Aiden stopped. “I’m being intrusive, aren’t I?”
She gave him a small smile, but the blue of her eyes had darkened. “Don’t worry about it. It was a long time ago.”
He really, really wanted to ask when her mother had died. Does she have any other family? Where does she live? He made a huge effort to return to impersonal subjects; he wasn’t normally so nosy. “So how many times have you temped for Marlowe’s? You seem to know it quite well.”
“This is the third time, and I’m good at fitting in.” She wrapped spaghetti round her fork, twirling it in the spicy tomato sauce. “I spent last summer here, and then I did some part time fill-in for a maternity leave in March.” She licked the sauce from her fork.
“You’ve done a great job finding the apartment.” His eyes followed the movement of her tongue.
“You already said that.” She rolled her eyes again. “It was really difficult. I had to pick up the phone at least twice.”
He laughed.
She put her fork down. “How’s your father doing?”
“Okay. He’s due out of hospital tomorrow. If everything goes well, I’ll spend tomorrow night with them and move out the day after.”
“Will he be coming back to work?”
Aiden shrugged. “He says so, but I don’t know.”
“Would you stay on?”
He lost the train of his thoughts as her wide blue eyes focussed on him.
“Mr Marlowe?”
“No way.” He waited while the waiter cleared their plates. “I have absolutely no interest in construction.”
“What is it you do?”
He told her about the venture capital investment company he and his partners had founded five years earlier. “We specialise in biotechnology. It’s an exciting area to be in, but you wait a long time for any return on your investment.” He waved at the waiter. “I’d like coffee. A double espresso, please.” He looked at Tallulah.
“A macchiato,” she said.
“You have an unusual name.” It suited her.
“I chose it myself.” She leaned back, smiling.
He raised his eyebrows.
“I was called Jade. I changed it when I was fourteen.”
“Jade?”
She pulled a face.
“No, you don’t look like a Jade.”
“Do I look like a Tallulah?”
“You look like a Tinkerbelle.”
She stared at him, and he felt a slight embarrassment. Am I flirting with her? My administrative assistant? He didn’t do that. I’m becoming a cliché, he thought. It had to be the stress of the past week. He drained the strong coffee and stood up. “We’d best get back.”
On the way, he tried to keep the conversation impersonal and asked her where she lived.
“King’s Cross.”
“Not far then?”
She shook her head and followed him back into the building.
Chapter 8
Tallulah read through the corrected report one last time, slipped it into a folder, and added it to the stack already on her desk. Aiden was out at a construction site but was due back any time. She was a lot happier working for him than she had been in the legal department. For one thing, the work was more varied, and there was a lot of it. She knew she thrived on deadlines and pressure—a character trait that was probably a leftover from her highly challenging childhood years. Aiden wasn’t as bad as she’d thought he would be either, and certainly not as bad as the human resources department had hinted. She’d worked for him for two weeks now, and while he’d been out of the office for a lot of that time, he appeared fairly easy going when he was present. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, but she knew she wasn’t a fool. As long as she didn’t allow herself to drool over him, everything would be fine.
The senior management team viewed him with suspicion and a general air of anxiety, but in Tallulah’s opinion, they’d probably been coasting for years and had been shaken out of their comfort zone. Aiden was rattling a lot of cages, checking a lot of the recent projects in much more detail than they really warranted. He had her gathering and collating old quotes, financial plans, and accounts. She wouldn’t have had him down as a micro-manager.
She picked up the phone as soon as it started to ring. The number was an internal one she didn’t recognise.
“Can I speak to Mr Marlowe?
“He’s not in the office at the moment. Can I take a message?”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“Any time now I think.” She glanced at her watch.
“Could you ask him to give me a ring as soon as he gets in? It’s Paul Goodman from site security.”
Tallulah told him she’d pass the message on and wondered why he’d sounded so spooked.
Aiden strode into the office five minutes later, shirt sleeves rolled above his elbows and jacket hooked over one finger. She passed on the message.
“Site security?” He stopped in front of her desk and pulled a face. “I wonder what they want.” He left the door open while he made the call.
She listened unashamedly.
“What? Here?”
There was a moment of silence from Aiden’s end of the call.
“Bring them up then. I’ll talk to them in the office.” He put the phone down carefully.
“Is there a problem?” Tallulah was dying to know.
Aiden gave her a blank look. “It’s the police.”
“The police?” Her face must have shown her confusion.
“Something to do with drugs.”
“Drugs?” She knew she sounded stupid. “What sort of drugs?”
“Recreational drugs. Not the aspirin kind.” He paced to her window and looked out, his back rigid with tension.
Tallulah’s heart sank. When drugs were mentioned, she couldn’t help remembering what they’d done to her mother. Ellie Becks had had a troubled relationship with a whole selection of substances, from alcohol to heroin. Her addiction had made her lose all connection with reality, was responsible for her series of abusive relationships, and had led to her losing her youngest children who had been born with their own drug-related problems. In the end, it had led to her death.
She took a deep breath. That was the past. Ellie was dead; her children had escaped. None of them so far had inherited the fatal attraction, although Tallulah had worried about Mia for a while. She inspected Aiden as surreptitiously as she could. Why are the police here? Surely he’s not a user? It couldn’t be possible; his skin glowed with health, his energy levels were phenomenal, and he’d never even shown signs of a hangover.
There was a knock on the door, and a man she’d never seen before strode in without waiting for an invitation. He ignored her and made a beeline for Aiden who turned away from the window. Two uniformed policemen waited in the doorway.
“Mr Marlowe.” The man held out his hand. Aiden was a tall man, but his visitor towered over him and must have weighed twice as much. “I’m Paul Goodman, head of security.”
Aiden shook his hand. “I’m sorry I haven’t been round to your department yet.”
“No problem.” Paul gestured towards the policemen. “I think we might have an issue.”
Aiden beckoned to the policemen. “We can talk in my office.” He sounded pissed off but not nervous.
All four of the men disappeared into the office, and the door swung closed behind them.
Tallulah stared at it. In the six weeks she’d worked at Marlowe’s, she hadn’t noticed any evidence of drug use, or at least not at work. Everyone knew it happened all over the city, but she’d never seen it at Marlowe’s. She shook off her depression and returned to her work.
Half an hour later, the police came out of Aiden’s office, followed immediately by Paul
Goodman. They walked past her desk without acknowledging her.
Aiden strolled out after them, his mouth tense. He folded his arms and watched them leave.
“Is everything all right?”
He glared at her. “Everything’s fine. We’ve been nurturing a trainee drug lord on the premises, but everything’s just peachy.”
“What?”
His scowl deepened. “The police raided a club. They had a tipoff. One of the people they caught worked here, and he told the police that his dealer did too.”
Tallulah’s mouth dropped open. “Who was it?”
“Bloody Davy Tollington-Rees. Your predecessor. My last admin assistant.”
“Are they going to arrest him?”
“I hope so. There’re a couple of girls in hospital—adverse reaction. One of them’s in intensive care. He’s not at work today though.”
“Holiday?”
“Off sick.”
Tallulah shook her head, betting he’d never come back. She hadn’t met him, but she’d seen the state of the microscopic amount of work he’d done while he worked for Aiden. He could easily be the sort of person who’d do something stupid like deal at work.
“They’ll pick him up at home,” Aiden said. “His family connections won’t help him there.”
“I bet they will,” Tallulah muttered. She couldn’t imagine someone with a name like Davy Tollington-Rees would get a custodial sentence.
Aiden gave her a doubtful look. “The police said that one of the girls they took into hospital worked here as well.” He rubbed his face with the heel of his hand. “I’m going to have to do something. No wonder the company’s in bad shape if people are using on the premises.”
“You don’t know they’re doing that,” Tallulah said. “I mean it does happen, and I’ve been in some places where there’s a queue in the toilets while the senior staff get their cocaine hits but I don’t think—”
“You think that’s a good thing?” Aiden glowered at her as though it was her fault.
She shrugged. It wasn’t something she’d ever been tempted to do.
“Have you used at work?” He stood in front of her desk, arms folded across his chest.
Tallulah leaned back in her chair, furious. What gives him the right to talk to me like that? She lost her hard-won calm for the first time in years. “I’ve never touched so much as a paracetamol. My mother died from an overdose, so I know where that path leads. Don’t you dare accuse me of being a junkie.” She shouted the last words at him.
“I wasn’t accusing. I was only—”
“I don’t want to hear.” She turned her eyes to her computer screen, shutting him out. He had no right to take his frustrations out on her. Rage boiled in her stomach, and she wasn’t sure why she was so upset.
Aiden hovered for a moment but returned to his own office without saying anything else. Tallulah pounded her keyboard ferociously.
Ten minutes later, a site-wide email went out.
The police have brought a serious problem to my attention. A member of staff has been caught selling banned substances. His employment will be terminated, as will the employment of any other individual caught indulging in illegal substances on company property or using company property for illegal activities. Anyone who wishes to discuss this may speak to me.
Aiden Marlowe
Tallulah deleted the message.
At four thirty, Aiden came out of his office, his briefcase in one hand and his jacket slung over his shoulder. “I’m going to visit my father. I’ll be in late tomorrow.”
Tallulah kept her head down, her focus on the keyboard.
Chapter 9
Aiden waited for his car to be brought round. He was not happy. Not only did he have an embezzler to deal with, his employees were dealing drugs and poisoning girls in nightclubs. Not my employees, he thought.
He wondered how the girl in intensive care was doing and which department she came from. I’ll find out tomorrow, find out if any of the rest of the staff are involved. What’s wrong with the company? he asked himself. It was only the head office that seemed to have problems; when he’d visited the construction site, everything had felt fine.
The car pulled up, and he got into the back without waiting for the driver to come around. He was sorry he’d upset Tallulah. How was I to know her mother was a drug casualty? He promised himself he would apologise the next day. He wondered again how old she’d been when her mother had died.
She still reminded him of a fairy. A slight fairy, an efficient fairy, an angry fairy, a fairy with sex appeal . . . He cut himself off. She was his assistant and off limits, at least until he knew how long he’d have to stay in London. It had only been a month since the fiasco with Sasha, and if he wanted a casual fling, there were better places to look than in his own office, especially as Tallulah gave off vibes suggesting that she would find a slug more appealing than him at the moment.
The car dropped him off at the private hospital near Guildford an hour and a half later. Once again, the traffic had been horrendous. New York traffic was bad enough, but he was convinced London and its surroundings were worse. In the end, he took his laptop out of his briefcase and reviewed the files Tallulah had sent. He pulled one of the plastic envelopes out of his briefcase and skimmed through the accounts for the rest of the journey.
His father was sitting in the armchair by his bed when Aiden arrived; pale and tired, but still looking better than the last time he’d visited. He should have left the hospital the previous week, but his recovery had been slower than anticipated. Francesca was already there, perched on the end of the bed.
She stood up when Aiden came in. “I’d better go.”
“Where’s Gareth?” Aiden had the idea that her fiancé was never far from her side.
“He had a late meeting.” Francesca glowered at him as though she still blamed him for the fact that he was in charge and not her. “See you later. I’ll be staying with Mother.”
Aiden sat on the empty upright chair. “How are you feeling?”
“Weary.” His father closed his eyes and rested his head against the cushions. “I didn’t think I’d be so tired.”
“You’ll be better once you’re home.” Aiden looked out the window at the neatly manicured gardens. The private hospital was luxurious and the private room better than a crowded ward, but it was still an institution.
“I suppose so. How’s it going at work? Settling in?”
“I’m just getting familiar with the current projects,” Aiden said. “Did you know Elaine resigned?”
“She came to see me,” his father said. His mouth formed a small, complacent smile. “She told me she’d only stayed so long because of me, and now was a good time for her to finish. She’s an amazing woman.”
Aiden held back his reaction. He thought it a terrible time to finish. He was furious with Elaine and wondered if the rumours about her and his father were still true; if their affair was still alive. I bet it is. It would certainly explain her attitude. He wasn’t going to ask.
“Her substitute’s been arrested.” Aiden assumed the police would have tracked Davy down by now. “His mother’s a friend of yours. Tollington-Rees?”
His father shook his head but didn’t look interested.
“My most-recent assistant looks like a fairy who’s run riot in a fabric shop.” Aiden tried to engage his father, but it was hard work.
“Have you any idea about the discrepancy in the accounts yet?”
Aiden’s mother pushed the door open. “You’re not talking about work, are you? William, remember what the doctor said?” She gave Aiden a reproving look. “Don’t bother him with company business.”
Aiden stood up. “I’ll leave you in peace. I’ll see you at dinner, Mother. And I’ll see y
ou tomorrow morning, Father.”
At nine-thirty the next morning, a private ambulance cruised slowly up the drive and came to a halt by the front door. Two agency nurses helped his father out of the back, both of them middle-aged women, dressed in crisp blue uniforms. They escorted him into the house with an easy competence, introducing themselves to Aiden and his mother, before inspecting the invalid’s accommodation. One of them would be on call at all times. Aiden suspected it was overkill; most people were discharged from hospital with no help whatsoever, but he couldn’t see his mother acting as ministering angel.
His father settled into an armchair in the small sunroom with a sigh of relief. “I want real coffee.”
“No,” his mother said. “You know you’ve been told you can’t have it.”
“Proper tea then?”
“You shouldn’t, but I suppose it won’t do you any harm.” She shook her head and rang for the maid.
Aiden could have used a cup of strong coffee, but he stuck to the tea provided. Francesca grimaced, but she did the same.
“How’s the progress on the Essex development?” William asked.
“It’s—”
“William. Stop it. And Aiden. You should know better.” His mother snapped at both of them.
“Sorry.” He held up his hands in surrender and instead told both his parents about aspects of his life in New York.
“How’s the girl you brought to Francesca’s engagement party?” his mother asked. “Sasha, wasn’t it? She was a nice girl and very pretty. Isn’t it time you were thinking of settling down?”
“It certainly is,” his father said. “Look at Francesca. She’s two years younger than you, and she’ll be married in November.”
Francesca raised her eyes to the ceiling.
“We split up,” Aiden said. “A week before I flew over here. We wanted different things.” He still thought he’d been committed to the relationship. Sasha turned weird. I don’t understand what went wrong. It was odd when he thought about how bad he felt the day after the breakup. It must have been the whiskey, because he hadn’t given her more than a moment’s thought since he arrived in the UK. He wondered if maybe he just hadn’t been that enthusiastic about her. They’d been together three years, and he’d almost forgotten her after a month. Perhaps she was right about my commitment.
Better Together Page 8