by Lucy Keane
Once back home, she couldn’t any longer avoid a confrontation with Charlie on the subject of truancy. She could see that with every word she said she was antagonising him.
‘But it was only a couple of times!’
She sighed impatiently. She was getting nowhere. ‘Only a couple of times a week, you mean! This is serious, Charlie! How do you think I feel being rung up at the office by your headmaster and having to pretend to my boss that it was just to pass the time of day? Honestly, you could have got me the sack, and then we wouldn’t even have a roof over our heads!’
Her brother’s face had that closed, sullen look. She tried a new angle. ‘Look, Charlie, I know Julius seems a friendly and amusing guy to you, but he’s hell to work for most of the time and my job depends on not having any problems with irate headmasters!’
Calling Mr. Parry ‘irate’ was overstating it, but she could remember only too vividly that horrible sinking feeling she’d had when she’d heard who was on the other end of the line.
Her brother’s expression didn’t change. He got up abruptly.
‘OK,’ he said, without looking at her, and left the room.
She sighed again. What did ‘OK’ mean, for heaven’s sake? OK I won’t do it again? Or OK I’ve listened to you, now stop moaning at me? Which was no guarantee of anything.
Julius wasn’t a man to waste any time once he’d made his mind up about something, but she was surprised, and rather annoyed, to discover from Charlie only a day later that he had been invited by her boss to spend Saturday with his nephew. Julius had rung him when he got home from school. He would collect him from Applecot after breakfast and deliver him back late on Saturday evening.
‘I don’t remember being consulted about this!’ she began—and then relented. It wasn’t fair to take it out on her brother. She had been consulted—by Julius, if his having made a unilateral decision on the subject counted as a consultation. She had to admit he had talked sense, and there was a chance the new contact might be good for Charlie.
When Saturday came she didn’t even have a chance to say hello. Charlie, ready and waiting, had been out at the car before she’d had time to get to the front door, but Julius had merely given her a wave, before the Mercedes disappeared down the lane between the spiky winter hedges.
She looked doubtfully at the cat. ‘Well, Rasputin. What do you think of that? Do I get the impression he’s avoiding me? He could have waited!’
He didn’t wait to talk when he brought her brother back, either, merely dropping him at the gate.
‘He says sorry he can’t stop but he’s got to get back to the flat.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Nothing else?’
‘To say hi or something.’
Or something. But what, exactly? His arrangements with Charlie now seemed to be excluding her completely!
Charlie’s initial report on the day’s entertainment was that it was ‘brill’, and by degrees she got out of him details of an enviable lifestyle involving horses, stables, hot-air balloons, wine-making in the cellars, and a cast of characters—nephew, niece, sister, brother-in-law— that made up Julius’s home world. Including Fiona.
She felt a twinge of jealousy at that, though Charlie’s comments on her were not complimentary. ‘A bit of a pain,’ he summed her up, and added the information that she and Julius had had a row.
The glimpse into Julius’s private world was fascinating, but it hurt too, because it reminded her just how much a part of it Fiona was. Perhaps she shouldn’t have torn up that wedding invitation. She should have kept it as a salutary reminder that any sort of idle dreaming about her boss was only going to make her unhappy in the end.
She would have to be very careful. It was sometimes hard not to show him that she had an interest in him beyond what was appropriate to her situation as a grateful employee. Of course, she didn’t want to have to be grateful to him, but she hadn’t much choice. She thought again of Maxine’s comments about him. He’d probably run her through his mental computer in a file called ‘Amy—problems’ and the answer had come back as ‘generally in need of assistance’. She told herself she ought to feel pleased that now he knew a little more about her situation he was interested in helping her. He’d accepted the fact that she was running her own business in addition to her work at the office, and if the Charlie problems could be glossed over and her brother kept out of any real trouble she might be all right until she and Jess could finally devote themselves to Cookery Unlimited full-time. But it had landed her in a perpetual conflict of emotions—the strong attraction that didn’t seem to be getting any weaker, no matter how severely she tried to control it, warring with the humiliating feeling that he’d adopted her as his ‘good cause’!
Seeing him in the office again on Monday marked a further change. He was into a double dose of that bristling dynamic energy she could have done without. He had given her one of those ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ smiles as he strode through the reception area, following it with a curt instruction to get one of his City contacts on the phone, and immediately vanished into his office. She reflected rather crossly that she was back in the ‘inadequate secretary’ pigeon-hole once more; he would only notice her when things went wrong and he wondered again about sacking her.
The office ‘weather forecast’ initially estimated him at ‘fair’, but as the morning wore on it became obvious that that was giving way to a stormy frame of mind which didn’t seem to have much to do with work. A couple of unsuccessful phone calls didn’t usually have him on the hop, and as far as they could judge trading was fairly steady on the Stock Exchange.
His mood hadn’t improved the following day. He appeared to be on a remarkably short fuse.
‘I want that done by three o’clock.’
The crisp instruction was also a dismissal.
She looked down at the document in her hand.
‘But—’
‘No buts, Amy.’ His eyes met hers.
‘I’ll have to leave the—’
‘I don’t care what you leave,’ he interrupted brusquely. ‘Just get on with it.’
It was a measure of her suppressed feelings about him that she could no longer shrug off a remark like that— now she took it personally, and it hurt.
‘It’s probably Fiona problems,’ Jacquie muttered as she passed on the way to her desk. ‘No phone calls, no office visits from her for the last three weeks—what do we suspect? We suspect that someone—a certain fairhaired gentleman—has just sabotaged the wedding plans. The formidable Mrs. H-M wouldn’t be very pleased!’ Amy didn’t comment, but thought of what Charlie had told her. His allusion to the row seemed to back up office interpretations.
Julius was going to be away from the office for the last couple of days before Christmas—two more days closer to the wedding she didn’t want to think about. She tried to tell herself she was no better than Zoe, with a romantic crush on her boss because he was handsome and dynamic and sometimes teased her, but it wasn’t any use—because he was already so much more than that.
The only real bonus for her as a result of Julius’s absence would be the more relaxed atmosphere in the office. But given the choice she would far rather have his presence. There was a sort of dangerous sparkle in the air when he was around; when he was out the job became dull routine.
Her preparations for Christmas were rather haphazard. She brought a tree home from Wychford on the bus. Along with it had come a bargain offer of a bundle of holly, and an anaemic-looking sprig of mistletoe which she hung up in the porch rather than waste. But, apart from buying in some stock for a cooking job she and Jess had on Christmas Eve, the rest of the shopping would have to wait until the office cat was finally out of the way, and the mice would have an opportunity to extend their lunch-hours.
When the doorbell rang on Sunday evening, she thought at once that it must be Charlie without his key, back unexpectedly early from watching a video at Celia’s. She’d been preparing to indulge in her usual end-of-the-week
lassitude. She’d washed her hair and swathed it in a towel, from which the long dark red strands escaped untidily.
Shock for a moment deprived her of all speech. The very last person she might have expected to see—and there he was, on her doorstep!
‘Julius!’
Had he made some arrangement with Charlie?
He was wearing an expensive leather jacket and jeans, but even casual clothes didn’t make him look any less the office tycoon—she sensed something wound-up, businesslike, just in the way he stood there. His eyes instantly took in the towel, the grey sweatshirt with its Snoopy cartoon in dayglo pink borrowed from Charlie, the tracksuit bottoms, and the inevitable football socks… With all the wistful passion of a Cinderella, she wished then—despite her resolutions to do nothing that would suggest she had the faintest personal interest in him—that once, just once, he could see her really glamorously dressed!
‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’ he said, looking down at her in a way that made her knees suddenly go weak. ‘Or are you on your way out for an evening’s goalkeeping practice?’
She seemed to have lost her voice. ‘I—yes—Charlie’s not here—’
‘I haven’t come to see your brother. I’ve come to see you.’
‘Social or strictly business?’
She tried to sound flippant to disguise the nerves or whatever they were fluttering away inside her. It wasn’t just that he had caught her at a disadvantage—she felt intensely aware of him. In the office there were secretaries, word processors, telephones to put between them. Now there was nothing.
His face relaxed briefly into lines that creased the sides of his mouth, and there was a spark in his eyes that belied his next words. ‘Strictly business!’
‘Professional advice on the rewiring?’ She remembered what Charlie had said about his last visit. He laughed, and stepped forward into the small hallway, and she stood back to let him pass. She saw him notice the mistletoe, but he didn’t comment. His clothes smelled of the cold night air, fresh and invigorating. She wondered if she should offer to take his coat.
He eyed the towel turban again. ‘Sorry—I should have rung you.’ He didn’t sound in the least apologetic. ‘I’ve got a business proposition to discuss with you.’
It sounded depressingly formal. She took his jacket, careful as always that her fingers shouldn’t touch his, and stood wondering whether she ought to hang it up on the pegs in the same untidy manner as hers and Charlie’s. He had his own coat-hanger at work. He read her indecision, and sounded amused. ‘You don’t have to give it special treatment, you know, Amy! We’re not in the office now.’
She smiled, her eyes avoiding his this time. ‘So you mean you lead a double life?’ she joked, trying to dispel some of the awkwardness she felt.
‘I’m beginning to think I do.’
It wasn’t the answer she expected. Startled, she met his eyes directly. He was looking at her in a way she couldn’t interpret, and his words had been unmistakably double-edged. She’d spent so long trying to suppress the hope that the attraction might, despite everything, be mutual, she couldn’t now afford to believe what a sudden crazy suspicion told her he might be saying. But surely he couldn’t be, after he had been virtually ignoring her for the past week?
Terrified of making a fool of herself if she’d guessed wrong, she asked stiffly, ‘Would you like something to drink? It’s only tea or coffee, I’m afraid.’
‘Don’t make anything specially. I can’t stay long.’ She wasn’t intending to have a drink, but it seemed like a good idea now. It would give her something to do while she gathered her wits together. ‘I was just going to get a cup of tea.’
He followed her into the kitchen, and she felt as though every nerve-end was aware of him. In that confined space the air seemed to charge instantly with his own particular brand of energy. He put down the carrier bag he’d brought in with him on one of the surfaces.
‘I’ve brought you and Charlie a Christmas present— Charlie’s is outside in the car. This is for you.’
She didn’t know what to say, the gesture was so unexpected. She looked in the carrier. It contained a bottle of wine. ‘Julius!’ The chateau label was a famous one. ‘What—why are you giving me a present?’ This is stunningly expensive! she thought, in embarrassed confusion.
‘In lieu of the invalid’s grapes—you said you’d prefer to drink them.’
‘But I’m better now!’
‘OK, then take it as standard office Christmas handout. You said when you came to dinner the other night you liked good wine.’
But she didn’t want him to get away with a remark like that—it gave her no clues. ‘I didn’t come to dinner that night—I came to cook for you!’
The unusual grey eyes with their dark-ringed irises met hers, but the look he gave her was again disappointingly enigmatic. ‘If that’s the way you want to see it.’ He changed the subject abruptly. ‘I’ll unload Charlie’s Christmas present now, if you don’t mind. Is there anywhere you can stack logs?’
‘It’s very kind of you to give us all this.’ She couldn’t help sounding doubtful. Ought she to accept it? ‘Surely you don’t do it for Zoe’s brothers and sisters, and Jacquie’s grandma as well?’
He glanced at her, and smiled, his eyes suddenly lighting with genuine humour in just the way that sparked a response deep inside her despite her reservations. ‘Not the family extras, no—but then as far as I’m aware Jacquie’s grandma isn’t a potential delinquent! Anyway, I couldn’t live with the thought of Charlie spending Christmas scouring the countryside for fir-cones, which he assured me was going to be his fate.’
‘So all this is Charlie’s fault?’ She laughed too, but awkwardly. She was secretly appalled at the thought of what her brother might have been telling the man who was her employer. She remembered how she’d made a joke to herself about busking in shopping centres. But there were ways and ways of begging!
His criticism of her fuel shed went some way to restoring that healthy antagonism that kept things in perspective. It was, according to him, badly stacked—Charlie’s work; he’d piled her last load of logs under a leak in the roof—and he insisted on bringing a great deal of damp wood into the kitchen, where it took up most of the available floor space and shed woodlice on to the tiles.
‘You’ll never have a decent fire if you don’t dry it out,’ he told her impatiently. ‘It’s just a waste. This stuff looks as though you’ve excavated it from a local swamp.’ Why did she always get the feeling that he regarded her as totally inept when it came to practical matters?
‘I stack the new wood by the fire!’ she argued. ‘That dries it perfectly!’
‘Yes. In quantities ideal for the average doll’s house.’
‘I can only afford to heat the average doll’s house!’ He gave her a sharp look at that, but didn’t reply. She’d made the tea while some of the unloading had been going on, and now she took it into the sitting-room. The fire was already laid, but unlit for economy reasons. The towel that swathed her hair fell down twice while she was lighting it. She was aware of Julius watching her. The look in his eyes disconcerted her—it could only be described as appraisal.
There was a pause, and it was while she pulled the towel away completely, letting her hair fall in long strands round her shoulders, that he said unexpectedly, ‘You’re an extraordinary woman, Amy—no one else I know could wear such dreadful clothes and still look such a siren.’
His expression gave her no clues, and she didn’t know how to react—she had to be mistaken—‘siren’ was the word he’d used in an allusion to what had happened that night at his flat! How could he describe her like that now, dressed as she was in her awful clothes with hair that must look like wet red string? He couldn’t really be telling her he still found her so attractive!
If only Charlie would come home! When he was around, this couldn’t happen. If it was happening. But his next words didn’t seem very serious, and then she wondered if he was
trying to defuse some of the peculiar tension that seemed to be building up.
‘Lighting fires and boiling kettles—I suppose it is appropriate to a witch after all.’ ‘Witch’ evoked an image very different from ‘siren’. She felt relieved—and a little disappointed.
‘And what about those other skills you’re supposed to have,’ he went on, ‘like telling my future? You promised me a tea-leaf consultation, remember?’
‘That was your idea,’ she protested quickly.
‘Come on—don’t tell me you don’t know how to do it!’
‘We’ve got tea-bags.’
‘That shouldn’t deter someone like you.’
What did he mean by that? On impulse, she got up, and standing in front of him gingerly took his empty cup. She pretended to glance into it, and then, without stopping to analyse what was prompting her, said rather quickly, ‘I can see a ring—perhaps two rings. And a lot of people in a church—and a journey. And I’m sure you’ll live happily ever after!’
There was an awful pause.
She didn’t know why she’d let herself say it. It was about as strong a message as she could give that he had no business to be making such ambiguous comments— flirting with her even, if that was what he was doing.
She wished he would say something. She couldn’t look at him. That had been a stupid thing to say—it let him know very clearly the trend of her thoughts, when she had probably misread the situation completely. After what seemed an age, he stretched out and took the cup from her fingers, putting it on a low table.
‘OK,’ he said quietly, but there was a definite edge to his voice now that told her her words had gone home. The temperature of the room seemed to have dropped several degrees. ‘Now let me tell you your immediate future—’
Her heart gave an ominous thud.
‘Julius—I ’ She ought to apologise before it got any worse.
‘You’re going to get an offer.’ He ignored her interruption, sounding suddenly cool and businesslike—as though he were interviewing her all over again. ‘It’s an offer you should accept. It leads to money, and foreign travel.’