Ruthless Boss, Dream Baby

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‘Okay, so Quinn’s got you playing his game,’ Magenta said. ‘I can understand that you don’t want to lose your job—I’m just thinking of all the expense involved in putting this right again—’ She had already reasoned that the reorganisation of the office would have been fairly easy if Quinn had copied the layout from the old photographs on the wall, but there were other things she couldn’t account for. There was a different feel to the place, never mind the look, which was dated, a little drab and definitely not the right environment to encourage cutting-edge design work. She thought it boring, not to mention inhospitable. There were different phones too, but it was the ergonomically unhelpful furniture that really concerned her—and single glazing? Had Quinn gone mad? Never mind the expense, what about condensation? Cold? If people were uncomfortable at work, productivity would suffer. Didn’t Quinn know anything?

And there was a different smell too…

Cigarette smoke?

‘Nancy!’ Magenta exclaimed with increased urgency.

‘Are you all right, Magenta?’ Glancing round, Nancy grabbed a chair and tried to press Magenta into it.

‘I’m fine.’ She was anything but fine. What had happened here? Had Quinn got people in to dress the offices like a sixties stage-set? And how was it possible she had slept through those changes? But it wasn’t just the noise element that concerned her; these changes were too thorough, too perfect, too convincing.

Magenta’s throat dried. This wasn’t some office teambuilding exercise. This was reality. This was reality for Nancy and for all the people here. It was Magenta who was out of sync. She must have fallen down the rabbit hole, like Alice, while she’d been asleep and landed in the sixties. And now the shock of being trapped inside a dream was only exceeded by her dread of meeting Quinn. From what she’d gathered, he was just the sort of man who would slot right into the sixties, where men ruled. Quinn obviously thought they did.

Magenta took a few steadying breaths while Nancy looked on anxiously. Magenta’s heart was pounding uncontrollably, but whatever had happened she would have to manage it.

She looked as much a part of the sixties as everyone else in the office, Magenta reassured herself, with her carefully made-up face, perfect hair and vintage cream wool dress. Though you could have bounced bullets off her underwear, it did outline her shape to the point where her breasts were outrageously prominent. That, believe it or not, was the fashion. It could best be described as ‘sex in your face’. No wonder Jackson had commented; she should have known better than to dress like this, but had done so innocently. Back in the real world, it had made her feel sexy—and after the encounter with the biker she had wanted to prove to herself that she still could feel that way. Now she realised drawing attention to herself in a sixties office was asking for trouble.

But, on the plus side, she had been researching the era for quite some time, so even locked into this bizarre dream she wasn’t entirely out on a limb. She could even accept and be a little reassured by the fact that the dream seemed to be influenced by her research; there was certainly plenty of raw material here. Although quite how the summer of love, the sexual revolution and the Whisky a Go Go, the first disco in America—which just happened to be Quinn’s homeland—would manifest themselves remained to be seen.

She would have to rely on what she knew if she was going to anticipate and avoid some of the problems, Magenta concluded. She would draw on that knowledge now—and her first action would be to open all the windows and let the smoke out.

Predictably everyone complained that it was too cold. ‘Well, you can’t smoke in here,’ Magenta insisted. ‘It’s against the law.’

‘Since when?’ one of the younger guys asked, swinging his arm around her waist to drag her close so she had no alternative but to inhale his foul-smelling breath.

‘And that is too,’ she informed him, removing his searching hand from her tightly sculpted rear end.

‘Ooh.’ He turned to his friends to pull a mocking face. ‘What got into your bed this morning, Miss Steele?’

‘No one? ‘ another man suggested, to raucous jeers.

‘We all know what’s wrong with you, ice maiden.’

‘Cut it out!’ Magenta said angrily. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

‘Apparently, you never are,’ one of the men murmured to his colleagues in a stage whisper.

As if that were the cue for the main player to enter the scene, the double doors at the far end of the office swung open and every head swivelled in that direction. Some of the women even stood at their desks as if royalty was about to enter the room. To say Magenta was stunned by this reaction wouldn’t even come close. ‘What the…?’

‘Quinn,’ Nancy told her tensely, hurrying away.

Magenta turned to say something to Nancy, but everyone including Nancy had returned to work the second Quinn arrived. And Quinn didn’t just arrive—he strode across the floor like a conquering hero. To make matters worse, all the women were giving him simpering glances when what he needed, in Magenta’s opinion, was a short, sharp, shock and someone to stand up to him. Whatever dream state they were both trapped in, this was getting out of hand.

But could this really be Quinn? Magenta’s head was reeling. Quinn in the sixties was none other than the gorgeous biker, in a jauntily angled Trilby hat and a dark overcoat that, instead of making him look silly, only succeeded in making him look like the master of the sexual universe.

‘Magenta,’ he said curtly, shrugging the coat off his shoulder and handing it to her along with his hat.

He knew her?

‘That’s a better look for you,’ he said, giving Magenta the most intrusive inspection yet. ‘I like to see a woman in a dress with some shape to it.’

What?

‘Keep it up,’ he said approvingly. ‘And remember, I expect the same high standards from my staff at all times—’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said smartly, playing along, which was all she could do—other than acknowledge Quinn was a beyond the pale chauvinist—as well as the best-looking man she had ever seen in her life. With his tough-guy body clothed in a sharply tailored dark suit and impeccably knotted tie, he looked amazing.

‘I’ll need you for a meeting later,’ he said, as though they had been working together for ever. There was not a shred of equality between them, Magenta registered with a spear of concern.

‘So no gossiping with the other girls in the kitchen when you’re supposed to be making my coffee,’ Quinn warned.

Would that be the coffee with the extra-strong laxative in it? Magenta wondered.

‘And absolutely no lunch break for any of you girls. You’ll have a lot of work to get through by the time I finish the meeting I’m going into now—understood?’

Actually, no, I’m a bit confused. Magenta thought Quinn had called a meeting to discuss her position with the company going forward, but perhaps that directive hadn’t made it through to the sixties. She decided to prompt him, if only to find out how much had travelled with her in the dream. ‘So, you’re having another meeting first?’

‘What are you talking about? ‘ Quinn demanded impatiently.

‘Another meeting before our meeting…?’

Quinn had no worries about touching Magenta. Taking hold of her shoulder in a firm grip, he steered her into an alcove out of sight of the rest of the office. ‘Not in front of everyone, Magenta…’ And then his eyes warmed in a way that made her heart stop. ‘Later, maybe—if I have the time.’

Magenta’s mouth formed a question, but she was so stunned by Quinn’s brazenly sexual behaviour her voice refused to function, and when she did speak it was only to ask Quinn what he wanted her to do with his hat and coat.

‘Why, hang it up, of course,’ he said as if she were one card short of a pack. ‘And when you’ve done that I’ll need plenty of coffee—hot, strong and black. Oh, and when you come into the meeting later, don’t forget your shorthand notebook.’

‘My—?’

‘You’re the office manager now, Magenta—that’s quite a promotion for you. You’ll have to sharpen up if you want to set the seal on this position.’

She’d set something in concrete—the deeds of the building, perhaps, before she dropped them from a great height on Quinn’s head.

But someone else owned the building now, she remembered, biting her lip. Steele Design had been called Style Design when her father had bought it. She had no stake at all here.