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‘For me, yes. I know you’re content to stay in the hicks here, studying by night, working by day to pay the bills, but it’s not for me. I love London. I love my job. I don’t want to own a cosy little place. Not yet.’
Beth groaned.
‘And when the baby arrives?’ she asked. ‘You’re going to have to settle down, Laura. Babies and the wild single life don’t exactly go hand in hand.’
Laura’s eyes shifted away from her sister’s face. ‘Time enough to think about that.’
What other answer had she seriously expected? Beth thought. Laura had always lived on the premise that the future was a bridge to be crossed when you came to it. While she had worked hard towards building something for herself, Laura had run through a series of unsatisfactory jobs, never thinking of tomorrow.
‘The wonderful thing is,’ Laura was saying, her voice low and urgent, ‘I’ve been at the Adrino corporation for six months now. Long enough to know that it’s the only job for me, but not so long that I know too much for you to catch up on. Right now, I’m doing pretty routine work, even if I do have the freedom to prioritise it the way I want, and you would be able to slot in with no trouble at all. And if you don’t understand anything, no one will be too surprised if you ask questions.’
‘Including your boss?’
‘Just so long as you only ask the question once,’ Laura replied truthfully. ‘He has the sort of brilliant mind that grasps things immediately, and he expects everyone who works for him to do the same.’
This sounded worse and worse. The man was an ogre. Beth could picture him without too much trouble. An arrogant tycoon, someone with a receding hairline and a bit of a paunch, testimony to stress and business lunches, but with enough money to attract whatever bimbo his heart desired.
‘Please,’ Laura wheedled, creeping up the bed to hold her sister’s hand. ‘If you hate it there, I promise I’ll do what you want. I’ll admit that I’m pregnant and I’ll work my notice and then leave. What have you got to lose?’
Beth hesitated, and Laura immediately seized the opportunity.
‘And the rest up here will do me good,’ she said fervently. ‘I’ll be able to do some thinking, and I’ll get away from London for a while. There are too many memories for me in London. We could both do with swapping places for our health.’
‘That’s emotional blackmail,’ Beth pointed out wearily.
But the battle was over, and by the time they finally switched off the lights she was already coming to terms with the fact that she was either as crazy as her sister or else so lacking in will-power that she had allowed herself to agree with something which bore all the resemblance of a jaunt in a minefield.
Laura had taken a week off work, and they spent the time laboriously going over the routines in the Adrino corporation. She had brought one of the company magazines with her, and she pointed out all the faces of the people Beth would meet and would have to recognise.
They weren’t that many, mostly the people who worked in the higher echelons of the company. It was a fortunate coincidence that her sister had not been in London long enough to acquire her usual following of male admirers. Her closest friend was Katie, who was aware of the plan.
David, she assured Beth with a note of bitterness, although he worked in the company, which was where she had met him, had applied and got a transfer abroad.
‘Running as far away as he could from me,’ she said with an attempt at bravado.
‘Isn’t that easier than if he had been around?’ Beth enquired mildly, and her sister shrugged agreement.
By the end of the week, Laura had managed to find herself a temp job, but her work at the Adrino corporation had obviously spoiled her. She rattled off what she would have to do now and was clearly appalled by the prospect.
Beth tactfully refrained from another lecture on it all being her fault, and that as she had made her bed, so would she have to lie on it.
She herself had successfully managed to resign from her job without having to give the obligatory one-month notice. She had pleaded an unfortunate family matter and tactfully left it to her boss to decipher whatever he wanted from that obscure statement.
It had hurt a lot less than she had expected. Had she really spent so much time in a job that she had shed without too many tears? Or maybe it was the stirrings of what was awaiting her.
Laura had made the whole scheme sound like a marvellous adventure, but the following Monday morning, as Beth stood outside the impressive Adrino building, she felt far from adventurous.
She felt an impostor, dressed in her sister’s jade-green suit. Was there a law against this sort of thing? she wondered.
She smoothed her hair back nervously and chewed on her lip. All around her people rushed past, lots of little soldier ants hurrying to their jobs.
A dull sun was attempting to break the stranglehold of grey clouds but it was easy to see that it was a losing battle.
She felt a light spitting of rain and merged into the line of soldier ants, finding herself swept into the massive building.
If I don’t look at anyone, she thought, then I won’t risk ignoring any recognisable faces.
But she was perspiring with nerves as the lift whooshed up to the top floor, disgorging her into the plushest set of offices she had ever seen in her life before.
The carpet was of muted grey-blue and thick enough to make footsteps soundless. The offices lay behind smoke-coloured glass.
One of the secretaries looked up as she walked past and waved, and Beth waved back. Marian, secretary to Ron Wood, the financial director.
‘Nice week off?’ Marian asked, stopping her in her tracks, and Beth smiled and nodded.
‘A little eventful,’ she said, inwardly grinning at the accuracy of the description, ‘but relaxing on the whole.’
‘Good. I wish I had a week off coming up. I’m up to my ears in it. You’ve had your hair cut?’
Beth ran her fingers self-consciously through her bob. ‘Spur-of-the-moment,’ she said vaguely.
‘Suits you. Makes you look more businesslike. Not,’ Marian continued hurriedly, ‘that you didn’t look great with long hair.’
Beth accepted the compliment with a smile. She liked Marian straight away. She was in her middle thirties, tending towards plumpness and quite plain to look at with her short wavy brown hair and spectacles, until she smiled. Then her face lit up and was really very attractive.
‘See you later, anyway,’ she said with another wave, and Beth nodded, walking confidently towards her office which she knew was at the end of the corridor.
First hurdle, she thought, successfully manoeuvred and out of the way. It surely couldn’t be as simple as this. Life was never that simple. It always insisted on throwing in a few complications to making the going more interesting.
But right now her self-confidence was a notch higher.
There would be a stack of typing awaiting her—she knew that from what Laura had explained—but that would be no problem. She had spent a long time working with the same computer system.
She pushed open the door to her office and gasped.
It was a large room, carpeted in the same shade of muted grey, but the walls were covered by an elegant dove-grey wallpaper. Her desk was an impressive mahogany affair, and the filing cabinets, also in mahogany, were stacked neatly against the wall.
Opposite, a large abstract painting dominated the wall. It wasn’t the sort of thing she would have chosen herself, but she decided that she rather liked it. It was soothing.
Marcos Adrino had probably hand-picked it. She had had to revise some of her ideas on his appearance. From the picture in the company magazine, he was younger than she had originally thought, but she had no doubt that the paunch was still there. The handful of wealthy men she had met had all seemed to be slightly over-weight. Products of too much access to rich food.
She hung her coat on the coat-stand and settled comfortably into her chair, browsing through the pile of letters, most of which she could tell at a glance, from experience, simply needed filing. Faxed letters from the boss were awaiting typing.
Beth looked at the strong, aggressive handwriting and felt a twinge of relief that he wasn’t around. She could do with a few days breaking in before she faced him.
She switched on the computer terminal and was about to begin working on the first letter when the door behind her opened.
She heard his voice before she saw him. It was deep, and right now tinged with enough hardness to freeze her to the spot.
‘Here at last. In my office. Now.’
She swivelled around to see him vanishing back into his room, and her head began to throb with nerves.
One day into this, and already things weren’t going to plan. He was not supposed to be here today. He was supposed to spend most of his time out of the country. In fact, from what Laura had told her, he was supposed to be in Paris and Geneva until the end of the week. At least. So what on earth was he doing here?
She licked her lips nervously and wished that she had listened to her good sense and laughed her sister right out of town.
He was standing by the window waiting for her, his body negligently leaning against the sill, one hand thrust into his trouser-pocket.
The difference between the man in front of her and the one she had conjured up was so vast that she looked away in confusion.
Marcos Adrino was tall and, far from having a paunch, he had not a spare ounce of fat to be seen. In fact, he had the body of a superbly tuned athlete, broad-shouldered and lean-hipped. A body that looked powerful, even though it was covered by an expensively tailored charcoal-grey suit.
Beth cleared her throat and looked at him, taking in the hard, clever lines of his face, the black hair, the dark, penetrating eyes, the curve of his mouth.
Pull yourself together, girl, she told herself. You’re the sensible one, remember?
He was staring at her through narrowed eyes.
‘Sit down,’ he ordered abruptly.
Beth edged over to the chair and sat down, lowering her eyes to her shorthand pad, making an effort to steady her hand.
It wouldn’t do to look ill-at-ease. She got the feeling that this man picked up things like that, processed them through his shrewd brain, and always came up with the right answer.
He remained standing where he was and she looked up at him with a bright smile.
‘I didn’t expect you,’ she said in a businesslike voice.
‘I dare say you didn’t,’ he drawled.
‘Successful trip?’
‘It would have been, if I hadn’t been privy to certain rumours circulating.’
‘Rumours?’
She managed a weak smile.
‘Rumour number one has it that you’ve been shirking your responsibilities here,’ he said coldly. ‘I don’t pay you to waltz into this office any time you feel like it.’
Beth gathered her wits together. This wasn’t a dictating session at all. She should have guessed that the minute she saw that forbidding expression on his face.
‘I didn’t realise that I had been,’ she ventured.
‘Really.’ He moved over to his chair and sat in it, inclining back, his hands clasped behind his head. ‘In that case, you don’t seem to be aware of the time you’re supposed to get here. I can assure you that it’s not ten o’clock.’
His voice was smooth and razor-sharp, and Beth looked at him with dislike. She had been spot-on when she had read arrogance behind her sister’s description of her boss. It was stamped all over him, but she was damned if he was going to stamp it all over her.
‘If I’ve been late on a couple of occasions,’ she said coolly, ‘than I apologise. It won’t happen again.’
‘It had better not. You’ve exhausted your first chance with me. Next time it happens and you don’t provide an acceptable excuse, you’re out. Understand?’
Beth swallowed her anger.
‘And what excuse would you consider acceptable?’ she asked with interest, forgetting that she was supposed to be holding on to her sister’s job and not kissing it sweet goodbye through the window. ‘Death, perhaps?’
Marcos’s mouth narrowed to a thin line.
‘Nor do I pay you to give me lip, is that clear?’ He stared at her and Beth defiantly met his gaze.
‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, fiddling with her pad.
This man was more than merely uncomfortable to be around. He was unbearable, and if Laura had been around she would quite happily have strangled her on the spot.
‘Have you prepared the groundwork on the St Lucian project?’ he asked, changing the subject.
He was trying to catch her out. Beth could sense it instinctively and she thanked her lucky stars that Laura had filled her in on all the details of the major jobs he was working on.
The St Lucian project involved an immense lot of work concerning the construction of an exclusive complex in St Lucia, the sort of complex that catered for the sort of people who never associated holidays with cost.
‘Yes,’ she responded calmly. ‘The groundwork’s all been covered and an appointment with the Minister of Tourism is scheduled for next week.’
It felt good to reel off the right answer. Marcos Adrino would have had no hesitation in reducing her to the size of a pea had she not been able to meet his question with an adequate response.
She got the feeling that he had no compunction when it came to eliminating dead wood from his company. Or, for that matter, from his life. She considered what her sister had told her about his private affairs, about the women who were drawn to him like iron filings to a magnet. Now, seeing him, she realised that he was the kind of man who treated women as disposable playthings. Men, she thought, she could well do without, and this breed of man was particularly on the objectionable list.
‘I do feel, however,’ she said, throwing in her own opinion on what Laura had told her about the project, ‘that more care should be taken to involve the visitors into the island life. A fabulous complex is one thing, but it can be enhanced by easy access to the local customs.’
‘You have opinions now, have you?’ he asked softly. ‘And since when has your efficiency extended beyond my orders?’
Beth didn’t answer. She would have to remember to act in character, and Laura would never have volunteered such an observation without being asked.
‘Is that all?’ she murmured, preparing to leave. ‘Sir?’
‘The name is Marcos,’ he answered easily, ‘use it. You always have. And no, as a matter of fact, that’s not all. Not by a long shot.’
Beth waited and the silence built around her like an electric field.
He had something else to say, and, from the sound of this particular brand of silence, whatever it was it wasn’t pleasant.
CHAPTER TWO
NEVER IN HER ENTIRE LIFE had Beth felt so acutely ill at ease. And the worst part was, Marcos Adrino wasn’t at all embarrassed at her discomfort. He continued to stare at her, those black eyes taking in absolutely everything, until she felt like jumping up from the chair and begging for forgiveness for whatever the hell it was she was supposed to have done, because he still hadn’t said.
He would have made a great interrogator, she thought. He certainly had the ability to fill his silences with unspoken threat.
‘I’ve been hearing other, slightly more distasteful rumours about you,’ he broke the silence, but there was still a dangerous softness to his voice. He idly picked up the silver letter-opener from his desk, running the edge along his finger with caressing delicacy.
