by Penny Jordan
That was it, Saul decided grimly. Put Giselle Freeman in the kind of clothes the other women in his employ wore and, instead of standing out from them, thus forcing him to focus on her, she would fade into the wallpaper, so to speak. Problem solved!
Impatiently Saul buzzed through to his PA and gave her his instructions. He heard her indrawn breath and demanded, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Saul, if I may say so, I don’t think that being told to present herself at Harvey Nichols’ personal shopping suite in order to be provided with some new work clothes so that her appearance fits with that of your other female employees will go down very well with Giselle.’
‘If she argues, tell her that she doesn’t have any choice,’ Saul commanded, before ending the call.
He was pleased—not just because he had solved his problem, but because, even more importantly, he felt that he had found the cause for it. He was focusing on Giselle because she stood out from the other women. Once she ceased to do that he would cease to notice her and when he ceased to notice he would cease to…To want her? He did not want her, Saul assured himself. Not really.
Wanting a woman—any woman—was the first dangerous step down a road he had no intentions of travelling. His father had almost worshipped his mother, and look where that had got him. Dead because his mother had refused to give up her aid work and his father had not been able to bear being apart from her. He never wanted to risk loving a woman to that extent. Better by far not to love at all—and that was exactly what he intended to do. He never intended to love and he never intended to have a child. Children were vulnerable—helpless hostages to fate, their emotions so tender that a parent could with the smallest sentence, the briefest gesture, accidentally scar them. He did not want the burden of carrying that responsibility.
His mother, in particular, had been burdened by the responsibility of having him. He could vividly remember how, after a wonderful fortnight spent with his parents, the first summer after he had gone to boarding school, he had begged his mother to allow him to stay with them all the time.
‘I could learn from books,’ he had told her. ‘You could teach me like you teach other kids—you and Papa.’
‘No, Saul,’ his mother had refused, quietly but firmly. ‘If your papa and I were to devote our time to you, then how could we do the work that is so important for helping all the thousands of children who do not have the advantages you have? They have so little and need so much.’
They have you. Saul remembered his eight-year-old self wanting to protest. But of course he had not done so, knowing how much such a comment would have displeased his mother, to whom it had been so important that he understood the needs of the children she worked with from war torn and disaster-struck parts of the world. Children so much more deserving of her time and her love than he himself.
Chapter Five
‘SAUL has done what?’
Moira sighed silently to herself as she heard the note of outrage in Giselle’s voice.
‘He’s instructed me to arrange an appointment for you at Harvey Nichols for four this afternoon with one of their personal shoppers. He feels…’ The PA paused, trying to find the right words. ‘Saul has explained that because of the expense of your great-aunt’s healthcare you can’t afford to…’
‘To what?’ Giselle stopped her angrily. ‘To buy my own clothes?’
‘He simply felt it would be easier for you to fit in if you were provided with some suitable business outfits to wear whilst you are working here. He thought it would help you if—’
‘Help me? By embarrassing me like this?’
‘I don’t think for one minute that that was his intention, Giselle.’ Moira tried to comfort and placate her. ‘In fact I gained the impression that he rather admires you for what you are doing—as indeed I do myself. It can’t be easy for you.’
Giselle’s body stiffened as she heard the pity in the older woman’s voice.
‘What can’t be easy for me? Wearing cheap clothes? I can think of plenty of things that would be far harder to bear.’
Moira tried another tack.
‘A large part of Saul’s business comes from the international high finance set, and it is all about convincing them that becoming partners with him and investing in his construction projects will bring them good returns. For that reason he believes that it is important to maintain the right kind of image. We have a mainly young staff, and their standards of grooming tend to be high.’
‘So it isn’t for my benefit that he has given instructions that I am to be shamed and patronised, then,’ Giselle challenged her, ‘but for his own?’
‘For his own and for yours,’ Moira insisted.
‘I won’t do it,’ Giselle told her fiercely. ‘He can get someone else from the firm—in fact I wish he would.’
‘Do you? That would mean being sent back to your employers in disgrace. Saul is their most important client. I can understand how you feel, but you have your CV and your future to think of. And with your great-aunt’s care to provide, taking any kind of risk with your earning potential might not be a good idea.’
What Moira was saying made good sense, Giselle knew. But that did not mean that she had to welcome hearing it.
The initial surge of adrenalin-boosted fury Moira’s announcement had brought subsided now, leaving Giselle feeling emotionally raw and shaky.
Moira put her hand on Giselle’s arm. They were in Giselle’s office, where she had come to pass on Saul’s instructions.
‘I do understand how you must feel, and indeed how I would feel myself, were I you,’ she told her calmly.
No, she didn’t, Giselle thought inwardly. How could she? How could anyone? She was the one who had been subjected to the humiliation Saul was heaping on her. She was the one who had been mocked and taunted and…and kissed by him until she was reduced to a molten aching longing.
‘I cannot and will not allow Saul to buy my clothes. And since I cannot afford to buy the kind of clothes for myself he seems to deem necessary for those who work for him—’
‘It is not Saul who will be paying for them; it is the company. If as an employee you were required to wear a uniform you would not object to your employer providing that uniform for you, would you?’ Moira challenged briskly, and continued without giving her time to respond. ‘This is just the same. Saul requires you to wear the same “uniform” as his other employees.’
‘I won’t do it,’ Giselle repeated. ‘And I shall go and tell him so.’
‘You can’t,’ Moira told her, stepping in front of her as Giselle made to head for the door. ‘He isn’t here. He’s flying to New York this morning. Don’t make your mind up right now, Giselle. The appointment isn’t until four o’clock.’
This was her punishment for last night, Giselle decided after Moira had gone. She was sure of it.
Her mobile rang whilst she was still brooding on her situation. Her caller was Emma.
‘You’ll never guess what,’ Emma told her without preamble as soon as Giselle had answered the call. ‘Bill Jeffries has been called in from annual leave and suspended from work until further notice because Saul Parenti has queried some of his costings. And I should warn you, Giselle, that Bill is blaming you—and gunning for you as well. You’re lucky you’re working at Parenti’s and not over here, I can tell you.’
Listening to Emma, Giselle gripped her mobile more tightly, torn between disbelief that Saul had actually taken her disclosures seriously enough to report them to the partnership for further investigations, the realisation that she must after all have been wrong about him trying to trick her, and the recognition that the door to her escape route from Parenti had just swung closed on her.
An hour later, on her way to the communal coffee machine, one of the other girls smiled at her and asked her if she was settling in okay. Giselle couldn’t help but notice how smart Aimee looked. Her black suit wasn’t shiny from being over-washed—but then it had probably never been anywhere near a wa
shing machine Giselle reflected ruefully. It looked far too expensive for that.
‘Saul’s gorgeous, isn’t he?’ Aimee chatted whilst she got her coffee and Giselle queued next to her. ‘Pity he’s so anti-commitment and settling down. Mind you, if he wasn’t I dare say we’d all be trying our best to become the future Mrs Saul Parenti. There’s no chance of that, though. Not with him having said so often and so publicly that he intends to remain single and family-free. Oh, it’s my birthday at the end of the month—you’re welcome to join us for drinks after work if you’re free.’
The other girls here did seem to be welcoming and friendly, Giselle acknowledged, and the drinks invitation was one she would have liked to take up if…
If what? If she could afford to dress like they did?
Some of the coffee she had just made herself slopped over onto the counter as her hand shook betrayingly. It wasn’t just expensive clothes that separated her from her co-workers, Giselle reminded herself. There was their differing attitudes to Saul as well. The reason he didn’t want to commit and settle down was probably because he couldn’t imagine any woman ever being good enough for him, Giselle thought cynically as she made her way back to her office, with her coffee. They seemed eager and ready to adore him, whilst she loathed him.
By three o’clock she had made up her mind what she had to do over the issue of Saul providing her with new work clothes—or rather she had had that decision made for her as a result of Emma’s telephone call.
As angry and resentful as it made her, she would have to accept Saul’s diktat.
When she went to inform Moira of her decision she couldn’t bring herself to meet the older woman’s gaze.
Right now there was nothing she longed for more than the financial independence to refuse both this secondment and the clothes he deemed good enough to go with it. But of course she couldn’t. Not whilst her great-aunt was so financially dependent on her. She owed her elderly relative so much, and nothing—not even her own pride—could be allowed to stand in the way of doing everything she could to repay the debt of loyalty and love she owed her.
Without her great-aunt she would have ended up in a children’s home—or worse. Giselle felt the old familiar sickness and fear rising up inside her. It was Saul’s fault that she was feeling like this, with her old fears being dragged up from their burial ground to torment her.
Giselle could feel Moira’s pity for her in the silence surrounding them.
‘It will make your working life here much easier if you can accept that Saul is a law unto himself,’ she told Giselle, breaking that silence. ‘And that he does not like having his decisions questioned.’
Half an hour later, stepping out into the street, Giselle witnessed a young couple stopping to exchange a tender kiss and her heart turned over inside her chest.
A dangerous emotion was filling her—a sharp, searing feeling of pain and regret because she would never be kissed like that, because for her there would never be a time when she was held in a man’s arms in an intimate moment of trust and love between them.
That emotion was still worrying her over an hour later, as she sat in the private fitting room of Harvey Nichols’ personal shopping suite with a cup of coffee in her hand whilst she waited for the shopper and her assistants to return with a selection of clothes for her to try on.
Why, after so many years of managing perfectly well not to think about all that she would be missing because of her vow to remain single, had her emotions and her body betrayed her now, by reacting in the way that they had done to Saul, of all men?
Her hand shook, spilling coffee onto the skirt of her cheap suit.
What was happening to her? She had always known that there was no escape for her from the burden she must carry. She had known that and accepted it, thankful for the fact that no one else other than her great-aunt knew of the terrible secret she had to conceal. Surely she had been tormented enough by her own guilt? She didn’t need the added cruelty of what she had felt yesterday, held against Saul’s body.
There was no place in her life and never would be for the age-old instinctive female need for the support of a man strong enough to carry her troubles should she herself grow too weary to carry them. No place either for the white-hot spear of female desire so strong that the ache of it was still pulsing within her.
The problem was that she had grown so accustomed to shutting herself off from what most women would consider ‘normal’ reactions to the male sex that she had grown complacent, she tried to reassure herself as she drank her coffee. Saul Parenti did not have any special magical powers that made her more vulnerable to him than she was to other men. She had simply allowed her protective guard to slip a little, that was all. Nothing more than that.
The squeak of the wheels of a garment rail being moved alerted her to the fact that the personal shopper was returning. Quickly finishing her coffee, Giselle smoothed down the dark material of her skirt and tried to mask her embarrassment at even being there.
‘We often notice with customers who have lost weight that they find it hard to judge what will be the right fit for them,’ the personal shopper informed Giselle with an encouraging smile half an hour later, after she had coaxed her into a black suit, apparently from a designer popular with many working women.
Giselle didn’t answer her. She was too busy staring at her own reflection in the full-length mirror. Surely she wasn’t really that shape? With that narrow waist and that curve to her hips and her bottom so subtly outlined by the shape of the elegant black skirt? It must be the mirror that was making her look like that. Hadn’t she read somewhere that women’s fitting rooms had mirrors in them which made customers look slimmer than they actually were?
‘Try the jacket,’ the shopper encouraged her. ‘The skirt’s a size eight, but the jacket’s a ten because you do have a good bust.’
A good bust? What did that mean?
Giselle soon discovered when she slipped the jacket on and discovered how its shaped shoulders and nipped-in waist accentuated the fullness of her breasts. Panicking, she pulled it off, shaking her head as she told the shopper, ‘No, I couldn’t wear that.’
‘But you looked lovely in it. It was a perfect fit.’
‘No. It’s too…It was too revealing. I need sensible work clothes that look smart—not clothes that draw attention to my…to my body.’
The shopper laughed.
‘I could understand you saying that if I’d brought you some of the more figure-hugging outfits for instance. I have to say that I was tempted, because you have the perfect figure for them. Trust me,’ she informed Giselle, ‘these pieces will be perfect for you.’
Before Giselle could object again she was producing a crisp fitted white shirt, which she explained had Lycra added to it for a neat fit.
‘We recommend a couple of shirts and a couple of plain white short-sleeved round-necked white tees as a basic working wardrobe staple. We’re in April now, so I think we should add a lighter-weight skirt—something you can wear with the jacket. Personally I love this black, grey and white patterned skirt.’
Giselle watched with growing discomfort and anxiety as the pile of clothes increased—beautiful elegant clothes—clothes for someone whose life included all the things that hers did not and could not. But there was nothing she could do or say. Saul had given instructions that she was to have a wardrobe suitable for one of his employees, and Moira had warned her not to defy him.
Because if she did he would punish her? How? By kissing her again? By touching her body, her breast, tormenting her nipple until she ached for him to…?
Frantically, her face on fire, her heart thudding, and deep within her that shockingly sensual pulse beating out its message, Giselle struggled to push away her dangerous thoughts.
Three cups of coffee later it was all over, and she and her new clothes—which to her dismay included sheer tights, smart shoes and, most discomforting of all, the underwear that she’d been measured for, havi
ng been told by the smiling assistant who did so that despite her narrow back she was a perfect C cup—were being handed into a taxi to be taken home. Even the taxi fare was apparently to be put on the bill, which would be paid by her new employer.
Giselle could feel her face burning afresh at the thought of the accounts department scrutinising the bill for her new underwear. Not so much the thankfully sensible and smooth tee shirt bra, but the other things—the delicate lace and silk bras with matching boy-pant knickers. She had thought at least one of them far too low cut, but the shopper had insisted she was going to need it. How could someone living her life possibly need something so…so sensual and seductive? And as for the two evening dresses that had been included, despite her protestations that she was unlikely to ever wear them…
Her flat was technically in Notting Hill—just. She’d bought it with the money that had been put in trust for her after the death of her parents, which she’d received on her twenty-fifth birthday—just before the recession had really started to bite. On the ground floor of a Victorian house, it included ownership of a tiny back garden, and comprised a good-sized sitting room, two bedrooms—each with its own bathroom—and a kitchen-dining-room which opened out onto the garden.
The previous owners had thoroughly modernised the whole flat, and Giselle hadn’t had to do anything other than buy some furniture and move in.
She knew that other women might consider her flat to be bare and lacking in femininity, but she didn’t care. A decor that focused on or reflected any kind of female sensual warmth was not for her. It might potentially arouse yearnings and needs she could not allow herself to have. She preferred her home as it was—even if others might think it looked bleak and impersonal.