by Kim Lawrence
‘You didn’t look very gobsmacked to me.’
‘I hide my emotions behind a suave exterior,’ he said blandly.
‘Are you laughing at me?’ This very definite suspicion only increased her deep sense of misuse.
‘Why the anger, Miss Rachel French? And don’t bother denying it; your eyes have been flashing fire since you first saw me.’
To hell with office politics—she was going to tell him what she thought of him: walking into her life and disappearing just as abruptly, leaving a vague sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness in his wake…
‘I hate frauds.’ To think he’d infiltrated her thoughts enough to make her wonder, at the most unexpected moments, what he was doing. Now it turned out his lifestyle was indeed far removed from her own, but not in the direction she’d imagined! She doubted he wanted rescuing from his pampered, privileged existence.
‘I didn’t lie precisely.’ A quick mental review confirmed this was correct. His ethics weren’t so irreproachable that he wouldn’t have bent the truth a little if required.
‘Steven…?’
‘That was Charlie’s idea.’
‘Why would my daughter make up your name?’ she said scornfully.
‘It had something to do with claiming me as her long-lost brother. I took to it right off; there’s something solid and dependable about a Steven. Admittedly I’m not Steven, but I’m still the man who rescued your daughter—despite her opposition, I might add.’
He had to remind her, didn’t he? Rachel chewed her full lower lip distractedly; she couldn’t deny the truth of his observation—at least the bit she could follow. The part about brothers made no sense at all.
‘You were laughing at me—us. I’m sure you’ll dine out for the next month on the story: “what happened when I went slumming”. I felt sorry for you!’ She couldn’t have sounded shrill if she’d tried but indignation did make her rather deep, husky voice rise an octave.
‘Pity is a very negative emotion,’ he reminded her. ‘Sorry, photographic memory. Only pity’s not all you felt.’ The way his dark eyes moved over her face alarmed her almost as much as the soft accusation. To her relief he didn’t pursue it. ‘I find it curious that you approved of me more when you thought I was one of the great unwashed. An unforgivable sin, I know, to turn out to be neither a paid-up member of the underworld nor a thug with a heart of gold. Has it occurred to you that your craving for a bit of…how can I put this delicately?…rough—’ an inarticulate squeak of outrage escaped Rachel’s pale lips and he reacted as if she’d uttered soothing words of encouragement ‘—could be a reaction against the sort of man you date? You’re looking for someone outrageous and slightly dangerous.’
‘I’m not looking full stop!’
‘When I meet a woman she generally knows what I do, who my family is and can usually hazard a fairly accurate guess at my bank balance…’
Rachel watched as he straddled a chair that was twin to the one she was sat upon. ‘My heart bleeds…and you just desperately want someone to love you for the real you.’ Her voice fairly dripped with sarcasm. ‘Which is no doubt why you roam the streets looking like a drug dealer!’
‘Do you make a habit of inviting drug dealers into your home?’ he enquired with interest.
The fingers that were laid lightly along the back of the chair were very long and elegant, she noticed irrelevantly, and his hands were shapely and strong. His words made her hospitality suddenly seem worryingly reckless.
‘I was grateful—’ she began defensively, before his urbane, polished tones interrupted her.
‘Was?’
‘Am—I am grateful,’ she said from between clenched teeth, sounding anything but. ‘I was sorry for you if you must know.’ That will teach me to get all sloppy and sentimental, she thought.
‘You shouldn’t blame yourself, you know. Your body is chemically programmed to find a mate. Hormones aren’t too concerned with financial prospects or social standing.’
‘Leave my hormones out of this!’ she yelled.
‘Fine,’ he said, with a languid smile that made her want to scream. ‘I can work with pity. As ulterior motives go, I think I prefer pity to avarice.’
‘Only someone from an obscenely privileged background could say anything so stupid.’
‘You have strong opinions about wealth, Rachel?’
‘No, just you. I think you’re a spoilt…irresponsible—’ She broke off, biting down hard on her lower lip to stop further imprudent remarks escaping.
‘I sense you were just warming to your theme,’ he said, with a provoking smile. ‘Don’t let the fact I’m your boss cramp your style.’
‘Temporary boss.’
‘Thank God, she breathed fervently?’ he surmised.
‘You’re very intuitive.’
‘And you’re very suspicious, Miss French. Let’s get a few things straight. When I met your daughter she was about to be carted off to the police station by a concerned couple. Being a child with limitless resources and a cool head, she decided to claim me as her brother. Apparently I looked mean enough to lack credibility in the eyes of the law and to get rid of the nice people—’
Rachel’s angry glare turned slowly thoughtful. That did sound awfully like something Charlie would do. ‘That doesn’t explain the way you looked or the fact you made me think…’ She shook her head doubtfully. ‘Why didn’t you just tell me?’
‘If you work here you’ll know I’ve just come back from a six-month stint on a cattle ranch in Queensland, and that’s the only reason I lacked a certain sartorial elegance. The conclusions about my background were all yours and your charming companion’s. How was dinner at the Wilsons’? Did you wear something suitable?’
Rachel stiffened, warm colour seeping under her skin. ‘Nigel has a cold; we didn’t go,’ she ground out.
‘I put Charlie in a taxi and followed her with the express intention of giving her delinquent parents a piece of my mind. It took me about ten seconds to realise I’d misread the situation, and less than that to be rendered speechless by your beauty…’
Rachel gritted her teeth and opened her mouth to tell him in no uncertain terms that the only desire such ridiculous statements evoked in her was one to throw up! Suddenly she recalled that vacant expression that had first made her think he was a bit challenged in the intellectual department. He couldn’t actually be telling the truth—could he? For some reason this absurd notion impaired her ability to think straight.
‘Don’t say things like that!’
‘This is the new me, open and transparent.’
‘I’m not beautiful, I’m passably attractive.’ Letting him see she was rattled seemed a bad idea. It wasn’t too difficult to see how he’d achieved his reputation as a womaniser.
‘As they say,’ he remarked with an almost offhand shrug, ‘it’s all in the eye of the beholder, and this beholder,’ he said, touching his chest with an open hand, ‘sees beauty. I also see a kind heart.’
‘A fact you ruthlessly exploited,’ she reminded him, trying hard to cling to her sense of outrage.
‘I was tempted,’ he admitted, ‘but I didn’t think your charity would extend as far as a bed for the night.’
She gave a gasp of outrage. ‘You were right!’ Had he no shame?
‘I feel much better now we’ve sorted that out,’ he confessed with a sigh. ‘I was wondering how I was going to bite the bullet and tell you I’m actually quite respectable. I was hoping my disreputable appearance didn’t account for all of the attraction, and if you have a thing about leather…’
‘Respectable!’ she choked incredulously. ‘Am I supposed to believe you’d ever have remembered me except as an amusing story to relate over dinner?’
‘Oh, believe it,’ he said, placing his chin in one cupped hand that rested on the chair-back. Suddenly he wasn’t laughing at all. Rachel thought the expression in his eyes should have carried a government health warning; happily she was immune to shall
ow flattery. She could be objective about the ripple of movement in her belly and the rash of gooseflesh that erupted over her hot skin.
‘It also makes it all much simpler to ask you out to dinner,’ he added cheerfully.
‘I’ll speak slowly and clearly because I can now see my first impression of you was correct…’
‘What was your first impression?’
‘Muscularly overdeveloped and intellectually undeveloped—a beautiful imbecile!’ she flared in a goaded voice. She realised too late the revealing nature of this confession. ‘I have a fiancé,’ she hurried on swiftly. ‘I don’t date other men.’
‘I don’t see a ring,’ he remarked sceptically.
‘We have an understanding.’
‘He didn’t seem to understand you too well the other night. Nice bloke, no doubt, but a bit lacking in the imagination department.’
Of all the arrogant, impossible… ‘For your information Nigel is very imaginative,’ she spat back.
‘I’m happy for you,’ he said solemnly. Confused, Rachel stared back. ‘A good sex life is important.’
‘I didn’t mean Nigel is imaginative in bed!’ She hated knowing he’d made her flush to the roots of her hair.
‘I didn’t really think he was,’ Benedict responded, nodding sympathetically.
The blood was pounding in her ears. ‘Nigel is worth ten of you!’
‘That’s being a bit severe,’ he remonstrated. ‘I did detect the very early stages of a paunch, but that’s to be expected in men of a certain age. He seemed very well preserved to me. Tell me, are your parents still alive?’
This apparently inexplicable change of subject tipped the balance away from inarticulate fury and towards confusion. ‘No, they’re not; my aunt Janet brought me up.’ Janet French had been there all her life and the recent loss of the lady with the indomitable spirit still hurt badly.
‘An all-female household,’ he said triumphantly. ‘I thought so, and now there’s just you and Charlie. You’re looking for a father substitute, not a lover, Rachel.’
‘Lame-brained psycho-babble.’ Her lip curled with genuine scorn. ‘This is sexual harassment.’
‘This is mutual attraction; we both knew that from the moment we set eyes on each other. If I wasn’t a gentleman I’d have done more than kiss you goodnight. Only I wanted to know if the attraction wasn’t totally the forbidden fruit thing. I see now it isn’t.’
‘Your ego is unbelievable!’ she gasped. ‘I wouldn’t have you if you came gift-wrapped.’
‘Is that a fetishist thing? he enquired. ‘Because I have to tell you I’m not really into that sort of thing.’
‘And I’m not into smutty innuendo!’
‘If you prefer, we’ll keep our personal and professional relationship strictly separate. That’s fine by me. A freak set of coincidences is the only reason this conversation is taking place in the work environment. We needed to clear the air.’
And he thought the atmosphere was clear! The only thing that was clear to her was that she ought to keep her dealings with Benedict Arden to a minimum.
‘We don’t have a personal relationship,’ she felt impelled to point out.
He was persistent; you had to give him that. If her circumstances had been different she might even have been flattered. Be honest, Rachel, he is extraordinarily attractive, she told herself.
If she’d been a carefree, single thirty-year-old, who knew? Temptation might have overcome good sense. But she wasn’t. She had a child, responsibilities. She didn’t act on impulse—she couldn’t act on impulse. She’d done that once when she was a naive nineteen-year-old and she knew all about consequences—not that she’d ever regretted the decision to keep her child.
‘We will, Rachel,’ he said with an unshakeable confidence she found disturbing.
‘I’m a single mother.’
‘So? I’m not applying for the post of father. Do you only date potential daddy figures, Rachel? Had you decided what you were going to do when Steve knocked on your door?’
The sly question slid neatly under her guard. ‘You! Given a choice, I wouldn’t have you within a fifty-mile radius of my daughter!’ His words had held an edge of mockery that made her long to hit him. What did Benedict Arden, the self-confessed hedonist, know about bringing up a child alone?
‘You know something? You’re even more shallow and two-dimensional than office gossip has led me to believe. It may shock you but it’s not all that unusual for people to consider someone else’s feelings other than their own.’
‘You want to know what I think?’ He remained palpably unmoved by her passionate annihilation of his character.
‘Would it make any difference if I said no?’
‘I think you’d decided to open the door to Steve, and not just to prove you’re not a snob.’
Rachel fixed a scornful expression on her face, though she knew his words would return to haunt her when she was alone later. Steve hadn’t existed but this man did and he had all the same bold sexuality. She instinctively knew that Benedict Arden was the more dangerous of the two.
‘You’re flesh and blood, not a machine; you can’t control your feelings. You’re a single woman who happens to have a child. You’re never going to marry good old Nigel, because when it comes right down to it, despite all his admirable qualities, he bores you rigid.’ He nodded with satisfaction as a revealingly guilty expression crept across her features. ‘I’m not asking you to do anything that will emotionally scar your daughter, I’m asking you to break bread with me and possibly open a bottle of wine—even two if you’re feeling reckless.’
‘Do you always do exactly what you want?’ she asked resentfully.
An odd expression flickered across his face, deepening the lines around his mouth and bringing an inexplicable bleakness to his eyes. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ he said cryptically. He pulled at the silk tie neatly knotted around his neck as if the constriction suddenly bothered him. ‘Are you free tonight?’
‘I don’t even like you.’ His mercurial temperament made it hard to keep up with his chain of thought.
‘Liking will come—I’m a very likeable guy; ask anyone.’ His smile held an attractive degree of self-mockery. ‘We could settle for mutual attraction for starters. Think about it,’ he advised. He glanced at the Rolex on his wrist. ‘The meeting with Kurt is in twenty minutes—right?’
Rachel glanced at her own watch and realised with a sense of shock that she’d forgotten completely about the morning’s tight schedule.
‘Yes,’ she said uncertainly.
‘When I had dealings with him last year he brought his own translator; you must have made an impression. You’re fluent in German?’ He stood up and Rachel followed suit. The switch into impersonal mode had been subtle but distinct.
‘German, Italian and French,’ she confirmed. When the translator hadn’t turned up she’d enjoyed the opportunity to utilise her skills.
She ought to have felt happy now they were on ground she felt confident about; she knew she was good at her job. Albert had taken over a portion of Benedict’s work, which was mainly corporate law, whilst he’d been out of the country, but this particular client had worked with Benedict before and wanted him to take charge now he was back in harness. She’d had the impression that Albert had been more than happy to relinquish the complicated case.
The client also wanted her, so she’d been transferred too to stand in for Benedict Arden’s PA who was taking annual leave. At the time she’d been quite happy to agree. At the time she hadn’t known who Benedict Arden was.
‘Why aren’t you working as a translator?’
‘I did when Charlie was a baby—manuscripts mostly.’
‘From home?’ She nodded. ‘That must have been quite an isolating experience.’
His perception startled her. ‘When childcare became easier I worked for a law firm near home.’
‘Where’s home?’
‘Shropshire.’
She paused, realising with a sense of shock how adept he was at drawing out information without revealing anything himself. Or maybe not—the memory of that bitter expression in his eyes when he’d implied he would have preferred not to be here flickered into her mind. She wondered whether she’d interpreted his economic words correctly. Was he already disillusioned with his career or did it simply interfere with his taste for the high life?
‘That’s where the aunt brought you up. And would I be way off the mark if I suggested this aunt wasn’t too keen on men?’
‘Experience taught me to be cautious, not indoctrination.’
‘Charlie’s father?’
‘My daughter is not a subject I discuss with strangers.’
‘You’re the subject I’m interested in, but if it makes you feel happier I’ll put that on hold.’
It didn’t make her feel happier but she welcomed the breathing space. She soon learnt, as she worked in close contact with him throughout the day, that, though she might doubt his dedication, his competence was undeniable. He caught on fast and had a knack of homing in on small but significant details that would take most people hours of arduous toil to discover. There had been none of the languid playboy about the man she’d worked with today, and despite herself she found the seeds of admiration germinating.
‘We work well together, don’t you think?’ She slid the last file into its place and didn’t respond even though she was overwhelmingly conscious of his presence. ‘Don’t tell Mags I said that; she’ll think I’m being disloyal. What time shall I pick you up?’
‘Pick me up?’ She couldn’t delay looking up; there was nothing left to fuss about with on her neat desk—where was an errant paper clip when she needed it?
‘For dinner.’
‘It’s a girls’ night in with a pizza take-away, and even if it wasn’t I don’t want to go out with you.’
‘Staying in would suit me.’
‘I’m trying to be polite.’
‘Don’t worry about manners; you should have left half an hour ago. This is your own time—be as rude as you like,’ he said generously.