Deception and Desire (42 page)

He leaned back in his chair, eyeing her narrowly. ‘Why?'

Again he caught her uncomfortable reaction to his curt reply and suppressed a smile; Jayne was becoming transparent, he thought. She was displaying the first signs of the vulnerability that comes with emotional involvement. But again she recovered herself so quickly that he almost wondered if her momentary discomfiture had existed only in his imagination.

‘You're awfully grouchy this morning, darling. What's the matter,?'

‘There is a door to my office, in case you hadn't noticed. I'd appreciate it if you'd knock on it like any other employee.'

This time her response was a quick blaze of anger.

‘But I am not any employee!'

‘During business hours you most certainly are.'

‘I disagree. Leaving our personal relationship out of it – though to be honest I don't see why I should – I would remind you that I am the senior designer with this company. I didn't realise I had to make an appointment to see you.'

‘There's no need to be facetious, Jayne. All I'm asking is that you don't come barging in when I am on the telephone. I think I have a right to my privacy.'

Her eyes blazed. He was fairly certain she had heard enough to know he had been making a date with another woman, and for a moment he thought she was going to confront him with it. But if this was so, she obviously thought better of it.

‘All right,
Mr
Lomax,' she said pointedly. ‘ Would you like me to go out and come in again so that we can begin our conversation on a more sensible basis?'

He swivelled his chair back to face his desk. Desire for her was beginning to stir again. She really was very attractive when she was angry. But he had no intention of letting her see it. ‘Treat 'em mean, keep ' em keen' the old saying went. Steve was a great believer in it.

‘There won't be any need for that – as long as it doesn't happen again. Come in, sit down. Now, what was it you were asking me?'

‘I was asking about Dinah's plans. I can't do my job properly if I don't know what she has in mind.'

‘I'm afraid I can't enlighten you. You'll have to talk to Dinah about that.'

‘Dinah is in London today. I need to know immediately what she has in mind. If we intend to put a whole new line into production in the spring there is no time to be wasted.'

‘I don't think one day will make much difference,' Steve said easily. ‘And in any case I don't believe it will concern you. As far as I can gather – and I have to say at this point that I am almost as much in the dark as you are since it was sprung on me, too, last night – as far as I can gather Dinah is dealing with the design and development of her idea herself.'

‘But Don Kennedy explicitly said he wanted me in on it!'

‘That's not quite what he said. He suggested your opinion would be of value. But it's not for Don to interfere in the design side. He's the money man, pure and simple. Dinah has the last word on the way things are done.'

‘That's ridiculous!' Jayne fumed. ‘ I was hired as chief designer. I have a right!'

Steve felt his desire stir again. He had a brief erotic fantasy in which he threw her, spreadeagled, across his desk and made love to her among the files and correspondence. But he exercised an iron control which hid from her any inkling of what he was feeling.

‘Perhaps I should remind you, Jayne, that whatever the terms of your contract, my mother
is
Vandina. The original idea was hers, the early designs were hers and hers alone. She built this company from nothing and if she wants to take complete control of her new project then neither you nor anyone else is going to stop her. What is more, you certainly do not have the right to interfere.'

‘I understood she no longer had the time to design and that was why she needed me. She can't do everything, and she has the company to run …'

‘I have been able to take some of that load off her shoulders and I shall be taking more and more, leaving Dinah free to do what she is best at – design projects.'

‘Do I detect a heavy-handed hint here?' Jayne demanded. ‘Is my position being undermined?'

He shrugged, ‘That's not for me to say. But if you don't like the way things are, well – you know what to do, don't you?'

‘I don't believe I'm hearing this!'

He smiled; he was enjoying himself.

‘Oh, I wouldn't worry about it. You'd be unlikely to be without a job for long. You're good at what you do, I admit it. Other companies would be queuing up for your services. And Reubens would be top of the list, I am sure.'

He saw the furious colour rise in her cheeks and almost laughed aloud. He'd gone too far, probably; if Jayne did take him at his word and leave he knew Dinah would not be best pleased. But he was fairly certain Jayne would not leave. There was too much to keep her at Vandina.

‘Right,' he said, changing his tone now that he had demonstrated his mastery. ‘ I'll tell Dinah you'd like to be copied in on the new plans, though I'm quite sure she intended to discuss them with you anyway. She'll be back in the office tomorrow and the designs will come with her. Dinah refuses to be parted from her brainchildren for even a moment, I'm sure you know that.'

Jayne did not answer. He could see she was still fuming.

‘And about us … give me an hour to do some work, then come back – if you like,' he said. ‘The boardroom is empty and there's a key in the door. I don't think we've ever made love there, have we?'

She had been on the point of leaving. In the doorway she swung round. ‘Steve – fuck off!' she said.

But she returned an hour later anyway, just as he had known she would. He took her to the boardroom, locked the door behind them and adjusted the Venetian blinds to make it impossible to see in from outside. Then he made love to her, not once, but twice, on the dark-blue carpeted floor, and the spat that had taken place earlier only added spice to the encounter.

‘The perfect end to a busy day,' he said after the first time.

Jayne was sitting up, buttoning her silky blouse.

‘Busy doing what?'

‘Checking files. Trying to discover the identity of the Vandina mole.'

‘And did you find anything?'

‘Not yet. But I will … I will.'

‘I still think Ros is the prime suspect.'

‘Do you? Oh, I'm not so sure.'

And then, with his typically insatiable appetite, he reached for her again.

Maggie was in the shower when the telephone rang, and at first she did not hear it over the rushing of the water. When she turned the flow off and realised it was ringing she dived for a towel and rushed dripping downstairs, afraid that whoever was on the other end might give up and ring off before she could answer it.

‘Hello?'

‘Maggie? It's Mike. I found your message when I got home.'

‘Mike.' She felt weak with relief. ‘ Thank goodness! I was beginning to think you'd disappeared too! I tried to get you last night as well but you were out.'

‘Yes.' But he did not say where he had been and she did not ask.

‘How did your dinner party go?'

‘All right, I suppose. I didn't find out anything, if that's what you mean. But it seems there
has
been a mole at Vandina and last night the finger was pointing at Ros.'

‘What the hell do you mean?'

‘My reaction exactly – at least, at first. And then I got to wondering if it might be possible. There's been a big security leak – a rival company has come out with a spring range that seems to have been pinched from Vandina. This other company went public with the designs just this week and of course it does look awfully bad for Ros. The way they see it she disappeared at a very opportune moment.'

‘Maggie, you can't be suggesting that Ros … ?'

‘I didn't suggest it – they did – but I did wonder if we ought to at least consider it as a possibility. But now something else has happened – something very worrying – and I've changed my mind again.' She went on to tell him about the bank statement. ‘Surely she'd have needed money by now wherever she is,' she said.

‘I'd have thought so, yes,' Mike said grimly.

‘I'm so frightened! I've got this awful feeling something dreadful has happened to her.' She was hoping, praying, that he would argue and tell her she was being foolish, but he did not.

‘I'm going to get on to the police about this,' he said. He sounded as worried as she was. ‘ When I've spoken to them I'll be right over.'

‘Oh Mike, no, I'm sorry, but I'm going out.' She wished heartily now that she was not; all she wanted was to see Mike but it was too late to change her plans now.

‘Tomorrow then? It's Saturday, and for once I don't have a cricket match or anything. No one seems to want to play our boys – they're too bloody rough! But I do have an activities day on Sunday, so I'll be tied up then.'

‘All right, but I'm going to have to go now. Steve will be here to pick me up and I'm nowhere near ready. In fact I was in the shower when you rang.'

There was a tiny silence, then Mike said: ‘Oh,
Steve
, is it?'

‘Steve Lomax. Ros's boss's son.'

‘Oh yes,' he said, and his tone was hard. ‘I know who Steve is. Well, watch yourself, Maggie.'

‘I will.' But as she put the phone down she was wondering just why he had sounded so angry and what it was he knew about Steve Lomax and disliked.

By the end of the evening Maggie had decided that whatever his reasons Mike was right – she did not like Steve very much either.

He was charming, yes, perhaps a little too charming, as if the syrup had been dolloped on with a spoon and spread about to create the right effect. He was courteous and attentive – the perfect gentleman. He was intelligent and good company. But Maggie thought he was also conceited and there was an edge of something else she did not quite understand, a hint of something darkly dangerous. In one respect it added to his attraction, and she thought that to many women Steve would probably prove irresistible.

That edge had come, she imagined, from the life he had lived. He had been a diver at one time, he had told her, working on an oil rig in the North Sea. From what little she knew of such things she guessed it was dangerous work, a maverick existence, certainly very different from the life of luxury he lived now. Maggie had looked at him across the table at the country pub where he had taken her and noticed the exquisitely made shirt, which she was sure was Turnbull and Asser, open at the neck with apparent carelessness to reveal a heavy gold chain, the stylish but immaculate haircut, the Rayban sunglasses tucked into his top pocket, and thought that this was a man who might once have been a rough diamond but had now been cut and polished to a degree which she found positively off-putting. To her mind he was trying too hard to be both suave and macho and for her, at any rate, it did not work. She much preferred the genuine maleness of someone like Mike, who probably threw on the first thing that came to hand and looked in the mirror only once a day, to comb his hair and shave.

‘No news of Ros, I suppose?' Steve asked, offering Maggie a Camel.

She shook her head to both the question and the cigarette, lighting one of her own export Silk Cut instead.

‘No. Nor at Vandina?'

‘No. I'm sorry if Jayne upset you last night with what she said about Ros. She likes to be dramatic.'

‘She did upset me a little,' she admitted. ‘ But I know my sister better than to take notice of such wild accusations.'

‘Someone at Vandina
is
passing information about future plans to the opposition. It's not something to be taken lightly.'

‘Whoever it is it is certainly not Ros,' Maggie said firmly. ‘In fact I'm beginning to wonder if Ros might have discovered the identity of the mole and that's why she has disappeared.'

His eyes narrowed behind the haze of cigarette smoke.

‘What are you saying?'

‘It's a serious business, isn't it, espionage of any sort? This isn't spying on the international scale, I know, but where companies like Vandina are concerned there must be a great deal of money involved. I know it sounds melodramatic, but is it possible that if Ros discovered who it was who was playing these very expensive games and threatened them with exposure something might … happen to her?'

His lip curled up a fraction; he looked incredulous and almost amused.

‘Like what?'

‘I don't know. But something serious.'

He laughed outright. ‘You've been watching too many spy films.'

Maggie tapped ash from her cigarette, rolling it nervously around the rim of the ashtray.

‘Maybe I'm wrong about the industrial espionage connection. But I do honestly think that something dreadful has happened to Ros. I don't want to think it, believe me, but the signs are not good.'

‘What signs, exactly?'

She told him, finishing with the latest piece of evidence, the bank statement. Catalogued all together it made a bleak and damning picture.

‘Yes,' he said when she had finished. ‘I begin to see why you are so worried. Look, if there is anything I can do …'

His hand slid across the table to cover hers; slightly embarrassed she removed it.

‘There is one other thing. Her ex-husband, Brendan, claims to have seen her with a man in Clifton, and it wasn't Mike, her boyfriend. You wouldn't have any idea who it might have been, I suppose?'

He shook his head. ‘If you mean do I know anyone else who might figure in Ros's life, the answer is I have no idea – though she was quite a girl. Did this Brendan tell you what the man looked like?'

‘Not really. White, aged about thirty. That's all he could say.'