by Susan Napier
‘So, he has settled on one, then…’
‘Actually, no, we’re still at the interviewing stage,’ Kalera confessed, and then nibbled anxiously at her lip, wondering whether even that innocent remark was revealing too much.
There was a small silence. ‘I suppose he’s still trying to con you into changing your mind?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Oh, well…at least that means there’s still a chance for my mole to clinch the job.’
The sharp edge to Stephen’s sardonic comment gave Kalera a moment’s uncertainty before she laughed. Of course he was joking! Even if Stephen were to go to such absurd lengths to try and plant one of his employees at Labyrinth, he certainly wouldn’t tip his hand by boasting about it on an open phone line.
Nevertheless, she couldn’t help, as she rang off, harbouring a tiny niggle of doubt.
‘Thanks for picking that up,’ said Kirsty, setting down her coffee perilously close to her keyboard as she collapsed back in her swivel chair. ‘I just nipped along the hall for a cup of stamina—I went to an ace party last night and I’m still feeling a bit ragged. Was it an important call?’
‘It was as far as I was concerned…it was Stephen.’
‘Oh!’ Kirsty blushed with a redhead’s easy brilliance, her fresh, freckled face drenched in guilt. ‘I…er…’
Kalera took pity on her. ‘Don’t worry, I know you were only obeying orders from on high.’ She turned back towards Duncan’s office, tossing over her shoulder with a crispness that made Kirsty surreptitiously grin, ‘Expect to shortly have them countermanded!’
Duncan, however, when confronted by his perfidy, stood staunchly by his view that it was a simple security matter—he didn’t want his chief rival to have easy access to Labyrinth’s communications system and thus the opportunity to hack into the network.
‘Easy! I thought you said your new firewall was impenetrable without the proper encryption codes,’ scoffed Kalera.
He swivelled his chair gently back and forth, looking up into her indignant face. ‘As of this moment, yes. But let’s face it, in Cyberspace there’s always someone coming up with something newer than new. Someone with the will, the skill, the time and the resources might figure a way to crack the encryption or bypass the codes. And there’s always the risk of human error opening up a window of opportunity.’
‘If you don’t trust me I don’t see why you want me continuing in your employ,’ Kalera said stiffly.
Duncan’s voice dropped to a husky drawl, a counterpoint to the expensive creak of leather as he leaned forward in his chair to cover the hand she had planted on his desk. ‘Darling, you know that I’d trust you to the ends of the earth with the cherished secrets of my soul…’
The outrageously flattering words were uttered with such fervent sincerity that Kalera’s whole body was suffused by a traitorous warmth. Her breath clogged in her lungs as she became aware of the intimacy of the admiration in the navy eyes and the searing familiarity of his touch. For a brief instant she was transported back into a darkened bedroom where she had wantonly invited his admiration and recklessly sought pleasure from those clever, caressing fingers.
With a gasp she snatched her tingling hand from his warm grip and his mouth twisted into a wry smile as he added, ‘It’s him I don’t trust.’
Implying that she shouldn’t either!
Kalera sniffed to express her disdain and assumed a detached politeness for the rest of the afternoon which only faltered when she returned from doing some photocopying and ran into Bryan Eastman, head of their research division, coming out of Duncan’s office, an unaccustomed grimness pulling his thin, pale face into tight lines of anxiety.
Bryan was as close to the typical preconception of a computer nerd as Duncan was distant. He was short and as skinny as a rail, myopic and, with his prematurely thinning sandy hair, wispy beard and hunched gait, always looked much older than his twenty-five years. He was utterly dedicated to his work, but his juvenile sense of humour and penchant for practical jokes rescued him from being a complete obsessive.
When he saw Kalera he pinned on a weak smile but his light blue eyes skated anxiously away from hers as they paused to exchange pleasantries. Instead of lingering as he usually did to ask after Anna, on whom he had a massive unrequited crush, he edged quickly out of the conversation, the deep frown returning to his bony brow as he hurried off down the hallway.
Duncan was on his feet staring out of the window when she re-entered his office and, studying the set of his back and his uncharacteristic stillness, she forgot that she was supposed to be punishing him with her aloofness.
‘What’s the matter with Bryan? Is there a problem with “Janet and John”?’ she asked as she placed the copied reports he had requested on his desk. Since Bryan practically lived at Labyrinth and had no personal life to speak of she couldn’t imagine anything but work could cast him into such gloom. Although she knew none of the technical details, she was aware that his research team was in the final stages of developing a piece of multi-language speech-recognition software under the codename of the old-fashioned children’s reading primer.
Duncan turned slowly and looked at her with a strangely shuttered expression, almost as if he didn’t see her, then he blinked and his moment of abstraction passed. He padded back towards his desk, a dangerous smile prowling across his firm mouth. As he got closer she could see that his navy eyes were alight with a fierce exhilaration, a classic sign that his imaginative intelligence was responding to a fresh challenge.
‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
Kalera waited for him to expand on the bald statement with his usual aggressive optimism, but instead he picked up the reports and silently flicked through the pile.
‘Bryan looked really worried. Is it going to mean a delay to the project?’ Kalera prodded, knowing that Duncan believed ‘Janet and John’ had the potential to become one of Labyrinth’s international top-sellers, superseding all similar programs currently on the market. He had certainly made a huge investment of money and resources, and at this late stage of development time was of the essence.
His long, dark lashes continued to screen his gaze. ‘Not necessarily.’
The casual, dismissive tone grated.
‘Is that the equivalent of telling me not to worry my pretty little head about it?’ Kalera said tartly.
His head tilted and he finally looked directly at her again, his eyebrows rising mockingly.
‘Since you’re not planning to be around for the project’s completion there doesn’t seem much point in involving you, does there?’ he murmured. His smile smouldered provocatively around the edges as he watched her grey eyes grow sullen with chagrin at the undeniable truth of his statement. He thrust the reports at her. ‘Here. File these, will you?’
Her chagrin turned to puzzlement. ‘But you asked me to make you extra hard copies.’
‘So?’ he responded imperiously. ‘Now I want the copies filed.’
Muttering under her breath, she complied, but as she tackled the redundant chore it occurred to her that Duncan had asked for the photocopying to be done just after he had received a brief phone call on his direct internal line, to which he had replied in unrevealing monosyllables.
Had Bryan been the caller? Had Kalera been discreetly got out of the way in anticipation of his visit?
She slammed the filing cabinet shut and leant against it, her throat suddenly tight as she unconsciously twisted the elaborate engagement ring on her finger. She shouldn’t really be surprised if she was being cut out of the information loop, but it was disturbing to realise how much it hurt to be excluded from Duncan’s magic inner circle. Maybe she wasn’t quite as ready for major changes in her life as she had thought?
A hollow opened up in her stomach as the reality of what she was doing fully crashed in on her. She wasn’t simply grafting a new life onto the old one, as most people did when they moved on to a new relationship. With her marriage to Stephen she was completely severing
the links that bound her to the world which she and Harry had inhabited. When she sold the house and moved into Stephen’s home as his wife there would be no going back, no casual friendly contact with her former colleagues and friends; and especially not with Duncan…
A faint flutter of panic beat in her chest and she fought it down. For her own peace of mind she must keep herself firmly focussed on the future. Soon she and Stephen would be building new memories together that would overlie the potent images of the past, muting their power to disturb.
Unfortunately that serene future was still frustratingly far away. As yet she was still stuck in the present, prey to a barrage of conflicting feelings, some of which had no place in the mind of a newly engaged woman.
With relief Kalera found that the last two interviewees of the day were reassuringly competent secretaries who were more interested in working conditions and rates of pay than the masculine charms of their prospective employer. To her annoyance she couldn’t quite banish the echo of Stephen’s silly joke about a mole and was disgusted to find herself thinking that maybe their qualifications were too good. One was a grandmother and the other a soignée woman in her thirties who rather startlingly announced just before the termination of her interview that she was gay—‘because I don’t want it to become an issue later’.
‘I don’t see why it should,’ said Duncan equably. ‘I don’t usually query my employees’ sexual orientation. My only concern would be if it rendered them vulnerable to blackmail but your frankness obviously negates any security risk on that score.’
‘She’s the best so far,’ commented Kalera as the woman left.
‘Why do you say that? Because she’s gay?’
Kalera recoiled under Duncan’s challenging stare. ‘No, of course not! Because of her qualifications—’
‘Which are no better than some of the ones you’ve given a swift thumbs-down to. It seems to me that you’ve suddenly developed an intriguing prejudice against your own sex. Have you noticed that the only candidates you’ve wholeheartedly approved of so far are either male, over fifty, married with children or lesbian?’
‘I—you—’ Kalera floundered for a moment before she rallied. ‘What about the Gatherfield woman?’
‘Ugly as sin and sour as unripe lemons.’ He propped his elbow on the desk and plopped his chin into his hand, a picture of smugness. ‘Face it, Kalera, you don’t want me to have a young and attractive and emotionally unattached woman flitting around as my secretary. And since I have an unblemished record as an employer it can’t be the unsuspecting females you’re protecting…so I guess it must be me…’
‘Nonsense!’ she sputtered, gathering up the interview notes with fumbling fingers, mangling the paper clip as she tried to jam too many sheets into its grip.
‘Is it? You’re sure you’re not letting jealousy get in the way of your professional judgment?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she choked, her outrage undermined by the sneaking fear that there might be some substance in his allegation. She jumped to her feet, anxious to halt the dangerous drift of the conversation. ‘I have no reason to be jealous—’
‘No, you don’t.’ Duncan rose and shadowed her nervous movements on the other side of the desk. ‘No matter how attractive or alluring she is, I’ll never feel about another secretary the way I feel about you…thank God!’
The heartfelt addition made her hand clench involuntarily on the papers in her grasp and the end of the distorted paper clip speared sharply into her thumb, providing a welcome distraction from the threat of his words. ‘Ouch!’
‘What have you done? Let me see.’ Duncan wove himself sinuously around the end of his desk and divested her of the weapon. He tossed the papers back down on his desk and turned her hand over and they both looked down at the bead of blood rapidly forming on the pad of her thumb.
‘Here. Let me.’ Expecting him to offer up his handkerchief to dab at the tiny wound, Kalera was stunned speechless when he lifted her hand and put her entire thumb in his mouth, his tongue swirling over the tip as he suckled strongly. She froze, her thoughts turning to chaos. His cheeks hollowed and as she stared into his deep, dark gaze the hot, wet, rhythmic contractions suddenly became shockingly erotic.
She tugged at her hand and felt his teeth clamp lightly around the base of her thumb, anchoring it in place. His fingers slid to her wrist, picking up her wildly fluctuating pulse as his rasping tongue shafted down the plump column of flesh in his mouth, sucking harder, drawing her more deeply into the sensual intimacy of the moment.
Kalera made an inarticulate sound which she later liked to think was a protest and pushed her other hand flat against his rock-hard chest, splaying over the harsh thump of his heartbeat and discovering that it was every bit as erratic as her own.
‘Duncan, do you think—? Woops!’ Anna did an abrupt U-turn, the beads on her braids rattling with the swiftness of her spin as she scampered out again. ‘I’ll come back again when you’re not so—uh—preoccupied…’
Kalera felt dizzy with dismay and something else she didn’t dare examine.
‘Now look what you’ve done! Stop that!’ she hissed belatedly, stiffening knees that were showing an alarming tendency to sag. Her fingertips curled warningly into Duncan’s cheek, her neat nails making a row of tiny indentations in the taut olive skin. ‘Let me go…now!’
The smouldering gaze never left hers as Duncan slowly pulled her glistening thumb from his mouth and then pushed it tauntingly back in again, his teeth grazing lazily across her slick flesh, before finally withdrawing it to rest against his lips.
‘I just wanted to make sure the blood flowed to clean the wound,’ he murmured innocently, taking one last lick, his fingers still firm around her slender wrist. ‘I don’t want you getting an infection.’
‘It was only the tiniest pin-prick, for goodness’ sake,’ she protested unevenly. ‘You didn’t have to go overboard. Oh, God, imagine what Anna must be thinking!’
She groaned, remembering their conversation in the restroom. Duncan’s assistant needed no encouragement to let her imagination run riot.
‘What does it matter what she thinks?’
Kalera glared at him, a far cry from the usual serene office Madonna. ‘She might tell everyone what she saw!’
‘It’s not as if we were even kissing,’ Duncan pointed out, although in Kalera’s opinion a kiss could hardly have been more intimate. ‘So you had your thumb in my mouth. What’s so wicked about that? Be thankful it was only your thumb!’ he added drolly.
She went scarlet, squirming in his grip, her voice shrill with outrage. ‘Duncan!’
He kissed her wrist and let it slip through his fingers. ‘Well, it could have been your toes,’ he mocked. ‘That would have been difficult to explain away.’ He correctly interpreted her stunned expression. ‘No, Kalera, I don’t have a secret foot fetish—I’ve never sucked a woman’s toes in my life.’ His eyelids drooped. ‘But I’m always open to new experiences…’
‘You don’t understand,’ she said, backing away, curling her damp thumb into her protective fist. ‘You’ve got to set her straight. She already thinks that you—that you—’ She faltered at his look of intense curiosity.
‘That I what?’ He hitched his hip on the corner of his desk and tilted his head to one side, his eyes bright on her rosy face.
She knew this was a mistake. ‘You know…have a—a thing…’ she mumbled.
The corners of his mouth crept up. ‘A thing? I have a thing?’
‘Yes,’ she gritted, folding her arms across her waist.
‘That’s a noun that covers a whole lot of ground…a fair bit of it minefield. Can you be a bit more specific? What kind of a thing is it that I have, Kalera?’
‘About me,’ she said tightly.
‘Oh!’ He pantomimed dawning enlightenment. ‘You mean that kind of thing! She thinks I have a mental preoccupation with you as the passionate object of my burning desire.’
‘Something like
that,’ she muttered, hunching her shoulders to present a smaller target for his mockery. Busy avoiding his gaze, she didn’t see his expression alter to one of brooding ruefulness.
‘Clever Anna,’ he said softly. ‘And here I thought the carefree playboy routine had everybody fooled.’
Kalera’s eyes flew to his face, her delicate body tensing for flight at the raw emotion that blazed in the dark eyes, sending a sizzle of familiar heat streaking along her veins. As if her fear had tripped an alarm the blaze was instantly extinguished and she could almost believe that she had imagined the shattering intensity of that look, and her shamefully ready response.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll make sure that Anna understands,’ he said, and she was so busy denying what had just happened that she failed to notice that he didn’t pinpoint exactly what it was he was going to ensure Anna understood.
‘Now, why don’t we both compare notes on those we interviewed today and then we can start reviewing our strategies for tomorrow’s list? And I want to get letters out tonight to all those who don’t make today’s cut—it’s not fair to keep people dangling any longer than absolutely necessary when they might need to reply to other job offers. Personal letters, too, not form things that make the rejectee feel even less of an individual.’
He saw her glance at her watch, mentally calculating whether the tasks would fit into the time available.
‘And I need you to print out some files for Bryan—preferably when there’s no one else around,’ he said, unfolding himself from his perch. ‘I did warn you I might need you to stay on this evening.’
It took an effort not to step back as he towered over her, but the hint of satisfaction in his tone goaded her to dig her heels in.
‘So you did,’ she agreed, ironing her face into the serene indifference that she knew he found so infuriating.
‘So…if you and Steve were going somewhere special tonight you’d better call him and cancel. Tell him you don’t know what time you’ll be finishing.’ He swept an expansive hand towards his desk. ‘You can use my phone if you like, and be sure to pass on my regrets for keeping his fiancée from his side…’
