by Helen Brooks
"He's such an out-and-out dish." A deep sigh had followed the statement, along with the sound of chairs being pulled out, and Lydia had grimaced sympathetically for whoever had spoken. They'd certainly got it bad! There had been a wealth of hunger in the female voice.
Boyfriend trouble, perhaps?
"I know." The other girl had added her sigh.
"But there's no way he'd look at me or you, Carol."
"Well, I can dream, can't I?" the first voice had said, a little indignantly.
"By all means, dream on, but as far as I know he's never dated an employee--not his style."
"Well, with the women he can have at his beck and call, it's not to be wondered at, is it?" the said Carol had replied tersely.
"Did you see that photo in the paper a few months back.
"Wolf Strade and friend" , the caption said. Some friend! With a figure like she'd got I bet they didn't play ludo all night. “A small, suggestive giggle had followed.
"Carol': " Well. It makes me mad. Why can't men see that ordinary working girls can be fun too? “Carol had said petulantly.
"You're getting positively sour in your old age," the other voice had said laughingly.
"And anyway, he'd be too much for you to handle. He was married once, you know, and since then he's had more women than I've had hot dinners, if only a quarter of the rum ours about him are true."
"Oh, they'd be true," Carol had sighed resignedly. "You've only to look into those beautiful blue eyes to know they'd be true, and frankly I'd be prepared to let him teach me anything, anything he knows."
Lydia had left the canteen at that point but the women's conversation had stayed with her all day, try as she might to dismiss it from her mind, and even now she could remember every word. It was stupid and irrational and quite out of character, but she had felt like slapping both of them, and that had horrified her almost as much as the fact that she had sat and listened to a private conversation. Had he been married? she wondered fretfully. And, if so, how had it ended and where was his ex now? What was the matter with her? She shook herself angrily. It was none of her business, it wasn't.
But why had he kissed her? She twisted restlessly in the big bed. Did he think she was easy, like some of the other women who threw themselves at him so blatantly? Well, she'd hardly done anything to dissuade him from such a line of thought, she reminded herself miserably.
She had returned the kiss until the very last moment.
_She knew it and he would have known it. He hadn't been holding her, trapping her in any way; she had been perfectly free to move away if she'd so wished. But she hadn't! The thought brought on a fresh deluge of humiliation and she sat up to punch her pillows violently into shape.
This couldn't continue. She'd be a nervous wreck if she worked for him much longer. The thought gathered steam as she lay there in the soft darkness, and by the time she drifted into a restless, troubled sleep her mind was made up.
She was leaving Strade Engineering and she would tell him so first thing on
Monday morning. Desperate situations needed desperate measures, and right now that was exactly how she felt--desperate.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lydia dressed very carefully for work the following Monday, choosing a demure high-necked blouse in pale coffee and a calf-length full skirt in a darker shade, securing her hair in a tight French plait that she fixed with grim fierceness, and allowing herself just the merest touch of eyeshadow on her wide eyelids. There. She checked herself in the mirror just before she left to take Hannah to nursery.
He couldn't say there was the remotest suggestion of a come-on in this chaste ensemble. She had tormented herself all weekend with the thought that she might have encouraged him in some way, although in all honesty she couldn't see how. But she intended to be all cool efficiency this morning, composed and calm when she told him she would be leaving at the end of the week. Her stomach turned over at the thought. Stop it, she told herself silently.
Wolf Strade will be like a shadowy dream in a few months, an indistinct, vague phantom relegated firmly to the past.
The vague phantom was prowling about her office when she arrived some time later, a sheaf of papers in his hand and a ferocious scowl on his face.
"I've been here all weekend." He glared at her as if it were her fault.
"Those fools in my Scotland office have nearly lost us the biggest order we've ever had through sheer incompetence. Can you be ready to leave in a couple of hours?"
"Leave?" She stared at him as though he were mad. "For Scotland." He gestured irritably as though she _were being deliberately obtuse.
"If I don't salvage this thing now, in the next twenty-four hours, I can kiss over five million pounds goodbye."
It was an unfortunate choice of words, but even as she felt her cheeks burn she saw the import of the phrase hadn't registered with him at all. He was in business mode, all his energies concentrated on the job in hand and it was unlikely that he even remembered Friday evening. And for this she had been devastated all weekend? She glared back at him now as her thoughts brought sparks to her eyes.
"What time do you want to go?"
"Lunchtime."
"Right."
He hadn't even noticed her abruptness, she thought painfully as he strode back into his office, growling instructions about the pile of papers on her desk as he went. He was impossible: Absolutely impossible.
She phoned her mother, who assured her she would love to take care of Hannah for a few days, phoned the nursery to say she would be dropping in a little later to explain things to Hannah and say goodbye, and then worked frantically on the more urgent correspondence before taking it, and a cup of black coffee, in to him mid-morning. He was sitting at his desk as she entered the room, and looked tired to death.
"Coffee?" She indicated the cup as she placed the papers in front of him.
"You look as if you need it."
"I don't know if I can pull this one round, Lydia."
No. As she stared at his face, uncharacteristically doubtful and faintly boyish, she felt her heart thud painfully. Don't do this to me. Not now.
Fury, temper, irritability she could cope with, but not this weariness that was putting a grey tinge of exhaustion on the handsome face and made her want to gather him up in her arms _and kiss all the anxiety away. Against that her heart had no defence at all.
"You're tired," she said as matter-of-factly as she could, considering she was aching to give more than verbal reassurance.
"How much sleep have you had in the last forty-eight hours, anyway?" she added reprovingly.
"Sleep?" He looked up at her as though she were talking a foreign language.
"I've cat-napped once or twice, I think."
"And food?" She stared down at him severely.
"Have you eaten?"
"Some sandwiches some time yesterday." He had been sipping the coffee as they talked and already a tinge of the old mordant note was back in his voice.
"And don't fuss, woman. I can't stand fussing." He eyed her sardonically.
"Nevertheless, you need someone to keep an eye on you." She smiled in what she hoped was a cool, secretarial way, but he didn't smile back as he looked up at her, the piercing eyes suddenly very clear and blue.
"No, I don't." They both knew he was answering the light comment with more seriousness than it had warranted.
"Some people aren't meant to form bonds, Lydia, not even in the mildest sense. They walk through life alone because they are a danger to themselves and other people if they don't."
"Do you think so?" She didn't know how to reply, what to say, and was floundering badly.
"I know so." He looked at her for one more long moment and then lowered his head to the papers.
"Believe me, I do know so."
"Oh." As she stood looking down at his bent head an almost irrepressible urge to ask more, to delve deeper, _brought her lips firmly clamping shut.
She was his temporary se
cretary, that was all, and he had just reminded her of it in the nicest way he could. Take it on board and be smart, she told herself silently, protect yourself. For all you know he is probably still in love with his ex-wife, despite all those other women.
"I'd like to say goodbye to Hannah before I leave for Scotland," she said, after a few seconds of absolute silence.
"And of course I shall need to collect some clothes and things. How long do you think we'll be away?"
"Two or three days, four at the most." He looked up and she saw his face was the old expressionless mask again, withdrawn and remote.
"And of course you must see Hannah. The flight is booked for two this afternoon but we need to be at the airport a little earlier. If you want to scoot off now and see to things, I'll pick you up just before one."
She nodded and left the office without another word, but just as she was preparing to leave she picked up the internal phone on impulse and ordered a hot meal from the canteen to be brought up immediately.
He might call it fussing, he might call it a lot worse, but he couldn't carry on at this pace without burning himself out. And she didn't want that. She checked the weakness quickly in her mind but it was no good. She was concerned about him even as she told herself it was foolish.
By half-past twelve she was packed and scribbling a short list of notes to her mother as she sat with a cup of coffee on the occasional table beside her and Tiger purring contentedly on her lap. Her mother had offered to stay at
Lydia's house in order that Hannah's routine was interrupted as little as possible so there was little to organise. Hannah herself had accepted the news quite-stoically in spite of it being the first time they had been
parted since she was born. Several of her friends' parents were often away on business so the idea was not new to her, besides which the present Lydia had mentioned would be brought on her return had been a definite plus.
As Lydia glanced at the small suitcase by the door her lip curled in wry self-mockery. Dashing off to Scotland with him was a little different from her plans of the weekend! She shook her head at her own weakness. But she couldn't let him down in an emergency. There was time to tell him she intended to leave later, once they were back in London again.
His authoritative knock just before one set the butterflies whizzing frantically in her stomach and she took a long deep breath as she opened the door.
"Hi." Was it her imagination or was he faintly sheepish? she asked herself silently as he walked through and picked up the small suitcase.
"Thanks for ordering the meal." He put the suitcase down again and turned to face her, his eyes wary.
"And I never said I appreciate you responding so well to the emergency."
"It comes with the job." She hoped she looked cool and composed because she certainly didn't feel it. He seemed to have more personality changes in the space of an hour than the rest of the people she knew put together.
"You did warn me I might have to take off at a minute's notice at my interview," she said lightly.
"Nevertheless, it was good of you." He looked so gorgeous as he dominated her small lounge that she felt the blood positively pounding through her veins.
"Thank you."
"No problem." She smiled carefully.
"Did Hannah take the news of the trip OK?" he asked quietly as he looked at her steadily through clear silver- blue eyes.
"Fine." She smiled carefully again, aiming for lightness.
"My mother is very good with her, they get on like a house on fire, so I never need to worry if I can't be with her."
"That's good." He eyed her soberly.
"It must be reassuring for you to know she's in good hands."
"It is." She glanced at him, faintly puzzled. It was almost as though he was hesitating about something, but perhaps it was her imagination. She certainly couldn't trust her feelings around this man, that was for sure.
"There's no one like your own mother, after all."
"I should imagine not." The words were faintly enigmatic but she sensed he hadn't meant them to be.
"Do your parents live close by?" she asked quietly, feeling as though she was treading on thin ice. It would have been a normal, polite pleasantry with most people, but with Wolf the normal wasn't, somehow.
"My mother died in an accident when I was about eighteen months old, so unfortunately I can't remember anything of her," he answered shortly, 'and my father lives in New Zealand. We communicate regularly, he's a great guy, but due to the distance we only meet a few times a year. “He shrugged dismissively.
"Oh..." Her tender heart was touched and it showed.
"That's a shame."
His face closed immediately, his mouth straightening.
"I've never looked at it that way." It was a definite snub, but in view of the fact that he had just told her he'd lost his mother at such an early age, she found it washed over her head.
"Well, I would." She looked him straight in the face now.
"I think families are important."
"Do you?" He smiled slightly at her vehemence and she saw the hard face relax slightly.
"Well, I suppose _I'm not the best judge of that. My mother was killed on an expedition my father had organised, and I think he always felt the fault was his. They were very much in love and it took him many years to get over her death. In the meantime I was cared for by a nanny and various servants in whatever country we happened to be in until I went to boarding-school in
England at the age of eight. I never really got to know my father until just a few years ago when--' He stopped abruptly.
"When I was passing through a bad time," he finished shortly.
"He was a tower of strength and we found we had more in common than we thought."
"You must have travelled extensively, then, when you were younger?"
She felt the personal revelations were alien to him and sat uncomfortably on his shoulders, and aimed at lightening the mood.
"And how." He grinned suddenly and, as before, it did something to her heart that was acutely uncomfortable. "But it had its advantages although I didn't appreciate them at the time. I can speak fluent French, German, Italian and
Greek and have a smattering of several other languages, all directly attributable to my nomadic beginnings.
Once I was taught languages officially at school I found I had absorbed far more in my early years than I had known. "
"That's good." It hurt her, far, far more than it should have done, that he hadn't had a mother's love. Ridiculous, and he would be furious if he knew what she was thinking, but the thought of 'the boy Wolf being cared for by paid employees hit a nerve inside her that was distinctly painful.
"Did you enjoy school?" she asked as she slipped into her jacket, keeping her voice casual. He mustn't guess _that these tiny glimpses into his personal life were of intense interest.
"Yes, I did, actually." There was a note of surprise in his voice as though he imagined he shouldn't have. "Most of the other boys were always aching to get home and see their folks, but as that didn't apply to me I found school life fulfilling and interesting. My father sent me to a good school and always provided the cash for any activities I wanted to take up."
"Did he?" But he wasn't around, she thought painfully, for the childish confidences and sharing of troubles that were so important in adolescence.
He had had to cope alone.
"What about you?" He smiled down at her and her heart flipped over.
"The regulation two-point-four family?" he asked teasingly.
"Almost." She smiled back carefully.
"My parents just had me and the dog. They wanted more children but somehow, after me, it just didn't happen. Then Dad died when I was twelve and I guess from that point Matthew took over looking after me. He was brilliant to me and Mum," she finished flatly.