‘Like that, is it?’ asked Lois, who was watching her face.
‘Like what?’
‘Snap judgment. You don’t like him.’
‘No, I don’t,’ Catherine declared vehemently. ‘He’s too full of his own importance.’
‘Be fair, Catherine. He has achieved something to feel pretty special about.’
‘I know,’ she admitted with due remorse. ‘I feel awful talking about him like this when I’m hoping to get some work out of him. I’m not usually such a hypocrite.’
‘No-o, I’ll go along with that. Neither are you usually such a bad judge of character, because take it from me, dear, he’s quite charming. Perhaps you’re in awe of him because he’s acquired such fame. It affects some people that way. Anyway, to put you in the picture, I told him about Allycats and asked him if he could send some typing your way. I gave him your business address and he promised to get in touch. Now, must do my duty round. Have you all got drinks?’ she said brightly, moving on to the nearest group of people.
Catherine realized that she’d forgotten to ask Lois his real name. No matter. She expected to encounter him again, and she did, by the simple expedient of turning ’round.
‘Looking for me?’ he inquired arrogantly.
So what if he knew she had been looking for him? He’d know why, because Lois had prepared the ground for her by mentioning the typing agency and informing him that she hoped he would give her some work to do. So she clasped her hands tightly, took a deep breath and said without preamble, ‘What do I call you? Lucky?’
His eyebrows lifted. ‘I hope so. You tell me.’
Unsure of how to handle his blatant teasing, she tried again. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Paul Hebden,’ he replied after a slight pause, as if he thought she should have known it.
‘I’m Catherine Mason. The Cat in Allycats. My partner Alison Butler is the Ally part.’
He studied her face for a moment, the total absorption in his jade eyes replacing the cold boredom so recently contained there.
For the second time that evening she recognized the danger and knew she must not allow herself to feel flattered, no matter how novel it was to have the most interesting man in the room, the most interesting man she had ever met, come to that, looking at her as if she had suddenly changed from her average self into a creature of divine fascination.
‘Mm,’ he said, in a way that made her wonder if he thought Cat was an appropriate name for her. She had been told more than once that her pointed face and sapphire blue eyes had a slightly feline look.
‘Is this a new kind of party talk?’ he said unexpectedly.
He was obviously telling her that he wasn’t in the mood to talk business. She sighed in resignation, and shivered despite the heat of the room. What he was in the mood for had been apparent all along.
He said, ‘Have you a coat to collect?’
She had hoped that her stay in the overheated smoky atmosphere wouldn’t be too prolonged, but now she didn’t want to leave its safety.
‘If we go so soon, Lois will think her party is a flop.’
‘Don’t be naive. It’s doubtful that Lois will take note of our leaving in this scrum. But if she does, that’s not what she will think at all.’
She swallowed. She and Ally needed the work, but did they need it this badly? The simple answer was yes. So yes, she had a coat to fetch. And yes, he could take her home.
She hoped she knew what she was doing. On the way home, sitting beside him in his car, a very expensive model with long racy lines, her thoughts were chaotic to say the least. Obviously he was dallying her along with the intention of eventually giving her some work to do. The million dollar question was, if he did, would she be able to cope? Bosses had long been noted for making passes. Even Charles, who had been almost perfect in every way—until the end—had tried it on at first. He’d accepted the fact that she didn’t want to play office hanky-panky and had gone back into line. Charles had respected her, going as far as to take her out on several occasions after his unsuccessful try-on, and every time his behavior had been that of a perfect gentleman.
But Paul wasn’t Charles, as she was soon to find out. When she said, ‘That’s where I live,’ he drove straight past, beyond the illuminating glow of the street lamp, and didn’t stop until he found a place of deep shadows.
Even though she expected it, it still came as a shock to be crushed so forcefully against his chest as he imprisoned her mouth in a kiss that blotted out everything but the most intense spurt of pleasure she had ever known. Every other kiss she had ever received faded into insignificance before the impact of this new experience, one which showed the others up for what they were: icing sugar kisses, sweet but impotent, leaving her senses untouched.
Just as her mouth had softened under the skillful persuasion of his, so did her body soften to his touch as his fingers brushed against her in delicate introduction as he reached for the lever that lowered her seat. The maneuver was effected so smoothly that she didn’t realize what was happening until the vulnerability of her reclining position struck her.
‘No!’ she gasped, struggling to sit up, a fresh wave of knowledge sweeping over her to increase her sense of panic.
Charles had been easy to repulse because she had wanted to repulse him. The recoiling of her flesh had been a blow to his pride and he had backed away from that as much as from her frosty, affronted protest.
But what man would listen when her body was giving out a different kind of message? He would take his cue from the exhilarated wildness of her pulse, the vibrating tingle of flesh that felt as though it must surely melt under the heat of its own response.
She had always prided herself on having a high sense of self-preservation and had guarded against the obvious harmful addictions such as cigarettes and alcohol, not realizing that it was easy to refrain from smoking when you found the taste of tobacco unpleasant. She quite enjoyed the occasional glass of wine, but hard liquor had little appeal for her.
Paul Hebden, though, could easily get into her blood. If she were foolish enough to let this happen, she would run the risk of never getting him out of her system again. He spelled danger for her. Resisting him would be the hardest test of stamina she had ever faced or was likely to come up against in her entire life. Despite all the confusion he wrought in her, her mind was surprisingly clear on that point.
Her next piece of action was a masterful cover-up of the battle she was fighting. ‘I’m getting out of this car, Paul, and don’t try to stop me.’
‘I never need to exert physical strength over a woman,’ he said, his tone implying that it was naive of her to think he ever needed to resort to such measures. Women would always be readily available to him.
In one smooth operation she was released from his arms and her seat was brought back to its original upright position.
‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you,’ she said, her dark copper hair swinging defiantly as she got out of his car. Even to her own ears her words sounded like a line from an old movie.
‘Do that,’ he instructed urbanely. ‘Seven-thirty tomorrow. The Park Royal Hotel. Call for me. If you’re not there on the dot, I won’t wait. But you’ll be there.’
‘You reckon? I’m afraid your confidence is in for a knock.’ Her quick breathing might tell him she was off balance, but her voice was as composed as she could have wished.
His smile mocked her. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t need to. He knew as well as she did the effort it took her to walk away.
CHAPTER TWO
Sleep was not to be wooed. After restlessly tossing and turning for thirty minutes or so, and still not being able to get the wretched man out of her mind, she put on the light and reached for her bedside reading matter. She had quite forgotten that the book she’d left handy was the one she had recently purchased—his.
Was there no escaping him?
She opened the book. Might as well find out if she found his writing s
tyle as disturbing as she found him. As she had only read the first few pages, she started again at the beginning, and as before, she was immediately absorbed. He was clever with words, and devious. She discovered meanings now that she had missed the first time and before she got to the bottom of the third page a blush rose to her cheeks, one which was to renew itself every few pages. Yet she was full of admiration for his writing technique. She knew why he had such a large and faithful readership. His characters were flesh and blood; every word he wrote stood out with sparkling clarity, justifying its existence, which was to further the plot. No boring padding, and even the bits that made her blush, the sex passages, although too earthy for her taste, were no worse than one would expect in a hard-hitting, no-punches-pulled novel obviously aimed at a masculine market.
Despite that—or because of it—she was adamant on one point. No matter how good the pay was, or how desperately she and Ally needed the money to keep Allycats afloat, she couldn’t work for him. If this novel was representative of the stuff he wrote, she wouldn’t be happy taking on his typing.
He wrote with obvious enjoyment and gusto, and she could just imagine him sitting a few feet away from her desk, his sardonic jade eyes following her progress as she typed out his manuscript. She could see it all so clearly in her mind’s eye—his mouth curling in knowledgeable derision, anticipating the exact moment her fingers would stumble on the typewriter keys as the red awareness flooded her cheeks. All her prudish instincts came rushing to the fore. She couldn’t do it, not even for Ally’s sake!
* * *
Usually she was the first in to work, but the next morning she didn’t need to take her key out of her purse. The door was unlocked, Samantha was occupied with her toy bricks in the corner she’d claimed as her own, and Ally was sitting at her desk, fretting over the account books.
As Catherine entered, Ally’s chin swung up and she leaned back against the padded upholstery, looking too small for the executive chair which they had picked up for a song and done up themselves.
Ally was small in stature, but in spirit she matched up to a giant, and it was this which had bullied Catherine and kept them both going when their backs were weary, when their raw-from-scrubbing fingers could barely hold a paintbrush and their noses and stomachs revolted at the smell of soap and paint. They had scrubbed and painted and carpeted and furnished. They’d hung Japanese prints on the newly painted walls and fixed a nameplate and a new, shiny brass doorknob on the newly painted door. And all this time it had been Ally’s indomitable spirit, her cheerful, cheeky bounce which had held them together.
Now, as she sat in that outsize chair, her wispy fringe sticking out where she’d pushed her fingers through it, the bubbling animation of her tiny-featured face subdued in dejection, even her spirit looked small.
It gave Catherine an enormous jolt to see her friend looking so down—so defeated. Ally was a fighter. She’d fought during the year of Ray’s illness, keeping depression at bay and Ray’s spirits up as well as her own, despite the fact that she had just found out that she was pregnant with Samantha when Ray’s listlessness was diagnosed as a blood disorder.
The knowledge that nothing could be done for him had been an extra burden to carry on her slight shoulders. She had always been the strong one in the marriage, the one to keep an eye on the finances and make the major decisions. After much soul-searching she had made her hardest decision: She thought it best not to tell Ray until almost the end, when it would be impossible to keep it from him any longer. He was charming, but weak, showing a marked tendency to crumble in a crisis, and he became querulous if he thought he was being given a bad deal. She knew this and loved him not a whit less because of it. She tried to explain to his parents that she was afraid that if he was told he would withdraw from the harshness of the sentence into a secret shell of his own, where they wouldn’t be able to reach him. They pooh-poohed the idea, not seeing their son through her realistic eyes, and insisted that he had the strength of character and the right to know. Ally fought bitterly with them on the issue, forfeiting any hope of receiving help and support from them afterward. Her reward was the knowledge that the last year of her husband’s life was the happiest he had ever known. To this end she had spent money as if there were no tomorrow for either of them, at bitter cost to her own solvency afterward. His parents couldn’t see that she was acting with loving unselfishness. They would have had her make their son miserable with her tears, and condemned her laughter and cheerful disposition as outrageous, and made it clear that they wanted nothing more to do with such a heartless, uncaring creature.
So it came as something of a shock to Catherine to hear Ally’s reply in answer to her urgent query of what was wrong. ‘Ray’s parents came to see me last night.’
‘And?’
‘They want to take responsibility for Samantha.’
‘Take Samantha away from you, you mean?’ Catherine said bluntly.
‘Yes.’
‘And leave you with nothing. Don’t they think you’ve suffered enough?’
‘That’s the whole point, they don’t think I’ve suffered at all. So I did go a bit mad with the spending at the end. There was such a lot of living to cram into that one year. But they won’t see that before then I was the one to curb Ray’s extravagance. They think I should have conserved what little savings we had to provide for Samantha after Ray’s death. In not doing so, I’ve acted irresponsibly and proved myself a totally unfit mother for their grandchild, or so they say, and they’re graciously offering to take her off my hands. It’s their view that if I can’t take care of my own affairs, how can I possibly take care of my child?’ A flicker of fierce anger came to her eyes at the injustice of it, which just as quickly extinguished itself in despair. ‘Perhaps they’re right,’ she said, giving the account books a shove in Catherine’s direction. ‘I hate to admit it, but I’m not the businesswoman I thought I was. I’ve not only conned you, I’ve conned myself as well. Perhaps it might be as well to get out while there are still some assets to split between us and not a pile of debts. I’m sure that Charles would give you your job back if you asked him.’
If she crawled, perhaps he would. If she went back to him in all humbleness and admitted that he had been right in the things he had said, that she had repaid all the kindness he had shown her with ingratitude.
Charles had been a big letdown. She had expected him to applaud her actions, find something worthy in her wanting to go to the aid of a friend and perhaps even do something constructive to help put the venture on its feet. Instead he had accused her of using him. Certainly he had helped her in her job and she was grateful to him for having sufficient faith in her initially to think she could do it. She would be the first to admit that she couldn’t have managed without his guidance—but she had always given him a loyal day’s work and it was pathetic of him to moan that he’d got used to her and accuse her of leaving him in the lurch.
She hadn’t told Ally any of this, even though she knew that her friend had been puzzled that the break between her and Charles had been so final. Ally had assumed that they would continue to see each other, a thought which had also crossed Catherine’s mind. There had been a time when she thought that something more permanent would come out of their casual dating. She shivered, as though suddenly realizing what a lucky escape she’d had. And anyway . . .
‘Allycats is surely a success,’ she protested. ‘You said yourself only the other day that we were getting a fair number of orders for work coming in.’
‘True. But I made two bad miscalculations. We’ve done this place up practically for nothing, but we’ve still had to pay money out for essentials, typewriters and suchlike. Telephone installation and the advertising we’ve had to do haven’t come cheap. We’re in a wobbly position now because I didn’t have any savings to put in and yours—and I’ll never be able to thank you enough for investing your own money—didn’t add up to enough working capital. That was my first miscalculation.’
‘Me again. It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to take up from where I left off before I gave up work when I was expecting Samantha. I’m rusty. It’s going to take awhile to pick up my speed and get my pre-Samantha efficiency back. I’m not pulling my weight. Whatever happens, I want you to know that I don’t regret trying. Even though it seems that we’ve fallen on our faces, I’m glad we had a go. If nothing else, it’s shown me what a true friend you are. I’ll never forget what you did for me.’
‘Will you please stop this! This halo is giving me a headache. And anyway, all the favors aren’t on one side. What did I give up? A job I was feeling too complacent about, which is the next thing to boredom. A man who wasn’t as nice as I thought he was. No, I should be thanking you, Ally.’
‘You’re not just saying this to make me feel less guilty?’
‘I promise you I’m not.’
But for Ally she would have gone on working for Charles, possibly drifted into a deeper relationship with him, which would have fulfilled her only because she didn’t know any better. She would never have gone to that party in the hope of finding work, never met Paul, never been awakened by his kiss. Even as her lips tingled at the memory, they curved in a smile of inspiration. She could use Paul as a lever to make Ally change her mind.
‘I haven’t had a chance to tell you about my meeting with the writer at Lois’s party last night.’
‘You actually got to talk to him. Lucky you!’
‘No.’ Catherine couldn’t resist it. ‘Lucky Chance.’
‘Oh, you!’ Ally said, pretending to throw her stapler at her, before asking with betraying eagerness, ‘Did he say we could do some typing for him? He’s very prolific, turns out books at an amazing rate. If we got in with him on a regular basis it would set us up nicely.’
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