Boardroom Proposal

by Way, Margaret

  Supper was superb. Set up in the high-ceilinged formal dining room which exuded a marvellous Anglo Raj atmosphere. The very long dark mahogany table had in fact been custom made in India surrounded by dark timbered elegant chairs upholstered in white as was the colour of the walls. Four brass candelabra in glass storm shades hung suspended from gleaming brass ropes over the table and a magnificent five-foot-high teak headboard, beautifully fretted and carved stood atop a teak and glass cabinet. The beautiful white flowers arranged in a pair of beautiful silver swans beguiled Eve’s eye. She adored flowers and always managed to bring a small bouquet home, but she had never seen such a lavish display. Flowers lit up every room from simple to breathtakingly bold. They must have cost a fortune, but then, the Forsythes were in the position to pay.

  Her first view inside Drew’s family home. She would have lots to tell Ben.

  Drew, even over supper, worked the room, using his considerable charm on the obviously flattered guests. Or maybe he wasn’t using it at all, Eve thought, observing him through her eyelashes. His manner, she had since come to know, was entirely natural. Even Sir David’s frosty blue eyes softened whenever his son moved into orbit. Whoever else found Sir David Forsythe abrasive, he was a very different man with his son. Mercifully Drew had been able to live up to all his father’s expectations, Eve thought. Another son, less brilliant, might have found it an entirely different story. Lost in her thoughts, Eve was a little startled when Jamie, who had hastened to rejoin her, touched her on the arm.

  “You’re not eating much. Try those little crab mille-feuilles or whatever they are called. They’re simply out of this world. I don’t know if we’re supposed to eat the nasturtiums.” He grinned.

  “You can if you like.” Eve smiled. “They’re perfectly edible but I think they’re supposed to be a decoration, and very pretty, too.” Such variety of wonderful food had been assembled. Roast beef, pork, baked glazed hams, turkey, sides of smoked salmon, marvellous seafood, Gulf of Carpentaria prawns, crayfish, lobster, shellfish arranged in easily handled chunks inside the carapace. There was a hill of glistening caviar piled high on an iced silver tray, salads of all kinds, hot dishes brought out halfway through served with fragrant steaming rice.

  Another sideboard held all the sweet delights. Tortes, gateaux, little latticed fruit pies, cheesecakes, profiteroles with pastry cream and toffee icing arranged in a pyramid, delectable confections for the chocolate lover....

  I have to be the only one here who isn’t hungry, Eve marvelled. Even the bone-thin Carol was busy forking succulent grey pearls of Iranian caviar, hideously expensive, into her mouth.

  Towards the end of supper Sir David spoke about the project so dear to his heart, thanking Elizabeth Garratt for seeing the value inherent in it and graciously agreeing to selling them a crucial amount of land. He even mentioned Eve’s part in the negotiations with a small smile of approval. Then he nodded to Drew who took over from his father, elaborating on project Capricornia for the benefit of guests.

  “God, isn’t he just so smooth and confident,” Jamie whispered in Eve’s ear admiringly. “Just look at the way everyone has their body turned towards him. The way their faces light up. They weren’t doing that when Sir David was talking.”

  Eve had noticed that, as well.

  After supper people began to stream out of the sets of French doors onto the broad verandas that surrounded the house on three sides. Moonlight showed up a beautiful garden, the air redolent with all the heady scents of summer.

  “Now where are you going?” a so attractive deep voice asked her.

  Eve turned to face him. “I should be thinking about going home.”

  “Haven’t you enjoyed yourself?” Drew caught hold of her hand, steering her away from the crowd towards the library.

  “I have,” she said when Carol and her disclosures had thoroughly rattled her. “I’m entranced with the ancestral home. It’s very splendid but it has a welcoming atmosphere. You must have had a happy childhood here.”

  “Not always,” he said surprisingly. “Dad was really plugged in to the job of mining magnate. He was away a great deal. Even when he was home it wasn’t always easy to see him. I know my mother was very lonely at times Oh, she filled her life with friends and the charity work she held dear, she just didn’t get much quality time from her husband. Dad wasn’t an easy man. Still isn’t.”

  “He adores you,” Eve insisted.

  “We’ve settled down.” Drew shrugged. “Dad had to put up with a lot of rebellion in my early days. I wanted him to know I’m me. I just wish my mother could have survived. Dad is indestructible ”

  “Can anyone really say that?” Eve looked up at him remembering the untimely undreamed death of the Princess of Wales.

  “I suppose not,” he agreed. “The most I can say is, he’s always seemed that way.”

  Eve nodded and walked ahead into the book-lined library, the parqueted floor covered with a magnificent Persian rug. “This is a wonderful room,” she said, excitement beating at her senses.

  “Even better.” He smiled. “There’s no one here. I can have you to myself for a few moments. How are you getting home?”

  “With Jamie.” She had to make herself secure.

  “You know he’s more than a little in love with you?” His voice was gentle and soft.

  “It’s not serious.” Eve shook her head. “Jamie knows I don’t mix business with pleasure.”

  “You did. Once upon a time.” He perched on the end of a desk, marvellously handsome in his beautifully cut dinner clothes.

  “You’re much too attractive, Drew. But I have to resist flirting with danger.” She exhaled a deep sigh.

  “Flirting?” the mocking eyebrow shot up. “That’s not the word for you.”

  “Maybe not.” She picked up a leather-bound book on the circular table, then put it down. “My friend, Lisa, calls me a control freak.”

  “It must cost you dearly.” He seemed to be devouring her with his eyes. “You’re full of strong emotions. I sensed that the very first day in the lift, for all the chaste buttoned-up image.”

  “Damn, is that how I appeared.” Eve started to turn away, thinking she couldn’t take that dark gaze much longer.

  “Well, God knows, you’re chaste.” His words were light, laconic, but she swung on him.

  “And you want to change that?”

  “I’m going to change it, Evie,” he said, a faint almost undetectable iron determination in his face. “But only when you’re ready. For now I have to content myself with sitting back and observing. What did Carol have to say to you, by the way?”

  “She was striving to warn me against you.” Eve settled into an armchair upholstered in ruby leather, fingering the carved arms.

  “One has to be a bit wary of Carol. I suppose she divined my interest in you?”

  “I gather I’m one of many.”

  He looked horrified. “Is that what she told you?”

  Eve stared at the coffered ceiling before answering. “She said your marriage never stood a chance because you were unfaithful.” Despite herself, her voice broke a little.

  “She upset you.” It wasn’t a question but a flat statement.

  “I don’t like being caught in the middle.”

  “How could that be?” he answered swiftly. “Carol and I are divorced. I would have thought she had something serious going with Morgan. That’s the word around town.”

  “And does it hurt?” Eve asked, intent on his expression.

  He looked back steadily into her eyes. “What difference would it make if I told you? You seem to have made up your mind.”

  His anger targeted her now. “It’s just because—” Some instinct made Eve hug herself tightly. “It’s because...”

  “You care?” he challenged her. “Or can’t you live with that?” Then abruptly, “I’m sorry, Eve. Carol hed to you. It’s over.”

  “I think it’ll be better if I go home.” Eve stood up, desperate
ly penitent this element of hostility had crept in. “Thank you for a wonderful evening.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, coming to his feet. The brilliance of her eyes matched the cobwebby shimmer of her beaded dress but her lovely skin had paled. She looked heartbreaking all of a sudden. He had a vivid mental picture of a little girl in a family deserted by husband and father. Pain had fashioned her. The pain of betrayal. He knew he was going to have to work hard to overcome it.

  “Evie,” he said tenderly, as she went to hurry past him, catching her into his arms, exquisitely conscious of her slender woman-scented body.

  For an instant she yielded, not daring to take a breath against the sweet, sharp spear of desire.

  “I want to be alone with you.”

  “It’s not possible.” Yet every day her feeling for him was getting harder to subdue.

  “Yes, it is.” He lowered his dark head, brushing his mouth against the smoothness of her cheek. “Come home with me.”

  “No.” Ridiculous when she wanted him so desperately she could have dissolved in tears.

  “I want to make love to you. Touch you all over with my mouth and hands. Trust me, Eve. Trust me. You must.”

  Still she shook her head, afraid of her increasing dependence on him. What was love, a kind of madness? Love? Wasn’t it time she confronted her true feelings instead of treating it like a blazing affair?

  “I can’t, Drew,” she uttered wretchedly, shadowed by her past.

  “Listen to me, Evie.” He turned her face up to him, beseeching when he never had in his life. “I never imagined...”

  Such a wild yearning rocked her, her heart, her head, her insides. What was he doing to her, bonding her to him so she would never get away? Had she completely forgotten her mother’s suffering? Because of what? This man’s magic. His warm sweetness, his burning ardour.

  “Let me tell Jamie I’m taking you home,” he said with the sharp imperative of passion. What was happening was agony, when desire had its own way.

  Susan, sweeping through the house, came upon them so soundlessly, Drew wheeled in surprise.

  There was silence for a moment and Eve’s stomach contracted at the wounded look on Lady Forsythe’s face. Even her skin turned transparent.

  “Are we being missed?” Drew asked in his smooth tantalising voice.

  “Yes.” The answer was very faint, as though Susan was desperate for air.

  “I must leave anyway.” Eve found the strength to make the break. A desperate run for it, really. “Thank you for a wonderful evening, Lady Forsythe. I’ve so enjoyed being in your beautiful home.” In all her life Eve had never felt such tension that now arose around all three of them.

  “It was a pleasure to have you, Eve.” Gallantly Lady Forsythe rallied, trying to fight back her own hopelessly mixed up feelings. “Why don’t we have lunch sometime?”

  “That would be lovely.” Impossible to say anything else.

  “Good night, Drew.” Eve turned her face to him, seeing his handsome mouth twist.

  “Whatever makes you happy.” He shrugged.

  “Your father wants to speak to you, Drew,” Lady Forsythe said, making a huge effort to sound normal. “Something about the Poiynton takeover.”

  “It looks like we’re back to shop talk,” Drew said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  WEEKS went by when Eve immersed herself in her work. Inexplicably Drew had drawn back, as confident and charming as ever but concentrating on what was very clearly a big job. Although they continued to work on project Capricornia together, there were other more pressing matters to occupy his mind, like the reopening of the Mount Maratta mine in the North West of the state. Eve arrived at work one Monday morning to be told Sir David and Mr. Forsythe had taken the company plane to the site of the old copper and gold mine along with their head geologist and didn’t expect to be returning for possibly a week.

  “Mr. Forsythe wants you to close that Santro deal, Eve,” Sara Matheson told her. “I must say he has great confidence in you.”

  “I hope it’s deserved.” Couldn’t he have told her he would be away? Eve thought, feeling a rush of acute disappointment. She had grown used to their close working relationship. Perhaps too used.

  In her office she reached for the phone, setting up an appointment to meet with Richard Wilson at Pearce Musgrave. They ought to be grateful. She had put a lot of business their way. Now she had to let her work dominate her mind.

  The phone woke her. Eve pulled herself out of her sleep, groping for the receiver. What time was it? Two-thirty. Who would be ringing at this time? Ben, she thought with a deep sense of relief, was home and sound asleep.

  “Eve Copeland,” she said into the receiver, her voice husky with sleep.

  “Jack, here,” a familiar voice said. “I thought it best if this came from me, Eve. It will be on the news in the morning. Sir David suffered a massive heart attack sometime late this afternoon. They were out at the mine. Sadly, he was dead by the time help got to them.”

  Eve jumped out of bed in shock. “Jack, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know Sir David well but I thought, like Drew, he was pretty well indestructible. He always looked so fit and well.”

  “I know.” Jack’s voice cracked.

  “And Drew. How terrible!”

  “He was totally unprepared.” Jack’s tone conveyed it had been a sad phone call. “He sounded broken up. He’ll be bringing his father back today. God, Eve, it’s going to be awful.”

  And awful it was.

  The newspapers were full of it. Sir David, alive and talking on T.V. How does the family stand it? Eve thought. But shock had taken hold of them all. Even the business world and the wider community were stunned. Sir David, if he hadn’t exactly been loved, had risen head and shoulders above his peers. A mining magnate of the old school and a legend in the state. What was worse, only for the remoteness of the mine’s location, he might have been saved had paramedics with their equipment been on hand. A frantic Drew had performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation to no avail. Sir David’s time had been up. There was a big photograph of Drew and Lady Forsythe in the front of Sunday morning’s paper coming away from the funeral home. Both were dressed in black. Both looked strained and sombre.

  “What a sad life it is,” Ben remarked solemnly, looking over Eve’s shoulder. “Drew is going to have an awful lot on his shoulders. He might have expected his father to last a good ten years at least. And what about Lady Forsythe? She’s lost a husband. I expect he left her very well off, but her whole position has changed.”

  Ben squeezed Eve’s shoulder then walked to the door to start the afternoon stint at McDonald’s. “Drew contacted you yet?”

  “Of course not.” Eve shook her head. “There’s far too much going on for him to think about me. He has a married sister in London. She’ll be returning for the funeral. There must be a hundred and one things for him to think about and attend to.”

  “It’s tough, I agree. But most people seem to think he’s ready to step into his father’s shoes.”

  Eve turned back the thoughts that sprang to mind. They were too deeply tangled. “What time do you think you’ll be home?” She turned to search her brother’s face. He was getting too thin, the result of too much work and too little relaxation.

  “Simon has asked me over to his place later. He wants me to help him out with an assignment. Don’t worry, he always feeds me first. Mrs. Bolton is a great cook.”

  Left alone, Eve decided to get out and go for a walk. It was a beautiful day outside, the worst of the summer heat was over and there were many parks in the area. She felt incredibly restless, incredibly sad, forced to accept, when it really came down to it, she was no one in Drew’s life. She had not seen him now for more than a week. Surely it seemed longer? A kind of anguish stirred in her. Once you allowed strong emotion into your life you were never the same. It was painfully apparent Drew wasn’t coming to see her. He didn’t need her. He was caught back into his own world. She co
uldn’t help but remember how Susan had reached up to stroke his face that very first day. It was meant to be affection but Eve had caught the fascination in her eyes. A woman’s intuition. It was pretty well infallible.

  Now the grief and terrible bleakness of loss. Eve felt pity.

  She took her time walking around the park. Children were playing on swings and whooshing down the slippery slides, young mothers in attendance. As always there were lovers lying on the grass, heads resting against one another’s, pointing with locked hands to the big beautiful kite that was moving in an arc across the sky.

  What have I got myself into? Eve thought. She was very glad, then, there had been no sexual involvement. She had already arrived at a point where the attachment was too great. And what about her job? Sir David’s death had changed everything. Drew would be called on to play an ever larger role. What a letdown it would be to work for someone else. But in the end, mightn’t it be for the best? She had stepped out of line. Now she was on her own. Aloneness was home territory.

  Home again at the apartment, she showered briskly, shampooed her hair, then dressed in fresh clothes, a white silk top and a favourite floral skirt that created a breeze when she moved. She hadn’t heard a word from Lisa for two days. Perhaps she’d better give her a call. Everyone was trying to come to terms with Sir David’s sudden death. And what would happen to that legendary wealth? The young widow would be left very comfortable, but Drew was the heir. His sister, Anne, would be amply provided for, though she had married very well from all accounts. Her husband’s uncle was an earl.

  Eve picked up a book and tried to read. It was dusk before she stirred, going to the window not quite sure if a car had pulled into their drive. If it had, it was a very smooth engine.

  She flicked the vertical blind, her whole being injected with adrenalin when she saw it was Drew. He was standing outside his Jaguar, turning the key in the lock. Immediately she went to the door and held it open.

  “Drew!”

  He put his arms around her and she clung tightly, wordlessly offering up her deepest sympathy.