At the Boss's Command

by Darcy Maguire

  Amy half expected to see King Louis himself—or at least Napoleon—reclining on the ornate four-poster bed. But it was wonderfully empty and she sprawled on it happily with the newspapers that had been thoughtfully provided.

  At huge expense, Anton had booked the famous Marie Antoinette Suite here at the Ritz for tonight’s reception. The glorious room, one of the most famous venues in London, would make an opulent setting for Anton to entertain the several dozen major stockholders in advance of tomorrow’s AGM, which would be held at a modern conference room overlooking the Thames.

  While Anton talked on the phone, she opened the Financial Times, expecting to find an article in advance of tomorrow’s stockholders’ meeting. It was there, all right, but its tone made her sit up, frowning.

  ‘You’d better read this, darling,’ she said.

  Anton read the article carefully, starting with the headline, NEW DIRECTION FOR ZELL CORPORATION QUESTIONED BY SHAREHOLDERS.

  When he’d finished, he passed the newspaper back to her. ‘It doesn’t say who any of these supposed shareholders are. I don’t take that too seriously.’

  ‘Well, it’s obvious who one of them is,’ Amy said. ‘Though, as you say, it doesn’t quote her name.’

  ‘You can’t blame everything on Lavinia, darling,’ Anton said with a smile. ‘It’s just a journalist picking up a possible story, that’s all. They’ll be singing a different song after the AGM.’ He glanced at his watch. He was scheduled to meet Lavinia Carron for drinks before lunch. Ostensibly, she was welcoming an old friend to London, but Amy feared it would be the first clash of sabres between them. ‘I’m guessing you have no desire to rekindle the flames of friendship with Lavinia?’

  ‘I never want to see her again,’ Amy said. ‘I’m sure she’s behind that story, my darling. It’s a shot across your bows.’

  He came to sit beside her, took her face in both his hands, and kissed her carefully on the mouth. ‘Don’t worry about a thing.’

  ‘I can’t help worrying,’ she replied, searching his eyes with her own. ‘She wants your money or to be your wife, Anton!’

  He laughed. ‘Sit tight, angel. What are you going to do while I hobnob with Lavinia?’

  ‘I’ll do some shopping.’

  ‘OK, we’ll meet for lunch at the Savoy Grill—I feel like something quintessentially English. One o’clock, Miss Worthington. Don’t be late!’

  She had told Anton that she was going shopping but the truth was there was almost nothing she needed. Her life in Hong Kong was so pampered and the shopping there was more than adequate for her relatively undemanding tastes. Of clothes, cosmetics and accessories, she already had more than she could use.

  And the sinking feeling that persisted in the pit of her stomach would not have allowed herself to spend on luxuries, anyway.

  Books, however, were another matter. The prospect of losing herself in a sea of the latest books was very alluring indeed. Belting herself into a coat, she headed purposefully out to tour the large book emporiums of the city.

  It was very cold. As so often, London seemed to have been taken by surprise by heavy snow. It was piled in dirty mounds, uncollected, on the traffic islands and pavements, or spread in slushy marshes that the traffic sprayed on hapless pedestrians. It was also, however, very beautiful; the great parks were stark snowfields where nobody had yet ventured to leave footprints, and each famous building, monument or statue was decorated with white caps on any horizontal plane where the stuff could adhere.

  Amy roamed the bookstores, buying things for Anton as well as for herself. Exciting new books were about the only Christmas present she knew he would enjoy. Heaven knew when they would have time to read all the volumes that soon accumulated in piles on the counters, but she could always dream of a peaceful future where she and Anton would have time to please themselves and nobody else.

  She tried not to think of what might be passing between Anton and Lavinia as she paged through the glossy books that still smelled of new paper and fresh ink. For all his light-hearted assurances, she was aware that the next few days were going to prove a watershed for Anton. She was not so prone to melodrama as to cast it as a battle for one man’s soul—but one of the reasons she had persuaded Anton not to make an offer on Quilin House was that deep down inside, she knew that there was going to be a winner and a loser. And she knew she was going to be the loser.

  Because she knew that love did not conquer all. Love was conquered by many things—by money, by expedience, by power. And Lavinia had them all on her side.

  All she herself had was the miracle that Anton had fallen in love with her—one snowflake out of so many others. One snowflake that would melt as soon as it was touched by the breath of reality.

  She bought so many books that there was no way she could carry them all, so they were sent to their suite at the Ritz. And then it was time for her to hurry across to the Strand to meet Anton at the Savoy.

  The front of the hotel was crowded as always with Rolls-Royces and limousines trying to get their occupants as close to the entrance as possible. A uniformed commissionaire hurried out to her cab and ushered her in under the shelter of a large black umbrella.

  The restaurant was crowded but she saw Anton at once, sitting at a banquette alone, his chin resting on his clasped hands. Her heart sank at his pose—she could tell at once that something was wrong. The drinks with Lavinia had evidently not gone well.

  A waiter ushered her to the table and she settled down opposite Anton, trying to smile brightly. ‘Sorry I’m late— the traffic’s awful.’

  Anton looked up at her. For the first time since she had known him, his eyes seemed empty and cold. That, more than anything, chilled her to the bone. She reached out for his hands.

  ‘Darling, what’s the matter? Did the meeting go badly?’

  He pulled his hands away from hers. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked in a quiet voice.

  ‘Tell you what?’ she replied in shock.

  ‘Why did I have to hear about that from Lavinia Carron, Amy?’ His face, always so handsome and alive, looked like a mask of anger and pain. ‘Couldn’t you have told me before?’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about,’ she replied urgently. ‘Whatever Lavinia has said to upset you so much is a lie, I can promise you that!’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said flatly. ‘I think it’s you who have lied to me.’

  ‘I have never lied to you,’ she flashed back at him.

  The waiter, who had been hovering with the menus, discreetly vanished at this point, though they barely noticed. The elegant restaurant, with its light wood panelling and snowy linen surmounted by bunches of pale yellow roses, seemed to be spinning around Amy.

  ‘When you first came to me,’ Anton said grimly, ‘I asked you directly whether you had had an affair with Martin McCallum.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, realisation hitting her like an arrow thudding into her heart, the shock spreading through her body, paralysing her.

  ‘You flatly denied it,’ Anton went on. ‘I asked you if that was why you were so eager to leave McCallum and Roe. You denied that, too.’

  ‘Anton, those questions weren’t ethical at that point, and you know that. You had no right to ask them.’

  ‘But you chose to answer them,’ he pointed out with ineluctable logic. ‘You answered them with lies.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said hopelessly, ‘I lied to you.’

  ‘We became lovers, Amy. You’ve had months to tell me the truth. To correct those lies. But you never did.’

  ‘I warned you,’ she said quietly. ‘There are things about me that I hide even from myself. I’m not an angel. I’m very sorry that Lavinia was the one to tell you. I should have guessed she would make enquiries about me and find that out. Of course she would use it.’

  ‘She didn’t have to look very far, Amy. McCallum and Roe are one of the companies she owns shares in. A lot of shares. Of course the boy would take her into his co
nfidence.’

  ‘Of course he would,’ she said drily. ‘I have been a fool.’

  Anton’s eyes never left hers. ‘I’ve been the fool, Amy. I allowed myself to believe things about you that I haven’t believed of any other human being—that you were honest, that you were pure, that you were different from all the others.’

  ‘Those are the things I believed about you, too,’ she said dully.

  ‘I even persuaded myself that we were the same inside,’ he went on. ‘We’d come from the same pain, we’d travelled the same route. I thought we believed in the same things, about people, about the world.’

  ‘And don’t we?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Amy. I could never lie to you the way you have lied to me. I asked you those questions during the interview because I was afraid that you’d had an affair with your last employer. You lied to me.’

  ‘And yet, within hours of taking me on, you were telling me you wanted a “special relationship” with me, Anton,’ she shot back. ‘You kissed me on the lips in Borneo.’

  ‘I did not expect or plan to fall in love with you!’

  ‘Nor did I expect or plan to fall in love with you, Anton. Don’t you remember how I tried to avoid it? Have you forgotten how angry you used to get with me when I wouldn’t just jump into your bed?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth?’

  ‘For what it’s worth, I always planned to tell you about Martin. I knew that there were things in my past that might upset you. That was why I was trying to put the brakes on— until I could get the chance to talk about them.’

  ‘Somehow that chance never came.’

  ‘Don’t sound so bitter,’ she begged. ‘It never came because our life together is so hectic. People in love need time and space to learn about each other. You cannot find the truth about someone just through sleeping with them. If there isn’t ever a moment to relax together, how can there be communication?’

  ‘I see. So the fault is mine.’

  ‘The fault is mine,’ she replied. ‘I’m just trying to tell you why I never got around to telling you about Martin. The only time we have ever had together that we weren’t travelling at the speed of light was in Vietnam. And that time—’ Tears filled her eyes suddenly and she could not speak for a moment. ‘And that time,’ she went on, brushing the wetness off her cheeks with shaking hands, ‘was so precious and beautiful. I didn’t want to even think about my life before you. I couldn’t bear to bring up such ugly things.’

  ‘I wish you had. It might have made a difference.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Anton,’ she repeated. ‘Yes, I had an affair with Martin McCallum and I wish it had never happened.’

  ‘It’s much more than that,’ he said, his eyes darkening. ‘You’re still hiding the truth. The truth is that you got pregnant. Didn’t you?’

  The room was spinning faster and faster now, the yellow roses blurring into the panelling, the elegant light fittings dazzling her aching eyes. ‘Anton—’

  ‘You got pregnant and you used that to try and force Martin McCallum into marrying you. And when that didn’t work, you terminated the pregnancy. As callously and as cynically as that. And you tell me not to be bitter?’

  ‘Anton, I can’t stay here,’ she heard herself say. ‘I have to go.’

  She rose. A deadly wave of dizziness rushed into her brain. She had to clutch the table to stop herself from falling.

  Anton had risen, too. He faced her across the table, his mouth compressed into a hard line, his normally tanned face pale with emotion. ‘Haven’t you got anything to say?’ he demanded.

  Conversation around them had halted and people at neighbouring tables were staring curiously. She was aware of everything through a spiralling haze. She knew only that she had to get out of Anton’s presence before she fainted or was sick all over the Savoy’s snowy white linen.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I haven’t got anything to say, Anton.’

  She clutched her bag and stumbled out of the restaurant. The alert waiter was waiting with her coat. ‘Can I get the commissionaire to call you a cab, miss?’ he asked her in concern.

  Not trusting herself to speak, she just shook her head. She made her way frantically through the noisy crowds in the lobby.

  And then she was running blindly into the whirling snow. She found herself back in Piccadilly, at Green Park. She was not sure how she had got there. The vast white space of the park drew her in, though she was already icy cold and shivering.

  Snow banks were piled high. The paths had been shovelled at some point but the heavy snowfalls had all but obliterated them again. The snow had also mocked the bare trees by piling every branch and twig with a glittering foliage of ice crystals.

  Amy walked through the park, finding a wilderness in the heart of the bustling city. Soon, the loudest sound in the world was the beating of her own heart. The only life was the clouding of her breath in the icy air. Flurries of snow twirled and fluttered down constantly.

  Her mind was largely a blank. She wasn’t rehearsing what she might say to Anton when he finally returned to her— there was nothing to rehearse. There was only the truth. And the truth would come out of her in its own way, whether she tried to put it into clever words or not, no matter how she tried to phrase it.

  She saw nobody in the park. Her frantic heartbeat began to slow as the icy cold sank into her flesh and bone. Shuddering now with the severe drop in temperature as the afternoon closed in and it grew dark, she turned her steps back towards the Ritz.

  The sparkling façade of the great hotel was like a beacon in the gloom, the famous name spelled out in lights. It was like another world, a glittering ocean liner from which she had fallen into deep, dark waters.

  As she walked into the lobby she mingled with the people from this other world, men in evening dress, women in gowns of silk or sequins. Curious eyes glanced at her, a snow-stained waif coming in from the cold, who scarcely seemed to belong here; but she didn’t care; she wanted only to get to her room and find Anton.

  She entered a world of pink serpentine columns and rich woods, of gold leaf and luxurious carpets in peach and blue and yellow, of chandeliers that dripped glowing crystals. The smell of snow in her nostrils was driven out by the mingled scents of a dozen famous perfume houses. She was trembling with the cold.

  And then she saw Anton. Anton and Lavinia Carron, walking through the lobby towards her. His arm was linked in hers. He was wearing evening clothes, she was in a long dress of pearl lamé with her dark hair lifted off her face. They were easily the handsomest couple in the lobby of the Ritz tonight, the king and queen of all these beautiful people.

  Gasping for breath, Amy tried to flee, but there were too many people to allow for escape. The press of the crowd brought her up face to face with Anton and Lavinia.

  Anton’s eyes blazed wide as he saw her. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he greeted her savagely.

  The shock and the pain of that almost made her legs give way. ‘Walking,’ she replied.

  ‘Walking? In the snow? Are you insane?’

  ‘I suppose I must be,’ Amy replied. Lavinia’s violet eyes were mocking, triumphant. How sweet it must be to see her rival, bedraggled and half-frozen, in the lobby of the Ritz!

  Anton grasped her arm and half pulled, half led her into an alcove where there was a measure of privacy. Lavinia followed, still smirking.

  ‘You look like death warmed over,’ Anton said, lifting Amy’s face with a firm grip on her chin and staring into her eyes. ‘Why did you run out of the Savoy like that?’

  ‘I had nothing more to say at that point,’ she replied, pushing his hand away from her face.

  ‘And now?’ Anton demanded in a growl. ‘Have you got anything to say now?’

  ‘Not in front of that woman,’ Amy retorted, not even deigning to look at Lavinia Carron.

  Lavinia’s simper faded at the enmity in Amy’s tone. ‘Are you going to let her talk to me like that, Anton?’ she
demanded angrily.

  ‘Amy,’ Anton said tersely, ‘all I need to hear from you is a yes or a no. Is it true or isn’t it?’

  ‘I can’t talk to you here,’ she retorted, ‘least of all in front of her.

  ‘She is the one who found out these things about you,’ Anton said grimly. ‘She is the one who enlightened me. If you want to say anything, then you should be able to say it in her presence.’

  ‘And if you can’t understand why I cannot say a word in her presence, then you are not the man I fell in love with,’ she retorted through chattering teeth.

  ‘You don’t love him,’ Lavinia hissed, leaning forward with bared teeth. ‘You want to drag him down to your pathetic level. You can offer him nothing except ruin!’

  ‘I do love you, Anton,’ Amy said, ignoring Lavinia’s outburst. ‘The question is, do you love me?’

  ‘I loved someone,’ he said heavily, and in the shadows under his eyes she suddenly saw the pain that he had gone through. ‘But I don’t know where she is any more.’

  ‘She never existed,’ Lavinia said with a brusque laugh. ‘Like all these people who appoint themselves custodians of the so-called environment, she liked to pose as a saint, but the truth is something else. Someone who used her pregnancy to blackmail her lover, and then aborted it to get revenge on him, cannot claim any moral high ground! She deserves no consideration whatsoever!’

  ‘And someone with a mind as loathsome as yours should keep her mouth shut,’ Amy retorted hotly, acknowledging Lavinia’s presence at last. ‘How dare you talk about blackmail? Aren’t you blackmailing Anton right now? All you love is money, Lavinia. You said it yourself in Antibes— nothing else matters to you except lots and lots of money in your bank account.’

  Lavinia turned to Anton, her nostrils flaring. ‘This is the woman you spent all afternoon scouring London for,’ she said harshly. ‘She destroyed Martin’s happiness. Are you going to let her destroy yours?’

  ‘That’s enough from both of you,’ Anton said quietly. He glanced at his watch. ‘We are due to meet the major shareholders in five minutes. I take it you don’t intend to be there, Amy?’