by Susan Napier
Watching him translate his dazzling techno-vision of the future into language the CEO could understand without condescending to the man’s fresh-faced, gee-whiz-kid information systems manager reminded Kalera all over again of how much she loved her job and what a wrench it would be to leave all this vicarious excitement behind.
Later, watching Duncan high-five around the office sharing the good news, she felt for the first time immune from the infectious air of celebration, realising that she wouldn’t be around to see the contract honoured. In fact, she wasn’t quite certain where she’d be in a month’s time, and the thought sent a brief flutter of panic jumping along her nerves. She had moved too many times in her childhood, lived among too many strangers, to view the prospect of radical change with anything but apprehension, and the sudden, traumatic loss of her husband had merely reinforced her fear of emotional displacement.
But she had Stephen now, she consoled herself. He, too, was seeking emotional security, and their needs seemed to dovetail so perfectly that it was natural that their mutual desire for companionship had so swiftly turned to romance. But they were both too cautious to allow themselves to be swept away by its momentum. Getting engaged had been a big step—just how big Kalera hadn’t realised until she had stumbled up against Duncan’s furious opposition!
And Duncan wasn’t the only one. The news of her controversial engagement spread through the Labyrinth network like wildfire and over the next few days Kalera found herself inundated with friendly advice. A few people, mostly women, offered their congratulations unencumbered, but the rest of the responses ranged from mild dismay to rowdy disapproval.
‘I suppose he is pretty spunky-looking,’ conceded Anna Ihaka as they were both touching up their make-up in the women’s restroom. Kalera followed her gaze to the picture of Stephen, scanned from the Financial Star by some anonymous joker and reprinted with the famous red circle-and-slash ‘No’ graphic adorning his smiling face, which was tacked to the wall beside the mirror. The posters had begun appearing all over the office after Duncan had confirmed her impending defection, and Kalera had given up trying to track down the mysterious perpetrator. Whenever she took one down, two popped up in its place.
‘Thanks,’ she said, powdering the sheen off her nose. ‘But I’m not marrying him for his looks…’
‘Sure—but no one wants to fall for a complete gargoyle, right?’ said Anna, who fell in and out of love with monotonous regularity and consequently considered herself something of an expert on romance. ‘I mean, let’s face it, a guy with a gorgeous bod has a natural advantage over a homely little creep with personality. Who would you rather be seen out with? And when your eyes go zing with a stranger across a crowded room it’s because you’re thinking, Wow, that guy looks hot! Not, Gee, what an attractive personality!’ She whisked some blusher over her cheekbones and started applying another layer of brilliant gloss to her lips.
‘Yes, well, fortunately Stephen has both,’ said Kalera, snapping her compact closed and taking out her lipstick. She had to admit that there had been an element of vanity in her acceptance of that first date—she had been flattered that such an elegant, urbane man was interested in her rather ordinary company.
Anna blotted her lips with a paper towel. ‘Someone said you met at a wild party?’
No doubt that ‘someone’ had relayed the facts with his usual flair for subjective embellishment. Duncan had employed Anna five years ago straight from school on the strength of a few meetings on the Internet, and despite her cheeky irreverence she was still inclined to accept his every word as gospel.
‘It was a very sedate sit-down dinner. We got talking and liked each other so we ended up talking some more—’
‘Doesn’t sound very exciting,’ Anna said dubiously.
Kalera outlined the bow of her upper lip. ‘Neither of us was looking for excitement,’ she said, blocking in the rest of the colour. ‘But I guess it found us anyway,’ she added wryly, thinking of the furore their engagement had created.
Anna shovelled her make-up back into her shiny black bag. ‘Yeah, well…I think it’s too weird,’ she sighed. ‘I mean, I always thought that, if you got it on with anyone, for sure it would be the chief.’
Kalera’s lipstick clattered into the ceramic basin and she scrabbled to pick it up, screening the panic in her eyes with her lowered lashes. ‘Why on earth would you think that?’ she croaked.
Anna shrugged, her cropped top revealing a flash of brown skin above her wildly patterned leggings as she leaned forward to check the disposition of her beaded locks. ‘’Cos he’s been crazy about you for years, I suppose.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ muttered Kalera, stunned into stammering confusion. ‘He—I—he—Harry…’
Amazingly Anna seemed to understand her incoherent fumblings. ‘Oh, I know he was happy to, you know, like—worship you from afar with his respect and all that while he thought you were still hung up about losing Harry, but jeez, you must have noticed he behaves differently around you…He doesn’t flirt the way he does with other women, and he’s always sort of gentle—you know, as if he’s trying to slow himself down to your speed…’
‘No, I don’t know!’ choked Kalera. As far as she was concerned Duncan had only one speed and that was a hundred kilometres per hour! ‘For goodness’ sake, Anna, it’s too absurd for words.’ She went hot and cold with alarm. ‘Oh, God, don’t tell me everyone else thinks that too?’
Anna sniffed. ‘Of course not! As Duncan’s assistant I’m around you two a lot more than most people and guess I pick up on the little things that nobody else notices—’
‘Good, because the idea is totally off the wall,’ Kalera interrupted. ‘Duncan and I are absolute polar opposites; we have practically nothing in common…’
But Anna’s fertile romantic imagination was immune to logic. ‘Right—and everyone knows that opposites attract!’
Kalera reeled from the restroom, shell-shocked, and ran slap-bang into Duncan striding down the hall.
He gripped her by the arms as she rebounded off his chest, his eyebrows rising at the sight of her unusually flushed face.
‘What’s up? Not coming down with summer flu, are you?’ He let go of one of her arms and applied his cool knuckles to her hot cheek.
‘I’m fine,’ fibbed Kalera, shying away from the casual intimacy of his touch, acutely conscious that at any moment Anna was going to come bouncing through the door behind her, and would no doubt see the little tableau as proof of her wild speculations.
Duncan’s gaze moved thoughtfully to the closed door and back to Kalera’s deepening blush.
‘Are they still giving you a hard time?’ he murmured. ‘Would you like me to pass the word around to lay off?’
In her hypersensitive state Kalera detected the hint of smugness in his proffered sympathy. Duncan was pleased by his staff’s partisan display.
Her chin rose. ‘I can handle it. After all, it’s only for a few more weeks,’ she pointed out, shrugging off his concern along with his staying hand.
Just in time. As Duncan’s eyes darkened in annoyance at the tart reminder Anna barrelled out into the hallway and stopped dead, looking hopefully from one to the other.
‘Sorry, am I interrupting something?’
‘Definitely not!’ said Kalera, with what she instantly realised was a shade too much emphasis.
Duncan immediately scooped up the initiative. ‘In the hall?’ He returned his assistant’s mischievous grin. ‘You’ve got to be kidding! You know me—I’m the soul of discretion.’
‘It’s facetious comments like that that fuel the stupid rumours,’ Kalera chastised him severely as he followed her into her office. ‘Everyone knows what a flagrant exhibitionist you are!’
‘Being uninhibited isn’t the same as being loose-tongued,’ he murmured, ‘but it certainly provides protective camouflage. I built my business on being able to guard my secrets, remember? I can be as close as the grave when it really matters.
’ He bent down and planted his palms on her desk as she pretended to busy herself with a shuffling of paper. ‘Is there one stupid rumour in particular that’s upset you?’
Heat swarmed over her body and the teasing glint of amusement in Duncan’s eyes sharpened into curiosity as Kalera mumbled something evasive. She wasn’t going to embarrass herself further by repeating Anna’s absurd opinions out loud.
‘You do know you can talk to me about anything, Kalera,’ he said, lowering his voice persuasively. ‘I’m very open-minded and pretty well unembarrassable.’
She flashed him an exceedingly dry look.
It was her own precious peace of mind she was concerned about, not his. Even the mere thought of telling him that he was supposedly crazy about her sent hot shivers skittering along her nerves.
Any woman who was loved by Duncan Royal was headed for a life of constant turmoil!
Unfortunately, instead of sinking into the deep, dark recesses of memory the mad idea persisted in hanging around on the fringes of her consciousness, a burden of dangerous knowledge that made her feel unfairly guilty, and which fired her determination to preserve a prudent professional distance between herself and Duncan.
If only he had been equally committed to her graceful withdrawal from Labyrinth Technology it might have worked, but Duncan was proving annoyingly uncooperative. A case in point was the employment of her replacement, which should have been a straightforward matter of picking the best person for the job.
‘Duncan, she can’t even spell!’ Kalera cried in exasperation as they discussed the latest candidate on the third morning of interviews.
‘That’s why word-processing programs have spellchecking utilities,’ he replied airily.
‘Look here—she even got the word Labyrinth wrong…twice!’
Duncan didn’t even glance down at the document that Kalera had shoved across his desk. He shrugged, rocking his black leather swivel chair back and forth. ‘Nerves. She was probably put off by you sitting there glowering at her while she was trying to concentrate.’
Kalera’s smooth brow ruffled with distaste. ‘I was not glowering.’
‘Well, you weren’t very friendly.’
She set her teeth. ‘It was a job interview, not an invitation to join a social club!’
‘Yes, well…you know how I feel about formality. I thought Lara was fun.’
Kalera controlled a sudden desire to scream. He was being deliberately obtuse. In the last few days he had become infuriatingly slippery when she’d tried to pin him down to making a serious decision.
‘We’re not looking for “fun”, we’re looking for competent,’ she articulated crisply.
Duncan linked his hands behind his head and kicked back in his chair, swinging his feet up onto his desk.
Kalera eyed the scuffed running shoes with trailing laces nudging the edge of his keyboard. Only Duncan could come to work in an Armani suit one day and turn up in chain-store jeans and plain white T-shirt the next, although the eye-catching stainless-steel Alain Silberstein watch on his wrist had probably cost him the equivalent of two designer suits. He rolled his head against his hands and the stud in his left ear snagged at her temper. Why did he always have to be so aggressively different? Being unique was almost some sort of fetish with him. Why, even in bed he—
Her thoughts screeched to a halt. No, she was not going to think about it any more!
‘We want to hire someone with practical skills, not simply an ability to make you laugh,’ she ground out.
Duncan flexed his elbows behind his head, the bleached white cotton straining across his torso, revealing a dark shadow where the hair curled thickly on his chest. Kalera knew exactly how soft and luxuriant that growth was, how sensuously springy it felt against her bare skin. She licked her dry lips as he continued, ‘Lara had other qualities.’
‘Name two!’ she foolishly challenged.
He pretended to consider and a wolfish smile prowled across his face. ‘Her legs.’
The candidate had indeed worn a mini-skirt that was barely decent, but Kalera knew when she was being taken for a ride.
‘She doesn’t type with her legs,’ she said coolly, sitting back in her chair. ‘In fact, judging from this—’ she flicked the dictation test ‘—she doesn’t type at all! And since I know you’d never hire a woman simply for her looks—’
‘I hired you, didn’t I?’
She bristled. ‘I presumed it was because I had the best qualifications.’
She had graduated top of her secretarial class, to the despair of her parents who had considered it a diploma in repression and a betrayal of her roots. ‘But you can’t be truly creative in an office,’ her mother had cried when she had told them she was taking the course. ‘It’s so sterile and unimaginative. You’ll end up as a slave to routine, a prisoner to technology!’
To Kalera, her parents’ fanatical adherence to the teachings of the latest feel-good guru was a more constrictive form of slavery, but of course they didn’t see it that way.
Duncan shook his head, his eyes heavy-lidded with amusement.
‘True, but that’s not the primary reason I chose you. I knew as soon as I saw you walk through that door that I wanted you…’ he paused a dangerous beat ‘…for my secretary. I assure you, I was acting on pure instinct—I hadn’t even read your CV.’
‘And now your instinct’s telling you that a grammatically challenged bottle-blonde with legs up to her ears and a single-figure IQ is my perfect replacement!’
Kalera bit her lip as her bitchiness echoed in her ears, for all the world as if she were a jealous wife. But her objections were purely logical, she told herself fiercely. Lara might well be a very nice girl—but Duncan needed someone mature in charge of his office, someone coolheaded who could keep her feet on the ground when he was bouncing off the walls. The last thing he needed was another breathless admirer pandering to his reckless genius.
‘Actually, my idea of a perfect replacement for you is you,’ he replied smoothly. ‘So…how about it?’
She ignored the blatant provocation. ‘If we don’t find a replacement by the time I’m due to leave—don’t expect me to extend my notice,’ she warned, voicing the lurking suspicion that he might be spinning out the process to just that end.
‘In that case we’d better stop wasting time and get back to work,’ Duncan said, glittering a smile at her that showed no sign of guilt or remorse. ‘I hope you haven’t made any lunch plans because it looks like we’ll have to work straight through…I’ll send out for some sandwiches. And I’ll probably have to ask you to stay on late again this evening, as well.’
Kalera opened her mouth to object, and then changed her mind. Stephen had been supposed to phone to let her know whether he was free to meet her for lunch, but since it was already mid-morning and he hadn’t yet done so it was probably safe to assume he, too, would be busy during her lunch-hour. She could save her protests and her dignity, and offend no one by her compliance.
CHAPTER SIX
SHE discovered her mistake later that afternoon when she paused at the temporarily unoccupied reception desk to answer the unattended telephone, and found an irate Stephen on the other end of the line.
‘I’ve been trying to get through to you all day but that damned receptionist keeps telling me you’re unavailable.’
Kalera bit her lip. ‘You should have left a message—’
‘I did, several times, but you never replied to any of them—I assume they were never passed on.’ Stephen’s voice rose in outrage as he continued, ‘And when I called by to pick you up for lunch Royal’s bully-boy excuse for a security man refused to send word up to you that I was there.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Kalera feebly. She had no doubt that the orders to censor Stephen’s calls and messages had been issued by Royal decree.
Nor, apparently, had Stephen. ‘It’s just petty vindictiveness. You tell Duncan you’re not going to tolerate his blatant interference in your private
life.’
‘Well, I suppose he could claim he’s within his rights as an employer to place a restriction on personal phone calls during business hours…’ said Kalera, striving to be fair. Before their engagement became public Stephen had never phoned her at work and she couldn’t help thinking that it was a mite tactless of him to expect loyal Labyrinthians to instantly embrace the enemy.
Stephen’s voice chilled several degrees. ‘Are you defending him?’
‘No, no, of course not,’ she said hurriedly, seeing Kirsty Seymour trotting back to the reception desk, a cup of coffee in hand. ‘Look, I must go—I’m sorry about lunch, but I wouldn’t have been able to leave the office anyway; we were just too busy—’
‘Well, how about tonight? Mother’s invited me over for dinner but I can ring her and say you’re coming too…’
‘I’m afraid I’ll be working late tonight as well,’ she said, her tone of regret disguising a guilty twinge of relief. She and Madeline Prior politely tolerated each other for Stephen’s sake but Kalera had never felt truly comfortable in her prospective mother-in-law’s company. She knew that Madeline had doted on Terri and still maintained close contact with her son’s former wife by regularly baby-sitting little Michael. Kalera, with her unconventional upbringing and brazenly eccentric parents, was a dubious addition to Madeline’s carefully cultivated social circle. Added to which was Kalera’s uneasy suspicion that, although she had never said so out loud, the older woman secretly held her somehow responsible for Stephen’s continuing estrangement from his son.
‘What—again?’
‘It won’t be for very much longer,’ she soothed, crossing her fingers. Duncan couldn’t continue to keep her late every night, not without seriously disrupting his own social life. He would soon get bored with his game, especially if she persisted in acting unperturbed by his attempts to sabotage her evenings. ‘Once I start training my replacement I’ll make sure she takes on the overtime.’
