by Peggy Gaddis
Kenyon looked at her a trifle uncertainly, but she was busy clearing a table for the waiter and helping him to arrange the dishes, all hot beneath their metal covers or iced according to their nature.
“Well, I must admit that looks tempting,” said Kenyon, and sniffed appreciatively as Phyllis lifted one of the covers and a savory smell drifted forth.
“I’m so glad,” said Phyllis, smiling at him warmly. “I was afraid you’d think I’d been—well, officious in ordering dinner without consulting you. But it worries me when you drive yourself so hard, Mr. Rutledge, and—well, it is part of a good secretary’s duties to see that the boss takes care of his health!”
“And you do a very good job of it, I’m sure,” said Kenyon politely, as he unfolded his napkin and looked hungrily at the food.
Phyllis poured the cocktails, and Kenyon sniffed appreciatively as she lifted her glass in a little gay gesture of a toast.
He relaxed a bit, and she saw that he was enjoying himself. Her spirits rose and she began to talk, lightly, gaily, of things that had no connection whatever with the office. Of things that made him notice her, not merely as an office automaton but as a woman with interests of her own, with pleasures and troubles and problems that were a million miles removed from the office.
When he laughed, she was delighted; when he looked at her with interest warm in his eyes, she knew that she was winning. Oh, it wasn’t easy, but it was going to be worth it.
The blood drummed in her veins, and her face took on a soft flushed look, her eyes were dewy. Kenyon studied her curiously, and when her heart leaped because of the look in his eyes, that leaping was reflected in her faintly increased color and in her eyes.
“You know, it’s funny,” said Kenyon suddenly. “We’ve been working together more than five years, and yet I have the curious impression that I’ve never really seen you until this moment.”
She laughed softly. A laugh that was intimate, almost caressing; a laugh that spoke of the singing of her blood and called to some instinct within him that made him feel younger and gay and somehow very virile.
“That’s because from nine until five I’m an extremely efficient employee,” she told him lightly. “But now we’re relaxing a little. And maybe it’s because I’ve never looked upon you as merely my employer.”
“No?” asked Kenyon warily, and she cautioned herself that she must go more slowly. “I wonder why. I hope I haven’t been unbearable as an employer.”
“Of course not,” she assured him hastily, once more with that warm, almost caressing little smile. “It’s just because—well, I’ve always admired you rather a lot, and working as closely as we have—” She let it lie.
“Hmm!” said Kenyon noncommittally. He scrubbed out the tip of his cigarette and stood up, holding out his hand to her as though he had reached a decision. “Suppose we continue this—er—highly interesting conversation in slightly more comfortable—er—circumstances.”
Again she gave him that low, intriguing laugh and put her hand in his, and he drew her with him over to the deep-cushioned couch of pale leather and chromium that matched the modernistic chairs and furnishings of the office.
Phyllis sank down in a corner of the couch, drew one knee thoughtfully beneath her, and leaned forward to accept the light he was offering for her cigarette. The gesture brought her very close to him; so close that the faint, flower-like scent she had dared to put on earlier tantalized his senses just as she had planned it. It also brought again that intriguing, tempting display of soft breasts and the little blue-white shadow between. She looked up at him through her lashes—and suddenly the match had burned to Kenyon’s fingers and her cigarette was still unlighted. And then Kenyon took the cigarette from between her lips and flung it from him. His arms went about her, drawing her up close and hard against him. The blood sang triumphantly in her veins as she lifted her soft mouth, lips faintly parted, for the hard, eager down-drive of his own….
And a voice from the open doorway said with gentle mirth: “Well, well, well! I do hope I’m intruding—and in time!”
Kenyon almost flung Phyllis from him as he got to his feet and faced Letty. She stood in the doorway, an inscrutable look in her lovely jade-green eyes. Letty looked—as always—exquisite, in a very sheer summer frock of a dense, deep blue, through which her cream-white skin all but glowed. Her red-gold hair was adorned by a gay little hat that was simply a half-wreath of fresh white flowers that looked like gardenias, the band that held it in place concealed by narrow green leaves. Her long, soft black gloves were wrinkled beneath her elbows, where inevitably there were dimples. In short, Letty looked like something straight from one of the more exclusive fashion magazines. And nothing could have made Phyllis feel more hot and rumpled and untidy.
Sick with frustration, shaken to the depths with the bitterest humiliation, Phyllis was for the moment powerless to do or say anything. And Kenyon stood awkwardly, flushed and miserable, looking unpleasantly sweaty, his hands opening and closing, for all the world like a rather stupid small boy caught without an alibi in the jam closet.
Letty looked at the table set for two, with the remnants of a meal—the empty cocktail shaker, the two used glasses. And then her eyes, merry and not at all distressed, flickered over Kenyon and then to Phyllis.
“How very cozy!” she said silkily, and the very fact that she was not angry, that she was not hurling bitter accusations at them, that she seemed to find the whole thing merely amusing and faintly distasteful, added the final note of bitterness to Phyllis’ discomfort. Caught in the act—like some cheap little strumpet, she told herself furiously. “But, really, Kenyon, this … well, this is something a little beneath you, isn’t it? A cheap little office intrigue! I expected something much more subtle of you—and of Miss Gordon!”
“But—but see here, Letty, you don’t understand,” stammered Kenyon, and Letty’s airy eyebrows arched a little.
“Oh, come now, darling, please don’t insult my intelligence,” she said sweetly. “After all, there’s really nothing much to understand, is there? Except that you’re a male, and quite normal, and Miss Gordon is a more than ordinarily attractive young woman, and that you were alone here together. Only really, Kenyon, your apartment—or hers—wouldn’t it have been more … well, more discreet? I mean the door was unlocked. Suppose one of the scrubwomen—” She lifted her lovely shoulders, artfully veiled by the dense blue chiffon of her gown, in a little shrug that told them how distasteful the whole scene was.
“But I tell you, Letty, Miss Gordon and I were working late—” Kenyon tried to bluster, and Phyllis could not bear to look at him.
“Of course, darling, just as you and Miss Gordon have been working late rather frequently, now that I come to think of it,” said Letty gently. “I’m afraid I was stupid enough to accept that at face value. It’s rather nice I learned before our marriage, instead of afterwards, isn’t it, darling?”
Before he could manage an answer, she turned to Phyllis and said, smiling politely, “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse him now, Miss Gordon. After all, as his fiancée, I do have a few rights, and one is demanding that he keep his engagements with me regardless of his … his secret assignations with you.”
There was nothing Phyllis could say. She could only get to her feet, her face burning scarlet, and, unable to look at either of them, to go out of the room and into her own office.
Added to her bitter humiliation at being caught in such a situation by Letty, there was the pain of frustration. She had so nearly won her fight to spend a few golden hours in Kenyon’s arms. He had been intrigued; he had wanted her. He would have taken her—and perhaps then she might have been free of this aching need for him. Her emotion had flamed high and his had been rising to meet it, and to have Letty walk in at such a moment was an almost unbearable indignity.
She rested her elbows on her desk and hid her white, emotion-ravaged face behind her shaking hands. The bitterness of her humiliation was almost mo
re than she could bear, and added to it was the aching misery of a pride that was crumbled into dust.
She had no way of knowing how long she sat there before the door opened, and she looked up to see Letty standing there, leaning her slim, elegant back against the closed door, studying Phyllis with a curious, puzzled look.
“Really, Miss Gordon,” she said smoothly, “I don’t understand this at all. If you wanted an affair with Kenyon, and couldn’t find a better place to stage it than here in his office after hours, why telephone me and ask me to drop in? It sounds like some sort of a trap, though honestly I can’t see just what it could be.”
Phyllis was staring at her in shocked amazement.
“I telephoned you? Mrs. Lawrence, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” she said at last.
Letty looked more puzzled than ever.
“Well, somebody telephoned me—a woman, with a very pleasant voice,” said Letty a trifle grimly. “And she said that if I dropped in at my fiancé’s office about eight o’clock, it might be interesting, and hung up before I could ask any questions. And, well, I wondered if maybe you could have staged the whole thing with some idiotic idea that if I caught Kenyon practically in the act of … shall we say seducing—with her full consent and cooperation—his priceless secretary, I might break the engagement and the secretary get a chance to marry Kenyon? That sounds pretty silly, I admit—and yet what other purpose could you have had?”
“I never dreamed of such a thing—” stammered Phyllis, in abject humiliation.
“No, I don’t suppose you would, at that,” Letty observed thoughtfully. “But who in the world could have known that you and Kenyon were—well, planning something like this?”
“There was no plan. I mean it j-j-just happened,” stammered Phyllis.
Letty laughed, a little, tinkling, cynical laugh, and shook her lovely head. The scent of the gardenias that banded that head touched Phyllis so that she felt never again would she smell them without being a little sickened.
“Oh, no, my dear—really, you belittle my intelligence,” through a fog of misery and embarrassment she heard Letty saying gently. “I’m not a child; I’m a woman of the world. I pride myself I’m even a bit sophisticated. I know men. I know Kenyon. He’s—well, perhaps he’s a bit of a fool where women are concerned, but I rather like that about him. I know that he’d never attempt to seduce a girl in his own office unless the girl gave him the ‘go-ahead’ signal. In fact,” she finished almost as though she spoke her thoughts aloud, “there are moments when I could almost believe Kenyon a virgin—though that’s ridiculous when you remember that he’s thirty-six and very rich and there are always women flinging themselves at his head.”
Phyllis said nothing. Her teeth were sunk hard in her lower lip and her hands were clenched tightly to fight back the threat of tears that would have added the final unbearable drop of bitterness to the present moment, a moment that was already worse than anything that had ever happened to her in all her life.
Letty said quietly after a while, “You’re in love with Kenyon, aren’t you, Miss Gordon?”
Phyllis put her shaking hands over her white face, and Letty studied her for a moment, a curious blend of pity and contempt in her lovely jade-green eyes.
“Too bad,” said Letty. “I’m truly sorry. Being in love with him will make it difficult for you to be satisfied with the sort of husband you will be likely to find in your own walk of life. You’re much to—er—tempting to be allowed to shrivel up into a neurotic, bitter old maid. But really, if you yearn to be Kenyon’s mistress, do, for pity’s sake, be a little more discreet. Kenyon’s income would easily manage a nice, quiet apartment, but I insist that you stop using the office.”
Phyllis said through her teeth and behind shaking hands, with complete surrender and abject entreaty in her voice, “Oh, please—”
And politely, as though they had discussed nothing more important than the weather, Letty said, “I’m so sorry.”
Phyllis managed to say, “I will resign my job tomorrow.”
Letty asked, wide-eyed, “But for goodness sake, why?”
Phyllis flung up her head and stared at Letty.
“Do you mean you don’t want me to?” she gasped.
Letty said, “But why should I? After all, you are thoroughly competent, and I know Ken relies on you a lot, and since you’ve both had your lesson, I feel quite sure there will never be a repetition of this little episode. So why should you give up a good, well-paid job where you are a valued, trusted employee, just because you—er—made a pass at the boss? I’m sure if every secretary who made a pass at the boss—without completing it—were discharged, there’d be a lot of bosses yelling for experienced help.”
Her voice invited Phyllis to laugh with her, but Phyllis had never been further from laughter in all her life.
A moment later, a hang-dog-looking Kenyon, bitterly embarrassed, almost pathetically humble, said to Letty, “I—er—am ready.”
“Are you, darling? Then we can still make the second act—they say the first one isn’t very good, anyway,” said Letty. She slipped her hand through his arm, and said over her shoulder to Phyllis, “Goodnight, Miss Gordon, and do forgive me for intruding, won’t you? It was tactless of me, and very inconsiderate.”
“Letty, for the Lord’s sake—” protested Kenyon miserably, and then they were gone.
Phyllis heard the crisp staccato of Letty’s tall heels crossing the office floor, and then the closing of the door, and still she sat on, sick with shame and bitterness.
She had always turned up her pretty nose at silly girls who got entangled in ugly sex affairs; she had always steered clear of them. That was why she had been a virgin when she had first gone into Terry’s arms, solacing her burning need for Kenyon with Terry’s complete and utter adoration.
The thought of Terry caused her to stiffen a little. Why, damn him, it had been Terry who had suggested that she give herself to Kenyon, to rid herself of the need for him. She knew now that had been twisted reasoning; she did not believe that Terry had really meant it. He had spoken out of the bitterness of wanting her, and the frustration of knowing that though she lay in his arms, it was Kenyon’s that she wanted….
The sound of a subdued clatter in the outer office finally roused her to a realization that it was late. She pulled herself up from her desk, and a glimpse of her white face and dark eyes in the mirror above the bookshelf startled her. She looked like a hag, she told herself savagely, and did what she could with powder, lipstick and rouge before she put on her hat and went out into Kenyon’s office.
She put away the papers on which they had been working, and flung a cloth over the disordered table. When she saw that the office was in its normal condition, she switched out the lights and walked through the outer office, where the scrubwomen paused in their work to watch her go.
CHAPTER NINE
PHYLLIS HOPED WITH all her heart that Anice would be in bed and asleep when she got home. But the moment she fitted her key into the lock, her tired heart sank. For Anice called swiftly, “Is that you, Cousin Phyllis? Goodness. I was worried about you. That Mr. Rutledge is just a brute to make you work this late—and gracious me, how tired you look.”
“I’m very tired,” agreed Phyllis.
“But I’ve got a bit of dinner for you—I knew you wouldn’t have time for a decent meal,” said Anice, following Phyllis to the bedroom door.
“No food, thanks, Anice—just sleep,” said Phyllis. Then, goaded by the girl’s wide-eyed protest, she said curtly, “I had dinner. Mr. Rutledge had food sent up from the restaurant on the corner. It was very good.”
“Oh,” said Anice, and smiled her relief. “I’m so glad.”
Phyllis turned on her with sudden suspicion, and before she could control the words, she demanded sharply, “Anice, did you telephone Mrs. Lawrence and suggest that if she dropped in at Mr. Rutledge’s office about eight, she’d discover something …”
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br /> Anice was wide-eyed with shock.
“Mrs. Lawrence? Who is she? Good gracious. Phyllis, why would I do that? What would I want to do that for? You and Mr. Rutledge were working—” she protested, hurt and puzzled.
Phyllis studied her for a long moment.
“Well, someone, a woman with a very pleasant voice, telephoned Mrs. Lawrence—” began Phyllis.
“And Mrs. Lawrence acted on an anonymous call like that?” protested Anice, bewildered. “Goodness, either she isn’t very much in love with him or else she must be a very suspicious person. Why, Cousin Phyllis, you’ve been working late with Mr. Rutledge one or two nights a week for just ages. Why should Mrs. Lawrence all of a sudden come all over suspicious and barge in?”
“I suppose she became suspicious because of a telephone call.”
Anice laughed. “Well, she must have felt like a perfect fool when she walked in and found you working your heads off. I’d have enjoyed seeing her face—it must have been a scream!” she caroled lightly, and missed nothing of the slight change in Phyllis’ expression. “Of course, you were working—” she finished gently.
“Naturally,” Phyllis flashed at her, her tone shaking. “What did you suppose we would be doing?”
Anice grinned impishly. “You and Mr. Rutledge—nothing else. But there are a couple of gals in that office who are so crazy about Mr. Rutledge he wouldn’t be safe alone with them for five minutes,” she said frankly.
Phyllis looked at her sharply.
“Oh?” she said, and then slowly. “Could one of them have telephoned Mrs. Lawrence?”
“Gosh, I wouldn’t know, Cousin Phyllis. It was a rotten thing to do. I’d hate to accuse anyone unless I had some real evidence, and I haven’t a speck. I just know the way the girls talk sometimes in what they call ‘the little girls’ powder room. Most of them think Mr. Rutledge is a sort of god. I think he’s a pain in the neck, myself—he’s always so stiff and so self-important, as though he went around saying, ‘I’m Kenyon Rutledge, the untouchable, and I’m so important you must always stand up and bow three times when I come in the room.’”