Abigail’s legs were feeling distinctly shaky. ‘That,’ she said in a flat, dull voice, ‘is disgusting.’ Was that how he saw it as well? she wondered.
‘The truth often is.’ Fiona’s lips curled back into a smile of active dislike. ‘And on the subject of which, I found out a few little truths about you, my dear.’ She paused for effect. Fiona was accustomed to pausing for effect. It was something she did very well. ‘I decided to do a little digging into your past. You might send out innocent, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-your-mouth signals, but you’re a woman and I know better than to believe that there’s such a thing as an innocent woman. When Ross told me that you had broken off your engagement, I thought that I’d see what I could find out about you.’ She paused. ‘It wasn’t difficult. I rooted through your personnel file and found out the name of the company you used to work for, then I telephoned and said that I had interviewed you for a job and who could I talk to, in confidence, about your work. I said that I couldn’t speak to your present boss because he didn’t know that you were planning on leaving.’
‘You did that? You…How could you?’
‘Very easily, my dear.’ Her arched eyebrows conveyed malicious triumph. ‘And guess what? There was a man there who was simply dying to tell all, so to speak.’
Abigail was beginning to feel quite ill. Ellis. Dear Ellis whom she had spurned at that party a week ago.
‘I met him for a drink,’ Fiona said into the thick silence, ‘and he was most forthcoming. With a little flattery, I managed to have a very educational chat with him.’
‘Ross knows all about Ellis,’ Abigail said bluntly.
‘Ah, but does he know that you targeted your ex-boss because you thought that he was a good marriage prospect?’
‘I never did any such thing!’
‘And might he just assume, with a little prodding from me of course, that you targeted him in exactly the same way? Might he be led to think that you got engaged to that sweet little chap of yours because you were under the impression that he had more money than you later discovered? It’s so easy, my dear, isn’t it, to think that a man is made of the green stuff when he’s busy courting and making the right impression? Might he, and I only say might, reach the sad conclusion that you broke off your engagement and decided to go back to your original target as soon as you discovered the true state of affairs with your dear, sweet boyfriend?’
‘He might if he’s a certified idiot,’ Abigail said faintly and Fiona smiled.
‘But men are, aren’t they? Especially a suspicious man like Ross.’
‘Get out of my flat. Now.’
‘I intend to.’ Fiona swept herself back into her coat. ‘Leave him alone. Find someone else, someone on your own level. He’s mine! If you try and come between us, I’ll make sure that you regret it. I’ll tell him a thousand lies if I have to and he’ll believe them because there will be just enough there to sound like the gospel truth.’ She smiled a cold, hard smile. ‘That’s a promise. I’ve told my friends, my family, that Ross Anderson is the man for me and he will be.’
Abigail looked at her with pity. ‘Will be?’ she said scathingly. ‘Maybe we’re both chasing windmills.’
Fiona walked across to the door, her expression ice. ‘I,’ she said, ‘at least have a chance.’
She pulled open the door and slammed it behind her, and Abigail remained where she was, then slowly regained her strength and began clearing away the dishes. She had a bath, she changed, she brushed her hair, but she felt dead inside.
She didn’t want to think about what Ross meant to her. Every time the awful truth reared up in her head, she swept it aside until she got tired and gave in, and thought and thought until she felt her mind would explode.
All her adult life she had carried around the idea that love was safe and that safety was desirable, the one solid thing in a changing world. She had been a plain child, she had grown into a pleasant-looking but by no means beautiful woman, and she had had it instilled in her from an early age that happiness was finding someone on her own level. Ellis had been an exercise in finding out that painful truth, and when Martin had come along her brain had logically worked out that he fitted that description, and she had never considered the possibility of being stupid enough to reject that in favour of her boss, the one man whose easy charm and lazy sex appeal she had observed from the sidelines, thinking herself happily immune.
The only glimmer in what was a disastrous scenario was that Ross didn’t know that she loved him. That would have been the most humiliating thing that she could have imagined. Fiona, after only meeting her a couple of times, had guessed at the truth, but then women were often more intuitive than men.
She wondered what Ross’s reaction would be if he ever found out how she felt. Amusement, perhaps, then maybe a certain amount of wariness. He had warned her that love and marriage were not for him. If he even suspected for an instant that she had fallen in love with him, he would turn his back and walk away as quickly as he could, and that would be without Fiona’s version of truth-telling.
Fiona, she thought, was very optimistic if she imagined that she had the wherewithal to net him, but then there were always two sides to a story and Ross, intent on seduction, would hardly have told her that he was planning to marry another woman. She didn’t see him as capable of such deceit, but Fiona was determined, available and socially suitable, and many a man had capitulated for less. She was also dangerous and scheming.
The thoughts played through her brain over and over, until she finally fell into exhausted sleep and went in to work the following morning feeling zombie-like, but strangely calm. There were no more cobwebs in her mind, no more nagging doubts; the jigsaw puzzle was all in place. She loved Ross Anderson, it was a hopeless situation, and from that starting point everything she did could only go uphill.
She pictured the tunnel stretching in front of her, one in which there would be no more of him, no more surreptitious glances at his handsome, angular face which she knew as well as her own, no more rush of adrenalin whenever he was around. It was bleak, but she told herself that she could get over it. Time cured everything, didn’t it? Loving him was crazy and hurt like hell, but it wasn’t terminal.
She walked into her office, relieved to find that he hadn’t yet arrived, and sat down at her word processor. Then she switched on the screen and typed out her letter of resignation, which she folded into an envelope, and placed on top of his desk. He couldn’t miss it.
When he walked into the room an hour later, she looked up at him, smiled politely and then waited for the summons to come.
CHAPTER NINE
SHE waited half an hour, then an hour, and finally, when he did call her into the office, she was too nettled by his lack of response to feel apprehensive. Had she thought that she was so important in his life that he would hit the roof when he opened that little white envelope? On a personal front, Fiona had been right, Abigail thought bitterly. To Ross, she was little more than an interesting interlude, nothing to get worked up about. And on a work front, she might be a good secretary, but good secretaries were two a penny.
She looked at him calmly and then sat down on the chair facing him without a word.
It was only now, now that she had admitted her love for him to herself, that she realised how accustomed she had become to seeing him. For months she had watched him from a distance, storing up everything about him without even noticing that she was doing so. There was an awful lot that she would have to relegate to memory, and that filled her with a brief but painful sense of despair, but she kept her face blank, waiting for him to speak.
He had her letter in front of him, and he took it between two fingers, holding it as though it were something he had fished out of the bin, something a little unsavoury.
‘I take it that this is not a joke?’
‘No, it’s not,’ Abigail agreed tonelessly. The way his thick black hair sprang back from his face, that was something she would have to forget.<
br />
‘Fine.’ His voice was cool. ‘You’ll have to get to work on recruiting your replacement.’
That hurt. She hadn’t expected a flood of emotion, but this didn’t even qualify as a light shower.
‘Of course,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’ll be in touch with the employment agencies today, unless you’d like to recruit someone from inside the company.’
He shrugged and looked bored. ‘It’s all the same to me, just so long as she can do her job.’
‘I know Mary who works in the sales department has been looking for a change.’
‘Mary? Who’s Mary?’
‘She works for Mr McGregor’s team,’ Abigail said, and he nodded.
‘The blonde one with the legs?’
‘That’s right.’ Her throat was threatening to seize up but she faced him with a bland expression.
‘Just make sure that that’s not all she comes qualified with. I don’t want someone whose only asset is looking ornamental.’
‘Of course not. I’ll set up an interview for this afternoon.’ She stood up and he leaned back in the swivel chair and fixed her with icy eyes.
‘Sit back down.’
She sat back down, feeling nervous and miserable. She knew him well enough to know that he would never let himself become dependent on anyone. The true strength in any company, he had once told her, was to ensure that no one was irreplaceable. Valuable, yes, but not irreplaceable. Why should she have felt that her departure meant more to him than a temporary inconvenience?
‘I take it,’ he said coldly, ‘that you intend to explain why I came in here this morning to find your letter of resignation on my desk?’
‘You know why,’ she said quietly.
‘Oh, but I want you to tell me, face to face.’
‘Very well. I don’t see how I can work efficiently for you after what’s happened between us.’
‘We made love and now you think that I won’t be able to keep my hands to myself, even though you want to put it all behind you?’
‘No, that’s not it,’ she stammered, and he gave her a humourless smile.
‘No? Then please elucidate. I’m dying to hear.’
‘When you asked me, when you said that we could…’ She faltered and he bared his teeth in another smile.
‘Have an affair?’
‘I told you that I would think about it, and I have. I’ve decided that I couldn’t. It would be wrong for me.’
‘Fine, that’s your prerogative, but I still don’t see what that has to do with whether you leave or stay. Not unless there’s something that you aren’t telling me?’
He stood up and strolled across to the window and absentmindedly stared down before turning to face her.
‘Something like what?’ This is it, she thought, he’s going to inform me in that way of his that I’ve fallen in love with him, and I’m going to shrivel up in embarrassment.
‘Let’s put it this way.’ He leant forward against the desk, propping himself up, and stared at her with hard eyes. ‘When Plan A with your ex-boss failed to net you the marriage you wanted, and Plan B failed because your ex-boyfriend wasn’t liquid enough for your liking, did you decide that Plan C, to slot me in the winning post, was the next best thing? Only to discover that I was rather more reluctant to be drawn into marriage than you had expected?’
Her eyes flared angrily. ‘That is the most despicable thing I have ever heard in my whole life!’
She stood up and he roared, ‘Sit back down!’
‘I suppose you heard all that from your girlfriend?’ Abigail said bitterly. ‘Just as I suppose you won’t believe a word I say if I try to deny it all?’
‘Feel free to deny.’
‘None of it’s true. You know why I left my last job.’ She looked at him defiantly, but there was a tell-tale flush on her cheeks. ‘I was wrong about Ellis, but I never wanted to marry him for money! And as for Martin—don’t you think that I might have guessed that he was short of cash from his job? He hardly came to fetch me from my flat in a Rolls-Royce!’
‘And what about me?’ he asked softly. ‘Did you think that you could get me to marry you? Did you believe that sleeping with me would put a ring on your finger?’
When she replied, her voice was icy and controlled. ‘I was a fool to sleep with you,’ she said, ‘and no, I never considered marriage at the end of it. I might have been a fool, but I would have had to be certifiable ever to expect that for an instant.’
She should have known that Fiona would never have uttered empty threats. She had run to Ross with her devious little fabrications and she had been right. Nothing about any of the accusations rang true, but there was just that little thread of possibility which would have stirred his suspicions. Suspicions were impossible to fight, they were too nebulous. It was like trying to get hold of a cloud.
‘In that case, why the sudden urge to leave? Do you think that you’re so irresistible that I would make your life here hell?’
‘That’s not fair,’ she said unhappily, and he looked away, a dark flush spreading over his face.
‘I told you once that I never beg. Not for you or for any woman. Whether I believe what Fiona said or not is irrelevant. Did you think that by handing in your resignation you might provoke me into fighting for you?’
‘It was the last thing on my mind,’ Abigail replied truthfully.
‘Of course, you know that you’ll never find a job as good as this one, or as well paid,’ he said coolly, and she nodded, fighting down the urge to burst into tears.
‘Something will come up. Would you want me to work out my full notice?’ she asked, hoping not. Her full notice was six weeks and she didn’t know whether she could face him, every day, for six more weeks. Just sitting here now, looking at him, thinking about how much she was going to miss his sometimes arrogant, sometimes volatile, sometimes charming, always intelligent, company, made her go numb.
‘I damn well would,’ he informed her, leaning forward and linking his fingers together. For the first time she caught the glimpse of anger behind the cool mask, and it didn’t really surprise her. ‘Don’t think,’ he said in a smooth, cruel voice, ‘that you can run off because you’ve suddenly decided that it’s become too uncomfortable here for you, whatever the bloody reason. You’re not about to leave this office in a state of chaos because of something personal.’
‘I would never do that,’ she protested, meeting his eyes. ‘I would make sure that my replacement was fully trained before I even thought of going.’
‘Which should take just about the length of your notice, don’t you think?’
She stood up. ‘Is that all?’ she asked, and he nodded, looking down at the work on his desk and waving her away with a dismissive gesture.
He knew how to hit where it hurt most, she thought, walking back to her desk. He wouldn’t give her, or any woman, she suspected, the satisfaction of showing a display of raw emotion. He didn’t need anyone and he had made the point as bluntly as if he had posted a sign on her desk telling her so.
She telephoned the sales department later that morning, and told Mary that her position was becoming vacant, and would she like to apply for the post? By mid-afternoon, she suspected that her resignation would be public property within the company, and by the following afternoon every other branch throughout the country would have heard. In an office, news travelled like wildfire, especially news that had to do with the boss. She wondered what sort of speculation would circulate as to the reasons for her departure, and decided that she didn’t care. She was on friendly terms with a few people within the organisation, but not so close that she would have been offended by their curiosity.
Ross emerged at lunchtime and told her in a distant, curtly polite voice that he would be away for the rest of the afternoon. He gave her a list of things that needed to be done, and then left, without a backward glance.
She read everything into his remoteness. It remained with her for the rest of the day and pre
yed on her mind. Ross Anderson was telling her, without having to spell it out word for laborious word, that their brief passionate encounter meant nothing to him, and that her decision to leave was one that wasn’t going to upset his world. He was also telling her that if she had even been thinking of commitment with him, then she had been living in cloud cuckoo land, and that was a bitter pill to swallow because it was the one thing she had known all along, right from the very first moment when her attraction to him crept out into the open, and still she had plunged on, still she had given herself to him.
She went into work the following day, to find that Ross’s cool, polite manner was still there, freezing her out, reminding her of his indifference. He barely glanced in her direction and when he did his eyes rested on her with the courteous blankness of a stranger. He still gave orders, but his voice was restrained, and when she brought Mary in to see him she got the feeling that replacing her was a technicality which he saw as only a minor hiccup.
She could have become used to the remoteness if she had never known the shared familiarity, if she had never seen the man behind the power. As it was, the week dragged past in an atmosphere of calm which had her feeling exhausted by the time Friday rolled around.
She wondered what had happened to Fiona. She hadn’t seen the other woman or taken any calls from her at work, but that didn’t mean that Ross had not returned to her, and the thought of that ate away inside her. Was she still prodding away? Insinuating in that sly way of hers? Hardening suspicions?
Two weeks after she returned from the cottage, and with only four left to go before she was released from the painful captivity of working for Ross, Abigail remembered the company Christmas party. The Christmas parties, which were usually held in one of the grander of the London hotels, never took place at Christmas. Over the years, most people had come to view them as the working version of a spring ball. Abigail herself had arranged the location, the food and the venue, but that had been months back, and she had completely forgotten about it until she opened her desk diary and found the reminder staring her in the face.
Beyond All Reason Page 15
