A Business Engagement

by Jessica Steele

  Great! By the sound of it, the board would soon be looking for an excuse to get rid of her. Nice to feel welcome! ‘But what role would I play?’ Board members voted on various things, didn’t they? ‘Supposing I’m asked to vote on something or other. How can I vote when I don’t know...?’

  ‘You’re just being difficult!’ her mother sniffed. ‘Stop thinking about yourself, and think of me and your father for a change!’

  That hurt. It made her feel ungrateful—when she wasn’t. Ashlyn was still smarting from her mother’s remark when her father, as if trying to explain, began, ‘I’m sure Carter Hamilton only agreed to my stipulation about you because he felt he wouldn’t have to look far for a reason to get you out. But, since you’ll be a non-executive member of the board, all you have to do is turn up at the monthly meeting—or whatever the frequency is—and look intelligent. That’s all there’ll be to it.’ Her father smiled at her encouragingly. ‘They can hardly remove you from the board if you don’t do anything, can they?’

  He made it sound simple, but Ashlyn was sure that it wasn’t. But, in view of her mother’s ‘think of me and your father for a change’, she felt bereft of more argument.

  That did not stop her from fretting about it in the week that followed, though. And with each passing day she knew more and more that she most definitely did not want this job which her father had manufactured for her—be it only for a few hours a month.

  How could she want it when they didn’t want her? She also guessed that feeling doubled for this bod Carter Hamilton. And that was another strange thing; she’d never heard his name before, so far as she could remember, yet now his picture just seemed to jump out at her from every newspaper she picked up.

  He was young, she thought, to hold such a lofty position, even if the group did bear his name—and he was good-looking with it. He appeared to be about thirty-five or thirty-six and tall—unless the elegant woman by his side in that particular picture was very tiny. Though the woman wasn’t his wife, because the article, a kind of Who’s Who at some premiere or other, referred to Carter Hamilton as ‘chairman—and most eligible bachelor—of Hamilton Holdings’.

  Ashlyn felt all churned up inside as she looked at the newspaper photograph. She was on the same board as him! Oh, grief. She had always felt comfortable in any company—whether hostessing for her mother when she was indisposed, or with her friends. Ashlyn had many friends, from all walks of life, and, having grown up with half a dozen male cousins—who, to a large extent, protected her and treated her more as a little sister—she was quite comfortable in male company too. So what was it about this man, a man whom she hadn’t even met, but whose picture she only had to look at to feel churned up inside—and all goosebumpy?

  Rubbish, she told herself—but she felt all churned up inside again when the next week brought forth a letter on Hamilton Holdings paper informing her of a board meeting two weeks hence. She wanted to hide. With the letter came a copy of the agenda for the meeting. It looked complex. She read it through twice—she knew Greek better!

  A little light came into her darkness when her youngest cousin, Duncan, telephoned to say he was home from university that weekend, and did she want to take him out for a drink?

  ‘I’ll do better than that—I’ll take you out and feed you, if you like.’

  ‘When I’m a millionaire and not scratching along on a student grant, I’ll take you out for a meal,’ he accepted, and she laughed. His family were loaded, and she doubted very much he would qualify for a grant even if he applied. But he was always broke.

  Ashlyn sighed as she recalled how she had wanted to go to university. She was keen on languages, and had wanted to be a teacher, or perhaps take work in the translation field.

  Her mother had not liked the idea, she knew. But at that time her mother had been going through a period of being unwell. Her illness had been nothing specific—just a general debility. Exhaustion, her doctor had diagnosed. Nothing that dropping a few committees and rest and care would not cure.

  But Ashlyn had been seriously worried, especially when she’d heard her mother, whose energy had always been boundless, declare one afternoon that she thought she would take a nap. And, a few evenings later, she’d asked Ashlyn if she would mind standing in for her at some dinner. Ashlyn had been too concerned about her parent to give more than a passing thought to the fact she had left it too late to apply for a university place that year.

  It had taken over eighteen months for her mother to fully recover, and by then Ashlyn had left school. But while her mother had begun to take an interest in shopping again Ashlyn had begun to think in terms of the subject of which she had an instinctive grasp.

  She was already fluent in French and Italian—there were so many languages out there. So many challenges. ‘Mother...’ she’d begun one evening.

  ‘Oh, dear. I always know it’s serious when you call me Mother,’ Katherine Ainsworth had teased. And as if she suspected what was coming, to Ashlyn’s surprise, she’d continued, ‘Actually, I meant to have a serious talk with you—only the moment never seemed right.’

  ‘It didn’t?’ Ashlyn’s mother was busy from dawn to dusk again, it was true, but surely...

  Her mother had shaken her head. ‘I’ve never said to you how grateful I was to have you around to hold my hand when I was so low a while back.’

  ‘You don’t have to!’ Ashlyn had protested.

  ‘Oh, but I do. I know there were times when you could have gone out with your friends but, out of concern for me, just in case I needed you, you stayed home. I have appreciated so very much your staying home when you could have gone to university.’

  ‘I wanted to stay home.’ No way, with her mother so poorly, would she have gone anywhere!

  ‘I know. But now it’s my turn to do something for you.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not necess—’

  ‘So I’ve arranged for you to continue your language studies privately.’

  Ashlyn could not believe it, and had felt closer to her mother then than she had at any time. Katherine Ainsworth had gone on to outline how on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays Ashlyn was to have language tuition.

  Four years later, at twenty-two, she was fluent in several more languages, and was taking a break from studying—which left her without one single solitary excuse for being unable to attend even just one of the board meetings held at Hamilton Holdings’ main office.

  And the closer it got to what was looming large in her mind as Terrifying Tuesday, the more she did not want to attend.

  Oh, if only... If only she’d been born the boy her father had wanted. It had been a big disappointment to him that while his brothers had sons he had a daughter. Neither he nor her mother had wanted her to go into the business and, Ashlyn had to own, she’d been quite happy about that.

  Her father, the youngest of three sons, had not wanted to go into his father’s business either. Consequently, with her grandfather’s help, he had started up his own company.

  Ainsworth Engineering, the company founded by her grandfather, was now run by her uncles and her cousins—and very prosperous it was too. With the exception of Duncan, her cousins were married and scattered round about, so that she saw much less of them these days.

  It did not stop her hearing about them, though. Only last night, after her mother had asked her what she planned to wear to the board meeting today, she had remarked how her two brothers-in-law were always saying how well their sons were doing.

  ‘Well, they are,’ Ashlyn had pointed out fairly.

  Her mother had not wanted to know. ‘So I told Edward when he rang to speak with your father yesterday—casually, of course—how you’d be a great asset to the Hamilton Holdings board at their meeting on Tuesday!’

  Now, realising she could delay starting the day no longer, Ashlyn got out of bed, with her mother’s words ringing in her ears. Asset! If Uncle Edward believed that, he’d believe anything.

  Pride, of course. Her mother wasn
’t normally boastful, but pride was dictating events these days.

  Ashlyn was in the shower when she realised that she too was being dictated to by pride. Why else was she doing what she was doing? Oh, not for herself. But pride demanded that since her father had stuck out for her seat on the board as part of the deal she would have to go—he would look exceedingly silly if she didn’t turn up.

  How did board members dress? Well, not with a thick mane of red hair hanging all the way down their backs, that was for sure. She didn’t want breakfast, indeed felt in such a turmoil inside that all she could do was hope the next three or four hours would pass quickly so that she could hurry back home.

  ‘Darling, you look lovely!’ her mother exclaimed when, her red hair pulled back and classically knotted away from her face—which that morning was almost translucent—Ashlyn presented herself downstairs. Her mother was seldom up this early.

  ‘Is that suit new?’ her father asked gruffly, so she knew that he thought she looked all right as well.

  ‘It cost me the last of my allowance—hint, hint,’ she managed to joke, and, with her parents’ love and good wishes ringing in her ears, she went to get her car out of its garage.

  She found the Hamilton Holdings building without too much trouble. But she was feeling so agitated that, but for remembering her mother’s ‘Your father has worked hard... to support you... It won’t hurt you to do something for him for a change’, she might have steered her car anywhere but down to Hamilton Holdings’ underground car park. It didn’t make her feel any better, however, to also remember—and she wished that she hadn’t—that Hamilton Holdings didn’t want her, and that Carter Hamilton in particular would be looking for a way to get rid of her.

  There were few car parking spaces left but, since she espied security cameras, she was confident that were she to erroneously park in the chairman’s allotted space, then for sure someone would hare down to turf her out.

  Ashlyn rode up in the lift to the reception area and, not for the first time, wondered what the dickens she was so afraid of. Plenty, came the answer as she visualised the whole of the meeting taking place with never so much as a peep coming from her. She knew nothing!

  She was glad of her new suit, though; it was light navy—a businesslike touch, she felt. She also wore a pristine white fine jersey collarless shirt, which crossed over her bosom in a few softly rolled pleats.

  She went up to the reception desk on plain navy two-and-a-half inch heels. ‘My name’s Ashlyn Ainsworth—can you direct me to the boardroom, please?’ she asked.

  She was expected. Pity. ‘Certainly, Miss Ainsworth,’ the receptionist smiled, and in no time a uniformed attendant was there to escort her up, not to the actual boardroom, but to a kind of ante-room.

  It was ten to ten. The meeting would start on the hour. The next five minutes passed in something of a blank, stomach-swirling haze. ‘How do you do?’ She shook a lot of hands. ‘How do you do?’ At least she was dressed properly for it.

  Dark-suited, white-haired, brown-haired, no-haired men came within her orbit. But as yet there was no one looking remotely like the dark-haired man she’d seen in the newspapers.

  There was then a general move towards the boardroom, and a friendly voice stated, ‘You’re a decided improvement on this lot.’ Manna from heaven! ‘I’m Geoffrey Rogers, by the way. And you just have to be Ashlyn Ainsworth.’

  She shook hands with him and Geoffrey, a man of about forty, escorted her into the boardroom, kindly showing her where to sit. Then he went to take his own seat about four chairs along, and during the next couple of minutes Ashlyn got a sketchy impression, from a word drifting down from here and there, that board members had flown in from all corners to be there today.

  She glanced shyly about, and realised with a sinking feeling that she was the only female present. Oh, grief, had she invaded an all-male board?

  But then another female did come in, complete with notebook and pencils. If she’s waiting to record anything I might say, Ashlyn thought, she’d have a long wait. Then a kind of hush seemed to descend over the boardroom—and he was there.

  He was tall, as she had thought. Ashlyn was tallish herself, but guessed he was six or seven inches taller. Still he hadn’t noticed her sitting there—the man next to her was rather large. Perhaps it would stay that way.

  He was every bit as good-looking as he’d appeared in the newspapers, though. And self-assured with it, she realised. ‘Good morning,’ he greeted everyone generally; he was clearly a man with little time to waste. ‘We’ve a lot to get through,’ he continued, his voice cultured and all male, ‘but before we start I should like to open this meeting by first introducing, and welcoming, our newest member, Miss Ashlyn Ainsworth’

  Oh, my giddy aunt! And she’d thought he hadn’t even noticed her! Ashlyn found herself pinned by a pair of stern dark eyes. And, as she quickly realised that there was little that this man missed, all other eyes turned to her. She wanted the floor to open up and swallow her—oh, how she wished that the next few hours were over!

  CHAPTER TWO

  QUITE when Ashlyn had begun to dislike Carter Hamilton she couldn’t have said. Probably before she had ever met him—and it was nothing to do with the fact that his organisation had bought out her father’s firm. Somebody or other would have done that anyway since, as Todd Pilkington had so eloquently put it, the company had been ‘up for grabs’.

  But dislike Carter Hamilton she did. Even as the meeting got under way and attention moved from her, she decided that she did not like him. Welcoming her! He’d been lying through his teeth!

  She gave her attention to the meeting, but inside a very few minutes knew that she was out of her depth. Big business was life’s blood to these people—she was having a hard time making sense of any of it.

  She concentrated harder—and found herself watching Carter Hamilton. She tried to forget him and focus instead on the business to hand—but, since he was constantly in her line of vision, she found that that was extremely difficult.

  Carter, obviously, was having no such problem. Not once had he glanced her way since that initial eye contact. Clearly she was beneath his notice.

  Who the devil did he think he was? Feeling riled, Ashlyn concentrated more determinedly on forgetting his presence and tuned into what had begun quite sensibly but had soon degenerated into total gibberish as far as she was concerned. She was good at languages, but they seemed to be speaking a language she had never heard before.

  Figures, in millions, were tossed around like confetti. Someone, although still seated, verbally took the floor to give a lengthy and totally boring report—and Ashlyn strove to look enrapt.

  She gave an inward sigh of relief when the report ended, and she wondered what the time was. It was tempting to take a look at her watch—but she did not want to draw attention to herself. There was a clock in the boardroom—but its face was just out of her line of vision.

  She did a head count—they were sixteen altogether. Seventeen including the PA taking down the minutes. Carter Hamilton had rather a nice-shaped head...

  Abruptly Ashlyn switched her glance from him—and caught sight of the watch on the wrist of the large man next to her. Was it only a quarter past ten? Oh, no—it couldn’t be! It wasn’t—she’d read it wrong. And later, when the dull-as-ditchwater meeting seemed to have been going on for hours, it was not very heartening to realise that it was only a quarter to eleven.

  Try to get interested. You’re intelligent—it said so on your school report. And you have A levels to prove it. But ‘feasible’, ‘viable’, ‘expedient’? Not to mention ‘resource’, and ‘finance’. ‘Equilateral’ somehow got in too—which was enough to let her know her full attention had slipped some five minutes ago.

  Relief was at hand when someone knocked on the boardroom door and wheeled in some coffee. ‘Black or white?’ enquired the pleasant young woman when she got round to Ashlyn.

  ‘White, please,’ Ashlyn smiled—an
d that was about as much relief as she got, for the meeting carried on through coffee.

  Her father had hinted that these meetings happened once a month—once a year would be too much in her view. Perhaps if she’d been born to it, had started there as a junior, worked her way up to the position which, without any training whatsoever she had just been tossed into—perhaps then she would have comprehended—and even enjoyed—this language everyone was talking.

  Yet another new language was foisted on her when a short while later some high-powered legal eagle came in to outline the wherefores of what could be done, and the therefores of why something else could not.

  He went on and on, in a dull, monotone voice, and was still going on when Ashlyn glanced about her. Everyone seemed totally absorbed—she had never felt so inadequate! Everybody knew so much more than she did; even the woman taking the minutes knew more—not once did her pencil falter.

  The legal executive had been talking for what seemed to be three days when Ashlyn gave up. She saw him pause to pour himself a glass of water. She reckoned he needed it. She too needed a drink, anything to waken her up—she had an idea she’d be asleep in a minute. But, as before, she did not want to draw attention to herself by stretching out an arm to the carafe of water in front of her.

  Her thoughts drifted and she wondered how long the PA had had to train for this high level of work. The woman was about thirty... Suddenly Ashlyn realised that her eyelids were drooping and, terror-stricken that she might nod off—or, worse, start snoring in the middle of this top-brass meeting—she stretched out an arm to the water carafe, and, in her haste, knocked it over!

  She stared, disbelieving, as the water emptied from the half-pint carafe. She came to life only as the cascade headed for the important-looking papers and notes belonging to the men seated on either side of her—and did the only thing possible. She grabbed hold of the pad in front of her—with not a single scribbled note on it—and hastily directed the water her own way.