by Dawn Tamayo
Victoria ran along the corridor to her office and slammed the door closed behind her as she crossed the room to her desk. She fumbled in her bag for her keys and took them out finding the one for her desk drawer. Whispering silent prayers she turned the key in the lock and opened the drawer. She let out a small cry as she stood looking into the empty drawer. The confidential file of CT Holdings’ new products soon to be launched in the USA and the UK was gone!
“Mark you bastard!” She cried as she sat down hard in her chair.
A knock came at Victoria’s office door and she lifted her head from her hands. It had only been a few minutes but it felt like hours since she had found her confidential file missing. She had been phoning Mark’s mobile phone continuously during that time, only now he wasn’t answering. Victoria had given up phoning him and sent him a message instead asking him what he wanted. But still she hadn’t heard anything back from Mark.
Her office door opened and Jake walked in.
“Vicky, are you alright?” Jake said seeing Victoria quickly move to sit upright in her chair.
“Yes fine. Everything is fine.” She said trying to look like nothing had happened.
“Are you sure?” He knew she wasn’t telling the truth – her face was flushed and she jumped when he walked into the room, besides he knew her well enough by now.
“Yes I’m fine really.” She said trying to sound more convincing.
“Look I’m sorry I gave you a hard time this morning. I should have trusted you but …”
“It’s okay Jake, really. I know it looked bad and I am sure that I would have felt the same way if the shoe was on the other foot. It’s fine.”
Jake smiled, he loved her strange little English sayings which she seemed to come out with at just the right time.
“Victoria, there’s something I want to ask you, I was going to wait until tonight but I can’t.” Jake closed the door behind him and walked across the office, but before he got more than a few steps in Victoria stood up and walked around her desk to meet him half way.
Jake took a deep breath and looked at Victoria seriously, “Are you still in love with Mark?”
“No! Not at all.” She shook her head No, Mark wasn’t the man she was in love with.
Feeling relieved Jake reached across and drew Victoria into his arms and held her tight, “That’s good because there is something I need to tell you Vicky. I am in love with you.” He said as he breathed in the fresh fruity smell of her hair and kissed it.
Victoria pulled back to look at Jake. She was speechless, she hadn’t expected Jake to tell her he loved her. Well not now, not today.
“It’s okay, I know you are going through a lot and you may not feel the same way, but I just wanted you to know that I do love you and I am serious about us. I can wait for you for as long as you want me to, that is if you want me to.”
Victoria laughed with happiness as she ran a hand across Jake’s cheek. “I don’t need you to wait because I am already there. I love you too Jake.”
“You do?” He asked not quite believing Victoria felt the same way about him as he did her.
“Yes I do.” She laughed and flung her arms around Jake’s neck and kissed him hard on his lips.
Victoria’s mobile phone buzzed signalling a new message and she stepped back from Jake, out of his arms.
“I’m sorry but I need to see who that is.” She quickly walked back to her desk and picked up the phone.
“Something important?”
“Yes and no. Nothing for you to worry about.” Victoria cringed inside as she read Mark’s message and tried not to let her face give her away. She didn’t like lying to Jake but she had to speak to Mark and get the confidential folder back before anyone else saw what was inside it, and then she was sure everything would be alright. In the meantime there was no need to tell Jake and make him worry. Besides she was sure Jake was going to be furious if he found out Mark had stolen his folder because she had left Mark alone in her office and his company secrets hadn’t been locked away! No, Jake didn’t need to know and Victoria was going to sort Mark out herself, after all he was simply trying to get her attention and he was definitely succeeding there! “Jake something has come up and I need to deal with it.”
“What’s going on.”
“Oh nothing for you to concern yourself with, it’s just a message from my London office.”
“But it’s late there.”
“Yes I know. I just need to do something, but I will see you later for dinner. Okay?”
Jake nodded, he had a busy afternoon with an office full of people probably waiting for him already, so he walked out Victoria’s office leaving her to make her phone call.
Victoria wanted to shout as loud as she could down the telephone but she kept it to a hissed whisper so no one could hear. Even with her door shut she was still worried about someone hearing her conversation.
“Mark you bastard, what are you playing at? This isn’t some sort of game. If Jake finds out what you have done you will be arrested and I will lose my job.”
“Well hello to you too Victoria. Now surely you should be more worried about Jake’s big product launch being ruined by someone else beating him to it.”
“As far as I am aware no one else has the foresight or ability to put these products onto the market.”
“Maybe not right now, but after they see everything in this folder they will. If some of the other market leaders know that Jake Cumberland was ready to gamble on these new products selling on the open-market then they will take that gamble too. Within forty-eight hours there will be a similar, if not identical product launched, and CT Holdings won’t be so innovative anymore. They will look like second best.”
Victoria clasped the phone tightly in her hand. She knew Mark was right and that was precisely why Jake was so concerned about the contents of the file getting into the wrong hands. And now it was her fault it had! “What do you want Mark?”
“Just your attention.”
“Well you have it, but you didn’t need to do it this way. Just give me back the folder and I can put it back without anyone knowing. No harm done. Oh, and you need to keep your mouth shut about what you have seen too.”
“Maybe.” Mark laughed and it didn’t sound pleasant. “You come to dinner with me tonight and we can have that talk like I wanted, and I will give it back to you then.”
Victoria sighed. She knew she didn’t have a choice and she didn’t like being held to ransom. “Alright. What hotel are you staying at?”
“The Four Season.”
“Fine. Eight o’clock it is then.”
“I will book a table on the terrace, that is unless you want to eat in private in my suite.”
“No thank you. The terrace will do, and Mark, don’t get too comfortable.” She terminated the call and put her phone down on the table wondering what horrible mess she had just got herself into.
Victoria stopped by Jake’s office at five o’clock but he was still deep in meetings.
“Do you want me to interrupt him, I am sure he won’t mind if it is urgent.” Andrea offered.
“No don’t interrupt him, it’s not about business.”
“Oh I see.” Andrea smiled - she had known from the beginning there was something between the two of them, and now she knew for sure there was more than work going on between Victoria and Jake. “It’s okay, I can keep a secret. Do you want me to pass a message onto him?”
Victoria smiled seeing Andrea happy with her little secret, “Yes please. Can you apologise to Jake for me and tell him that I can’t make dinner tonight, I have to do something and I won’t be finished in time. Tell him I will call him when I finish, but he should go ahead and eat without me.”
“No problem.” Andrea said.
“Thanks.” Victoria nodded and walked back to the lift. She felt awful inside, she didn’t like lying to Jake, again, but she could hardly tell him she was going to dinner with Mark to get his confidential folder b
ack!
CHAPTER TEN
Victoria walked the expanse of the Four Seasons’ marbled entranceway and made her way across the lobby to the lift. The doors opened immediately and she stepped inside followed by several other diners and hotel guests. The bell-boy pressed the seventh floor button for her and she tried to control her breathing as she felt the lift go up one floor at a time.
Victoria was still nervous when she saw Mark waiting for her at a table just at the edge of the terrace restaurant. She didn’t want to be here and she certainly didn’t want to be having dinner with Mark, but right now it was unavoidable. However that didn’t mean she had to be nice to him. Well only nice enough to get her file back and then it was gloves off, she was going to tell him exactly what she thought of him and all of this.
Victoria saw Mark stand up as she walked across the restaurant. She took the chair across the table from him as the waiter held it out for her sit down. She thanked the waiter and looked at Mark not hiding her despise for the situation.
“I’m glad you could make it Victoria.” Mark said as he indicated to the waiter to pour more wine.
Victoria held up her hand, “No wine for me thank you. I would like a glass of iced tap water please.”
He nodded his head and walked away.
She didn’t waste any time, “So have you got my file?”
“Yes.”
“Let me see it.” Right now Victoria didn’t put anything past Mark and before she sat through a dinner with him she wanted to make sure he did actually have her file.
Mark pushed aside the thick white napkin next to him to reveal the cream folder from Victoria’s drawer underneath. “Here it is.”
Victoria looked at it eagerly and thought for a moment about trying to grab it and run out of the hotel with it, but she had no doubt that since they were on the seventh floor Mark would be able to catch up with her before she made it out of the hotel at the very least, or at the worst he would make a scene and everyone would see, and then Jake would find out and even though his folder would be returned to him safely what would happen to her and Jake then?
“Just give me the folder Mark.”
“Not until we have a little chat?”
“A chat about what?”
“About you and your client.”
“I am not prepared to talk about CT Holding. My work and my client is confidential.”
“Oh come on Victoria I am not talking about the company, I am talking about Jake Cumberland.”
“What about Jake?”
“Are you sleeping with him?”
“What?”
“Is that why you called our wedding off?”
“No Mark it is not. I called our wedding off because you were screwing your secretary.”
“Look maybe we can rephrase that and things will be much easier for us. Let’s call it a mistake. I made a mistake.”
“A bloody huge mistake, and not your first! You seem to have made an awful lot of mistakes from what I hear.”
A few diners looked their way and Victoria realised she was talking louder than she would have liked.
“You know Victoria, I don’t think you really want this file very much, because you are not letting me talk to you the way I want to. I want us to have a nice cosy dinner together. By the way I ordered for us, I hope that’s alright.”
“Whatever.” She said non-committaly thinking ‘no it was not alright’ but she wasn’t about to argue on that point with him as well.
“Then maybe we could get ourselves back on track. If you listen to me you will see that I am really sorry for my mistakes.”
“I want the file Mark.”
“Then let’s go up to my suite and talk about it there.”
“No.” Victoria said reaching across the table grabbing for the file. She was beginning to think coming here was a big mistake but she couldn’t turn back now.
Before Victoria could get the file out of his reach, Mark pulled it back and stood up. Victoria held onto the file standing up too.
Victoria and Mark stood either side of the table both holding the file between them staring at each other until they realised all eyes were upon them from the other diners. Mark reacted first and pulled the file from Victoria’s grasp.
“My suite now, follow me.” He said as he walked off with the file in his hands and told the waiter to send their dinner up to his suite as he passed by.
Victoria stood and watched Mark walk off. She didn’t want to go to his suite but she had to get that file back - it was definitely her file, and she knew she couldn’t let it get away from her now. Not when she was so close to getting it back.
Victoria grabbed her bag and ran after Mark catching up with him just as he was holding the lift door open, obviously waiting for her to join him. She stepped inside as the bell-boy closed the lift doors and stayed silent until the lift doors opened again and Mark walked out down the lavish corridor to his suite. Mark swiped the key card through his door’s security system and then held the door open for her. Victoria walked through into his suite, and then Mark walked inside and closed it firmly behind her.
“So what’s next? I didn’t want to come up here but you still made me. Are you going to tell me I need to sleep with you now to get my file?”
“Now that’s an idea. I hadn’t actually thought of that but if you……”
“Oh go screw yourself Mark because that is not going to happen! Is this how you got the other women to sleep with you? Well you may have got me into your suite but I can tell you right now this is as far as this goes!” She highly doubted that was how he seduced his other women considering he was handsome, tall and liked to splash his money around, but she couldn’t help saying it out of anger and hurt.
A flash of rage and arrogance swept across Mark’s face, “No Victoria they willingly jumped into my bed, into our bed.”
Victoria gasped at his cold heartless come-back. Just how many people had he taken into their bed? The thought made her feel sick. She stepped back towards the door almost forgetting why she was there in the first place as Mark reached out to stroke her arm but she pulled away.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, but you made me angry.” Mark said taking a deep breath, this wasn’t quite what he had planned and he was beginning to see Victoria wasn’t going to be running back into his arms any time soon, or probably at all, and he didn’t like that.
“Look Mark you have my attention, we are talking, but this isn’t helping either of us. We cannot go forward from here and I don’t want any more animosity between us. Just give me the file and let this all be over. I will sign the papers for you for the house tomorrow and I will courier them back to London.” Victoria stood firm holding her hand out to take the file, but Mark walked further into the living room and put the file on the table, his hand still firmly on top of it.
“You know what’s inside this file Victoria, and so do I. We could sell this to CT Holdings’ competitor and make a fortune.”
“No Mark, we can’t.” Seeing the look on Mark’s face as he obviously thought of another option she continued, “And you can’t sell it to them either. I won’t let you.”
“What are you going to do to stop me? You wouldn’t have me arrested would you?”
Victoria paused for a moment, she really didn’t want it to come to that but she would if she really had to, even though it would mean she would probably lose her job and Jake in the process. “Don’t make me do that Mark because yes I would.”
He looked at her surprised, he didn’t think she would say that. “You will lose your job if they know what I did, I’m sure you shouldn’t be leaving things like this unsecured in your office with an outsider in there.
“That may be, and for it I will probably pay the price, but I can’t let you do this.”
Mark shrugged his shoulders, “Well I am standing looking at what can make me a lot of money. Why should I just hand it back to you?”
“Because you should never have
taken it in the first place.”
“Yes well I guess we both know that I don’t always do what I should do.” He smiled ironically.
Victoria stood with her hands on her hips and wondered what she ever saw in this guy - yes he was handsome, but underneath he really was a bit of a smarmy rat. She looked at Mark seriously, even though he was talking about selling the information in the file to a competitor she didn’t believe he had flown all the way out to Miami to do this intentionally. She wanted to believe he had taken the file to get her attention as he first said, but just got caught up in the idea of making a lot of money from it. Yes he was a lying cheat, but would he really do something as low as this? This was a whole new level of low! Would he really do this to her? She had a sinking feeling in her stomach and she realised she knew the answer to that.
“Okay Mark you win, if it’s money you want then I will give you my share of our house. It’s yours if you give me that file back right now and sign a confidentiality agreement tonight.” She didn’t want to lose the money from their house but it was a better option than losing Jake and her job. She could call a lawyer and have the papers drawn up within half an hour, that was another good thing about Miami, there was always a lawyer on hand if you needed one – she was sure the hotel could have one there within the hour.
Mark looked at Victoria, she was serious! “Wow that’s a big thing to give up for this.” He said tapping his forefinger on the file.
She shrugged not wanting Mark to know why it was worth it, even if it was reluctantly.
“No, I think his competitors will pay more for this than you ever could.” He shook his head.
“Then I didn’t want to do this Mark but you leave me no choice, I am going to have to call Jake and tell him what’s happened and phone the police, right now.” Victoria look her mobile phone out of her bag.
