by Jessica Hart
‘Enough to make you change your mind about going back?’
‘No.’ She ruffled up immediately. Why was Guy so determined to believe that her feelings for Kevin weren’t real?
Of course, the fact that she had kissed him back the other night might have made him wonder if she was quite as besotted as she claimed to be, but he would have to be incredibly conceited to think that it had made a difference to her.
He was incredibly conceited, of course, so maybe that was exactly what he thought. She had told him that the kiss hadn’t bothered her. It had, but Guy wasn’t to know that.
Her chin lifted. ‘Of course I’m going back,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t mean I can’t make the most of being here.’
‘I’d be disappointed if you didn’t, Cinders,’ said Guy. ‘Making the most of the moment is what you do best.’
Why was it that conversations with Guy always ended up wandering into uncomfortable territory? Lucy wondered. She never knew quite how to take comments like that.
‘There’s better news about Richard,’ she offered in an attempt to change the subject-again! ‘I’ve been going to the hospital every day and he’s out of his coma.’
‘So Meredith was right after all,’ he said. ‘Your voice did make the difference.’
‘We can’t know that.’ Lucy shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t like to think of Richard loving her as much as Meredith and his parents seemed to think, because that would mean she would have to hurt him again one day. ‘I’m sure it’s just coincidence,’ she said. ‘He’s still very ill and can’t talk much, but obviously it’s progress.’
‘Well, that’s good news. His parents must be relieved.’
‘They’re delighted, of course…’
‘But?’
She made a face. ‘It’s very difficult. They’re treating me like a daughter-in-law already. I don’t know if it’s just that they don’t really listen when I mention my boyfriend, or if they don’t believe me, but it’s getting really embarrassing.’
‘You can’t have been talking about me enough.’
Guy’s voice was threaded with amusement and Lucy cursed the moment she had told Richard’s parents that her invented boyfriend was called Guy. Why on earth hadn’t she chosen Paul or Jack or…Ethelbald? Anything other than Guy!
‘I don’t talk about you at all,’ she said with a quelling look. ‘I do try and mention my fictional lover as much as I can, but it doesn’t seem to have much effect. I can’t keep going on about him. I’m already pretending that he’s completely besotted with me. If I’m not careful, I’ll end up marrying myself to him!’
‘I’m sure Guy won’t mind,’ said Guy. ‘He’ll have been a lost man as soon as he kissed you.’
A tide of colour flooded Lucy’s cheeks and she was desperately grateful for the dim light in the back of the car. Beside her, Guy seemed very big and very close and her whole body was thumping with awareness of him as the air between them thrummed with the memory of that kiss on the quayside. She was sure that he must be able to hear her heart thudding.
‘It was stupid to have started the whole story,’ she muttered, turning to stare out of the window and willing her flush to fade. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘Well, it’s done now,’ said Guy practically. ‘You could tell Richard’s parents that you made the whole thing up, but that would probably be embarrassing for them, as well as for you.’
‘I know. I’ve thought of that, but they’ve got enough to cope with at the moment.’ She sighed. ‘I’m just going to have to learn to think before I open my big mouth.’
The rush hour traffic was moving slowly and the car edged to a halt in front of yet another red light. Lucy glanced at her watch. Her feet might appreciate the ride, but it might have been quicker-and less unsettling-to have stuck with the tube.
‘Do you ever think of using public transport?’
‘As it happens, I do if I’m just going home, but I’ve got a few things on tonight. I’m going to see my mother in the hospital, and then there’s a reception at the Guildhall, and later I’m going out to dinner with friends in Putney, so it just seemed easier to take the car and let Steve earn some overtime. It’s one of the benefits of being a bloated plutocrat!’
‘How did your mother’s operation go?’
‘Pretty well, the doctors think. They’re making her walk already. She had a double hip replacement so it was quite a big operation, but, as far as I can tell, she’s assumed command of the whole ward and the medical staff are clearly longing for the time when she’s ready to go home!’
‘When will that be?’ asked Lucy.
‘Next week some time, I think. The occupational therapist has been to Ma’s house and I’ve had a list of things to organise to make things easier for when she comes out of hospital. I’ve had a second banister fitted to the stairs and bought her a new armchair and a higher bed, but I’m braced to discover that I’ve chosen absolutely the wrong thing.’
His voice was light, but Lucy didn’t laugh. She glanced at him, a tiny crease between her eyes.
‘I would have thought that someone like you would be the apple of his mother’s eye,’ she said, and Guy lifted an eyebrow.
‘Someone like me?’
‘I’m sure you’re perfectly aware of how good-looking you are,’ said Lucy with a touch of spice. ‘You can be charming-when you’re not being really irritating, that is-and you’re obviously attentive. I might not appreciate you myself, but I can see that most mothers would adore having a son like you. Some women are grateful if their sons ring them once a month, let alone visit them in the hospital every day.’
Guy had laughed at her comment about him being irritating, but at that he sobered. ‘I think my mother is grateful,’ he said quietly. ‘And she loves me, I know she does. She just can’t show it that easily. Remember, she grew up in the outback. It’s a tough life out there, and they weren’t encouraged to spend a lot of time talking about their emotions, at least not in those days. She’s had a hard time, too. When she’s brusque, it’s just her way of dealing with the fact that she’s lost the two people she loved most in the world.’
‘Your father…?’ Lucy asked, wondering why Guy wasn’t the person his mother had always loved most in the world.
‘And Michael.’ Guy’s voice was expressionless. ‘My brother. Now, he was the apple of my mother’s eye. My father’s, too. Michael was everything they wanted in a son. He worked hard, he was head boy at school, he was steady and responsible, and never for a moment did he complain about his destiny to take over Dangerfield & Dunn when my father retired. I used to ask him if he didn’t want to do something else with his life, to have some fun, but Michael never liked taking risks. He joined the firm as soon as he left university and seemed perfectly happy to go into the office every day. Ironic, really.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because it was going in to the office that killed him. It was a hit-and-run accident. He’d been working late-of course-and it was dark, but he was using the zebra crossing, because Michael always did the right thing. It wasn’t his fault that joyriders don’t always stop at pedestrian crossings, or that he just happened to be crossing the road as they came round the corner.’
Guy sighed and shook his head. ‘He was killed outright.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Without thinking, Lucy laid her hand over his, where it was resting on his thigh, and Guy turned it so that their palms met and their fingers entwined.
‘My parents were never the same again,’ he told her. ‘My father had a heart attack only months later and left my mother all on her own. They had a very strong marriage, and Ma has been bereft ever since. She retreated into her shell and, whenever she’s difficult, I remind myself of what she’s still suffering.’
The lazy good humour was so much a part of Guy that it was almost a shock to realise that he had tragedy in his background. She had just assumed that his light-heartedness came from a charmed life, but she had been
wrong, Lucy realised with compunction. Guy might be privileged in lots of ways, but there was clearly much more to him than she had thought. He was clearly far from the playboy she had dismissed him as in Australia. It had only taken a day at Dangerfield & Dunn to realise that the staff there held him in respect.
Perhaps she was going to have to change some of her assumptions about him, thought Lucy.
Her fingers tightened around his in unspoken sympathy. ‘What about you?’ she asked, thinking that he had lost as much as his mother. ‘Were you and Michael close?’
Guy shook his head. ‘Michael was nearly ten years older than me. I looked up to him, but it was too wide a gap for us ever to be really close. Still, he was my brother.’
He fell silent for a moment and Lucy wondered if he were even aware that they were holding hands.
‘Ten years is a big gap,’ she commented, not sure what else to say, and Guy glanced at her.
‘I think I was a “mistake”,’ he said, and she was relieved to see the glinting smile reappear. ‘Michael was too kind ever to say so, but I worked it out for myself. Even as a small boy I could see that he was all my parents needed. Michael was destined for the family firm, and there was nothing left for me to do but be difficult. It wasn’t that I was jealous of him-at least, I don’t think I was,’ he added with scrupulous honesty. ‘I didn’t want Michael’s life in the bank. I wanted adventure, excitement, something different.’
‘Hence the rodeo riding?’
He smiled an acknowledgement of her memory. ‘Yes, that was an early ambition, but falling off a few horses at Wirrindago soon knocked that one out of me! I conformed enough to go to university, but then I dropped out and bummed around the world for a while, surfing, sailing, skiing, white water rafting…doing anything that took my fancy. I was a free spirit like you once!’
‘That can’t have gone down very well with your parents,’ said Lucy, burningly aware of the warmth and strength of the fingers curled around hers.
‘They were appalled at the waste of my expensive education, and I don’t blame them,’ said Guy. ‘They couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more like Michael, when I’d had all the advantages he had had, but I just wanted to have a good time, and I did. I can’t say I regret it at all, although I suspect I did hurt my parents more than I thought. I was pretty selfish.’
‘And then Michael died?’
‘And then Michael died,’ he agreed, his voice carefully expressionless. ‘And then my father, and then there was only me to take over.’
Lucy’s eyes rested on his profile. ‘That must have been hard,’ she said quietly.
Guy shrugged off her sympathy. ‘I felt sorry enough for myself at the time. The last thing I wanted was to settle down and spend my life being second best, but it would have seemed as if I were letting Pa and Michael down if I didn’t, so I hung up my surfboard and came home to knuckle down and do what I could for my mother. And you’ll never guess what happened…’
‘What?’
‘I found I loved it!’ The familiar, heart-shaking smile gleamed in the dim light. ‘It’s not catching a wave but investment banking is all about taking risks, and making money has got an excitement all of its own. The last thing I expected was to enjoy myself, but I must have absorbed more from the old man than I thought I had.
‘Not that it’s been all that easy,’ he went on. ‘I’ve had a struggle with some of the older members of the board, who were used to thinking of me as the young, irresponsible one. It’s over four years since I took over, and it’s only now that they’re starting to accept me. It’s the same with Ma in lots of ways,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘In her mind, I’m still the wild one.’
Lucy nodded. ‘Like Meredith is still the sensible one and I’m still the irresponsible one. Do you think we can ever change the way our families think of us?’
‘Probably not,’ said Guy, ‘but we can change the way we think of ourselves.’ Looking down, he seemed to realise suddenly that their hands were still linked and he disentangled his fingers from hers with a faint smile. ‘We can try, anyway.’
Lucy’s hand felt cold and uncomfortable on its own. Not knowing what else to do with it, she set it on her lap like a parcel and stared down at it, half expecting to see it glowing from the way it throbbed and tingled. Afraid that it would start twitching at any minute, she clamped her other hand over it to keep it still as she thought about what Guy had said.
‘Is that what my challenge is about?’ she asked slowly, and Guy turned his head to look into her face.
‘If you want it to be,’ he said.
Lucy’s first couple of weeks at Dangerfield & Dunn passed so quickly that she was quite surprised to find herself in a packed City bar one Friday night, celebrating the end of a fort-night’s employment. Always envious of Lucy’s travels, Meg had been very sympathetic about Lucy having to adjust to office life.
‘It can’t be much fun after working on a cattle station,’ she said, raising her voice to be heard as they fought their way to a table. She had the bottle while Lucy held their glasses high to avoid spilling them as they pushed through the crowd. ‘Aren’t you bored?’
‘The funny thing is, I’m not,’ said Lucy slowly, setting the glasses on the table.
She had expected to be. Guy’s challenge had been to get the job in the first place, and she herself had vowed that she would make a success of it, but it hadn’t occurred to her that she might actually enjoy it. If anything, she had pictured herself pining for the outback, and sticking steadfastly to her vow in spite of it. As things had turned out, she had been too busy to pine.
‘I thought being a receptionist would be really dull,’ she told Meg. ‘I thought it would mean just sitting behind a desk all day, filing my nails, but there’s much more to it than that.’
She pushed Meg’s glass across to her. ‘It’s surprising how many different people come through the doors every day and the different things they need to know. Sometimes it’s just a question of pointing them in the right direction, but at others they need more practical help. We get a lot of overseas visitors and they often ask for advice about how to get to different parts of London, or how to go about booking something.
‘In fact, we seem to be the advice centre for everyone. It’s amazing the information Imogen has at her fingertips! How to book theatre tickets, where to get help for everything from a stubbed toe to a divorce, who to talk to about what in the bank, where’s the nearest place you can buy mascara-I had that just the other day!-booking taxis…’
She faltered to a halt as she found herself fixed by Meg’s accusing stare. ‘What?’
‘You sound as if you’re enjoying it!’
Lucy didn’t do nine-to-five and commuting with the rest of them. She was the friend they all relied on to work for wacky organisations, the one who was prepared to pack her bags and move on, who reminded them that it was still possible to chuck it all in if only they dared. For Lucy to take to working in a bank, however temporarily, felt almost like a betrayal to Meg.
‘Well…’ Lucy was well aware of how uncharacteristically she was behaving at the moment and she ran her finger round the rim of her glass a little uneasily. ‘I suppose I like dealing with people, and there’s more scope than I thought to use my initiative. Dangerfield & Dunn is such a friendly place to work, too. It feels as if everyone’s got a part to play…even the receptionists!’
‘I might try and get a job there myself,’ said Meg, impressed in spite of her reservations. ‘It sounds as if Guy Dangerfield has a better idea of how to run a company than my bosses! How is the gorgeous Guy, anyway?’
Lucy had told her the bare bones about her return to London with Guy and the night she had spent at his apartment, but Meg knew her very well and was adept at reading between the lines. It hadn’t taken her any time to winkle the whole story out of Lucy.
‘I’ve hardly seen him,’ Lucy said.
It was true. She had caught occasional glimpses of Guy walking to or
from the lifts. He never failed to smile and greet her and Imogen, but he didn’t come over and talk to them again, even on the rare occasions when he was on his own.
Lucy didn’t mind-obviously-but she couldn’t help feeling just a little put out. After all, the last time they had spoken, she had held his hand and he had told her about his brother’s death. It wasn’t the kind of conversation you had with a total stranger, and perhaps he regretted telling her as much as he had, but she hadn’t forced him to confide in her, had she?
Meg was watching her as she drank her wine abstractedly. ‘Has he kissed you again?’
Lucy flushed. She wished she hadn’t told Meg about that. At least she had managed to be fairly casual about it, and Meg had no idea quite how much Guy’s kiss had affected her.
‘No, as far as he’s concerned I’m just the new receptionist now,’ she said as lightly as she could.
‘It must be a bit awkward, isn’t it?’ said Meg. ‘Having kissed your boss?’
‘He wasn’t my boss when I kissed him, and anyway he kissed me first. Why should I feel awkward?’
‘Maybe Guy does? He might be too embarrassed to talk to you now.’
Lucy gave a short laugh. ‘Guy? I can’t imagine him being embarrassed about anything!’
‘Perhaps he’s met someone else?’ Meg suggested.
This thought had occurred to Lucy, too, more than once. Imogen, source of all information on Guy, hadn’t mentioned anything about a new girlfriend, but presumably she didn’t know everything.
‘Not as far as I know,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter to me,’ she said with a touch of defiance. ‘I’m just there to do my job. Guy can do what he wants.’
Still, it was hard to concentrate on the job when her heart did that ridiculous flip-flop every time she glimpsed Guy striding across the atrium, every time he turned his head and sent them that smile, every time his laugh rang out.
It was strange how one man, dressed exactly like all the others, could change the whole feel of the building. There was no need to hoist a flag to show that Guy Dangerfield was in residence. All were aware of a shift in the air, the sense of an ocean breeze swirling in and blowing away the staleness in the atmosphere, that charge of extra ozone he brought into the room that made everyone sit up straighter.