скачать книгу бесплатно
At last. I pulled out the doughnut and took a bite, mumbling with pleasure as my teeth sank into the sugary dough.
And then froze as the door opened and Phin came in. ‘I forgot that file—’ he began, and then it was his turn to stop as he took in the sight of me, sitting guiltily behind my desk, doughnut in hand and mouth full.
His eyes lit with amusement. ‘Aha! Caught red-handed, I see.’
Blushing furiously, I dropped the doughnut and brushed at the sugar moustache I could feel on my top lip. ‘I thought you’d gone,’ I blustered, mortified at having been caught in such an unprofessional pose.
‘Now I know why you were so keen to get rid of me,’ said Phin. ‘This is a new side to you. How very, very unlikely. Who would have thought that sensible Summer Curtis would have a doughnut addiction!’ He leant conspiratorially towards me. ‘Does anyone else know?’
‘It’s not an addiction,’ I said, trying for some dignity. ‘I just work better if I’ve had some sugar in the morning.’
‘Well, I’m delighted to find that you’ve got a weakness. I was finding all that perfection just a little intimidating.’ He grinned. ‘It’s good to know that when it comes down to it you can’t resist temptation either.’
Of course, then I had to prove him wrong.
The next day, when I called in to buy my usual cappuccino on my way into work, I refused the doughnut Lucia offered and felt virtuous. This would be the start of a new regime, I vowed. I didn’t need a sugar fix, anyway. That was just silly. I would stick to coffee—a much less embarrassing habit and one that was less likely to lead to humiliation.
And I made it all the way to the lifts before I started to regret my resolution. Why shouldn’t I have a mid-morning snack? It wasn’t as if eating a doughnut was immoral or illegal. I blamed Phin for making me feel guilty about it. It was more satisfying than blaming myself.
Already I could already feel the craving twitching away in the pit of my stomach, making me tense. It didn’t bode well for the rest of the day, and I hoped everyone would give me a wide berth. I wasn’t known for my easygoing attitude on the best of days, and I had a feeling this most definitely wasn’t going to be a good one.
At least Phin managed to turn up before ten o’clock, looking distinctly the worse for wear.
‘I hope I get a gold star for turning up early,’ he said.
I thinned my lips, still illogically determined to blame him for my doughnut-less day. ‘I’d hardly call ten early,’ I said repressively.
‘It is for me.’ Phin yawned. ‘I had a very late night.’
I wondered how much his lack of sleep was due to the beautiful Jewel Stevens. According to last night’s Metro, the two of them were ‘inseparable’. Not that I was scouring gossip columns for news of my new boss, you understand. In spite of taking a book to read on the tube every day, I somehow always ended up devouring the free paper on the way home. When it’s pressed into your hand, it seems rude not to.
Phin’s name just happened to catch my eye—honest. There had even been a picture of him at some party, with Jewel entwined around his arm. I know I’m in no position to talk about stupid names, but really…Jewel? I’d put money on the fact that she was christened Julie. In the picture Phin had a faintly wary look, but that might have been the flash. He certainly didn’t look as if he were pushing her away.
Why would he? She was dark and sultry, with legs up to her armpits, a beestung mouth and masses of rippling black hair. Every man’s fantasy, in fact.
I felt vaguely depressed at the thought, and then worried by the fact that I was depressed—until I realised it must just be the lack of sugar getting to me.
‘No, really, though. I’ll be fine,’ said Phin, when I failed to offer the expected sympathy. ‘There’s no need to make a fuss.’
I sighed and narrowed my eyes at him.
‘I can tell that deep down you’re really worried,’ he said, and when I just looked back at him without expression he wisely took himself off into his office.
‘I’ll survive,’ he promised, just before he shut the door. ‘But if I don’t, you’re not to feel bad, OK?’
All was quiet for nearly an hour. I was betting that he had gone to catch up on his sleep on one of those sofas, but frankly I was glad to get rid of him for a while. I tried to soothe myself with a little filing, but a few days wasn’t long enough to generate much of a backlog, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how good a doughnut would taste with a cup of coffee.
Perhaps Phin was right. Perhaps I really was addicted, I fretted. I even considered sneaking out to Otto’s, but couldn’t take the chance of Phin waking up and finding me gone. I’d never hear the end of it.
The more I tried not to think about doughnuts, the more I wanted one, and it was almost a relief when Phin buzzed me. Yes, buzzed me—like a real executive! Maybe he would get the hang of corporate life after all.
‘It’s almost eleven,’ came his voice through the intercom. ‘Am I allowed to have coffee yet?’
‘Of course,’ I said, glad of the distraction from my doughnut craving, and relieved to be able to act as a normal PA for a change. ‘I’ll bring you some in.’
‘Bring yourself some, too. We need to do some planning. You’ll like that.’
Planning. That sounded more like it. I switched my phone through, wedged my notebook under my arm, and took in a pot of coffee and two cups on a tray.
I half expected to find Phin lying on one of the sofas, but he was sitting behind his desk, apparently immersed in something he was reading on the computer screen. He looked up when I pushed open the door with my elbow, though, and got to his feet.
‘Let’s make ourselves comfortable,’ he said, guiding me over to the sofas and producing a familiar-looking paper bag from a drawer. ‘I thought we’d have a little something with our coffee,’ he said, waving it under my nose.
He’d brought two doughnuts.
It was all I could do not to drool. I’ve no idea what my expression was like, but judging by the laughter in the blue eyes it was a suitable picture.
‘Now aren’t you sorry you weren’t more sympathetic?’ he asked as he set the doughnuts out on a paper napkin each.
I eyed them longingly. ‘I’ve just decided to give them up,’ I said, but Phin only clicked his tongue.
‘You can’t do that just when I’ve found a weakness I can ruthlessly exploit,’ he said. ‘Besides, you told me yourself you needed a sugar fix in order to concentrate. You’ll just get grumpy otherwise.’
Unfortunately that was all too true.
‘Take it as an order, if that helps,’ he said as I hesitated. ‘Keeping me company on the doughnut front is compulsory. If I’d been able to appoint my own PA I’d have put it in the job description.’
What could I do? ‘Well, if you insist…’ I said, giving in.
I sat on one sofa, Phin sat on the other, and we bit into our doughnuts at the same time.
I can’t tell you how good mine tasted. I laughed as I licked sugar from my fingers. ‘Mmm…yum-yum,’ I said, and then stopped as I saw Phin’s arrested expression. ‘What?’
‘Nothing. I was just realising I hadn’t heard you laugh yet,’ he said. ‘You should do it more often.
My eyes slid away from his. ‘It’s easy to laugh when you’re being force-fed doughnuts,’ I said after a tiny pause. I was very aware of him watching me, and I licked sugar from my lips with the tip of my tongue, suddenly uncomfortable as the silence stretched.
I cleared my throat. ‘What exactly did you want to plan?’ I said.
‘Plan?’ echoed Phin, sounding oddly distracted.
‘You said we needed to do some planning,’ I reminded him.
‘Oh, yes…’ He seemed to recover himself. ‘Well, I had a chat about my role here with Lex last night, and we discussed things in a civilised manner.’
‘Really?’
‘No, not really. We had a knock-down-drag-out fight, and shouted at each other for a good hour. It didn’t quite come to fisticuffs, but it was touch and go at one point. Just like being boys again,’ he said reflectively.
I couldn’t imagine anyone daring to shout at Lex, but then Phin was a self-confessed adrenalin junkie and obviously thrived on danger.
‘What happened?’ I asked a little nervously. I hoped Phin hadn’t enraged his brother so much that we would be both be out of a job.
‘I’d like to claim utter victory, but I’d be lying,’ Phin admitted. ‘Lex wasn’t budging when it came to renegotiating our suppliers, but he did agree eventually that I could start to build up links with communities overseas. In return I had to promise to co-operate fully on the PR front. Apparently he’s lined up a feature in Glitz already.’
Phin shrugged as he finished his doughnut and brushed the sugar from his hands. ‘So, not everything I wanted, I’ll admit, but it’s a start.’
‘Well…good,’ I said, feeling a little uncertain. ‘What happens next?’
‘We’d better keep Lex quiet about the PR,’ he decided. ‘Make arrangements for that interview, and talk to Jonathan Pugh about what they want.’
Talk to Jonathan! Talk to Jonathan. My stomach clenched with excitement. I had a reason to go and talk to Jonathan! My handwriting was ridiculously shaky as I made a note, although there was no chance of me forgetting that particular task.
Phin was talking about a trip to Cameroon he was planning but I hardly listened. I was too busy imagining my meeting with Jonathan.
This would be my first chance to talk to him properly since that awful evening when he had told me it ‘wasn’t working’ for him. I had seen him around the office, of course, but never alone, and I was sure that he was avoiding me. I’d been holding onto the hope that if we could just spend some time together again he would change his mind.
I would play it cool, of course, I decided. Surely he knew that I was the last person to make a fuss? I would be calm and reasonable and undemanding. What more could he want? I’ve missed you, Summer, I imagined him saying as the scales dropped from his eyes and he realised that I was just what he needed after all. You’ve no idea how much.
But if he had missed me, why hadn’t he told me? I puzzled over that one. OK, maybe he had just been waiting for the right moment. Or he’d thought I was busy.
It even sounded lame in my fantasy, which wasn’t a good sign.
I suddenly realised that Phin had stopped talking and was looking at me enquiringly. ‘So what do you think?’ he asked.
‘Um…sounds good to me,’ I said hastily, without a clue as to what he’d been talking about. ‘Great idea.’
His brows lifted in surprise. ‘Well, that’s good. To be honest, I didn’t think you’d go for it.’
‘Oh?’ I regarded him warily. That sounded ominous. ‘Er…what exactly didn’t you think I’d like?’
‘Staff development in Cameroon,’ he prompted, but his eyes had started to dance.
‘What?’
Phin tried to look severe, but a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘Summer, is it possible you weren’t listening to a word I was saying?’
I squirmed. ‘I may have got distracted there for a moment or two,’ I admitted feebly.
He tutted. ‘That’s not like you, Summer. After I gave you sugar, too! I’ve just explained about my plan to take a group from Head Office to Cameroon for a couple of weeks, to help build a medical centre in one of the villages I know there. It’s a great way to start forging links between the company and a community, and everyone who goes will get so much out of it. But you don’t need to worry about it yet. You’ll have plenty of time to prepare.’
‘Hold on,’ I said, alarmed by the way this was going. ‘Me? Prepare for what?’
‘Of course you’ll be coming, too,’ said Phin, with what I was sure was malicious pleasure in my consternation. ‘We’re a team, remember? This is our scheme. It’s important that you’re really part of it. What better way than to go as part of the first group, to find out what it’s like out there?’
Chapter Three
‘YOU’RE not serious?’
‘I’m always serious, Summer,’ said Phin. His face was perfectly straight, but I’ve never seen anything less serious than the expression in the blue eyes right then.
I stared at him, aghast. ‘No way am I going to Africa!’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘I don’t like bugs.’
‘There’s more to the rainforest than bugs, Summer.’
‘The rainforest?’ My eyes started from my head. How much had I missed here? ‘Oh, no. No, no, no. The jungle? No way. Absolutely not.’
‘You’d like it.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ I said, still shaking my head firmly from side to side. I’d seen him leading those poor people through enough rainforests on Into the Wild to know just what it would be like. They spent their whole time struggling through rampant vegetation, or slithering down muddy slopes in stifling humidity, so that their hair was plastered to their heads and their shirts wringing with sweat.
There was almost always a shot of Phin taking off his shirt and rinsing it in the water. Anne’s favourite bit, in fact. Whenever they reached a river she’d sit up straighter and call out, ‘Shirt alert!’ and sigh gustily at the glimpse of Phin’s lean, muscled body.
I didn’t sigh, of course, but I did look, and even I had to admit—although not to Anne, of course—that it was a body worth sighing over if you were into that kind of thing.
But I certainly wasn’t prepared to trek through the rainforest myself to see it at first hand.
‘It sounds awful,’ I told Phin. ‘Hot and sweaty and crawling with insects…ugh.’
He leant forward, fixing me with that unnerving blue gaze. ‘You say hot and sweaty, Summer,’ he said, rocking his hand in an either/or gesture. ‘I say heat and passion and excitement.’
Heat. Passion. Excitement. They were so not me. But something about the words in Phin’s mouth made me shift uneasily on the sofa. ‘And what on earth makes you think I would like that?’ I asked, with what I hoped was a quelling look.
‘Your mouth.’
It was a bit like missing a step. I had the same lurch of the heart, punching the air from my lungs, the same hollowness in the stomach. My eyes were riveted to Phin’s, and all at once their blueness was so intense that I felt quite dizzy with the effort of not tumbling into it.
‘It just doesn’t go with the rest of you,’ he went on conversationally, while I was still opening and closing the mouth in question. ‘You’re all cool and crisp and buttoned up in your suit. But that mouth…’ He put his head on one side and studied it. ‘It makes me think there’s more to you than that. It makes me think that you might have a secretly sensual side…Am I right?’
‘Certainly not,’ I blustered, unable to think of a suitably crushing reply. ‘I can assure you that there isn’t a single bit of me that wants to go to the rainforest.’
Phin clicked his tongue and shook his head sadly. ‘Summer, Summer…I never thought you’d be a coward. Isn’t it time you stepped out of your comfort zone and explored a different side of yourself?’
‘I’m not into exploration,’ I said coldly. ‘That’s the thing about comfort zones. They’re comfortable. I’ve got no intention of making myself uncomfortable if I don’t have to.’
‘But I’m afraid you do have to,’ said Phin. ‘You’re on my team, and my team is going to Cameroon, whether you want to or not. So you’d better get used to the idea.’
I looked mutinously back at him. He was smiling, but there was an inflexibility to his jaw, a certain flintiness at the back of the blue eyes, that gave me pause and, like the coward Phin called me, I opted out of an argument just then.
I was sent off to liaise with Human Resources and find candidates for the first staff development trip. Phin said that he would organise everything at the Cameroonian end, but it would be my job to sort out flights, insurance, and all the other practicalities involved in taking a group of people overseas.
I didn’t mind doing that as long as I didn’t have to go myself. Still, he could hardly force me onto the plane, could he? I would be able to get out of it somehow, I reassured myself, and in the meantime I was much more excited about organising the Glitz interview. This was the chance I had dreamed about. At last I had a real reason to be in touch with Jonathan again.
Putting Africa out of my mind, I sat down to compose an e-mail to him. My heart was beating wildly at the mere thought of seeing him again, and I didn’t trust my voice on the phone.
