Instead of protesting, which was what she should have done, she hesitated, and that brief hesitation was enough. Helen looked at her viciously and nodded.
‘Decided to get in there while the going was good, did you? You little bitch!’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Francesca said weakly, knowing that it was too late, that her moment’s silence had cost her dear.
‘Took advantage because he was on his own? Or did he decide that you would do, you would tide him through a bad night?’
‘I’m going.’ Francesca began walking towards the door, hoping that the other girl would not pursue her down to the ground floor, because in a lift there would be no escape.
‘I should have known that that butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth face of yours was a put-on,’ she spat out, and Francesca saw with distaste that the venom there was a case of the cat thinking that its cream had been heartily lapped up in its absence.
‘I’ll make sure that everyone within a twenty-mile radius knows what’s going on,’ she said, with a cold smile, and Francesca stopped in her tracks.
She hadn’t wanted this argument, but now that she was embroiled in it, she felt angry blood rush to her head. ‘If you do,’ she said quietly, ‘I’ll make sure that Oliver knows exactly who started the gossip, and you’ll soon find yourself out of a job.’
She had never threatened anyone in her life before, and she was shaking like a leaf. They stared at each other wordlessly for a few seconds, and she could tell that Helen was digesting that, wondering whether spreading her story was worth her job—her no doubt highly paid job.
‘I’ll make sure that you pay,’ she contented herself with saying. ‘Somehow.’
The lift came and Francesca hopped in, pressing the ground-floor button and breathing a sigh of relief when she realised that the other girl was not going to step in with her.
She still felt hot at the thought of that conversation. She should have denied it all; she should have left the office before they’d even got to that stage; she should have laughed off the suggestion. She should have, should have, should have. But she hadn’t.
Helen Scott was basically an unpleasant person; Francesca had always known that from the very first moment that she had set eyes on her. She shuddered at the thought that that sly, curling mouth might start rumours snowballing through the building.
When she got into her flat the telephone was ringing, and Francesca picked up the receiver, balancing it under her chin while she tried to wriggle out of her coat. It was Oliver.
‘I’ll be delayed by a bit more than a week,’ he said, with his usual lack of preliminaries. His voice sounded distant and hollow, and there was a slight crackle down the line. ‘Things are moving slightly slower here than I had imagined.’ There was a sigh, and she could imagine him rubbing his eyes with his thumbs.
‘No problem,’ she said brightly, feeling utterly dejected at this piece of news. ‘I’m doing fine at work. I’ve been in touch with Ben Johnson about that contract and I shall fax him the information he wants tomorrow first thing.’ She thought of Helen and wondered what he would say if she told him that on another front things weren’t humming along nicely at all.
‘Good,’ he said in a clipped voice. ‘And how are you?’
‘Nice of you to ask,’ she replied, suddenly happy. ‘I’m fine.’
‘So you’re fine and work is fine.’ There was a touch of harshness in his voice and she speculated on what that meant. Was he missing her? Had he hoped that she wouldn’t be fine, that she would be missing him? She couldn’t hear him very well, though, and long-distance lines distorted voices, but if her imagination was playing tricks on her then her imagination was also doing a good job of improving her mood.
Not that she was about to tell him how she was really feeling. She knew that he wanted to be casual about their relationship, and she intended to be as casual about it as he was. If he got the slightest idea that she was playing a game of deadly seriousness, then he would turn his back on her faster than the speed of light.
‘Shall I postpone all those meetings that were lined up for you on your return?’ she asked, still in her cheerful voice.
‘Of course,’ he said briefly. ‘I can hardly be in two places at once, can I?’
They chatted about work for a while longer, and when he rang off she was feeling distinctly happier than she had been an hour previously.
On the spur of the moment she decided to give Rupert a call, and after a few sheepish apologies from him about not being in touch recently she talked him into coming over.
‘You can share dinner with me,’ she said temptingly. ‘Corned beef sandwiches.’
‘Irresistible.’ He laughed. ‘I’m on my way.’
Actually—and she told herself that that had not been the point of the phone call—she wanted to ask him about Imogen.
And he had expected that. She could tell from the expression on his face the minute he walked through the door. It was a mixture of guilt and wariness, and as soon as he had been settled with a glass of wine—the only alcohol in the place—he said, obviously taking the bull by the horns, ‘I meant to tell you, I’m going out with someone you know. Imogen Sattler.’ There was hearty bluster in his voice, but his face was red.
‘Really?’ Francesca said, raising her eyebrows expressively, and he battled on, not drinking, his hands cradling the glass.
‘I would have told you sooner, but you know how it is…’ His voice fizzled out and she smiled.
‘Naughty, naughty Rupert. Imogen Sattler was spoken for.’
‘The engagement is off.’
Francesca looked at him, frowning, thinking. Earlier, speaking to Oliver on the phone, she had pushed aside any uncomfortable thoughts about what had happened between him and Imogen. Now she found herself wondering. She found herself thinking of Helen. ‘Did he decide that you would do; you would tide him through a bad night?’
‘Neither of us meant anything to happen, Frankie.’ The bluster had given way to earnestness, and he leaned forward. ‘I thought she was fun, not like the other girls I’ve met in the past.’ He frowned, and tried to be more descriptive than that. ‘When I first saw her I didn’t think she was that attractive. I mean, I thought she was a very nice-looking girl, but…’
‘But not along the lines of Linda Baker,’ Francesca filled in wryly, and he gave her a dry look in return. Linda Baker had been one of his past girlfriends—an impeccably beautiful girl with an impeccable background and not much happening between her two ears. If the rooms in Imogen’s head were all filled and busy, there had been quite a few in Linda’s which hadn’t been opened up for a while—if ever.
‘But not along the lines of Linda Baker,’ he agreed. ‘I also thought that she was humouring me when she told me how much she enjoyed the nightclub—you know, the time I dragged her and that boss of yours along.’
Francesca nodded. ‘And things just went on from there, Rupert?’
‘She phoned me up. We chatted. I telephoned her. I happened to be passing right outside her office one day and we went out for a drink. It was all above board, honestly.’
‘You don’t have to convince me of anything, Rupert,’ she said mildly. ‘I’m not here to sit in judgement on you.’
‘I feel badly about Oliver Kemp, though,’ he muttered, and she knew that he would. It was not in his nature to steal other men’s girlfriends, but theft, in that instance, would have been a two-way affair, wouldn’t it?
‘We just had so much to talk about,’ he clarified helplessly. ‘She was different. She had more intelligence in one little finger than all the other girls I’d ever been out with combined. I couldn’t understand what she saw in a lump like me. I don’t suppose I ever will.’
There was such genuine wonder in his voice that Francesca had to smile. It would not occur to him that what he had was unique—his good nature, his thoughtfulness, his happy, carefree disposition. It was a different kind of appeal from the overt aggressive masculinity
that Oliver had, but she thought, it carried its own weight.
‘I began to think about her all the time,’ he carried on. ‘I stopped going out. I felt that I needed to be by the phone in case she called. We weren’t sleeping together,’ he felt compelled to add, ‘but we both knew that it would happen, and we both knew that she had to break off the engagement.
‘She told me that she and Oliver had been friends for years, but that the engagement had been a mistake. Friendship had never matured into love. At least not for her. She had thought at the time that it would be enough, but then she met me…’ He couldn’t prevent a small, satisfied smile from forming.
‘So there you have it. As it turned out, Oliver called the whole thing off anyway. Told her that she deserved to pursue what she wanted.’ He sipped some of the wine and sat back with his fingers entwined on his lap. ‘Any questions?’
He sounded like a professor addressing his students, and Francesca shook her head. No questions. None that concerned him, anyway.
She listened while Rupert spent the next couple of hours chatting, mostly about Imogen, but things were going around in her head, and as soon as he left she began thoughtfully tidying the room.
Oliver had broken the engagement, true enough, but from where she was standing, with the jigsaw pieces neatly slotted together, it seemed very much like an act of generosity propelled by circumstance. His lover had wanted to be free and he had given her her freedom before she could demand it.
‘Did he decide that you would do?’
A man on the rebound could be very undiscriminating, couldn’t he? Was that why Oliver had come to see her? The woman he loved had told him that she was not in love with him, was going out with someone else, in fact, and he knew where he could find a willing woman with whom he could drown his sorrows? He hadn’t looked like a man with a broken heart when he had come round, but then, thinking about it, Oliver Kemp was not the sort of man to walk around with a long face, was he?
No wonder he had told her that he wasn’t interested in commitment. He was committed somewhere else—that was the reason.
On the rebound, she thought to herself. I had flung myself at him once, and he had walked away because his heart was somewhere else. He knew where to come; he knew that I would not turn him away. He didn’t know why, but that didn’t matter.
What mattered was that she would now have to face the truth. Oliver Kemp wanted a body—temporarily—and she was no longer happy to be a yielding one just because she had optimistically believed that time would make love grow. The soil there was barren. Nothing would grow.
Oliver Kemp loved Imogen, with her intellect, her gritty rise from rags to riches. He probably loved her more now that she was out of reach and for ever would be.
He could never love me, Francesca thought, with my cosseted upbringing and an intellect that has never had to strive to attain anything.
Now she was glad that he wasn’t going to be back on schedule—glad that she had been given time to compose herself and do what she knew she had to do.
CHAPTER SIX
‘YOU look sick,’ Helen said with a sort of nasty satisfaction. They were in the cloakroom and Francesca was staring at her reflection in the mirror and wondering whether a dab of lipstick might improve her green complexion.
‘I feel fine,’ she muttered, lying. She felt awful. In fact, she had been feeling awful for the past fortnight, thinking about Oliver and that resignation letter which he would find on his desk when he returned the following morning.
‘Could have fooled me.’ Helen stood behind her so that their eyes met in the mirror. ‘Claire Burns said that you looked like death warmed up when she came to see you the other morning.’
Claire Burns, thought Francesca, wouldn’t have been snide with it.
‘You should be feeling on top of the world, what with your lover coming back tomorrow.’
Francesca couldn’t help a furtive look around to make sure that the cloakroom was empty, even though she knew that it was, and Helen laughed slyly.
‘The coast is clear,’ she said, sneering. ‘Just the two of us and our little secret.’ Which only made Francesca feel sick all over again, and she rushed into the toilet, only just managing to slam the door behind her.
When she emerged Helen had gone, and she slowly made her way back to her office. Her resignation letter was sitting in the top drawer of her desk like an unexploded bomb, and it had been there ever since Rupert had visited her at the flat, ever since her mind had been made up for her, and she had been drained of all reason for living. Or so it seemed.
It was just as well that she had never let him suspect her feelings for him, and just as well that she had kept their telephone conversation for the past weeks on a cheerful, impersonal note, never once betraying how much she yearned for those few minutes every day when she would hear his distant voice down the line.
In fact, since she had made up her mind to resign she had made sure that her voice was downright cool. That way she could prepare herself for the inevitable.
Nevertheless, Francesca was highly nervous the following morning when she arrived at work. She had left her unexploded bomb on his desk, so that he could read it and digest it without her standing in front of him like a tense schoolgirl.
She still had to face her father about her decision, and the quicker she left, the quicker her life could carry on.
I’ll get over him in no time at all, she told herself, hanging her coat on the peg and walking across to her desk. She hadn’t quite made it there when the connecting door opened, and she half turned, feeling a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach when she saw Oliver standing there, looming in the doorway, his eyes cold.
The impact of seeing him again after more than four weeks only made her realise how devastatingly handsome he was. She had forgotten how tall and overpowering his physical presence was, though she hadn’t forgotten the sort of effect he had on her. He was having that effect now. She looked at him and felt that rush of awareness, that excited sensitivity to every last little detail of his appearance.
She also had a sudden, very sharp and very unwelcome memory of the last time they’d seen each other, naked and in bed after the most wonderful night she had ever had in her entire life—a night when foolish optimism had been born and cold reality had been conveniently shoved into the background.
Foolish optimism, she thought, was hardly a worthwhile emotion, but she would certainly have preferred it to the lurch of dread that washed over her now, making her feel dizzy.
‘Come into my office.’ His face was unsmiling when he said that, and before she could say anything he had turned his back and vanished.
Francesca took three deep breaths to steady herself and followed him, quietly closing the door behind her. Then she sat down on the chair facing him and folded her arms on her lap.
‘Did everything go all right on your trip?’ she asked when the silence had stretched so taut that she could feel nervous perspiration breaking out all over her.
He was sitting staring at her, his eyes hard, his elbows resting on his desk. ‘What does this mean?’ He ignored her pleasantry, which she had known he would, and picked up the letter between two fingers as though it were contagious.
‘Oh,’ Francesca replied, her mind going blank, ‘so you’ve read it.’
‘No,’ he answered, his deep voice thick with sarcasm. ‘I’ve called you in here so that I could play a guessing game with you. Of course I’ve damn well read it.’ He stood up so abruptly that she jumped, and then he stalked across to the window; he perched on the ledge and looked at her, his arms folded.
She had rehearsed this little scene quite a number of times in her head, but now, reluctantly staring up at his menacing figure, she realised that no amount of dress rehearsals had prepared her for this.
‘Might I ask why you’ve decided to resign?’ he asked coldly, and she licked her lips.
‘Ah.’ She frowned and struggled to remember her little speech
. ‘I’ve decided that this isn’t the sort of job that I’m looking for,’ she said, which bore no resemblance at all to her rehearsed speech.
‘Too uninteresting?’ His mouth curled.
‘No. It’s very stimulating,’ she responded quickly, truthfully.
‘Not well paid enough?’
‘No, of course not! I have no idea where I could get a job with a bigger salary.’
‘So why are you leaving a stimulating job with an incomparable pay cheque?’
Good question, she thought miserably, trying to come up with an equally good answer. ‘It’s just not what I’m looking for…’ was all she could find to say, and his brows snapped together in an angry frown.
‘Oh, let’s stop playing games, Francesca, shall we? Why don’t you admit that the reason you’re leaving is because we slept together.’
There was a heavy silence, and the colour crept into her face.
‘That has nothing to do with it,’ she muttered, and he banged his fist on the table.
‘Stop it!’
‘All right, then!’ she snapped, her head flying up. ‘I admit it. I’m leaving because we slept together.’
‘Well, at least we’re getting somewhere now.’ He sat back down at his desk. ‘What difference does it make to your job whether we went to bed together or not?’
‘I can’t work with you and…’
‘Oh, grow up, Francesca,’ he said impatiently. ‘Do you think that I’m going to make passes at you the minute you set foot inside the office?’
‘No!’ This was another one of those verbal traps, she thought. He was very good at that. He should have been a lawyer.
‘Then…?’ He gave her a cool, stripping look, and she had to force herself not to launch into a mumbling, incoherent explanation.
‘It’s just that I’ve decided that I’m not attracted to you. When I first came here you told me in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t your type, and I guess you’re not my type either.’ She was sure that he would see through that; she was sure that anyone would see through a lie that was as big as a house, but his expression didn’t change, and when he replied the temperature in his voice had dropped by a couple of degrees.
To Tame a Proud Heart Page 9
