He couldn’t even be bothered to hear her out! He was too busy being paternalistic about the state of her intoxication! This was the Big City and confessions of affairs and broken hearts were a dime a dozen.
‘Yes, I fell for him!’ Shannon snapped, reluctantly grateful for the support of his arm because without it she had a sneaking feeling that she would plummet to the ground in an inelegant heap. ‘He was a smooth talker. He took me places, promised me a future and then I found out that he was married!’
‘Oh, dear,’ he said sympathetically, as they made their way slowly towards the hall, where her coat was perched in the downstairs cloakroom. ‘It must have come as quite a shock.’
‘Married with two children!’ Shock was a mild way of describing what she had felt at the revelation. She had felt the world collapse around her. ‘And when I confronted him, he laughed! Said that I needed to grow up! Told me that married men had affairs all the time and that I would realise that if I wasn’t too busy being a baby! He said that he was glad to be rid of me because I wouldn’t…wouldn’t…you know…’
‘Wouldn’t what?’
‘Wouldn’t sleep with him,’ Shannon said. She felt a little tear of self-pity gather in the corner of her eye and she blinked several times, taking her time as she allowed him to slip her into her coat and telephone for his driver to come for her.
‘He was a cad, reds,’ Kane said gently, inclining her face to his with the pressure of a finger under her chin. ‘He didn’t deserve you. Forget him.’
‘I have. I only brought up the subject because you asked.’
‘Good girl.’ He tapped her nose with the tip of his finger and smiled. Frankly, it was insulting. Next, he would say ‘chin up’ and tell her that she was only a kid after all.
‘And I’ve seen the error of my ways,’ she told him, all self-pity banished by sudden, swift anger at his response.
‘Go for the good guy next time.’ He nodded in a soothing way.
‘Oh, just the opposite, actually,’ she threw back at him. ‘At my tender age, I’ve already discovered how men use women, so why not apply some of the same medicine to them? Starting,’ she added, for further credibility, ‘next Friday.’
CHAPTER FOUR
‘AND…? How did your wild and exciting evening on Friday go? Was it everything you expected?’
Kane had finished briefing Shannon on what he wanted done and now he sat back in his leather chair and looked at her with a little smile. They had settled into a working routine that included a cup of coffee first thing in the morning in his office while he flicked through files, passing over what he wanted her to do, what meetings needed to be scheduled, what meetings needed to be cancelled and what clients needed to be contacted in order of priority. On the trip into work, she now found herself looking forward to that half-hour. In a strange way, it seemed to set her up for the rest of the day.
Shannon gathered up the files from the desk and rested them on her lap.
‘It was scintillating,’ she lied, casting her mind back to the pub where they had all met at eight for drinks, followed by a nightclub which had turned out to be a cramped dark space somewhere in Soho where the music had been too loud, the atmosphere too smoky and the crowd almost entirely composed of nineteen-year-old kids dressed in way-out clothes.
Having expected something a little more sophisticated, Shannon had settled at a table in the corner with three of the women from work and had spent the remainder of the evening comparing notes on how young the people had seemed to be and trying to identify the music which had not so much blared as throbbed with a steady bass beat that had been very good at promoting headaches. She’d had the odd dance with one of the guys from the company but there had been so many people on the dance floor that it had been difficult to move, never mind dance properly. By the time she had got back to her bedsit at one-thirty, her dress and tights had smelled of cigarette smoke and had born the telltale patchy spots of spilled drinks.
‘Scintillating… Where did you go?’
She gave him the name of the club, safe in the knowledge that the last place Kane Lindley would have heard of would have been a nightclub for wild, young things—most of whom hadn’t looked old enough to earn a living, never mind be in possession of the money needed to have a good time for hours in a nightclub in central London.
‘You went there!’ He sounded horrified and she felt her hackles rise at the tone of his voice. Now, more than ever, she was determined to drive home to him what an exciting evening it had been. ‘I don’t suppose you realised that that place has a reputation for illicit drugs? Not exactly fertile ground for meeting new people. Well, not unless you’re interested in meeting boys who probably haven’t started shaving yet! What would your mother say?’
‘My mother isn’t here!’ Shannon declared icily, ‘so she isn’t going to say anything, is she? And,’ she continued, fixing him with a gimlet stare, ‘how do you know about this place? Don’t tell me you go there on a weekend to live it up!’
‘Why not? Can’t you picture me slugging back pints of lager and gyrating on a dance floor with eighteen-year-old girls?’
Actually, Shannon found it easier to picture herself growing five arms and three legs overnight. There was a quiet gallantry about Kane that resisted any notion of him misbehaving in any way in public. Or in private for that matter. She doubted if he had ever lost his self-control. He just wasn’t that type of man.
‘Frankly, no.’ She rustled the files on her lap, waiting for his invisible signal that it was time for her to go, but he carried on looking at her, smiling.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ he conceded in a low, amused voice. ‘Eighteen-year-old girls don’t interest me. And I can think of better ways of dancing than flinging myself around and bashing into everyone else.’
His voice left her in no doubt what form of dancing he had in mind and she felt faintly unsettled at the thought. She had a vision of him on a dance floor, his strong arms engulfing the woman with him, his body pressed erotically against hers, hips grinding against hips, face and hands buried into hair. Losing that iron self-control. His body trembling slightly in anticipation of what was to come. His voice thick with desire.
She gulped and shuffled the files a little harder.
Every so often a rogue thought would enter her head—that his innate gentlemanliness disguised something wild and dangerous, lurking suggestively beneath the surface.
‘Can’t you?’ he prompted, and she looked at him with an addled expression.
‘Can’t I what?’
‘Think of better ways of dancing?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Shannon said crisply. ‘The foxtrot can be quite a laugh. And, of course, there’s Irish dancing. You can’t beat it for burning off calories.’
He gave a wry laugh and then said lightly, ‘And I can think of better ways of doing that as well. Eleanor,’ he said, changing the subject before she could dwell on what he had said, ‘seems to be quite taken with you. She tells me that you’re fun. How are you finding it? Is the travelling too much of a hassle? It’s dark by the time you leave and really I don’t care to think of you traipsing through London on the underground to get back to your flat.’
‘Oh, it’s fine,’ Shannon said airily, thinking of the dark, isolated walk once she left the underground and was heading back to her bedsit. The Victorian house which had been converted into bedsits was in a leafy, residential area but a residential area that only just managed to creep into the category of savoury. In the daytime it was fine, because there were always people around, leaving for work, but on one or two occasions she had walked the pavements back to the house on her own and then the sound of her footsteps clattering on the tarmac had made her nervously turn her walk into a semi-run. Good job she didn’t suffer from high blood pressure or it would have been through the roof by now. And with winter swiftly descending, the nights would get darker earlier and eight-thirty would seem like midnight. She would have to make an effort not to thin
k about it. ‘I like the exercise,’ she lied feebly. ‘And the fresh air.’
‘Because I could always arrange for Jo to drive you home.’
‘No!’ She was already indebted to Kane for her job, which was far more highly paid, she was sure, than she could have got somewhere else, and for the babysitting which she enjoyed and which, incidentally, further boosted her income. She didn’t need to be further reliant on him for her transport. ‘I mean, thanks very much but, no, thank you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it would…confuse my arrangements.’
‘What arrangements?’
‘Arrangements to go somewhere else once I leave your place!’ Shannon insisted in a shrill voice, racking her brains to think of any arrangements she had made recently that had involved her not returning in a semi-run back to her dreary bedsit.
‘You mean like another fun club,’ he said gravely, and she bristled at his patronising tone.
‘I shall have to try out quite a few before I find the right one!’ she declared defiantly. ‘I’m new to the area, after all.’
‘A club crawl at nine p.m. on a weekday every time you leave my place. Sounds hard work. Are you sure you’re going to be able to fit all this in with getting up in the morning to come to work?’
‘I would never let my personal life affect my working life—’ Shannon began swiftly, only to be cut down in mid-self-righteous explanation.
‘I’m surprised you can say that after your fling with Eric Gallway, which ended up in your leaving your last job and fleeing Ireland.’
That, she thought, was hitting below the belt and she could tell from Kane’s sudden flush of discomfort that he was aware of that as well.
‘Which is why I shall always make sure that the two sides don’t meet,’ Shannon retorted. ‘Now, will this be all?’ She cocked her head to one side in a businesslike manner and he grinned and lowered his eyes. There was a certain wickedness to his grin, she thought absent-mindedly, that belied the stern appearance. Was he aware of that or was it just some characteristic he had been born with? Like some people were born to have dimples when they smiled?
‘For the moment,’ he agreed, back to his usual highly professional and unreadable self. ‘Dennis Clark and one of our accountants will be here in an hour. Make sure there’s coffee, would you?’
‘Of course, sir,’ Shannon said in a docile voice. ‘Anything else? Some biscuits perhaps? I could rustle something up from the canteen.’ Me secretary, you boss. This was more like it. At the risk of overplaying her role, she was tempted to launch into a selection of various other secretarial duties he might avail himself of, but instead she headed back to the safety of her own office and decided to banish all thoughts of Kane Lindley the man by working fast and furiously and keeping her eyes fixed on the computer screen in front of her.
She was the perfect secretary until lunchtime when she bolted down to the canteen, later than usual because the meeting, in which she’d been asked to sit and take notes, had lasted until after one.
A bowl of soup, some bread and fruit and a cup of coffee, she thought, sitting at one of the many empty tables, would revive her enough for the afternoon. Working for Kane outside work hours had seemed easy enough when she’d accepted the job. How had she known that she would begin to feel a little too submerged in him and his personal life for her own sense of well-being? Eleanor was a joy to look after, but she chattered about her father, whom she adored, and Shannon was finding herself going down the slippery slope of piecing together all the intriguing facets of Kane’s personality that emerged during their girlish conversations together after school.
The fact that the women he had brought back to the house, far from being a heady stream of dizzy blondes, had all been, as far as Eleanor had been concerned, boring and formal. Which Shannon shrewdly interpreted as career-women who had found it difficult to accommodate an eight-year-old. The fact that Carrie had developed a crush on him and it had been his idea to relieve her of some of her hours rather than the other way around, which was what he had initially implied.
‘How on earth do you know that?’ Shannon had laughed.
‘I could tell,’ was Eleanor’s implacable reply. ‘She started giggling whenever he was around and finding all sorts of reasons to stay later than she needed to.’
Shannon learnt that Kane rarely took holidays, and when he did he was always in contact with his office, which made her feel acutely sorry for Eleanor, but was firmly told, as a follow-on, that he couldn’t help working so hard because it was all to do with looking after her.
She was reflecting on all of this, drinking her soup and relaxing, when a familiar voice said from behind her, ‘Mind if I join you?’ Before she could answer, Kane slid into the chair opposite her and deposited his plate of salad in front of him and his glass of water.
‘What are you doing here?’ Shannon muttered, looking around her nervously, relieved that there was no one she recognised left in the canteen. Little did he know that there were quite a few young girls in the company who considered him a heartthrob, and the last thing she needed was the job of fending off their curiosity should they see them together, having lunch.
Then she decided that she was being utterly ridiculous because there was nothing meaningful about sitting at the same table at the same time by chance. Bosses frequently came down to the canteen at lunchtime and most of them sat at whatever table was available, usually at the ones where their secretaries were sitting, which was an instant gossip-quencher but did promote a healthy informality in the company.
‘Eating lunch,’ he said mildly, pausing in mid-mouthful to look at her. ‘And don’t look so shocked. I do occasionally manage to slip in a mouthful of food some time during the day.’
‘But here?’
‘If you recall, you suggested I eat here now and again so that I could be on the ground floor when it came to seeing and hearing what’s going on in the company.’ He gave her one of those bland smiles which she was sincerely coming to distrust. ‘Not that there’s anyone around to speak of,’ he said ruefully. ‘Bad timing, I suppose. You’re not eating your soup. You can’t afford to lose weight. You’ll disappear. So eat up.’
Shannon reluctantly swallowed a mouthful of soup while he dug with hearty enthusiasm into his salad, spearing the tiger prawns and making favourable remarks about the quality of the food, finally hinting that maybe he should make the time to frequent the canteen a bit more often, and when it was more crowded.
‘You can’t!’ Shannon squeaked.
‘Why not?’ His dark eyes were unrevealing which, she thought sceptically, meant that he would somehow try and worm a response out of her by feigning innocence. Since she wasn’t about to comply, she started talking briskly about work, meanwhile drinking her soup as rapidly as she could without spilling the lot in the process.
After she had concluded her five-minute monologue on various assorted topics, ranging from the filing system to computer programs, he looked at her calmly and said, ‘I get the impression that you’re a little on edge. I hope I haven’t unsettled you in any way by joining you for lunch.’
‘Unsettle me? Of course not!’ She laughed to further the impression that it would be impossible for him to unsettle her, then laughed again just in case he hadn’t received the first message. ‘Why on earth would I be unsettled by you?’
Kane shrugged his broad shoulders and continued eating. If he was at ease with the silence stretching like elastic between them, she certainly wasn’t. What on earth was wrong with her? She could hear herself babbling about everything under the sun until she finally ran out of steam, at which point he surprised her by asking about Christmas.
‘Christmas? What about it?’ Shannon asked, bewildered.
‘What are you doing about it? Going back to Ireland? Staying here? The reason I ask is because Eleanor would like you to spend Christmas with us if you’re at a loose end.’
Spend Christmas with them? He really must fee
l very sorry for her! Fortunately, she had already planned on heading back to her family for Christmas so she could reject his offer in all truthfulness.
‘I really would have enjoyed that,’ she told him, laying it on thick, ‘but I’ve already told my mum that I’ll be back home for Christmas. The family have never spent Christmas apart, not even when Francis was away studying in Paris. I’m sorry. I’ll explain it to Eleanor, if you like.’
‘No, I’ll do that. She’ll be disappointed, of course.’
‘Haven’t you got…grandparents? Aunts? Cousins?’
‘We’re a small family. Pretty much the opposite of yours. Now. Back to work, I suppose. Although I rather fancy playing truant at the moment.’ He chuckled at the thought of it.
She said, startled at the personal aside, ‘I can’t imagine you playing truant.’
‘It seems there are quite a number of things you can’t imagine me doing,’ he said, ticking them off on his fingers. ‘Playing truant, gyrating on a dance floor, eating lunch…would you like me to tell you what I can’t imagine you doing?’
‘Not really,’ Shannon said hurriedly, alarmed at this sudden turn in the conversation, and he laughed as though her response had been exactly as he’d predicted. He was no psychic but he had a knack of seeming to second guess her reactions which she found a little unnerving. Either he was a sharp judge of human character or else her human character was so bland and transparent that he could read her like a book.
‘I just couldn’t imagine what,’ she informed him coldly, ‘you would do if you did play truant. Go to the park and feed the ducks? Take in a sneaky afternoon movie? Head for the nearest junk-food place and gorge yourself on hamburgers?’ There. That sarcasm should put him in his place if nothing else.
‘I like the park option,’ Kane said slowly, undeterred by her tone of voice. He stood up, waiting till she clambered to her feet, then they strolled back to the bank of lifts, with Shannon looking shiftily around her just in case someone she knew appeared in front of her like a rabbit from a magician’s hat. ‘A leisurely walk in the park…’
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