The Right Kind Of Man

by Jessica Hart

  Skye bit her lip. She would have liked to tell Lorimer that she hadn’t given Charles a thought when she asked him to let her stay, but he was hardly likely to believe her, not after the way she had prattled on about following Charles to Edinburgh. What an idiot he must have thought her! What an idiot she had been. She should never have told Lorimer the whole story. Now he would never believe the real reason she had wanted to stay. Skye wasn’t at all sure she knew what it was anyway.

  ‘I’d better speak to him, I suppose,’ Lorimer went on impatiently when she said nothing. ‘Put him through.’

  She put the phone down, feeling strangely flat, and went slowly down to the kitchen to get him some more coffee. When she came back, Lorimer was scowling ferociously down at a letter and making savage notes in the margin. This time, she didn’t risk handing him the mug, but set it carefully down on the desk.

  ‘I gather he’s taking you out tomorrow,’ said Lorimer snappishly, without looking up from the letter.

  ‘We’re just going out for a drink,’ she said, and then wondered why she sounded as if she was apologising. It wasn’t any of Lorimer’s business what she did after work.

  ‘Well, don’t forget what I told you about confidentiality,’ he said nastily. ‘I don’t want Charles Ferrars knowing everything that goes on here.’

  Skye looked down at his dark head, puzzled. ‘Why should he be interested?’

  ‘Why else would he be taking you out?’ Lorimer retorted, lifting his head to watch her almost accusingly.

  ‘Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that he might actually want to see me?’ Skye’s voice was sugar-sweet but there was a spark of anger in her eyes. They’d had one argument today already and she’d thought they’d made their peace. Now Lorimer seemed determined to pick another one.

  ‘I know Ferrars’ type. They always have an ulterior motive. He might be interested in Kingan Associates, or he might be interested in currying favour with Fleming Carmichael, but he’s not interested in you or your beautiful blue eyes.’

  Skye felt like picking up his mug and pouring coffee all over him all over again. Her chin tilted defiantly. ‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we?’

  Blue eyes met blue in unspoken challenge, and then

  Lorimer turned back to his letter with a grim smile. ‘Yes, we’ll see.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me how gorgeous he was!’ Vanessa sent Skye an accusing look as they walked down the steps from the office the next day.

  ‘Who?’ said Skye unconvincingly.

  ‘Your boss, of course!’ Lorimer had been in the hall talking to Murray as Vanessa and Skye left the office for lunch. He had broken off his conversation with the accountant to remind Skye that she only had an hour off.

  ‘I know you have an extremely flexible approach to time-keeping,’ he had said without bothering to disguise his sarcasm, ‘but perhaps you could make an effort to be back on time today? I’ve got a lot to get done this afternoon and you’re not swanning off with Charles Ferrars until it’s finished.’

  He had been in a nit-picking mood all morning and Skye had been unable to do anything right. She had gritted her teeth and reminded herself of her father, but if it hadn’t been for him she would have been sorely tempted to tell Lorimer Kingan what he could do with his rotten job. She had begun to think that she had imagined that brief moment of warmth and understanding that had flared between them yesterday before Charles had telephoned.

  Not that it could have been that that had put Lorimer in such a bad mood, Skye reasoned. Moira Lindsay had rung only that morning, and Skye’s heart had sunk unaccountably at the sound of the other girl’s low, musical voice and pleasant manner. Lorimer hadn’t taken out his bad temper on her. Instead he had sounded delighted to hear from her, and as soon as he had put the phone down he’d been on to Skye, telling her to book a table for two at one of Edinburgh’s most exclusive restaurants.

  Skye sighed as she and Vanessa crossed Charlotte Square. So what if he wanted to take Moira out? She had already decided she was going to concentrate on making a success of her job and on not being involved with anyone for a while, and very happy she was too.

  ‘I’m not surprised you lost interest in Charles once you met Lorimer,’ Vanessa was saying, buttoning up her coat against the wind.

  ‘I haven’t lost interest in Charles,’ Skye said, only too aware of the half-hearted note in her voice. ‘Not exactly. I’m just… playing it cool. You were the one who suggested I should do that, after all.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Skye. I’ve only had a glimpse of Lorimer, but that was enough to tell that he’s twice the man Charles is. I’m not surprised you keep getting things wrong. If my boss looked like that, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on my work either. That rugged look is terribly attractive, isn’t it? Much more so than Charles’s smooth good looks. His charm’s all on the surface with nothing underneath.’

  ‘At least he’s got charm, which is more than I can say for Lorimer,’ snapped Skye, conveniently forgetting how devastating his smile had been and concentrating instead on how grumpy and disagreeable he had been that morning.

  ‘You’re not your usual sunny self, Skye,’ Vanessa commented with a searching look. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Skye kicked through a pile of fallen leaves and avoided her friend’s eye. She did feel oddly edgy and unsettled but it had nothing to do with Lorimer taking Moira out tonight, absolutely nothing. The trouble was, she didn’t know how she felt any more. She had never reacted to anyone quite the way she had to Lorimer. There was something about him that threw her off balance. Whenever she had met an attractive man before, she and her friends had enjoyed discussing every nuance of the relationship in exhaustive detail. It had all been part of the fun, so much so that sometimes the man in question was less entertaining than talking about him. Lorimer was different. For a start, they didn’t have a relationship to discuss, and even if they had Skye knew instinctively that she wouldn’t want to giggle about it over a bottle of wine.

  No, she couldn’t tell Vanessa how she felt about Lorimer. There was nothing to tell.

  ‘Of course not,’ she said again more firmly, and spent the rest of the lunch-hour being determinedly cheerful at the prospect of seeing Charles again.

  Lorimer was, if anything, even more bad-tempered that afternoon, and, in spite of Skye’s arriving back from lunch five minutes early, was so scathing about a report she had spent hours typing that she could cheerfully have hit him. Moira was welcome to him, she decided furiously, stomping out of his office and shutting the door behind her with unnecessary force.

  Turning from the door, she found herself suddenly face to face with Charles, who rose from a chair near her desk.

  ‘I’m a little early for my appointment, I know,’ he said smoothly. ‘I asked your receptionist if I could wait in here for you. I hope you don’t mind?’ He smiled at her in a way that had once had her weak at knees, but which now left her feeling nothing other than surprised that he had arrived so early. The Charleses of this world usually liked to give the impression they were rushing from one important meeting to another.

  ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ she said. Her mind was still half on Lorimer’s unreasonableness, her face vivid with suppressed anger, but she gave Charles a brilliant smile, largely because she knew Lorimer wouldn’t like it. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to wait here alone. I didn’t realise you were here.’

  She had forgotten how handsome Charles was. His fair hair was beautifully cut and he was dressed as usual with impeccable taste in an elegant grey suit and discreet tie. He might have been a model, standing there with his perfect features and his perfect teeth and his perfect tan. Only the peculiarly cold eyes gave him an individual look. Skye gazed at him, hoping against hope that she would fall in love with him all over again, but her heart continued to beat steadily, undisturbed.

  Realising that she was behaving in a very distracted manner, Skye walked across and
kissed him on the cheek. ‘It’s lovely to see you again, Charles,’ she said, much more warmly than she would have done if Lorimer hadn’t been so thoroughly unpleasant.

  ‘It’s good to see you too, Skye.’ Charles held on to her a little longer than necessary. ‘I hadn’t realised quite how good it would be.’

  ‘I hate to break up this touching reunion,’ said Lorimer acidly behind them, ‘but you’ve still got work to do, Skye. You don’t finish work until five-thirty.’

  Skye was furious with herself for the guilty way she jumped away from Charles at the sound of his voice. Lorimer moved forward to greet the other man with ill-concealed hostility, and Skye couldn’t help remembering how Vanessa had compared the two of them. Charles was cool and smooth, sophisticated and assured in his tailored suit, while Lorimer, in a tweed jacket that only seemed to emphasise his rugged quality, was massive and granite-hard and gave off an unmistakable aura of suppressed fury. When the two men shook hands, they reminded Skye of two dogs, circling aggressively, their hackles rising in instinctive distrust.

  They disappeared into Lorimer’s office and Skye, still smarting from Lorimer’s comments, set about correcting the report, thumping the keyboard resentfully with angry fingers that only created more mistakes. By the time they emerged, she was in just as bad a mood as Lorimer and had somehow resolved not to give Lorimer another thought at the same time as showing him just what he was missing that evening.

  Lorimer opened the door just in time to see her touching up her lipstick and his expression hardened. Skye quickly snapped her mirror closed and dropped the lipstick into her bag, directing a dazzling smile over Lorimer’s shoulder at Charles.

  ‘Finished?’

  ‘Obviously,’ Lorimer answered for him sourly. ‘More to the point, have you finished?’

  ‘Of course.’ Skye was the picture of virtue. She glanced at her watch. ‘Oh, dear, it’s only twenty seven minutes past five. Charles, would you mind terribly waiting three minutes? I don’t want Lorimer to think I’m deserting my post.’

  ‘You’d better go if you’re so anxious to leave,’ Lorimer snapped, goaded.

  He stood looking thunderous as Skye graciously allowed Charles to help her into her coat. ‘I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this,’ she said, smiling sweetly up at him and delighted to see, when she risked a glance at Lorimer, that his black look had deepened. Evidently unable to bear the sight of her simpering up at Charles any longer, he gave a contemptuous snort and slammed back into his office without a word of farewell.

  Satisfied, Skye lifted her eyebrows in mock surprise and turned a bright smile on Charles. ‘Shall we go?’

  He took her to a wine bar behind Hanover Street. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch with you sooner, Skye,’ he said, pouring her a glass of wine. ‘But it’s been frantically busy…you know how it is.’

  Two weeks ago she hadn’t known what busy was, Skye reflected, but she smiled and took the glass. ‘I know what you mean. We’re busy too.’

  ‘Not too busy, I hope,’ said Charles, edging closer. ‘It would be nice to see more of you since we’re both exiles up here. It’s quite a coincidence you being here at the same time, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Skye with a weak smile, wondering if there was any way he could have guessed that she had simply followed him. Now she couldn’t imagine what had possessed her. What had she seen in him? He was very good-looking, of course, and she could see several women in the wine bar casting her envious looks, but somehow he had seemed so much more attractive when he didn’t want anything to do with her. Vanessa was right. All Charles had been was a challenge, and now that he was sitting beside her, toasting her with his glass and saying that he wanted to see more of her, all she could feel was ashamed that she could have made so much fuss about a man who couldn’t make her pulse beat anything more than sluggishly. She couldn’t help comparing him to Lorimer, who only had to look at her to send her pulse into orbit and set her heart lurching out of control.

  ‘So how are you enjoying working for Lorimer Kingan?’ Charles asked. Even the sound of Lorimer’s name was enough to make her heart jump. ‘Tough character, isn’t he? Pity he’s such a rabid Scot.’

  ‘He was badly let down by an English firm recently,’ said Skye before she could stop herself. Heavens, who was she to leap to Lorimer’s defence?

  Charles shrugged. ‘Development’s a tough business. If you ask me, the Scots are too damned sentimental to make good businessmen.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call Lorimer sentimentall’ Skye stared at him in astonishment.

  ‘Oh, he looks formidable enough, I know, but I can’t help feeling that he cares a bit too much about what he’s doing.’ Charles made caring sound like some form of aberration. ‘He won’t accept that the bottom line is money.’

  Skye took a defiant gulp of her wine. ‘And it is for you?’

  ‘I’m honest about it,’ said Charles carelessly. ‘Fleming’s brought me up here to try and drag the Edinburgh office into the twentieth century. All I need to do is show them how to pull off a really profitable deal, and I can hotfoot it back to London. The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Don’t you like it up here?’ Skye looked at him curiously, and he gave an exaggerated shudder.

  ‘It’s a barbaric country! And Edinburgh’s so cold and dull I’d have thought you of all people would understand, Skye. You’ve always struck me as a real London girl.’

  ‘I used to think I was,’ she said slowly. ‘But I’m not so sure now. I like Edinburgh. I think it’s a wonderful city.’

  Charles’s expression was half patronising, half pitying. ‘You’ve changed.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Skye. ‘I think I have.’

  The evening seemed to drag. Skye, who would normally have been in her element sitting thigh to thigh with a handsome man in a cosy wine bar, kept glancing surreptitiously at her watch and wondering what Lorimer and Moira were doing. Were they toying with their food, smiling at each other over the candlelight, planning how wonderful life would be once Moira had replaced Skye and they could spend all day together?

  Skye drank her wine desperately and told herself for the umpteenth time that she didn’t care. She tried to concentrate on Charles, but found herself increasingly surprised that she had ever found anything to like about him at all. Why on earth had she gone to so much trouble for him? She thought of the dinner parties she had arranged, the invitations she had wangled, the elaborate charades she had got herself involved just so that she would see him. Now she could only wonder at herself.

  She was also beginning to have a nasty suspicion that Lorimer had been right when he had claimed that Charles was more interested in Kingan Associates and her closeness to the Carmichaels than in her. He asked an awful lot of questions about Lorimer’s business which Skye parried by pretending to be more interested in him. As this meant listening to a diatribe about the parochial attitudes in Fleming’s Edinburgh office, the climate, the lack of social life and, obviously more important as far as Charles was concerned, the lack of opportunities to make big money, she was soon bored and increasingly aware of how his cut-crystal tones carried through the chatter of the wine bar.

  Skye’s smile grew rigid, but fortunately her sense of humour came to her rescue before she did anything she might regret. This dreadful evening served her right! Edging as far away from Charles as she could, Skye reminded herself again of evenings spent hanging around in his favourite wine bar, hoping that he would appear. If she could have imagined her present lack of enthusiasm then, she could have saved herself an awful lot of trouble! She could have stayed in London… Skye contemplated her wine and thought about how different her life would have been. She would never have come to Edinburgh. She would never have learnt what it was to work hard. She would never have met Lorimer.

  Perhaps things hadn’t turned out so badly after all.

  She left as soon as she could. By the time she had g
iven Vanessa a blow-by-blow account of her ghastly evening and both girls had enjoyed a good giggle, Skye had accepted that she had made a complete and utter fool of herself over Charles and felt immeasurably better. From now on, she told Vanessa, she was going to dedicate herself to work.

  Ignoring Vanessa’s hoots of incredulous laughter, Skye mapped out an optimistic future. She would concentrate on her job so that when Lorimer’s precious Moira was free, she would have some decent experience to find a proper job somewhere else. She would make her father proud of her after all. What she wouldn’t do was waste any more time thinking about men. She had learnt her lesson with Charles. There was no point in falling for men who patently weren’t interested in her—and that included Lorimer Kingan! No, from now on, work would be her watchword.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘YOU don’t mind socialising with your boss, do you dear?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Skye automatically. She fiddled with her telephone cord and wondered what it would be like to see Lorimer outside the office. ‘I’d have thought it would be more a case of whether he minded or not.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Marjorie Carmichael robustly. ‘A pretty girl like you? Of course he won’t mind. The thing is,’ she went on confidentially, ‘Fleming feels that Lorimer and Charles aren’t getting on very well together, and he thought it might help for them to meet on a social basis for a change. I’m afraid it’s mixing business with pleasure for you, dear, but we did so want to see you, and you’re always such good company at a dinner party.’

  Skye laughed. ‘I’ll try my best.’

  ‘I knew I could rely on you, dear. Till next Saturday, then? Is half-past seven all right?’

  ‘That’ll be fine. See you then.’ Skye put the phone down thoughtfully. She had seen little of Lorimer over the last few days. He had been in and out to meetings, and yesterday he had spent the whole day in Perth discussing a possible new site. He hadn’t suggested that she go with him. The atmosphere between them had been strained ever since Charles had taken her out for that drink and Skye was glad she had decided to devote herself to her work instead of any foolish daydreams about Lorimer coming to like her in time. It was perfectly obvious that he found her as exasperating as ever, although she really had been trying to be more efficient.