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Ursula only pretended to think about it. She had always refused to attend social events when they were connected with work, but this was the first time he had ever invited her to his house. She told herself that it was simply a genuine desire to help Katy celebrate her birthday which had her itching to attend. And it was. But deep down she was dying for a glimpse into his home life. Would he be as messy as he was in the office? Would Jane be clucking round the kitchen like a mother hen? ‘Thanks very much. I’d love to come.’
‘Good.’
‘What time on Saturday?’
‘About six o’clock? We promised Katy that she could have an early-evening party.’
There it was again, the ‘we’ word, reminding Ursula—if she had needed any reminding—that Ross was already spoken for.
‘So no jelly and ice cream?’ she questioned lightly.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that! If you’re very good, I’ll see if I can organise chocolate cake!’ He grinned back and began to draw funny little shapes onto the large sheet of paper in front of him, which told Ursula that he was about to go into creative mode.
Unusually—and lucratively—Ross Sheridan managed to combine the twin accomplishments of being artistic and yet having a strong head for business. In the competitive world of advertising he was already a bit of a legend—and he was still only thirty-two! As a copywriter, he was second to none—his the dizzy success story which others aspired to. As people said—any campaign with Ross Sheridan’s name on it was Midas-kissed!
His rise had seemed effortless—but Ursula knew how hard he had worked to get to where he was today. He had started out at Wickens, one of London’s biggest agencies, where he had quickly established himself as one to watch. Early on he had produced two brilliantly successful ads which had gone on to win national awards. That was where he had met Ursula, who had been temping because the money had been better and she had needed as much as she’d been able to get her hands on.
In Ursula, Ross had recognised talents which complemented his own. She was punctual, efficient and sensible. She didn’t spend hours on the phone to her boyfriend or come back from lunch all giggly with wine.
When Ross had left Wickens he had taken Ursula with him—to the buzzy ‘hotshop’ agency where all the brightest talents had converged, and where Ross had met Oliver Blackman. And when Oliver and Ross had formed Sheridan-Blackman—their own breakaway agency—Ursula had been their first full-time member of staff.
She’d been with Ross so long that sometimes she felt like part of the wallpaper—while at others it seemed that her life with him had sped by in a flash. And the one great constant was his charisma. That never dimmed, just kept drawing you to him, like a moth to the flame.
Like all creative personalities, he had his flaws. He could be irritable and exacting, short-tempered and impatient. But he compensated with his enthusiasm, his brilliance and the occasional smile which could make grown women swoon.
She looked at him now, trying to analyse his appeal.
Every day was dress-down day at Sheridan-Blackman, and today Ross was wearing trousers which made his legs look spectacularly long. He wore these with an open-neck shirt which couldn’t disguise those lumberjack shoulders or the lean body which every woman in the building dreamed of.
He topped six feet in his bare feet—which everyone knew because he often kicked his shoes off after arriving at the office! His hair was lighter than black but darker than brown—wavy, thick and usually in need of a trim.
Ursula sighed. It wasn’t easy working for a man who looked as if he should be starring in a jeans commercial!
Forcing herself to concentrate on something else, Ursula rose to her feet. ‘Do you want some coffee?’ she asked him.
‘Coffee sounds good.’
She was almost at the door when he said, ‘Ursula?’
She turned round, noticing blue-black shadows beneath his eyes, and thinking that he looked as if he needed a good night’s sleep. ‘Yes, Ross?’
‘Any chance of a couple of aspirin to go with that coffee?’
When he turned those big dark eyes on her like an abandoned puppy, there was every chance that she would grind the chalk to make the tablets herself!
‘Hangover?’ she quizzed sweetly. ‘Or some ongoing complaint I should know about?’
He scowled. ‘I just asked you for a couple of pills—I didn’t expect to have you carry out a full medical on me!’
Unwanted, X-rated thoughts went sizzling across her mind, but Ursula didn’t miss a beat. ‘Yes, boss,’ she said crisply. ‘You just carry on sitting there quietly relaxing while I run around and fetch for you.’
‘Thanks,’ he replied absently, scribbling on a notepad and not seeming to notice the sarcasm in her voice.
In the office’s adjoining kitchen, Ursula ground some coffee beans, then plugged the kettle in. She looked out of the window at the London skyscape as she waited for it to boil, reflecting on how lucky she was to work slap-bang in the centre of London, and in such a stunning suite of offices. For a girl with just a clutch of typing certificates to her name she hadn’t done too badly!
Like the rest of the building, the kitchen had been designed with the kind of flair you would expect from an advertising agency. Glossy and slick. As Ross had informed her on her first day at Wickens, ‘Image is everything in this business.’ Ursula remembered that he had said it in a very cynical, jaded kind of way, and she recalled wondering whether he was happy or not.
She remembered the day she had discovered that he was married, with a young daughter, and the great stabbing feeling of disappointment she had felt. Which had been utterly ridiculous when she had thought about it afterwards. Surely she hadn’t been expecting that a dreamy hot-shot like Ross would be interested in a plump Irish orphan like her?
But having her hopes dashed—however futile they had been—had meant that she had gone on to develop a strong working relationship with her boss, one that wasn’t based on false expectations of having him clasp her in his arms one day! That wasn’t to say that she didn’t still sometimes have the occasional little fantasy about him—but she wasn’t alone in that. So did every other woman in the building!
‘What’s happened to the coffee?’ came a low growl from the office. ‘Are you boarding a plane for Colombia to harvest the beans yourself?’
Ursula smiled as she popped two aspirin out of their foil container, poured him a glass of water and carried them through to him.
He looked pale, she thought critically, handing him the drink and the tablets.
‘Thanks.’
‘Are you ill, Ross?’
He shook his head. ‘Just sleep-depleted.’
‘Well, don’t frown,’ she told him sweetly. ‘It’ll give you lines,’ and went back out to the delectable smell wafting from the kitchen before he had time to come up with a smart reply.
Pinned on one of the walls of the kitchen was a framed still of one of Ross’s most successful campaigns, featuring a glossy young blonde with bee-stung lips, sipping from a glass of iced cocoa. The blonde had been sitting on a beach, clad in the skimpiest of bikinis, and Ross’s copyline had read, ‘Not Just For Bedtime...’.
The campaign had exploded the myth that cocoa was only drunk by fuddy-duddies. It had also started a hot and angry debate in the women’s pages in newspapers about whether it wasn’t time to stop using sexist images to sell products. Ross had refused to comment.
Sales had shot through the ceiling, and Ross had become the hottest property in town—and in more than just a commercial sense. With his creative genius, a body that was lean and hard—and eyes which could sometimes resemble hell’s fire—Ross Sheridan was the man whom everybody wanted to be seen out with.
Except that he was seen out with nobody because he had a wife and daughter at home!
And Ursula admired him for that. Over the years, the man had had enough temptation put in his path to have tempted the holiest of saints. She had seen models and actresses coming on to him like nobody’s business. But Ross hadn’t just resisted—he had shown absolutely no interest.
Which only added to his appeal. The irresistible man who was beyond temptation. Moody, spiky, brilliant and erratic.
She carried the tray of coffee through, added a plate of his favourite biscuits. She had poured them both a cup and settled back down at her desk when his deep voice punctured the silence.
‘Ursula?’
‘Yes, Ross?’
‘Um, how old are you exactly?’
Ursula blinked. Again, the uncharacteristic use of the word ‘um’. ‘But you know how old I am!’
His mouth assumed a stubborn little-boy curve. ‘Not exactly, I don’t,’ he hedged obstinately.
‘How exact do you want? Down to the nearest minute? Are you plotting my horoscope for me?’
‘Very funny.’
‘Don’t you know that it’s rude to ask a lady her age?’
‘But I don’t know any ladies,’ he mocked. ‘Only women.’
The velvet sensuality which underpinned his words had the undesirable effect of making Ursula’s cheeks grow scarlet.
‘Ursula,’ he teased, ‘you’re blushing.’
‘Well, you caused it!’ she snapped.
‘Only because you were being so coy about your age.’
‘That was not coyness!’ she returned. ‘It was a perfectly natural wish to keep something of myself back!’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. You keep plenty of yourself back,’ he remarked obscurely, and took a sip of his coffee before catching her in the inky crossfire of his eyes. ‘So are you going to tell me?’
Ursula found herself wondering briefly whether there was ever an age that a woman was happy to admit to! ‘I’m twenty-seven—twenty-eight soon.’ She stared across the room at him. ‘Why do you want to know?’
He batted her back an innocent look. ‘Does there need to be a reason?’
Ursula shrugged, and the upward movement caused her long dark hair to catch the light in a blue-black gleam. She wore her hair loose and flowing around her shoulders—not a terribly practical style for work, but at least it diminished the width of her unfashionably round face. Or so she thought. ‘Of course there needs to be a reason!’ she told him. ‘I’ve worked with you for the past six years and you’ve never bothered asking me before!’
‘Maybe I’m planning to surprise you—’
‘You mean you’re going to turn up on time tomorrow morning?’
He laughed, but it was a slightly uneasy laugh. ‘You’re right,’ he sighed. ‘I have been late a lot recently.’
Ursula quickly straightened the papers on her desk into a neat line. She wasn’t going to ask why. Didn’t need to. Married men who kept turning up late in the morning usually had a very legitimate reason for doing soy—presumably because they had been distracted by the womanly wiles of their wives.
And that was an area of Ross’s life which Ursula determinedly kept her nose out of. She was glad that Ross was happily married—she just didn’t want it rammed down her throat every five minutes.
‘So why the sudden interest in my age?’ she quizzed. ‘Have you decided that I’m due a pay rise as a reward for long service? Or maybe just for being long-suffering?’
Ignoring her question, Ross picked up a pencil and with three swift, hard strokes on a sheet of scrap paper managed to produce an uncanny likeness of a philandering Cabinet Minister who had been in the news all week. ‘It’s disturbing,’ he said, after a minute, ‘to think of you getting on for thirty.’
‘It is very disturbing,’ Ursula agreed equably, ‘when you put it like that. Because I’m not! Now who’s the mathematically challenged one? I happen to be more than two years off thirty! I’m not exactly queuing up for my pension just yet! And, besides,’ she added defensively, because taking a resolute attitude helped diminish the fear of a lonely old age, ‘thirty isn’t very old, not these days.’
‘No. You’re right. It isn’t.’ His voice was thoughtful as he fixed luminous dark eyes on her. ‘And is there a man on the scene?’
Ursula blinked with surprise. What on earth was the matter with Ross today? First inviting her to Katy’s party. And now this. He had never asked her about her love life before. ‘Y-you mean...a boyfriend?’ she asked breathlessly.
Ross gave an odd kind of smile. ‘Do you only go out with boys, then, Ursula?’
If only he knew!
But no one knew, not even her sister, though Ursula suspected that Amber must have guessed her embarrassing secret. That she had reached the grand old age of twenty-seven and had only ever had one serious boyfriend. And even he hadn’t been that serious; not if you judged the relationship in the way everyone else did—in terms of sex. Because—shame of all shames—in a liberal world where experience was everything, Ursula O’Neil remained an out-of-touch virgin.
‘No, there isn’t a boyfriend,’ she told him, hoping she didn’t sound too defensive. ‘I’m quite busy enough with my line-dancing and my French Appreciation lessons. And I read a lot. I don’t need a man to justify my existence, you know!’ She frowned at him suspiciously. ‘And why have you suddenly started taking an interest in my personal life?’
‘No reason,’ said Ross innocently. He absently took a bite from his biscuit and then looked at it in surprise before finishing it, like someone who hadn’t realised how hungry they were before they started eating. He popped the rest of it in his mouth and crunched it.
‘Miss breakfast this morning, by any chance?’ queried Ursula.
‘How did you guess?’
‘The way you practically bit your fingers off? That gave me just a tiny clue!’
He smiled as he licked a stray crumb off his finger with the tip of his tongue. ‘You know, you’re bright, funny and extremely tolerant, Ursula.’ There was a pause as he looked across his desk at her. ‘Do you ever think about changing your job?’
Ursula might have felt insecure about her looks and lack of attraction to the opposite sex, but she was supremely confident about her work, and it didn’t occur to her that Ross might be hinting at her to leave. She assumed an expression of mock shock. ‘You really want me to answer that? On a Monday morning, when you’ve got a headache? What’s up, Ross—worried that I’ll walk out and leave you in the lurch?’
‘I’m serious, Ursula.’
‘Well, so am I.’ She blinked at him, dark, feathery lashes shading her unusually deep blue eyes. Her best feature, or so her mother always used to say. ‘I presume that wasn’t a prelude to “letting me go”, or whatever horrible euphemism it is they use these days when someone wants to sack you! Was it?’
‘Sack you?’ He gave a gritty smile. ‘I can’t imagine the place without you, if you must know.’
Which sounded like a compliment, but left her with a rather disturbing thought. ‘Do you think I’m stuck in a rut, then, Ross?’
‘The question rather implies that other people do,’ he observed. ‘Anyone in particular?’
‘My sister,’ Ursula admitted.
Ross knitted his dark brows together. ‘Amber? The model?’
‘She doesn’t really model very much these days—not since she got herself involved with Finn Fitzgerald—’
‘But she doesn’t approve of you working here?’
Ursula bit her lip, wishing that they’d never started this wretched conversation. Life was so much easier if you just drifted along without asking too many questions along the way. ‘She thinks six years in one place is a long time.’
‘And she’s right,’ he said slowly.
Ursula looked up in alarm. Maybe she had misjudged things. Him. Maybe subconsciously he did want her out.
Ross saw the wide-eyed look of fear on her face and shook his head. ‘Now what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours?’
‘Don’t you patronise me!’ she snapped. ‘Or tell a lie!’
‘And how am I telling a lie?’
‘I am not pretty!’
‘Well, that’s purely subjective, and I happen to think you are—exceedingly.’ He saw her blush, and smiled. ‘In fact, if I go so far as to be objective—then I’d describe those enormous eyes as sapphires set in a complexion as dewy and as fresh as creamy-pink roses left out in the rain—’
