Secretary on Demand

by Cathy Williams

  ‘It’s freezing outside,’ she pointed out with crushing pragmatism.

  ‘True. Point taken. Then perhaps in a cabin somewhere in front of a roaring fire.’

  The image sent a little shiver down her spine as her imagination took flight once again into the land of no-go.

  ‘I never thought truants liked skipping work for that kind of thing,’ she told him, watching as he punched a button to the side of the lifts and they waited for one to arrive. ‘Anyway, why don’t you just take some time off and go away somewhere with Eleanor?’

  The lift arrived and they stepped inside. As the door shut, Shannon had a sudden trapped feeling and found herself pressed against the back, staring fixedly ahead of her but very much aware of the man slightly in front.

  ‘Time is the one thing I never seem to have enough of,’ he commented drily.

  ‘Which would make a depressing epitaph,’ she said lightly. ‘Why don’t you do something about it? In fact, in a couple of weeks’ time Eleanor’s class is putting on a play. Nothing formally to do with Christmas…’ Shannon smiled as she remembered this particular conversation ‘…since there are several religious denominations to be considered. It’s at two in the afternoon, before school finishes. She’d be thrilled if she knew you were going.’

  The lift finally arrived at their floor and as the doors opened Kane leant against one so she could slide past. Out of the claustrophobic confines of the lift, she could feel her treacherous breathing return to normal.

  ‘Were you planning on going to this play?’ he asked, and Shannon blushed.

  ‘I might have the afternoon off,’ she admitted. ‘It broke my heart to think of the little mite in a play with no family or friends to watch. At eight, children get so excited about things like that. It’s a shame.’

  ‘What else does Eleanor get excited about that she fails to mention?’

  A good eight inches shorter than him, Shannon had to walk at a brisk pace to keep up with his long, easy strides, and by the time they were back at her office she was slightly out of breath.

  She shrugged noncommittally and sat down, putting on her supposedly stern secretarial mask. But instead of going away, he swung her chair round so that she was facing him and placed his hands squarely on either side of her. The jittery claustrophobia she felt now made those few minutes in the lift seem like a run in the open countryside by comparison.

  ‘Care to answer my question?’ he pressed, towering over her, his tie falling forward to brush against her blouse.

  ‘Oh, just the usual. She’s got a starring role in this production. Apparently, it’s a great honour not to be sidelined into playing one of the animals. She’s thrilled because she has a speaking part and Jodie, the class big-mouth, is playing a camel.’ Shannon grinned. ‘She’s also excited because she’s now in the top group in maths and her poem was read out day before yesterday at assembly in front of the lower years.’

  Kane looked bemused by this array of accomplishments.

  ‘It’s not my fault I have to work all the hours God made,’ he objected roughly, as if she had criticised his parenting. A bad case of guilty conscience, she decided, and well deserved as well.

  ‘It is your fault, actually. You could make more time for Eleanor, and don’t tell me about your weekends. You constantly get business calls on a Sunday, anyway!’

  ‘Business calls! On the weekend!’ He was virtually spluttering.

  ‘Yes,’ Shannon said smugly. ‘Eleanor told me. Girls’ talk.’

  ‘And what else do you girls talk about when I’m not around?’

  ‘I can make sure that you’re free for the play. Will you be coming? As I said to you, Eleanor would be thrilled.’

  He pushed himself back from her chair and appraised her with his eyes. ‘I wouldn’t dream of missing it, now that it’s been brought to my attention. Nor,’ he added, shoving his hands into his pockets and smiling with satisfaction, ‘would I dream of letting you miss it. Not after you had planned on going. I think this mighty corporation could do without us for a couple of hours, don’t you? We can watch Eleanor in the play and then afterwards we can take her out for something to eat somewhere. Settled?’ He flashed her one of those smiles that indicated there was no room for manoeuvre.

  One week later, Shannon was feeling even more hopelessly ensnared. Ensnared on a stake of her own making. And helpless to protest because Kane’s new-found determination to put her advice into practice and see more of his daughter was all to the good. At least all to the good as far as Eleanor was concerned. She was probably seeing more of her father during the weekdays than she had for her entire life. Shannon left him working at five only to see him again at six-thirty when he strolled through the front door to delighted squeals from his daughter. And more disastrous to her mental health than that, he always insisted that she join them for supper.

  ‘She’s so thrilled at you being here with us,’ he’d told her depressingly on the first evening of his run of early homecomings. ‘She really almost considers you to be one of the family.’

  ‘But I’m not one of the family!’ Shannon had protested vigorously, her hands on her hips, glaring at him as he’d divested himself of his jacket and moved away, tugging at his tie to remove it and drape it over the banister. ‘I happen to have my own family!’

  ‘But they’re not here, are they?’ he had countered smugly.

  ‘I’m not looking for a family substitute!’

  ‘And I’m not offering you one. I’m merely suggesting that it seems so important to Eleanor, and what’s important to Eleanor is important to me.’

  Which had silenced her. He’d seemed so sincere, almost vulnerable in the admission, but a healthy sceptical streak in her read that as a cunning move to get what he wanted and there was no denying that it was easier for him when she was around. He could relax, have a drink and whilst he was bombarded with Eleanor’s accounts of school and what had happened that day, a fair amount of time was spent comfortably watching his daughter and Shannon play games, cook tea and exchange ideas while he sat at the kitchen table, making the occasional remark and half reading the newspapers.

  The domesticity of it frightened her, but when she tried to dig deeper into the reasons for that, she came up against a brick wall.

  Now, as she slung on her coat and braced herself to face the brisk walk to the underground and the tube journey back to her bedsit, she couldn’t help looking at him accusingly from under her lashes.

  ‘What?’ he asked, walking her to the front door and muttering that he didn’t care for the thought of her journeying back to her bedsit in the dark.

  ‘I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘You don’t have to. You’re like an angry little bull terrier waiting for a leg to bite. My leg, I get the feeling.’

  ‘I’m not little,’ Shannon told him through gritted teeth. ‘And I’m not a child either.’

  ‘You look like a child with those pigtails. Why do you tie your hair back all the time?’

  ‘It’s practical,’ Shannon said uncomfortably. She self-consciously took one of her ridiculous braids in one hand and played with it. Lots of women wore their hair tied back! ‘And I can’t wear it tied back in a bun because it’s not long enough. Not that I have to explain my hair-styles to you.’

  She thought of one of the company lawyers who made a habit of popping in unannounced and insisting on seeing Kane with important business. A tall, glamorous blonde with fashionably short hair. She doubted whether Kane had ever mentioned to her that she looked like a tomboy with such short hair!

  ‘I suppose I could have it all chopped off, like Sonya Crew,’ she added waspishly. ‘Would that be mature enough for your liking?’

  He gave her a long, leisurely and very thorough look which sent shivers down her spine, and she edged back against the front door. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to go,’ she said in confusion. ‘I don’t want to be getting back too late.’

  ‘Which has been my point all along,’ he sa
id mildly, still looking at her with that shuttered expression that sent her nervous system into panicky overdrive. ‘How long will it take you to get back?’

  ‘Oh, about half an hour, I guess. Maybe a little more.’ If she pushed any harder against the wooden door she would go right through it, but for some reason she felt threatened by Kane’s proximity and, worse, excited by the thought of it.

  He stepped back. ‘Right. I’ll see you tomorrow, if you’re sure you don’t want to be driven back.’

  Shannon heard herself squeak out a stuttering refusal.

  ‘And tomorrow there’s no need for you to come after work,’ he continued. ‘I’m going to be back late so Carrie’s staying on for the night. You can catch up on your social life which must have gone into a bit of decline with the hours you’ve been putting in here.’

  ‘Oh, no. As I said, I leave here early enough to go out afterwards!’

  She felt disproportionately disappointed to be missing that little illicit taste of domesticity which she now found she had become pleasurably accustomed to. Reactions like that wouldn’t do and she immediately decided that she would go to the pub after work with some of the girls from the office. She couldn’t afford to pander to her instincts to behave like the homebody she naturally was. She would just find herself slipping into another rut, this time involving a family that wasn’t hers.

  She was young and living in the Big City! It was crucial that she remind herself of the fact, and of the fact that she should be out there enjoying all the wonderfully exciting things that London had to offer after dark. One brief foray into a second-rate nightclub didn’t really qualify her to join the ranks of the young and free, did it? And cosy meals with Sandy didn’t count either. Starting from next week, she would dictate the days she babysat for him and start concentrating on herself.

  ‘In fact,’ she said boldly, pleased with the various options she had now opened for herself, ‘tomorrow suits me. I’ll go to the pub with some girls from work, maybe head for a club after—’

  ‘Head for a club? On a Tuesday?’

  ‘That’s right!’ Shannon snapped. ‘I can party till dawn and not feel the effects!’

  She gave him a challenging look and then considered that she had scored a point when he was the first to look away, opening the door for her with his usual gentlemanly politeness. She’d discovered that he belonged to that old-fashioned and sadly fast-disappearing breed of men who still believed in treating women like ladies.

  The opposite of Eric Gallway, in fact, who had once remarked, sniggering at his own sense of dubious humour, that women shouldn’t expect to be treated any differently from men since they all seemed to make such a fuss about being equal, and since when did he ever open doors for men? It hadn’t occurred to her at the time to counter that by asking him why, then, he bought her chocolates and flowers.

  But maybe, in the throes of her infatuation, she might not have cared for the obvious answer, which would have been that chocolates and flowers were groundwork for getting a woman into bed.

  ‘Lucky to be so young and carefree,’ he murmured blandly, giving her one of those smiles that suggested the opposite of what he was actually saying but left no room to argue the toss.

  ‘I think so!’ she threw back carelessly. ‘Now, if you don’t mind…?’

  But the following day, Shannon couldn’t help but wonder whether she’d had a victory over him at all. She also found that going to the pub wasn’t the attractive option she had banked on. In fact, a malicious inner voice told her, it was decidedly inferior to babysitting Eleanor and waiting in tense expectation of Kane’s arrival.

  At eight-thirty, she found that she was restlessly looking at her watch and rather than continue to cradle her glass, she drained it, made her excuses and began the journey back to the bedsit.

  It was now dark by four in the afternoon and by nine it was dark enough and cold enough for her to think that she was walking down some street in Siberia. A stiff, steady breeze whipped against her, making her ears and face and fingers feel numb.

  From the underground to her place was no more than a matter of fifteen minutes’ walk. She made it back in under ten, racing along the pavements, her arms tightly drawn around her body to conserve some heat.

  It occurred to her that when she had decided to flee Ireland and head for another life in London, she could just have easily have headed abroad. Somewhere hot. She could have got a job doing a spot of nannying somewhere where the sun shone until eight in the evening. Or, frankly, somewhere where the sun shone and didn’t pay occasional visits like a guest with better things to do than hang around in one spot for too long. The Italian Riviera might have been nice. She might have had to learn Italian but it would have been a small sacrifice for glorious warm days and glamorous movie-star-style nights, flitting from one venue to another.

  The fantasy was enough to sustain her sense of humour until she made it back to her bedsit, clambering up the three flights of stairs to the shabby door to her room. She couldn’t wait to feed the meter and get some heat crawling back into her.

  What a dump, Shannon thought, looking around her despondently. She was sick and tired of trying to see the good things about it. The fact that it was fairly central and not too far from the underground. The fact that the fridge and stove and oven actually worked. The fact that, unlike most bedsits, this one had its own bathroom. Was it any wonder, she asked herself fiercely, that she was so willing to work extra hours, babysitting?

  It was nine-thirty by the time the room had warmed up sufficiently for her to relax. She’d had a shower and changed into her maiden-aunt night attire of flannel nightdress and fluffy bedroom slippers. She’d had nothing to eat but the thought of doing anything that required more effort than it took to make a mug of hot chocolate wasn’t worth thinking about. Another thing, she thought sourly, that she had become accustomed to. Hot food, the shared pleasure of making it with Eleanor.

  To begin with, Mrs Porter had left casseroles for them to eat, but after a couple of days they had both found it more fun to try their hand at cooking dinner themselves. There were always masses of fresh vegetables and the freezer was well stocked. Mrs Porter, who did all the shopping, was as expert in her purchasing as she evidently was in her culinary skills.

  She switched on the television and was half watching something on the news when there was a knock on the door. Three sharp knocks, actually. Since Shannon couldn’t imagine who it could be, and there was no way that she was opening the door to some drunken lout who had come to see someone else in the building and had mistakenly lurched his way to her door instead, she remained where she was, cradling her mug with her hands, her feet curled under her, waiting for whoever it might be to stagger off to their correct destination. When the knocking continued, but more urgently, she finally stormed to the door and flung it open. Or rather flung it open the few inches that her chain lock permitted.

  ‘Mind letting me in?’ Kane asked.

  She didn’t. She was too shocked to see him. ‘Who’s with Eleanor? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Mrs Porter. Let me in.’

  ‘How did you know where I lived?’

  ‘These and other questions to be answered shortly. Just as soon as you open this door and let me in.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘WAIT a minute.’ Before Kane could say anything, Shannon slammed the door in his face and rushed to get her bathrobe.

  She reappeared at the door several seconds later with the bathrobe drawn tightly around her. The bedroom slippers, a previous Christmas present from one of her brothers, would have to stay on.

  ‘Come in, then,’ she said reluctantly, pulling back the chain and allowing him to enter.

  ‘How,’ she asked, leaning against the door with her hands behind her while he took the few steps needed to get to the other side of the room, ‘did you know my address?’

  He was so damned big that her bedsit seemed to have shrunk to the size of a matchbox, and his
masculine aroma, a fuzzy mixture of clean, cold air and the remnants of aftershave, filled her nostrils like incense.

  ‘I know everything, reds. Haven’t you realised that already?’ He grinned. ‘Actually, I had a look in your personnel file. Believe it or not, that’s what they’re there for. Useful information. And stop standing by that door and shivering. Why don’t you offer me something to drink? Like a good hostess would.’

  ‘It’s late. I really am tired.’

  ‘I thought you said that you could party from dusk till dawn,’ he pointed out, using her own frivolous aside to bludgeon through her feeble excuse. ‘Mind if I take my coat off?’

  Shannon shrugged in a non-answer and he removed the trench coat, folding it in half and then placing it on one of the two chairs in the room.

  ‘Ah. Hot chocolate,’ he said, spying the half-empty cup on the table. ‘It’s been years since I had hot chocolate. I used to love it when I was a kid. A cup would be great.’ He gave her a slow, implacable smile and Shannon reluctantly unglued herself from the door and sidled past him, muttering along the way that he might as well sit down and make himself comfortable.

  She returned a few minutes later with a mug of hot chocolate to find him browsing unashamedly among the array of family snapshots which had been the first thing to decorate her bedsit when she’d first moved in.

  ‘Who’s this?’ he asked, holding up a framed picture in one hand.

  ‘My family,’ Shannon said, handing him the mug but keeping her distance.

  ‘Brothers and sisters?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are their names?’

  So she had to take a few steps closer to him to peer at the picture and point to each member of her family, listing them by name from the eldest Shaun down to the youngest Brian. As she spoke, he sipped his hot chocolate and she could feel his breath as he exhaled very gently on the top of her head. When she had finished, he carefully placed the picture on the ledge exactly where he had found it, but continued to scan them all, asking her questions about where they were now and what they were doing.