There was an odd tenderness in his eyes, but he said easily, ‘Fine.’ He stood up and adjusted his tie absentmindedly. ‘Profits are going to go way beyond target, at least for the first six months.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘A good time for investment,’ he said, ‘which is why I shall be flying to Boston in a couple of days’ time. Have you got a passport?’
‘Yes, why?’ Then the impact of what he had asked hit her between the eyes.
‘Because you’re coming with me. I’ll give you details and you can book the flights. First class.’
‘No,’ she said instinctively, because even in the space of one second she could see all the problems posed by being continually in his presence for days on end, and not liking any of them. ‘I mean, surely you need me here…’
‘If I did, I wouldn’t have asked you to come along,’ he replied with irrefutable logic.
‘Martin and I…’ she persisted, mentally rummaging around for any excuse, and his expression went a shade cooler.
‘Cancel whatever has been arranged. I’m not asking you to come, Abigail——’ he leant towards her ‘—I’m telling. If you value your job, you’ll unearth your passport and pack your bags in time for tomorrow.’
‘How long will we be there?’ she asked with a sigh of angry defeat.
‘Three nights.’ He began walking towards his office. ‘Book us at the Boston Harbour Hotel.’
‘Planes could just be full,’ she informed him with an edge in her voice. ‘Hotels could just be booked up.’
‘I don’t think so.’ He shot her a lazy smile over his shoulder. ‘Not if you use my name.’
It was only when she later replaced the receiver of the phone, when the airline and the hotel proved as accommodating as he had predicted, once his name was mentioned, that the dreadful uneasiness which she had felt the minute he had issued his command began to sink in.
The thought of being with him in Boston filled her with dread. She knew all about being sensible, she could write a book on the subject, but she had already seen how weak good sense became when faced with that frisson of sexual excitement that both lured and terrified at the same time.
In her neat, ordered life, everything had suddenly gone haywire. Boston, she knew, was not the place to try piecing things together again.
CHAPTER FIVE
ROSS was resting in the seat next to her, his eyes closed. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, aware that at any minute he might suddenly open his eyes, with the alertness of a cat, and she didn’t want him to catch her staring at him. But he fascinated her. He had, she acknowledged, always fascinated her, right from the very beginning, but that sort of stolen fascination was only a seed. It needed the elements to nurture it, to make it grow, and she had always made sure that those elements were never allowed to get a foothold. She worked hard, head bent, eyes down, aware of his love-life but making no comment on it, and making damn sure that her personal life stayed right out of the picture. But things had changed. The overall picture was the same, she still arrived for work and did her job, but the emphasis had shifted. Now her personal life seemed to swamp her all the time, and Ross Anderson invaded her thoughts like weed that had taken root and in so doing had begun a steady takeover.
She reverted her attention to the screen in front of her. The in-flight movie was a thriller which seemed to have remarkably few thrills and a disproportionate amount of violence, but her mind continued on its one-way track, analysing emotions which she would have preferred to keep buried.
Martin had been casual enough about her sudden departure to Boston and she had been relieved about that, but also a little saddened. She could already feel them drifting away from one another, and even though part of her wanted that, there was another part that felt alarmed and scared that a relationship which, at least on paper, had been so promising could end with such apparent ease. What did that say about her ability to fall in love with a man who could provide her with the emotional security she wanted?
‘You’ll live to regret it,’ her mother had said, the voice of doom as always. ‘You would have had a good, solid life with Martin.’
‘Perhaps I don’t want good and solid,’ she had ventured, and she could almost hear her mother puffing in irritation down the telephone.
‘Fine,’ her mother had said. ‘Well, you just go right ahead searching for adventure and, mark my words, you’ll end up with egg on your face. I don’t want to remind you of the state you were in when that business with your last boss came to an untimely end!’
‘I wasn’t in a state,’ she had pointed out reasonably. ‘A little upset, maybe, but hardly in a state.’
Her mother could be downright objectionable at times, although she had a point. Martin would have been a very stable, reliable husband, and high adventure was a risk she was not prepared to take.
She stared at the screen. Now there appeared to be some kind of frantic car chase taking place which involved quite a lot of guns and screeching of wheels.
She would have to watch herself with Ross. She had never had to before because she had always suspected that when he looked at her he saw an efficient piece of office machinery, but now he knew that she was attracted to him and that made her vulnerable.
Physically Ross Anderson was a sexy man, a powerful man who was as ruthless as he was charismatic. Men like that might as well have had ‘Danger’ stamped on their foreheads in bright neon lettering, as far as she was concerned.
She was absently thinking, letting her mind drift along where it wanted, when she felt her headphones being lightly pulled off her head and she turned to see Ross looking at her with sardonic amusement.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, startled.
‘You’re not paying a blind bit of notice to what’s going on up there,’ he said, dropping the headphones into the pocket of the seat in front of him. He sat back and clasped his hands on his lap, his head tilted at an angle so that he could look at her.
‘Of course I was!’ she protested immediately, because not paying a blind bit of notice to the movie was infinitely preferable to feeling the rush of nervous tension that his dark eyes induced in her.
‘Well, then, tell me what it was about.’
‘Two prisoners,’ she said succinctly, ‘a daring escape, a few car chases and several policemen looking earnest but baffled.’
‘So something intellectual, in other words.’ He gave her a warm, relaxed smile and she smiled back at him drily.
‘In other words.’
‘Not your cup of tea?’
‘Not really,’ she admitted. ‘I prefer something a bit more soothing on the nervous system.’
She lay back, offering her profile to him, her eyes closed.
‘Like The Sound of Music perhaps?’
‘Don’t knock it! I saw that five times when I was young!’ Ross could be very friendly, she thought drowsily, when he wasn’t being provocative or else bellowing orders out at her.
‘And I haven’t seen it once,’ he said ruefully. ‘Was I missing anything?’
‘You’d have hated it. It’s very sentimental and a little on the sloppy side.’
‘How do you know I would have hated that? I can be very sentimental when the situation demands.’
‘I’ll bet,’ Abigail muttered drily and he laughed.
‘Now who’s guilty of making sweeping generalisations?’
She opened her eyes to look at him. ‘I just can’t imagine you being sentimental,’ she mused. ‘It’s a bit like trying to imagine primitive man being sentimental with a club in one hand and a dead boar in the other.’
‘I don’t think I could lift a dead boar single-handed.’ His eyes swept over her face, vaguely unsettling her. ‘I see that the engagement ring is still conspicuous by its absence.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ The question caught her by surprise and she sat up, frowning at this turn in the conversation.
‘I’m surprised you hav
en’t got around to retrieving it from the kitchen sink.’
‘All right.’ She sighed. ‘If you must know, we’ve decided to call off the engagement. There. Satisfied?’
‘The question is, are you?’
She looked across at him and maintained a facade of calm self-assurance.
‘Of course I’m not satisfied,’ she retorted. ‘Of course I’m not happy that my relationship with Martin has ended. He was—is—an extremely nice man.’
‘But niceness wasn’t invigorating enough for you.’
He phrased that as a statement rather than a question and she could feel herself getting angry at the unspoken satisfaction in his voice that she had merely done what he had recommended in the first place. No doubt he was also thinking that the reason behind it was the fact that she was attracted to him, and that made her even angrier.
‘We’re still good friends,’ she said through gritted teeth, and he gave a hoot of laughter.
‘Friends! The concept of a man and a woman being good friends without some element of sex involved is beyond me.’
‘Well,’ Abigail said coldly, ‘it would be, wouldn’t it?’
‘Meaning?’ he asked, but his voice was still amused.
‘I feel sorry for any man who only sees women as conquests.’
‘You’re misinterpreting what I’m saying.’ He was still smiling. ‘It’s perfectly possible for a man and a woman to be the best of friends, but not without at least an awareness of sex. They might mutually choose not to act on that awareness, but it would still be there.’ His voice was husky. ‘Wouldn’t it, Abby?’
She heard the timbre of his voice with a jolt of alarm.
‘If you say so,’ she agreed with a shrug. ‘You’re the expert.’
He frowned at the lack of response. ‘Well, I’m glad that you came to your senses.’
He relaxed back in the seat and there was a smile playing on his lips.
‘So am I.’ She paused, then carried on without inflection in her voice. ‘Although, unlike you, I don’t believe that the world revolves around sex. If it did, what hope would there be for anyone having a successful marriage?’
His eyes flickered across to her. ‘And a successful marriage is what you’re after?’
‘Of course it is. What woman isn’t?’ She gave him a blank smile. ‘I’m sure that Fiona is as eager to get married, for instance.’
‘Really.’ The smile had left his face now and she was glad.
‘She more or less told me so herself.’ She gave him a surprised glance. ‘Weren’t you aware of that?’
‘Stop trying to be clever.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ She smiled again. He didn’t mind provoking her into awkward situations so that he could sit back and smile at his handiwork, but he disliked being at the receiving end of the same game. ‘Isn’t marriage on your agenda?’ she asked sweetly.
‘You are beginning to irritate me,’ he said with a heavy frown, and she manufactured a contrite expression which met with an even blacker expression.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘And stop apologising,’ he muttered, ‘that’s beginning to get on my nerves as well.’
‘Your nerves do seem to be a bit delicate at the moment,’ she said, concerned. ‘I can’t imagine why.’
‘Oh, go back into your shell,’ he told her, ‘you’re easier to handle that way.’
That made her laugh and it forced an unwilling grin out of him. Their eyes met and she looked away quickly because in that split instant something strong and silent hummed between them.
‘OK. In that case, may I have my headphones back, please?’
‘Go right ahead.’
She bit back a sigh of frustration. He wasn’t going to reach them for her, and he knew as well as she did that for her to reach them herself would mean her leaning across him, practically lying across his lap.
‘You’re not enjoying the movie anyway,’ he said, when she made no move to get them, ‘you told me that yourself. You were having a far better time playing with me.’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ she said, going red.
‘No?’ he murmured lazily, flashing her a sideways smile that had a hint of challenge in it. ‘You seemed to be thoroughly enjoying yourself just then, trying to provoke me into a reaction. How could we have spent months working together without me realising that you have claws?’
‘I have not got claws!’ He was back in control now.
‘Point proved.’ He closed his eyes and yawned and she glared at him from under cover.
Shortly afterwards, the plane began to descend and the confused turmoil of thoughts running through her head was submerged beneath the general fuss of buckling the seatbelts and stretching slightly to steai glances through the window.
She didn’t see much, of course. They were landing in darkness and there was nothing to distinguish the twinkling lights of Logan airport from any other airport in any other metropolis.
A chauffeured car was waiting for them once they had cleared Customs. It was a relief not to have to stand in a queue for a taxi, especially as it was cold, much colder than it had been in London, with the sort of dry feel that made you long to have every exposed part of your body under wraps.
She had reserved one of the penthouse suites for Ross and something altogether less imposing for herself three floors down. Seeing the hotel now, she didn’t doubt that her less imposing room would be marvellous and the mind boggled to think what the penthouse suite would be like.
‘Dinner?’ he asked, turning to her after they had been checked in. ‘There’s a restaurant here, as well as a bar, and the food in both is very good.’
She shook her head, shying away from the thought of having dinner with him. ‘I’m very tired. Exhausted, in fact. I’m going to retire to bed and order room service.’
He shrugged, not bothered by her refusal.
‘In that case, I’ll expect you to join me for breakfast. Eight sharp. I want to go over some things with you before the first meeting.’
She nodded. It was an immense relief to be back in her safe secretarial role. The bellowing, she had decided on the plane, was infinitely better than the amused, probing curiosity.
She had no idea just how tired she was until she had had her bath and her dinner, which had arrived promptly. A salmon salad with avocado, lots of brown bread which was the best she could remember tasting, potato crisps and a bottle of ice-cold mineral water. She sat on the bed with her book optimistically in front of her, and after fifteen minutes she was fast asleep.
The following day, she was glad that she had had a good night’s sleep. There was a series of meetings to attend, complex affairs during which she took notes and listened first-hand to Ross’s dynamism as he discussed high finance with board directors, bankers, and lawyers. He had a sharp mind and an ability to read the flow of currents, so that every problem thrown at him was met with an answer. He wanted a takeover of an American firm, one that was ailing but wary of being ruthlessly poached.
Over dinner, which was hosted by one of the lawyers, they discussed legal details of the takeover, while she watched and listened, mesmerised by Ross’s breadth of knowledge. Occasionally, when the conversation turned to lighter matters, she contributed something, but she was content to remain in silence.
At the end of two long days and two gourmet dinners which were merely a continuation of business, but over a four-course meal, she wistfully thought that she had managed to see precisely nothing of Boston, so it was with a certain amount of excitement that on her last day she was told to relax and sightsee.
‘But won’t you need me at the meetings with Don Huston and his partner?’ she queried over breakfast, and Ross shook his head.
‘It’s all but sewn up,’ he said, with the confidence of the tiger that had just accomplished a difficult kill. ‘The nuts and bolts are all in place. My lawyers in England can take over the rest when we get back.’
‘Does it give you a thrill to do s
omething like that?’ Abigail asked curiously.
He sat back and looked at her, and she didn’t need him to answer to work out what his reply would be. It was written on his face. He enjoyed the cut and thrust of power, the wielding of his intellect.
‘I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t,’ he said coolly. He took a sip of coffee. ‘What about you? Did you enjoy it?’
‘Very much,’ she admitted, ‘though I couldn’t see myself doing the same thing. I wouldn’t have the heart for it, never mind the brains.’
He looked as if he were about to say something, but then he glanced at his watch and stood up.
‘Shame we can’t sightsee together,’ he murmured, watching her, and she smiled politely.
‘Better that only one of us freezes to death out there rather than both of us!’
‘Get used to it,’ he said, slipping on his jacket. ‘I spoke to someone in England last night and it’s bitter over there. They predict snow.’
‘Weathermen always get it wrong though, don’t they?’ She was smiling, but the smile was laboured. Could the ‘someone’ he spoke to have been Fiona, by any chance? Had he been missing her?
It was easy to forget that Fiona existed, that life back there in London, in the real world, existed. Boston, for all its hard work and business dinners listening to legal talk, was like a step out of time. She had forgotten all about Martin and the headache that she had left behind, and the thought of Fiona, back there, enjoying her nightly conversations with Ross, was a sharp blast of reality.
She spent the remainder of the day enjoying the city as much as she could, given the weather. Whenever it became too unbearable outdoors, she found warm sanctuary in one of the malls and nursed her hands around a cup of coffee. No plans had been made for that evening, though Ross had hinted that he would be visiting a friend and she would be free to do what she liked. What she liked, at the end of what turned out to be a very long but highly enjoyable day, was another stab at room service. The first time had been so fantastic that she wanted to give it a second try.
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