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‘Laura,’ Beth said bluntly, ‘what the hell has been going on in that office with you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean the man laid into me the minute I was in his office. He said that you had been shirking your job, coming late.’
‘Oh.’ There was a sheepish silence at the other end, then Laura burst out defensively, ‘It only happened a couple of times.’
‘A couple?’
‘Well, four or five.’
Beth sighed. ‘Well, he found out about the four or five times and he was livid.’
‘Oh, dear. I wonder who told him? I had morning sickness. Honestly, Beth, I just couldn’t drag myself into work on time, and I could hardly tell anyone, could I? I’m sorry. Although it’s kind of a relief that you were there to handle him. I’ve heard that he can be positively scary when he’s crossed. I would have just burst into tears, I know it. I’ve been very emotional since I got pregnant.’
‘Thanks,’ Beth commented wryly. ‘But I can tell you I wished I’d never been talked into this insanity.’
‘You’re not going to back out, are you?’ There was a hint of tears already in Laura’s voice.
‘No, but I want some honesty from you. This David character. Was he the only one? I mean…’
‘Beth! How could you even imply…!’
‘You can be a bit of a flirt,’ she stated flatly, ‘so don’t play the innocent with me, my girl. Don’t forget, I know you better than anyone else in the world. You’ve spent a lifetime mastering the art of getting yourself into scrapes with men, so don’t act as though you’re shocked by the question.’
‘I haven’t been sleeping around, if you must know,’ Laura said with asperity. ‘The minute I met David, that was it.’
‘Good.’ At least that was one less problem to worry about, Beth thought. She couldn’t have coped with an entourage of men beating a path to the top floor whenever the coast was clear.
‘What do you think of Marcos?’ She heard her sister’s voice and it was brimming over with curiosity.
‘I’ve met more pleasant people in my time,’ Beth answered firmly. ‘He’s every bit as arrogant as I expected him to be.’
‘But attractive, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I suppose so,’ Beth confessed grudgingly, remembering the feeling of hostility he had evoked in her, ‘though not my type. He’s too self-confident for his own good and he acts as though when he says jump he really expects the rest of the world to obey.’
‘Oh, they do.’
I can believe it, Beth thought. She changed the topic. She didn’t like talking about Marcos Adrino. It made her think of him, and thinking of him made her skin begin to prickle.
They chatted about what the weather was doing, Beth reminded Laura not to forget to water her plants and to collect a dress from the dry cleaners down the road, and it was only as she got into bed that she suddenly remembered Angela.
She had completely forgotten to ask Laura who the hell Angela was, and how she was supposed to handle her.
Then she decided that she didn’t care anyway. As far as she could see, it wasn’t part of her job description, or rather her sister’s, to deal with Marcos’s personal life, and if he didn’t like it, then he could lump it.
She put it to the back of her mind and there it remained the following morning as she busied herself with her twin tasks of briefing herself on the company, including the project in Santo Domingo, and typing up the reports that had been left on her desk after she had gone home.
Marcos had obviously put in an appearance at the company, and it must have been late because he had been nowhere to be seen when she had left. He must run on overdrive, she thought.
She was relaxing over her fifteen-minute lunch break comprised of a cup of black coffee and an apple, when the door to her office was flung open and Marcos swept in, bringing with him that feeling of restless energy that she had seen the day before.
‘I’ll have one of those,’ he said without stopping at her desk, ‘in my office.’
He strode into his office, slamming the door behind him and Beth winced. A very good afternoon to you too, she mouthed, gulping down her last bite of apple and moving over to the percolator.
He was poring over some paperwork at his desk and he barely glanced up when she entered.
‘Your coffee?’ she reminded him of her presence.
He stared at the cup, then he stared at her. ‘What the hell is that?’
‘It’s a cup of coffee,’ she answered. What else could it be? A jug of orange juice?
‘I don’t take my coffee black. I take it white, with one teaspoon of sugar.’ He leant back in his chair and scrutinised her. ‘Surely you should know that by now?’ he asked softly. ‘You’ve really changed, and more than just your hairstyle. Am I missing something here? Am I being a bit dense?’
Beth retrieved the cup from the desk, steadying her nerves. She had automatically poured him the same coffee as she had herself. Stupid. Little oversights like this made this dangerous game as glaringly obvious as if she had committed some larger, more noticeable mistake.
‘I’m sorry. My mind must have been elsewhere.’
‘Either that, or you left it behind in Cambridge.’
‘What?’ Beth asked sharply, smiling to hide the sudden tension she felt.
‘You went to stay with your sister, didn’t you? Jane told me.’
‘My sister?’ Her mind was working furiously. Who, she wondered, was Jane? The office spy from the sounds of it, and office spies could be extremely dangerous.
‘Something wrong with your hearing today, Laura?’ he asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.
Beth smiled again. ‘Of course I went to stay with my sister. In Cambridge.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘I would have gone somewhere more glamorous, but my funds were a little low at the time.’ She would have to stop being so jumpy every time she thought that he was edging towards the truth. After all, there was no way that he could even suspect that Laura was miles away in her little flat, while she was here pretending to be someone she was not.
‘Where would you have gone?’ he asked curiously. ‘I would have associated you a few weeks ago with somewhere on the French Riviera, close to a few nightclubs, but perhaps I misread you completely.’
Beth shrugged non-committally. She didn’t like this sudden digression on to personal topics. There could be a lot of unexpected traps here. For a start, she didn’t know what Laura had told him about herself, if anything, and he wasn’t likely to dismiss another slip-up like the coffee. He was altogether too shrewd. His clever, calculating mind probably stored information that most normal people would forget within seconds. Stored it and had it quite handy to recall at a moment’s notice.
‘I’ve never been to the French Riviera,’ Beth finally volunteered, as he continued to look at her from under his dark lashes. ‘And I’ve never felt any particular wish to go, if you must know. In fact, I haven’t done a great deal of travelling at all.’
‘But you’d like to?’ he prompted.
Beth fidgeted uncomfortably. She didn’t like this. She was sure that he couldn’t give two hoots whether she hated the idea of planes, or else saved madly to go on one. Laura had said that he barely noticed her except in her capacity as secretary. So why the sudden interest now? She wondered whether he suspected something odd, a little thought hovering somewhere at the back of his mind. A little thought that he was beginning to explore.
‘Wouldn’t everyone?’ she answered distantly.
‘No. I personally have seen enough of airports to last me a lifetime. Hotel life, you know, outstays its welcome very quickly.’
‘Does it? I wouldn’t know. Anyway, I’ll make you a fresh cup of coffee now, if you like.’
‘Why,’ he drawled, ‘do I get the impression that you’re eager to get out of my company?’
His words, for reasons that she couldn’t fathom, sent a hot flood of colour to her cheeks. Or maybe it was the way he had spoken them, in that lazy, slightly speculative voice.
Whatever, there was no answer to that question and she left the office quickly, only realising how tense she had been when she exhaled her breath deeply in the safety of her own room.
By the time she re-entered his office she was perfectly in control of her senses once again, and the cup of coffee was precisely how he liked it.
He began to talk to her about work and she breathed a sigh of relief. When he talked about work, she was on relatively safe ground.
As she was leaving his office, she turned around and said on the spur of the moment, ‘Do you remember what you said to me about getting bored of hotel life very quickly?’
He looked up from his paperwork and nodded.
‘Well,’ Beth continued awkwardly, ‘it’s just a thought, but these projects in St Lucia and Santo Domingo—you could try and make them places that would never outstay their welcome.’
He looked at her assessingly.
‘Any suggestions?’
Beth laughed genuinely. ‘None at all. Don’t forget I’m inexperienced enough to find any sort of hotel life quite a novelty.’
He looked as though he was about to say something, but when he finally did it was only to inform her briskly that she could apply herself to giving the matter some thought, then he returned to his paperwork.
Effective dismissal, Beth thought, letting herself out, but she felt suddenly invigorated.
She was absorbed in reading one of the folders on St Lucia when the outside door to her office opened. But it wasn’t Marian, who normally peeped in with files or reports for Marcos.
This woman she had never seen before.
‘Can I help you?’ Beth asked, wondering how she had managed to bypass the usual security checks and make her way successfully to the top floor.
‘Is Marcos around?’ The woman smiled politely. She was very poised, every strand of blonde hair neatly tucked into a sophisticated chignon at the back of her neck.
‘Who may I say is asking?’
‘Oh, don’t bother to announce me,’ she said quickly, ‘I’ll let myself in.’
Before Beth could do anything to stop her, the woman had made her way to the connecting door, and Beth could just see Marcos’s dark head look up, then the door was very firmly closed.
She returned to her work, but her mind was seething with questions.
Finally, and with a feeling of ridiculous surreptitiousness, she called Laura at her workplace, and said without preamble, ‘A blonde woman just walked into Marcos’s office. She didn’t tell me who she was. Am I supposed to know?’
‘Blonde?’ Laura asked. ‘Very leggy and very glamorous? Probably wearing silk or cashmere?’
‘That’s the one.’ The woman had been dressed in a pale pink cashmere suit with a strand of pearls around her neck, and they didn’t look like the synthetic stuff either.
‘Remember I told you that Marcos is quite something with the women?’
‘Yes,’ Beth answered.
‘Well, that’s one of them. Angela Fordyce.’ She groaned down the phone. ‘He finished with her about three weeks ago, and under no circumstances were you supposed to let her in to see him!’
CHAPTER THREE
BETH TRIED TO SUMMON UP the feeling of bravado she had had the previous day when she had resolutely decided that Marcos could handle his own damned personal life.
But sitting here, in front of her computer, her eyes flitting warily across to the connecting door, it was difficult.
She had already been subjected to his cold anger and it was something she had no desire to experience again.
She frowned at the file she had been poring over a minute before, but the words were just a jumble of black and white. Eventually she gave up.
She could, she thought, leave for home. It was already half-past five. She chewed her lip, glanced across at the door again and remained undecidedly rooted to her chair for another half an hour.
This is ridiculous, she finally decided. Hovering about here like some sort of criminal waiting to stand before the judge.
She stacked her papers away and unhooked her coat from the coat-stand. Now that she had decided to leave, her feet couldn’t move fast enough, and by the time she made it to the ground floor she was positively churning with tension.
She only managed to regain some of her equilibrium on the Underground back to the flat, but even when she was safely indoors she found that she was plagued by the same sense of apprehension.
More alarmingly, her mind was fizzing over with questions that she knew shouldn’t concern her at all.
Was that the type of woman he fancied? Tall and blonde and with the sort of impeccable good looks that spoke of hours painstakingly spent in front of the mirror? Angela Fordyce, she found herself thinking uncharitably, didn’t look as though her brain had ever taxed itself with anything more complicated than whether her colour scheme for the day matched.
Not that it was any concern of hers anyway. The man was infinitely dislikeable, someone who constantly seemed to rub her up the wrong way. He was welcome to his following of leggy blondes. Peculiar though it might seen, they probably suited him. Men whose work lives ran on constant pressure no doubt found the company of brainless bimbos relaxing. They could unwind without the tiring obligation of actually having to respond to any manner of intelligent conversation.
She switched on the television, laughing at her line of thought. Am I really so bitchy? she wondered. She had never been before.
She had changed into a pair of tight jeans and a loose sweater and she had a sudden, unwelcome image of herself standing next to Angela Fordyce, her short bob hardly the most glamorous hairstyle in the world, her face bereft of any make-up, her feet inelegantly clad in a pair of thick woollen socks to stave off the cold.
With a little frown she shoved the image to the back of her mind and settled down to follow the detective movie. She liked detective movies. Something about them appealed to the logical processes in her brain. That was probably why she enjoyed the mathematical precision of her accountancy course. There was no room for emotive flights in an accountancy course. Things made sense with it. Two and two always added up to four.
Her mother once told her that it was a trait that she must have inherited from her father. He had possessed a fine mind, a mind that had enjoyed the precision of logic.
Laura, she had said, took after her. They were both volatile and emotional. Two and two, with a generous helping of imagination, sometimes added up to five.
Why, Beth thought pensively, had she suddenly remembered that? Was it because her cool, reasonable approach to life had recently been less reliable? Odd.
She refocused her attention on the small screen and was once again absorbed in various premutations of theory being volunteered by the chief detective, when there was a sharp knocking on the door.
She reluctantly got up, wondering who on earth it could be. Were there such things as door-to-door salesmen in London? Or maybe it was Katie. She had been meaning to get in touch with Katie, but hadn’t found the time so far.
She pulled open the door and her body tensed immediately.
‘Oh,’ she said, simply because she couldn’t find anything better to say, ‘it’s you.’
‘Surprised?’ Marcos walked past her into the small lounge, making no apology for his appearance even though it was after ten o’clock.
