Secretary on Demand

by Cathy Williams

  And before she could utter another word of protest, he was back in his car, patiently waiting to make sure she was safely inside before driving away.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  NO WONDER Kane hadn’t offered to see her up to her door, make sure she travelled the two flights of stairs without being accosted five times on the way, checked under the sofa for possible snakes. Discretion had overcome valour! He must have known, Shannon fumed, that she would have clobbered him over the head with something very large and very hard!

  She’d never heard such a ridiculous suggestion in her whole life and she knew why he’d made it. Because life would be infinitely easier for him if he had her in place as nanny and his over-developed protective instincts would be satisfied, knowing that she didn’t have to scurry like a fugitive along the dark streets leading to her flat every time she left his house.

  Did he really imagine that she would relinquish her freedom and be grateful for the opportunity?

  Her bedsit might be the last word in undesirable, but it was hers and she had no one looking over her shoulder every time she sneezed!

  Shannon tried to imagine life under Kane Lindley’s roof but when she did her mind was overwhelmed by suffocating thoughts of never being able to escape him. It was bad enough trying not to be aware of his presence when she was at his house with Eleanor for three hours after work. It was bad enough constantly crossing that line between secretary and babysitter, without having to endure it twenty-four hours a day! Never mind his logic about saving up to rent somewhere halfway decent! Logic, she thought sourly, might rule his life, but it certainly didn’t rule hers!

  ‘It’s a very thoughtful offer,’ Sandy told her treacherously the next day over lunch. ‘London’s not safe at night. I mean, don’t you feel worried having to walk back to your flat in that part of town?’

  ‘You’re supposed to take my side, Sandy,’ Shannon complained, toying with the pasta on her plate.

  ‘You could always share a house, like me. It means I can afford a room in a much nicer area…’

  ‘And have four people breathing down your neck! I need my privacy!’ Sandy shared a large house on the outskirts of Hampstead with four other girls, and whenever Shannon was around, there always seemed to be people bursting through doors or having loud telephone conversations in the room next door, or else opening fridge doors and speculating on who had stolen their food. Sandy might enjoy the constant hum of activity but Shannon suspected that it would drive her crazy.

  ‘Well, he said you would have all the privacy you wanted…’

  ‘And pigs might fly. What’s this?’ She stabbed a peculiar object in her plate of pasta and held it up for examination.

  ‘Oh, Alfredo had one or two scallops going spare so I flung them in.’

  ‘It’s a strange addition, don’t you think?’

  ‘Not for anyone with refined tastebuds. Anyway, you’re changing the subject. If his house is that big, you won’t even have to see him at all.’ There was a sudden flurry of activity as the kitchen was invaded by several people who all seemed to be hunting out scraps for lunch, stopping to chat en route and dip into what was on offer in the dish in the middle of the table. Having a conversation was impossible in Sandy’s house.

  ‘And as he pointed out,’ Sandy continued, oblivious to the chaos, ‘you’ll be able to save lots of money and put a deposit on somewhere a bit more upmarket. In fact, you’d probably only have to stay there for a couple of months and your finances would be sorted out. Stop playing with that food and eat up. You’ll fade away to nothing.’

  No help from that quarter, Shannon thought, but after delivering a long lecture on the role of friends who should always support one another and not try to introduce counter-arguments which only clouded the issue, she allowed herself to be diverted into their usual gossipy chat about what was happening to whom and why.

  After all her weekend seething and fulminating, it was almost an anticlimax to get into work the following day, only to discover that Kane had been called away on urgent business and wouldn’t see her until possibly later that evening, if not the following morning. No mention of what they had spoken about on Saturday night, and she wondered whether he had forgotten the whole thing already. Maybe at the time he’d been roaring drunk even though he’d seemed as sober as a judge. Perhaps he just hid it well and was, in fact, one of those people who seemed to suffer no effects from alcohol except inexplicable memory loss the following day.

  The thought cheered her up. By five o’clock she had come to the comforting conclusion, having spoken to him twice on the telephone during which he had mentioned nothing of what had been said, that he had decided to drop the whole issue. He had probably sensed that under that open, cheerful and seemingly malleable exterior there beat a heart of steel.

  Or maybe, she thought to herself, he, too, had realised the implications of his offer. That he would see more of her than he might find palatable. Judging from the beauty at the jazz club, he had a life of his own to pursue and maybe he had reached the conclusion that one Irish girl with a tendency to be too outspoken for her own good might just be a fly in his ointment.

  She was due to be at his house to supervise Eleanor by five-thirty but it was nearly six by the time she arrived, to find Kane’s car sprawled on the driveway. Before she could ring the bell, the door was open and he was standing in front of her, dressed casually in a pair of cords and a rugby-style sweatshirt that made her hurriedly avert her eyes. Too much masculinity at too close a range.

  ‘I thought you said you were away on urgent business,’ she greeted him, as he stood aside to let her enter.

  ‘One thing I admire about you,’ he reflected drily, shutting the front door, ‘is your talent for bypassing social niceties.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t expect to find you here,’ Shannon told him by way of apology. ‘You said you’d be away until tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I said I might.’

  ‘Where’s Eleanor?’ She tried to peer past him but failed.

  ‘Actually, spending a night with her friend.’

  Shannon looked at his coldly. ‘In which case, why didn’t you inform me?’

  Kane, infuriatingly, grinned. ‘You’re very cute when you try to be cutting. Perhaps because it’s so out of character.’

  Trust him to leave her speechless. She recovered quickly. ‘I won’t be needed in that case.’

  ‘Now, whatever gives you that idea?’

  Lost for words twice in the space of as many seconds, Shannon contented herself by glaring icily, and he relented with a mock gesture of surrender.

  ‘OK. You’re still needed…’ he let the words linger tantalisingly in the silence between them ‘…because I have a visitor to see you. Waiting in the kitchen, as a matter of fact.’ He strode off, leaving her to hurriedly get out of her coat and trip along behind him while she frantically tried to work out who this so-called visitor was. Only a handful of people knew where she lived.

  ‘What visitor?’ she managed to hiss before they reached the kitchen, and he stopped so abruptly to face her that she nearly staggered into his chest.

  ‘No introductions will be needed. That’s all I’ll say. Wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.’

  He stood dramatically aside for her to precede him and then waited behind as Shannon walked into the kitchen and her visitor stood up with arms outstretched.

  ‘Mum! What are you doing here?’ She was aware of Kane standing behind her and she didn’t have to look at his face to know that he was the arch-manipulator behind her mother’s sudden appearance on the scene. Arch-manipulator with a specific purpose in mind, and the purpose, she suspected wildly, had nothing to do with a tender reunion of mother and daughter for a cup of tea and a cosy chat.

  By way of response, her mother engulfed her in a hug, then stood back and inspected her from arm’s length.

  ‘Shannon, you’ve lost weight.’

  Her mother was a slender woman with short brown hair
and a habit of looking ferocious when she chose. Right now she was looking ferociously at her daughter and Shannon quailed and stammered out something in-articulate by way of denial.

  ‘Don’t you try and tell me I’m wrong,’ her mother countered with a voice that precluded any further debate on the subject. ‘You’ve lost weight and your lovely gentleman friend had every right to be concerned.’ She gave the lovely gentleman friend a warm conspirational look and Shannon controlled the insane impulse to spin around and sock him on his gloating jaw.

  ‘He’s not my lovely gentleman friend, Mum. He’s my employer and he has no reason to be concerned about me. I have told him that,’ she said in a voice laced with the promise of retribution, ‘so I hope he hasn’t made the mistake of fetching you all the way from Ireland over nothing!’

  ‘I don’t think my baby’s welfare is nothing,’ her mother said reprovingly, so that Shannon wanted to groan. ‘You led me to believe that everything was a bed of roses down here, Shannon. I thank my good Lord that this young man of yours had the sense to call me up and let me know one or two facts!’

  ‘He’s not my young man.’

  The young man in question finally saw fit to sidle past Shannon into the kitchen and offer her a cup of coffee.

  ‘Or something stronger, although it is a little on the early side for wine…’

  ‘Oh, my Shannon doesn’t drink. A good, strong cup of tea for the both of us would be a delight. Then we can have a nice little chat about things.’

  ‘Very sensible,’ Kane agreed, ignoring the killing look that Shannon directed at him.

  ‘Things?’ Shannon said weakly. ‘What things?’

  ‘Why don’t you two ladies go to the sitting room and I’ll bring the tea through?’ Kane said, giving her a soothing smile that made her want to breathe fire. ‘And some of those lovely home-made shortbread biscuits you brought with you, Rose.’

  Rose? Rose? So now he and her mother were on first-name terms? She watched aghast as her mother gave him another warm smile, the warm smile of someone who had fallen victim to Kane Lindley’s charm. Shannon felt herself hustled out of the kitchen by her mother tugging her along and only had a fleeting opportunity to glance backwards over her shoulder at Kane who was busying himself with a tin on the counter, presumably home of the lovely shortbread biscuits.

  ‘What a beautiful house, wouldn’t you agree?’ Rose said, looking approvingly around her as they passed through the hall and into the sitting room. ‘Kane gave me a guided tour of the house and I must say it’s beautiful. So quiet in the midst of all this noise and pollution. A haven, if that’s the word I’m looking for.’

  ‘He gave you a guided tour? How long have you been here, Mum?’

  ‘Oh since around eleven-thirty this morning, darling. You really do look gaunt, Shannon. You haven’t been eating properly, have you? And I thought you were old enough to look after yourself down here. I should have known better! Didn’t I tell you that it would be a mistake, coming here to London? On your own? Away from your family?’ She was shaking her head as she said this and Shannon felt as though various lifelines were slipping away, out of her grasp, leaving her defenceless and gasping for air.

  ‘Mum…’

  ‘Now, don’t you “Mum” me, Shannon.’ She sat down and primly folded her hands on her lap.

  ‘Kane had no right to get in touch with you.’

  ‘He had every right, my girl. It’s a blessing that there’s someone in this godless city who cares about your welfare. He explained how worried he was at the state of your living quarters—’

  ‘My living quarters are fine, Mum!’ Shannon protested feebly. ‘Adequate, at any rate.’

  ‘Well, my girl, I’ll be the judge of that. Kane suggested that the best thing might be if I go with you to have a look for myself.’

  Shannon’s last remaining wall of defence crumbled in the face of the implacable steamroller now looking at her, and there was a minute of respectful silence while she contemplated the outcome of any such impending visit to her bedsit. There was no opportunity to vent her fury at the instigator of it all until much later that night, after her mother had been ensconced in a bed in one of the guest rooms.

  ‘You…you…rat!’ Shannon spluttered, stamping into the kitchen to confront a cool, calm and collected Kane who had managed to spend the evening further ingratiating himself into her mother’s good books by saying all the right things, making all the right noises and behaving in the sort of gallant manner calculated to overcome all maternal obstacles.

  ‘Coffee? Nightcap?’

  ‘Don’t you coffee and nightcap me!’ She looked at him with withering rage. ‘How dare you bring my poor mother all the way here just to suit yourself?’

  ‘Sit down. You look as though you’re about to explode,’ he said with his vast mastery of understatement. He indicated a chair at the kitchen table facing him and Shannon flung herself into it, making choked noises under her breath.

  ‘Now, why don’t you get a grip and we can discuss this like two adults?’ He was drinking a glass of port and appeared utterly serene in the face of her blistering gaze. ‘Sure you won’t join me in a glass of port? My little teetotaller? Tut, tut, tut, fancy letting your mother think that you hated the demon drink…’

  ‘I’ll join you in a glass of port,’ Shannon informed him through gritted teeth, ‘if you’ll allow me to pour it over that conniving head of yours.’

  He shook his head and poured her a glass. ‘Now you’re being childish. You have to admit that your mother saw my point of view completely, and aren’t you happy that she felt confident about giving you her blessing to shelter under my roof until you found somewhere more respectable to live? I told her all about Eleanor, of course, and she was delighted to think that you would be joining in a family instead of living on your own.’

  ‘My life is none of your business! You had no right—’

  ‘You don’t want to accept help, but accepting help sometimes can show strength of character. If you’re nervous about sharing my house…’

  ‘Nervous? Why on earth should I be nervous?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps you think that things might be different somehow if you moved in. Less of an employer-employee situation…’

  ‘I don’t think anything of the sort,’ Shannon told him frigidly, distracted from her argument by his sweeping assumption that his presence might affect her somehow. Did he imagine that at closer quarters she might develop an unlikely crush?

  ‘Then what’s the problem with accepting a helping hand for a month or two until you find somewhere else? Your freedom won’t in any way be curtailed. I’m not going to take advantage of your good nature…’ He paused and stroked his chin reflectively. ‘Well, perhaps good nature is a bit strong,’ he murmured slyly. ‘Put it this way, you can come and go as you please.’

  ‘How did you manage to persuade my mother to come here? How did you know where she lived?’

  ‘Your next of kin on your personnel file in answer to question two. And in answer to question one, I simply appealed to her good sense to come and see how you were.’

  ‘Ugh. Sickening.’ She knew that she would get precisely nowhere if she continued ranting and railing. Her mother had been pathetic enough over Mrs Porter’s superbly prepared dinner, treating Kane as though he was the impersonation of everything wonderful and even having the cheek to slide her the odd glance or two indicating how much she approved of him.

  Her mother, who had always been a dragon of embarrassing, inquisitive questions when it came to her boyfriends, had melted in the face of Kane’s studied thoughtfulness. She had treated Shannon’s stuttering, wrath-filled protests over the washing-up with incomprehension, pointing out that she should be grateful to have found such a considerate employer who was responsible enough to take an interest in her well-being. After half an hour of this, Shannon had felt like flinging herself over the edge of the nearest precipice.

  ‘Your mother didn’t seem to
think I was sickening.’

  Shannon eyed him narrowly. ‘She’s probably suffering from undiagnosed senile dementia.’

  ‘In fact, she thought I was a very responsible, thoughtful kind of guy…as she herself said on several occasions if my memory serves me right…’

  Shannon wondered how she was ever going to spend even a week in the company of someone who had a tendency to get under her skin like a worrisome burr without going mad. But move in she would because she had been left no option.

  Her mother had been predictably appalled at the bedsit, peering at everything, checking her fridge, clucking her tongue, shaking her head and generally acting as though the mere fact that her beloved daughter had lived in such a place without informing her constituted a mortal sin. She had implied to her trailing daughter that she had somehow been rescued by her saintly employer from a vicious fate of assault at knifepoint and had then proceeded to deliver a scathing lecture on her poor eating habits. As though the loss of a few pounds were somehow inextricably linked to her living arrangements.

  ‘Well, if I move in here—’

  ‘When, you mean.’

  ‘I intend to lay down a few ground rules,’ she continued, ignoring Kane’s smug interruption. ‘First of all, I don’t work as an out-of-hours secretary if you have anything that needs typing. Secondly, I don’t want anyone looking over my shoulder at what I’m doing—’

  ‘Will you be doing anything that might tempt me to do that?’ he asked mildly.

  ‘And, thirdly, I don’t intend to clock in and out and ask permission to breathe. Oh, and, fourthly, I have to give you some rent money.’

  ‘Absolutely no rent money,’ he said forbiddingly.

  ‘I don’t like the idea of accepting favours,’ Shannon informed him stiffly.

  ‘Why ever not? Sometimes it’s important to see the big picture or else we end up missing valuable opportunities by getting entangled in the little things. One of the most important pieces of advice I can give you is to have long-term vision.’