Beyond All Reason

by Cathy Williams

  They said that a man in love would very often act out of character. Ross Anderson had never before even thought of sacrificing business for the sake of pleasure, not that she had even known. His work had always come first, and the play afterwards. She had seen him, on occasion, drive himself virtually into the ground, and still have the energy to be in the office the following morning at the crack of dawn.

  She had no idea why she was reacting like this. After all, he was entitled to do what he damn well pleased, with whoever, and she decided that it was because if she was forced to alter her view of him, then she might find her respect for him beginning to diminish, and then she would be tempted to look elsewhere for a job. This simple piece of convoluted logic was very appealing, and by the time Ross did make an appearance, she was more or less absorbed in her work.

  ‘Any messages?’ he asked, striding into the office with that vitality and dynamism that could still leave her taken aback, and she looked up at him with a blank face.

  ‘Two. I’ve left them on your desk.’

  He divested himself of his jacket and threw her a glance. ‘Good. Bit late, I’m afraid, but that meeting with Williams isn’t till one, is it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said coolly, and he frowned at her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, stopping by her desk so that she had to look up at him.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Then why do you look as though you’re spoiling for a fight?’

  ‘I’m sorry if I gave that impression, Mr Anderson,’ she smiled sweetly at him.

  ‘You,’ he said, with narrowed eyes, ‘are no longer the predictable secretary I had a month ago. I never know what kind of mood I’m going to find you in when I walk into this office.’

  ‘I do apologise.’ She bared her teeth into another sweet smile. That’s rich, she thought, coming from you. It’s all right for you to be as predictable as a volcano, but if I so much as frown, I’m suddenly responsible for bringing the smooth office machinery to a grinding halt.

  He didn’t look mollified at her sugary expression. His black brows met and he gave her an impatient, restless look as though he wanted to walk into his office but found that his feet were nailed to the floor by her desk.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ he snapped. ‘Oh, your work is still the same, you make sure that all the letters that I give you get typed and that all the phone calls get made, but you’ve changed.’ His eyes skirted over her briefly, then returned to her face, and when he looked at her it was with narrowed suspicion. ‘This isn’t some little ploy of yours for getting back at me, is it?’

  ‘Getting back at you for what?’ Her surprise was genuine.

  He didn’t answer. He strolled across to the window by her desk and stared out, then moved across to where she was sitting and leaned right over her, so that when he spoke his breath on her cheek was warm.

  ‘Getting back at me,’ he said softly, ‘for the remarks I made about that boyfriend of yours being no good for you.’

  ‘No, it is not!’ She would have liked to spin around but he had her physically trapped. She couldn’t move without finding herself inches away from him, and she knew that that was one thing she didn’t want. She clenched her fists helplessly and thought that that would really make his day, to know that something he said casually could have had such an overwhelming effect on her. Especially, she felt obliged to add for her own benefit, when it wasn’t true.

  ‘Sure?’ he drawled, with amusement in his voice. ‘Your change of attitude looks like a severe case of sour grapes to me.’

  She didn’t say anything, but her body was rigid with tension.

  ‘Is he your lover?’

  The question took her so much by surprise that this time she did turn around, and her mouth went dry.

  ‘That’s none of your business.’ Her voice didn’t sound like hers and she didn’t feel as though she belonged to her body at all.

  He laughed, and there was something wicked and knowing in his laughter that made her want to hit him.

  ‘That’s no answer,’ he murmured, and she followed the movement of his mouth with fascination. ‘Don’t tell me that all that sexy dressing hasn’t done anything for your love-life. I’ve only ever seen you in your bland uniform of suits. Neat and sober. I never guessed that a risque dress or a pair of tight jeans could alter the image so completely. Don’t you turn him on, or is it the other way around?’

  ‘You may find this hard to believe,’ she muttered, ‘but there’s more to a relationship between a man and a woman than sex. You think that desire makes up for a lack of basic friendship, but it doesn’t. That’s why I could never go out with you.’

  ‘I didn’t realise I’d asked.’

  She could feel hot colour rush into her face, but it was too late to retract the stupidly spoken words. It wasn’t what she had meant to say, not at all. Her brain wasn’t working properly, not with him so close to her.

  ‘On the other hand,’ he murmured lazily, ‘a bit of animal lust helps.’ He gave another of those amused laughs, and she knew that he was going to kiss her even before he did. She could see the intent stamped in those disturbing, gleaming black eyes but she was too frozen to do anything about it.

  He lowered his head fractionally, and his lips when they touched hers were explosive. She closed her eyes and half opened her mouth, allowing his tongue to caress hers, while his hand reached up to cradle the back of her neck.

  Martin had kissed her, of course he had, but it had been nothing like this. Their kisses had been comforting ones. There was nothing comforting about this. There was hunger in his kiss and it awakened a shameful burning in her that made her whole body feel as though it were on fire. The fire was melting everything inside her, every nerve, every muscle, every pore. Her legs felt shaky and she was glad she was sitting because, if she hadn’t been, she would have collapsed.

  The demand in his kiss grew stronger, changing from mocking provocation to something more intense, and it galvanised her back into action. She pushed hard against him and he straightened, staring at her, his face unreadable.

  They were both breathing heavily, she from mortified embarrassment and shock at what had just taken place between them. He stuck his hands into his pockets, but she was the first to break the silence.

  ‘I’ll pretend that that never happened,’ she said, trying to be as composed as possible, while everything inside her was still reeling from horror. ‘We’re both adults, and what took place was a mistake, an error of judgement’ Her eyes shifted away from that hard, masculine face to the shelf behind him, with its row of plants, its Oxford English Dictionary, its bright plastic jar of pencils. Those things represented normality.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ he said in an odd voice. His lips twisted cynically, and the familiar mocking amusement was back on his face. ‘Let’s just label it a freak accident and that way neither of us can be held responsible.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she agreed quickly, not liking his tone.

  She thought that he would retort with something biting, some derisive remark on her humiliating rush of desire when only minutes before she had been calmly informing him that desire was nothing compared to friendship. Friendship! He had proved his point and in the most terrible way possible. He had shown her the naked face of passion, because what she had felt just then, for a split-second, was passion such as she had never imagined possible, and she hated him for teaching her that lesson.

  How could she ever have thought that Ellis Fitzmerton had taught her anything at all about desire? What she had felt for him had been a shadow in comparison.

  Whatever, though, this situation developing between herself and Ross was a dangerous monster. Had she always been attracted to him? she wondered with panic. She had never thought so. She had always thought that his sex-appeal was something that didn’t touch her, however blatant it was, that the rapport they felt was founded in their mutual ability to work well together, but maybe she had just been hiding behin
d closed doors, keeping the monster at bay.

  Common sense told her the truth, though. Basically what had applied to Ellis especially applied to Ross. Her mother had always been right. Ordinary girls like her were meant for ordinary men and lived ordinary lives.

  Ross was staring at her, not saying anything. He walked away, back into his office, pushing open the door and then slamming it behind him with such force that the room seemed to rattle with the reverberation.

  She stared sightlessly at her desk, and thought that what he had just done was like a punch in the stomach. He had taken all her stupid, fanciful notions and turned them on their heads, and in the process had turned her carefully plotted life upside down.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ROSS was standing at the office door, his hands in the pockets of his black coat. Abigail noticed him but only out of the corner of her eye. For the past three days she had been doing her utmost not to let him get under her skin, and it was working. Now she made a great show of concentrating on the paperwork on her desk, because she could feel his eyes on her.

  ‘Not leaving yet?’ he asked, and she was forced to look at him.

  ‘No, not just now,’ she said calmly, ‘I’ve got some more letters to type and I want to clear them before the weekend.’ Actually, the letters weren’t important, but she didn’t want to travel down with him in the lift.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘And I thought that women needed hours to get ready for a party.’

  This time she gave him her full attention.

  ‘Party? What party? What are you talking about?’

  Wrong response. He moved over to her desk and leaned on it, propping himself up by his hands so that his face was only inches away from hers.

  ‘Don’t tell me that you’ve forgotten.’

  ‘What am I supposed to have forgotten?’ She was definitely feeling confused now, and he gave her a slow, silky smile.

  ‘The party? The one at the Savoy tonight? Lots of lawyers and bankers? Oh, for God’s sake, Abby, I know that you have a lot on your mind with your love-life, but I didn’t think that you’d gone completely soft in the head!’

  He stared at her and she gasped with nervous dismay. ‘Oh, God, the party. The lawyers and bankers one. I’d completely forgotten. I meant to transfer it into my diary but I must have forgotten.’

  ‘Too bad. Now you’ll have to rush around because we’re due there at seven-thirty and it’s nearly six right now.’

  ‘I can’t make it.’

  ‘What?’ His voice was dangerously soft.

  ‘Can’t you get Fiona to take my place?’ she asked weakly. She didn’t want to go to a party, any party and especially not to a party in the company of Ross Anderson. She had just about made it through the past few days by concentrating hard on her work and besides, she was in no fit mental state to go anywhere. She didn’t think that she could manage to act normally when the events of the past few days were still on her mind.

  ‘No, I emphatically cannot get Fiona to take your place. You’ll just have to cancel your date.’ He straightened and said with a grim smile, ‘I’ll expect to see you there at seven-thirty.’

  Then he was gone and she stood up and began clearing her desk quickly. She was over-reacting, she knew, but Martin’s words kept floating back into her head. ‘It’s that boss of yours, isn’t it? That’s why you’re breaking off the engagement. He’s been feeding you doubts, telling you how to run your life. He thinks that, because he can crook his finger at work and you run, he can apply the same principle outside work as well.’

  She had denied it vigorously, she had spent a tortuous forty minutes explaining, apologising, squirming at the baleful accusation on his face.

  Martin hadn’t understood or he hadn’t wanted to and, much as she had wanted to spare his feelings, she hadn’t told him what had become clear to her ever since Ross had kissed her on impulse, another meaningless action prompted by curiosity. That however much she liked him, she wasn’t in love with him.

  Her mother had been shocked, then dismayed, then finally indignant. Heaven only knew how his parents had taken it. She had never had the opportunity to get to know them and it saddened her to know that they would think about her now with parental dislike and resentment.

  She managed to make it to the Savoy with only minutes to spare. She knew from experience that this sort of client party did not cater for a lack of punctuality. Drinks would be drunk between seven-thirty and eight, then food eaten between eight-thirty and ten-thirty, then some more drinks which could last until gone midnight. And she also knew that she would have to chat, chat, chat and maintain a bright facade even though she might not feel much like it.

  Ross was there by the time she arrived, standing in the midst of a group of dark-suited businessmen. That was another feature of these functions, where other halves were excluded. They were predominantly male. Abigail had never minded. She tended to stand on the sidelines anyway, listening, happy to put faces to the names which she often saw on paper.

  He beckoned to her, his eyes flitting over her cursorily, and she accommodated herself into the group, breaking off to chat to the man next to her, whom she had met before and rather liked.

  Gradually the group dispersed and he whispered into her ear, ‘Very neat. Very serious.’

  ‘What is?’ she asked, puzzled.

  ‘Your outfit.’

  She went red and he grinned at her with ironic amusement. She had worn one of her old stand-bys, a black suit with an aquamarine silk blouse and a string of pearls.

  ‘I didn’t think that the occasion called for anything flamboyant,’ she said tartly, and his grin broadened.

  ‘No. You wouldn’t want to be responsible for giving anyone here a coronary, would you?’

  ‘I hardly think I could do that,’ Abigail said, smiling and sipping from her glass of excellent champagne. She wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were flitting across the crowded room, idly picking out faces that she recognised.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ His voice was low and lazy. ‘You underestimate yourself. You also overestimate some of the old duffers here. Look at old Sir Wilcox——’ he inclined slightly so that his voice was a murmur in her ear ‘—ninety if a day. If he saw you in what you were wearing at that engagement party of yours, he would choke on his gin and tonic.’

  There was a sudden thread of electricity between them and she wondered whether she was imagining it. It wasn’t the first time that they had been to one of these affairs together and joked good-humouredly about the people there, but never before quite in this vein. She decided to ignore imagination.

  ‘Old Sir Wilcox,’ she responded drily, ‘is hardly ninety and he happens to be married.’

  ‘Which hardly says anything.’

  ‘Very cynical.’ She took another sip of champagne, caught someone’s eye across the room and smiled in recognition.

  Ross laughed. ‘Cynicism is what separates fools from wise men.’

  This time Abigail looked at him. ‘And I gather you classify yourself as one of the wise men?’

  He shrugged and slanted her a sideways look. ‘Now it would be very immodest for me to say yes to that question, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘And of course, you’re nothing if not modest,’ she murmured seriously, relaxing as the champagne bubbled its merry way down her throat and dispelled some of the anxieties that had been tugging away at her for the past few days. Wonderful stuff, champagne, she decided.

  Two lawyers joined them and they stood there chatting. Abigail listened while her mind drifted away, back to Martin.

  ‘Look at all the things we have in common,’ he had argued persuasively. ‘We both like the quiet life, we’re neither of us nightclubbers, we enjoy going to the cinema. We even like the same movies!’

  She had frowned, hesitant, confused. Wasn’t he right? Wasn’t that love? The pull of attraction, what was that? Lust, and lust never lasted. It fed, and when its appetite was sated, it died.

  ‘W
e’re friends, aren’t we?’ he had asked. ‘Well, what about we see each other as friends? No strings attached. What would you have to lose?’

  So they had parted outside her block of apartments like the friends Martin had insisted they now were. A brief peck on the cheek, nothing threatening.

  ‘You’re daydreaming,’ Ross said into her ear, and she jumped guiltily.

  ‘I wasn’t. I was listening to every word that Gerry and Robert were saying.’

  ‘Really.’ His voice was amused and sceptical. ‘I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but I want to have a word with Lord Palfry over there about that takeover that’s in the pipeline, so make sure that the little grey cells are alert and in full working order.’

  Ross could function perfectly well without her, she knew, but he liked having her there by his side, mentally taking notes, and this time she listened to every word that Lord Palfry was saying. The business world was a complex one. Little snippets of information exchanged at company affairs such as these had to be filed away because they could be useful at a later date.

  Ross had told her that the very first time she had accompanied him to a client gathering, and she had obediently filed throwaway remarks into the storage area of her brain, amused to find at a later date that he had been right. The strangest things could sometimes have the most meaningful consequences. She could remember, ten months ago, telling Ross lightly that a certain company director was having an affair with his personal assistant, an attractive, bespectacled girl from Arkansas. It had been a flash of insight on her part, a female intuition that stemmed from the way they didn’t look at each other, rather than the way they did. Ross had called off a bid to buy the company, and sure enough, a few weeks later, the company director announced his decision to marry his assistant, move to America, and resigned. Shares plummeted and Ross acquired the firm at a fraction of what he would have originally paid for it. Abigail would never have placed that amount of importance on that love-affair but, as Ross had later explained, company shares were a sensitive beast and it sometimes paid to listen to intuition.