The Boss's Proposal (9 page)

Even more frustrating was the fact that his once ceaseless social life had whittled down to business meetings, client dinners and the occasional meal on his own at the local Italian. The thought of another woman, another of his simple, easy-to-please-just-add-two-tablespoons-of-compliments-and-some-expensive-meals-out women, made him go glassy-eyed with boredom.

He blamed
her
.

‘I wasn't thinking of anything in particular,' Vicky said noncommittally, drinking the remainder of her coffee quickly.

Max forced himself to smile, or was it grimace? He couldn't be sure. At any rate, whatever expression emerged felt unnatural.

‘The only thing, I've noticed, that gives a woman that abstracted look is the thought of a man.' Fishing. Again. And not very subtly either, he thought. Some of his remarks made him cringe. Where the hell had all his debonair self-assurance gone? He could see her looking at him with a withering expression and his mouth tightened.

‘Not
all
women, actually,' Vicky told him politely.
She shoved the empty mug a few inches into the centre of the counter, a little prelude to her request to be driven to the office so that she could collect her car. ‘
Some
of us do sometimes find our tiny minds cluttered up with something other than thoughts of a man.'

Okay, he thought, I deserved that, but did she have to look quite so…self-righteous? His mind leap frogged into an altogether different tableau, one where self-righteousness played no part, one that involved more emotion than she probably knew how to handle. In fact, a variation on one of the many tableaux that had recently been complicating his previously unfettered life.

‘Touché,' he said, flushing darkly. ‘Well, I can see that you're ready to go. By the way, that rumour about a supermarket being built near your house—it was just a rumour after all. They've bought a site on the other side of town instead.'

‘That's a relief—'

‘And, in case you're interested,' Max continued, ‘I was talking about the building work you might want to have done on your house at some point. If you're even considering the possibility, I'd suggest you get in touch with Mandy and let her know. Organising all the various people can be a nightmare, even though they all answer to this company.' Who on earth did she think she was kidding? No matter how much she tried to hide it, there was a man somewhere in her life. What he couldn't understand was why she felt compelled to conceal the fact. The mere thought of a man touching that body he constantly fantasised about made him want to grind his teeth.

‘You're moving too fast!' she said lightly, walking ahead of him to the front door. She looked over her shoulder and smiled. ‘And, from your point of view, I haven't been with the company for two minutes! Shouldn't I have
to work a lot longer before I can qualify for any discounted building work from the company?'

God, how he wanted to take that small, delicate face between his hands and crush her mouth with his lips until she couldn't breathe, until every secret was squeezed out of her head. They had stopped at the front door but before she could open it, he leaned against it and stared at her. The tantalising thought that he could just reach out and feel the touch of her lips, run his hands along her smooth neck, made his eyes darken. The prospect of turning fantasy into reality stretched his nerves to breaking point. He could see her pupils dilate as she looked back at him in wordless silence.

‘No,' he heard himself say, ‘so just set the date.'

She murmured something vague and looked away so that all he could see were her long eyelashes drooping against her cheeks. Her eyelashes, despite the burnished gold of her hair, were dark and thick. He couldn't help himself. He reached out and touched her cheek and she raised her eyes immediately.

‘What are you doing?' She flinched back and he abruptly withdrew his hand, which, he was disgusted to see, was shaking from the fleeting contact.

‘There was ink on your cheek,' he said smoothly, pushing himself away from the door and opening it for her to precede him out of the house. She rubbed the spot vigorously, not meeting his eyes. ‘I want you to type up those letters I dictated in the car today,' he said in a hard voice. His feelings had betrayed him. He had acted as though his body had a mind of its own, and his mouth was tight with anger, at himself and incidentally with her simply for
providing such ludicrous temptation
. ‘I'll need them,' he said, opening her door for her and walking around to the driver's seat, ‘by lunchtime tomorrow. And cancel my
meetings for next Monday. I'll be in New York for three days. Problems with Eva, one of the subsidiaries.' He glanced at her as he pulled out of the drive. ‘It would be useful if I had a secretary there.'

‘If you like, I can arrange for Tina, Roger's secretary, to accompany you. I know she likes overseas trips.'

His eyes, fixed on the road, were wintry when he answered. ‘Leave it. I'll see what can be arranged over there.' And he would bide his time. He had never been a man noted for his patience. He was learning fast.

T
HE
following Monday, no sooner had she sat at her desk and switched on the computer terminal than Vicky's internal line buzzed her.

Mandy from Personnel. She had arranged for one of their company architects to have a look at her house and ascertain the cost of any building work needing to be done.

A choking fit ensued as Vicky swallowed a mouthful of coffee down the wrong way, a reaction to her shock at this sudden development.

‘Building work?' she asked giddily.

‘You mentioned to the big man that you wanted to take advantage of our company policy of subsidised building work for employees?'

‘In passing, perhaps…I didn't mean to imply that speed was of the element…'

‘You'll learn,' Mandy said dryly from down the end of the telephone. ‘Max Forbes doesn't sit on things. He can make a decision in less time than it takes me to make a cup of instant coffee.' There was admiration in her voice. ‘And he's obviously decided that your house is in immediate need of repair work. You poor thing. Coming all the way here from Australia to find your house falling about around your ears.'

‘Falling about around my ears…?' Vicky repeated in parrot like fashion.

‘That's the problem with lodgers,' Mandy continued confidentially. ‘My sister rented her house out for a year and it was a mess when she moved back in. Cigarette burns
everywhere and the oven had to be chucked out completely. Anyway, Andy Griggs, the architect, is terrific. So…' There was the sound of clicking in the background, ‘I'm looking at a week today, twelve-thirty. You can meet with him in your lunch hour, unless you'd rather arrange it for the evening?'

‘No!' Vicky said hastily. ‘Lunchtime would suit me a lot better!' What was going on? She didn't
want
any building work done to her house! In fact, if her memory served her clearly, she was in the process of trying to tactfully terminate her employment at the company because the smell of trouble was getting stronger with each passing day. ‘No, what I mean is…I don't
want
…any building work…'

‘I know,' Mandy said sympathetically. Click, click, click. Things were ominously being punched in, in the background. ‘Who does? At least you work, so you can be out of the house when they're there. You'll just get back to a sinkful of tea-stained mugs and ladders and work-benches everywhere. So, I've pencilled you in for next Monday. Andy'll meet you at your place, and you shouldn't be longer than a hour…'

‘Next Monday.' Her external line was blinking furiously. In ten minutes the post would be delivered and she wouldn't be able to raise her head above water until mid-afternoon at least. She would sort all this building nonsense out later.

Except by the time the thought of architects, builders and Mandy's phone call resurfaced, Vicky was on her way to the childminder to collect Chloe, who was waiting for her with an armful of painting work done at school, which, from experience, Vicky knew would have to be housed at least for a few days until they could be discreetly relegated to the bin.

In her mind, she played guiltily with the thought of bashing the kitchen and the small dining room into one, so that she could have a decent-sized kitchen, big enough for a sensible eating area, maybe even some kind of bar arrangement as well where she could stick a couple of stools. Chloe would like that. It would remind her of the ice-cream bar they'd used to go to once a week in Sydney, where the tall stools were as much of an attraction as the fifty-one different types of ice-cream.

And then, if there was a bit more free wall space, she could have a notice board or two and Chloe's infantile works of art would see the light of day for a bit longer than they did at the moment.

She pushed the nasty, treacherous little thought away and entered into the gist of her daughter's conversation, which today revolved around a stuffed human project in the small class she was attending. Bradley, the name that cropped up most frequently in her daughter's conversation, had apparently hijacked the efforts of the class by accidentally sitting on one of the vital body parts that was destined to be the stuffed figure's head. At this, Chloe laughed until tears came to her eyes and Vicky allowed herself a few moments of unadulterated pleasure, listening to her daughter's uninhibited conversation and bubbling laughter.

‘Now we'll have to make a new head,' Chloe confided, ‘Miss Jenkins took the buttons off but the smiley mouth took us
ages
to do and we'll have to do a new one.'

‘What buttons?'

‘The buttons for the
eyes
, Mum!' Chloe said impatiently. ‘I'm hungry. What's for tea?'

‘Something nourishing and full of goodness,' Vicky said, slowing down to pull into her drive, and her daugh
ter's face fell. She grinned to herself. ‘Chicken casserole with potatoes and carrots.'

‘Can I have ketchup with it?'

‘No reason why not.'

Her thoughts continued to drift like flotsam and jetsam.

The bedrooms. There were the bedrooms. Yes, they were absolutely fine, but really, just say building work
did
take place—which it wouldn't, of course—then wouldn't it be nice to knock a couple of those bedrooms together so that she could have a good-sized room for herself with the luxury of an en suite bathroom? Maybe even a dressing room? Nothing big, but big enough for her to actually see her jumpers and maintain the odd crease-free shirt for work.

And Chloe's room would benefit from having those dated fitted cupboards removed and replaced by a free-standing one in some cheerful, modern colour that her daughter would like.

‘I can't eat that many carrots, Mum.'

Vicky glanced down to discover that there was a small mountain of orange on her daughter's plate and she hurriedly rectified the situation and tried to gather her thoughts into a less wayward direction.

In the morning, she would phone Mandy and explain that there had been some hideous mistake, that she wasn't at all interested in having any building work done—at least, not at that moment in time. She would stop letting her thoughts drift in pleasing circles that involved bigger bedrooms and bar counters in kitchens. Instead, she would think of wallpaper, paint effects and possibly getting rid of some of the heavier furniture.

By the following morning, her thoughts had turned full circle and she'd managed to persuade herself that she would meet with the architect after all.

Wouldn't it, she thought reasonably, draw attention to herself if she summarily turned down the whole thing without even assessing the cost? If she met with Andy Griggs, then she could say quite truthfully, no doubt—that it was all going to be too expensive, but that she would consider it at a later date. Who could be suspicious of sensible economic belt-tightening? If she met with the architect, she would also be able to put her mind at rest and find out for herself exactly what could and couldn't be done with the house. She loved the location but she had become accustomed to lighter, airier houses in Australia and she found the closed-in rooms claustrophobic and a little depressing. He might make one or two good suggestions which she could put into practice later on down the road. Once she'd left the company and had saved enough money to do it on her own.

All told, she decided that it was altogether better to go ahead with plans as they stood.

Her carefree frame of mind, now she had persuaded herself that she would see Andy Griggs, gave in fully to the temptation to mentally redesign the house from the bottom brick upwards. She found that there was no aspect of it she couldn't, in her head, alter. She was in high spirits when the telephone shrieked just as she was about to leave work for the day.

The minute she picked up the receiver something told her that Max Forbes would be at the other end. Some inner instinct that sent her pulses racing. It had been peaceful these last two days. Her only communication with her boss had been via e-mail and fax and the work had gone smoothly at this end.

Now, as she heard the deep velvet voice down the end of the line, she realised that something intangible had been missing from the office. Excitement. A certain thrill of
anticipation. A heightened state of awareness in which her senses were always, in his presence, on full alert.

‘Vicky. Max here. Glad I caught you before you left.'

Vicky played with the cord of the telephone, wondering what could have warranted a phone call when fax and e-mail could easily provide sufficient communication between them and neither sent her nervous system into overdrive.

‘How is it going in New York?' she asked politely. ‘I've dealt with all your e-mails and sent both of those faxes off to Roger's and Walnut House, as you requested.'

‘Yes, yes. Fine. Good. Look, the reason I'm calling is that the problem out here is bigger than I had first thought.' He paused. ‘Quite an unpleasant situation has arisen, as a matter of fact.' His voice, when he said that, was cold, and she shivered at the prospect of Max Forbes on the trail of whoever had made the
situation unpleasant
. She had now seen enough of him at work to realise that there was a core of steel running through him that made him a formidable adversary.

‘Is there something you'd like me to do from this end?' Vicky asked anxiously.

‘For starters, you can cancel my meetings for the next week. Get Anderson to chair the ones that can't wait, but the rest will have to be rescheduled.'

Vicky had already flicked out some notepaper, and even while he spoke was rapidly cataloguing in her head which of his meetings would need to be handed over to Ralph Anderson.

‘Anything else?'

‘Yes. I need you over here—and that's not a question, it's an order. Heads are going to roll over here and everything will have to be meticulously documented. I'm meeting with lawyers this afternoon to see where we stand, but
there's a hell of a lot to get down in writing and a lot of it is highly confidential. I can't trust a temp out here to do the job, provided I can get one to do it well enough, and what's going on is too sensitive for any of the secretaries in the company to deal with the information. I take it,' he said, ‘that there won't be a problem with that?'

She could hear the hard edge to the question. He was not going to allow her to wriggle out of this, and however much she told herself that she would clear off as soon as possible, she was reluctant to leave under a black cloud. She needed a good reference if she was to apply for anything worth doing at a later date and clock-watching never got an employee anywhere.

‘How long would you need me for?' she asked, heart thudding at the prospect of asking Brenda to have Chloe and her daughter's tears at the thought of her mother going abroad without her. They had never been separated and it was a precedent she had no wish to set.

‘Three days at the outside, probably less. Don't worry,' he said coolly, ‘I fully appreciate that foreign travel is not something you're interested in, but this time there's no choice. You can book Concorde over. You know where I'm staying. Get a room there as well. I'll make sure there's no problem in that area.'

Vicky sighed inaudibly. ‘Will that be all?'

‘E-mail me with your time of arrival and expect to be working the minute your feet touch the ground.'

‘Of course,' she said with a hint of sarcasm. ‘I wouldn't dare expect otherwise.'

The adrenaline was still surging through her bloodstream when, one hour later, she found herself asking Brenda whether she could keep Chloe for the following night, at the most two.

‘I'll pay you, of course,' she said, over a cup of coffee, and Brenda looked at her intently.

‘Never you mind the money, Vicky. Just so long as this job doesn't start taking over your life. I've seen some of these career women and they spend their lives in a state of permanent exhaustion. Not,' she added thoughtfully, ‘that it seems to be doing you any harm at all.'

‘What do you mean?' In the corner of the room Chloe and Brenda's little girl Alice, who was one year older, were playing a vigorous game of Barbies. From the sidelines, Ken watched with blank-eyed interest.

‘I haven't seen you look so…so
well
…for months. Skin radiant, eyes sparkling. Whatever work this boss is feeding you, it agrees with your system.'

‘He's
feeding me
?' Vicky said, laughing, half at the antics of the Barbie dolls, who now appeared to be engaged in physical warfare despite their attire of bikinis and high-heeled pumps, and half at Brenda's mistaken notions. ‘Too much work, heaps of responsibility and no end of sarcastic comments, not to mention nosy prying and pointed innuendoes.'

Brenda laughed in response. ‘Well, watch out. A girl could get addicted to a diet like that.'

But it was settled, as was the flight to New York which she'd booked that afternoon, and she felt the first stirrings of excitement when she arrived at Heathrow with her small flight bag and was shown all the respect and subservience obviously given to anyone who had enough money to fly by the most expensive method in the world.

Only when she booked into the hotel in New York, after an enjoyable and uneventful flight in surroundings that were speedy but cramped, did the excitement give way to apprehension.

It dawned on her more fully now that she was going to
be here with Max Forbes for at least two days, maybe three, and this time there would be no five o'clock ending and eight-thirty start.

He had arranged to meet her in the hotel bar, to brief her on what was going on, and she felt a tremor of nerves as she slipped on her smart oatmeal-coloured trouser suit, with a long-sleeved cream polo top underneath the tailored jacket, and bundled her hair into some form of chignon. The person staring back at her in the mirror looked impeccably professional but still managed to give the impression that the wearer of those smart clothes might well have been happier in a pair of jeans and an oversized shirt.