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Mary closed her eyes. Excellent. Fall over, knock drink over him, insult his design taste and tip her handbag all over the floor…Could she look any more of a fool, and in front of the man with the power to make or break her precious agency, too?
Pink with embarrassment and irritation with herself, she stooped to gather up keys and lipstick and business cards—there were plenty left, it appeared—plus a sundry collection of pens, safety pins, tissues, scraps of paper with scribbled lists, a couple of floppy disks, an emery board and a plastic baby spoon.
A biscuit left in an opened packet ended up at the tip of Tyler’s perfectly polished shoe and Mary scrabbled to retrieve it. That explained all the crumbs in the bottom of her bag anyway. It must have been there for ages, and the wonder was that she hadn’t eaten it.
Tyler bent and picked up a spare nappy, which he handed to Mary with an expressionless face.
‘Thank you,’ she muttered, shoving it into the bag along with the rest of the stuff and straightening.
She was amazed that he was still there, and couldn’t think why he hadn’t walked off in disgust long ago. Why had he come over in the first place, in fact? she thought with a trace of resentment. She had been perfectly all right, minding her own business and not doing anything stupid, and then he had turned up and transformed her into a blithering idiot.
But Tyler showed no sign of walking off. He just stood there, looking daunting, and waited for her to explain what she was doing there.
Tyler was, in fact, bitterly regretting having come over to talk to her. He had moved instinctively to catch her when she’d fallen, not realising how heavy she would be, and he was lucky she hadn’t taken him down with her. As it was, she had managed to knock the champagne he’d had in his free hand all over him. Always fastidious, Tyler was very conscious of the stain on his shirt and, as for his tie, it was probably ruined, he thought crossly.
Not content with that, she had criticised his floor, and he didn’t take kindly to criticism from anyone, let alone someone who wore ridiculously inappropriate shoes and evidently possessed a handbag as messy as the rest of her. Everyone had turned to look as the contents scattered over the floor, and they had probably noticed him there too with a nappy—a nappy, of all things!—in his hand and a spreading stain on his shirt, and no doubt looking a fool.
If there was one thing Tyler hated, it was feeling ridiculous.
Actually, there were lots of things that he hated, but looking stupid had to be way up there at the top of his list.
He wished he had never been sucked into Mary Thomas’s chaotic orbit, but now that he was here he couldn’t think of a way to leave. If they’d been in a meeting, he could just have told her that her thirty seconds were up but, as it was, she was looking pink and flustered and he didn’t feel able to turn on his heel and walk off, no matter how much he might want to.
‘What sort of recruitment?’ he asked after a moment, deciding to pretend that the whole bag incident had never happened.
Mary only just stopped herself from sighing in time. She had been willing him to make an excuse and leave, at which point she could have slunk off home and enjoyed her humiliation in comfort.
This was a fantastic opportunity for her. Half the room would give their eye teeth to be in her position, with Tyler Watts’s apparently undivided attention. She should be making her pitch and sounding gung-ho, but it was hard when your feet were aching, your toes pinched, your jacket was gaping and you had just humiliated yourself three times in as many minutes in front of the man you had to try and impress, and when you would really much rather be stretched out on the sofa in front of the television with a cup of cocoa.
But lying on the sofa wouldn’t get her agency off the ground. It wouldn’t get her a home of her own, or make a new life for Bea.
Lying on the sofa wasn’t an option.
Mary took a deep breath and, mentally squaring her shoulders, handed Tyler a business card and launched into her carefully prepared spiel.
‘I understand you’re expanding your operation in the north now that you’re making York your headquarters, so if you need people with accountancy, clerical, computer or secretarial skills, I hope you’ll think of my agency. I can find you the best,’ she told him with what she hoped was a confident smile.
‘I don’t deal with junior staffing decisions,’ said Tyler, frowning down at her card.
‘I’m aware of that, which is why I was hoping to meet Steven Halliday here.’ Mary kept her voice even and hoped that she didn’t sound as desperate as she felt. ‘I have worked for Watts Holdings in the past myself, so I understand the company ethos and how it operates,’ she went on. ‘That’s a huge advantage when it comes to finding suitable staff, as I’m sure you are aware.’
But Tyler wasn’t listening. ‘You’ve worked for me?’ he said, a very faint light beginning to glimmer.
‘It’s nearly ten years ago now, so you won’t remember me,’ said Mary, a little unnerved by the way the pale, polar-blue eyes were suddenly alert as they rested on her face. ‘I worked in Human Resources here in York. Guy Mann was director then.’
‘Ah…!’ Tyler let out a hiss of satisfaction. He had it now.
Mary Thomas…Of course.
‘I do remember you,’ he said slowly. ‘You were the one who spilt coffee all over the conference table at some meeting.’
Of course, he would remember that. Mary bit her lip and averted her eyes from the stain on his shirt. ‘I’m not usually that clumsy,’ she said.
‘And you stood up to me over that guy…What was his name?’ Tyler clicked his fingers impatiently as if trying to conjure the name out of thin air.
‘Paul Dobson,’ Mary supplied, since there was no point in pretending she didn’t know.
‘Dobson…yes. You told me I was wrong.’ He eyed her with new interest. Very few people dared to tell him he was wrong about anything.
It was all coming back. He could remember the shocked silence around the table as Mary Thomas had spoken out, the scorn in her voice, how taken aback they had all been, as if some gentle kitten had suddenly puffed up to twice its size and lashed out without warning.
‘I hope I put it a bit more diplomatically than that,’ said Mary, her heart sinking. He would never give her work if he associated her with trouble.
‘There was no diplomacy about it,’ said Tyler. ‘You told me flat out that I was wrong and should be ashamed of myself.’
He had been furious at the time, Mary remembered, marvelling now that she had ever had the nerve, but when she risked a glance at him she was sure she detected a gleam of something that might even have been amusement in the chilly blue eyes. It had a startling effect, lightening the grimness of his features and making him seem suddenly much more approachable.
‘You told me I was a bleeding heart,’ she countered, emboldened.
‘So you were,’ he agreed. ‘But a bleeding heart who got her own way, I seem to remember.’
Mary nodded. ‘You were fair,’ she acknowledged.
That was one thing you could say about Tyler Watts. He might be rude and impatient, and the most difficult and demanding of employers most of the time, but he was straight and he didn’t ignore or manipulate facts that didn’t suit him. Irritated he might have been, but he had listened to what she had had to say about Paul Dobson. The upshot had been a special inquiry, and Tyler had been prepared to reconsider his decision when he knew more.
Well, that explained why she had seemed so familiar, anyway. Tyler felt better. He didn’t like being puzzled or uncertain. Having solved the mystery, he could move on, but he was remembering something the HR director had once told him: ‘Mary Thomas may be young, but she’s got an instinctive understanding of human relationships.’
And, if that were still so, maybe Mary Thomas could be of some use to him after all.
‘Why did you leave Watts Holdings?’ he asked her.
Mary, trying to relaunch into her sales pitch, was thrown by the abrupt question. ‘I wanted to work in London,’ she said, puzzled by his interest. ‘I grew up in York and I was really lucky to get a job with you after I graduated, but after three years I was ready to spread my wings.’
‘You could have got a job with us in London.’
He sounded almost peeved that she hadn’t. She hadn’t realised that joining Watts Holdings was supposed to be a lifetime commitment. Mind you, there had been some fanatically loyal members of staff who probably thought of it that way. There tended to be a very high turnover amongst the rest, though, most of whom were terrified of Tyler Watts. Mary had only managed to survive three years by not being important enough to have much to do with him.
Still, better not tell Tyler that. She had been tactless enough for one evening.
‘I wanted to broaden my experience,’ she said instead.
‘Hmm.’ Tyler’s hard eyes studied her with such intentness that Mary began to feel uncomfortable. ‘And now you’re back in York?’ he said.
‘Yes. I’ve been back a few months now,’ she told him, relieved that he seemed to be getting back to the business in hand, which was about winning some work.
‘I’ve recently set up a recruitment agency,’ she went on, ready to launch back into her spiel and wishing that her feet didn’t hurt so much. ‘I offer a complete headhunting service for junior staff. Companies tend to spend a lot of money recruiting senior members of staff and skimp on employees at lower grades, but it’s a false economy in my view.
‘A financial investment in finding exactly the right person, however lowly the job, pays dividends,’ she said. ‘If all your staff, from janitors to chief executives, are doing the job they’re best suited to, your entire company will function more efficiently.’
Tyler was unimpressed. ‘Sounds expensive,’ he commented.
‘It’s more expensive than accepting anyone who happens to have the skills to do the job,’ Mary agreed. ‘But less expensive than realising you’ve appointed someone who doesn’t fit into the team or who doesn’t work effectively with their colleagues.’
She was beginning to perk up a bit now. Tyler’s expression might be unresponsive, but at least he was listening. ‘Before I look for the right person for you, I need to understand the company culture, and that means working very closely with your human resources department. It’s important to know exactly what the job entails and what sort of personality would fit most comfortably into the existing team.
‘I see my job less as matching skills and requirements, and more about forging successful human relationships,’ she finished grandly. She always liked that bit.
Relationships, the dreaded R word! Tyler was sick of hearing about them. He had recently spent a weekend with his best friend and his wife, and Julia had spent her whole time banging on about ‘relationships’ and making free with her advice.
‘For someone so clever at business, you’re extraordinarily stupid when it comes to women,’ she had told him bluntly. ‘You’ve got no idea how to have a relationship.’
Tyler had been outraged. ‘Of course I do! I’ve had loads of girlfriends.’
‘Yes, and how many of them have lasted more than a few weeks? Those are encounters, Ty, not relationships!’
Tyler was fond of Julia in his own way, but her comments had caught him on the raw, especially after that reunion he had gone to with Mike where all his peers seemed to be measuring their success suddenly in terms of wives and children rather than share value or racehorses or fast cars.
‘That’s what being really successful is nowadays,’ Mike had said, amused by Tyler’s bafflement. ‘You’re going to have to get yourself a wife and family, Tyler, if you want to be the man who really does have it all!’
‘And you won’t be that until you learn how to have a relationship,’ Julia added. ‘If you want to be the best, Ty, you’re going to have to get yourself a relationship coach.’
It was all rubbish, of course, but her words had rankled with Tyler. He liked being the best—needed to be the best, even—and he wasn’t prepared to accept that there was anything he didn’t do well, even something as unimportant as relationships. He didn’t do failure, in any shape or form.
Now here was Mary Thomas going on about relationships too.
‘What is it with all this relationship stuff nowadays?’ he demanded truculently. ‘Why is it no one can just do the job they’re paid to do any more? Why do they all have to spend their time forging relationships?’
‘Because unless they do form relationships, they won’t work effectively,’ said Mary, who was wishing Tyler Watts would stop talking and let her get out of these shoes. ‘You know, it’s not a big deal,’ she told him when he made no effort either to move on or to hide his scepticism. ‘It’s not about hugging each other or sitting around chanting. It’s just about understanding that different people have different approaches, different needs, different expectations. It’s about being aware of other people, of what they do and how they do it.’
She attempted a smile, although they tended to be rather wasted on Tyler from what she could remember. ‘Like any other relationship, in fact.’
To her surprise, an arrested expression sprang into the cold blue eyes that were boring in to her. ‘Do you think you can teach that?’
‘Teach what?’
‘All that stuff you were just talking about…you know, understanding, being aware of people…’ Tyler waved a dismissive hand, clearly unable to remember any other alien concepts.
‘Of course,’ said Mary, surprised.
This was one area she really did know about, thanks to Alan. He had been running a coaching course when she’d met him, and she had been bowled over by his psychological insights and grasp of the complexities of human relationships.
Of course, it hadn’t helped when their own relationship had fallen apart, but that was experts for you.
‘I’ve run a number of courses on workplace relationships in the past,’ she went on, thinking there would be no harm in bigging herself up a little. ‘It’s an interesting area, and it’s amazing what a difference tackling problems like this can make to a company’s productivity.’
‘Do you do other kinds of coaching?’ Tyler asked.
‘Yes.’ Mary was really getting into her stride now. ‘I can help people identify their goals at a personal level and work out a strategy to achieve them.’
Now she was talking his language. Tyler looked at her with approval. He might not have a clue about relationships, but he understood goals and strategies all right.
‘In that case, I might have a job for you,’ he said.
Mary was taken by surprise. ‘I thought you weren’t involved with staff recruitment?’
‘This isn’t about staffing,’ he said. ‘It’s about me.’
‘Oh?’ said Mary, puzzled but polite.
‘Yes.’ Characteristically, Tyler went straight to the point. ‘I want to get married.’
CHAPTER TWO
MARY laughed. ‘Well, this is very sudden!’ she said, entering into the spirit of the joke and pretending confusion. She pressed a hand to her throat as if to contain her palpitations. ‘I don’t know what to say. I had no idea you felt that way about me.’
‘What?’ Tyler stared at her.
‘Still, it’s a good offer,’ she said, putting her head on one side as if giving it serious consideration. ‘I’m thirty-five, and a girl my age can’t be picking and choosing. I’m up for it if you are!’
Looking down into her face, Tyler realised with a mixture of incredulity and outrage that she was laughing at him. The grey eyes were alight and a smile was tugging at the corner of her wide mouth.
‘I’m serious,’ he said, glowering.
The smile was wiped off Mary’s face and it was her turn to stare. ‘I thought you were joking!’
‘Do I look like the joking type?’
‘Well, no, now you come to mention it, but…No, come on.’ She laughed uncertainly. ‘You are joking!’
‘I can assure you,’ said Tyler grimly, ‘that I am not in a humorous mood.’
‘But…you don’t want to marry me, surely?’
His expression changed ludicrously. ‘Good God, no!’ he said, appalled at the misunderstanding. ‘I don’t want to marry you.’
Charming, thought Mary acidly. She knew that she wasn’t beautiful and, OK, she was a bit overweight at the moment, but she wasn’t that bad, and Tyler was no George Clooney, when it came down to it. He had no call to look as if he would rather pick up slugs than touch her.
‘Well, you know,’ she said, leaning forward confidentially, her smile a-glitter with defiance, ‘that’s what the princess in the fairy tale always says to the frog, and you know what happens to them!’
Tyler’s fierce brows were drawn together in a ferocious scowl, and if Mary hadn’t been so cross with him by this stage she would have been quailing in her heels. As it was, when he demanded, ‘Do you want a job or not?’ she only looked straight back at him.
‘I’m not at all clear what this job of yours involves,’ she said. ‘Or, to put it another way, I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about!’
A passing waiter, seeing that they were without glasses, approached with a tray, only to falter as Tyler waved him away irritably, but as the man made to retreat Mary gave him her best smile.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’d love one.’
Ignoring Tyler’s glare, she helped herself to a glass of champagne. She didn’t care what he thought anymore. It was late, she was tired, her feet hurt and she was fed up with Tyler Watts looming over her. She didn’t know what he wanted, but it didn’t sound like it was anything to do with recruitment, and that meant he was wasting her time.
