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Some property owners did nothing to help themselves, but this probably wasn’t the moment to say so.
‘So it’s just the woodworm, rot and missing lead flashing on the roof that a potential buyer has to worry about?’ Darius Hadley raised his dark brows a fraction of a millimetre and every cell in her body followed as if he’d jerked a string.
Amongst a jangle of mixed messages—her head urging her to take a step back, every other part of her wanting to reach out and touch—she just about managed to stand her ground.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘according to the paperwork, the woodworm was treated years ago.’ Something he would have known if he’d taken the slightest interest in the house he’d apparently inherited. ‘I think you’ll find that it’s the cobwebs that will have women running screaming—’
Behind Hadley’s back, Miles made a sharp mouth-zipped gesture. ‘Mr Hadley isn’t looking for excuses. What he’s waiting for,’ he said, ‘what he’s entitled to, is an explanation and an apology.’
She frowned. Surely Miles had already covered that ground? She assumed she’d been called in to discuss a plan of action.
‘Don’t bother; I’ve heard enough,’ Hadley said before she could get in a word. ‘You’ll be hearing from my lawyer, Morgan.’
‘Lawyer?’ What use was a lawyer going to be? ‘No, really—’
Darius Hadley cut off her protest with a look that froze her in mid-sentence and seemed to go on for an eternity. Lethal eyes, a nose bred for looking down, a mouth made for sin... Finally, satisfied that he’d silenced her, his eyes seemed to shimmer, soften, warm to smoky charcoal and then, as she took half a step towards him, he nodded at Miles and walked out of the office, leaving the room ringing with his presence. Leaving her weak to the bone.
She put out a hand to grasp the back of the chair he’d been sitting in. It was still warm from his touch and the heat seemed to travel up her arm and spread through her limbs, creating little sparks throughout her body, igniting all the erogenous zones she was familiar with and quite a few that were entirely new.
Phew. Double phewy-phew...
‘He’s a bit tense, isn’t he?’ she said shakily. A sleek, dark Dobermann to Toby’s big, soft Labrador puppy—to be approached with caution rather than a hug. But the rewards if you won his trust...
Forget it! A man like that wasn’t a keeper. All you could hope for was to catch his attention for a moment. But what a moment—
‘With good reason,’ Miles said, interrupting a chain of thought that was going nowhere. Dark, brooding types had never been even close to the top of her list of appealing male stereotypes. Far too high-maintenance. Rude dark, brooding types had never figured.
A barrage of hoots from the street below distracted her, but there was no escape there. Apparently oblivious to the traffic, Darius Hadley was crossing the street and several people stopped to watch him stride down the road in the direction of Sloane Square. Most of them were women.
It wasn’t just her, then.
Without warning he stopped, swung round and looked up at the window where she was standing as if he’d known she’d be there. And she forgot to breathe.
‘Natasha!’
She jumped, blinked and when she looked again he’d gone and for a moment she was afraid that he was coming back. Hoped that he was coming back, but a moment later he reappeared further along the street and she turned her back on the window before he felt her eyes boring into the back of his head and turned again to catch her looking.
‘Have you spoken to the Chronicle?’ she asked; anything to distract herself.
‘The first thing I did when Mr Hadley’s solicitor contacted me early this morning was to call the Chronicle’s advertising manager.’ Miles walked across to his desk and removed a sheet of paper from a file and handed it to her. ‘He sent this over from his office. Hadley hasn’t seen it yet but it’s only a matter of time before his lawyer contacts them.’
It was a photocopied proof of the ad for Hadley Chase—exactly as she’d read it out—complete with a tick next to the ‘approved’ box and her signature scrawled across the bottom.
‘No, Miles. This is wrong.’ She looked up. ‘This isn’t what I signed.’
‘But you did write that,’ he insisted.
‘One or two of the phrases sound vaguely familiar,’ she admitted.
She sometimes wrote a mock advertisement describing a property in the worst possible light when she thought it would help the vendor to see the property through the eyes of a potential buyer. The grubby carpet in the hall, the children’s finger marks on the doors, the tired kitchen. Stuff that wouldn’t cost much to fix, but would make all the difference to the prospects of a sale.
‘Oh, come on, Tash. It sounds exactly like one of your specials.’
‘My “specials” have the advantage of being accurate. And helpful.’
‘So you would have mentioned the leaking roof?’
‘Absolutely. Damaged ceilings and pools of water are about as off-putting as it gets,’ she said, hating that she was on the defensive when she hadn’t done anything wrong.
‘What about the stairs?’
‘I’m sure they’d be lovely if you could see them for the dust and dead leaves that blew in through a broken window.’ The house had been empty since the last occupant had been moved to a nursing home when Alzheimer’s had left him a danger to himself a couple of years ago. ‘The caretaker is worse than useless. I had to find some card and fill the gap myself but it’s just a temporary solution. The first serious gust of wind will blow it out. And, frankly, if I were Darius Hadley I’d put a boot up the backside of the estate executor because he’s no help.’ He didn’t reply. ‘Come on, Miles. You know I didn’t send this to the Chronicle.’
‘Are you sure about that? Really? We all know that you’ve been putting in long hours. What time was your first viewing this morning?’
‘Eight, but—’
‘What time did you finish last night?’ He didn’t wait for her to answer but consulted a printout of her diary, no doubt supplied by Janine. No wonder she’d been smiling. This was much more fun than an office party. Gossip city... ‘Your last viewing was at nine-thirty so you were home at what? Eleven? Eleven-thirty?’
It had been after midnight. Buyers couldn’t always fit into a tidy nine-till-five slot. Far from complaining about the extra hours she put in, that they all put in—with the exception of Toby, who never allowed anything to interfere with rugby training, took time off whenever he felt like it and got away with murder because his great-aunt was married to Peter Black—Miles expected it.
‘They flew from the States to view that apartment. I could hardly tell them that I finished at five-thirty,’ she pointed out. They’d come a long way and wanted to see every detail and she wasn’t about to rush them.
‘No one can keep up that pace for long without something suffering,’ he replied, not even bothering to ask if they were likely to make an offer. ‘It seems obvious to me that you attached the wrong document when you emailed your copy to the Chronicle.’
‘No—’
‘I blame myself.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve pushed you too hard. I should have seen it coming.’
Seen what coming?
‘I didn’t attach the wrong anything,’ she declared, fizzing with indignation, her pulse still racing but with anger now rather than anticipation. How dared anyone tamper with her carefully composed ad? ‘And even if I had made a mistake, don’t you think I’d have noticed it when the proof came back?’
‘If you’d actually had time to look at it.’
‘I made time,’ she declared. ‘I checked every word. And what the hell was the Chronicle thinking? Why didn’t someone on the advertising desk query it?’
‘They did.’ He glanced at the ad. ‘They called this office on the twentieth. Unsurprisingly, they made a note for their records.’
‘Okay, so which idiot did they speak to?’
He handed her the page so that she could see for herself. ‘An idiot by the name of Natasha Gordon.’
‘No!’
‘According to the advertising manager, you assured them that it was the latest trend, harking back fifty years to an estate agent famous for the outrageous honesty of his advertisements.’ His tone, all calm reason, raised the small hairs on the back of her neck. Irritable, she could handle. This was just plain scary. ‘Clearly, you were angry with the executors for not taking your advice.’
‘If they didn’t have the cash, they didn’t have the cash, although I imagine their fees are safely in the bank. Believe me, if I’d been aping the legendary Roy Brooks, I’d have made a far better job of it than this,’ she said, working hard to sound calm even while her pulse was going through the roof. ‘There was plenty to work with. No one from the Chronicle talked to me.’ Calm, cool, professional...
‘So what are you saying? That the advertising manager of the Chronicle is lying? Or that someone pretended to be you? Come on, Tash, who would do that?’ he asked. ‘What would anyone have to gain?’
She swallowed. Put like that, it did sound crazy.
‘You are right about one thing, though,’ he continued. ‘The phone has been ringing off the hook—’ her sigh of relief came seconds too soon ‘—but not with people desperate to view Hadley Chase. They are all gossip columnists and the editors of property pages wanting a comment.’
She frowned. ‘Already? The magazine has been on the shelves for less than two hours.’
‘You know what they say about bad news.’ He took the ad from her and tossed it onto his desk. ‘In this instance I imagine it was given a head start by someone working at the Chronicle tipping them off.’
‘I suppose. How did Darius Hadley hear about it?’
‘I imagine the estate executors received the same phone calls.’
She shook her head, letting the problem of how this had happened go for the moment and concentrating instead on how to fix it. ‘The one thing I do know is that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. I meant what I said to Mr Hadley. Handled right...’
‘For heaven’s sake, Tash, you’ve made both the firm and Mr Hadley into a laughing stock. There is no way to handle this “right”! He’s withdrawn the house from the market and, on top of the considerable expenses we’ve already incurred, we’re not only facing a hefty claim for damages from Hadley but irreparable damage to the Morgan and Black name.’
‘All of which will go away if we find a buyer quickly,’ she insisted, ‘and it’s going to be all over the weekend property pages.’
‘I’m glad you realise the extent of the problem.’
‘No...’ She’d run a Google search when Hadley Chase had been placed in their hands for sale. There was nothing like a little gossip, a bit of scandal to garner a few column inches in one of the weekend property supplements. Unfortunately, despite her speculation on the source of their wealth, the Hadleys had either been incredibly discreet or dull beyond imagining. She’d assumed the latter; if James Hadley had been an entertaining companion, his money would have earned him a lot more than a smallish estate in the country. He’d have been given a title and a place at Charles II’s court.
Darius Hadley had blown that theory right out of the water.
Forget his clothes. With his cavalier curls, his earring, the edge of something dangerous that clung to him like a shadow, he would have been right at home there. Her fingers twitched as she imagined what it would be like to run her fingers through those silky black curls, over his flat abs.
She curled them into her palms, shook off the image—this wasn’t about Darius Hadley; it was about his house.
‘Come on, Miles,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t buy this kind of publicity. The house is in a fabulous location and buyers with this kind of money aren’t going to be put off by problems you’ll find in any property of that age.’ Well, not much. ‘I’ll make some calls, talk to a few people.’ Apparently speaking to a brick wall, she threw up her hands. ‘Damn it, I’ll go down to Hadley Chase and take a broom to the place myself!’
‘You’ll do nothing, talk to no one,’ he snapped.
‘But if I can find a buyer quickly—’
‘Stop! Stop right there.’ Having shocked her into silence, he continued. ‘This is what is going to happen. I’ve booked you into the Fairview Clinic—’
‘The Fairview?’ A clinic famous for taking care of celebrities with drug and drink problems?
‘We’ll issue a statement saying that you’re suffering from stress and will be having a week or two of complete rest under medical supervision.’
‘No.’ Sickness, hospitals—she’d had her fill of them as a child and nothing would induce her to spend a minute in one without a very good reason.
‘The firm’s medical plan will cover it,’ he said, no doubt meaning to reassure her.
‘No, Miles.’
‘While you’re recovering,’ he continued, his voice hardening, ‘you can consider your future.’
‘Consider my future?’ Her future was stepping up to an associate’s office, not being hidden away like some soap star with an alcohol problem until the dust cleared. ‘You’ve got to be kidding, Miles. This has to be a practical joke that’s got out of hand. There’s a juvenile element in the front office that needs a firm—’
‘What I need,’ he said, each word given equal weight, ‘is for you to cooperate.’
He wasn’t listening, she realised. Didn’t want to hear what she had to say. Miles wasn’t interested in how this had happened, only in protecting his firm’s reputation. He needed a scapegoat, a fall guy, and it was her signature on the ad.
That was why he’d summoned her back to the office—to show the sacrifice to Darius Hadley. Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t been impressed. He didn’t want the head of some apparently witless woman who stammered and blushed when he looked at her. He was going for damages so Miles was instituting Plan B—protecting the firm’s reputation by destroying hers.
She was in trouble.
‘I’ve spoken to Peter Black and he’s discussed the situation with our lawyers. We’re all agreed that this is the best solution,’ Miles continued, as if it was a done deal.
‘Already?’
‘There was no time to waste.’
‘Even so... What kind of lawyer would countenance such a lie?’
‘What lie?’ he enquired blandly. ‘Burnout happens to the best of us.’
Burnout? She was barely simmering, but the lawyers—covering all eventualities—probably had the press statement drafted and ready to go. She would be described as a ‘highly valued member of staff’...blah-de-blah-de-blah...who, due to work-related stress, had suffered a ‘regrettable’ breakdown. All carefully calculated to give the impression that she’d been found gibbering into her keyboard.
It would, of course, end with everyone wishing her a speedy return to health. Miles was clearly waiting for her to do the decent thing and take cover in the Fairview so that he could tell them to issue it. The clinic’s reputation for keeping their patients safe from the lenses of the paparazzi, safe from the intrusion of the press, was legendary.
Suddenly she wasn’t arguing with him over the best way to recover the situation, but clinging to the rim of the basin by her fingernails as her career was being flushed down the toilet.
‘This is wrong,’ she protested, well aware that the decision had already been made, that nothing she said would change that. ‘I didn’t do this.’
‘I’m doing my best to handle a public relations nightmare that you’ve created, Natasha.’ His voice was flat, his face devoid of expression. ‘It’s in your own best interests to cooperate.’
‘It’s in yours,’ she retaliated. ‘I’ll be unemployable. Unless, of course, you’re saying that I’ll be welcomed back with open arms after my rest cure? That my promotion to associate, the one you’ve been dangling in front of me for months, is merely on hold until I’ve recovered?’
‘I have to think of the firm. The rest of the staff,’ he said with a heavy sigh created to signal his disappointment with her. ‘Please don’t be difficult about this.’
‘Or what?’ she asked.
‘Tash... Please. Why won’t you admit that you made a mistake? That you’re fallible...sick; everyone—maybe even Mr Hadley—will sympathise with you, with us.’
He was actually admitting it!
‘I didn’t do this,’ she repeated but, even to her own ears, she was beginning to sound like the little girl who, despite the frosting around her mouth, had refused to own up to eating two of the cupcakes her mother had made for a charity coffee morning.
‘I’m sorry, Natasha, but if you refuse to cooperate we’ll have no choice but to dismiss you without notice for bringing the firm into disrepute.’ He took refuge behind his desk before he added, ‘If you force us to do that we will, of course, have no option but to counter-sue you for malicious damage.’
Deep, deep trouble.
‘I’m not sick,’ she replied, doing her best to keep her voice steady, fighting down the scream of outrage that was beginning to build low in her belly. ‘As for the suit for damages, I doubt either you or Mr Hadley would get very far with a jury. While the advertisement may not have been what he signed up for—’ she was being thrown to the wolves, used as a scapegoat for something she hadn’t done and she had nothing to lose ‘—it’s the plain unvarnished truth.’
‘Apart from the woodworm and the stairs,’ he reminded her stonily.
