Ruthless Boss, Dream Baby

by Susan Stephens

  ‘Worse—Quinn,’ the girl explained with what sounded like panic in her voice. ‘He mustn’t find you here.’

  ‘Why not?’ Magenta stared in bewilderment around her office, which seemed to have been cleared of all her creature comforts while she’d been asleep. But it wasn’t just the flowers, the coffee machine, the bottles of water or the family photographs that were missing. ‘Hey, where’s my laptop?’ she said, shooting up. ‘Has there been a robbery?’

  ‘Magenta, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I do know you have to get out of here now.’

  ‘All right, all right!’ Magenta exclaimed as the girl took her by the arm and physically dragged her towards the door. ‘I’m sure I locked this door last night.’

  ‘I used my key.’ The girl shook a spare set in her face.

  ‘What’s the rush? I’ll need my mobile phone, and where’s my tote, my handbag, my briefcase?’ Magenta demanded, glancing back at the vastly changed room.

  ‘No more questions,’ her new friend hissed frantically, tugging at Magenta’s arm. ‘We don’t have time. Quinn will be here any minute.’

  A multitude of thoughts and impressions were slowly percolating through Magenta’s sluggish brain. This was a new girl, possibly someone Quinn had brought in. She seemed nice, though, confusingly, she seemed to know Magenta when Magenta was certain they had never met before. ‘Did Quinn get my list?’ she said, clinging on to priorities while her brain sorted itself out.

  ‘What list? You didn’t give me a list.’

  ‘No, that’s right—I gave it to Tess.’

  ‘Tess?’

  This girl didn’t know Tess? ‘Sorry, uh…’

  ‘Nancy,’ the girl supplied, looking at her with real concern. ‘Magenta, are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ This was growing stranger by the minute; if she hadn’t felt so heavy-headed she would have been faster off the mark. ‘I gave a list of the list of things Quinn should implement immediately to one of the girls in the office.’

  Nancy huffed. ‘If you had given me a list like that, I would have seriously lost it on purpose.’

  ‘Has Quinn been bullying you?’ She forgot her own confusion; bullying in the office was one thing she wouldn’t stand, and Magenta’s concerns soared when Nancy refused to answer almost as if she was frightened of being overheard. ‘Well, no one’s going to bully you while I’m around—especially not Quinn.’

  Nancy hummed and started tugging on Magenta’s arm again. ‘I’m not joking, Magenta, we have to get out of here.’

  ‘But where do you want me to go?’ This had been Magenta’s office since—well, she could hardly remember; it had been hers for so long now.

  ‘You work in the typing pool, remember?’ Nancy told her urgently, poking her head out of the door to check the coast was clear.

  ‘The typing pool?’ Magenta laughed. ‘Is this some joke of Quinn’s to get us all in the right mood for the sixties campaign?’

  Nancy gave her a funny look.

  ‘To be more accurate, you used to work in the typing pool,’ she finally replied, nudging Magenta towards the door. ‘The guy who ran the place before hotshot Quinn arrived from the States took his office manager with him, so Quinn promoted you.’

  ‘Why didn’t Quinn text me? And what’s this?’ Magenta demanded as Nancy bundled her towards a mean little desk set to one side of her office door—a door she now noticed with outrage that already bore the legend, ‘Gray Quinn’.

  ‘This is your desk now, Magenta,’ Nancy explained. ‘It’s a great improvement to the typing pool, don’t you think?’

  ‘Do you want to hear what I think? No. I didn’t think so,’ Magenta agreed as Nancy shook her head. ‘I don’t know what’s happening around here, but this isn’t my desk—and Quinn definitely can’t take over my office.’

  ‘But, Magenta, you used to work in the typing pool—you’ve never had your own office,’ Nancy insisted, looking increasingly concerned about Magenta’s state of mind. ‘Don’t you remember anything?’

  Magenta swept a hand across her eyes as if hoping everything would change back again by the time she opened them again. But, to make things worse, people she didn’t even know were staring at her as if she was the one who was mad.

  But how could this have happened? She gazed around and felt her anger rising. Quinn had to be some sort of monumental chauvinist; men occupied all the private offices while the women had been relegated to old-fashioned typewriters—either in the typing pool, where they sat in rows behind a partition as if they were at school, or at similar desks to this one outside the office doors. Ready to do their master’s bidding, Magenta presumed angrily. She remembered her father telling her how it used to be for the majority of female office workers in the sixties. ‘Why are all the girls typing?’ she asked Nancy in a heated whisper.

  ‘It’s their job!’ Nancy said, frowning.

  ‘But why aren’t they working on the campaign?’ Magenta noticed now that many of the women, some of whose faces were adorned with heavy-framed, upswept spectacles, were pretending not to look at her.

  ‘What campaign?’ Nancy queried, stepping back as a keen teen brushed passed her.

  ‘Wow, Magenta, you look really choice!’

  ‘I do?’ Magenta spun on her heels as the young man she had never seen before gave her a rather too comprehensive once-over. ‘Why, thank you…?’

  ‘Jackson,’ Nancy supplied, having cottoned on to the fact that Magenta needed all the help she could get.

  ‘Jackson.’ Magenta raised a brow. ‘Stop staring at your Auntie Magenta and go find yourself a girlfriend.’

  Jackson laughed as if Magenta could always be relied upon to say something funny. ‘You’re a gas, baby.’

  Had Quinn changed all the personnel? Of course, he was perfectly entitled to, Magenta reasoned. Quinn ran the show now. But what had happened to her friends? And what had happened to their working environment?

  So many questions stacked up in her mind, with not a single answer to one of them that made sense.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘LOOK, Magenta, I don’t want to rush you,’ Nancy said in a way that clearly said that was exactly what she wanted to do. ‘But Quinn’s only slipped out for an eleven o’clock appointment.’

  ‘So what?’ Magenta said impatiently. ‘He’s got a damn nerve.’ She was still looking round, trying to take everything in. She could understand Quinn wanting to live the sixties in order to give the campaign that final fizz of authenticity—hadn’t she done the same thing herself? But didn’t he know there was such a thing as going too far? ‘Nancy, what’s been going on here?’

  ‘The usual?’ Following her glance, Nancy gazed around the office.

  ‘The usual,’ Magenta repeated grimly. ‘Is it usual to remove the computers?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Okay, so Quinn’s got you playing his game,’ Magenta said. ‘I can understand that you don’t want to lose your job—I’m just thinking of all the expense involved in putting this right again—’ She had already reasoned that the reorganisation of the office would have been fairly easy if Quinn had copied the layout from the old photographs on the wall, but there were other things she couldn’t account for. There was a different feel to the place, never mind the look, which was dated, a little drab and definitely not the right environment to encourage cutting-edge design work. She thought it boring, not to mention inhospitable. There were different phones too, but it was the ergonomically unhelpful furniture that really concerned her—and single glazing? Had Quinn gone mad? Never mind the expense, what about condensation? Cold? If people were uncomfortable at work, productivity would suffer. Didn’t Quinn know anything?

  And there was a different smell too…

  Cigarette smoke?

  ‘Nancy!’ Magenta exclaimed with increased urgency.

  ‘Are you all right, Magenta?’ Glancing round, Nancy grabbed a chair and tried to press Magenta into it. />
  ‘I’m fine.’ She was anything but fine. What had happened here? Had Quinn got people in to dress the offices like a sixties stage-set? And how was it possible she had slept through those changes? But it wasn’t just the noise element that concerned her; these changes were too thorough, too perfect, too convincing…

  Magenta’s throat dried. This wasn’t some office team-building exercise. This was reality. This was reality for Nancy and for all the people here. It was Magenta who was out of sync. She must have fallen down the rabbit hole, like Alice, while she’d been asleep and landed in the sixties. And now the shock of being trapped inside a dream was only exceeded by her dread of meeting Quinn. From what she’d gathered, he was just the sort of man who would slot right into the sixties, where men ruled. Quinn obviously thought they did.

  Magenta took a few steadying breaths while Nancy looked on anxiously. Magenta’s heart was pounding uncontrollably, but whatever had happened she would have to manage it.

  She looked as much a part of the sixties as everyone else in the office, Magenta reassured herself, with her carefully made-up face, perfect hair and vintage cream wool dress. Though you could have bounced bullets off her underwear, it did outline her shape to the point where her breasts were outrageously prominent. That, believe it or not, was the fashion. It could best be described as ‘sex in your face’. No wonder Jackson had commented; she should have known better than to dress like this, but had done so innocently. Back in the real world, it had made her feel sexy—and after the encounter with the biker she had wanted to prove to herself that she still could feel that way. Now she realised drawing attention to herself in a sixties office was asking for trouble.

  But, on the plus side, she had been researching the era for quite some time, so even locked into this bizarre dream she wasn’t entirely out on a limb. She could even accept and be a little reassured by the fact that the dream seemed to be influenced by her research; there was certainly plenty of raw material here. Although quite how the summer of love, the sexual revolution and the Whisky a Go Go, the first disco in America—which just happened to be Quinn’s homeland—would manifest themselves remained to be seen.

  She would have to rely on what she knew if she was going to anticipate and avoid some of the problems, Magenta concluded. She would draw on that knowledge now—and her first action would be to open all the windows and let the smoke out.

  Predictably everyone complained that it was too cold. ‘Well, you can’t smoke in here,’ Magenta insisted. ‘It’s against the law.’

  ‘Since when?’ one of the younger guys asked, swinging his arm around her waist to drag her close so she had no alternative but to inhale his foul-smelling breath.

  ‘And that is too,’ she informed him, removing his searching hand from her tightly sculpted rear end.

  ‘Ooh.’ He turned to his friends to pull a mocking face. ‘What got into your bed this morning, Miss Steele?’

  ‘No one?’ another man suggested, to raucous jeers.

  ‘We all know what’s wrong with you, ice maiden.’

  ‘Cut it out!’ Magenta said angrily. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘Apparently, you never are,’ one of the men murmured to his colleagues in a stage whisper.

  As if that were the cue for the main player to enter the scene, the double doors at the far end of the office swung open and every head swivelled in that direction. Some of the women even stood at their desks as if royalty was about to enter the room. To say Magenta was stunned by this reaction wouldn’t even come close. ‘What the…?’

  ‘Quinn,’ Nancy told her tensely, hurrying away.

  Magenta turned to say something to Nancy, but everyone including Nancy had returned to work the second Quinn arrived. And Quinn didn’t just arrive—he strode across the floor like a conquering hero. To make matters worse, all the women were giving him simpering glances when what he needed, in Magenta’s opinion, was a short, sharp, shock and someone to stand up to him. Whatever dream state they were both trapped in, this was getting out of hand.

  But could this really be Quinn? Magenta’s head was reeling. Quinn in the sixties was none other than the gorgeous biker, in a jauntily angled Trilby hat and a dark overcoat that, instead of making him look silly, only succeeded in making him look like the master of the sexual universe.

  ‘Magenta,’ he said curtly, shrugging the coat off his shoulder and handing it to her along with his hat.

  He knew her?

  ‘That’s a better look for you,’ he said, giving Magenta the most intrusive inspection yet. ‘I like to see a woman in a dress with some shape to it.’

  What?

  ‘Keep it up,’ he said approvingly. ‘And remember, I expect the same high standards from my staff at all times—’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said smartly, playing along, which was all she could do—other than acknowledge Quinn was a beyond the pale chauvinist—as well as the best-looking man she had ever seen in her life. With his tough-guy body clothed in a sharply tailored dark suit and impeccably knotted tie, he looked amazing.

  ‘I’ll need you for a meeting later,’ he said, as though they had been working together for ever. There was not a shred of equality between them, Magenta registered with a spear of concern.

  ‘So no gossiping with the other girls in the kitchen when you’re supposed to be making my coffee,’ Quinn warned.

  Would that be the coffee with the extra-strong laxative in it? Magenta wondered.

  ‘And absolutely no lunch break for any of you girls. You’ll have a lot of work to get through by the time I finish the meeting I’m going into now—understood?’

  Actually, no, I’m a bit confused. Magenta thought Quinn had called a meeting to discuss her position with the company going forward, but perhaps that directive hadn’t made it through to the sixties. She decided to prompt him, if only to find out how much had travelled with her in the dream. ‘So, you’re having another meeting first?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Quinn demanded impatiently.

  ‘Another meeting before our meeting…?’

  Quinn had no worries about touching Magenta. Taking hold of her shoulder in a firm grip, he steered her into an alcove out of sight of the rest of the office. ‘Not in front of everyone, Magenta…’ And then his eyes warmed in a way that made her heart stop. ‘Later, maybe—if I have the time.’

  Magenta’s mouth formed a question, but she was so stunned by Quinn’s brazenly sexual behaviour her voice refused to function, and when she did speak it was only to ask Quinn what he wanted her to do with his hat and coat.

  ‘Why, hang it up, of course,’ he said as if she were one card short of a pack. ‘And when you’ve done that I’ll need plenty of coffee—hot, strong and black. Oh, and when you come into the meeting later, don’t forget your shorthand notebook.’

  ‘My—?’

  ‘You’re the office manager now, Magenta—that’s quite a promotion for you. You’ll have to sharpen up if you want to set the seal on this position.’

  She’d set something in concrete—the deeds of the building, perhaps, before she dropped them from a great height on Quinn’s head…

  But someone else owned the building now, she remembered, biting her lip. Steele Design had been called Style Design when her father had bought it. She had no stake at all here.

  Now she found herself staring at the back of her own office door as Quinn closed it in her face.

  Then it flew open again. ‘Magenta?’ Quinn rapped. ‘My office. Now.’

  You could have heard a pin drop behind her. They all anticipated her immediate dismissal, Magenta guessed. She countered that expectation with her sweetest smile. ‘Of course,’ she replied respectfully; respectful was good—essential—at least until she learned the ropes. Walking inside, she shut the door behind her.

  ‘Let’s get one thing clear,’ Quinn said, handing Magenta the hairpiece she had left on his desk. ‘You do not use my office in my absence for grooming purposes. You d
o not come in here at all, unless at my express invitation. And, if I’m at work early, you are too.’

  ‘And how would I—?’

  ‘How would you know?’ he interrupted, narrowing his eyes. ‘I was coming to that. Do you have your notebook? No? Carry it with you at all times? You have a “must do” list, don’t you? When I give you a memo to alert you to the fact that I will be in here at six in the morning, I expect you to note it down. Why are you late, by the way?’

  Magenta opened her mouth and wondered which of the million and one reasons on the tip of her tongue would work best in Wonderland. ‘I apologise,’ she said, thinking better of making a fight out of it just yet. ‘I just thought you might appreciate a couple of days to become acclimatized.’

  ‘Acclimatised? I’ve come over from the States, not the moon. What’s wrong with you limies?’ Limies? Whoah; that was an old term Magenta guessed hadn’t been used much since the war. The term was a hangover from the way-back-when days, when British sailors were given limes to counteract scurvy. Surely they were way past that?

  ‘I need you here on time, Magenta,’ Quinn continued to rap. ‘You’re my assistant as well as the office manager. If the job’s too much for you, just let me know.’

  ‘It isn’t—I mean, yes, sir,’ Magenta spat out crisply, stopping just shy of a salute.

  This was novel. This was annoying and confusing. And, alarmingly, it was pretty amazing too. Quinn was pretty amazing, with all that dark hair escaping his best attempt to tame it from falling over his brow. And those eyes, steely and fierce—not to mention the body currently concealed beneath some pretty sharply tailored clothes. Here at last was a man who was really worth taking on. Had she met her match at last? Forget all that nonsense about not wanting to add him to her workload; she would gladly put Quinn on her ‘must do’ list.

  ‘Please accept my apologies.’ She wanted to keep the job, such as it was, didn’t she? ‘I forgot you intended making such an early start. And I’ll be sure to remember my, er, “must do” list in future.’

  ‘Be sure you do. Just remember, this might be your first day on the job, but it gets you no special favours from me. I expect you up to speed by the end of the day. And any thoughts you might have had about taking time off before the holidays, cancel them.’