rugby as a youth, turned his head to hide his grin from her.
She was trying very hard, he conceded, and it surprised him how much he was actually enjoying what she was doing.
‘Have you made any plans for the Easter holiday weekend?’ she asked him.
Mark shook his head.
‘No, neither have I… What I’d really like is to spend the whole weekend away somewhere romantic with a gorgeous sexy man.’
She looked mock-coyly up at Mark from beneath her mascaraed lashes.
‘Just the two of us… on our own,’ she emphasised purr
ingly.
They had reached the corridor’s second set of security doors and as Mark paused to open them for her, even though he was now the one carrying most of the files, she leaned closer to him, ostensibly trying to squeeze through the small gap in the half-opened door, but in reality pressing her body so close to Mark’s that he could feel the soft, warm weight of her breasts against his arm.
Deborah had neat, firm and very pretty breasts which at work she kept discreetly concealed beneath heavy silk shirts; the temporary clerk’s were much fuller, softer, momentarily conjuring up in Mark’s memory echoes of the lustful yearnings of his young teenage self.
‘Hey… what’s going on here…?’ Abruptly Mark turned his head as he realised that a couple of the other accountants were walking towards them down the corridor. Younger than Mark and newly qualified, they were working in the general office, and as the clerk drew away from him, all pouting arch confusion as she thanked him for his help and made a great play of smoothing down her blouse before taking the files from him, Mark could see the look in the men’s eyes change from one of mockery to that particularly male kind of respect which was grudgingly given to another man seen to be more sexually successful.
As the clerk disappeared they lingered, turning their heads to watch her undulating progress towards her office.
‘Nice work,’ one of them commented enviously, adding with a grin, ‘Come on, tell us the secret. What is it… your aftershave… ?’
Mark grinned and shook his head. ‘Sorry, boys,’ he told them mock-despairingly. ‘But it isn’t something you can buy in a bottle… you’ve either got it or you haven’t…’
It felt good knowing that they were slightly envious of him, that they couldn’t just dismiss him as a professional no-hoper who had to stand aside and watch his lover fast-track past him, even if the way he was behaving, the comments he was making were somewhat out of character for him.
Since he had grown up, become mature, he had put aside his old macho teenage need to flex his sexual muscles and show off in front of his peers, and he knew exactly what Deborah would think of such behaviour.
Deborah didn’t flirt; she simply wasn’t that sort of woman. She was too honest and straightforward, and abhorred any kind of deceit or pretence within a relationship. The last thing she would ever do would be to indulge him with a bit of harmless massaging of his ego, either in private or in public.
‘Come on, don’t hold out on us… Tell us your secret…’
‘Yeah… you’re a dark horse all right… There we were thinking that——’
‘What’s going on here? Haven’t any of you got any work to do?’
Mark tensed as he recognised Ryan’s voice coming from behind him.
‘What the hell are you two doing?’ he demanded of the two juniors. ‘And where’s that file I asked you for?’
‘Sorry… just going to get it…’ one of them apologised, shuffling his feet.
Without waiting for them to be out of earshot, Ryan turned to Mark.
‘Look, I know you aren’t exactly carrying a full workload at the moment, and I appreciate that time must be hanging heavily on your hands, but, if you’ve got time to waste, try wasting it with someone from your own department and not mine, would you? We do have work to do.’
He turned on his heel, striding down the corridor before Mark could make any retort, his comments completely wiping out the good feeling that Mark’s brief flirtation with the clerk had given him, leaving him with the bitter taste of anger and resentment souring his mouth.
‘Made any plans for the long weekend?’ Peter asked him as he walked slowly back into his office and to the empty desk which was beginning to feel like a prison to him. ‘The wife and I thought we might take the camper down to the coast.’
‘Mmm… what…? No, we’re not doing anything,’ Mark replied absently, and then frowned.
How long was it since he and Deborah had had time away together, just the two of them? Last year they had holidayed with friends and this year they hadn’t as yet made plans for their main holiday. Deborah had been too busy to talk about it… Just as she was too busy to talk about anything that didn’t concern her work and her promotion.
‘I’m going to take an early lunch-hour,’ he told Peter, suddenly coming to a decision.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘WHAT do you mean, you’ve booked a holiday? Mark, how could you? You know I’m up to my eyes with this liquidation. I can’t go… I’d planned to spend the break getting up to date with my other work…’
Deborah stopped her angry pacing of their living-room and turned round to face Mark, pushing her fingers into her sleek hair in an irritated gesture of impatience. ‘Why didn’t you tell me first… ?’
‘I wanted it to be a surprise,’ Mark told her stiffly.
‘A surprise!’ Deborah made a small explosive sound of disbelief. ‘You know how important this liquidation is to me,’ she protested. ‘I can’t just drop everything and go off with you. You should have consulted me first, before you booked this holiday—surely you can see that?’
She stopped, frowning as she saw the look Mark was giving her.
‘I should have consulted you?’ he repeated grimly. ‘Doesn’t that go both ways, Deb—does this equality thing you women are so keen on only work in your own favour? Now that you are the major wage-earner, you get to make all the major decisions—is that it… ?’
Deborah couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘You’re the one who went ahead and booked the holiday,’ she reminded him.
‘And you’re the one who decided that you were going to work—without consulting me. Just tell me something, Deborah. What am I supposed to do while you’re working?’
Deborah stared at him, baffled.
‘It’s a bank holiday weekend,’ Mark reminded her forcefully. ‘A time for people to spend together, relaxing, enjoying themselves. Oh, but I forgot,’ he added sarcastically. ‘You’re already enjoying yourself—with your work. Well, forgive me if I can’t pretend to be getting the same satisfaction out of mine. It may have escaped your notice, since you’re obviously far too busy these days to notice such things, but it isn’t the greatest mental stimulation in the world sitting in front of an empty desk five days a week.’
‘Oh, Mark, for goodness’ sake stop exaggerating. Your desk isn’t empty.’
‘Damn near—but that isn’t the point. Nothing else matters to you apart from your work, does it, Deborah? Everything… everyone has to fit in around your precious career. How the hell do you think I feel, sitting here night after night while you’re working late, being told to turn down the television so you can work, being treated as though I’m some kind of sub-standard human being because I don’t measure up to you professionally?’
‘That’s not fair,’ Deborah protested. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing any of this,’ she added wearily. ‘I thought you understood… I thought we had an agreement. I can’t believe this is really you I’m listening to, Mark… what is it exactly that you’re trying to say? That you expect me to back-pedal on my career because yours isn’t going well?’
Mark tensed as he caught the angry contempt in her voice.
‘No, of course not,’ he denied. ‘It’s just… Look, I know how much this promotion means to you, but you’ve got to admit that it hasn’t exactly come at a good time for me…’
‘For you?’ Deborah’s eyes rounded. ‘But this is my career we’re talking about… what is it you want from me, Mark? Am I supposed to pretend that I don’t want it… that I’m not thrilled about it…?’
‘No, of course not…’ Irritation and guilt mingled inside him. ‘It’s just that you might try to be a little less self-obsessed about it, to remember that there are other things in life. Is Ryan planning to work this weekend as well?’
His question caught her off guard, her face flushing even though she assured herself she had nothing to feel guilty about.
‘I don’t know… He may do… He ha
sn’t said so… Just that he wants to make sure that I’m really on top of everything.
‘The bank is a major client,’ she pointed out defensively when she saw the way he was looking at her. ‘Mark, you know how important this promotion is to me… Ryan’s already beginning to make noises about having to defend his choice of me for the case to the other partners… I don’t want to let him down.’
‘No? Why not? You sure as hell don’t seem to mind letting me down.’
Deborah froze. ‘That’s unfair,’ she told him angrily. ‘And I could make the same accusation of you. After all, you’ve hardly been supportive recently, have you? I’m beginning to wonder if Ryan’s right when he says that you’re jealous of me——’
She stopped abruptly, cursing herself under her breath as she realised she had said too much.
‘Mark,’ she protested as she saw his face.
‘Forget it,’ he told her bitingly as he turned around. ‘Forget the whole damned thing. You go and get on with your precious work, Deborah… I’ll spend my weekend painting the flat. Who knows—I might get quite a kick out of it… it will certainly be a damn sight better than spending the weekend in a foursome with bloody Ryan and your fucking work. The four of us just wouldn’t get in that double bed together…’
He was behaving childishly and he must know it, Deborah told herself. Her own anger was a tight, hard ball of resentment clogging up her throat, her eyes already stinging threateningly with over-emotional tears.
She hated quarrels and arguments—she always had; and she and Mark never normally quarrelled—or at least they never used to.
Mark’s bitterness and anger had caught her completely off guard, the accusations which had spilled from him as they’d quarrelled so unlike him that she could hardly believe he had actually voiced them.
Well, one thing was certain now. There was no way she could give her work the concentration it needed with this hanging over her. Perhaps it would do them good to get away for a few days; to sit down and talk things over rationally. She knew how upset Mark was about his job but she had never dreamed that he might actually resent her success.
