Bittersweet Yesterdays

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Lucy busied herself with the coffee.

‘What’s all this?’ he demanded.

Lucy spun round and found him frowning down at the draft specification on her desk.

‘One of the survey teams needs it in a bit of a rush,’ she said then, thrown by the expression on his face, added, ‘They’re used to me doing them, and, anyway, it’s not as though I’ve been worked to death since coming up here—you’re hardy ever around.’

‘Well, I shall be around from now on—so they’ll just have to get it done through the proper channels. And while you’re telling them, I’d be grateful if you’d refresh their minds as to what those channels are. From now on you work for me and no one else—understood?’

Lucy looked at him in amazement. ‘I’ve finished it, actually. I was just going to send the disks down for printing.’

‘OK—send them down,’ he growled, opening one of the cupboards behind her desk and removing a dictaphone from it.

‘Mark...why are you so annoyed?’ she asked, curiosity overcoming her.

He placed the machine on the desk, his expression slightly startled.

‘Lucy, you don’t seem to realise...’ He broke off, plainly rethinking what he had been about to say. ‘I’ve been borrowing other people’s secretaries for so long—so let’s just say I’ve become a little possessive now that I’ve got one of my very own.’

‘Ha, ha.’ Did he honestly think she would swallow rubbish like that?

‘Lucy, stop trying to be cynical,’ he admonished with surprising lightness. ‘And try getting it into your head that you are exactly what I need right now and that I’m not going to stand for anyone else poaching you... Isn’t that coffee ready yet?’

She flounced over to the percolator, her mind being tugged in different directions. Suddenly it was very important to her to do this job, not well, but brilliantly—if only to dumbfound him. But it was he who was managing to dumb-found her right at this very moment—not that she believed a word he was saying.

‘You’ve always made it perfectly plain that you’ve needed me like a hole in the head,’ she accused. The old Mark was bad enough, but this somehow different version was far worse. ‘So what’s changed?’

‘A lot,’ he replied, giving her one of those smiles she so distrusted as she handed him his coffee. ‘I’ve toured my empire and dutifully served my apprenticeships with all the experts and their super-efficient secretaries. And now that’s all behind me I’ll be able to get down to projects of my own in areas where I’m regarded as the expert.’

Lucy was racking her brain to remember what his particular field was. She knew he’d originally got a First in modern languages, but also that he’d immediately followed that with something else—architecture or something related to it, but she couldn’t be sure.