'What are you implying?' she croaked through a throat so dry she could barely force a whisper. 'I am remaining here. I've signed a contract of employment and I don't intend leaving whatever the circumstances!'
Not a muscle moved, not a flicker disturbed his impassive features. 'Had I been notified earlier of your imminent arrival you wouldn't have been allowed aboard the helicopter,' he shocked her by saying.
'But why?' In her agitation she whipped the amber shields from her eyes so that he received the full blast of her outraged glare. 'You need a secretary and I need a job—it's especially important that I find work here in Shetland, where I can live at home and look after an elderly relative. I can meet all the requirements laid down in your advertisement—indeed, if anything I'm over-qualified for what appears to be a perfectly routine job, therefore what possible objection can you have, it can't be anything personal, since you don't even know me!'
'It was evident from your letter that you were female,' his response was so cool it took her breath away, 'and all applications from females were weeded out immediately. I employ male secretaries only, Miss Dunross, because experience has taught me that female secretaries—and especially immature infants such as yourself are unable to cope with the pressures of the job.'
'But that's blatant sex discrimination!' she gasped. 'Obviously a man of your occupation is cut off from civilisation, yet I'd imagined that news of the Sex Discrimination Act, introduced some years ago, would by now have filtered even as far as the oilfields!' She could have bitten off her tongue the moment the snide statement had been made, not because she regretted the dart she had directed towards his tough hide, but because she could not afford the luxury of jeopardising her chances of gaining the job she needed so desperately. It seemed incredible that Leon Casson could be unaware that he was breaking the law, yet deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt, she said more gently. 'It's now unlawful in this country, Mr Casson, for a female applicant to be treated less favourably than a man merely on the grounds of her sex.'
Immediately frowning eyebrows drew into a thick dark underscore beneath the rim of his steel helmet and amber eyes flashed sparks of temper through a thicket of lashes she sensed that he had mistaken her genuine attempt to enlighten for patronage.
'I'm almost tempted to punish your impudence by giving you the job as my secretary, Miss Dunross, but to do so a man would need to be so lacking in conscience he would feel no qualms about throwing a rabbit to a pack of wolves.' Coldly, tersely, he flayed her confidence, spitting words from his lips as he would have spat a mouthful of gravel. 'I'm completely au fait with the rules and regulations governing the employment of workers. In my capacity as Director of Operations I'm kept snowed under with piles of correspondence and miles of red tape directed by Government departments of this, that or the other—which is why I'm in urgent need of a replacement for the assistant whose initiative and competence have been rewarded with higher status. If you'd researched the subject more thoroughly you would have discovered that there are exceptions to the rules governing the Sex Discrimination Act, one of them being the disqualification of any applicant whose sex can be proved to be a genuine occupational hazard. Another, applying solely to females, states that legislation limits the times at which females may work, and also declares out of bounds certain types of location. As you will have judged for yourself from my present outfit, Miss Dunross, I'm far from office-bound. Touring the terminal, checking the docks, flying by 'copter out to the rig can be rough, tough, and very often dangerous, and wherever I go I prefer my secretary—or as I prefer to call him, my assistant—to accompany me. Do I need to go on?'
With a throat so painfully tight she found it impossible to speak she struggled to assimilate the knowledge that the solution of what to do about her aunt had been thoroughly scuttled. She stared, conscious of his triumph yet too dazed to actually register his expression, feeling cruelly cheated, wondering how on earth she was to explain her arrival at the cottage later that day, wondering how long, provided she did eventually manage to persuade her aunt to allow her to stay, the small amount of money she had saved would last without a salary to boost her bank account. The thought crossed her mind of appealing to Leon Casson's better nature, then was immediately dismissed as ludicrous. Even without the stewardess's verbal illustration of the company boss, or the receptionist's obvious eagerness to flaunt her attractions, she would have had no difficulty classifying Leon Casson as a blatant sexist, a man whose ego demanded the nourishment of being made to feel superior, macho, chauvinistically contemptuous of the physical strength and mental agility of what he would no doubt term the weaker sex. Nevertheless, for the sake of her aunt, she felt she could not give up without a fight.
'Physically, I'm very fit,' she insisted, jutting a determined chin, 'also, for four years I attended further education classes five nights a week while holding down a full-time job, which must prove that I'm capable of working long hours at a stretch.'
He smiled unpleasantly. 'Often, while visiting the rig, the weather deteriorates to such an extent that I'm forced to live in until conditions improve,' he squashed, his tone mellowed by complacency. 'As the rig is an all-male establishment, separate sleeping quarters for females are not available.'
'I don't see that as an insuperable problem,' Catriona persisted doggedly. 'You could imagine I'm just another man, in fact I'd prefer you to. A sleeping bag tucked away in some quiet corner would suit me fine!'
'No way,' he drawled, shaking his head while an infuriating smile played around his lips. 'Either you're a nymphomaniac, Miss Dunross, or you're entirely ignorant of the nature of the men who work on oil rigs supermen, risk-takers extraordinary, hell-raisers who feel entitled to let off steam whenever they manage a break from working in freezing temperatures. Never would I allow men in superb physical condition, deprived for weeks upon end of female company, to have their minds distracted from their dangerous work by the sight of a shapely ankle or a sensuous, wiggling walk.'
The humiliation of being classed as a mindless sex object goaded her beyond reason. Fixing his mocking face with eyes glittering vixen bright, spitting darts of feline fury, she blazed,
'Must I remind you that the decision to employ my services was approved by no less a personage than your company Chairman?'
She shrivelled inwardly, yet stood her ground, determined not to betray a leap of terror-ridden pulses when he leant forward across the desk, his slit-narrow eyes, flaring nostrils and curling upper lip suddenly robbed of humour. By contrast, his low throaty growl was doubly shocking.
'Our Chairman, a fellow director and veteran diver like myself, is a man who's worked his way to the top, becoming deservedly admired and respected not only for his drive and ambition, but because he has proved over the years that he's always prepared to listen to constructive criticism and to reverse any decision that might eventually be proved wrong.'
'But he's also,' she argued recklessly, 'a man who places harmony between oil men and local residents very high on his list of priorities, so much so that he agreed wholeheartedly with our Council's suggestion that islanders should be given first preference when applying to fill job vacancies.' She waited, glowing with the satisfaction of a gambler who has suddenly discovered a hidden trump card, then when he made no haste to respond she stabbed deeper. 'No doubt you'll be able to persuade your Chairman around to your way of thinking, but it could take time. Indeed, the argument might turn out to be quite lengthy. Didn't I hear you mention that you're an extremely busy man, Mr Casson?' she enquired with deliberate sweetness. 'And also that you're very much hampered by the lack of a secretary?'
When their glances clashed Catriona experienced real fear for the first time in her life, fear of a thin smile that was like the baring of the fangs of a jungle king prepared to leap straight at the jugular vein; fear of the snap of white teeth and the angry expression on a face so tanned by exposure to wind and salt spray it resembled the dar
k, even brown of flesh cured over smouldering oak chips.
'You are obstinate, stubborn, and obviously out to make trouble, Miss Dunross,' he menaced across the width of his desk. 'However, such persistence should not go unrewarded.' With shocking suddenness he lunged to his feet and strode towards the door. 'I've changed my mind,' he snapped. 'Be prepared to start work in this office at eight-thirty sharp tomorrow morning!'
Before she could gasp her gratitude the door banged shut behind him, leaving her stunned, doubtful, her mind pounding with words culled from the memory of a Shakespeare play she had enjoyed months previously.
' Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look:
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.'
CHAPTER THREE
A WORRIED quirk played around Catriona's lips as she sat in the rear seat of the chauffeur-driven car summoned so swiftly that its appearance had provided fair indication of the oil boss's anxiety to be rid of her. Her victory had been won so incredibly easily, especially considering the fact that her meagre knowledge of how to handle men had been gleaned solely from conversations overheard at students' halls and in teachers' restrooms. 'Man has a hole in his mind plastered over with conceit!' one particularly unscrupulous girl had stated. 'Never feel guilty about scoring off any man he'll be carrying his comfort around with him.'
Instinct told her that such an outlook was wrong, yet from the moment she had set foot inside Leon Casson's domain her personality had seemed to split into two separate entities the calm, unemotional girl suddenly submerged by the passionate, unpredictable, completely irrational woman.
She sat tense, unable to enjoy the half-hour journey along a coast road with a landscape dominated by sea, surging, rolling, thrusting into long narrow voes, creaming around the bases of jagged cliffs, washing beaches stretching solitary and smooth along secretive, picturesque coves. Piles of ancient stone reared occasionally upon the treeless skyline, ruined forts testifying to the skill and ingenuity of civilisations that had inhabited the islands many centuries ago.
Catriona craned her neck and peered inland when she recognised a familiar stretch of bare, unrelieved moorland, eager for her first sight of a dot upon the horizon that would signal that she was almost home.
'Not far now,' she told the surprised driver. 'See that croft house just visible on the horizon—please drop me off there.'
'That old thatched cottage?' he peered hard. 'It looks deserted, I'd no idea people still lived in such places.'
'Live and work,' she smiled without taking offence. 'If you look farther to the left you'll see a figure-cutting peat on the hillside.'
'Peat!' the modern-minded young man snorted. 'Give me central heating any time.'
Catriona shrugged. 'Obviously you've been denied the pleasure of sitting over a glowing peat fire in winter time, sniffing its pleasant, mildly antiseptic smell, basking in heat as intense as any given out by other solid fuels, yet lacking the soot and dirtiness of most of them.'
When the young driver drove off, after promising to return for her early the next morning, she began making her way up to the peat hill, keeping her eyes fastened upon the gaunt figure stooped over her task of laying out turves of peat in neat walls to dry. Her brow puckered as she noted the slow, laboured movements, the stiff, agonised straightening of the spine, the stumbling steps of her aunt who, not many months ago, had boasted with truth that she possessed the energy and agility of a fifty-year-old.
'Leave that!' she called out, anxiety making her tone sharper than she had intended. 'I'll finish it later.'
'Who's there?' To Catriona's utter dismay her aunt's eyes, trained directly upon her, seemed to be providing her with very limited vision. Conscious of the old lady's pride, her reluctance to admit to any degree of disability, she forbore any mention of failing eyesight and responded with forced lightness.
'It's me… Catriona. I didn't write to warn you of my arrival, I wanted to surprise you.'
'Catriona!' The tuskar her aunt had been using to cut peat fell from her grasp as she opened her arms wide to receive her. 'My bonny bairn, what a wonderful surprise, I was just thinking about you!'
Yet even though Catriona felt a suspicion of moisture on her aunt's cheeks while they exchanged hugs and kisses the basically undemonstrative old lady pushed her away to scold sternly. 'You've no right to give a body such a fright! Anyway, what's brought you here in the middle of term, is something the matter?'
'Why, whenever there's the slightest deviation from normal, must you jump to the conclusion that something is wrong?'
'Because I'm suspicious of change,' her aunt snapped, 'I like things to go on as they've always done.'
'I know you do, Aunt Hanna,' Catriona laughed aloud, 'but I can assure you that this is a happy visit. Let's go inside the house and I'll explain.'
Once inside the tiny living-room with firelight reflecting from shiny brasses; square-paned windows draped with flowered chintz to match covers on cushions and chairs; old, faded rugs placed strategically on spots where resting feet were most likely to need protection from the ever-present chill rising from a stone-flagged floor, Catriona prepared herself for an inquisition. She did not have long to wait. Immediately a black kettle singing on a hook suspended above the firegrate had boiled, then the teapot filled and set between them on the table while they waited for the brew to 'mash' the old lady demanded,
'Now, tell me exactly why you're in Shetland when you ought to be at university?'
Treading warily, made uneasy by the knowledge that never once in her lifetime had she been able to deceive her aunt and that, on the few reckless occasions when she had tried, retribution had been swift, she decided to stick as closely to the truth as possible.
'I applied for a post with the oil company and was fortunate enough to be accepted by the Director of Operations as his private secretary. I shall be working here on the island, Aunt Hanna,' she urged brightly, 'and as transport is provided for all employees resident on Shetland I shall be able to live at home permanently-and commute to work each day.'
Hoping for a favourable response, she kept her fingers crossed beneath the table, yet was not completely unprepared when wise old eyes, bird-bright with suspicion, were trained upon her flushed face.
'I don't understand,' her aunt frowned severely. 'You've always seemed so happy with your job at the university—often you've said how much you enjoy working with Professor Sandwick and how you could never hope to repay him for his kindness and for the interest he's taken in your career. I've heard that the oil people pay exorbitant wages—as if they have to bribe people to work here but you've never been a mercenary person, praise be, so money can be discounted as the motive behind your extraordinary decision. Tell me the truth, Catriona,' she demanded sharply, 'what's your real reason for turning your back upon a job you love, the friends you've made, and worst of all, upon Professor Sandwick, the man to whom you owe so much loyalty?'
Uncomfortable as a schoolgirl squirming beneath the eye of an angry headmistress, Catriona responded with an almost indistinct mumble.
'Loyalties often become divided, Aunt Hanna, tearing one apart as the mind dictates one course of action and the heart another.'
'The heart…?' Aunt Hanna snapped. 'What on earth have your emotions to do with a change of employment?' Then to Catriona's surprise she gave a loud gasp, then relaxed, a smile of pleasure spreading across her features.
'What a blind, stupid old woman I am,' she chuckled softly, 'and how shy you still must be, child, if you can't bring yourself to spell out in words of one syllable why you've allowed your heart to dictate your actions. You're in love,' she decided with great satisfaction, 'and obviously the object of your affection is employed by the local oil company! Did you imagine, Kate, my dear,' her bright eyes scolded, 'that just because I've remained a spinster I couldn't understand or excuse your desire to put less distance between yourself and the man you love?'
'The man I…!'
'Now, child,' her aunt glowed, betraying a streak of romanticism Catriona had never suspected, 'tell me all about this remarkable young man who's managed to entice you away from your beloved university!'
Sensing that in order to satisfy her aunt's romantic expectations the description would have to be larger than life, a profile etched sharp as flint upon a background of slate, Catriona drew upon the image of the only man of her acquaintance who could even remotely match up to such requirements. Nervous as a diver about to explore uncharted seas, she plunged boldly into a depth of deception.
'He's a tough-talking, hard-bitten Texan, Aunt Hanna, a company executive and ex-diver who I suspect would much prefer to be back working with his team of North Sea treasure-hunters—men who can be compared with astronauts exploring outer space, inasmuch as they require the same qualities of courage, expertise and superb physical fitness in order to overcome underwater perils as great and as unexpected as any encountered by spacemen exploring the galaxy.'
'Really?' Her aunt expelled an admiring breath. 'How exciting!' She almost bounced out of her chair. 'And how wonderful to have fallen in love with a man of such high calibre—spirited, daring, intelligent, full of vitality—exactly the sort of qualities I'd hoped you'd find in the man you decided to marry.'
Rapture of the Deep Page 3