Книга - The Temp and the Tycoon

The Temp and the Tycoon
Liz Fielding






Liz Fielding was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain – with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She finally came to a full stop in a tiny Welsh village cradled by misty hills and these days, mostly, leaves her pen to do the travelling. When she’s not sorting out the lives and loves of her characters, she potters in the garden, reads her favourite authors and spends a lot of time wondering… “What if…”

For news of upcoming books – and to sign up for her occasional newsletter – visit Liz’s website at www.lizfielding.com




The Temp and the Tycoon


by

Liz Fielding




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


CHAPTER ONE

‘WAIT for me!’

Talie Calhoun sprinted across the marble lobby of the Radcliffe Tower as the lift doors began to close. The occupant of the lift obliged by holding the doors, and she beamed a grateful smile in his direction.

‘Thank you so much! It’s my first day and I am sooo late,’ she said, all in a rush as she checked her wristwatch and let out a tiny wail of anguish before looking up at her fellow passenger. Nothing unusual there. Looking up was what she did, mostly. Her grandmother had warned her. If she didn’t eat up her spinach and crusts she wouldn’t grow tall and her hair wouldn’t curl.

One out of two to granny.

Oh, good grief. It was just her luck that the man was a serious babe magnet. Slate grey eyes, cheekbones to die for, a mouth that you just knew would melt your bones. If you were in the market to have your bones melted, that was. In short, the kind of man that you wouldn’t want to meet unless your make-up was perfect, your clothes elegant—but sexy—and your hair totally in control. Instead, she was pink in the face, dishevelled and flustered. She wasn’t even going to think about her hair…

‘That’s not good, is it?’ she said, offering a smile. But if she’d been hoping for reassurance, she was out of luck.

‘It does suggest a certain lack of enthusiasm,’ he replied coolly.

Would it have hurt the wretch to smile?

‘Which floor?’ he enquired.

‘Oh…’ She consulted the card she was holding. ‘Thirty-two, please.’ Then, as her knight errant pressed the button for her floor, ‘It’s not true, you know,’ she said. ‘I am incredibly enthusiastic.’

He lifted his left eyebrow no more than a millimetre. It expressed a world-weary lack of belief that she found totally galling.

‘No, honestly!’ she protested. Then, ‘But you’re probably right. This may be the shortest temp job in the entire history of temping.’

‘If it was important, maybe you should have set your alarm a little earlier.’ Her outraged response to this calumny was still a fledgling thought when he said, ‘Who are you going to work for?’

‘The Finance Director.’

‘Then you are in trouble.’

A twinge of unease tightened her stomach. She couldn’t be that unlucky…

‘Look, it wasn’t my fault. My alarm was set for six o’clock. I was almost here an hour ago.’

‘I should perhaps warn you that the Finance Director never accepts “almost” as good enough.’

‘Please… Tell me that you’re not him…’

‘No. You’re safe for another couple of minutes.’ His smile was definitely worth waiting for. Tiny creases appeared at the corners of his mouth and eyes to demonstrate that, although it was more ironic than ha-ha-ha, it was the genuine article.

‘Whew!’ she said, flapping her hand as if to cool her cheeks—actually, it wasn’t wholly pretence. ‘That would have been a really bad start.’

‘Late is bad enough. Have you got a good excuse prepared? Delay on the Underground is a favourite, I believe.’

‘With good reason,’ she declared. ‘But it wasn’t anything that simple. I wish it was.’

The eyebrow did its job again, inviting her to elaborate. Or maybe in disbelief… ‘Look, it’s just me, okay? I seem to have this fatal attraction for calamity, mayhem and misadventure. Today it was some poor man having a seizure down in the Underground.’

‘That’s a reason for him being late, not you,’ he pointed out.

‘Yes, but I will get involved.’

‘Oh. I see.’

For a moment she suspected that he was laughing at her. No, his mouth was perfectly straight…

She dragged her gaze from the kind of lower lip that sent a rush of hormones to her brain.

‘He’d, um, collapsed on the platform. People were walking right past him. I suppose they thought he’d been taking drugs or something. It wasn’t exactly a rerun of While You Were Sleeping—’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The movie? Where the girl rescues the guy when he falls onto the track and then everyone thinks she’s his fiancée…’ She stopped. Clearly he hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. ‘Obviously I couldn’t just leave him there.’

‘Obviously,’ he said. And then he did smile. Really smile. He was clearly killing himself with the effort not to laugh out loud.

Why did men always do that?

Because she was only five foot three in her thickest socks and twenty pounds overweight, according to some stupid height/weight chart in one of her aunt’s slimming magazines?

Why was it that only tall, thin people were taken seriously?

‘You find that funny?’ she demanded.

‘No! No, absolutely not,’ he said, rapidly losing the smile. ‘You weren’t afraid?’ Then, ‘I suspect that’s why none of those people stopped.’

‘Of course it was, but he was sick. He needed help. I grabbed the nearest person and wouldn’t let go until the poor woman got out her mobile phone and called for an ambulance. Then I did what I could to make him comfortable. Of course it took the paramedics forever to get through the rush hour traffic, and then I had to stay and explain what had happened, what I’d done.’

‘Is he going to be all right?’

Okay. He’d smiled at the wrong moment, but he had asked the right question…

‘I think so. He was a bit dazed, but he seemed to have pretty much recovered by the time I finally got away.’ The lift stopped, the doors slid back. ‘Uh-oh. This is my floor. Well, thanks for holding the lift.’

‘Anytime. Just yell,’ he said, and then he smiled again. And her bones…melted.

Oh, good grief. She’d yelled… In the hallowed precincts of the Radcliffe Tower…

‘I only do that in an emergency,’ she said, again wishing she was six inches taller so that people would take her seriously.

She was tired of men smiling indulgently at her. Not that she could have done anything about it if they were gazing at her with undiluted passion. But even so. A girl needed a morale boost once in a while.

‘Keep your fingers crossed for me.’

‘I will,’ he said, then spoiled the effect by saying, ‘But I doubt that will be necessary. I suspect you could talk your way out of anything.’

Jude Radcliffe was still smiling as he walked into his own suite of offices on the top floor of the tower. Catching his PA’s startled expression, he straightened his face and said, ‘Call Mike Garrett, will you, please, Heather? Tell him I’d appreciate it if he didn’t give his temp a hard time about being late. She dealt with a medical emergency on the Underground on her way to work.’

‘Good heavens. Was it serious?’ Then, with a frown, ‘What were you doing on the Underground?’

‘I suspect it was dramatic, rather than life-threatening, and I wasn’t involved. I just rode up in the lift with the woman.’

‘You seem to have covered a lot of ground in a short time. What’s her name?’ she asked, picking up the telephone.

‘She never stopped talking long enough for me to ask her.’

‘Obviously she had no idea who you were.’

‘I doubt that it would have made any difference.’

‘Really? Well, good for her. Description?’

‘How many temps do you think they’ll have arriving late in Finance?’ he said, suddenly regretting the impulse to get involved. ‘She’s small, with hair like an exploding mattress.’

‘What colour mattress?’

‘Blonde.’

‘Ah.’

Ah? What did ‘ah’ mean? He refused to ask.

‘Keep an eye on her, will you? See how she does. If we’ve got a suitable permanent opening we might consider her. If she’s interested.’ Realising that Heather was looking at him with a speculative little smile, he said, ‘The woman stopped to help a total stranger when everyone else walked by. People like that are rare.’

‘If she was telling the truth. It must have occurred to you that she might simply have been lying in wait for you to arrive with this heart-touching story well prepared?’

That he hadn’t—not for one minute—was disturbing. It was usually his first thought, and his last one, too. ‘Anything is possible,’ he replied, and, in an attempt to discourage any foolish ideas that might be lingering in Heather’s normally intelligent head, ‘Which is the reason I asked you to keep an eye on her.’

‘Right. Of course it is. And which is most important, Jude? Her skills or her social conscience?’

At which point he knew that he was being teased. That his PA thought he’d been snagged by some eye candy with an above average IQ who’d taken the trouble to use more than her looks as bait. And that, for once in a long while, he’d fallen for it.

‘You’ve been working for me too long to ask that,’ he said, deciding that enough was enough. ‘When you’ve spoken to Mike, bring in the New York file. I want to fine-tune the details before I leave for Scotland.’

Talie enjoyed working for the Radcliffe Group. The job was demanding, but she relished the opportunity to stretch herself. So much of her time in the last couple of years had been lived within the confines of her home; the chance to get out into the workplace, talk to some people who knew nothing about her, do ordinary stuff for a couple of weeks, was her version of respite.

Even if it meant having to cope with her aunt’s attempts to get her involved in a slimming regime.

Her only disappointment was that she hadn’t met her knight errant of the lift again. She’d hoped to thank him properly. She would put him right about Mike Garrett, too. Mike had been totally understanding about why she was late that first morning, was an absolute sweetheart to work for, and she sincerely wished she had more than just the one week standing in as holiday coverfor his secretary.

Unlike the eponymous owner of the Tower.

Jude Radcliffe, according to her new colleagues, who’d whisked her off to their favourite lunchtime watering hole and wasted no time at all in filling her in on just how lucky she was not to have been assigned to the top floor, was a total bastard to work for.

She might have dismissed this as pique that their personal billionaire, although apparently sex-on-legs and unaccountably unattached, was totally oblivious to their charms. However, a couple of the other senior secretaries who’d worked for him when his PA was away shuddered so convincingly at the memory that she knew it had to be true.

His PA was considered to be something of a dragon, too, although she’d seemed pleasant enough when she’d stopped at Talie’s desk later in the week to ask if Mike was free, taking the time to ask how Talie was settling in, make sure she’d found her way around, ask what her plans were, suggest she leave her CV with Human Resources.

Since Jude was away the week she worked for his company she didn’t have the opportunity to check him out for herself. Apparently his idea of a holiday was walking in the Scottish Highlands—shock, horror, face-pulling all around. It didn’t sound that terrible to Talie, but she didn’t say so. She was a temp, and her opinion didn’t count. She was just there to listen. But it was clear the rest of his employees felt the least he could do was indulge himself in a lavish lifestyle and give them something to gossip about over the skinny latte. And when they looked at her, expecting her to agree that the man was a disappointment all around, she did her best to hide her amusement and agreed with them.

’Natalie! I can hear the phone!’

She was already halfway down the stairs before her mother called out. Phone calls early in the morning or late at night always meant bad news and she snatched it up. ‘Yes?’

‘Talie? Talie Calhoun? This is Heather Lester. From the Radcliffe Group? We spoke—’

‘I remember,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry if I snapped, but I was—’

‘Asleep. I’m the one who should apologise, for disturbing you in the middle of the night. I do know how unsettling late-night phone calls can be. Unfortunately I’ve got a bit of a crisis and it wouldn’t wait until morning.’

About to explain that she hadn’t been asleep, Talie said, ‘Oh.’ Then, ‘What kind of crisis?’

‘Before I go into details, can I just ask if you have a valid passport?’

‘Well, yes.’ She had once had a life and holidays abroad, like ordinary people.

‘Well, that’s the first hurdle. The thing is, I’m supposed to be flying to New York with Mr Radcliffe tomorrow morning—actually, it’s this morning now—but my daughter has gone into labour two weeks early and her husband is away, so she needs me.’

‘And you need someone to take your place?’

‘At zero notice.’

‘And you’re asking me?’ Talie caught her breath. ‘To go to New York?’ With the total bastard?

‘My choice is limited. There aren’t too many secretaries who can take shorthand verbatim. And Mike spoke very highly of you.’

‘He did? Gosh, how kind of him. I’d give him a reference as a great boss anytime.’

‘That speaks volumes in itself. He’d rather type his own reports than cope with incompetence. However, I’d be lying if I said he was as difficult as Jude. I wouldn’t want you to get the impression that this trip will be a holiday. It’ll be damned hard work.’

Yes, but it would be damned hard work in New York!

She hugged the excitement close to her chest and said, ‘Well, of course. I don’t imagine Mr Radcliffe takes his secretary away with him purely for decoration,’ she said. And then clapped her hand over her mouth as she realised how that must sound. ‘Oh, crumbs. I didn’t mean—’

‘It’s okay, Talie. I know exactly what you meant. The other thing I have to impress on you is the need for total discretion.’

‘I always assumed that was the first requirement of the job, Mrs Lester. But if you’re concerned, then maybe you should send someone you know.’

‘It’s Heather. And I’m asking you. Yes or no? Will you go?’

Reality beckoned.

‘I’d absolutely love to, but the thing is I’ve already got another temp job lined up and I can’t let them down—’

‘I’ve already spoken to the agency. They will rearrange the booking if you are willing to take this assignment.’

In the middle of the night?

Apparently sensing her disbelief, Heather said, ‘I’m a personal friend of the manager. Who speaks very highly of you, I might add.’

‘Oh, I see. Well, if you’re sure. I mean, surely there’s someone else at the office…’ She stopped, remembering how the other women at the office spoke about Jude Radcliffe. ‘Who can do shorthand,’ she finally managed.

Heather laughed. ‘Not like you, Talie. You’ll have my undying gratitude if you’ll take this on.’

And clearly the undying gratitude of the right-hand woman to Jude Radcliffe was something well worth having. In the unlikely event that she would ever be able to take on a full time job.

Assuming that all objections were disposed of, Heather went on, ‘A car will pick you up at nine-thirty to take you to the airport. The driver will have everything you need in a carry-on bag, including some notes I made in case something like this happened.’

‘Heavens, that was lucky.’

‘Not lucky. It’s called forward planning. Babies have a habit of doing their own thing. You’ll have my laptop, too, and there’s everything you’ll need on that. Jude’s been away, so I’m sure he’ll want to work on the plane. Have you got a notebook handy?’

Heather spent ten minutes or so briefing her before rushing back to her daughter. Talie replaced the receiver and sat on the bottom of the stairs for a moment, staring down at the pages of shorthand notes she’d taken down, utterly stupefied by the speed at which events had overtaken her.

She needed to move. She needed to pack…

‘Who was that?’ Her mother’s voice finally filtered through the disbelief that something so amazing could have happened to her. ‘Who could be so thoughtless, calling at this time of night?’

She stirred, went back upstairs to her mother’s room. ‘It’s okay, Mum, it was work. A special temping job has come up and I’m going to have to go away for a few days—’

‘Away? Where? I can’t—’

‘You’ll be fine,’ she said, firmly putting a stop to her mother’s panicky reaction. ‘Karen is here until the end of the month, remember? And I’ll ring you every day.’ She decided it would be wiser not to mention exactly where she’d be phoning from… ‘I bought some videos for you today,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘A couple of old Doris Day movies.’

‘Really?’ Her mother brightened momentarily. Then, ‘If only your father were here.’

‘I know, Mum. I know.’ She brushed the hair back from her mother’s forehead and kissed her. ‘You go back to sleep. I’ll bring you some breakfast before I leave tomorrow.’

‘Heather? I’ve been trying to get you all morning. What’s this damn nonsense about you not coming to New York? I’m at the airport and the flight has already been called.’

‘I’m sorry, Jude. I did try and get you last night, but I could only get your answering machine and it ran out before I could explain—’

‘And then you switched off your phone.’

‘I can’t have it on in the hospital.’

‘Hospital! What hospital? What’s happened?’

‘Nothing to worry about. It’s just my daughter. She’s gone into labour early and she’s having a bit of a torrid time, poor darling. They’re considering a Caesar—’

‘And you’re a surgeon?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Stop fooling around and get to the airport. You can buy the baby something special at Tiffany’s—’

‘Talie can take shorthand as fast I can, and she’s fully briefed. I promise, you won’t even miss me.’

Talie? Who the devil was Talie?

‘Your daughter’s got a partner, hasn’t she? She doesn’t need you to hold her hand—’

‘Jude, I have to go.’

‘I refuse to cope with some stranger. I want you. Here. Now!’

‘She’s not a stranger!’ Then, ‘Isn’t she there? The car was supposed to have picked her up at nine-thirty.’

At that moment the automatic doors slid back, and as Jude Radcliffe caught sight of an unmistakable mop of blonde hair that even under restraint looked in danger of exploding he stopped listening. It was the pocket-sized blonde bombshell from the lift. She was pushing a trolley laden with a mountainous heap of luggage and talking to an elderly woman who was searching her handbag in a totally distracted manner.

‘Heather,’ he said, ‘you’re fired.’

And he cut the connection.

Talie, looking around desperately for someone in uniform to grab and ask for help, suddenly found herself confronted by her knight errant, freed from the armour of navy pinstripe and looking totally gorgeous in a grey cashmere sweater that exactly matched his eyes.

‘Good heavens, are you going to New York, too? How brilliant! I thought I was going to be on my own with Jude Radcliffe, and everyone says he’s a total…’

She stopped. The girls in the office might well be right, but it occurred to her that saying the first thing that came into her head might not be wise since, knight errant or not, he had to be one of Jude Radcliffe’s famously bright young men. And, ignoring that enticing left eyebrow, which was inviting her to continue, she turned quickly to the elderly lady she’d rescued as she’d struggled with her trolley.

‘This is Kitty,’ she said. ‘She’s going to visit her new grandson in New Zealand. At least she would be if she could find her ticket.’

‘It’s all right, dear. I’ve found it. It was stuck between my book and my box of tissues.’

Talie breathed a huge sigh of relief as the woman finally produced the folder from the depths of her bag. ‘I’ll just take her to find her queue and then I’ll be right back.’

‘You’re going nowhere. Our flight has already been called. You should have been here an hour ago.’

‘I know, but there was an accident in the tunnel,’ she said, a touch less brightly as it occurred to her that her knight might be dressed casually for travelling, but his expression was as unyielding as granite. Typical. Just when she could do with a smile or two to allay nerves that were stretched to breaking point, she finally got ‘serious.’

‘And you had to give first aid?’ he enquired.

‘Not this time,’ she said, and, assuming he was teasing her, began to relax and smiled up at him. She was on her own with the smiling, she discovered. Losing her own rapidly, she said, ‘I’ll only be a minute—’

‘You’re not listening to me, Talie,’ he said, in a tone that stopped her in her tracks.

‘Oh, you know my name?’

‘It’s not a name. It’s the word that goes in front of “ho.”’

‘It’s short for Natalie,’ she replied, refusing to allow him to rile her, furious with herself for being foolish enough to daydream for a whole week about riding in the lift again with him. ‘The alternative is Nat,’ she said. ‘Which would you choose?’

There was a pause that lasted a heartbeat, no more.

‘Talie what?’

‘Calhoun,’ she said, certain that she’d won a very small victory. But, refusing to fall into the trap of smiling again, she offered him her hand in her most businesslike manner. ‘I’m standing in for Heather on this trip. Her daughter has—’

‘I know what her daughter has done,’ he said, taking her hand and clasping it in his, holding it a touch more firmly than was quite comfortable. Rather more ‘You’re not going anywhere’ than ‘How d’you do?’ ‘And I hope they run out of gas and air.’

‘That’s not very nice. I’m sure she didn’t do it deliberately.’ Then, seeing from his expression that she wasn’t doing herself any favours, she said, ‘I’m sorry, you have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.’

He didn’t immediately fill the void, but instead gave her a look that took in her entire appearance, from the top of her embarrassing hair, via the comfortable trouser suit—it had been a toss-up between style and comfort and, taking into consideration the fact that she’d be sitting in it for seven hours, she’d gone for comfort—to her lowest heels. Right now she wished she’d gone for style, four-inch heels and to hell with practicality…

At that moment Kitty stopped fussing with her bag and looked up. ‘Good Lord, aren’t you Jude Radcliffe?’ she said. ‘I bought shares in your company after I saw you on TV. You were so charming when that nasty interviewer was rude to you…’

‘Charm is all a matter of perspective. From Miss Calhoun’s point of view I’m a total…’ And that enticing left eyebrow invited her to fill in the blank.

The word that slipped from her lips wasn’t the one she’d heard applied to him. But it was near enough.


CHAPTER TWO

‘WELL,’ Talie said, since she had to say something. ‘Now we both know that I’m just as good at talking myself into trouble as out of it.’

It earned her a smile of sorts. The kind that said ‘Now I’ve got you…’ And she began to see how, while the ‘sex-on-legs’tag fitted him to a T, he might not be the kind of man you’d want to work for.

Not that she anticipated having that particular problem for very long.

‘Can you wait until I find out where Kitty needs to go before you sack me?’ she asked.

‘You’re not getting off that lightly.’ He snagged a passing female in a uniform with a glance—something she had signally failed to do with any number of glances—and said, ‘Lady Milward is having trouble finding her check-in desk. Will you please take care of her?’

And then he really smiled. The full-scale, hundred-and-fifty-watt variety. The girl was putty by the time he’d reached sixty watts—if he’d looked at her like that Talie would have been putty—and she briefly considered a lecture on energy saving. Then decided she was in enough trouble…

‘Have a good trip, Kitty,’ he said, turning to the old lady and offering his hand. ‘I hope to see you at the next shareholders’ meeting.’

‘You know her?’ Talie demanded, having rescued her own luggage from Kitty’s trolley before it was whisked away.

‘When she said she was a shareholder I looked at her luggage label. You were suckered, Talie Calhoun. But I don’t suppose you’re the first person she’s fooled with that helpless dithering act. It’s by getting other people to do their dirty work for them for nothing that her kind got rich in the first place.’

‘I don’t care how much money she has,’ Talie said, outraged. ‘She needed help; I gave it.’ And, since she had nothing to lose, ‘What’s made you so cynical?’

‘Experience. Make a note to send her an invitation to the cocktail party.’

A note? As in, like his personal assistant? And suddenly his ‘You’re not getting off that lightly,’ made sense. Sacking her would be too kind. She was going to have to work for him and suffer.

In New York, she reminded herself. In New York.

‘Which cocktail party?’ she asked.

‘The one we hold for shareholders after the Annual General Meeting.’

‘Right.’ She made a move to dig out her notebook.

‘A mental note. We have to check in before they close the flight.’

He picked up the cheap-and-cheerful holdall that had seen her through her student days but which looked embarrassingly scruffy next to the wheel-on laptop bag that Heather had sent with the car, and placed it beside his own equally worn leather holdall.

The thing about buying quality, she thought, was that it matured with age. The scuffs lent it character. Unlike cheap-and-cheerful which, once past its cheerful stage, just looked—well, cheap.

‘Passport.’ He held out his hand for it as they reached the first-class check-in desk.

He had good hands. Large enough to be comforting, with long fingers and the kind of broad-tipped thumb that… Well, never mind what the thumb suggested to her overheated imagination.

But you could tell a lot from a man by looking at his hands.

His lied.

She handed over her passport and tickets. The clerk already had all the details of the change of passenger in her computer, so there was no delay, and it occurred to her that, for a woman distracted by the difficulties of her daughter’s labour, Heather had done an amazing job of handling the details so that Jude Radcliffe’s life would proceed as smoothly as if she was there herself.

It was scarcely surprising that he was irritated to discover that instead of perfection he’d been lumbered with her. Maybe she was being a little harsh. Stifling a yawn, she made a silent vow not to do anything to annoy him further as she and the wheel-on laptop bag put in the occasional hop and skip in an attempt to keep pace with him as he strode towards the boarding gate, making no concession to the fact that her legs were at least a foot shorter than his.

She revised her earlier regret about her shoes, too.

In four-inch heels she’d never have made it.

She also vowed to keep her mouth shut. Not speak unless she was spoken to.

It wasn’t easy. Her student travelling had been done using the cross-Channel ferry and backpacking across Europe, which she’d loved. Her one and only experience of flying was cattle-class on a package tour charter flight, and she’d hated every minute of it.

But this was different, and despite her apprehension—she refused to admit to the flutter of anxiety that until now she’d been too distracted to notice—she looked about her, eager to enthuse about the size of the seats, the amount of space each passenger had and the neat little individual television screens. She always talked too much when she was nervous.

Biting her lower lip to keep her mouth shut, she explored her space, picking up the entertainment programme. ‘We get a choice of films?’ she asked, forgetting her vow of silence in her astonishment.

‘Other people might. You are here to work.’

For seven solid hours?

‘Of course. I was merely making an observation,’ she said crisply, and, restricting her enthusiasm to the business at hand, she opened the laptop bag. ‘This is the note that Heather sent you, Mr Radcliffe,’ she said, handing him an envelope. ‘To explain about me.’

‘I know all about you,’ he said, without enthusiasm. ‘You watch romantic films, attract trouble and are always late.’

This was definitely a moment for silence.

Satisfied, he said, ‘And you will call me Jude.’

‘Oh, but I couldn’t!’

Well, that didn’t last long…

‘Try,’ Jude insisted, trying very hard to keep his temper. Why on earth had Heather picked this woman as her stand-in? It was bad enough that he’d found himself constantly distracted by the memory of those few seconds they’d spent together in the lift, wasting time he’d allocated to thinking about the direction in which he should take the company during the next five years.

Instead of planning corporate strategy he’d been thinking about her ridiculous hair. That totally infectious smile…

He needed someone he could trust on this trip, and Heather was the one who’d suggested that this girl might have been putting on an act, for heaven’s sake. That her story had been just that. A story to snag his attention.

Except he’d just seen her in action. If she was that good an actress she was wasting her time in an office. But somehow the fact that her compassion, her enthusiasm for life, wasn’t an act disturbed him far more. He was more comfortable with guile. Understood it. Knew how to handle it.

He took a slow breath. He was stuck with her and they’d both have to live with it.

‘I may be a bastard,’ he said. ‘Although my mother might take issue with you on that. And I certainly don’t suffer fools in any shape or form in my organisation. But Heather calls me Jude and so will you.’ Then, in case she was under any misapprehension that he was being friendly—he was deeply regretting his uncharacteristic impulse to hold the lift for her— ‘That way I won’t be constantly reminded of her absence every time you speak.’

And, without waiting for her to reply, he opened the envelope and took out a single folded sheet of paper. The note was brief and to the point.

Jude, I know you’re going to be furious that I’ve had to miss this trip, but you know you’re going to have to get used to working without me in the near future. I gave you a year to find a replacement and time is running out. And, no, I didn’t do this deliberately. Even you must realise that I can’t control the arrival of an impatient baby.

Just don’t take it out on Talie. It’s not her fault. Mike raved about her. She takes shorthand verbatim, and I took the trouble to check out her story about the incident on the Underground last week. Unlikely as it may seem, your little blonde was telling the truth.

I know—she’s almost too good to be true. But I’m sure a week working for you will bring out any hidden flaws. If you behave yourself, you might even be able to persuade her to take you on full time. Heather.

He glanced down at the girl sitting beside him.’ Heather suggests you’re almost too good to be true. Shall we see if she’s right?’

‘What?’

It was just as well her eyes were blue or he’d be forced to compare them with a startled doe’s.

What an appallingly banal thought.

At least she’d made an effort to get her hair under control, stuffing it up into some kind of knot on the top of her head that was not so much a bun, more a cottage loaf. Even as he congratulated himself a curl sprang free, refusing to be confined by anything so feeble as a hairpin.

Realising that she was still staring up at him like a startled blue-eyed—and there really was no other word for it—doe, he said, ‘If you’d like to get out your notebook some time before we arrive in New York, maybe I can find out if you’re as good as Mike and Heather claim you are,’ he prompted.

‘But we haven’t even taken off…’ She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, presumably to prevent the rest of the sentence from escaping and thus provoking further sarcasm.

And that irritated him, too. He felt like being seriously—‘Would you fasten your seat-belts, please?’ a stewardess said as she walked through the cabin, checking that everything was properly stowed. ‘We’ll be taking off shortly.’

Talie, it seemed, had a firm grasp of the priorities and got out her notebook before she fastened her seat-belt, made a note of the time and date, wrote something else in shorthand—probably what she wanted to say out loud but thought it wiser not to—and then turned to him, her pencil poised and waiting.

‘Whenever you’re ready,’ she said. ‘Jude.’

He dragged his attention from her hair, which was slowly unravelling, and began to dictate a series of notes on the ideas he’d had during his solitary days walking in the Scottish Highlands. The ones that didn’t involve the dimple that appeared for no reason at all every now and then at the corner of her mouth.

The plane backed slowly away from the gate before taxiing to the runway. There was a long pause as they waited for clearance and, glancing across to ensure that she was keeping up with him, he noticed that the knuckles of the hand gripping her pencil were bone-white.

She was nervous? This girl who, without a second thought, leapt to the aid of total strangers in distress?

As he hesitated, she glanced up at him. It wasn’t only her knuckles that were white, he realised, and as the engine noise grew and the plane began to speed down the runway he stepped up the speed at which he was dictating in an effort to distract her.

It might have worked, too, but when a day started out badly, it invariably kept going that way, and as they lifted off something crashed loose in the galley behind them. A woman in the aisle seat opposite them gave a startled scream and Talie jumped so violently that she would undoubtedly have left her seat if she hadn’t been strapped in. As it was, her notebook and pencil took off on a flight of their own, and the pins which had been struggling manfully with gravity to hold up her hair gave up the effort and the cottage loaf exploded.

‘Are we going to die?’ she whispered.

‘Yes,’ he said, reaching out and taking her hand. ‘But not today.’

He really was a bastard, Talie decided, as her heart rate slowly returned to normal. How could she ever have imagined for one minute that he was friendly? Charming? Totally scrummy, actually.

She had practically haunted the lifts of the Radcliffe Tower in her lunchtimes, hoping to run into him again. Knowing that she was being stupid. Just how stupid she couldn’t possibly have imagined.

Okay. She’d give him the killer good looks—even if he was using those slate eyes to freeze her to her seat—and she was right about his hands. They were strong and capable and very good for holding on to when you thought your last moment had come.

Admittedly he’d lost the smooth, boyish look of the average pop idol, and settled into that look men achieved around their mid to late thirties and hung on to until the muscles started to sag a little around the jaw, when they were so old that it didn’t matter. When he smiled he didn’t look anywhere near old enough to be the ill-tempered tycoon described by her colleagues.

Unable to rescue her notebook until the seat-belt sign went off, Talie remained absolutely still, trying to ignore the warmth of his palm pressed against hers, the way his long fingers curled reassuringly around her hand. Instead she closed her eyes and re-ran their encounter in the lift, trying to work out how she could have got it so wrong.

He’d seemed friendly enough, but then she hadn’t given him much of a chance to be anything else, prattling on about being late. He probably wouldn’t have spoken to her at all under normal circumstances. Most of his staff probably wouldn’t have dared say anything beyond good morning.

None of them would have yelled at him to hold the lift. They’d rather have been late.

And he wasn’t being funny when he said she could talk her way out of anything, she realised belatedly. He was being sarcastic.

The seat-belt sign pinged off, but before she could move, reclaim her notepad, he had released her hand and picked it up for her.

‘Have you stopped shaking sufficiently to carry on?’ he asked, handing it to her. ‘Or do you require a medicinal brandy?’

‘If I had a medicinal brandy that would be the end of my working day,’ she said. ‘Not the beginning of it.’

She looked around for her pencil, but it had rolled away under a seat somewhere, and since she wasn’t about to crawl around on her hands and knees looking for it she took a new one from her bag. Then, suspecting that she might need more than one, she swiftly anchored her hair back into place and stuck some spares into the resulting bird’s nest, so that she wouldn’t have to cut him off in full flow.

‘Whenever you’re ready,’ she said. Then, when he didn’t immediately begin, she glanced up at him and realised that he was staring at her hair. For just a moment she thought he was going to make some seriously cutting remark.

Maybe she was mistaken. Or maybe he’d wisely thought better of it. Because after a moment he sat back, closed his eyes and continued pouring his thoughts out at a rate that kept her fully occupied for some time.

Her attention briefly wandered when an infant whose mother was deeply engrossed in the film she was watching caught her eye and with a giggle tossed a drinking cup in her direction, hoping for a playmate.

Any other time she’d have been there…

The cup rolled away down the aisle and the child started to cry. Talie found it really, really hard to stay put when every instinct was urging her to leap up and retrieve it. Instead she took a deep breath and, as she turned the page, hit the buzzer to attract the attention of the stewardess.

‘Good decision,’ Jude said.

She’d written it down before she realised that it was a comment rather than dictation. Clearly his eyes weren’t as firmly closed as she’d imagined.

The flight passed without further incident. She typed up the notes Jude had dictated until the laptop battery beeped a warning that it was about to go flat. But if she thought all she had to do was hit ‘save’and then relax for the rest of the flight, she was mistaken.

Jude stopped working on some figures, took a special adapter from his own laptop bag and leaned across her to plug it into the power outlet of the aircraft—obviously concerned that she’d do fatal damage to the aircraft electronics if he left her to do it herself.

He might be an unmitigated bastard as a boss, but he did have gorgeous hair, she thought with an envious sigh as she got an unexpected close-up. Dark as bitter chocolate, perfectly cut so that every silky strand knew its place. Even the lick that momentarily slid across his forehead needed no encouragement to return to order.

She tucked a stray curl behind her ear and comforted herself with the thought that good hair wasn’t everything.

Kindness was much more important.

He refused all offers of tea, coffee, even lunch when it arrived, and, taking only water, kept working. She had no idea if he expected her to follow his example, but enough was enough. He might be able to function on fresh air, but she needed a substantial amount of calories if she was going to keep up this level of output. She made a mental note to stock up on an emergency supply of chocolate at the first confectionery outlet she passed.

After the stewardess had removed her tray, he began again. This time dictating notes for an after-dinner speech he was going to make to some business group, stopping just before her right hand began to scream for mercy.

She began to wonder if Heather’s daughter had really gone into early labour. She might just have decided that she could do with a break, and could always say it had been a false alarm…

Mentally slapping herself for having such evil thoughts, she applied herself to the keyboard, and was taken by surprise when the Captain announced that they would shortly be arriving at JFK.

‘I don’t believe it! A yellow cab!’

Jude glanced across the road to where a constant stream of cabs was picking up new arrivals. ‘No, you’re right. It’s yellow.’ Then, spotting his driver climbing out of a waiting limo, he said, ‘This is our car.’





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