Peter’s lips twisted. “No, Mr. Wilkinson, I did not.”
“Why not?”
Peter hesitated. “I don’t know. I’m not a monk. She’s a pretty girl. And I was surprised.”
“So even with all this attention you get all the time, you were surprised when you were alone in the office after hours and a pretty girl came on to you?”
Peter shifted again. It wasn’t warm in the room, but sweat had started to bead on his forehead. And he’d shifted back to using formal surnames. He’s sweating, and not just physically.
“I didn’t say anything at first,” Peter stated, “but that’s not a crime. But she leaned right against me and ran a hand through my hair, and then she kissed my ear.”
Coco lifted her head to look at him, and Felix glanced at her. Did she believe him?
“What did you do then?” he asked.
“Then I moved away. I stood and told her I was flattered, but that I wasn’t interested. She turned angry, told me I’d been coming onto her. But I hadn’t given her any encouragement.”
“None?”
“No.” Peter’s hands bunched into fists on the table.
“You never touched her in the office?”
“No.”
“You never made sexual jokes to her—never used innuendo?”
“I didn’t encourage her,” Peter said. Nice way to avoid the question.
“What happened then?”
“She told me she loved me. I told her that was ridiculous—that we hardly knew each other. She started to cry, then she told me she’d tell my wife. That made me angry because nothing had happened. I yelled at her and she ran out of the office.”
“What did you yell?”
“I yelled that if she told my wife or anyone at the firm, I’d have her sacked.” He glared at Felix. “I was angry. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I know what devastation a sexual harassment suit can cause to the accused and his family, as well as his company. I’ve defended teachers who’ve been accused by their pupils and it can ruin a man.”
Felix glanced at Coco, hoping she was getting all this down. Her notepad was covered with the tiny lines and squiggles of shorthand, and she seemed to be keeping up with the conversation.
He wished he could be alone with her to discuss what Dell had just said. Did she believe him? Had she heard of any affairs, or of any other secretaries who’d experienced similar problems? He couldn’t ask her in front of Dell—that would be unprofessional. If he wasn’t happy with what Dell had said, he had to declare his intention to carry out a further investigation.
He looked over at Christopher, who’d spent most of the hearing with his gaze fixed on the table. His boss met his gaze, but Felix couldn’t read anything into it. He didn’t smile, though, and if Felix had to guess, he would have said Christopher was trying to tell him to brush away his concerns and dismiss the “trivial matter”.
But could he do that? Did he really think Peter Dell was innocent of what Sasha had accused him?
He pushed his chair away from the table and stood, then walked over to the coffee pot in the corner and poured himself a cup. “Anyone else?” he asked the room.
Rob, Hugh and Christopher said yes, Coco shook her head. Peter and Jack began a conversation and didn’t even reply. Felix poured the cups and brought them over with the tray of milk and sugar, then took his place at the table.
He looked across at Coco as he waited for Peter and Jack to stop talking. She was still doodling on her notepad, eyes lowered. Her hair was so neat, tightly wrapped in its bun, not a hair out of place. The style might have made some women look harsh or severe, but it just emphasised her high cheekbones and fine features. She nibbled at her bottom lip as she doodled, lost in thought. What was she thinking?
Still waiting for Peter to finish his little chat, Felix tapped the notepad and she looked up, startled. He smiled. “I don’t know how you make sense out of all those marks. It just looks like a load of nonsense.”
She met his gaze, her cool green eyes shining like cat’s eyes. Something simmered in their depths. Was it resentment? She didn’t want to be in the room. She was hating every minute of this.
Why?
She looked at her notepad. “Each letter of the alphabet is represented by a symbol. Take your name, for example. The F is a long loop like this.” She drew it on the pad. “The L is a long, curved line like the type of lowercase L you’d use in handwriting. And the X is just a lowercase x. Where the meaning is clear, we omit the vowels. And in this case join up the F and L, using a small line across the L to indicate the X, like this.” She wrote his name in three short strokes.
“That’s fascinating,” he said. “I had no idea that was how it worked.”
“It’s pretty simple once you know the basics. The rest is practise.”
“Every night, I seem to remember you saying.”
“Without fail.” She didn’t smile. He wished he could say he was sorry for having asked her to join him in the room. Why was she uneasy? What did she know about Peter that he didn’t?
The two men opposite him finally broke apart, and Peter leaned back in his chair, fingers linked. He looked less nervous, as if he couldn’t imagine how Felix could possibly deny the story he’d related.
Felix looked at Hugh White, the HR manager. Hugh met his gaze and frowned. Felix looked at Rob, whose eyes were clear, almost challenging, as if to say go on, what do you make of that? Christopher was back to staring at the table. Jack and Peter bore similar slightly smug looks.
And then Peter glanced at Coco. Felix watched her raise her gaze to meet his. They exchanged a brief, unspoken communication before she lowered her eyes quickly. A smile touched Peter’s lips.
And that made up Felix’s mind.
“So let me just summarise what you told me.” He poured milk into his coffee, added a sugar and stirred. “You’re basically saying that Sasha is lying—that she made up the story of sexual harassment because you turned down her advances. At root, this is about revenge on her part—payback from a woman scorned.”
Peter leaned his elbows on the arms of his chair and steepled his fingers. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“You intimated this wasn’t the first time you’ve refused a woman’s advances.”
Peter blinked slowly. “That’s right.”
“Have other women ever reacted in this way?”
“They’ve been upset. But no, they’ve never threatened me in this way.”
Felix frowned. “I don’t understand what Miss De Langen felt she had to gain by threatening you. She was unlikely to force you to have a relationship with her by threatening to tell your wife or someone at the office. In my experience—albeit limited, I accept—if a woman thinks a guy likes her and reacts to that effect, only to find out he doesn’t, the likely result is embarrassment. I would have thought Miss De Langen would have been horrified if she’d genuinely thought she’d got it wrong—that she would more likely have made a speedy exit or even apologised. Not got angry. Not unless she’d been given reason to think you were interested.”
Peter went still. Jack’s eyes flicked to Felix and back to the man sitting beside him.
“I didn’t encourage her,” Peter said.
He met Felix’s gaze, the same as he had when Felix had first walked into the room. This time, however, Felix didn’t look away. He held the icy blue stare, content to wait, to prove that he was in control of this hearing, acting on his gut instinct that this man was guilty, that he’d intimidated Sasha and tried to make her have a sexual relationship with him, and when she’d stood her ground and refused, he’d turned to blackmail. The woman had been upset enough to file a complaint. That in itself deserved further attention. Felix wasn’t going to play along with the partners and pretend it was a trivial matter. He wasn’t that type of man.
Peter continued to stare at him, his building anger evident in the way he clenched his fists once again. But Felix waited. And eventually Peter d
ropped his gaze.
Felix refused to let a smile of triumph touch his lips, but inside him the wave of relief made him feel almost light headed.
He finished off his coffee, closed the manila file and replaced it in his briefcase. “After some consideration,” he said, “I’ve decided the matter needs further investigation. I propose that I stay here until the end of next week to interview other members of staff, consider my verdict over the following weekend and give you an answer on the Monday. Is that acceptable?” He looked at Christopher, not Peter.
Christopher met his gaze, void of expression. Then he nodded.
Felix stood. “Thank you, everyone,” he said. And he turned and left the room.
Chapter Thirteen
Several hours later, Coco leaned against the doorjamb and studied the young lawyer where he sat deep in thought. Christopher and Peter had left the building, leaving behind a low murmur of rumour and speculation rumbling through the office like the earthquake tremors that occasionally plagued the capital.
Felix had disappeared into his office and shut the door when he vacated the boardroom, and she’d left him to it, although she knew Christopher had gone in to say goodbye. What had the Auckland boss said to him? Had he berated him for not brushing the case away as if it were the cobwebs in the dusty corners of the offices? Been angry and worried about the reputation of the firm being brought into disrepute?
She’d seen Rob Drake, who said Felix had asked for the rest of the day to read through some files and look up the procedure he was expected to follow, ready to start interviewing the next week.
Forget about him, she’d thought, and had busied herself throughout the morning, casting her eye over that day’s work generated by the secretaries, sorting out their hours for the following week, making sure everyone had been paid for the right number of hours, having a brief meeting with Accounts when she found two members of staff who hadn’t, settling a dispute between two secretaries who weren’t getting along, and generally ensuring that the office ran smoothly and without a hitch.
At lunchtime, as usual, she put on her coat, walked outside and rang her mother on her mobile.
Nurse Rachel picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Hi, Rachel, it’s me.”
“Hi, Coco. We were just talking about you.”
“Oh. How is she today?”
“So so.”
Eleanor Stark was currently in the middle of an attack that had started over a month ago, leading to problems with coordinating her arms and legs, incontinence, some trouble speaking and bouts of dark depression at the thought that she was going to be that way for the rest of her life.
“I’ll put her on,” Rachel said.
The phone rustled and muffled voices sounded, and then Eleanor said, “Hi, love.”
“Hi, Mum. How are you today?”
“I’m fine,” Eleanor said, her standard response, her words slurring slightly. “Now, have you been thinking about our conversation this morning?”
Coco gritted her teeth. Eleanor had given her a speech as she ate her breakfast, something along the lines of “You’re twenty-seven and should be out enjoying yourself, not looking after me.” It was a recurring theme.
“No,” Coco said.
“I want you to go out this evening. It’s Friday night and I’ve asked Frances to come and stay with me for a few hours so you can socialise.” Frances was Eleanor’s best friend.
“I don’t want to socialise,” Coco said. “I’ve just bought the final series of House. I thought we could have a marathon watch—four or five episodes until we fall asleep.”
“That sounds lovely,” Eleanor said softly. “But not tonight. Please, Coco. Do this for me.”
Coco walked across the road to look at the harbour, her stomach churning. “Seriously, Mum, I haven’t got anywhere to go. Amy’s busy tonight, and I don’t have any other friends.”
“Then you should get some,” snapped Eleanor. “There must be someone at work you can go for a drink with.”
Coco hesitated as Felix’s tall, smiling form jumped into her mind. She shook her head angrily. “It’s my choice to look after you,” she said, near to tears. “I wish you’d stop trying to push me away.”
Eleanor ignored her. “Sort something out. Frances will be here from seven until at least ten, or whenever you get home.”
She hung up.
Coco stared at the phone, then clipped it shut and slid it in her pocket. Eleanor had never hung up on her before.
It was a windy day in the capital city—no change there, she thought—and the breeze whipped the waves of Lambton Harbour into white horses. The ferry that crossed the Cook Strait from the North Island to the South—affectionately named the Vomit Comet—would be earning its nickname that day.
Depression settled over her. Eleanor meant well, and deep down Coco supposed she was right, but the truth was that she couldn’t think of anyone to go for a drink with. She purposely maintained a professional relationship with everyone in the office, except for Amy, whom she’d known since secretarial college and who was unfortunately going to her Tai Chi class that evening. And Coco didn’t want to get close to anyone else—didn’t want to reveal that beneath the severe image of the office manager she worked so hard to project was a soft-hearted, passionate woman, too afraid of being hurt to open up and let anyone in.
Unbidden, Felix’s brown eyes swam into her mind again, kind as he promised to keep her nickname a secret, and she sighed. He’d impressed her in the boardroom, and although his insistence on investigating the case could raise problems for her, nevertheless she was touched that he obviously felt Sasha’s claims deserved to be considered.
But there was no point in going out with him. He would only be in Wellington a week at most—surely it was pointless to start a journey when she had to get off after one stop? And yet the thought of going out with him, of having a drink, getting to know him better, filled her with a warmth she couldn’t shake.
Head bowed, she walked back through the streets to the building and rode the elevator to her floor. She left her coat in her office and checked with Rob. Felix was still in his room, he assured her, and hadn’t appeared for lunch.
It was now one thirty, so she bought two different boxes of sandwiches from the cart, made two cups of tea and went to his office to find the door open and him deep in contemplation, studying his iPad.
He looked up and a rueful smile spread across his face. “Hey.”
“Hey.” She walked in and put the mugs on his desk. “Thought you might like a cup of ‘Rosie’.”
He laughed, put down his stylus and leaned back in the chair. “Thank you. That would be lovely.”
“And I wondered if you were hungry. The cart leaves at two, and I didn’t want you to miss out on lunch.” She offered him both boxes.
He smiled and chose the chicken. “Will you join me?”
“If that’s okay.”
“Of course.”
She moved the mugs to the coffee table, and he rose and walked around the desk to take the armchair across from her. They opened the boxes and began to eat the sandwiches.
She indicated the desk. “How’s the investigation? Rob said you were going to take today to go through some files.”
“Yeah.” He picked at a bit of lettuce. “Actually, between you and me, I thought I’d take the afternoon to recover. I found the process a bit…hair raising.”
He was confiding in her. Once again she flushed with warmth, aware of the strange connection they’d made that, as he’d told her, they couldn’t now undo. “You surprise me. You looked totally in control, especially at the end. I loved the way you stared Peter down.”
He gave her a wry smile. “I’m sure he was wearing a syrup.”
“Syrup?”
He grinned then. “Sorry. Syrup of figs—it’s rhyming slang for wig. Toupee, you know. You can’t tell me that black rug was real.”
She rolled her eyes. “I need an English to Coc
kney dictionary just to talk to you.”
“I know, I forget. I rented a house with a girl from Peckham for two years—it rubbed off on me.”
She chewed her sandwich, studying him curiously. “Was she your girlfriend?”
He picked up his mug but didn’t drink, staring instead out of the window. “Yes.”
“Did she move back over here with you?”
“No.” He sighed. “She died.”
Coco inhaled. “Oh goodness. I’m so sorry.”
He looked back at her, his eyes sad. “Thank you.”
“Was she ill?”
“No. She went on holiday to Greece with some friends and went snorkelling. When she was younger she used to have asthma, but it hadn’t been a problem for years so she didn’t even think about it. But she had an attack—I think it was something to do with the pressure of the water—and they just couldn’t get her breathing again.”
Coco put down her sandwich, filled with horror at the thought of losing someone at that age. “That’s so awful.”
“It was. Well, still is. It was seven years ago now, but I still have trouble moving on, you know? I’ve tried…” He gave a sheepish smile. “Quite a few times. But it’s not easy.”
Coco was only too aware of how a relationship could haunt you even after years had passed. Thinking about her ex, Michael, sent another wave of depression over her, and she pushed the second half of the sandwich away uneaten. Michael had effectively killed her hopes of another relationship by destroying her self-confidence to the extent that she was terrified of opening up to anyone again.
What was she doing here? Felix’s intimation that he’d tried to move on implied that he slept around, and that was most definitely not the sort of man she was interested in. In fact she didn’t want a relationship with anyone, and certainly not Felix Hotshot Fancy Pants. She didn’t want a social life at all. At twenty-seven surely she’d earned the right to live her life the way she wanted? She was going to go home that evening, change into her sweats, eat ice cream from the carton and watch House in her bedroom, and her mother could lump it.
“I’d better go,” she said, clicking the sandwich box shut.
Five Exotic Fantasies: Love in Reverse, Book 3 Page 8