by Kate Hardy
‘Do you ever stop working?’
‘Occasionally.’ He lowered his eyes. Something about the shape of her breasts, just discernible under the dress, was kick-starting his imagination. ‘Lily seems to be enjoying herself.’
‘Yes. Yes, she does.’
‘But I guess you probably found the whole thing a little…boring…’
She shrugged. ‘Not at all,’ she told him politely.
‘You looked bored every time I saw you.’
‘You were watching me?’
Nick didn’t like the intonation in her voice when she said that. ‘It’s my duty to make sure that my guests are having a good time.’
‘Then I’m surprised your keen sense of duty allowed you to sneak off to this office and work.’ Yet again, she had the nagging, unpleasant suspicion that she was a charity case. ‘Anyway, it was very interesting. It always is, meeting people from different walks of life.’
‘Now why do I get the feeling that you don’t really mean that?’ When she didn’t answer, he added, interested against his will, ‘What’s your walk of life?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘What do you do for a living?’
‘I…I work in computers.’ God, that sounded dull, especially when she considered the flamboyant, beautiful people who cluttered his life. How on earth, as a businessman, was he so well connected with the media set? she wondered. Then the question was answered virtually before it was posed. He dated cover girls. Money and looks would always be attracted to money and looks.
‘That’s very interesting.’
‘There’s no need to patronise me.’
‘I’m not. What exactly do you do? In computers?’
‘Nothing very exciting.’
At this point, Nick knew that he should just give up. Getting anything out of this woman was about as rewarding and straightforward as pulling teeth, and if it was one thing he didn’t do, it was to work at making small talk with a woman. But her awkward response was like an invitation to press harder. In front of him, the screensaver came up on the computer and he switched it off.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Look—’ Rose looked at him steadily ‘—I know you probably feel sorry for me…’
‘Why should I feel sorry for you?’
‘Because I don’t slot into your category of an interesting woman.’
‘As you quite rightly pointed out, it’s always an eye opener meeting people from different walks of life.’
‘Well, if you really want to know, I pretty much do everything with computers. Programming, updating systems, designing websites…’ She heard herself rattling off a curriculum vitae that sounded deadly dull. ‘It’s actually very absorbing,’ she stressed.
‘I’m sure it is,’ Nick agreed. ‘Odd that you and your sister should have ended up in such completely different worlds. Computing and acting…’
Rose shrugged and stood up. ‘I’ve got to go and find Lily. It’s late. Time to head back.’
Nick met his fair share of clever, career-oriented women in his working life. He had frequently sat opposite top female lawyers in the early hours of the morning closing deals. Several of them had even tried to flirt with him, but he had never been interested in developing a relationship with any of them outside the boardroom. Put simply, nothing could compete with the archetypal brainless bimbo when it came to relaxation. Who needed to be mentally challenged twenty four seven? He had derived enough mental challenges in his working life.
Or so he had always maintained.
Right now, he was beginning to feel inordinately curious about what the computer whiz kid did in her spare time.
‘Is this a late night for you?’ he asked blandly.
Rose was suitably riled by the question. ‘Not particularly,’ she lied. ‘But there’s a limit to how long I can carry on chatting to people I don’t know about things I’m not particularly interested in.’
‘What would you rather be doing?’
‘Going to bed, as a matter of fact.’
‘With anyone in particular?’
Rose’s mouth dropped open at the sheer audacity of the question, which had sprung from nothing but, once voiced, seemed to fill the room with thick, electric tension.
‘I really don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she finally managed to stutter, red-faced. She turned and began walking towards the door, head held high. He might be a millionaire many times over, but that didn’t give him the right to say whatever he wanted to say and ask whatever he wanted to ask, without reserve.
She was aware of him behind her before she had even reached the door and when he stood in front of her, blocking her exit, she had to clench her hands at her sides to steady her nerves.
‘I like things that aren’t my business,’ Nick murmured lazily. ‘So tell me what you do in your spare time. When you go out until the early hours of the morning.’
He towered over her and she felt as if she were suffocating. Was he laughing at her? She rather imagined that he was because he certainly wasn’t interested in anything she had to say. He was bored with his own party and had decided to have a little fun at her expense. She was sure of it.
Having worked all that out, it still left her with the little problem of how to get out of the room when he was standing in front of the door like a prison warden with a taste for sadism.
The man was loathsome. Yes, he was sinfully good-looking and, yes, she could see those flashes of charm that turned women into mindless robots ready to do whatever he asked them to do, but to her he was someone who was happy to play with other people, in much the same way as a cat played with a mouse. No serious harm intended, just a spot of good fun.
‘I don’t have to do anything,’ Rose told him coolly. ‘Lily’s always been the clubber.’
‘And you’ve always been…what?’ Hand it to her, he thought, she wasn’t going to let herself be daunted by him, even though her mounting colour signalled her discomfort. Nor was she flattered by his interest. In fact, he would have been hard-pressed to think of any woman less flattered by his undivided attention. That in itself was an interesting concept.
‘I talk when I go out with my friends,’ Rose said quietly. ‘And I don’t need to drink to excess or have loud music blaring in the background to feel as though I’m having a good time.’
Nick could hear the implicit sarcasm in her voice and was amused by it.
‘Sounds like fun.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’
‘And what do you do afterwards?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When you’ve had fun setting the world to rights?’
‘I don’t set the world to rights.’ Rose gritted her teeth together and reminded herself that he was just goading her and that the last thing she should do was play into his hands by reacting. ‘And even if we did sit around setting the world to rights, it would still be a heck of a lot more fun than slowly getting drunk and bitching about everyone and everything.’
‘Referring to anyone in particular?’
‘Several in general,’ she said waspishly, ‘and they’re all out there. I believe they’re called your friends.’
If she had hoped to insult him, then she had been mistaken, because instead of being suitably offended he just burst out laughing.
When he laughed, really laughed…
Rose’s skin prickled and she felt jumpy and weak at the same time, as if her bones were turning into hot liquid, no longer able to support her body.
‘I’m glad you find that funny,’ she said, and wondered if he, too, could detect the high-pitched panic in her voice. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she badly needed to leave the room.
‘Oh, I do…but you still haven’t answered my question.’
‘I didn’t realise you’d asked one.’ She gave a deep, exaggerated sigh, which she hoped would convey to him just how fed up she was with their conversation.
‘About what you do after you finish
discussing deep and meaningful things with your friends. In quiet rooms. Over some invigorating glasses of mineral water.’ Nick grinned. In actual fact, he had headed to the office to have a break from the noise of the party, which was an event he had arranged solely for Lily’s benefit. What an altruist he was turning out to be.
Work was always an absorbing diversion, but right now he couldn’t care less about work because he was thoroughly enjoying himself. He was also more curious than ever to find out just a little bit more about the woman in front of him who was, right at this moment, barely managing to restrain herself from hitting him as hard as she could. He imagined that she could probably throw a pretty good punch. None of the usual female face-slapping before bursting into tears. More a sock to the jaw and then, when he was rubbing his face, another for good measure.
‘I don’t know what you’re going on about and I think you should head back before they send out a search party.’
‘Hardly likely considering most of them are far too inebriated to have even missed me, and what I’m going on about is whether, when your crazy late nights are over, you head back to your place for wild sex…do you?’
‘I told you—that’s none of your business.’ Now she really needed to get out because something was happening and, while she didn’t quite know what, she did know that it was…dangerous for her. And thankfully he stepped aside. He even opened the door for her, but before she could make a break to the safety of the crowded club he was leaning down to her; she could feel the warmth of his breath against her ear and it made her shiver.
‘I take it that means no?’
She wanted to run but she didn’t. She walked away, head held high, without bothering to dignify his smirking remark with an answer.
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN Rose looked at the screen of her computer terminal she had the strangest sensation. Instead of seeing her programme run, she saw a face. His face. It was infuriating. Not only had the man got under her skin at the party nearly a week ago, but he was continuing to get under her skin when she should be concentrating on her work. She couldn’t figure it out because she had pointedly avoided mentioning him to Lily and out of sight should have meant out of mind.
Just as well her office wasn’t the sort of cosy little place where people might notice that she had been staring at the same code for the past fifteen minutes. In fact, the big pull about Fedco, when she had joined it five years previously, had been its size. Squatting like a giant patriarch on a retail site just outside London, it had been easily accessible by car, thereby enabling Rose to avoid the vagaries of the London transport system, and, once inside, she had been able to lose herself in the enormity of the building. Her friends all joked about leaving it behind, moving on to somewhere small, chic, designer and innovative where they could really exploit their talents, but in truth the thought of being at the cutting edge of technology in some small, upwardly mobile company terrified her. Small and cutting edge, in her head, spelt insecurity, whereas Fedco was as secure as they came, never mind that you were more a number than a face.
And where else could she sit scowling without someone telling her to get on with her work?
In between her scowls, she kept a sharp eye on the clock. She had never been one to clock-watch but she couldn’t wait to leave the building and get back home, where she could put her feet up and drag her thoughts away from her sister’s high-handed, arrogant boyfriend by watching a couple of hours of mindless television.
With fifteen minutes to go and just as she was finally beginning to get into her stride, an excited Maggie flew to her desk and announced, sotto voce, that there was a man waiting in Reception for her.
‘What man?’ Rose asked suspiciously, using the interruption as an excuse to switch off her computer and begin gathering her belongings.
‘A dishy one.’
‘I don’t know any dish…Hang on, what exactly does he look like?’ She could feel the colour crawling into her face.
‘Oh, you know, tall and dark and drop dead gorgeous.’
‘What the heck is he doing here?’
‘He who?’ Maggie looked as if swooning would become a real possibility within the next few minutes.
‘He my sister’s boyfriend.’ Rose slammed some files into her briefcase and banged it shut. ‘He the most arrogant man on the face of the earth…he the person with the manners of a wild boar…that he…’
‘Oh. Trust Lily to snap up another good one.’ Maggie visibly wilted. ‘Must be tough having a sister it’s impossible to compete with…not that I meant…not that I mean…’
‘I know what you meant, Mags, and you’re right—on the looks front she’s a hard act to follow…and she’s nice with it…’ Rose stood up, stuck on her coat and felt her stomach clench at the prospect of seeing Nick. ‘Although I’ve got to say that this is the sort of man that no woman in her right mind would dream of competing for. One of those “love ’em and leave ’em” types of guys who see women as notches on their bedpost, the more the merrier.’ The office was beginning to thin out as everybody began the exodus, off to enjoy the beginning of their weekend. ‘I mean—’ she leaned towards Maggie who gave a little yelp and stepped back ‘—the man is everything a woman should steer clear of—’
‘Thanks for the endorsement.’
Nick’s voice was so close to her that for a few seconds Rose didn’t believe that she had actually heard him. He was standing right behind them. She turned around slowly and hoped that she was more composed than she felt. At any rate more composed than Maggie, who had launched into an awkward introduction followed by some stuttering apologies about having to dash, simultaneously backing away from Nick’s unsmiling figure. Rose longed to do the same.
‘What do you think you’re doing here?’ Attack, she decided, was the best form of defence. ‘Is Lily with you?’
‘No. Should she be?’
‘Why are you here? Sneaking around?’ He had obviously come straight from work and he looked amazing, unfairly sexy considering he had probably spent his day at a desk somewhere. Wherever it was that very rich people spent their days. At the end of a tiring working day, she always seemed to look like something the cat dragged in. Rumpled hair that had spent the day progressively rebelling against clips and elastic bands, lip gloss that had disappeared some time between her morning snack and lunch-time baguette, face that was shiny under the fluorescent lighting.
‘We need to…have a chat about your sister…’
‘Why?’ Panic slammed into her. From experience, whenever someone had said to her that they needed to have a little chat, the little chat had never heralded good news. When she was growing up, Tony and Flora had always preceded their next, big, new adventure with a little chat. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Shall we take this conversation somewhere else?’ He would return to those insults of hers later. For the moment, he would see to it that they leave the bustling confines of her office. He didn’t have to glance around to know that he was attracting some very curious stares and, while this didn’t bother him in the slightest, he suspected it would give her ample ammunition to attack him for disrupting her life.
He wondered what he was doing here. In fact, he wondered how his highly ordered existence had become so embroiled, in such a short space of time, with two sisters whom he had not known from Adam a month ago. The one, yes, he could understand. Lily was beautiful, sweet-natured and helping her had been a balm for him after the annoyance of his last relationship.
But her sister?
‘No. I don’t want to go with you anywhere. Whatever you have to say can be said right here.’ Drugs? Debt? Pregnancy? Lord, what if Lily was pregnant with his child and too embarrassed to break the news herself? Rose tried to remember just how long Nick had been on the scene.
‘Come on.’
‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’
‘Right. In that case, I’ll just stroll out and leave you to stew in your own stubborn stupidity, shall I? Yo
u would rather make a point than listen to anything I have to say.’
‘That’s not true. It’s just that I…can’t leave yet. I still have heaps of work to do.’
‘Wearing your coat? With your computer switched off?’
Rose flushed and looked away. The more she argued with the man, the more she sensed a lively interest from the dwindling number of her colleagues still around. ‘Why didn’t Lily come herself? Is she in trouble?’
‘She…just seemed reluctant to tell you…this herself so I volunteered to do it on her behalf…Now, let’s get out of here.’
It only took them five minutes to make it out of the building, but it could have been five hours. Why would Lily be reluctant to talk to her? They had always talked about everything. At least until this man had come along.
She shot him a look of pure resentment.
‘You’ll have to put up with my driving, I’m afraid.’
‘My driver’s waiting. We’ll use him. I can deliver you back to your car later.’
Rose opened her mouth to protest and realised that he was waiting for the predictable objection.
‘Okay.’
‘Okay? Does that mean that you’re not going to launch into a feminist rant about being able to drive yourself?’
‘I never launch into feminist rants,’ Rose said hotly. ‘I just stand up for the things I believe in.’
‘You shoot your mouth off.’
‘I do not shoot my mouth off and I resent being told that I do.’
‘And I don’t much like the fact that you’re gossiping about me behind my back. I’m obviously on your mind if you feel so strongly about me.’
‘You are not on my mind!’ They had reached his car, how she had no idea because she had been so wrapped up in defending herself.
Nick pulled open the passenger door for her and she slid primly inside, making sure, he noted, to wrap her coat very tightly around her, as if depending on it for protection.
It was out of keeping for him to ever leave work at the ridiculous hour of four forty-five, but he wasn’t regretting his decision. Apart from the fact that he was doing Lily a favour, he was also enjoying himself with her sister. His palate, after years of getting precisely what and whom he wanted, was jaded. Rose, with her bristling, yapping aggression, was a novelty and who was he to resist the allure of the new?