Книга - To Tame a Proud Heart

To Tame a Proud Heart
CATHY WILLIAMS








“You don’t approve of me, do you?”


“No, I don’t.” Oliver’s words were blunt. “I don’t approve of women like you, who were raised in the lap of luxury and swan through life thinking that hard work is something best left alone.”

That stung, but Francesca didn’t say anything.

“But so long as you do your job competently we’ll get along just fine. Abuse your position and you’ll soon discover the limits to my tolerance….”


CATHY WILLIAMS is Trinidadian and was brought up on the twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago. She was awarded a scholarship to study in Britain, and went to Exeter University in 1975 to continue her studies into the great loves of her life: languages and literature. It was there that Cathy met her husband, Richard. Since they married, Cathy has lived in England, originally in the Thames Valley but now in the Midlands. Cathy and Richard have three small daughters.




To Tame a Proud Heart

Cathy Williams










www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




CONTENTS


CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN




CHAPTER ONE


FRANCESCA WADE was not a person given to nerves. She had the resilient self-confidence which came naturally to those who were good-looking or wealthy. In her case, both.

Right now, though, with her eyes dutifully glued to Kemp International’s promotional magazine on her lap, she was feeling decidedly tense. She might have impulsively made the decision to come here, but she was discovering fast that this was the last place she wanted to be, and the temptation to take flight was enormous.

She kept reading, glancing covertly at her watch every so often, wondering where the hell The Man was. She had been shown into his outside office forty minutes previously, had smilingly been informed that Mr Kemp would be with her shortly, and here had she sat since. Waiting.

When the door opened she glanced up hopefully, and tried to wipe the growing resentment off her face.

‘Mr Kemp will see you now.’ It was the same smiling face that had ushered her into the office—neat grey little bun caught at the nape of her neck, navy blue suit, plumpish figure. She stood aside and Francesca made an effort to smile pleasantly back as she was led along the corridor to an intimidating mahogany door.

Suddenly the nerves gave way to something else—something more like alarm—and Francesca’s mouth was dry as the door was pushed open.

The stylish designer suit which she had plucked from the wardrobe and donned because she thought that it conveyed the right image of businesslike efficiency now felt starched and uncomfortable. She was not accustomed to being so carefully dressed. She preferred casual clothes. She nervously smoothed down the skirt and looked around her, her eyes settling on the figure in the chair, his back towards her.

Behind her the door closed deferentially, and the figure in the chair swung around.

What had she expected? She realised that she had no idea—vague impressions, yes. She had spent weeks listening to her father’s well-placed insinuations that it was time she found herself a job, that she couldn’t sit back and indulge in useless creature comforts for ever, to him telling her that he knew someone—the son of a friend of his, a charming fellow.

It had been a quiet game of gradual persuasion, aimed at eroding her objections—the age-old water-dripping-on-a-stone technique—so that now, standing here, she found that she could hardly recall any recent conversation with her father which hadn’t been vaguely permeated with descriptions of the wretched Oliver Kemp.

‘He’s a self-made man,’ her father had told her in his early, enthusiastic phase, before her constant, stubborn refusals to have her life sorted out for her had obliged him to take a more subtle stance. ‘Grabbed the proverbial boot-laces and hauled himself up, inch by inch, until now he’s worth millions.’

That had conjured up images of a sour-faced young man grappling up the face of a cliff, growing ever fatter on the way as he made money and did all those wonderful things which had clearly awed her father.

The man facing her was not fat. Nor was he sour-faced. He had a disturbing brand of good looks—the sort of good looks which she had never before encountered among her young rich set. Every feature was strong and aggressive and his light blue eyes were mesmerising, hypnotic.

He stared at her openly, not blinking, until she lowered her eyes. ‘Sit,’ he commanded—a coldly uttered monosyllable that made her flinch.

He gave no apologies for having kept her waiting, but then he didn’t strike her as the sort of man who went in much for apologising. Probably, she thought, he didn’t even know how to spell the word.

She sat down opposite him, across the gleaming boardroom table, at one end of which was a word processor and several sheets of paper.

‘How did you hear of this job?’ he asked bluntly. ‘It wasn’t nationally advertised.’

‘From my father,’ Francesca confessed reluctantly, already on the defensive for reasons which she couldn’t even identify.

‘Ah, yes.’ He stared at her, and she thought irritably, What does that mean?

‘He mentioned that you were a friend of his and that you were looking for a secretary.’ She was even more irritated to find herself rushing into a little explanatory speech. ‘He thought that I might be interested.’

‘I had lunch with your father weeks ago,’ Oliver informed her coolly. ‘How is it, if you’re that interested in finding work, that you’ve only now decided to come here for an interview?’

Interview? she wanted to ask. What interview? This was more like a cross-examination. What exactly was she guilty of? she wondered.

‘Unless, of course, you’ve been busy going to other interviews?’

He let the question hang in the air challengingly, while he continued to look at her with coolly polite indifference.

‘Not as such,’ Francesca admitted, disliking him more with each passing minute.

‘Not as such? What does “not as such” mean? Either you’ve been going to interviews or you haven’t.’

‘This is the first,’ she muttered, trying to comfort herself with the thought that she didn’t really want this job anyway, that she had been goaded into it by her father.

‘And how long is it since you left college?’ He appeared smilingly vague. Did he, she wondered, think that she had been born yesterday? He would know exactly how long it was since she had left college because her father would have told him.

‘Several months.’

‘So, if you haven’t been working or even, as you tell me, looking for a job, what were you doing for “several months”? Resting?’

‘Look, Mr Kemp,’ she said, through gritted teeth, ‘I came here for an interview. All these questions you’re asking me aren’t relevant to whether or not I’m capable of doing the job, are they?’

‘Miss Wade—’ he leaned forward and there was a soft, cold threat in his voice ‘—you don’t decide what’s relevant or what’s not. I do. If you don’t like it, then the door is right behind you.’ He stared at her, and for a split second she was seriously tempted to leave, but strangely she didn’t want to be browbeaten by this man.

‘So,’ he said with the same unsettling softness in his voice, ‘are we going to continue?’

She nodded. There really was something very threatening about this man, she thought. It sat on his shoulders like an invisible cloak.

‘Shall I tell you why you haven’t bothered to stir yourself into getting a job sooner, Miss Wade?’ he asked with pointed casualness. ‘Your father is a rich man, and rich girls have no need for jobs. No doubt jobs get in the way of late nights, partying, men—’

Francesca’s head shot up at that one. ‘That’s an insult, Mr Kemp!’ she snapped. ‘You have no right to make assumptions about my character!’

He shrugged negligently and stood up. She watched him as he strolled across to the window, one hand casually thrust into his trouser pocket, his face half turned away as he idly surveyed the scene outside.

There was a panther-like grace about him. His body was lean, muscular, as much of a threat as his dark good looks. All in all, she didn’t like him—about as much as he didn’t like her. He had no intention of employing her, of course. No doubt the only reason he had agreed to see her in the first place was because he vaguely knew her father. She should never have let herself be emotionally railroaded into this.

‘You need to settle down,’ her father had told her the evening before. ‘You’re a bright girl—too bright for a life of constant parties and holidays and shopping.’

For the first time she had sensed a certain amount of irritated despair in him. There had been no gentle teasing in his voice, none of the sly nagging in which he took great amusement.

He was right, she had thought reluctantly. She had left her expensive private school at eighteen, with three A levels under her belt, had sailed through a very expensive secretarial course, which she had taken simply because she couldn’t face the thought of going to university, and ever since then had done very little about finding a job.

She frowned at the image her mind threw up of herself—too rich, too pretty, content to drift along with her crowd of friends who appeared to fritter their lives away happily doing nothing in particular, or else indulging in sporadic bursts of fruitful energy when they would do a course on photography or cordon bleu cookery, or anything else that enjoyably absorbed a bit time but didn’t inconveniently leave an aftertaste for something more.

She wasn’t like that. She knew that. But if she wasn’t why had she allowed herself to flow with the tide instead of taking her life in her own two hands?

Oliver Kemp had turned to face her. His back was to the window now, and the harsh, winter sun threw his face into angular shadows.

‘The fact is, Miss Wade, that I don’t know precisely what your motives are in coming here, but if the only reason is to get your father off your back then you’ve come to the wrong place.’

He hadn’t smiled once, she realised, since she had walked into this office.

‘Of course that’s not the reason why I’m here—’ she began, reddening because there was too much truth in his observation for comfort, and he cut in abruptly.

‘Really?’ The ice-blue eyes raked over her thoroughly, and clearly disapproved of what they saw.

‘I apologise for taking up your time, Mr Kemp,’ Francesca said stiffly, standing up. ‘But I’m afraid I made a mistake in coming here; I’m afraid that I can’t accept any job you have to offer.’

‘Sit back down, Miss Wade, and kindly do not think about leaving until I am through with you.’

‘I have no intention of sitting back down, Mr Kemp,’ she replied equally coldly, ‘and kindly do not patronise me by treating me like a child.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ he said smoothly, ‘if you would start acting like an adult. Your father mentioned that you needed to settle down, that he was at his wits’ end with you. God only knows what sorts of high jinks you’ve been getting up to, but I can well imagine. The fact is that I don’t really give a damn what you do or don’t do in your personal time, but my company isn’t a rehabilitation clinic and I’m not in the business of setting wayward children back on the straight and narrow.’

Francesca actually only managed to absorb part of this. Her mind seemed to shut off when he got to ‘high jinks’, and anger flooded through her like a crashing tidal wave.

‘I am not,’ she managed to splutter, ‘some kind of charity case, Mr Kemp. I was not obliged to come here and you are certainly not obliged to give me this job!’

‘No,’ he agreed, but his expression was shuttered.

‘And for your information I am not a wayward child!’

‘Really?’ Mild disbelief bordered on downright indifference, but he wasn’t about to let her put her point across. He pointed to the word processor on the table.

‘Let’s dispense with the histrionics,’ he said coolly, making her sound, she thought furiously, like a candidate for the local mental asylum. ‘I might as well find out if you’re qualified for the job anyway. I want you to type the document at the side of the computer, and then I’ll dictate some letters to you.

‘Your father said that your secretarial skills were excellent but—’ he looked at her with enough disbelief to make her teeth snap together in anger ‘—whether that was paternal pride talking is left to be seen.’

Francesca smiled sweetly at him and rose to go over to the terminal. ‘Indeed,’ she said. This at any rate was one area in which she was supremely confident. ‘And, forgetting paternal pride,’ she said, sitting down and quickly switching on the machine, ‘anything I learnt at secretarial school might well have been forgotten after six months of partying, late nights and—what was it? Oh, yes—men. And high jinks and debauchery. Wouldn’t you agree?’

She threw him another sweet smile. He didn’t smile back at her, but there was a sudden shift in his expression, and she glimpsed behind the powerful, aggressive face a suggestion of charm that was an unnerving as his insolence had been.

She looked away quickly and began typing, her fingers flying smoothly over the keyboard. She could feel Oliver Kemp watching her, perched on the edge of the boardroom table, one hand resting lightly on his thigh—watching and waiting for her to sink obligingly to the level of his preconceived notions of her.

She glared at the word processer. True, she had come here of her own accord; true, her father, although he hadn’t actually arranged the interview himself had hinted long and hard enough. He had also caught her at her weakest moment.

She frowned, and wondered whether she would be sitting here now if she had not spent that one misguided night with Rupert a few days before. Dear Rupert—tall, blond, carefree, with more money than sense most of the time. Her father thoroughly disapproved of him, and when he had discovered her whereabouts he had hit the proverbial roof. It had made not the slightest difference that Rupert Thompson held about as much sexual allure for her as a baked potato.

Her eyes slid across to where Oliver was sitting. If her father absolutely had to interfere, she thought, the least he could have done would have been to recommend her to someone halfway human—someone easygoing and amiable. Oliver Kemp, she decided, was as easygoing and amiable as a cyclone.

She printed the five pages of typed document and handed them to him with a blankly polite expression.

The cold blue eyes skimmed over them, then he read them more slowly. Checking for errors, she thought. No doubt hoping for them. If any existed he could go back to her father with a rueful shake of his head and say, in all truth, that she just had not got the necessary skills to work for him, but that he would keep his ear to the ground as a favour to him.

Maybe, she thought suddenly, I should have inserted enough mistakes to have guaranteed that rueful shake of the head. But her only thought at the time had been to show the damned man that she wasn’t the completely frivolous nitwit that he obviously thought she was. Shame. The best ideas, like the best retorts, always came to mind after the event.

‘Not bad.’ He deposited the sheets of typed paper next to him and walked across to the door, expecting her to follow, which she did, brushing past him then following him towards the office where she had sat for forty minutes earlier.

His own office was through the connecting door. It was huge, with two desks, one of which was his, the other housing a computer terminal and printer. Extending along one side of the room was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, handmade in the same rich dark wood as the rest of the furniture, with rows of books on electronics.

Kemp International had cornered the market in sophisticated electronic equipment, and had always managed to stay one step ahead of its rivals.

Francesca eyed the books and wondered whether this was Oliver Kemp’s personal taste in literature as well. Was he one of those men who ate, slept and dreamt work?

‘I would expect you to be au fait,’ he said, following the direction of her eyes, ‘with the contents of most of the books on those shelves. Working for me isn’t simply a question of being an adequate typist.’

‘So you’ve decided that I’m good enough for the job, Mr Kemp?’ she asked, with an expression of surprise. She didn’t know whether to be astounded or dismayed by this. ‘Does this mean that you don’t think my father’s verbal curriculum vitae was based entirely on paternal pride?’

He sat back in his swivel chair and linked his fingers together. ‘Sarcasm is not a trait I admire in a secretary,’ he drawled.

Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear, Francesca felt like saying; then we might as well call this a day, mightn’t we? But she swallowed down the rejoinder. Her father would be elated that she had taken him up on his suggestion, that she had landed this job through her own skills in the end, and she dearly loved him.

‘I do apologise,’ she murmured, and he frowned at her.

‘You’ve proved,’ he said, giving her reply the benefit of the doubt, ‘that you can type.’

‘And that I can read,’ she pointed out. ‘I shall consume the contents of those books avidly.’

His eyebrows flew up at that, and she hurriedly began stammering out a suitable apology.

He waited patiently until her voice had fizzled out into a series of fairly inaudible noises.

‘Good. Because when clients call with queries you will have to respond to them in a coherent, knowledgeable fashion.’

He paused, and she said into the silence, ‘What happened to your last secretary?’

‘My last secretary,’ he said lazily, ‘emigrated to Australia to live with her daughter three years ago. Since then I’ve been subjected to a string of women ranging from the downright dim to the misplaced intellectual.’

So you wouldn’t describe yourself as fussy? Francesca wanted to ask. ‘I see,’ she said, only, in fact, seeing a series of hopeless confrontations ahead of her.

‘You, at least, have started off in vaguely the right direction. You can spell at any rate.’ He looked at her through his lashes, his face expressionless. ‘Which brings me to the obvious question. Why are you here?’

‘I thought you knew why I was here,’ she answered, bewildered by the question. ‘I’m a spoiled brat who—’

‘Why are you really here?’ he interrupted impatiently. ‘What are you doing here when you could have got yourself a job at any number of companies if you’d wanted. Your father informed me that you had excellent A level results. Why didn’t you go to university?’

Francesca looked at him resentfully, not liking the way he was manoeuvring her into a position of self-defence.

‘Your father wanted you to go to university.’

‘He did,’ she agreed.

‘He wanted you to study economics, I believe.’

‘Did you talk about anything at this lunch of yours apart from me?’ she asked with irritation. ‘I suppose you also know what dress size I am, and what my favourite colour is as well?’

She hadn’t expected a response to that, but he looked at her very carefully, his eyes roaming over her body and sending a reeling sensation of alarm through her. Men had looked at her before—in fact she was quite used to interested stares—but she had never felt this nervous prickle down her spine.

‘Size eight, and, with your hair, probably green—dark green.’

‘I didn’t go to university,’ she said hurriedly, flushing, ‘because I wanted a break from studying.’

‘A break to do what?’

‘To enjoy myself,’ she muttered feebly, feeling like a cornered rat.

‘Ah, now we’re getting to the heart of the matter, aren’t we?’

‘Are we?’ she asked, already feeling her hackles beginning to rise.

‘You may have all the qualifications for this job, and God only knows I’ve seen more than enough internal applications by way of comparison, but don’t for a minute imagine that I shall tolerate your personal life spilling over into your professional one. Working for me isn’t going to be a game to be endured simply to humour your father. I don’t want to see you enter this office either late or the worse for all-night partying. Do I make myself clear?’

‘As a bell,’ she said coldly.

‘Nor do I expect you to spend your time rushing through your work so that you can get on the telephone to your numerous admirers.’

‘I don’t have numerous admirers, Mr Kemp,’ she snapped. ‘And I can’t believe that Dad would have told you that I did.’

He shrugged. ‘He mentioned some playboy who was always in tow, and playboys tend to travel in packs, don’t they? They don’t feel complete unless they’re enjoying their wild times in the company of like-minded individuals.’ There was contempt on his face.

‘You don’t approve of me, do you, Mr Kemp?’ she asked stiffly.

‘No, I don’t.’ His words were blunt. He was not the sort of man to beat about the bush, nor was he the sort to parcel up unflattering thoughts underneath pretty wrapping.

‘I grew up poor, Miss Wade, and I made it on my own. I don’t approve of playboys who can’t see further than having a good time. Nor do I approve of women like you, who were raised in the lap of luxury and swan through life thinking that hard work is something best left alone. You obviously have the brains to do something for yourself, but that doesn’t appeal, does it? Hard work is rarely glamorous to those who don’t have to do it.’

That stung. She felt angry hurt prick the back of her eyes but she didn’t say anything. She could hardly deny that she had been indulged all her life, could she? By the time she had been born, late in her parents’ lives, her father had already made his first million and had been well on his way to making several more.

Would things have been different if her mother had lived? Probably. But in the absence of a mother her father had spoilt her, doted on her, bought her everything that her heart had desired. There was so much, she later realised, that he had wanted to make up for—for the lack of a mother, for the long hours he worked and, most of all, it had been his way of showing her how much he loved her.

But maybe Oliver Kemp was right. Maybe showering her with material things had taken away from her that hungry edge that drove people on to succeed. She thought of her friends—all pampered, all the indulged products of wealthy parents, charming enough people to whom hardship was unknown and suffering was measured in terms of missed skiing holidays.

‘But those are my personal feelings,’ he said coolly, breaking into her introspection. ‘Personal feelings have no place in a working environment, though. Just so long as you do your job competently then we’ll get along just fine. Abuse your position, my girl, and you’ll soon discover the limits to my tolerance.’

They stared at each other, and she felt panic rise up in her throat. This was never going to work out. He disliked her and he disliked everything that she stood for.

‘Thank you for making me feel so warmly welcomed into your organisation, Mr Kemp,’ she said stiffly, and his lips curved into an unwilling smile which totally altered the forbidding angularity of his face.

He stood up to show her into her office. ‘I see,’ he murmured over his shoulder, their eyes meeting, ‘that that biting tongue of yours might be something I shall have to tolerate. However,’ he continued, turning away and walking into the outer office, ‘there’s no need to dress in designer clothes.’

He sat on the edge of her desk, waiting for her to sit down, then he leant towards her. ‘I say this for your own benefit. The people with whom you’ll be mixing don’t come from such a rarefied background as you do.’ He reached out to finger the lapel of her expensive shirt. ‘Too much of this and you might find yourself distanced by a group of very nice people indeed.’

She didn’t pull away from his touch, but she wanted to. Instead, as he strolled back into his office, she found that her body had become rigid, and she only began to relax as she sorted out the stack of typing which lay at the side of the computer.

At twelve o’clock he emerged from his office and informed her that he would be out for the rest of the day. She watched as he slipped on his jacket, adjusted his tie, and breathed a sigh of relief when the door closed behind him.

He made her tense and it wasn’t simply due to the insults which he had flung at her. There was something watchful about him—something that stirred a certain uneasy wariness in her. He was like a shark, circling the water around her, content to watch, but she would do well to remember that sharks bit.

He had left her enough work to fill her time until five o’clock, but in fact she stayed on until nearly six-thirty, familiarising herself with his filing system, and familiarising herself also with some of the books on the shelf which he had informed her would have to be read, digested and memorised.

She had no idea how much of that had been said because he contemptuously believed that she would never manage such a task, but if she was to stay working with the loathsome man then she would make damned sure that by the end of her stint he would have to swallow everything he had said.

Her father was not at home when she got back—tired, but oddly elated at having spent the day doing something productive—but Rupert was. Bridie had let him in and Francesca found him in the sitting room, on his second glass of gin and tonic.

He looked at her as she walked in and said without preamble, ‘Nasty rumour has it that you’ve got a job.’

Francesca looked at him and grinned. She was very fond of Rupert Thompson. She had known him casually for two years, but it was really only in the last seven months that they had become close, much to her father’s disgust. He had no patience with men like Rupert. He thought that he should buckle down and find himself a job or, failing that, join the Army—as if joining the Army would suddenly change sunny-tempered Rupert into an aggressive work-machine.

The only thing that held him in check was his daughter’s repeated reassurance that nothing was going on between them. Rupert was fun. He didn’t want her as a passionate lover and the feeling was mutual.

She took off her coat, tossed it onto a chair and went across to the bar to pour herself a glass of mineral water.

‘Nasty rumour,’ she said, sitting down on the sofa, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet underneath her, ‘is right.’ She looked at him. ‘You could always follow my example,’ she added, and he grinned at her infectiously.

‘And lose my reputation? Never.’

As it happened, he did have a job of sorts, but in typical Rupert-style he had long ago decided that delegation was a talent that was much underrated. And, in fairness, it worked for him. His parents had died ten years ago, leaving him a fortune, along with a vast estate which he had happily left in the efficient hands of the managers who had looked after it from the year dot.

He signed things that needed his signature, spent enough time at his country home to ensure that things were being run profitably, and there his input ceased. He made sure that all his employees were treated well, received unstinting loyalty in return, and cheerfully had his good times on some of the immense profits that came his way.

‘So tell all,” he commanded, settling back comfortably with his drink, and Francesca obliged, carefully editing out the unpleasantness of her interview. She wasn’t given to confiding private feelings to other people—a legacy, she had always assumed, of having been the only child of a single-parent family.

‘Kemp,’ Rupert murmured thoughtfully. ‘Kemp, Kemp, Kemp. I know that name.’

‘Their electronic stuff is all over the country, Rupert,’ Francesca said drily. ‘And they’re branching out all the time,’ she heard herself saying. ‘They’ve moved into Europe and are hoping to capture the Far East fairly soon.’ One day, she thought suddenly, and I sound like an advertising brochure. Had Oliver Kemp been that successful in influencing her thoughts? She found the idea of that slightly disconcerting.

‘No, no, no.’ He waved aside the explanation. ‘What I mean is this—I’ve heard of that man personally.’

‘Really?’ She felt a sudden rush of curiosity which, she told herself, she had no intention of satisfying. Oliver Kemp was an arrogant bastard, and whatever he did in his private life had nothing to do with her. She would work for him because a combination of pride and guilt would make her, at least for the time being, but beyond that her interest stopped.

Rupert, immune to subtle shifts in atmosphere, blithely ignored this one and continued in the same thoughtful voice, ‘Oliver Kemp. I’ve seen him around.’

‘You’ve seen most people around,’ she pointed out. ‘You’re hardly one of life’s shrinking violets, are you?’

He laughed, pleased at that. ‘Good-looking chap,’ he said, draining his drink and eyeing the empty glass meaningfully. She ignored the hint. As far as she was concerned he drank too much anyway, and she had no intention of assisting the situation.

‘You can have some mineral water, Rupert,’ she said eventually, and he sighed in resignation.

‘Too much of this stuff is bad for you,’ he said when she handed him the glass of water. ‘Haven’t you heard that?’

‘No, and nor have you.’

‘A glass of wine, according to the experts, does wonders for some organ or other. Heart, I believe.’

‘I would sympathise if your input was restricted to one glass per day.’

‘Oliver Kemp,’ he said, not commenting on that one, ‘was in the gossip columns not too long ago. That’s why the name rings a bell. Don’t you ever read the gossip columns?’

‘Too trivial,’ she replied airily, and he laughed with great humour.

‘Ever since they announced that we were about to become engaged?’

‘Stupid people.’ Her mouth tightened as she remembered all the fuss. One casual shot of them leaving a nightclub in London had been enough to propel them into an item, and it had been that silly drama which had led to all her father’s unfounded suspicions that his daughter was about to do something utterly ridiculous.

‘Well, they had their facts right about Oliver Kemp. He’s engaged to a woman—Imogen something or other. There was a picture of them taken at their engagement party not too long ago.’

‘Oliver Kemp is engaged?’ Her voice was high and incredulous, and Rupert looked at her with some surprise.

‘Sattler,’ he said, nodding, delighted at this triumph of memory. ‘Imogen Sattler. She’s one of the city’s top businesswomen. They squeezed in a few lines of background on her. Born up north somewhere.’ He frowned. Instant recall was not one of his strong points and he didn’t pursue it. ‘Girl makes good, type of thing. You know what I mean—parents not well off, daughter very clever, gets into Oxford University, ends up sitting on the board of one of the top companies in the country.’

That made sense. Oliver thought that she was frivolous, an intellectual lightweight who spent her time enjoying her father’s wealth—‘Daddy’s money’ would probably be the term he would use, she thought with sudden bitterness. She was a decorative little bauble who had suddenly found herself catapulted into his sphere.

Rupert was standing up, ready to leave. He had only really dropped by, he told her, to ask her out to dinner. ‘Now that you’re earning,’ he said, ‘I shall expect you to pay your way.’

‘Rupert, I always pay my way, and let’s not go into those times when your wallet has mysteriously been absent without leave.’

They laughed, and arranged a place to meet tomorrow—at seven, so that she would have time to leave work at six, dash back to the house, and quickly change.

She knew that she didn’t need to justify herself in the eyes of Oliver Kemp, but some part of her wanted to prove to him that she wasn’t the brainless dimwit he thought she was.

He had expected her to falter over that typing test, she realised, and he probably confidently expected that she wouldn’t last the course in the job. He would think that she would get bored or that she wouldn’t be able to cope, or both.

She went upstairs to have a bath, and by the time she emerged she had gone from simmering irritation over his contempt for her to downright anger. She had also found herself giving far too much thought to this fiancée of his.

She had no idea what Imogen Sattler looked like, but her imagination provided her with all the details—tall, hard, eyes as condescending and intolerant as his—the sort of woman who was only happy when discussing the stock market or the economy, the sort of woman who never spoke but held forth to an audience. The sort of woman, in fact, who would be ideally suited to a man like Oliver Kemp. And, of course, they would share the same hard edge of people born without comforts and destined to make their own.

Her father came home just as Francesca was finishing her meal and settling down to a cup of coffee. It took a great deal of effort to maintain a calm expression, to convince herself that working for Oliver Kemp was worth it when she saw how his face lit up at the thought that his dear little daughter had taken the bull by the horns and got herself a job—and one that he had recommended at that.

And he must have known Oliver Kemp’s character more than he had originally suggested, because he was visibly relieved when she told him that the job was fine, that the boss was fine, that everything would work out, she was sure. She kept her fingers crossed behind her back all the while.

‘He’s a very highly respected man,’ her father said, prepared to be just the tiniest bit smug.

Francesca made agreeing noises and thought, Respected by whom? Vampires and other creatures of the night?

But then, she later thought in bed, he wasn’t cold-hearted, was he? Not with a fiancée tucked away in the background.

She tried to imagine him as a hot-blooded man of passion, and that was so easy that by the time she finally fell asleep she no longer felt just angry and resentful towards him, she also felt vaguely disturbed.




CHAPTER TWO


‘SO YOU made it here on time.’

Those were the first words that greeted Francesca as she walked through the office door at five minutes to nine. She had planned on arriving earlier, but her body had become accustomed to late mornings, and trying to put it through its paces at seven-thirty had been torturous.

She looked at him, keeping her temper in check, but he wasn’t looking at her at all.

‘I see you managed to finish all the typing that was on your desk. What time did you leave last night?’

Francesca sat down at her desk. She had dressed in slightly more conservative clothes today—navy blue dress, straight and fairly shapeless and far less obviously designer.

‘Around six,’ she murmured vaguely, and his eyes slid across to her with irony.

‘There’s no need to become a workhorse,’ he said mildly, reaching down two volumes from the shelf of books and putting them on the desk next to her. ‘I want hard work out of you; I don’t want a nervous breakdown.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ she asked, eyeing the books.

‘What it’s supposed to mean is that I don’t want you working over-long hours and then complaining of exhaustion by the end of the week.’

‘I’m not a complaining sort, Mr Kemp,’ she answered, truthfully enough, and he shrugged, not really interested in what she was or wasn’t, she supposed, just so long as it didn’t intrude on work.

It was a novel situation. She had always been accustomed to provoking a reaction in men. She had the extraordinary looks of a blonde with contrasting dark eyes and eyebrows. She looked at him from under her thick lashes and saw that as far as her looks were concerned she might well be as alluring to him as the umbrella stand in the corner of the office.

‘I want you to get a start on these two books,’ he said, pushing his hands into his pockets. ‘They’ll give you some background information on what the company does. Before that you’d better come into my office and we’ll go through my work diary for the next six months.’

She followed him into the office and obediently compared her thick diary with his, slotting in meetings and conferences which had obviously been arranged since the departure of his last unsuccessful temp.

When he had finished he sat back in his chair and looked at her steadily.

What was it, she wondered, about this man’s eyes? They were quite cool, quite calculating, but somewhere in the wintry depths there was also something else—something offputtingly sexual.

‘I never got around to asking you whether you have any questions about the company,’ he said, ‘or, for that matter, about your role in it. Have you?’

‘What did your last secretary do?’ Francesca asked ‘I mean, the one who left three years ago. What duties did she have?’

He looked at her with a trace of irony on his mouth. ‘Do you intend to fill her shoes?’ he asked. ‘No one else has managed that.’

‘I’m willing to give it a try,’ she said evenly. ‘I know you don’t think very much of me—’

‘Oh, but I think your secretarial skills are surprisingly as good as your father described.’ His voice was cool and his choice of words blunt enough to leave her in no doubt as to where the remainder of his thoughts lay.

Francesca kept her temper. She was normally an even-tempered person, but then, admittedly, no one had ever been quite so abrupt to her before. She had only been in the job one day but already she was beginning to realise exactly how cushioned her life had been. When she walked into the building she was surrounded by people purposefully going somewhere, hurrying to jobs because, no doubt, they needed the pay-packet that came with employment.

‘Irene,’ he said into the silence, ‘was my right-hand man. She not only typed, she also knew the workings of this company almost as well as I do. When I asked for information on a client she could provide it almost without needing to go to a file for reference.’

‘Sounds a paragon,’ Francesca said wryly.

‘I think it’s called devotion. The assortment of secretaries I’ve had since then have been in the job simply for the money.’

‘Which,’ she pointed out, ‘is one thing, at least, you can’t accuse me of.’

‘No,’ he returned without emphasis, ‘but your lack of need to earn a living does mean that it’s fairly immaterial what you bring to this job, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘You’re not prepared to give me a fighting chance, are you?’ she asked, and he shrugged, neither confirming or denying that. He simply continued to look at her steadily, shrewdly, with cool judgement in his pale eyes.

‘How did you start all this?’ she asked, changing the subject because she didn’t want to let him get under her skin. Again.

‘With a loan from the bank,’ he replied drily, as if it had been a particularly stupid question because the answer was so self-evident.

‘And after the loan from the bank came what?’

‘A small outlet in the Midlands. Our products were good, though, and we moved in at a fortuitous point in the market. Any more questions?’

He waited politely and she clamped her teeth together. It wasn’t difficult to tell that he found her a bore. She stood up, shaking her head, and when she looked back towards him as she left his office his attention was already elsewhere, his face frowning as he skimmed through something on the computer on his desk.

She quietly closed the door behind her, feeling for almost the first time in her life that she had been politely rebuffed.

When you thought about it, she decided, it was funny—funny to have the shoe on the other foot, not to be the focus of admiring attention. Except that she didn’t much feel like laughing, even though she knew that her reactions were childish and that she would have to stop acting like a damned spoiled brat who sulked when she was not in the limelight. She had never before considered herself a spoiled brat and it was silly acting like one, she told herself, just because Oliver Kemp, a man whom she didn’t like anyway, found her uninteresting.

At ten-thirty the outer door opened and one of the managers strolled in. He was in his mid-thirties, fair-haired, and the minute he saw her his eyebrows flew up.

‘Well,’ he drawled, darting a quick eye at the connecting door and then obviously deciding that the coast was clear, ‘where have you been hiding yourself, my lovely?’

Francesca stopped what she was doing and said calmly, ‘You must be Mr Robinson. Mr Kemp is expecting you. I’ll just buzz and tell him that you’ve arrived.’

‘Brad. And no need just yet. I’m five minutes early anyway.’ He eyed the door again and adjusted his flamboyantly coloured tie.

Francesca watched him in silence as he perched familiarly on the edge of her desk and leant towards her. She knew this type, this make and model.

‘When did the wind blow you in?’ he asked.

Probably married, she thought, but still felt as though he was entitled by divine right to do just whatsoever he pleased. Probably, she decided, he felt as though it was his duty to spread himself around the female population, or at least around those remotely presentable.

‘I’ve been here since yesterday,’ Francesca answered coolly, ‘and I wasn’t blown in by the wind.’

‘No, but you look as though you should have been. Ethereal, almost, with that hair of yours.’ He reached out to touch her hair, and she saw Oliver Kemp watching them with widening eyes. How long had he been standing there? She hadn’t heard the click of his door opening.

‘Mr Kemp,’ she said, standing up, ‘I was just about to show Mr Robinson in.’

Mr Robinson had gone an embarrassed shade of red and had hopped off the desk as though suddenly discovering that it was made of burning embers.

Oliver didn’t say a word, and his dark-fringed, pale eyes were expressionless. He simply turned his back. The now very subdued manager bustled in behind him and the door was firmly shut.

Francesca released a long breath. She felt inappropriately as though she had been caught red-handed doing something unthinkable.

When an hour and a half later Brad Robinson hurried out of the office, making sure not to look in her direction, she found that she was concentrating a little too hard on what she was doing, and when Oliver Kemp moved across to her desk the colour flooded into her face.

‘I do apologise,’ she began, stammering, and he looked at her with raised eyebrows.

‘By all means. What for, though?’

She had been so sure that he had been going to say something to her, in that coldly sarcastic way of his, about not flirting with management that his question took her by surprise.

‘I didn’t invite Mr Robinson to sit on my desk…’ she began, faltering and going a deeper red. ‘He—’

‘He’s an inveterate flirt, Miss Wade,’ Oliver cut in unsmilingly. ‘I’ve caught him sitting on more desktops than I care to remember, but he’s a damned good salesman.’

‘Of course,’ she murmured with relief.

‘That’s not to say that I condone a lot of time-wasting during office hours,’ he added.

‘No.’ She paused. ‘Though I know how to handle men like Brad Robinson, anyway.’

‘I’m sure. I expect you’re quite accustomed to men who flirt the minute they clap eyes on you.’

He didn’t say that as a compliment and he was already looking at his watch.

‘I’ve got a few files here,’ he said, moving round the desk and perching next to her. Her eyes travelled along his muscular forearms to where his sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and she felt a sudden twinge of uneasy awareness.

‘Yes, sir,’ she mumbled, disconcerted by her reaction.

His dark-fringed eyes slid across to hers and he said drily, ‘You can call me Oliver. I don’t believe in a hierarchical system, where my employees salute every time I walk past. Bad for the morale.’

‘You’ve studied psychology?’ Francesca asked, and he raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, flustered, ‘I…’

‘Don’t mean to be sarcastic all the time?’ He sat on the edge of the desk. ‘I suspect that that’s because you’ve never had to curb your tongue, have you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I mean, Miss Wade, is that your privileged background has opened a great many doors for you. People are often subservient to wealth, and I suspect that you’ve come to expect subservience as part and parcel of everyday life.’

‘That’s not true,’ she said in a weak voice, but there was more than an ounce of truth in what he was saying. She had not gone through life demanding special treatment, but on the other hand it had frequently been given to her.

‘This is your first job,’ he continued relentlessly, ‘and probably for the first time in your life you’re going to have to realise that no one here is going to treat you as anything other than another employee in this organisation.’ She felt his cold blue eyes skewering into her dispassionately.

‘I don’t want to be treated any differently from anyone else,’ Francesca said defensively. She looked away from the hard, sexy contours of his face, which anyway was only addling her mind still further, and stared at the stack of files on which his hand was resting.

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He slipped off the desk and turned his attention back to the files. ‘There are letters in these which need typing and I’ve highlighted a few things which I want you to sort out. You’ll have to phone the regional managers and arrange appointments for them to come and see me. As far as the Smith Holdings one is concerned, make sure that you get Jeffrey Lake to see me no later than lunchtime tomorrow.’ He looked down at her. ‘Any questions?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Francesca murmured, and a ghost of a smile crossed his face.

‘You’re very confident, aren’t you?’

‘Don’t tell me that there’s something wrong with that!’

‘Nothing at all.’

She looked up at him and their eyes met. ‘I guess you’d be able to analyse that trait in me as well? Wealth breeds self-confidence, doesn’t it? Maybe you start off from the vantage point of thinking that everyone is inferior, so it’s an easy step towards thinking that you’re capable of anything.’

‘Very good,’ he drawled, and his expression was veiled. ‘Too much self-confidence is as bad as too little, though. I’m sure you wouldn’t like to fall flat on your face just because you’re too proud to ask questions.’

‘I don’t intend to fall flat on my face,’ she returned calmly, ‘and I’m not so completely stupid that I don’t realise the value of asking questions when I need to.’

‘Good.’ He walked towards the door and she watched his loose-limbed stride with angry fascination. ‘I won’t be back for the rest of the day,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘If you need me I’ll be contactable on my mobile phone until seven, then anything after that will have to wait until tomorrow.’

Once he had gone she turned to the computer and methodically began working her way through the files, calling the regional managers, arranging appointments.

Every so often, though, her mind would flit back to him. It irked her that he treated her like a child—an over-indulged child who appeared capable of handling the job but of not much else beyond that. There was always a cool dismissiveness in his voice when he addressed her, and even when he had perched on the desk and offered her his little pearls of insight into her personality the basic uninterest had still been there. To him she was a case study in everything that he disapproved of. Someone who would either do her job well or not.

Her father, had he known, would have had a good laugh at that, she thought.

She worked steadily through lunch, and it was only when the door was pushed open that she realised with some surprise that it was after four.

‘Hi.’

One word—a monosyllable—and Francesca knew instantly that she wasn’t going to warm to the girl standing by her desk, looking at her with assessing eyes. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Could you give these to your boss for signing? I take it he’s not in.’

‘No. Who shall I say left them?’

‘Helen. I work in the accounts department.’

She looked, Francesca thought, as though she had been wildly miscast. She looked, in fact, as though she should have been working at the cosmetic counter of a large department store. Her hair, dyed jet-black, was carefully styled and hung in a straight bob to her shoulders, and her face was impeccably made up in an assortment of shades which gave her the look of a highly painted doll—she was attractive in a very obvious sort of way, and was clearly in no mood to hurry on, from the way she was standing looking around her.

‘Actually,’ Helen said, dragging a chair to sit opposite Francesca, much to Francesca’s dismay, ‘we’ve been curious about you. One minute Oliver had given his temp the boot and Cathy was filling in, and the next minute here you are. How did you manage to land the job?’

‘Oh, usual way,’ Francesca lied vaguely, but the other girl let that one go past. She was clearly not madly interested in the ins and outs of how Francesca had found herself working for Oliver Kemp. But she wanted something, because she still made no move to depart.

‘We’re all dying of envy, anyway,’ Helen said, narrowing her blue eyes. ‘I’d do anything to work for Oliver, but my typing skills are lousy.’ She picked up a paperweight from the desk and idly turned it over while Francesca wondered what this bizarre conversation was leading to.

‘Well, I’m sure your job must be very interesting,’ Francesca said politely, and Helen laughed—a hard, brittle sound that jarred.

‘Oh, riveting, dear.’ She plonked the paperweight back down and stood up. ‘Well, I’m off; just thought I’d come and see what the competition was like.’

‘The competition?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She opened her eyes wide and failed to look guileless. ‘Thought you might be the brainy type that Oliver goes for, but you’re not. Still, just between the two of us, he can’t be that immune to a pretty face, can he?’

‘And, if he isn’t, you want to make sure that you’re the one in the firing-line?’

‘Got it in one.’ She smiled but without humour. ‘I’d give my right arm to get into the sack with him.’

‘Really?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘No,’ Francesca said coldly. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a lot of work to do.’

‘Sure.’ Helen walked towards the door. ‘He in tomorrow?’ she asked, and Francesca nodded. ‘Tell him I’ll come by to collect that stuff in the morning.’ And she was gone, leaving an unpleasant taste in Francesca’s mouth.

That, she thought acidly, was office politics—something else of which she had no experience.

She was ready to leave by five-thirty, and it was something of a relief to see Rupert at seven—sweet, uncomplicated Rupert, who wouldn’t know the meaning of ‘connive’ if it jumped in front of him waving a sign in neon lettering.

‘You look tired,’ he said as they walked towards his car—a sleek red Jaguar which he had obligingly parked in the very centre of the courtyard. ‘Tired yet extraordinarily gorgeous, considering all we’re doing is going out for a meal. Sure you won’t change your mind about coming out to a nightclub with me? We could dance till dawn and drink until at least midnight.’

Francesca laughed. He was incorrigible. He was also easy company. They drove to the restaurant—a French bistro in the theatre district—and he entertained her with a barrage of fairly trivial chat, which was quite amusing nevertheless. Rupert had always felt uncomfortable with pregnant pauses in conversation, and consequently he was adept at making small talk, which, she thought as they went into the restaurant, was just what she needed.

The restaurant was dimly lit, in accordance with someone’s clever notion that subdued lighting was conducive to a romantic atmosphere.

The proprietor knew them well and showed them to a little table in the corner, much loved by aficionados because it offered an excellent view of the other diners. Rupert liked it. From there he could watch the comings and goings of the largely pre and post theatre crowd who were wealthy enough to afford the exorbitant prices the place charged.

Privileges, Francesca thought suddenly—all those privileges that money could buy.

She had never known what it was like to have her choice of restaurant narrowed down to a hamburger bar because of financial considerations. Of course, she had eaten hamburgers, and she had enjoyed them, but then she had chosen to. She frowned and wondered why she was devoting so much time to these questions when they had never really bothered her before.

She was subdued over the meal, listening to Rupert ramble on in his harmless, amusing fashion. He was typical of all her friends—out for a good time, ever game for harmless, mostly expensive fun. But they all lacked something, didn’t they? she thought. It was as though reality hadn’t quite impinged upon them.

Then she thought of Oliver Kemp, and that irritated her. He was hardly what she would call a role model of a caring man—at least not as far as he had shown her—but still, he was somehow more substantial than anyone else she had ever met, wasn’t he?

Rupert was saying something and she nodded amiably enough, letting her eyes drift through the crowded restaurant, and she saw him just as he saw her. Their eyes tangled in the dimly lit room, and then, with a feeling of sinking horror, she watched as he and his companion walked towards their table.

At first she hardly noticed the woman with him. The only thing her eyes could focus on was the masculine figure in his dark suit with a cream silk tie around his neck.

‘Oh, God, Rupert,’ she whispered nervously. ‘Here comes my boss.’

They watched until Oliver had approached the table, then Rupert, ever ready with a tactless opening statement, said, smiling broadly, ‘So you’re the slave-driver I’ve been hearing so much about!’ He stood up, unruffled by Oliver’s cool, speculative expression, and said expansively, ‘Why don’t you pull up a couple of pews and join us?’

‘I’m sure Mr Kemp has a table booked,’ Francesca said, mortified, while the woman with him watched the cabaret with a pleasant smile.

‘We’d love to join you,’ she said, still smiling, and for the first time Francesca looked at her fully.

Was this Imogen Sattler—the tall, hard woman she had envisaged from Rupert’s vague description? The self-made woman who had climbed to the top of her career?

She was small, with short, curly fair hair and an intelligently serious face.

‘I take it you’ve just come from a play?’ Rupert asked them both as they sat down, and Oliver nodded, looking at Francesca with amusement, as though the playboy man in her life was just precisely as he had imagined.

‘I’m Rupert Thompson, by the way,’ Rupert said with limitless bonhomie. ‘General wastrel but with a heart of gold.’

The woman laughed and said brightly, ‘What a novel introduction. I’m Imogen Sattler.’ She looked at Francesca. ‘And I’m so glad to meet you. I hope you work out as Oliver’s secretary. He seems to run through them at a rate of knots.’ She glanced at him fondly, and Francesca felt a spurt of confused emotion which she could neither explain nor rationalise.

‘So I understand,’ she said politely, looking at Oliver from under her lashes.

‘Miss Wade is still in the enthusiastic phase,’ Oliver said coolly. ‘She’s trying to prove herself.’

That amused Rupert. He beamed, took a generous sip of port, and said, grinning, ‘That must be new to her. You’ve never had to prove yourself to anyone before, have you, Frankie?’

If he had set out to confirm everything that Oliver suspected of her, he couldn’t have done it better. Oliver gave her a dry, knowing look, and she said defensively, ‘Of course I’m not trying to prove myself. I just feel that if I’m employed to do a job of work then I should do it thoroughly.’

‘Well done!’ Imogen said, laughing. ‘Just don’t let him take advantage of you! He’s notorious for taking advantage of his secretaries. Why do you think they all leave with such alarming regularity?’

‘Now, now,’ Oliver murmured, and his light eyes slid across to his fiancée, ‘you make me sound like an ogre.’

The waiter approached to take their order and Rupert said, speaking for all of them, ‘Just the bill. Our friends here have decided to come to a nightclub with us. Haven’t you?’ He looked at Imogen and murmured breezily, ‘It would be a shame to waste such a glamorous outfit on a badly lit restaurant, don’t you agree?’

She looked delighted at this turn in events, but Oliver’s mouth had thinned and he said abruptly, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘I’d really like to just get home, Rupert,’ Francesca said, alarmed, but he waved aside both protests as if the thought of their turning down his kind invitation was hardly conceivable.

‘Nonsense, Frankie. Just because you’ve got a job it doesn’t mean that you have to give up all of life’s little pleasures.’

‘It would be fun,’ Imogen said, turning to Oliver, and he looked at her with grudging indulgence.

They might not be all over each other, Francesca thought, but there was a thread of real emotion there between them, evident in the way they looked at one another. Was this love? She abruptly drained her glass of port and felt a little dizzy.

Rupert stood up and held his arm out for Imogen. ‘You don’t mind my escorting your lovely fiancée to the door, do you, old man?’

Oliver was beginning to look mildly irritated, and when he fell into step with Francesca he said in a low, harsh voice, ‘Can’t you keep a rein on your lover?’

‘Rupert is not my lover!’ she said angrily, and he shrugged.

‘Whatever, then. Playmate.’

‘You make us sound like a couple of children.’

They were walking towards the door, and ahead of them Imogen was laughing, highly entertained by whatever Rupert was saying. He could be a superb conversationalist when he chose—witty, warm, direct, and with a boyish charm that could halt a charging rhino at a hundred paces. Francesca had seen it in action often enough before.

‘And it’s hardly my fault that Rupert’s commandeered your fiancée, is it?’ she added tartly.

‘Oh, Imogen is a big girl,’ Oliver drawled lazily. ‘And intelligent enough not to be taken in by your little playmate’s oily charm.’

They stepped outside into the freezing air, and Rupert immediately hailed a taxi while Imogen smiled coaxingly at Oliver over her shoulder. ‘We never go to nightclubs,’ she said persuasively, her eyes bright. ‘It might be fun!’

Francesca thought that going to sleep sounded rather more fun, and her mouth was tight by the time the taxi pulled up to the nightclub and deposited them outside.

Rupert was well-known there, not that it would have mattered. Oliver’s presence commanded such immediate awe that they were ushered in like royalty, and Francesca looked around at the familiar haunt with a sinking heart.

Had she really enjoyed frequenting these places—loud music, beautiful people frenetically talking and looking around them, eyes ever open to spot anyone they knew?

‘I’m awfully sorry about this,’ she murmured to Imogen once they were inside, and the other woman turned to her with wry humour in her eyes.

‘Why? It makes a change for me. My head is normally so full of business that I find it hard to relax.’

Oliver, with an ease which he seemed to accept without question as people made way for him, had gone to the bar for drinks, and Imogen took her arm confidentially.

‘You come here often, I gather?’

‘Oh, all the time,’ Francesca said, airily. ‘My head is so devoid of business that I find it terribly easy to relax.’

‘I wasn’t meaning to be offensive,’ Imogen said with gentle sincerity, and Francesca blushed.

‘No, of course not; it’s just…’

‘That Oliver’s been giving you a hard time because of your background? He told me that your father is terribly well off.’

‘And what else has he told you?’ She pictured them together, talking about her, and winced.

‘He’s a hard man,’ Imogen said, ‘but I expect you’ll get used to that in time. If you stick it out, that is! Must be something of a culture shock, though,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘if you’re used to a man like Rupert.’

‘Rupert,’ Francesca began defensively, ‘is—’

‘A type of person I’ve never met in my life before!’ Imogen laughed, and Francesca felt the beginnings of real warmth towards her. She watched as Rupert took her to the dance floor and reluctantly sat down in a secluded corner with Oliver.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see the attention he was receiving from other women in the room—sidelong glances of interest which he either chose to ignore or else genuinely didn’t notice.

‘I can understand why your father was worried about your lifestyle,’ he said, leaning towards her.

Amidst the noise and push of people there was something disturbingly intimate about his husky voice, and she looked at him and felt a twinge of something uninvited begin to stir inside her. She pushed it aside and said crisply, ‘I never intended to make this kind of thing a permanent feature of my life.’

‘You just spent the past few months allowing yourself to be persuaded into it?’

‘That’s hardly fair! You don’t know me.’

‘I know enough.’ He looked around him and there was a condescending glitter in his pale eyes which made the blood rush to her head angrily.

‘Your fiancée seems to be enjoying it,’ she snapped.

‘The element of novelty has its temptations for a limited period of time.’

‘You sound as though you’ve never had a moment’s fun in your life before.’

‘Is that what you think?’ He refocused his attention on her, and she felt her head begin to swim a little.

‘Well, have you?’

‘I didn’t spend my whole life in front of books before joining the army of people out to earn a living,’ he replied, his deep, low voice cutting through the tinny sound of the music.

‘You just decided somewhere along the line that fun was something you could do without?’ She cradled her glass in her hands, unwilling to drink another drop because she already felt a bit giddy.

‘No, I just decided that this sort of thing was an exercise in stupidity.’

‘Which I suppose is another criticism of me?’

He shrugged. ‘You can suppose anything you like.’

‘You don’t really care one way or the other.’ For some reason that stung.

‘That’s right.’ He leaned back in his chair and looked at his watch.

‘I’ll make sure that I’m at work on time tomorrow,’ Francesca said, abandoning her principles and taking another long gulp of her drink.

‘Of course you will,’ he murmured easily, ‘if only to prove that you can burn the candle at both ends and still function.’

‘I don’t have to prove anything to you,’ Francesca lied, not meeting his eyes.

‘Well, then,’ he said, not bothering to look at her, ‘maybe to yourself.’




CHAPTER THREE


‘I’M LEAVING home.’ Francesca’s father looked at her with anxious consternation, and she knew that it wasn’t because of what she had just announced but the way she had announced it. She knew that her mouth was tight, her words abrupt, her expression hard, but she was just so angry that anything else was quite beyond her.

How could he?

‘I’ve found a flat,’ she carried on, not quite meeting her father’s eyes but not looking away either. ‘It’s small but it’ll do, and I shall move at the weekend. You’re away for a couple of weeks so I won’t get under your feet.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘What’s the matter?’ She stood up and walked across the room to the window, then she turned to face him, her hands on her hips. ‘Dad, how could you?’

Two months, she thought furiously; two months of working for Oliver Kemp and now this. She didn’t quite know how the sudden flare-up had happened. She had got into work the morning before and had known the minute she had clapped eyes on him that he was in a foul temper.

Whether it had been his mood or a reaction to two months of his stunning indifference to her, which, she had managed to persuade herself, suited her just fine, she didn’t quite know, but she had snapped.

All she could coherently remember was Oliver leaning across her desk with a filthy expression on his face and telling her that the document which she had typed, which she had spent hours typing, would have to be redone because some of the facts were inaccurate, and that she should have known better. As if, she had thought at the time, she were on some uncanny hotline to Divine Company Information.

David Bass had dictated the facts. How could she have known that some of them weren’t on target? She had said as much to Oliver.

‘Oh, I’ve had a few words with David Bass,’ Oliver had said grimly, and then she had snapped.

‘How could I what?’ her father asked now, and she glared at him. The memory of what Oliver had told her was still humiliatingly clear in her head.

‘How could you have blackmailed Oliver Kemp into hiring me?’ she wailed, angry with her father, herself, Oliver and the world at large.

She had spent the last two months working hard, proving herself, foolishly believing that she had got the job on her own merit, and she knew that she would have continued harbouring the illusion if she hadn’t goaded Oliver into revealing the truth.

Her father was looking uncomfortable, clearing his throat and attempting to placate her, but Francesca was in no mood to forgive.

‘I only did it for your own good, my dear,’ he offered.

‘You knew his father very well, didn’t you, Dad?’ she said bitterly. ‘This was no passing acquaintance you bumped into accidentally. You grew up with his father! You both went to the same school, except that when you left to go on to a private school to finish your education he left to support a family of nine!’

‘He was a very clever man,’ her father murmured ruefully, which to her seemed quite beside the point.

‘I don’t care if he was Einstein!’ Francesca shouted, on the point of tears. ‘Oliver said that when his father died you sent them money—money so that Oliver could have the education he deserved. You sent me to him like a mouse to a trap, knowing that he would have no option but to employ me.’

‘You went of your own free will,’ her father pointed out, and Francesca ignored him.

‘You put him in a position of obligation. I was a debt.’ Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘A debt to be paid off.’

‘I knew you could do the job,’ her father said.

‘In that case you should have let me prove myself,’ she retorted immediately, and her father reddened.

‘My dear—’ he began, and she cut him short with a wave of her hand.

‘No,’ she said, gathering herself together. ‘It’s done, but I shall never forgive you for this.’

‘You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. If Oliver had thought you incompetent he would have sacked you, debt or no debt.’

‘The fact is you shouldn’t have blackmailed him.’ She walked towards the door. ‘Please tell Bridie that I’ll be in over the weekend to get my things together.’ She didn’t want to meet her father’s eye. Her anger was so great that it pushed aside everything else. It consumed her.

‘I can’t possibly continue working for you,’ she had told Oliver the day before, shaken and humiliated by his revelation.

And he had said curtly, ‘Don’t be a complete fool. I won’t accept a resignation from you.’

‘Why?’ she had taunted bitterly. ‘Because you’re honour-bound to keep me here?’

‘And stop,’ he had said, unwittingly focusing on the one thing guaranteed to make her feel even worse, ‘acting like a child.’

She felt like a child now, but she couldn’t help herself. Her self-respect had been whipped away and she felt naked and vulnerable, and she certainly wasn’t about to be persuaded by her father to be reasonable.

She didn’t want to be reasonable. She wanted to fling things about, and before she could do that she left, slamming the door behind her and bringing Bridie rushing down the stairs to see what was wrong.



Francesca was still fuming the following morning when she got to work, and as soon as Oliver walked in and saw her face he said tightly, impatiently, ‘For God’s sake, Francesca, drop it.’

‘Drop what?’ She watched as he took off his jacket, then slowly turned around to face her.

‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ he said, moving across to her desk and propping himself on it with his hands. ‘If I hadn’t thought that you could do the job I wouldn’t have hired you.’

‘Sure,’ Francesca muttered under her breath, and he gripped her chin with his fingers, forcing her to look at him.

‘I can’t stand people who feel sorry for themselves,’ he grated, and she met his eyes with an angry glare.

‘Since you can’t stand me anyway,’ she said, ‘I don’t think any further criticisms of my character will have any effect.’

He shook his head and looked as if he could willingly have slapped her, but instead he stood up and strode into his office, slamming the door behind him.



By the time Friday rolled around Francesca’s nerves were jangling from the silently aggressive atmosphere between them.

Her work was as efficient as ever, but her body tensed the minute he came near her, and there was a tension in him too that didn’t help matters. She still hadn’t told him that she was moving house, and she delayed that until she was ready to leave on the Friday evening, when she said coolly, not looking at him, ‘I don’t know whether I mentioned this to you or not, but I’ve decided to leave home.’





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