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‘Well I—’
‘Otherwise I might start wondering if you’re really the office girl standing in for the boss.’
Only too aware that she had made more of a hash of things than any self-respecting office girl, she managed a smile and poured out a second cup of tea.
‘Cheers.’ He raised his cup and drank.
Knowing he was making fun of her, she gritted her teeth and took a sip of the tea she didn’t want, shuddering at the memory of all those other cups of grey, lukewarm liquid that had passed as tea.
She had hated tea ever since.
‘Just as a matter of interest,’ he pursued levelly, ‘how many personnel do you have? I couldn’t get a straight answer from Benson.’
‘Well, I’m sure he must have explained that we’re a very small firm and—’
‘How many?’
‘Two.’
‘I see.’
Firmly, she said, ‘That’s all it normally takes. Though of course it depends on the size of the job in hand and how quickly it has to be done. If we do need extra staff—carpenters, electricians, fitters—we employ them on a temporary basis.’
That had been their plan, though it hadn’t yet become necessary.
‘Your job for instance… I understand you want it completed without delay, so—’
‘What’s happened to Benson? Do I take it he’s chickened out?’
Angry at the interruption, she answered as evenly as possible, ‘He had an afternoon appointment.’
‘Cold feet, more likely,’ Robert Carrington opined. ‘So he decided he’d send a beautiful woman to soften me up?’
Caught out by the jibe, she quickly responded, ‘I may not be beautiful, but I am the senior partner. No one sends me to do anything.’
‘Good for you!’ he applauded.
Rising to his feet, he came round the desk and, putting a hand beneath her chin, turned her face up to his own.
She sat as though metamorphosed into stone, while he studied the widely spaced grey eyes beneath dark winged brows, the high cheekbones and straight nose, the generous mouth and pointed chin.
Then, running a fingertip along the jagged silver thread of scar tissue that ran down her left temple and cheek, he asked, ‘What makes you think you’re not beautiful?’
Inside her head she could still hear the voice saying, “It’s a pity she’s got that ugly scar”…and sure he was just baiting her, she answered recklessly, ‘I do own a mirror.’
‘So how would you describe yourself?’
‘Colourless. Nondescript. Scarred.’
‘It’s no use looking into a mirror if you’re prejudiced. Try looking into other people’s eyes to see what their opinion is.’ His glance fell on her modest ring. ‘Your fiancé’s for instance.’
She had looked into Dave’s eyes and seen only her own opinion reflected there.
Almost before the depressing thought had crossed her mind, Robert Carrington had returned to his chair and was regarding her steadily across the desk.
As though it had branded her, she could still feel his touch, and she was forced to repress a shiver while she struggled to regain some semblance of composure.
Though her every instinct urged her to run and hide, she knew she must make her peace with this tough, complex man sitting opposite.
It was necessary.
Desperate to get back on course, she said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid we’ve strayed from the point, and I’m sure you’re much too busy to waste your time.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t describe it as wasted,’ he objected lazily. ‘Sometimes it’s useful to digress a little. It helps to really focus the mind.’
She counted to ten. ‘Well, now we’ve digressed a little, perhaps we can get back to business?’ Her tone, though pleasant, implied that she hadn’t got all afternoon to waste, if he had.
His tawny eyes narrowed and, without further ado, he called her bluff. ‘Well, I’ll quite understand if you’re too busy to give me any more of your time—’
‘No! No, that’s not what I meant. Of course I’m not too busy.’ The hasty interruption betrayed her desperation all too clearly.
Wanting only to put her head down on her arms and weep tears of anger and frustration, she sat up straighter and lifted her chin.
‘Mr Carrington, you must know we want this job, and I can only assure you that if you give us the chance we’ll do our very best.’
And it would have to be their best. She was already convinced that he wasn’t the kind of man who would be prepared to settle for anything less than the moon, if that’s what he’d been promised.
Running long fingers over his smoothly shaven jaw, he asked thoughtfully, ‘How long have you been in business?’
Knowing it was useless to prevaricate, she answered reluctantly, ‘Not quite a year.’
Glancing around, as though weighing up his surroundings, he asked, ‘And you’ve had this office for the same length of time?’
He sounded far from impressed.
‘Yes,’ she answered, and thought wryly that it was just as well he hadn’t seen it when they’d first taken it over.
The walls had been painted a stomach-turning green, an abandoned rusty-grey filing cabinet had leaned drunkenly against the wall, and worn linoleum in squares of ginger and black had adorned the floor.
While Dave had gone out searching for orders, she had set about refurbishing the place.
The cabinet and linoleum disposed of, a good second-hand carpet, a desk and two chairs, a couple of coats of white paint, and a few cheerful pot plants had made a lot of difference.
By the time they had installed the reconditioned computer equipment it was starting to look good, and she had been pleased with the result until she saw it through Robert Carrington’s eyes.
‘Hmm,’ he said. Then, ‘Perhaps you’d like to tell me how Smith and Benson came into being?’
Though politely phrased, she recognised it as an order rather than a request.
She wanted to look forward rather than back. But unless she was prepared to go along with this difficult and arrogant man, there might be nothing to look forward to.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, she told him the bare bones of it. ‘It was Dave’s idea. The technical side of computers and communications has always been his forte. He’s brilliant at it.’
‘What about you?’
‘I knew nothing whatsoever about business, but so we could go into partnership, and I could pull my weight, he encouraged me to take a course in practical business studies.’
‘What did that cover?’
‘Office equipment and layouts, how to instal and use the latest technology, and computer programming. Rather to my surprise, I found it both interesting and enjoyable.’
‘Which college did you go to?’
‘I didn’t go to college. I went to special evening classes.’
‘For how long?’
‘Almost a year.’
‘Why evening classes?’
When she didn’t immediately answer, he added, ‘It just struck me that was the hard way to do it.’
‘I needed to keep working to support myself.’
‘What kind of job were you doing?’
‘I was working in a hotel.’
‘As a receptionist?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘You have an attractive voice, and you speak well.’
Dave had said much the same thing.
Seeing Robert Carrington was waiting for her affirmative, a kind of stubborn pride made her inform him flatly, ‘As a matter of fact I worked in the kitchens.’
‘All the time you were doing the course?’
‘Yes.’
‘No parental help?’
‘No.’
‘Couldn’t Benson help to support you?’
‘He wasn’t in a position to.’ In fact she had supported Dave during his final year at college.
‘So what made you decide to go into business, rather than just have a job?’
‘It was something we both wanted to do. I suppose we liked the idea of being free to work for ourselves…’
In truth she had, at first, only wanted something that was hers. A small business of some kind, a second-hand bookshop, or a tearoom perhaps, ideally with some living-accommodation over it.
Security and independence.
Only later had her dream widened to include Dave.
She had been a quiet, introvert child who, as Matron put it, “lived inside her own head”. Though rated as highly intelligent and bright, her grades at school had been only a little above average. She had shone at nothing.
When she finally left the classroom to start work in the kitchens at the children’s home, her sights already set on the future, it had been without too many regrets.
As soon as she was old enough, she had thanked the staff for their years of care and escaped from the grey drabness of Sunnyside, taking with her nothing but a few clothes, an abiding love of books and music, and a knowledge of plain cooking.
She had found herself a job as a kitchen assistant in a busy hotel less than a mile away from Sunnyside. The hours were long and the work hard, but with the job went a small room.
It was dark and draughty and overlooked the yard and the dustbins, but it was hers. Her refuge. Her private domain. She felt a heady sense of freedom. For the first time in her life she was in control of her own destiny.
Though the wages were far from good, because she had bed and board and no travelling expenses, she could save. She did save. Every penny.
The rest of the hotel staff, mostly young and out for a good time, invited her to join them at the local pubs and clubs, and no doubt thought her odd when she refused. But though she was always polite and friendly, she made no attempt to mix, and after a bit they stopped asking, and let her go her own way.
As soon as her working hours had been established, she took a job at the nearby supermarket stacking shelves in the evenings and on her day off. Adding to her bank balance.
After a while she moved to the checkouts where late-opening shopping meant she was working even longer hours, and by the time she crept into bed each night she was too tired even to dream.
But perhaps she didn’t need to. After more than three unrelenting years of hard work and dedicated saving, she was really getting somewhere. Another year, and she could start looking for a suitable shop to rent, and begin to turn her dreams into reality.
One Friday night, just before closing time, she had glanced up to see a young man in jeans and a thin, shabby jacket unloading a few meagre items from a shopping basket.
Dave.
Though she hadn’t seen him for more than five years, she would have known him anywhere. That handsome face, with its thin nose and dark brown eyes, the curved brows and lock of black wavy hair that fell over his narrow forehead like a question mark, was unforgettable.
Her heart gave a strange lurch.
He too had been at Sunnyside, and for a long time she had worshipped him from afar, dreaming of the day he would finally notice her.
But two or three years older than her, he hadn’t seemed to know she existed. When he had eventually left, without even a goodbye, she had felt desolate and bereft.
‘Well, hello there. It’s Ella, isn’t it?’ All at once he was smiling down at her, his slightly crooked teeth very white in his dark face. ‘This is a real blast from the past.’
‘I’m surprised you remember me,’ she admitted a shade awkwardly.
‘Apart from getting a bit older, you haven’t changed much.’
