He stepped back and shoved his hands into his pockets, and she could see that he was debating whether he should continue on his course of persuasion. She knew him well enough to realise that her obstinacy would have infuriated him, but she had no intention of bowing and scraping and thanking him for interfering in her life. He must really, she thought, have absolutely no respect for my intelligence, if he thinks that he has to jump in and warn me off Stephen Hancock.
No wonder their relationship had come to nothing. Even without the shadow of his wife dictating its outcome, she wouldn’t have been of marriageable quality for him anyway. Fine to fool around with, but it was obvious that he liked them brainy and it was equally obvious that he considered her to be about as brainy as a baked potato.
‘And stay out of my life,’ she said, her fingers on the door handle.
‘Or else what?’ he asked tightly. ‘What will you do? Go on, tell me, I’m dying to know.’
She didn’t answer that. Instead, she walked out of the room, her back straight and her head held high, half expecting him to follow her out and pick up the pieces of his argument.
It was a relief when she made it to the front door and she practically ran to the car, fumbling with the lock and tossing her bag of stuff on to the back seat, then she spun round in the courtyard, reversing the little car as if the devil was on her tail, and accelerated down the long tree-lined drive, passing the cottage and scowling at it.
Gayle King, indeed. Oh, Gayle King said this, and Gayle King said that. Had Gayle King also clicked her tongue and shaken her head sadly and told him that he ought to warn her off Stephen Hancock? Claire thought sourly. No. James would never listen and obey anything anyone said unless he happened to agree personally with their opinion. No, he had taken it upon himself to preach to her about the folly of becoming involved with Stephen because he ranked her as a total idiot when it came to handling members of the opposite sex.
Oh, why had she ever thrown herself at him? she wondered miserably. How smug and self-satisfied he must have felt, warning her off. He still wanted her, and in the absence of her compliance with this, what better than to make sure that the competition was eliminated?
He wouldn’t have fabricated what he had told her about Stephen, she reflected, as she later lay in bed, staring upwards at the ceiling, but had he embellished what was basically hearsay? It certainly would have suited his purpose, and who knew what pleasure he derived from watching her face when he told her about Stephen. She had tried to school her features into an impassive, unreadable mask, but she was new at such games and no doubt he saw right through them to the confused, dismayed girl underneath.
Whether she believed what he had said or not, though, it was food for thought, and when Stephen did call on Saturday to invite her up to London to see a play she made some polite excuse and declined the invitation.
‘You sound different,’ he said suspiciously down the phone. ‘What’s the matter, babe? I was hoping you’d be my guide around this lovely city of yours.’
‘I’d be a hopeless guide,’ Claire said. ‘I hardly know London at all. I can recommend a few good agents, though.’
‘None as enchanting as you,’ he murmured huskily, and she frowned at the charcoals lying on her desk.
‘Look, I’m not interested in flirting, Stephen,’ she said brusquely. ‘I thought I had made that absolutely clear when we met at my sister’s party.’
‘I’m not flirting,’ he countered in such a sober, reasonable voice that she wondered whether her imagination had been playing tricks on her. ‘It’s just that I’m thousands of miles away from my home, away from friends. I’m sorry if I came on too strong, but it was just nice to meet someone I feel I can relate to.’
She relaxed slightly. ‘Fine,’ she said, feeling much better now she had informed him where he stood, which was nowhere, ‘but I still can’t make it tonight. I’ve got other plans.’
‘What about tomorrow?’ he asked swiftly, and she found herself being talked into dinner at one of the more expensive London restaurants.
Am I being stupid? she asked herself afterwards. She had not given him the slightest reason to think that she was willing to sleep with him, and if he enjoyed her company then what was the harm in the occasional meal out? It wasn’t as though he was going to be in London indefinitely. And it was more therapeutic than staying indoors or going out with her girlfriends, who were only interested in going to parties. Karen was different, but, even so, she couldn’t rely on her for a social life.
And anyway, she thought defiantly, Stephen could be quite amusing sometimes. Then she had to laugh at the way she was justifying her actions to herself. I’m a big girl now, she told herself, despite what James Forrester cares to think, and I can take care of myself as good as the next person.
Sitting in the ultra-expensive, ultra-sophisticated London restaurant the following evening, she almost wished that James was around so that he could see just how capably she was handling herself.
She had worn a very simple but very flattering olivegreen dress which looked like linen but wasn’t, a pair of flat gold sandals and some muted gold jewellery. Nothing ostentatious, nothing that would give a man the wrong idea, and she had made sure that the conversation remained on a purely impersonal level, which, as it turned out, brought out the most amusing side of Stephen. He had travelled quite a bit and some of his stories, when he didn’t play a starring role, were very funny.
He was dressed expensively but not flamboyantly and she tried to match him with the opportunist painted by James, the man who accepted gifts from women, presumably in return for services rendered. Had that been an imaginative touch on James’s part? she asked herself. Surely someone like that would be more—well, more vulgar? Gold medallions perhaps; a bracelet, a few rings.
She should, she knew, have asked him, in a roundabout manner, about what Gayle had said about him, but in the end she didn’t. It was no business what he did with himself in New York. He could surround himself with a harem of women for all she cared, just so long as he obeyed her hands-off message to him. Anyway, she resented her private life being discussed by James Forrester and his lady-friend. To have quizzed Stephen on what he did or didn’t do behind closed doors would have been tantamount to being grateful for James’s interference.
They enjoyed dinner in an atmosphere of relative amicability. No innuendoes from Stephen, no lingering looks, nothing to suggest that he was an unpleasant, cleverly camouflaged Don Juan angling for a romp in the hay.
By the time they were strolling through Leicester Square in search of a taxi to take her to the station she felt completely at ease, and all the more so when he informed her, ruefully, that his time in England was up.
‘Already?’ Claire asked, surprised. ‘I thought you were here for two months.’ She couldn’t say that there wasn’t a touch of relief in her response to this bit of news, but he didn’t seem to notice it. He was shaking his head, glancing at her sideways.
‘So,’ he said with overdone gloom, ‘did I. But the powers that be have decided otherwise. Apparently there’s some urgent business that I’ve specifically been asked to do on behalf of a client, so I’m being flown back over.’
‘Still,’ Claire said, ‘you’ll be glad to get back to your friends.’
‘Not so glad to leave others behind,’ he replied ambiguously, and she gave him a vague, uncomprehending smile.
The taxi was pulling up, something of a miracle at this hour in Central London, and she held out her hand politely.
‘Well, thank you for the meals. It’s been fun. Maybe the next time you’re in London you can look me up and we can get together for a laugh.’
‘Not so fast,’ he murmured smoothly, folding his hand over hers and smiling. ‘I don’t leave for another week and a half. Time enough for one or two more meals, wouldn’t you say?’
Claire laughed and was saved from saying anything by the taxi driver who had shoved open the passenger door and was leaning
across to bellow something about having better things to do than hang about for hours while they gassed.
‘You either hop in, luv, or else I’m off.’
‘I’m in!’ Claire said, turning away as Stephen leaned forward to kiss her. She politely proffered her cheek, but his head dipped down and his lips touched hers. There was nothing searching or urgent in the kiss, but still the gesture took her so much by surprise that she could only stare at him for a few seconds, red-faced and disturbed. She didn’t know whether she should ignore that or else rebuff him, but in any event she was spared from doing either by the taxi driver, who was accelerating meaningfully.
By the following morning she had put the uncomfortable episode to the back of her mind.
She was the last to arrive at work for once. She had overslept and had had to condense her usual forty-minute routine of shower, clothes and breakfast into a rushed fifteen minutes. The breakfast had had to be eliminated, and as a result she arrived at the office ravenously hungry.
She stopped off at the office kitchen, a must as far as Tony was concerned because coffee machines, he assured them all, were bad for the health, and poured herself a strong cup of black percolated coffee, complete with two heaping teaspoons of sugar. It wasn’t as good as a bowl of cereal, but it would have to do, and she hurried to her desk, only to be halted in mid-stride by Tony, who had stuck his head out of his office and was gesticulating for her.
Why is this always such a madhouse? Claire thought, dumping her bag on the desk and grimacing at Karen who was stopped as she leaned across to whisper something by Tony snapping shut the door behind him and striding towards her.
‘All right, all right! I’m coming!’
He walked back towards his office and Claire followed in his wake, clutching her cup of coffee. Couldn’t he have at least allowed her to enjoy her first cup of coffee for the morning? As she walked into his office, she opened her mouth to tell him about as much and then shut it just as quickly, freezing to the spot just inside the doorway and staring at James with mounting horror.
He was dressed for work in an immaculately cut grey suit which made Tony’s trendier oatmeal-coloured linen one appear garish in comparison. His legs were crossed and the green eyes were fixed on her with irony.
‘Well,’ Tony hustled her in from behind the desk, ‘close the door, will you? What time do you call this? I told Mr Forrester that you were always the first in.’ He turned to James with a winning smile, ‘After myself, at least.’
Claire had to tear her eyes away from James. It was a shock seeing him here, lean and dark and vital and in apparently no rush to leave. What was he doing? It wasn’t a social visit, so it must be to do with business, which would go a long way to explaining Tony’s sycophantic behaviour, but why then had she been summoned?
‘Sit down, sit down,’ Tony was saying, gesturing to the chair next to James’s, and Claire frowned at it.
‘Must I?’
Tony ignored that, but out of the corner of her eye Claire could see James’s lazy acknowledgement at the remark.
‘Hello, Claire,’ he said in a deep, cool voice, reaching out, and Claire looked at his extended hand, appalled.
‘Hi,’ she mumbled, making the polite gesture as brief as possible, but still feeling the thrill of electricity at the physical contact. She sat down, cross to find that her legs were shaky, and kept her eyes pointedly averted from James. She could feel him staring at her from under those thick lashes, though, one hand casually resting on his thigh, the other on the armrest of the swivel-chair. He made everything in the office seem a little overdone and ever so slightly tacky. The furnishings, she knew, had been purchased on the cheap, when Tony had first been doing up the office, because he hadn’t been able to afford anything much better. Since then, he had gradually been replacing things bit by bit, trading in his small, rigid chair for something a bit better and more comfortable, then upgrading the desks in the main office one by one. With time, she had become too accustomed to her surroundings to pay much attention to them, but now she realised for the first time how seriously some of it was in need of redecoration.
‘How are you?’ James asked, and she was forced to face him, if only out of politeness.
‘Fine,’ she muttered briefly.
‘Done anything interesting since I last saw you?’ he asked in a deeply courteous voice. ‘I believe when we last met we were surprised to find that a certain acquaintance was known to us both?’
Tony was smiling approvingly at this little interchange. He liked this rapport between them. Somehow he thought that it cast a pleasant reflection on him.
‘Did we?’ Claire asked, wide-eyed. ‘I can’t recall.’ She turned her attention back to Tony, who was choosing to ignore her. He was looking at James, offering him another top-up of coffee, which she was glad to hear declined because the last thing she intended doing was scurrying out to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee for James Forrester.
‘I guess we should just get down to business straight away,’ Tony said in a voice that made her want to grind her teeth with helpless frustration. ‘I understand that time is money for you.’ He laughed at that and then directed a frown at her. ‘We could have started half an hour ago if you had shown up on time.’
‘I did show up on time,’ Claire said mildly. ‘My working hours are…’
‘Yes, yes, yes, well, you’re here now and we can get on with it.’
‘You could have started without me, I’m sure,’ she pointed out icily, more for James’s benefit than for Tony’s. In other words, she intended to make clear to him, I don’t want to be here, and he read her intonation without batting an eyelid.
‘On the contrary,’ he drawled smoothly from next to her, ‘you’re an integral part of my proposition.’
‘I see,’ she muttered, feverishly trying to work out what was going on. He was playing some kind of game. Not content to have thoroughly ruined her life, not content to have spied on Stephen with whom she might well have decided to have an affair for all he knew, he was now further turning the screw by embroiling her in some stupid scheme which would probably involve her being humiliated even more. Couldn’t he just leave her alone? Was this his way of getting his own back for her having the temerity to walk out on him? By coming here, he had put her in a position of impotence. What could she do? Risk her career by standing up and refusing to deal with him? Throw a fit and accuse him of taking advantage of his power by leading poor Tony up the garden path? Hardly. No, all she could do was sit here and grit her teeth, which he would find very amusing.
‘And what is your proposition?’ she asked with no attempt at curiosity, and was treated to a black frown from Tony.
‘Over to you,’ he said, nodding briefly to Tony, who beamed like a well-fed cat.
‘A marvellous deal,’ he said on cue. ‘Mr Forrester—’
‘James, please, if we’re to be doing business together.’
‘James,’ he said obligingly, as if he had been granted a miracle. ‘James has offered us a huge advertising contract for one of his bigger subsidiaries. Billboards, magazines, newspapers, the lot.’
‘Really?’ Claire said. ‘How interesting.’ How unbelievable, her voice implied.
‘I don’t think you realise what an opportunity this is,’ Tony said warningly. ‘Perhaps I can have a word with you outside, Claire?’
‘Perhaps,’ James interrupted, ‘I could have the word with her instead? Why don’t you get us some coffees?’
Claire grinned reluctantly to herself. Tony would hate that. Getting coffees? It was tantamount to asking him if he wouldn’t mind parading down the High Street in the nude, but of course he was as trapped as she was, incapable of doing anything but obeying because James Forrester was not only a potential client, but far and away the most important one his little company had ever had. Normally he dealt with small firms, quite a few of them family-owned. This, he knew, could put him in the big time, and he wasn’t about to jeopardise that by
arguing the toss over fetching a few coffees. He stood up and looked at Claire, who shook her head, and then left the office dutifully.
‘Your boss isn’t very impressed with you,’ James said, as soon as the door had shut behind him, and her teeth met angrily.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I thought it was obvious. Bringing some big business in for Tony.’
‘Why won’t you leave me alone?’
‘The contract could be worth a lot of money,’ he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘And look at me when I’m talking to you.’
‘Or else what?’ she asked, looking at him.
‘That better. I hate talking to a shoulder. Have you seen Stephen—that’s his name, isn’t it?—since we last spoke?’
‘Yes, not that it’s any of your business.’ Now that she was facing him, she found that she couldn’t keep her eyes away. It was like a starving man who had been shown a plateful of food, piping hot, ready to be eaten. She took in everything, the easy incline of his body in the chair, the hard set of his features, the sensuous curve of his mouth, the sardonic stare of those amazing eyes.
‘And did you mention the sort of reputation he has in New York?’
‘I did not! Anyway, it doesn’t matter; he leaves London in a few days’ time.’
‘Does he?’ He lowered his eyes, then looked at her. ‘And how do you feel about that? A wasted opportunity?’
‘Don’t be so insulting. I can’t believe you bamboozled your way into this office, leading poor Tony up the garden path with some fairy-story about contracts, just to corner me.’
He gave her a look that implied that she was mad and she glared at him.
‘And don’t give me that innocent look,’ she said.
‘All sparks, aren’t you?’ was his only comment. ‘A far cry from that obliging girl who—’
‘That was a long time ago!’ Claire cut in, going scarlet. ‘You’re not being fair on Tony. He really believes you. He’s on Cloud Nine. How do you think he’s going to feel when you tell him that we won’t be doing the advertising? No billboards, no magazines, no newspapers, nothing. I know you have your own advertising contacts.’
Shadows of Yesterday Page 12
