by Anne Weale
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Excerpt
About the Author
Title Page
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Copyright
Marc looked amused. “For
a girl with such a kissable
mouth you have a remarkably
prim manner.”
“Sometimes you make remarks some people would define as…improper,” she said in a low, tense voice.
“It’s outside working hours, Sophie. Tonight you are one of my guests and I’ll say what I please…I’m sure you’re aware that you have an alluring mouth.”
“I’ve never been called prim before.”
“Perhaps you aren’t…with other men. Perhaps it’s only with me that you back off.” As he spoke, his fingers slid up from her wrist to enfold her hand. Sophie felt her defenses melting like butter in the sun. Surely he couldn’t intend to kiss her again?
Anne Weale was still at school when a women’s magazine published some of her stories. At twenty-five she had her first novel accepted by Harlequin. Now, with a grown-up son and still happily married to her first love, Anne divides her life between her winter home, a Spanish village ringed by mountains and vineyards, and a summer place in Guernsey, one of the many islands around the world she has used as backgrounds for her books.
Look out in September for Anne Weale’s seventieth book—
A Marriage Has Been Arranged:
Holly knew she wasn’t beautiful, but still hoped that one day she’d find a man who would love her and wed her. Trouble was, the only man she had ever really wanted was Pierce Sutherland! But what chance did she have with a man like him? Women like her glamorous blonde stepsister had always been much more his type. Which was why she had been shocked at this errant bachelor’s proposal. Pierce Sutherland wanted to marry her—plain old Holly! But could her pride allow her to accept a man who was marrying her not for love but convenience?
Only in Harlequin Romance!
Sophie’s Secret
Anne Weale
CHAPTER ONE
SITTING in the Air France departure lounge for Concorde passengers at New York’s Kennedy Airport, Sophie Hill looked as calm and confident as the rest of the cosseted travellers waiting to board their supersonic flight across the Atlantic to Paris.
But her air of relaxed composure was superficial. Inwardly she was tense with excitement and uncertainty.
In her elegant suit and discreetly stylish jewellery, Sophie could easily have passed for a rising star in the legal or banking world, setting out on assignment to Europe. In fact she was a member of the quietly influential network of top people’s personal assistants. After starting her career by temping for a large secretarial agency to gain experience, and then working in France for a time, following that with a spell in London, for the past two years she had been PA to a New York insurance broker.
Now she was joining the payroll of someone even more important: the man at the summit of a vast international empire—but a man who kept a low profile and was said to maintain a press relations department to keep his name out of the papers.
Sophie had expected to fly business class to Italy. To find herself suddenly transferred to the Concorde flight to Paris had been unexpected, and she still didn’t know the reason behind the last-minute change of plan. It seemed that, in addition to paying them exceptionally generous salaries, her new employer treated his worldwide team of personal assistants with unusual consideration.
All the same, she would have felt happier had she been able to meet him before signing the contract to work for him. The position she was taking up had some unexplained aspects that made her faintly uneasy.
She hadn’t applied for the job because of its tempting salary. Its location had been the main lure. She would be working in Venice, arguably the most beautiful and romantic city in the world.
Shortly before take-off time, with most of the passengers already boarded, a latecomer entered the Concorde lounge.
Observant by nature and training, Sophie had already cast an interested eye over her fellow passengers, both those who had arrived before her and those who had followed her in. But the man who was pausing to speak to the ground stewardess by the entrance had things about him to catch the eye and the interest of even a less alert woman.
He was very tall and, despite being casually dressed, carried himself with a recognisable air of authority. Most of the men on this flight wore the uniform of chief executives: well-tailored city suits with expensive shirts and shoes, and the costly accessories appropriate to their standing.
The tall man wore cream-coloured trousers, a white shirt, open at the neck, and a single-breasted black jacket with the matt look of fine barathea. While Sophie and all the other passengers had overcoats, raincoats and various other accoutrements, he had brought nothing but a book.
As she watched him speaking to the stewardess, to her astonishment the girl nodded and indicated Sophie. With a word of thanks the tall man turned away from the desk, his stride bringing him swiftly to where she was sitting.
‘Good morning, Sophie. I’m Marc Washington.’
Her job had taught her to maintain an appearance of unflappability in the face of almost any contingency. Even so, to be confronted by her new employer in these circumstances was the last thing she had anticipated and a severe test of her self-possession. She passed it, but only by a whisker.
‘Good morning, Mr Washington. I wasn’t expecting to meet you here.’
‘Having to cope with the unexpected is one of the elements of working for me,’ he replied as they shook hands. ‘The flight is an opportunity for us to get acquainted. Shall we…?’ The unfinished question was accompanied by a gesture in the direction of the boarding tunnel.
After stooping to pick up her bag, her book and her lightweight raincoat, she accompanied him across the lounge, her own height of five feet eight dwarfed by his much taller frame.
Although she had not had long to take in his features full face, her mind retained an impression of dark eyes under black eyebrows and a naturally olive skin still deepened by a summer tan.
But, of course, for a man of his means sunlight was available all year. Although he might have to spend much of his time in capital cities where winter brought bad weather, weekends at ski resorts or sailing from sunlit marinas would not, for him, be a rare treat. They would be frequent occurrences.
Somehow, with not much to go on, she had assumed Marc Washington would be a middle-aged workaholic, obsessed by high finance and complex power games. But he looked to be still in his thirties, with the physique of a man who kept fit in pleasurable ways—not, like her previous boss, by working out on machines in an expensive downtown gymnasium because his physician advised it.
From talking to other PAs whose bosses used Concorde regularly, Sophie knew the most coveted seats were the four at the front, often occupied by royalty. Today, two of these seats had been kept for Marc Washington and herself.
As a stewardess in a double-buttoned deep blue dress took her raincoat away Sophie couldn’t help wondering if her name would have been memorised had she been travelling alone, instead of as the companion of a man whose name might not appear in the newspapers but was sure to be flagged as a VIP on the database of regular Concorde users.
As she sat down and fastened the seat belt across her hips, the sight of her knees reminded Sophie of one of the key qualifications required in candidates for the job she had won. Great legs.
That proviso, with its sexist implications, had almost put her off applying. But the prospect of working in Venice had overcome her disquiet that Marc Washington might expect more than secretarial services from the women he employed to smooth his working life.
Now, because he was younger than she had expected, and gave an immediate impression of powerful virility, her unease resurfaced. Was he going to expect her to be his playgirl by night as well as his PA by day?
In general Sophie took a relaxed view of the natural hazards of being a presentable female. Perhaps she had been lucky. So far the men she had worked with had not been the kind who made unwelcome passes.
But the man settling his broad shoulders against the backrest next to hers was a totally unknown quantity. He might be a macho type who saw the entire female sex as an extended harem from which he could select whoever took his fancy and expect an amenable response.
If he thought that because he was paying her an exceptionally high salary he was entitled to everything she had to give, he could think again. In Sophie’s view the duties of a PA went a long way beyond those of most employees in terms of time and support. They didn’t include the kind of personal attentions he might have in mind.
Not, to be fair to him, that Marc Washington was giving the female cabin staff the once-over like the elderly lecher seated across the aisle. Her new employer seemed unaware that a great pair of legs belonging to one of the stewardesses was in close-up view while its owner spoke to another member of the cabin staff. He was arranging his own long legs.
Sophie chose to keep hers angled out of sight, apart from a few inches of black-hosed knees exposed by the hem of the black skirt which went with the black and cream plaid jacket and cream silk shirt she had chosen to travel in.
In her working life she strove to emulate the understated chic of top career women ten years her senior. The colours she loved, and which matched her large blue-green eyes, were confined to her scarf and underwear drawers and to the contents of the jewellery roll now in her capacious travelling bag.
Although it seemed unlikely that any Concorde passengers would be suffering from pre-flight nerves, they were offered champagne before take-off.
‘Not for me, thank you,’ she said with a smile, when the steward presented the tray to her. ‘But I would like a glass of water…when you have time.’
‘You don’t like champagne, or you don’t drink alcohol at all?’ Marc Washington asked her after the steward had passed by, leaving him holding a glass of the gently fizzing wine.
‘On the contrary, with pasta suppers at my New York neighbourhood trattoria I always drank my share of the carafe of house wine,’ she answered. Impulsively she added, ‘To be honest, I’m on a stratospheric high already…what with being on the way to Venice and the surprise of finding myself flying Concorde.’
Marc Washington’s mouth didn’t alter but his eyes did. Suddenly they gleamed with amusement.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said as the supersonic aircraft rose from the ground. ‘Your composure suggested otherwise. I have a powerful thirst for life, Sophie, and I like the people around me to feel the same way. My impression, when we shook hands, was of someone noticeably guarded in their responses. It didn’t tally with Audrey LaRue’s impression that you were exactly right for the Venetian assignment.’
‘That’s good to hear,’ said Sophie. ‘I wanted the job very much and I’m looking forward to starting it. Mrs LaRue explained that liaising with the Venetian civic authorities would be an important part of it, but beyond that I know very little.’
‘That’s why we’re travelling together, so that I can explain it to you. Your dossier says you’ve been to Venice before. How long did you spend there?’
This was a question Sophie wanted to sidestep. To answer it fully would be painful to her, and anyway the whole truth was none of his business.
She said, ‘Longer than the majority of tourists who, so I read, spend an average of sixteen hours there. I know the city a little better than they do, but not as well as I’d like to.’
Fortunately her answer seemed to satisfy him. ‘By the time my project is accomplished you’ll know it well,’ he assured her. ‘I hope the problems you’re going to have to deal with won’t spoil the place for you.’
‘I’m sure they won’t. What sort of problems will they be?’
As she spoke they were handed menus.
‘Before I go into that, let’s decide what to eat.’
For some seconds, as he fixed his attention on the dishes listed on the card, she was able to study his face more closely than had been possible until now.
As a small child she had been taught to give close attention to the structure of people’s faces, to observe how their mouths drooped or curled, to notice how features varied and to read the signs revealing a person’s character.
‘Faces are maps…maps of experience and temperament.’ She remembered the voice and the remark as clearly as if she had heard it yesterday.
What kind of man and what kind of life was mapped in Marc Washington’s face? She found it impossible to tell. She could recognise his charisma but she couldn’t begin to guess what lay behind it. At this stage of their acquaintance he was a complete enigma.
Working for him would change that. The old French quote ‘No man is a hero to his valet’ could nowadays be updated to, No man is a mystery to his PA.
Her last boss had been a nice man with a stable marriage and no affairs on the side. At present she didn’t even know if Marc Washington had a wife, an ex-wife or two, or a succession of girlfriends.
When a stewardess came to take their orders for lunch, Sophie asked for curried apricot and mint soup followed by a nest of quail’s eggs with an asparagus salad and, for pudding, poached pears in red wine fruit jelly.
Marc Washington’s choices were more robust. He had decided to start with oysters, followed by saddle of hare in a mustard sauce with several vegetables. He concluded his order with the three-layer chocolate mousse.
‘Did your friends give you a send-off at that West Side trattoria you party at?’
As she hadn’t mentioned the restaurant’s location she concluded he must remember the address from her dossier. If his memory was as retentive as that, she would have to be doubly sure she never forgot any details.
She smiled at him. ‘Yes, they did. I made some good friends during my time in America. I’m glad I crossed the Atlantic, but I’m glad to be going back to Europe.’
At this point their meal began. A week or two earlier Sophie’s ex-boss had received a brochure about the Air France Concorde. She had read it, never expecting to travel on it. Recently the interior of the aircraft had been redesigned by the internationally famous André Putman, whose approach to design was simplicity rather than ostentatious luxury.
Sophie had already noticed that the headrest covers were of crisp white cotton piqué protecting a subdued upholstery of finely ribbed grey and beige wool. The tablecloths had hem-stitched edges, the starkly simple white china was narrowly rimmed with blue, and the cutlery was presented in a roll of corrugated paper tied with a matching cord. It was all a far cry from the garish colours and emphasis on synthetics of most airlines. Clearly Marc Washington took all this elegance for granted. Perhaps he had never experienced any other kind of in-flight meal.
As she dipped her spoon in her soup the memory of the horrible refreshments on a cut-price flight to Mexico, where she and her friend Merle had spent Christmas, made Sophie smile inwardly. Yet, even after that uncomfortable flight, perhaps they had enjoyed thems
elves as much as these Concorde passengers at their fivestar resorts or in their luxurious houses.
As it seemed her companion preferred to enjoy his oysters in silence, she didn’t speak while they ate. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the leisurely movements of his long fingers and the light catching the glass and metal of the watch protruding from the edge of his white shirt-cuff.
It wasn’t an ostentatious watch, nor, although they were well kept, were his nails professionally manicured, she noticed. But in a line-up of all the expensively tailored, smoothly groomed men on this aircraft he would stand out for many reasons.
As she often did, she heard an echo from the past. ‘Don’t be a conformist, Sophie. Don’t run with the herd. Go your own way.’
But she had conformed. With her living to earn and no special talents to take her in a different direction, there had been no option but to join the big city ratrace.
While she was admiring her next course, a pale golden hollandaise sauce coating four quail’s eggs and overflowing their nest of puff pastry and puréed broccoli, her new employer broke his silence.
‘One of the best eggs I ever ate was a bantam’s, fried in olive oil, topping a sliver of mountain ham on a chunk of village bread,’ he said reminiscently. ‘It came with a glass of brandy on a very cold morning.’
‘Somewhere in Italy?’
‘No, in a scruffy little pueblo in the mountains of southern Spain. I’d been to the Sierra Nevada to see the world ski championships, but they had to be cancelled for lack of snow. So I spent a few days exploring the Alpujarra region.’
The way his tongue rolled the ‘r’s in the Spanish name made Sophie suspect he spoke the language. In her experience it was unusual for Americans to be linguists, unless their parents or grandparents had been immigrants. Those whose forebears had come to America a long time ago tended, like the British, to expect everyone to speak their language.
