by Penny Jordan
A boss who provided his employees with offices furnished with priceless antiques, who treated his female employees as individuals and cherished them for the very difference in their sex to his own… Hannah decided that it must be her hardy upbringing that made her feel so uncomfortable and faintly suspicious. The simple truth was that she wasn’t used to such luxury and comfort in the workplace.
But she was going to have to accustom herself to it, and to an environment where it was no longer necessary for her to rigorously monitor her every instinctive response lest some male colleague jeer at it as an unwanted ‘feminine’ reaction.
Here, it seemed, feminine reactions were welcomed for the insight they gave into human relationships and vulnerabilities. A brief tap on her door disturbed her chain of thought.
‘It’s half-past nine,’ Sarah told her shyly.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘HANNAH , good! Come in and sit down…’’
Silas had been seated behind his desk when she walked in, but now he stood up, beckoning her to join him in the more informal seating arrangement around the fire.
His small courtesy on standing as she entered threw her for a moment, and she realised as she felt herself stiffening defensively how very prickly she must have become during the last extremely difficult months of working with Brian Howard.
‘Maggie will be giving Sarah a list of our major current clients. I’ve got a copy here, and one of the first things I want to do is to run through it with you. We’re in the business of selling here, not always an easy task, and sometimes we find we get a client who is particularly difficult to deal with. If you have any problems with any of the clients, please tell me—’
He was frowning slightly, and Hannah bristled instinctively, cutting across what he was saying to demand, ‘If you felt I might have trouble handling your clients, why did you offer me the job?’
‘You were employed as vice-president and as my personal assistant,’ he reminded her. ‘But as a matter of fact that advice was for your benefit and not theirs. It sometimes happens that a businessman will expect to be provided with extracurricular activities of a kind which we do not and never will supply. All the women who work for me have explicit instructions to report such men to their superiors. The Jeffreys Group does not do business with them again,’ he told her crisply.
As she looked away from him, angry with herself for leaping to a totally erroneous conclusion, and taking personally something which had obviously merely been meant as a general warning, she heard him saying, ‘I take it you enjoyed your weekend at home?’
Her heart leapt. So he had seen her.
‘Very much,’ she responded neutrally, wondering whether she was expected to ask him if he had enjoyed his, and reflecting a little sourly that he could surely not have failed to do so with such a stunningly attractive female companion.
After a moment’s silence, Hannah looked at him and found him watching her with an expression she found it hard to define.
‘Maggie has told you, presumably, that we shall be spending Thursday and Friday at Padley?’
‘Yes,’ Hannah agreed formally.
Again he looked at her, a cool, assessing look that didn’t linger on her face, but went directly instead to her clothes…and stayed there for so long that Hannah found she was holding her breath, her heart pumping fiercely. What was he looking at her for? His scrutiny unnerved her, made her feel vulnerable and awkward. Her mouth went dry and she found herself swallowing nervously. The movement of her throat muscles attracted his attention, and he switched his concentration from her clothes to her skin, making an odd heat that generated from the pit of her stomach and which weakened every muscle in her body, climbed swiftly through her veins and turned her skin a faint pink.
She swallowed again, totally unable to help herself, wondering if she was trembling visibly as much as she was trembling inwardly.
She waited, hardly daring to breathe, knowing that Silas must be aware of her tension, waiting for him to ask her what was wrong, but instead he merely said levelly, ‘Power dressing has its place in the modern business world, but it isn’t necessary here. Of course, I don’t want to dictate to any member of my staff how they should dress. But it occurs to me on those occasions when we visit Padley that you might want to wear something a little more casual, rather more comfortable.’
Hannah had always been vulnerable to criticism. It was a weakness she had striven all her life to hide, but now for some reason her defences deserted her, and she reacted quickly and bitterly to Silas’s words, pain stinging her over-sensitive emotions as she retaliated sharply, ‘How very typical of a man. I suppose you’d prefer me to wear something like the dress Sarah has on…something soft and feminine with tactile appeal…’
As he started to frown, she realised too late what she had done. For all his apparent indulgence, this man was her boss. She should never have allowed him to push her into such a personal exchange.
And then, just as she was formulating a stiff apology, his frown vanished and his mouth twitched in a faint smile.
‘Attractive though it is, Sarah’s outfit isn’t exactly what I had in mind. Cyclamen pink is hardly your colour, I suspect,’ he added drily, and then, before she could object to the blatant chauvinism of his remarks, he continued smoothly, ‘I have a luncheon engagement today with an old client. I’ve arranged for you to join us. Although initially you won’t have much contact with the clients, later on when you’ve found your feet, so to speak, there may be occasions when I shall ask you to stand in for me. We’re lunching at…’
He mentioned a restaurant which Hannah well knew was one of the most fashionable and expensive in the City. She also knew that her City suit would look totally out of place among the designer outfits of the other female diners, and she groaned mentally.
* * *
In the event, the lunch was not the ordeal Hannah had anticipated. They arrived at the restaurant ahead of the client, who when he joined them proved to be a pleasant man in his early thirties; his manner was perhaps a little too smooth and polished for Hannah’s taste, but he was careful to keep her fully involved in the conversation, doing nothing more than raising his eyebrows slightly when Silas introduced her as his personal assistant.
From the conversation, Hannah soon realised that Silas had apparently embarked on something of a crusade in involving as many women as he could in his business; and that this crusade was well-known among his friends and clients.
The lunch was not a selling exercise, but simply an affirmation of the good relationship that already obviously existed with the client, and afterwards, as they left the restaurant, Hannah felt relaxed enough to ask Silas several questions about Tim Hawley and his business.
Indeed, so engrossed was she that she stepped off the pavement without thinking, gasping out loud when Silas’s arm shot out and he grabbed hold of her, swinging her back, just as a taxi screamed round the corner far too fast.
Shaken and angry with herself, Hannah thanked him. All her life her family had teased her for being impetuous and slightly clumsy, and she didn’t like having their teasing confirmed by the knowledge that but for Silas’s awareness and prompt action she might have been injured by the taxi.
As the immediate shock passed, she realised that Silas was still holding her, his hand gripping her arm so tightly that she could feel pins and needles under her skin. She must have made a faint sound of distress without realising it, because immediately his grip relaxed, although he didn’t release her. It was odd how aware she was of the heat and strength of his flesh, even through the thickness of her jacket. Her skin seemed to burn from the contact, a fierce, consuming heat that sent pulses of energy singing through her body. An unfamiliar faintness came over her, a combination of shock and anger, she told herself, as she tried to control it and the horrid buzzing in her ears. She concentrated on focusing on Silas’s face. His skin looked rather pale, the hard jut of his cheekbones uncompromisingly male. Through her dizziness, she felt a dangero
us compulsion to reach out and touch them with her fingers.
Abruptly, despite the heat he was generating in her body, she started to shiver. She watched distantly and vaguely as his eyebrows contracted and he frowned at her, feeling his fingers splay out against her arm and his other hand reach for her wrist, cool fingers monitoring her frantic pulse. He said something under his breath, extinguished by the roar of the traffic as the light changed.
‘Hannah.’ He shook her, and she realised that the look in his eyes was one of concern. Why—because he had registered that all too betraying and very feminine reaction to him? The thought made her go hot again with chagrin and despair. This was the very situation she had been determined to avoid.
Gathering her stunned wits, she pulled away from him, apologising huskily for her clumsiness. Before she looked away from him, she saw his frown deepen and her heart sank. Was he already regretting employing her? Fraught with difficulties though her new job was, she didn’t want to lose it.
And then, to her astonishment, she heard him say tersely, ‘You weren’t clumsy; the taxi driver was at fault…’ Far more roughly he added, ‘He could have killed you. Another few inches…’
Her face went ashen as she looked at him and the reality of what he was saying hit her in all its starkness. She could so easily have been killed. A moment’s lack of concentration, a moment’s unawareness…and then oblivion. A shudder of horror convulsed her. She felt sick and dizzy, hot and then dangerously, weakeningly cold. Shock, she told herself inwardly, her body registering the presence of Silas’s arm around her with gratitude for its warmth and comfort, instincts she had long ago thought successfully suppressed, surging past the barriers of training and life-style as she allowed herself to draw strength from his proximity, leaning gratefully against him while the waves of sickness and dizziness washed over her and the roaring in her ears subsided to no more than the wash of conversation of people walking past them; some of them staring at them, others totally uninterested in their stillness…in the proximity of their bodies that was almost but not quite an embrace.
The realisation of what she was doing brought Hannah abruptly out of Silas’s arms. She heard him saying something about it being his fault, and that he shouldn’t have frightened her by highlighting her danger.
She managed to pull herself together sufficiently to give him a weak smile and say shakily, ‘I’m only grateful I wasn’t with one of my brothers. They’re always reminding me how impulsive and careless I am.’
‘I take it those were two of your brothers I saw you with on Sunday?’ Silas asked her as they crossed the road in safety and continued to make their way back to the office.
Without looking at him, Hannah shook her head. ‘One of them was. The other was a…a friend—’
Of my brother’s, she had been about to add, but to her astonishment Silas cut right across what she was telling him to say crisply, and with a certain amount of coldness, ‘There’s no need to be coy, Hannah. If the man is your lover, then why not say so?’
‘If he was, I would,’ Hannah asserted a little untruthfully. ‘As it happens, Malcolm and I had only met this weekend. He’s a colleague of my brother’s.’
The dark eyebrows rose.
‘Really? You surprise me. I had surmised from the very possessive way he was holding on to you that the relationship between the two of you was far more intimate.’
‘Even if it were, that would scarcely be any business of yours,’ Hannah told him, jolted out of her habitual caution by the note of interrogation she could detect in his voice.
‘On the contrary. When you were interviewed for your job, you informed Gordon that your life was completely free of any emotional commitments.’
Thoroughly angry now, Hannah stopped on the pavement and challenged him. ‘And you thought I was lying? Well, I wasn’t,’ she told him flatly, too angry to employ tact. ‘There is no man in my life…no lover to whom I’m committed. Not now, not in the past, and not in the future.’
She stopped, aware of a brief flaring of something disconcerting in his eyes, before he banished it and said smoothly, ‘I’m very tempted to ask you what it is about the male sex that makes you so determined to exclude them from your life, but now isn’t the time.’
They were almost back at the office, and too late Hannah realised she had allowed herself to become involved in a far more personal discussion than was wise…or safe.
Safe. There it was again, that word that Linda had said was so favoured by their generation. She tensed a little uncomfortably, remembering the sensation that had raced through her when Silas had touched her. Sensations which had been far from safe…
‘I’ve got a board meeting this afternoon. I’d like you to sit in on it. Tomorrow I’ll want your reaction and appraisal of the other board members, then we’ll go through the facts about them and see just how keen your judgement is.’
He was testing her, but at least he was giving her fair warning. Normally Hannah considered herself to be a pretty fair judge of character, but today she had been thrown so off guard by her own emotional and physical vulnerability that her confidence seemed to be draining away from her like life blood from a major artery. She gave Silas a suspicious glance, wondering whether he had done it on purpose, just to see exactly how she would cope. He was a very shrewd man, very skilled at manipulating people, no matter how sincere he might appear on the surface.
She was just about to step past him into the building when he said abruptly, ‘Wait.’
As she turned towards him in mute query, he reached out and cupped her face in his hands.
Instantly, all her bones liquefied. Her stomach became a trembling mass of jelly, and where his hands touched her skin, holding her face as though it were made of the most fragile porcelain, her skin seemed to burn.
She thought he was actually going to kiss her, and stared at him in confused bewilderment, wondering which of them had gone mad.
How could he possibly know of the appallingly intense desire inside her to know what his kiss would be like? How could he read her so clearly that he could turn to her so prosaically and matter-of-factly, here on the pavement outside his offices and place his mouth to hers? Like an adult giving sweets to a child. Shamingly, the fear grew that somehow she herself had told him, had shown him, had asked him… There could be no other explanation for the ease and assurance with which he had stopped her, with which he was holding her.
And yet she would have sworn that, of all men, he was the least likely to indulge in such behaviour with an employee.
She felt both triumph and disappointment: triumph that he should so immediately respond to her femininity, and disappointment at his lack of control, of responsibility.
As her thoughts swirled fiercely through her mind, he removed one hand from her face and said calmly, ‘You’ve got a smut on your cheekbone. It doesn’t go with the power dressing. I’d go and check up on it before going back to your desk if I were you. It doesn’t match the image.’
And then he was releasing her, smiling at her in a kindly, distant manner, while she could only stand transfixed and stare at him, so thoroughly confused and betrayed by her own emotions that speech was literally impossible.
Later in the afternoon, sitting in on the board meeting, she refused to allow herself to berate herself any longer. All right, so she had come dangerously close to making a fool of herself. Well, let that be a lesson to her. She frowned fiercely, trying to concentrate on what was going on.
The board wasn’t excessively large. Under a dozen members, most of their names familiar to her from her pre-interview research; mostly but not all of them involved with the Group in one capacity or another, all of them very able and shrewd businessmen. All of them, under the eagle scrutiny of Silas’s eyes, treating her as an equal.
It was almost six o’clock before the meeting finished. One of the directors suggested they all went on to a local pub for a drink, and Hannah’s heart sank. She felt wrung out both emotiona
lly and physically, and had planned to spend the evening going over some of the client files.
She didn’t allow her feelings to show, however, waiting for Silas’s response to the other director’s suggestion.
To her relief he vetoed it, explaining that he had a dinner engagement. With the woman she had seen with him in his car? Hannah wondered, and then fought to dismiss her dangerous train of thought, concentrating instead on the final winding up of the meeting.
Knowing that her first few days in her new environment would be physically and mentally punishing, she had deliberately kept this evening free, but it seemed that fate was determined to conspire against her, and, by the time she had finished assuring her mother that she loved her new job, it was gone nine o’clock and her stomach was reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since lunchtime.
Half an hour later, shoes off, feet tucked up underneath her, she was sitting in her favourite chair with a bowl of crisp raw vegetables on the table beside her, deeply engrossed in the files she was studying, when the phone rang again.
Cursing mildly, she got up to answer it. Linda was on the other end of the line, wanting to talk about her weekend. Listening to Linda extolling her lover’s virtues, her heart sank a little. She wanted to caution her friend against allowing herself to become too emotionally involved, but just as she opened her mouth to do so she had a vivid memory of her own feelings this afternoon when Silas had touched her, and the caution died unspoken. Who was she to give advice? She was already in dire danger of committing the greatest folly known to a female employee…that of falling in love with her boss.
Falling in love… She moved restlessly on her chair, no longer really listening to her friend, conscious of the growing schism within her own personality. More and more often now, the softer, more traditional, more emotional and vulnerable side of her nature broke through her self-imposed banishment of it. It was no use blaming Silas. He was simply the focus of those emotions, not the cause.