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Laura nodded her head.
Again she was word-perfect. Not that Vasilii would have expected or accepted anything else.
‘So, we have established that your translation skills are … adequate, but if you know anything about China you will know that there is far more to successful business negotiations with the Chinese than merely having a good grasp of Mandarin.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Laura agreed. ‘Even if they speak another language the heads of Chinese industries and high-ranking Chinese officials often use a retinue of interpreters and PAs because that adds to their status. It is part and parcel of the Chinese way of doing business. Since I know that you speak both Russian and Mandarin yourself, I assumed that it was in part because of the issue of respect that you have decided to negotiate through someone else yourself.’
‘That is correct,’ Vasilii replied, and then looked at her, his eyes slightly hooded and his grey gaze unreadable.
Instinctively Laura knew that his silent assessment of her was both critical and meant to unnerve her.
It would have been so much better, so much easier for her, if she didn’t have that silly teenage crush lodged dangerously in her emotions. Its mere presence was enough to weaken her self-confidence.
When the silence instigated by Vasilii stretched to a length that was beginning to feel uncomfortable he delivered the blow that came from a direction she had not been prepared for. ‘You resigned from your previous employment, I understand—without having secured another post first. Why? It is rather a risk in today’s financial climate.’
CHAPTER TWO
LAURA felt her heart still in fearful recognition.
He couldn’t know. It just wasn’t possible. Summoning all her courage, she told him, ‘I decided to take a sabbatical,’ keeping her tone light and her head held high.
‘Really?’
The cynical look he was giving her warned Laura that he didn’t believe her. But worse was to come when he continued.
‘I understand that you are buying your current property with a mortgage, and that in addition to that financial commitment you also help to pay the fees for your aunt’s sheltered accommodation?’
‘Yes,’ Laura was obliged to confirm. ‘My aunt brought me up after the death of my parents. She’s not been well recently, and only receives a small pension, so naturally I want to do what I can to help her.’
‘You seem very eager to draw a picture of yourself as someone who takes her duties and responsibilities seriously, yet your attitude towards job security, which I would have thought in the circumstances would be extremely important to you, suggests the opposite. In fact I’d go so far as to say that I find it hard to believe that someone with your financial commitments would even think of taking time out for a sabbatical. And I have to say that I find it even harder to believe when I know that you made that decision within a month of being offered a promotion for which you had been personally selected by your mentor—a mentor with whom you have worked for many years.’
Laura’s heart had started to beat with heavy, hammer-like blows of acute dread.
There was nothing he wanted to do more than tell Laura that he had another far more suitable, far more acceptable applicant to fill the vacancy as his PA, Vasilii acknowledged as he watched her, but he couldn’t. Her translations had been faultless and skilled, and he already knew from her CV how highly her previous employers had rated not only her negotiating skills but also her people skills. As Vasilii knew, they were going to be very, very important in securing this particular contract. However, he intended to let her know he was not a man she should cross.
Laura could see that Vasilii was waiting for an explanation, but she couldn’t tell him the truth. Instead she had to appear casual and calmly in control, even if she was sick with anxiety inside, and tell him, ‘The new position I was offered would have entailed a relocation to New York. I resigned because I preferred not to go.’
‘Because you don’t want to travel? But the position as my PA involves a great deal of travelling—and to places rather more far flung than New York.’
Laura’s earlier anxiety had become a clawing sense of impending disaster. Her dread was justified when Vasilii announced, ‘If there is one thing above all else that I demand in my employees, Ms Westcotte, it is honesty and trustworthiness.’ He paused, and then demanded, ‘Isn’t it the truth that you were offered the option of leaving your previous employment voluntarily or being dismissed, because of your affair with your immediate—and affianced—superior?’
‘No!’ Laura denied immediately.
This time it was impossible for her to control her emotions—those feelings that she had kept locked up inside herself since the shocking and humiliating moment when Harold and Nancy had burst into the bedroom of John’s hotel room. And then she’d been summoned to Harold’s office to be accused of having an affair with John—her boss and her mentor, a man she loved and admired. A man she looked up to as a career-related father figure. John was, after all, twenty years her senior. He had been divorced when she had first met him, with two sons he adored, and she had been delighted for him when he had become engaged to a wealthy American socialite, a divorcée of his own age whom he had met in New York, even though she had never actually been able to warm to Nancy herself.
One dark, sardonically arched eyebrow told her exactly what Vasilii thought of her hot denial.
‘Very well—yes. I was offered that choice,’ she felt forced to agree. ‘But I was not having an affair with John. He was my mentor—a father figure to me in many ways. We were not having an affair,’ she stated again fiercely.
‘Your CEO thought you were. In fact he was so convinced of it that he offered you the choice of leaving of your own accord, with the whole matter being kept private, or of being subjected to a very public dismissal, with all the damage that would do to your professional reputation. Harold Johnson has very strong views on the morals he expects from those who work under him. He is also an extremely astute CEO, so I doubt he would make such an accusation against a valued and valuable member of his team if he wasn’t convinced of their guilt. Was he convinced of your guilt, Ms Westcotte?’
Laura exhaled shakily.
‘Yes. Yes, he was,’ she admitted.
‘And he was convinced because he and John Metcalfe’s fiancée found you in Metcalfe’s bed. Isn’t that also the truth?’
‘Yes …’
As the excruciating scene came rushing back, Laura could hear in her own voice the dying of her hopes of Vasilii offering her the job. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was the condemnatory look in the flint-grey gaze that right now was clinically ripping her pride to shreds.
Laura didn’t know, but something definitely gave her the determination and the strength to insist, ‘But it wasn’t how it looked. John and I had been working late on a project for a client and the client had taken us both out to dinner, and then a nightclub. There had recently been articles in the papers about young women being at risk in using cabs late at night—especially from nightclubs. We were both tired, and we knew we’d got an early start in the morning, so John suggested I stay overnight in his hotel suite. We’d done it before …’
‘Before? Before he had become engaged? When he was a single man?’
‘Yes. But …’
‘I understand that at the time you elected to share John Metcalfe’s suite he and his fiancée were having relationship problems. She had told him that she believed your feelings for him were not those of a mere work colleague.’
‘I didn’t know about that. John is tremendously loyal. He would never have discussed his relationship with Nancy with me. I had no idea that she had told him that she wasn’t happy about the two of us continuing to work so closely together.’
‘Because she felt that you wanted to usurp her position in his life and become his wife?’
‘That’s what she told Harold,’ Laura was forced to agree. ‘John told me afterwards that she didn’t like the fact that he was having to work such long hours.’
‘But you, of course, were happy to share those long hours—and his bed.’
‘No. I’ve already told you. John and I were close, it’s true, but he was never anything more to me than a mentor and a father figure.’
‘You were discovered in his bed.’
‘Yes, because he’d insisted that I take it. He slept on the sofa in the sitting room of the suite.’
‘A very convenient excuse and one that can’t be proved. Though your willingness to walk away and not fight to prove your so-called innocence speaks volumes.’
Laura closed her eyes. Yes, she had walked away—but only to spare her elderly aunt the stress and upset of watching her niece go through in public what Vasilii was putting her through now.
Vasilii was right in one respect. The fact she had not shared a bed with John could not be proved. But the fact they had never been lovers could—since she was still a virgin. Not, of course, that she was ever going to admit that to anyone—much less this man. It was her embarrassing secret. A woman in her twenties who had next to no real sexual experience because … Because she had been too busy with her education. Because she had simply not met the right man at the right time. Never because of that crush she’d had on the man now standing in front of her with such contempt in his gaze. The very thought of ever being challenged to admit that it was because of Vasilii that she was still a virgin, because her crush on him had been so intense that she had simply never desired anyone else with the same intensity, made her feel weak with angry shame.
But that did not alter the fact that Vasilii was wrong about her and wrong to accuse her as he had. She’d chosen to walk away before, but now she was determined to defend herself—and fully intended to do so.
‘You obviously want to think that.’
The words were out before Laura could silence them. She wasn’t going to apologise for them, though. Not even with Vasilii giving her a look as dangerous as the scimitar swords of his desert ancestor warlords.
‘Meaning?’ he demanded.
‘Meaning that you want to think badly of me,’ Laura told him, standing her ground. ‘Harold and Nancy’s interpretation of what they saw was the wrong one. John and I both told them that, but they didn’t want to listen—just as you don’t want to listen. You’ve judged me already, and on someone else’s assessment of me. I’d assumed from what I’ve read about you that you are a man who makes his own judgements rather than a man who runs with the herd.’
Vasilii was hard put to it to conceal his disbelief. Once again she was actually daring to challenge him. She had a certain proud independence about her—he had to give her that. But independence wasn’t what he was looking for in a PA.
‘I take on board the opinions of others. Who doesn’t? And what my own opinion tells me is that so far, despite your excellent CV, nothing you have said inclines me to think that I want to employ you as my PA—a position that demands that the person who fills it is two hundred per cent trustworthy and reliable. You are neither of those things. The accusation made against you in your previous employment proves that you are not trustworthy, and I already know from my own experience that you are if not specifically unreliable then at least not someone who puts duty ahead of their own pleasures.’
There—that should put her in her place and stop her from looking at him with that clear-eyed look of female pride that for some reason made him think about all the ways in which, as a man, that pride challenged him. All the ways? Vasilii tensed against the unwanted question. If he was aware of her as a woman then it was only because he needed to assess her so thoroughly. The last thing he wanted was a female PA who was going to create sexual havoc everywhere she went.
From his own experience? What did he mean?
Laura intended to find out. ‘What experience?’ she demanded angrily. ‘This is the first time we have met.’
‘In person, perhaps, but I am well aware of the way you behaved when your aunt—who was employed by me to provide my sister with female company here in London—requested you to stand in for her, when she was taken to the hospital. When my sister telephoned you to pass on your aunt’s request you decided to go to New York with friends instead—even though you must have known that your aunt was depending on you. In my opinion a person who does not fulfil their obligations to their family is not likely to fulfil those same obligations to an employer.’
Laura’s head was a whirlwind of stunned thoughts. This was the first she had heard about any of this. The last thing she would ever do was let her aunt down, and her first instinct was to say as much. But even as she opened her mouth to tell him that she had never at any time received a telephone call from his sister, never mind refused to help her aunt because she preferred to go to New York with friends, she remembered once listening to Alena as a schoolgirl, complaining to her aunt when she had come to the matron’s room to ask for a headache tablet that her half-brother was very strict with her, and had advised her parents against allowing her to spend the weekend with another pupil.
‘Just because he doesn’t approve of her brother,’ Alena had protested.
Whilst Laura had sympathised with her, a small part of her had envied her for having such a protective brother—but then, of course, in those days Vasilii could do no wrong as far as she had been concerned. Now, though, she was old enough to think that Alena might have had her own reasons for lying to Vasilii, and a certain sisterly solidarity was making her feel that she didn’t want to betray the other girl—even if that solidarity came at the cost of being misjudged.
After all, what was the point in trying to defend herself when it was plain that he wanted to think the worst of her? Immoral and unreliable—that was what he thought of her.
Surely that wasn’t a sharp stab of pain she felt? Why on earth should the biased opinion of a man so condemnatory and arrogant that she already thoroughly disliked him cause her to feel pain? It wasn’t pain—it was misery at the thought of not getting the job she needed so much, Laura assured herself.
‘Nothing to say?’ Vasilii challenged her.
‘What would be the point?’ Laura asked. ‘Since you have obviously already made up your mind about me.’
She wasn’t going to let him see just how desperately it mattered that she wasn’t going to get the job. Lifting her chin she told him coolly, ‘I don’t see that there is any point in us wasting any more of one another’s time. Obviously you don’t want me to be your PA.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Vasilii agreed curtly, and paused before adding reluctantly, ‘However, unfortunately—given the excellence of your CV in respect of your language and negotiating skills, the inability of any headhunter to find me a candidate to better them, and the immediacy of my need to find a new PA—I have decided on this occasion I have no alternative other than to put to one side my scruples and offer you a temporary contract to cover the next six months. If at the end of that time my negotiations with the Chinese have been concluded to my satisfaction, then in addition to your salary there will be a generous bonus payment.’
Oh, how she longed to be in a position to turn down his offer, Laura thought helplessly. But of course she couldn’t. She could tell from his voice how much he resented having to offer her the job. He hadn’t let her know that out of weakness or vulnerability. No, he had told her because he wanted her to know just how much contempt he had for her. If she had felt hard done by before, at being falsely accused and then used as a scapegoat for Nancy’s unfounded jealousy, that was nothing to the raw, bitter taste of misery she was being forced to swallow down now. She wasn’t going to let him think she was grateful, though.
Lifting her chin, she told Vasilii as valiantly as she could, ‘Unfortunately for me I have no option other than to accept your offer. But that does not mean that I want to accept it, or that I want to work for you. I don’t.’
Their mutual antagonism crackled hostilely on the air between them.
‘And just to make things crystal-clear to you,’ Vasilii continued, ‘whatever your modus operandi or your personal agenda might have been in your previous post, in this one as my PA our relationship will be strictly business. Any woman who thinks that working for me is a shortcut to my bed and via that to a marriage licence will be making a big mistake.’
His bed? For a moment Laura was gripped by panic—had he somehow with some dangerous power managed to learn about her teenage crush? A thousand bolts of searing self-consciousness burned through her. But then her common sense returned. Of course he didn’t know. No one had ever known. Not even her aunt. Even so, she wanted to make it clear to him that she wasn’t someone who would run after a man—any man, but especially not him.
‘Both you and your bed are perfectly safe from me,’ she assured him. Unable to stop herself from giving way to her emotions, she couldn’t resist adding fiercely, ‘You obviously think that you’re a wonderful catch, but I certainly don’t. If and when I ever marry it will be because I love the man I am marrying and because he loves me in return—because we both want to make a lifetime commitment to be there for one another.’
‘A lifetime commitment? No one can or should promise that.’
There was so much anger in his voice—and something else as well that Laura couldn’t quite analyse.
As he spoke Vasilii had put down the papers he was holding and had taken a step towards her before he’d even realised what he was doing, never mind understood the reason he was doing it. The experience of letting a woman’s jibes cut under his skin—a woman he thoroughly despised and distrusted at that—was so unknown to him that it took him several seconds and several strides in Laura’s direction before he could bring his reactions, both physical and emotional, under control.
Even more damaging to his pride was the look of shocked, almost horrified revulsion on Laura’s face as she stepped back from him. She was actually raising her hands, palm open, as though to fend him off—as though she was revolted by the thought that he might be going to touch her.
How dared she try to claim the moral high ground? How dared she think she needed to defend herself from his touch after the way he had just warned her off?
Vasilii had a formidable sense of pride, and Laura Westcotte’s reaction had virtually flayed it to ribbons. No woman had ever, ever reacted to him like that. To Vasilii’s angry disbelief, the fact that it should be this woman of all women who was rejecting him so obviously, and with such open revulsion, set alight inside him a savage male desire to show her exactly how easily he could punish her for that outrage by making her want him.
The surge of furious and instinctive need for supremacy threatened to slice through all the bindings of modern-day life, convention and even the strict limits he imposed on his own behaviour with such speed that inside his head he was already reaching for her. Reaching for her and holding her, sliding his hands into the lustrous silky warmth of her smooth hair and feeling it glide sensually through his fingers, its tendrils wrapping around them as he bound her to him, a willing captive to the possession of his kiss. Beneath his her lips would part softly and eagerly, clinging to the domination of his. Her head would tilt back to reveal the vulnerable arch of her throat, her skin as soft as the wing of a white dove at his mother’s people’s oases. And, as with the powerful life-giving water of those oases, he would be able to slake his own thirst and quench his pride’s need for vengeance in the soft sounds of pleasure she would make beneath the sensual punishment of a kiss that would teach her beyond all doubt that she wanted him. He would hear her sigh and sob that wanting beneath his mouth as she pressed herself closer to him, willingly offering herself to him …
The swift aching hardening of his body brought Vasilii abruptly back to reality, away from the dangerous place that his angry thoughts were taking him—in more ways than one.
Thankfully the punishment he wanted to inflict on Laura Westcotte had only been within the privacy of his own thoughts. Naturally he had retained enough sanity not to move so much as a centimetre closer to her, never mind actually touch her—despite the anger she had aroused within him with her obviously deliberately faked attempt to get under his skin by pretending that she was horrified at the thought of his touch. A woman like her would be adept at manipulating situations to suit her own needs. No doubt she had hoped to provoke him into desire for her after the way he had warned her off. Unfortunately for her she had failed. But at least he had her full measure now that he had himself fully under control, and he would ensure that that control was never compromised again.
As he stepped back from her, though, Vasilii knew that he now had another reason for not wanting to have Laura as his PA. Another reason not to want her. But he had no choice but to take her on.
It was a very galling reality to have to acknowledge, and there was a bitter taste in his mouth as he told her coldly, ‘There is no time to lose. My negotiations are at a very critical stage. I have an employment contract here ready for you to sign. Once it is signed I have a résumé of the history of the negotiations so far for you to study, so that you will be up to speed with what has happened.’
‘I shall need to know something of the future of your plans, as well as the past,’ Laura felt bound to point out.
Now was not the time to allow herself to dwell on the way she had felt when Vasilii had come towards her as though he was going to touch her. It was because she hadn’t wanted him to touch her, that was all. Not because she had. The very idea was … The very idea was unthinkable.
Taking a deep breath, she continued firmly, ‘As you know yourself, Chinese negotiations are very delicate. The wrong pause between words, never mind the wrong look or the use of the wrong word, can set things back far more than we would expect in the West. I know that when someone new joins a negotiating team the instinct is to keep them a little out of the loop facts-wise, until they’ve proved themselves, but in this instance—’
‘I shall be briefing you myself on those aspects of the negotiations tomorrow afternoon, when we shall be flying out to meet the Chinese, once I have assured myself that you have the correct grasp on what has already happened.’
Laura nodded her head. She was very professional when it came to her work, and she had no qualms about her ability to absorb the facts she would need to know.
‘Which part of China are we flying to? I only ask because I’ll need to pack appropriately.’
‘We aren’t flying to China. We’re flying to Montenegro. Wei Wong Zhang, the head of the company with whom I am in negotiation to work alongside in the development of new modern shipping container ports, has expressed a wish to visit Montenegro. He has other business interests in the potential development of tourist and leisure complexes on China’s coast. In the party of officials who are attending will be Wei Wong Zhang’s wife, Wu Ying, as well, of course, as the usual government officials and translators. In addition a nephew of Wei Wong Zhang, Gang Li, will also be a member of the party. Gang Li’s mother was Chinese-American and he was educated in America. He is very close to his uncle. All the indications are that Gang Li is being groomed to take over the business at some stage. There is, in fact, a suggestion that he might be Wei Wong Zhang’s son—although officially that cannot be mentioned and will certainly never be recognised.
‘The success of these negotiations has far-reaching consequences for my business that go well beyond the immediacy of this contract. My way of doing business and my status within the business community within China will be judged on my success with this contract. Winning it will by its very nature open doors to further investment in and business with Chinese partners. My PA has prepared a list of the officials who will be accompanying the family to Montenegro. The plan put forward by Wei Wong Zhang, through Gang Li, is that a smaller group than the large entourage he intends to bring with him can be formed to allow for more informal and thus more productive meetings to bring our negotiations to a mutually satisfactory conclusion.’
‘The Chinese are past masters of polite and creative delaying tactics, should they want to employ them,’ Laura felt bound to point out.
‘Yes. That had occurred to me. It will be part of your role to ensure that the use of such tactics is kept under control. As for clothes—just bring a few basics. I’ve already ordered a suitable wardrobe for you, which will be waiting at our destination. I shall require you to be here tomorrow for eleven-thirty in the morning.’
Vasilii had turned his back on her to walk over to his desk before Laura could so much as acknowledge her understanding of the information he had just given her, never mind make her natural objections to his highhanded behaviour with regard to her working wardrobe, or tell him that she didn’t like the way he had been so sure of her acceptance that he had already given instructions with regard to her clothes.
Only self-respect was one thing. Wilfully prejudicing the job she so badly needed if she was to be able to continue to help her aunt was another. Her aunt had sacrificed a great deal to bring her up. Sacrificing her pride now in order to help her was the least she could do.
It wasn’t that the concept of an employer requiring a certain standard of dress was something new to her, or something to which she objected. She’d had a clothes allowance with her previous job. The thought of someone else actually choosing those clothes, though—especially when that someone else was Vasilii—sent prickles of a sensation she did not like trembling down her spine. Even worse than that—humiliatingly so, in fact—were the sudden unexpected and unwanted images which had produced themselves inside her head of delicate and very sensual silk and satin wisps of underwear.
Such images were highly inappropriate. The clothes that Vasilii had selected for her would be work clothes. It could only be because she had walked past a couple of exclusive lingerie shops on her way here this morning that those images had somehow lodged inside her head. No other reason. Vasilii Demidov might be the kind of man who had the style and the good taste to buy his lovers the kind of underwear that women loved, but she was most certainly not the kind of woman he would ever want as one of those lovers. Nor did she want to be.
‘Here is the information you will need, and here is your contract.’
Vasilii had turned round, and now her face started to burn. Get a grip, Laura warned herself as she took the papers he had put down on the coffee table within her reach but without touching her. Another unwanted stab of emotion pricked at her heart.
She knew his opinion of her. She knew he didn’t like her or trust her. Everything about his manner towards her now that she had actually met him revealed him as a man who was corrosively antagonistic and nothing like the white knight she had fantasised about as a girl. So, given that, why should she feel hurt and rejected because he was making it plain that he didn’t want any kind of physical contact with her?
It was safer to lose herself in speed-reading the contract than to allow herself to dwell on finding a truthful answer to that question, Laura acknowledged with relief as she read and then reread the contract.
