‘Good. Because when clients call with queries you will have to respond to them in a coherent, knowledgeable fashion.’
He paused, and she said into the silence, ‘What happened to your last secretary?’
‘My last secretary,’ he said lazily, ‘emigrated to Australia to live with her daughter three years ago. Since then I’ve been subjected to a string of women ranging from the downright dim to the misplaced intellectual.’
So you wouldn’t describe yourself as fussy? Francesca wanted to ask. ‘I see,’ she said, only, in fact, seeing a series of hopeless confrontations ahead of her.
‘You, at least, have started off in vaguely the right direction. You can spell at any rate.’ He looked at her through his lashes, his face expressionless. ‘Which brings me to the obvious question. Why are you here?’
‘I thought you knew why I was here,’ she answered, bewildered by the question. ‘I’m a spoiled brat who—’
‘Why are you really here?’ he interrupted impatiently. ‘What are you doing here when you could have got yourself a job at any number of companies if you’d wanted. Your father informed me that you had excellent A level results. Why didn’t you go to university?’
Francesca looked at him resentfully, not liking the way he was manoeuvring her into a position of self-defence.
‘Your father wanted you to go to university.’
‘He did,’ she agreed.
‘He wanted you to study economics, I believe.’
‘Did you talk about anything at this lunch of yours apart from me?’ she asked with irritation. ‘I suppose you also know what dress size I am, and what my favourite colour is as well?’
She hadn’t expected a response to that, but he looked at her very carefully, his eyes roaming over her body and sending a reeling sensation of alarm through her. Men had looked at her before—in fact she was quite used to interested stares—but she had never felt this nervous prickle down her spine.
‘Size eight, and, with your hair, probably green—dark green.’
‘I didn’t go to university,’ she said hurriedly, flushing, ‘because I wanted a break from studying.’
‘A break to do what?’
‘To enjoy myself,’ she muttered feebly, feeling like a cornered rat.
‘Ah, now we’re getting to the heart of the matter, aren’t we?’
‘Are we?’ she asked, already feeling her hackles beginning to rise.
‘You may have all the qualifications for this job, and God only knows I’ve seen more than enough internal applications by way of comparison, but don’t for a minute imagine that I shall tolerate your personal life spilling over into your professional one. Working for me isn’t going to be a game to be endured simply to humour your father. I don’t want to see you enter this office either late or the worse for all-night partying. Do I make myself clear?’
‘As a bell,’ she said coldly.
‘Nor do I expect you to spend your time rushing through your work so that you can get on the telephone to your numerous admirers.’
‘I don’t have numerous admirers, Mr Kemp,’ she snapped. ‘And I can’t believe that Dad would have told you that I did.’
He shrugged. ‘He mentioned some playboy who was always in tow, and playboys tend to travel in packs, don’t they? They don’t feel complete unless they’re enjoying their wild times in the company of like-minded individuals.’ There was contempt on his face.
‘You don’t approve of me, do you, Mr Kemp?’ she asked stiffly.
‘No, I don’t.’ His words were blunt. He was not the sort of man to beat about the bush, nor was he the sort to parcel up unflattering thoughts underneath pretty wrapping.
‘I grew up poor, Miss Wade, and I made it on my own. I don’t approve of playboys who can’t see further than having a good time. Nor do I approve of women like you, who were raised in the lap of luxury and swan through life thinking that hard work is something best left alone. You obviously have the brains to do something for yourself, but that doesn’t appeal, does it? Hard work is rarely glamorous to those who don’t have to do it.’
That stung. She felt angry hurt prick the back of her eyes but she didn’t say anything. She could hardly deny that she had been indulged all her life, could she? By the time she had been born, late in her parents’ lives, her father had already made his first million and had been well on his way to making several more.
Would things have been different if her mother had lived? Probably. But in the absence of a mother her father had spoilt her, doted on her, bought her everything that her heart had desired. There was so much, she later realised, that he had wanted to make up for—for the lack of a mother, for the long hours he worked and, most of all, it had been his way of showing her how much he loved her.
But maybe Oliver Kemp was right. Maybe showering her with material things had taken away from her that hungry edge that drove people on to succeed. She thought of her friends—all pampered, all the indulged products of wealthy parents, charming enough people to whom hardship was unknown and suffering was measured in terms of missed skiing holidays.
‘But those are my personal feelings,’ he said coolly, breaking into her introspection. ‘Personal feelings have no place in a working environment, though. Just so long as you do your job competently then we’ll get along just fine. Abuse your position, my girl, and you’ll soon discover the limits to my tolerance.’
They stared at each other, and she felt panic rise up in her throat. This was never going to work out. He disliked her and he disliked everything that she stood for.
‘Thank you for making me feel so warmly welcomed into your organisation, Mr Kemp,’ she said stiffly, and his lips curved into an unwilling smile which totally altered the forbidding angularity of his face.
He stood up to show her into her office. ‘I see,’ he murmured over his shoulder, their eyes meeting, ‘that that biting tongue of yours might be something I shall have to tolerate. However,’ he continued, turning away and walking into the outer office, ‘there’s no need to dress in designer clothes.’
He sat on the edge of her desk, waiting for her to sit down, then he leant towards her. ‘I say this for your own benefit. The people with whom you’ll be mixing don’t come from such a rarefied background as you do.’ He reached out to finger the lapel of her expensive shirt. ‘Too much of this and you might find yourself distanced by a group of very nice people indeed.’
She didn’t pull away from his touch, but she wanted to. Instead, as he strolled back into his office, she found that her body had become rigid, and she only began to relax as she sorted out the stack of typing which lay at the side of the computer.
At twelve o’clock he emerged from his office and informed her that he would be out for the rest of the day. She watched as he slipped on his jacket, adjusted his tie, and breathed a sigh of relief when the door closed behind him.
He made her tense and it wasn’t simply due to the insults which he had flung at her. There was something watchful about him—something that stirred a certain uneasy wariness in her. He was like a shark, circling the water around her, content to watch, but she would do well to remember that sharks bit.
He had left her enough work to fill her time until five o’clock, but in fact she stayed on until nearly six-thirty, familiarising herself with his filing system, and familiarising herself also with some of the books on the shelf which he had informed her would have to be read, digested and memorised.
She had no idea how much of that had been said because he contemptuously believed that she would never manage such a task, but if she was to stay working with the loathsome man then she would make damned sure that by the end of her stint he would have to swallow everything he had said.
Her father was not at home when she got back—tired, but oddly elated at having spent the day doing something productive—but Rupert was. Bridie had let him in and Francesca found him in the sitting room, on his second glass of gin and tonic.
He loo
ked at her as she walked in and said without preamble, ‘Nasty rumour has it that you’ve got a job.’
Francesca looked at him and grinned. She was very fond of Rupert Thompson. She had known him casually for two years, but it was really only in the last seven months that they had become close, much to her father’s disgust. He had no patience with men like Rupert. He thought that he should buckle down and find himself a job or, failing that, join the Army—as if joining the Army would suddenly change sunny-tempered Rupert into an aggressive work-machine.
The only thing that held him in check was his daughter’s repeated reassurance that nothing was going on between them. Rupert was fun. He didn’t want her as a passionate lover and the feeling was mutual.
She took off her coat, tossed it onto a chair and went across to the bar to pour herself a glass of mineral water.
‘Nasty rumour,’ she said, sitting down on the sofa, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet underneath her, ‘is right.’ She looked at him. ‘You could always follow my example,’ she added, and he grinned at her infectiously.
‘And lose my reputation? Never.’
As it happened, he did have a job of sorts, but in typical Rupert-style he had long ago decided that delegation was a talent that was much underrated. And, in fairness, it worked for him. His parents had died ten years ago, leaving him a fortune, along with a vast estate which he had happily left in the efficient hands of the managers who had looked after it from the year dot.
He signed things that needed his signature, spent enough time at his country home to ensure that things were being run profitably, and there his input ceased. He made sure that all his employees were treated well, received unstinting loyalty in return, and cheerfully had his good times on some of the immense profits that came his way.
‘So tell all,” he commanded, settling back comfortably with his drink, and Francesca obliged, carefully editing out the unpleasantness of her interview. She wasn’t given to confiding private feelings to other people—a legacy, she had always assumed, of having been the only child of a single-parent family.
‘Kemp,’ Rupert murmured thoughtfully. ‘Kemp, Kemp, Kemp. I know that name.’
‘Their electronic stuff is all over the country, Rupert,’ Francesca said drily. ‘And they’re branching out all the time,’ she heard herself saying. ‘They’ve moved into Europe and are hoping to capture the Far East fairly soon.’ One day, she thought suddenly, and I sound like an advertising brochure. Had Oliver Kemp been that successful in influencing her thoughts? She found the idea of that slightly disconcerting.
‘No, no, no.’ He waved aside the explanation. ‘What I mean is this—I’ve heard of that man personally.’
‘Really?’ She felt a sudden rush of curiosity which, she told herself, she had no intention of satisfying. Oliver Kemp was an arrogant bastard, and whatever he did in his private life had nothing to do with her. She would work for him because a combination of pride and guilt would make her, at least for the time being, but beyond that her interest stopped.
Rupert, immune to subtle shifts in atmosphere, blithely ignored this one and continued in the same thoughtful voice, ‘Oliver Kemp. I’ve seen him around.’
‘You’ve seen most people around,’ she pointed out. ‘You’re hardly one of life’s shrinking violets, are you?’
He laughed, pleased at that. ‘Good-looking chap,’ he said, draining his drink and eyeing the empty glass meaningfully. She ignored the hint. As far as she was concerned he drank too much anyway, and she had no intention of assisting the situation.
‘You can have some mineral water, Rupert,’ she said eventually, and he sighed in resignation.
‘Too much of this stuff is bad for you,’ he said when she handed him the glass of water. ‘Haven’t you heard that?’
‘No, and nor have you.’
‘A glass of wine, according to the experts, does wonders for some organ or other. Heart, I believe.’
‘I would sympathise if your input was restricted to one glass per day.’
‘Oliver Kemp,’ he said, not commenting on that one, ‘was in the gossip columns not too long ago. That’s why the name rings a bell. Don’t you ever read the gossip columns?’
‘Too trivial,’ she replied airily, and he laughed with great humour.
‘Ever since they announced that we were about to become engaged?’
‘Stupid people.’ Her mouth tightened as she remembered all the fuss. One casual shot of them leaving a nightclub in London had been enough to propel them into an item, and it had been that silly drama which had led to all her father’s unfounded suspicions that his daughter was about to do something utterly ridiculous.
‘Well, they had their facts right about Oliver Kemp. He’s engaged to a woman—Imogen something or other. There was a picture of them taken at their engagement party not too long ago.’
‘Oliver Kemp is engaged?’ Her voice was high and incredulous, and Rupert looked at her with some surprise.
‘Sattler,’ he said, nodding, delighted at this triumph of memory. ‘Imogen Sattler. She’s one of the city’s top businesswomen. They squeezed in a few lines of background on her. Born up north somewhere.’ He frowned. Instant recall was not one of his strong points and he didn’t pursue it. ‘Girl makes good, type of thing. You know what I mean—parents not well off, daughter very clever, gets into Oxford University, ends up sitting on the board of one of the top companies in the country.’
That made sense. Oliver thought that she was frivolous, an intellectual lightweight who spent her time enjoying her father’s wealth—‘Daddy’s money’ would probably be the term he would use, she thought with sudden bitterness. She was a decorative little bauble who had suddenly found herself catapulted into his sphere.
Rupert was standing up, ready to leave. He had only really dropped by, he told her, to ask her out to dinner. ‘Now that you’re earning,’ he said, ‘I shall expect you to pay your way.’
‘Rupert, I always pay my way, and let’s not go into those times when your wallet has mysteriously been absent without leave.’
They laughed, and arranged a place to meet tomorrow—at seven, so that she would have time to leave work at six, dash back to the house, and quickly change.
She knew that she didn’t need to justify herself in the eyes of Oliver Kemp, but some part of her wanted to prove to him that she wasn’t the brainless dimwit he thought she was.
He had expected her to falter over that typing test, she realised, and he probably confidently expected that she wouldn’t last the course in the job. He would think that she would get bored or that she wouldn’t be able to cope, or both.
She went upstairs to have a bath, and by the time she emerged she had gone from simmering irritation over his contempt for her to downright anger. She had also found herself giving far too much thought to this fiancée of his.
She had no idea what Imogen Sattler looked like, but her imagination provided her with all the details—tall, hard, eyes as condescending and intolerant as his—the sort of woman who was only happy when discussing the stock market or the economy, the sort of woman who never spoke but held forth to an audience. The sort of woman, in fact, who would be ideally suited to a man like Oliver Kemp. And, of course, they would share the same hard edge of people born without comforts and destined to make their own.
Her father came home just as Francesca was finishing her meal and settling down to a cup of coffee. It took a great deal of effort to maintain a calm expression, to convince herself that working for Oliver Kemp was worth it when she saw how his face lit up at the thought that his dear little daughter had taken the bull by the horns and got herself a job—and one that he had recommended at that.
And he must have known Oliver Kemp’s character more than he had originally suggested, because he was visibly relieved when she told him that the job was fine, that the boss was fine, that everything would work out, she was sure. She kept her fingers crossed behind her back all the while.
Francesca made agreeing noises and thought, Respected by whom? Vampires and other creatures of the night?
But then, she later thought in bed, he wasn’t cold-hearted, was he? Not with a fiancée tucked away in the background.
She tried to imagine him as a hot-blooded man of passion, and that was so easy that by the time she finally fell asleep she no longer felt just angry and resentful towards him, she also felt vaguely disturbed.
CHAPTER TWO
‘SO YOU made it here on time.’
Those were the first words that greeted Francesca as she walked through the office door at five minutes to nine. She had planned on arriving earlier, but her body had become accustomed to late mornings, and trying to put it through its paces at seven-thirty had been torturous.
She looked at him, keeping her temper in check, but he wasn’t looking at her at all.
‘I see you managed to finish all the typing that was on your desk. What time did you leave last night?’
Francesca sat down at her desk. She had dressed in slightly more conservative clothes today—navy blue dress, straight and fairly shapeless and far less obviously designer.
‘Around six,’ she murmured vaguely, and his eyes slid across to her with irony.
‘There’s no need to become a workhorse,’ he said mildly, reaching down two volumes from the shelf of books and putting them on the desk next to her. ‘I want hard work out of you; I don’t want a nervous breakdown.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ she asked, eyeing the books.
‘What it’s supposed to mean is that I don’t want you working over-long hours and then complaining of exhaustion by the end of the week.’
‘I’m not a complaining sort, Mr Kemp,’ she answered, truthfully enough, and he shrugged, not really interested in what she was or wasn’t, she supposed, just so long as it didn’t intrude on work.
It was a novel situation. She had always been accustomed to provoking a reaction in men. She had the extraordinary looks of a blonde with contrasting dark eyes and eyebrows. She looked at him from under her thick lashes and saw that as far as her looks were concerned she might well be as alluring to him as the umbrella stand in the corner of the office.
To Tame a Proud Heart Page 2