ACAPULCO MOONLIGHT
Marjorie Lewty
Just how far was she expected to go?
Karen knew she had to avoid antagonizing millionaire Saul Marston at the Acapulco conference if she wanted him to save her financially troubled company.
And she was prepared to put aside her personal dislike of the man and be accommodating in order to create a favorable impression.
But that didn't include sleeping with him. He couldn't make that a condition for investing in the company, could he?
CHAPTER ONE
Ever since yesterday afternoon, when Ben broke the news to her, Karen had been feeling more and more worried, and by this morning, when she arrived at the factory and edged her Mini into the parking bay marked Miss K. Lane, the worry had changed to anger.
It wasn't fair, she fumed silently, slamming the car door and turning the key, Ben shouldn't be in danger of losing everything he had built up in his business Over the last five years. She stood for a moment looking with affection at the low, neat factory building in the small industrial centre on the outskirts of the Midlands town, where she had worked with Ben Clark for three of those five years. She was almost as proud of the place as Ben himself was. As his secretary, and recently as his personal assistant,, she had been involved in so many of the decisions that concerned the running of the factory and the comfort of the staff that she felt she had a personal stake in it all.
She pushed open the side door, stamping the slushy snow off her high-heeled black boots vigorously. Damn the bank manager! Couldn't he see what an utterly worthwhile man Ben was? Honest, hardworking, responsible, kind. A thoroughly good man. And a wizard in his own particular line, which was electronics. Heavens above, she grumbled to herself as she hung up her coat in the outer office, electronics was the up-and-coming thing, wasn't it? The communications industry that was going to transform all our lives. Surely a man as clever and inventive as Ben Clark should be able to keep his firm viable, without being on the brink of disaster every other month?
Lucy, the young typist and odd-job-girl, came panting in just behind Karen, her cheeky face rosy from the keen January wind outside. 'Oh hello, Miss Lane, gosh, am I late? I had to wait ages for a bus. Brrh! What a brute of a morning. It's starting to snow again.' She wrenched off her mac and flung it over the back of the typing chair.
'Hadn't you'd better hang that up?' Karen suggested. 'We're on show this morning, remember?'
Lucy's hand flew to her mouth. 'Oh, golly, I forgot.' She hung the mac on the coat-rack next to Karen's red cord jacket and went over to uncover her typewriter, rubbing her hands together vigorously. 'What's so special about this important bod who's coming, anyway? Is he going to give Mr Clark a specially hefty order or something?'
'Something,' Karen said vaguely. There was no point, at this stage, in warning Lucy just how critical the visit of Mr Saul Marston, millionaire-tycoon, was likely to be. If he was interested in what he saw here Ben's troubles might be over. If not—well, Lucy would probably find herself out of a job at the end of the week. So would they all.
Karen smoothed down her scarlet pleated skirt and glanced in the mirror to check on her make-up and run a comb through her dark, shining hair. Except for evening dates she usually wore her hair down, curving into her neck, or tied back with a ribbon, but this morning she had arranged it in a knot on the top of her prettily-shaped head. A small detail, but today everything depended on giving this Saul Marston the impression of a well-run business, and Karen reckoned she looked like the competent business woman she felt herself to be. She just wished she didn't feel so churned up inside.
'Brew up some coffee, there's a dear,' she said to Lucy. 'I know it's early but we can do with it on a morning like this, and Mr Clark will be ready for some when he comes in.'
'Yes, Miss Lane, will do.' Lucy flashed an adoring smile towards Karen and scuttled away to the little cupboard-annexe Where they kept the coffee machine.
'And you'd better have some more on for when Mr Marston arrives,' Karen called after her.
Lucy's pink face and frizzy gold head appeared round the cupboard door. 'What time's he coming?'
'Eleven.' Karen pushed open the door of the inner office that she shared with Ben. His car hadn't been in the car-park so he couldn't be here yet and she'd have time to tidy the place up before he arrived. They'd worked late last night, going over all the figures with a fine toothcomb, in readiness for this vital meeting this morning, and they had both been too tired to set the office to rights then.
But Ben was there already, sitting at his desk. He looked up and smiled his crooked smile as Karen went in. 'Hi!'
'Hi yourself,' she returned brightly, putting her leather satchel on the desk. 'I didn't see your car.'
'It's not here,' he said. 'Big ends went last night on the way home. I came in by bus.'
Karen was shocked at his pallor but wasn't going to let him know it. Cheerfulness was the key-word this morning. She was very fond of Ben and she hated to see him looking so wretched.
'Oh Ben, how rotten for you, I wish I'd known, I could have given you a lift home.' Home, she thought compassionately, you could hardly call Ben's house home—an empty, unwelcoming place it was now, since the divorce.
He gave her a twisted grin, pushing back his hair. Ben Clark was coming up to forty, a sturdy man with a humorous twist to his mouth and straight fair hair that flopped over his wide forehead, a forehead that was already showing deep creases—much too deep for his age, Karen thought with a sudden pang. 'It did me good to walk,' he said. 'Blew the cobwebs away. I rehearsed my speech for this morning, all the way home. Don't they call it the speech on the gallows?' He pulled a ghoulish face.
'That is not funny, Mr Clark,' Karen said. 'I refuse to listen to such negative talk. Have you had any breakfast?'
He rubbed his left temple. 'D'you know. I really can't remember. I know the house was frigid when I got up. The boiler's gone on the blink again, I imagine.'
Poor old Ben—having to fend for himself in an icy-cold house, just when he needed someone to look after his creature comforts.
Karen opened her satchel. 'A good thing I anticipated this state of affairs.' She took out a packet of sandwiches and set it before him on the desk on a paper picnic-plate. 'Eat up.'
Ben said nothing for a moment, just stared at her with a look in his brown eyes that she was beginning to recognise. Then he shook his head in wonder. 'Karen, you're absolutely incredible.'
Lucy came in with two mugs of coffee. 'I'll make some more for when he comes,' she volunteered brightly.
'The name's Marston—Mr Marston,' Karen corrected. 'And don't forget to call him sir.'
Lucy gave her an old-fashioned look. 'I'm practising me curtsy,' she said and went out.
'Cheeky young so-and-so,' grinned Ben. 'We really need some discipline in this place.'
'This place,' Karen said, sitting down opposite Ben at the big desk and emptying her satchel of the papers she had taken home last night, 'is pretty good just as it is. You don't hear of any strikes at Clark's Components. Look at 'em all out there—happy as Larry, whoever he was.' She nodded towards the glass partition that divided the office from the big workshop, where twenty women in white overalls sat at their separate small benches, assembling the intricate bits and pieces that made up the latest electronic gadget that Ben had designed and put on the market.
His eyes followed her glance. 'Yes, they're a jolly good lot.' He was silent again, his lips pursed together, and Karen knew what he was thinking but wouldn't say: How much longer would they be sitting there working away so industriously?
He turned away abruptly and munched a sandwich. 'Um, these are jolly good. Thanks a lot, Karen.' He grinned crookedly. 'Note�
�the condemned man is eating a hearty breakfast.'
Karen said briskly, 'Don't be negative, Ben. Everything's going to be fine. This Saul Marston individual will be impressed, I know he will.'
'I'd like to believe it, but the books are fairly damning evidence. He'll only have to glance at the figures for the last two months to turn him off, I'm afraid.'
'That brute of a bank manager! Why did Mr Fellowes have to retire just at a bad moment for us?' Karen gulped her coffee too hot and choked.
Ben nodded ruefully. 'Yes, I know. Fellowes would probably have helped us over this particular hump. But there would have been another one pretty soon. I've faced it, I'm just not a very good manager.'
'Oh, but that's nonsense ‑'
Ben shook his head and a lock of fair hair flopped over his forehead. He pushed it back impatiently. 'No, it isn't nonsense, my loyal Karen. I'm not kidding myself. My real interest lies out there ‑-' nodding towards the workshop ' ‑not in here.' He waved a hand at the jumble of books and papers spread on the desk. 'I should have thought it out more carefully five years ago, before I decided to start up on my own. I'm just not a business man, and that's the plain truth.' His mouth twisted. 'My ex-wife was right, she was against the whole venture, but I thought I could make a go of it.'
Karen was silent, not trusting herself to speak of Christine, because she might say something she regretted. But inside she fumed as she thought of Ben's wife, with her pretty face and her petulant little mouth, who had walked out on him six months ago, about the time that things started to go wrong with the business. Just a rat leaving a sinking ship, she thought. No, worse than a rat, because a rat acted on instinct, whereas Christine Clark had calculated just what she was doing when she went off to New York with a rep from a top firm that made women's underwear.
Karen glanced at Ben's sombre face and said, 'Well—let's look on the bright side. We don't know yet what this Marston man's proposition will be. It might work out quite well.'
Ben picked up the last sandwich .and said rather grimly, 'It could do—for him. He gobbles up small businesses that have got into difficulties. Adds them to his empire—that's how he made his money. We'll doubtless go the way of all the rest if he considers our products would be useful to him. I just hope he'll want to keep the girls on. As for me ‑-' he shrugged '—I've faced it, Karen. However you look at it Clark's Components is finished as a viable concern. I'll be redundant.'
He stretched out a hand and covered hers on the desk. 'I'm terribly sorry, my dear, I'm afraid this will affect you too. It's a devil. My only consolation is that you won't have any difficulty in finding another job. You'll have a queue forming to get your services.'
She smiled at him. She was very fond of Ben Clark; she'd been with him through all the ups and downs— mostly downs—of the last traumatic months. Very gently she disengaged her hand and began to straighten her papers.
'Thanks for the compliment, Ben, but I refuse to consider that it will be necessary. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed and hope that somehow things will go on more or less as usual. This Marston man is supposed to be an expert on the job—surely he'll recognise a good thing when he sees it. What's he like, anyway?'
Ben had met Saul Marston recently at a week-end seminar for managers, when Marston had come to talk to the group about his own ideas and experiences that had led him to the top of the business world.
Ben shrugged. 'Oh—just what you'd imagine. Success and confidence writ large all over him. A very big fish—showing all us little tiddlers how it was done.'
'How old is he? What does he look like?'
'Middle thirties, I'd think. Tallish, dark. Very much the big shot. All the usual trappings—Rolls Royce and everything that goes with it.'
Karen didn't like the picture of this Saul Marston at all. 'He sounds like an intolerable show-off.'
Ben finished the last sandwich. 'Oh, I don't know,' he said reasonably. 'You have to choose your role at the start and then you can forget it and move on to more important things. Make sure you look the part and have the props. That was one of the things he told us.'
'And what are the more important things?'
Ben looked up at the ceiling, ticking the points off on his fingers. 'Motivation—drive—knowledge of all the facts—willingness to take risks—understanding people ‑'
'And a healthy bank balance?'
'Or a trusting bank manager,' Ben amended drily. 'If you can inspire your bank manager with confidence then the sky's the limit.'
'Hm.' Karen drained her coffee mug and stood up. 'Well, I don't really fancy Mr Saul Marston but I'll reserve judgment until I've seen him.'
Ben looked up at her, his brown eyes soft, like a spaniel's. She wished that the similarity hadn't occurred to her, it seemed to belittle Ben somehow. 'Give him your lovely smile, Karen. That'll soften him up,' he-grinned, and added, 'You're looking prettier than ever this morning. I like that red thing.'
Karen twitched her pleated skirt. 'I thought it might indicate our fighting spirit. I always feel lively when I wear red.' She twirled round. She hoped she wasn't overdoing the Little Miss Sunshine act, but really, Ben did need cheering up. She added a little doubtfully, 'I hope I don't look too jazzy for a personal assistant.'
'You look terrific.' Ben took his eyes from her with an obvious effort. 'I'm the one who's letting the side down.'
He walked over to the small mirror beside the curly wooden coat-stand and peered into it. 'God, I look a mess. Talk about giving the right impression to our potential benefactor! I should at least bear some resemblance to a managing director.' He drew the collar of his open-necked shirt together. 'They wear business suits, don't they, managing directors? I haven't worn a tie for ages, I hate the beastly things. Should I wear a tie, Karen?' He turned a rueful face to her. 'What's your advice?
She hesitated. 'Well...'
Ben grinned and raised a hand. 'Fair enough, my child, you don't need to put it into words. I shall now make my final effort. I shall go into the town and buy a shirt and a tie. I might even fit in a hair-cut. Marston's not due until eleven, is he?'
'Eleven. That's what he said in his letter. Take my car,' Karen offered.
Ben paused beside her on his way to the door. 'Thanks, Karen. Thanks for everything,' he said slowly. 'What should I do without you?' Their glances held, hers a little surprised, his almost pleading.
Then, abruptly, he grabbed his raincoat and left the office.
Karen went thoughtfully about the business of tidying up. She was twenty-three and she had seen that look in a man's eyes more times than she could remember. She didn't have to be conceited to know that she was attractive, with her dark shining hair, her fine, perfect skin, and her long-lashed hazel eyes. She had never lacked dates or hopeful partners for dances or tennis, and holidays abroad with friends had been quite exciting in a care-free way.
But Ben was different—older, more mature than most of the boys she had known. She stood still for a moment, pressing the cap of a .pen against her lips. Could she be falling in love with Ben? Could this caring tenderness she felt for him develop into something deeper? She knew for a certainty that it was up to her—she had seen the question in Ben's eyes. Ben wouldn't take it further unless she encouraged him, she knew that too. She understood him so well, he was such a modest person, she could guess how he saw himself—a near-failure in business, and with a divorce just behind him. He probably thought of himself as too old for her, too. No, Ben wouldn't take the first step.
But the thought that he might want to gave her a warm feeling. Ben was such a dear, and already she loved him in an odd, comfortable sort of way. Karen had had flirtations but never experienced the wild thrill of romantic love and was inclined to discount it, having been brought up by cool, professional parents who, though affectionate, had the detached attitude towards emotion which they seemed to consider necessary to medical people.
She shook her shoulders impatiently. This was no time to consider romantic
possibilities—the first thing was to be sure that the company would survive, and about this she was much more hopeful than Ben was himself. He had a good little set-up going here and he was brilliant at his job. If this Saul individual had any business sense at all (and he must have plenty!) he would recognise all this and that it only needed an infusion of capital—and perhaps some of his marvellous business expertise—to have the place flourishing and profitable.
She looked round the now immaculately tidy but rather shabby office. Well—Superman would just have to take them as he found them. The clock over the door said 9.45 and Karen went through the connecting door into the workshop.
She walked down the centre aisle between the work-tables, pausing now and then to have a word with one of the workers, enquiring after a child at school, an ailing relative, the progress of a flat-purchase. They all had a smile for her and, as for herself, she never ceased to marvel at their deft fingers handling the tiny instruments and components so expertly and rapidly. They were a good lot, as Ben had said, and he took care to make their work as interesting for them as he could, explaining the end products to them if they wanted to listen, keeping them informed of new developments well in advance, through the factory manager, Charlie Benson, and his assistant, Jean McBride.
Jean came up to Karen now from the far end of the work-room, a worried-looking young woman in a navy-blue boiler-suit. She had been with the company since its start and Karen knew that both Ben and Charlie thought the world of her intelligence and her tact in acting as a sort of unofficial shop steward. Jean was a small thin girl, with light red hair and a pale, serious face. She and Karen usually hit it off well, though Karen sometimes found Jean taciturn to the point of gruffness. She had a good physics degree and was always ready to talk about her work, but her personal life remained a closed book. Except for the fact that she lived with and looked after an aged grandmother, Karen knew very little about her.
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