Power Games

‘So, it’s agreed then,’ she heard Sir Anthony say firmly. ‘I’ve suggested to Bram that I leave it to him to liaise with you. I know you’ll do your best to help him.’

He stood, leaving Taylor with no option but to follow suit and to allow him to shepherd her towards his office door.

Later on in the safety of her own office she could feel the shock starting to sink in. She ought to have taken a firmer stand, to have refused outright to work with Bram Soames. But how could she have done so? By giving up her job? She wasn’t financially independent enough to do that; jobs like hers weren’t easy to come by. And besides, she liked her job. She liked its solitude, its security and safety. She liked the reassurance of the routine she had established. The thought of leaving and trying to make a fresh start somewhere else filled her with even greater panic.

Damn Bram Soames! Damn him and his precious program! And yet, even as she cursed him mentally, Taylor acknowledged that she was being selfish and unfair. If he could succeed in writing such a program it would transform the lives of so many people.

Perhaps, if she could just focus on that fact and hold fast to it, it might help to make the unbearable somehow bearable, she decided sombrely.

Her office was situated at the top of the building, its narrow, barred window the only source of natural daylight. Some time ago it had been suggested that she move to a lower floor and a larger office with a much bigger window, but she had refused.

It was pointless trying to explain to other people that the narrowness of her existing office window, its thick, almost opaque glass and steel bars, were infinitely preferable to her than something larger, which someone might look or step through. Just thinking about such a possibility made her shudder. How could she ever give up her job here and go somewhere else? Here, in surroundings where she had worked for years, her small eccentricities—as others thought of them—were tolerated; in a different environment…a new environment…

She closed her eyes and then opened them abruptly as her telephone rang.

Some sixth sense warned her who the caller would be, but it was still a shock to hear Bram Soames’s unmistakable warm male voice on the other end of the line.

‘I hope I’m not pre-empting things by telephoning you so soon,’ she heard him saying after he had identified himself. ‘But Anthony did promise he would speak to you as soon as he could about the possibility of our working together, and I was wondering if he—’

‘Yes,’ Taylor interposed tersely. ‘Yes, he’s told me.’ The palm of the hand gripping the receiver was already damp with anxiety, the forefinger of her other hand curling nervously in and out of the plastic-covered coil linking the receiver to the base unit.

Bram could hear the tension in her voice and hoped that she wasn’t equally able to hear the reluctance in his. There was, he reminded himself firmly, absolutely no reason whatsoever why he should not work with her. No logical reason at all.

So, why then, this gut feeling that he would be far safer to retreat?

The silence from Taylor’s end of the line was slightly unnerving. If it hadn’t been for the slightly erratic sound of her breathing he might almost have thought she’d hung up on him.

Firmly pushing his personal thoughts to the back of his mind, he said calmly, ‘I think before we can get down to any serious work we need to have a preliminary discussion. I was wondering if you were free tomorrow afternoon?’

In her office Taylor flipped over the page of her diary. It was completely blank.

‘No, I’m sorry… I already have an appointment then.’ Did her voice sound as betrayingly unconvincing to him as it did to her? She almost hoped he would guess that she was lying and decide to ask Sir Anthony to suggest someone else to help him, and she held her breath as she waited for his response.

‘I see…. Well, in that case, I wonder…I’m eager to get started on this project as soon as possible. At the moment I’ve got some free time, but…’

He paused while Taylor reflected coolly that if he had hoped to impress or bully her by playing the big powerful, dominant, successful businessman he was going to be disappointed.

‘I wouldn’t normally ask you to work outside office hours, but is there any chance that we could meet tomorrow evening, say about six-thirty?’

Six-thirty—after the rest of the office staff had gone home and only the cleaners were around. Taylor cursed herself inwardly for the trap her fib had built around her.

‘I…in the office? I think the building is locked up at six,’ she told him quickly. ‘I don’t think…’

‘We could have our discussion here,’ Bram told her after a moment’s silence. ‘I could send a car for you and—’

‘No. No…there’s no need. I…’

The total panic he could hear in her voice made Bram frown. She had struck him as such a contained, almost over-controlled person, on the surface at least, that he was unprepared for the intensity of emotion he could hear in her voice.

‘I…I’ll cancel my afternoon appointment,’ Taylor told him shakily. ‘I…what time did you have in mind?’

‘Two-thirty?’ Bram suggested diplomatically.

‘Yes…very well then…’ Taylor agreed. Her throat felt raw with tension, the muscles aching, the sound of her voice unfamiliarly husky.

Her body was drenched in cold sweat and she was starting to shiver. It took her four attempts before she managed to put the receiver down correctly.

If just talking to Bram Soames could affect her like this, then what was she going to be like when she was working with him? It was pointless, useless telling herself that a man with his sexual magnetism, his strong blend of power and charisma—a very obviously heterosexual man who had apparently chosen to remain unattached—was hardly likely to express even the remotest interest in her. The knee-jerk sexual male response she had witnessed in his body at their first meeting did not count. The fact that a man like Bram Soames could and no doubt did have his pick of eager women who made a career out of pursuing men like him, was not the point. The point was that he was a man.

As she focused numbly on the small oblong of obscured daylight from her barred window, she acknowledged that in many ways the window was like her life, what to another woman would be restrictive was to her protective. She needed that protection.

She knew there had been whispered speculation among her colleagues about her sexual orientation. The very fact that she shunned male company so determinedly was bound to give rise to it. But Taylor had no sexual or emotional desire for her own sex. A small, bitter smile twisted her mouth. Unbelievable as those who knew her or thought they knew her might find it, there had been a time when she, too, had dreamed of falling in love, getting married, having children; when sexually she had been open and curious.

And if she was honest with herself, there were still times when, deep down, she felt those needs, nights when she lay awake not just tormented by her fears but filled with bitter anger as well.

It was twenty years now. Twenty years, and there had not been a single day during that time when she had not been conscious of the past, when she had not been fearful of its being recreated, when she had not abandoned the habit of stopping, checking… watching…waiting.

Twenty years. Almost a life sentence, she acknowledged bitterly, but her life was not over yet. She was thirty-nine, that was all.

She could live to be twice that age; both her paternal and her maternal grandparents had. Her parents… She swallowed painfully. Neither of her parents had lived to see fifty. Their deaths haunted her still. They always would.

‘You must not blame yourself. You are not to blame,’ she had been told.

Her head was beginning to ache, the tight knot into which she had pulled her hair dragging on her scalp. It was a luxury at night to let it down and release her neck muscles from the strain of supporting the heavy weight.

Perhaps she ought to wear her hair short. The last time she had done so had been on her sixteenth birthday. The trip to her mother’s hairdresser had been a present paid for by her father, a ritual on the path to adulthood.

She could remember how nervously she had watched her reflection in the mirror as the stylist lopped off her heavy, childish braids. The pretty urchin cut had emphasised the delicate bones of her face, made her eyes seem enormous. Her mother had frowned and commented that the style was rather too adult for her, but Taylor had seen in her father’s eyes male approval for her transformation. She wasn’t a child any more, she was a woman.

She had kept her hair short for several years after that, and just before she had gone to university she had allowed the stylist to experiment with blonde highlights woven into the strands of hair that framed her face.

Her mother had denounced the effect as far too sophisticated and her father hadn’t even noticed the change. Both had been preoccupied then over her sister, who had written from Australia breaking the news of her impend-ing marriage.

‘We don’t want a big fuss, just a quiet ceremony for the two of us…’ she had written to Taylor. ‘And besides, I know our parents don’t approve of what I’m doing.’

That had been a gross understatement of their parents’ views. It had shocked Taylor to hear her parents say that they wanted nothing to do with her sister until she came to her senses and returned home-alone.

Somewhere at the back of her mind she had always been aware that their love came attached to a price tag, but seeing the actual evidence of that suspicion left her feeling very vulnerable, which was why-Her telephone rang again, and she reached out to answer it, glad to escape the painful introspection of her thoughts.

The cab driver gave Taylor a brief smile as she stopped outside the small block of apartments where Taylor lived.

She was a fairly new driver for the firm; most of their regular clients were considerably older than Taylor, who she thought looked about her own age, and, as far as she could see, perfectly healthy.

When she asked curiously in the office about her, no one had been able to tell her anything other than the fact that Taylor had been a regular customer for some years.

The block of apartments was set in neat, well-kept gardens, screened from the main road by trees and shrubs. Initially, when she had gone to view the property Taylor had been put off by this aspect; anything designed to screen the property from the road could also provide a screen for someone trying illicitly to enter the apartments. But in the end she had forced herself to overcome her unease and accept that she was unlikely to find anything better.

The apartment did, after all, fulfil all her other criteria. The large detached Victorian house had been carefully converted into six good-sized apartments, all designed to meet the needs of retired couples. The conversions had been advertised as possessing all the latest security features, locking windows and intercoms.

Taylor had also liked the fact that all the other occupants were people who believed in keeping themselves to themselves; quiet retired professional couples or singles who exchanged polite pleasantries if and when they met before retreating thankfully into their own private domains.

Her own apartment was slightly cheaper than the others and slightly larger, since it was in what had originally been the attic.

It had two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, a large, pleasant sitting room, a small dining room, an even smaller study, which just about housed her desk and bookshelves, and a neat galley kitchen.

Since no one other than herself was ever allowed inside, there was no one to comment about the apartment’s lack of homely touches. There were no small pots of herbs on the sunny kitchen windowsill, no leafy green plants in the sitting room, no family mementoes—materially worthless, but sentimentally irreplaceable—marring the elegant perfection of the sitting room, decorated and furnished in a cream colour. Even Taylor’s bedroom with its cool eau-de-Nil colour scheme had an almost anonymous feel to it, as though its owner was afraid to leave any personal stamp on the room in case it betrayed her in some way.

Automatically Taylor paused before entering the lift, turning to glance over her shoulder.

The hallway was empty. She stepped quickly into the lift and pressed the button.

Once again, when the lift stopped and the doors opened, she paused to check before stepping out of it, walking quickly across the dove-grey carpeting into the foyer of her apartment.

It took time to unlock the special double lock to her apartment door. Taylor stood sideways as she did so, which made the task more difficult but gave her a clear view both of the lift and of the stairs.

Once inside her apartment she relocked the doors. And then, as she always did, she walked slowly and almost nervously through every room, checking the empty spaces and the locked windows.

Only when this had been done did she allow herself to relax enough to go into her bedroom and close the thick curtains which screened out the light so effectively she had to turn on a lamp before she removed her suit jacket and started to unpin her hair.

As she opened the drawer in her dressing table where she kept her pin box she paused, hesitated and then, so quickly that it was almost as though she was afraid of what she was doing, she reached into the back of the drawer and removed a heavy silver photograph frame. Holding her breath, she turned it over and stared almost greedily at the photograph inside.

A girl’s face smiled back at her. She had an open, warm smile; her whole expression one of intelligence and confidence.

Her eyes were blue-grey, her hair a riot of thick, dark red curls. The photograph was only a head and shoulders shot, but it conveyed the impression of someone who would be lithe and quick, a positive dynamo of movement and life. For a teenager, she possessed remarkable composure and self-assurance. It radiated out of her…as did her obvious joy in life, her happiness.

As Taylor returned the photograph to the drawer she could feel a burning sensation stinging the back of her eyes. Her throat ached. Fiercely she blinked away her tears. Her emotion was inappropriate and selfish, and it would mean nothing to the girl in the photograph. Why should it?

Chapter 6

‘The Gibbons file is on your desk. Mike Gibbons should be ringing you later this afternoon. His secretary promised she would try to contact him. Oh, and Franklins have been on several times asking for Jay. When they heard he was in New York, they asked if they could speak to you instead.’

‘Marcia stop fussing. I’ll manage. You get yourself off to the hospital. Richard will take you. The car’s waiting downstairs for you.’ Bram shook his head as his secretary attempted to interrupt him, and said firmly, ‘No arguments. He’ll get you there faster than any taxi.’

Although his voice had been calmly reassuring when he spoke to her, Bram was frowning as his secretary hurried out of his office. She had received a call half an hour earlier to say that her husband had been taken to hospital with a suspected heart attack. Quite naturally, she was now in a frantic state. She and her husband were in their forties, their two children at university. Marcia had worked for Bram for almost ten years, knew all his small foibles and, like the very best PAs, made sure that his office routine ran smoothly. She was panicking now, not just about her husband but, in a lesser way, about Bram as well.

Marcia was more than just his secretary; she was in effect his office manager. She knew all their major customers by name, unlike the junior secretary who would have to stand in for her. It was a pity that Louise, Jay’s secretary, was on holiday, Bram reflected as he mentally reviewed his diary for the next few days. He would have to cancel or rearrange as many of his outside appointments as he could in order to be on call in his office.

His frown deepened as he realised that one of the appointments that would have to be rearranged was the one he had with Taylor Fielding. Taylor Fielding. What, he wondered, had caused the fear he had heard in her voice when he spoke to her? Surely to God not him. She hadn’t struck him as the kind of woman who would be awed or intimidated by another human being’s worldly position or material possessions. Far from it. If anything, when they had met he had got the impression that she disapproved of him. Her attitude towards him had certainly veered towards the dismissive rather than the adulatory. He drummed his fingertips thoughtfully on the top of his desk. He was half-tempted to cancel his appointment with her. And do what? Ask Anthony to assign someone else to work with him? Abandon the project altogether? No, he could not take either of those evasive courses of action. Unfortunately, and perhaps at his own instigation, he and Taylor Fielding were fated to be on a collision course.

Grimly, Bram walked through to the outer office and asked the woman who had taken over from Marcia to ring through to the charity’s headquarters for him.

Taylor was in her office talking with Sir Anthony when the call came through. In such a small enclosed space it was impossible for her boss not to overhear their conversation, even though he had diplomatically walked over to the small window when he had recognised Bram Soames’s voice.

Taylor’s heart sank as she heard Bram explain that it was impossible for him to leave his office.

‘I apologise for having to change things at such short notice, but I was wondering if it is possible after all for you to come to me later this afternoon. I could send a car for you.’

Taylor closed her eyes. How could she refuse to go when Sir Anthony was there? He was bound to hear what she was saying and ultimately query her decision.

Sickly, Taylor nodded her head, and then, realising the idiocy of what she was doing, managed to utter a tortured agreement to the alteration in their original arrangement.

‘There was really no need to send a car for me. I am perfectly capable of walking half a mile or so, you know. Or was it supposed to be less an inducement and more a potential threat?’ Taylor demanded aggressively as Bram showed her into his office.

Bram had had an exasperating afternoon. The woman sent to take Marcia’s place was new to the company and inclined to treat him with a mixture of awe and feminine appraisal, which instead of finding flattering he found extremely irritating. So irritating, in fact, that he reacted with uncharacteristic heat to Taylor’s aggression.

‘I hardly think that providing you with transport can logically be considered a threat,’ he returned as he pulled out a chair for her and waved her into it.

‘That all depends on what viewpoint you look at it from,’ Taylor told him angrily. ‘Sending your driver to collect me could be seen almost as a form of coercion, of kidnap….’

‘Kidnap?’ Bram stared at her, his frown changing to an amused smile. ‘In broad daylight, on a busy London street?’

‘It has been known to happen,’ Taylor informed him, her face flushing as her eyes darkened with resentment at his amusement and the shadow of memories she still had to fight to suppress.

‘I see. Well, please enlighten me then. Having kidnapped you and had you brought here against your will, what is it exactly I’m supposed to do with you? As you can see, this office is hardly the place one would choose for a passionate seduction and—’

Taylor stood, her eyes flashing, her normal control exploded by the force of her fury. How dare he make fun of her like this! He knew quite well that she had not been talking about sex.

‘I will not be manipulated by you,’ she told him stormily. ‘I will not be forced into pandering to your ego or, just because it doesn’t suit your opinion of yourself, for you to be the one to come to me, you—’

Bram stared at her. He pushed his hand wearily into his hair.

‘Look. You’ve got this all wrong,’ he told her quietly. ‘I changed the venue of our appointment simply because my secretary has had a personal emergency—her husband has been admitted to hospital. Naturally she wanted to be with him, which meant that it would have been difficult for me to leave the office.’

Now it was Taylor’s turn to stare at him, the angry colour staining her fair skin slowly burning into a deeper flush of embarrassment.

It had disturbed her to be told that Bram Soames had sent a car to collect her; it had reminded her of… Defensively she switched her thoughts away from the past and back to the present, gnawing worriedly at her bottom lip as she acknowledged that she seemed to have made an error of judgement.

‘Look, why don’t we start again,’ Bram suggested firmly. ‘I promise you that I had no ulterior motive whatsoever in sending Richard to drive you. I simply thought it would save time—yours as well as mine. It never occurred to me that you’d think I was trying to coerce or bully you, and I apologise for that oversight.’

But not for his sexist remarks following her outburst against his actions, Taylor noted silently.

She looked calmer now, Bram observed, watching Taylor as she digested his comments, calmer and very alert. He suspected that her outburst had shocked her in much the same way that his own sexually verbal response to it had shocked him.

The strain of the latest tussle of wills with Jay coupled with the intensity of his desire to succeed in his mission to write this special program must be affecting him more than he realised.

‘Working together isn’t going to be easy—for either of us,’ he told Taylor quietly, abandoning his initial urge to cravenly ignore the hostility they seemed to generate towards each other in favour of a more responsible approach to the problem.

‘But I think I’m right in saying that ultimately we both want the same thing, which is a successful outcome to this project.’

‘If there can be one,’ Taylor agreed grimly.

‘You don’t believe there can?’

‘It’s been tried before without success.’

‘Which doesn’t mean that we can’t succeed.’

Against her better judgment Taylor found herself unexpectedly warming to that unanticipated ‘we.’ But then he was obviously the kind of man who was good at generating team spirit, at making others feel they were important, she warned herself.

‘Still, it’s a view you aren’t alone in taking,’ Bram continued. ‘My son, for one, certainly shares it.’ He gave her a wry look. ‘I shall just have to do my best to prove you both wrong, shan’t I. Can I get you a drink, by the way, tea…coffee…? It will have to be from the machine, I’m afraid.’

Taylor stared at him. Sir Anthony, for all his paternalism, would certainly never have suggested fetching a more junior member of his staff a drink from the office dispensing machines; nor indeed, Taylor suspected, would he have drunk one himself. Although she searched his face thoroughly, there was no trace of self-consciousness or mockery in Bram’s expression as he waited for her response.

Perhaps she had been wrong about him, Taylor acknowledged hesitantly…guilty of overreacting, of al-lowing her own prejudice to overshadow logic and reality.

‘I…coffee, please,’ she requested.

Taylor moved self-consciously in her chair, pressing a quelling hand to her rumbling stomach, as it gurgled protest at its lack of food.

It was almost seven o’clock but the time had passed so quickly she was astonished that it was so late.

Once she had managed to distance herself from her own fears and preconceptions, she had discovered that Bram was unexpectedly well informed about the problems he was likely to face in writing his program. Even more surprisingly, he was genuinely concerned for the plight of the people he was trying to help.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to keep you so long,’ he was apologising now, as her stomach protested even more volubly. ‘I hadn’t realised it was getting so late. There’s a very good Italian restaurant just round the corner where I frequently eat when I’m working late. Look, why don’t you join me for dinner there, and please don’t tell me that you’re not hungry.’