Charade Of The Heart

Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

CHAPTER ONE

BETH LOOKED CAREFULLY at her sister and counted to ten. It was difficult, but she wanted to find exactly the right words to explain, without resorting to downright exasperation, that there was absolutely no way she was even going to contemplate taking part in this juvenile scheme.

They had reached an age when these sorts of escapades should long have been left behind. When on earth was Laura ever going to grow up? It was tiring always being the one to frown and nod sagely and act reasonable.

‘Well?’ Laura prompted. ‘What do you think?’

Have you got a few days to spare? Beth asked herself. She looked at her sister’s flushed face, framed by the tangle of long auburn hair, and sighed.

‘It’s the craziest idea you’ve ever come up with,’ she said, with what she considered a huge amount of restraint, ‘and there’s no chance that you’re going to get me involved with it. I would rather spend the rest of my life in a snake pit. So you can wipe that grin off your face and leave my lunch alone.’

They were sitting in her kitchen, a cosy yellow room with pale, speckled wallpaper and matching curtains which had taken Beth ages to make. She tapped her sister’s hand, which had been making surreptitious inroads into her plate of salad, and considered the matter resolutely closed.

‘Oh, Beth.’ Laura slipped out of her chair and went around to her sister, folding her arms around her neck. ‘It’s not that crazy, really it isn’t, not when you think about it. And it’s the only thing I can think of.’ Beth could hear the tears in her sister’s voice and hardened her heart. Laura had the knack of turning the tears on with alarming ease and she wasn’t going to fall for it. Not this time.

She bit into a lettuce leaf liberally soaked with salad cream and didn’t say a word.

‘You’re mad,’ she muttered finally, disengaging herself from her sister’s stranglehold and clearing away the table.

Laura followed her to the kitchen sink and dipped her finger into the basin of soapy water, trailing it into circular patterns, her long hair hanging forward and hiding her face.

‘You’re so unsympathetic,’ she muttered. ‘Here I am, in the worst fix in my life, and you’re not prepared to do anything at all to help. I was counting on you, Beth. Why do you think I drove all the way up here in this weather? If I had known that you wouldn’t give me the time of day, then I’d have stayed at home and…and…’ Her voice trembled, and Beth sighed again.

‘I’m not unsympathetic,’ she said gently. ‘Stunned perhaps, but not unsympathetic. I mean, how on earth could you have let yourself become pregnant? Don’t tell me that it just slipped your mind that there are about a million types of contraceptives available.’

She eyed the half-completed washing-up with resignation and led her sister into the lounge.

Like the kitchen, it was small, but imaginatively furnished. Beth’s job as secretary-cum-bookkeeper in a small electronics company didn’t pay that much. It was all she could do to meet the mortgage on her tiny two-bedroomed flat. But it was hers and she had decorated it as tastefully as she could on a minuscule budget.

Whenever she felt like giving up, she told herself that things would improve as soon as she had completed her accountancy course and could find herself a better job. All that studying she had to do in her free time would pay dividends.

By nature she was an optimist. Didn’t they say that every cloud had a silver lining?

Laura had collapsed on to one of the chairs and was hugging a cushion. A picture of misery. Beth looked at her doubtfully. This didn’t seem like any act, although it was hard to tell. Laura had the ability to look woebegone if the weather report began with showers and light snow.

‘Look,’ Beth said calmly, ‘there’s no point weeping and wailing. You’re pregnant, with no chance of marrying the father of the child. You’ll just have to do what anyone else in your situation would do. Work for as long as you can and then leave. You’ve said that you can’t go back to the job as you haven’t been there long enough to qualify for maternity leave. So what? It’s hardly the end of the world.’

She bit back the temptation to lecture on the sheer insanity of becoming involved with a married man, not to mention becoming pregnant by him. Her sister had enough problems on her plate without that.

From the sound of it, though, Beth could think of a thousand better places to put her loyalty than with a creep who had knowingly involved himself with Laura when his responsibilities lay elsewhere. He didn’t know about the pregnancy but she seriously doubted that that would have influenced his actions. He had left her sister high and dry after a three-month fling. A baby on the way was hardly likely to have changed that.

Couldn’t Laura have suspected the sort of man he was?

‘It’s the end of the world for me,’ Laura said, in between sobs. Beth handed her a box of tissues. ‘Jobs like mine don’t grow on trees, you know. I love it there. It pays more than I could ever hope to get in a lifetime of doing secretarial work.’

‘Then you should have thought about all that before you got yourself into this situation.’

‘How was I to know that David…’ there was another onslaught of weeping and she blew her nose noisily into a tissue ‘…that David was married? He didn’t tell me until he decided to walk out. And by then it was too late. I was already pregnant. And I’m still in love with him,’ she finished miserably.

‘Surely not,’ Beth said, aghast.

‘I knew you wouldn’t understand.’ There was an edge of accusation in Laura’s voice now. ‘You’ve never been in love. Not even with Craig. It’s easy for you to sit there and sound horrified just because I haven’t had the common sense to have acted the way you would have done! You don’t know what it’s like! You’ve always been so sensible. When Dad died, you were the one who was strong enough to support Mum, and when she remarried you were the one who told me not to cry because that would only make her unhappy, and, when they both went to Australia to live last year, you were the one who waved them off at the airport and told me that life had to go on!’

Beth felt the prick of tears behind her eyes. Laura had managed to make her sound like a monster, but she was practical, that was all. Was that some sort of crime? As for Craig…she preferred not to dwell on that and pushed it to the back of her mind. Easy enough to do. Laura was right about that, at any rate. She hadn’t been in love with him, had felt no fireworks. When he had broken off their relationship she had been upset, but not distraught, had picked up the pieces and carried on. It was the only way, wasn’t it?

Now her sister had sprung this latest escapade on her, and had expected…what?

She had spent a lifetime reacting in the only way she had known how to her sister’s recklessness. Now that control, that inability to become involved, had become as much part of her as the colour of her hair or the shape of her nose.

‘You’re being unfair!’ she protested uncomfortably.

‘No, I’m not. You don’t want to understand. In a minute you’ll start telling me to pull myself together.’

‘I just don’t know what to do,’ Beth objected. ‘I’m not some sort of miracle-worker. I understand, honestly, and I’ll help in whatever way I can, you know that. I’ll baby-sit, I’ll buy things for it, as much as I can afford, I’ll even sell my flat and move up to London to be closer to you. What more do you want me to say?’

Silly question. Beth waited for the inevitable response.

‘You know how you can help me, if you really want to,’ Laura insisted stubbornly. There were smudges on her face from where the tears had dried, giving her a fragile, pathetic appearance.

‘It wouldn’t work,’ Beth said helplessly, but there was less determination in her voice now, and Laura sensed it, moving in like a shark that had scented blood and was homing in for the kill.

‘It could work,’ she said earnestly, moving forward closer, impatiently sweeping her hair away from her face. ‘Come with me, I’ll show you.’

She stood up and held out her hand. Beth reluctantly took it, allowing herself to be led into the bedroom. Like a lamb to the slaughter.

Laura guided her to the tall mirror that stood next to the dressing-table in the bedroom.

Outside the wind was fierce and relentless, rattling the window-panes ever so slightly. It was a perfectly dark night, the moon obscured by the dense layers of cloud that had hung over the country for the past few days.

Inside, the bedside lamps threw patterns of light and shadow across the room and the overhead light with its pretty apricot shade picked out the figures of the sisters, illuminating them.

Beth looked silently at their reflections, seeing them through Laura’s eyes and reluctantly understanding what had inspired her sister’s hare-brained plan.

Two women, both the same height, both the same shape, both with the same oval faces and luminous green eyes. Identical twins.

She was the first to look away, throwing herself on to the bed and staring sightlessly up at the ceiling.

Trading places. It had been a ridiculous game when they were children, but they weren’t children now. They were women in their early twenties, and surely the time for ridiculous games was over?

Laura sat on the bed, her knees pulled up to her chin.

‘Please, Beth, do it for me. It can work. I’m sure of it. Would I jeopardise my whole life if I didn’t believe that?’

You’re mad enough, Beth felt tempted to say.

‘My boss would never notice,’ she continued persuasively. ‘He’s hardly ever there. He owns a string of hotels worldwide, not to mention enough other business interests that keep him out of the country for weeks on end. My orders tend to come by phone or fax. And when he is around he’s always far too busy to notice me other than in the capacity of the secretary who follows his dictates.’

‘Sounds a treasure,’ Beth said drily.

‘You know what I mean. He breathes, eats and sleeps work. No, maybe not sleeps. He had enough women around to fulfil him on that score.’

‘Charming.’

‘But what I’m saying to you is this: we don’t have the sort of close working relationship that would make him notice any difference if you replaced me. He probably wouldn’t even see that our hairstyles were different and, if he did, you could tell him that you had had your hair cut.’

‘And you like working for this man?’ Beth sat up, propping her head on her elbow and staring curiously at her sister. The man hardly sounded like a comfortable type to be around.

‘I love it. I’ve never had so much responsibility in a job in my life before. That’s why I’m so desperate to hang on to it. As far as I’m concerned, working for Marcos Adrino is the best thing that ever happened to me. That—’ she patted her stomach ‘—and the baby. It’s all I have left of David, and I’m happy with that.’

‘Oh, yes, the baby. So I’m to cunningly replace you at the Adrino corporation, not arousing so much as a whisker of suspicion, while you move into my flat and temp until the baby’s born, and then what?’

‘And then,’ Laura elaborated, her eyes positively gleaming now that victory was tantalisingly within reach, ‘and then I move back up to London and take up where you left off. My friend Katie is a professional child-minder. She’s already promised to look after it.’

‘Convenient.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Laura agreed, unaware of the oblique sarcasm in her sister’s voice.

‘And how do I cope with all those little details like knowing the layout of the office? The filing system?’ Why, Beth wondered, am I actually allowing my curiosity to encourage Laura in her mad ideas?

‘I’ll fill you in on that. It all runs remarkably smoothly. Marcos told me when I first applied for the job that the secret of a successful office lay in its simplicity. Everything documented and on computer so that no one was indispensable to the company.’

‘Except him, of course.’

‘Right.’ Laura’s voice was full of awe.

The man obviously had something, Beth thought, although from where she was sitting that something sounded very much like a healthy dose of arrogance.

‘And don’t you think that other people might notice our little swap?’

‘Not likely. Marcos’s office occupies the top floor of the building, and there are only a handful of people there. The two vice-presidents who work for him, and their secretaries, whom I have very little to do with.’

She rattled off their names and Beth held up her hand to staunch the flow of information.

‘And what about my job?’ she asked. ‘Do I just tell them that I’m taking seven months’ leave to help my sister out in a scheme that could have come straight out of a third-rate movie, but to hang on, I’ll be back?’

‘You quit.’

‘I quit.’

‘Sure. Why not? You know that you’re only there because it’s convenient and because it helps pay the mortgage. I can get a temp job somewhere and pay your mortgage, and you can use my huge salary for the next seven months to build up that little nest-egg you’re always telling me you wish you had.’

‘I see.’

Beth could hardly credit her sister with the forethought she had taken in preparing the ground plan of all this. For every question, she had an answer, and all of the answers were logical in a bizarre way.

‘Besides,’ Laura continued, ‘you told me how much you’d like to get out of here for a bit, to put a little distance between you and Craig. Here’s your chance.’

‘It was wishful thinking!’ Beth objected weakly. ‘Besides, I’ve got over all that.’

‘Have you?’

Beth looked at her sister and sighed. She knew what lay behind this piercing concern for her emotional well-being. It had little to do with the state of her heart and much more to do with the fact that it would fit in very nicely with her plans, thank you very much.

‘Yes,’ she said firmly, ‘I have. I don’t look like someone on the verge of a nervous breakdown, do I? I’m quite grateful to him in a way; he taught me a valuable lesson about the male species. They’re best left alone.’

She had enjoyed an undemanding relationship with Craig for seven months before he’d left her for someone else. Men like that, she had decided, instilled caution when it came to the rest of their sex. She wouldn’t be getting involved with another man for a very long time indeed, and she could have told her sister that dragging up that unfortunate episode and tacking it on to her arguments was useless.

She didn’t, though. Talking about Craig still made her feel vaguely disillusioned, and Beth preferred not to dwell on anything that served no purpose other than to depress her.

Instead she offered her own counter-argument. ‘And Mum? Do you think that Mum will give this little venture her blessing?’

Laura sat upright and adopted a complacent expression which sent chills down Beth’s spine. It was the same expression she had seen whenever her sister was about to confront a problem with an irrefutably foolproof answer.

‘That’s the beauty of it,’ she said smugly. ‘You know how Mum’s always spent her life tearing her hair over me. In fact, she still does that now, even if it is only by letter. Well, I won’t tell her about the pregnancy just yet. I’ll fill her in just before the baby’s due, and by the time she arrives the swap will be accomplished, and I’ll be back in my job. Easy.’

Beth shook her head wonderingly. ‘Is it all worth it?’ she asked.

‘For me, yes. I know you’re content to stay in the hicks here, studying by night, working by day to pay the bills, but it’s not for me. I love London. I love my job. I don’t want to own a cosy little place. Not yet.’

Beth groaned.

‘And when the baby arrives?’ she asked. ‘You’re going to have to settle down, Laura. Babies and the wild single life don’t exactly go hand in hand.’

Laura’s eyes shifted away from her sister’s face. ‘Time enough to think about that.’

What other answer had she seriously expected? Beth thought. Laura had always lived on the premise that the future was a bridge to be crossed when you came to it. While she had worked hard towards building something for herself, Laura had run through a series of unsatisfactory jobs, never thinking of tomorrow.

‘The wonderful thing is,’ Laura was saying, her voice low and urgent, ‘I’ve been at the Adrino corporation for six months now. Long enough to know that it’s the only job for me, but not so long that I know too much for you to catch up on. Right now, I’m doing pretty routine work, even if I do have the freedom to prioritise it the way I want, and you would be able to slot in with no trouble at all. And if you don’t understand anything, no one will be too surprised if you ask questions.’

‘Including your boss?’

‘Just so long as you only ask the question once,’ Laura replied truthfully. ‘He has the sort of brilliant mind that grasps things immediately, and he expects everyone who works for him to do the same.’

This sounded worse and worse. The man was an ogre. Beth could picture him without too much trouble. An arrogant tycoon, someone with a receding hairline and a bit of a paunch, testimony to stress and business lunches, but with enough money to attract whatever bimbo his heart desired.

‘Please,’ Laura wheedled, creeping up the bed to hold her sister’s hand. ‘If you hate it there, I promise I’ll do what you want. I’ll admit that I’m pregnant and I’ll work my notice and then leave. What have you got to lose?’

Beth hesitated, and Laura immediately seized the opportunity.

‘And the rest up here will do me good,’ she said fervently. ‘I’ll be able to do some thinking, and I’ll get away from London for a while. There are too many memories for me in London. We could both do with swapping places for our health.’

‘That’s emotional blackmail,’ Beth pointed out wearily.

But the battle was over, and by the time they finally switched off the lights she was already coming to terms with the fact that she was either as crazy as her sister or else so lacking in will-power that she had allowed herself to agree with something which bore all the resemblance of a jaunt in a minefield.

Laura had taken a week off work, and they spent the time laboriously going over the routines in the Adrino corporation. She had brought one of the company magazines with her, and she pointed out all the faces of the people Beth would meet and would have to recognise.

They weren’t that many, mostly the people who worked in the higher echelons of the company. It was a fortunate coincidence that her sister had not been in London long enough to acquire her usual following of male admirers. Her closest friend was Katie, who was aware of the plan.

David, she assured Beth with a note of bitterness, although he worked in the company, which was where she had met him, had applied and got a transfer abroad.

‘Running as far away as he could from me,’ she said with an attempt at bravado.

‘Isn’t that easier than if he had been around?’ Beth enquired mildly, and her sister shrugged agreement.

By the end of the week, Laura had managed to find herself a temp job, but her work at the Adrino corporation had obviously spoiled her. She rattled off what she would have to do now and was clearly appalled by the prospect.

Beth tactfully refrained from another lecture on it all being her fault, and that as she had made her bed, so would she have to lie on it.

She herself had successfully managed to resign from her job without having to give the obligatory one-month notice. She had pleaded an unfortunate family matter and tactfully left it to her boss to decipher whatever he wanted from that obscure statement.

It had hurt a lot less than she had expected. Had she really spent so much time in a job that she had shed without too many tears? Or maybe it was the stirrings of what was awaiting her.

Laura had made the whole scheme sound like a marvellous adventure, but the following Monday morning, as Beth stood outside the impressive Adrino building, she felt far from adventurous.

She felt an impostor, dressed in her sister’s jade-green suit. Was there a law against this sort of thing? she wondered.

She smoothed her hair back nervously and chewed on her lip. All around her people rushed past, lots of little soldier ants hurrying to their jobs.

A dull sun was attempting to break the stranglehold of grey clouds but it was easy to see that it was a losing battle.

She felt a light spitting of rain and merged into the line of soldier ants, finding herself swept into the massive building.

If I don’t look at anyone, she thought, then I won’t risk ignoring any recognisable faces.

But she was perspiring with nerves as the lift whooshed up to the top floor, disgorging her into the plushest set of offices she had ever seen in her life before.

The carpet was of muted grey-blue and thick enough to make footsteps soundless. The offices lay behind smoke-coloured glass.

One of the secretaries looked up as she walked past and waved, and Beth waved back. Marian, secretary to Ron Wood, the financial director.

‘Nice week off?’ Marian asked, stopping her in her tracks, and Beth smiled and nodded.

‘A little eventful,’ she said, inwardly grinning at the accuracy of the description, ‘but relaxing on the whole.’

‘Good. I wish I had a week off coming up. I’m up to my ears in it. You’ve had your hair cut?’

Beth ran her fingers self-consciously through her bob. ‘Spur-of-the-moment,’ she said vaguely.

‘Suits you. Makes you look more businesslike. Not,’ Marian continued hurriedly, ‘that you didn’t look great with long hair.’

Beth accepted the compliment with a smile. She liked Marian straight away. She was in her middle thirties, tending towards plumpness and quite plain to look at with her short wavy brown hair and spectacles, until she smiled. Then her face lit up and was really very attractive.

‘See you later, anyway,’ she said with another wave, and Beth nodded, walking confidently towards her office which she knew was at the end of the corridor.

First hurdle, she thought, successfully manoeuvred and out of the way. It surely couldn’t be as simple as this. Life was never that simple. It always insisted on throwing in a few complications to making the going more interesting.

But right now her self-confidence was a notch higher.

There would be a stack of typing awaiting her—she knew that from what Laura had explained—but that would be no problem. She had spent a long time working with the same computer system.

She pushed open the door to her office and gasped.

It was a large room, carpeted in the same shade of muted grey, but the walls were covered by an elegant dove-grey wallpaper. Her desk was an impressive mahogany affair, and the filing cabinets, also in mahogany, were stacked neatly against the wall.

Opposite, a large abstract painting dominated the wall. It wasn’t the sort of thing she would have chosen herself, but she decided that she rather liked it. It was soothing.

Marcos Adrino had probably hand-picked it. She had had to revise some of her ideas on his appearance. From the picture in the company magazine, he was younger than she had originally thought, but she had no doubt that the paunch was still there. The handful of wealthy men she had met had all seemed to be slightly over-weight. Products of too much access to rich food.

She hung her coat on the coat-stand and settled comfortably into her chair, browsing through the pile of letters, most of which she could tell at a glance, from experience, simply needed filing. Faxed letters from the boss were awaiting typing.

Beth looked at the strong, aggressive handwriting and felt a twinge of relief that he wasn’t around. She could do with a few days breaking in before she faced him.

She switched on the computer terminal and was about to begin working on the first letter when the door behind her opened.

She heard his voice before she saw him. It was deep, and right now tinged with enough hardness to freeze her to the spot.

‘Here at last. In my office. Now.’

She swivelled around to see him vanishing back into his room, and her head began to throb with nerves.

One day into this, and already things weren’t going to plan. He was not supposed to be here today. He was supposed to spend most of his time out of the country. In fact, from what Laura had told her, he was supposed to be in Paris and Geneva until the end of the week. At least. So what on earth was he doing here?

She licked her lips nervously and wished that she had listened to her good sense and laughed her sister right out of town.

He was standing by the window waiting for her, his body negligently leaning against the sill, one hand thrust into his trouser-pocket.

The difference between the man in front of her and the one she had conjured up was so vast that she looked away in confusion.

Marcos Adrino was tall and, far from having a paunch, he had not a spare ounce of fat to be seen. In fact, he had the body of a superbly tuned athlete, broad-shouldered and lean-hipped. A body that looked powerful, even though it was covered by an expensively tailored charcoal-grey suit.

Beth cleared her throat and looked at him, taking in the hard, clever lines of his face, the black hair, the dark, penetrating eyes, the curve of his mouth.

Pull yourself together, girl, she told herself. You’re the sensible one, remember?

He was staring at her through narrowed eyes.

‘Sit down,’ he ordered abruptly.

Beth edged over to the chair and sat down, lowering her eyes to her shorthand pad, making an effort to steady her hand.

It wouldn’t do to look ill-at-ease. She got the feeling that this man picked up things like that, processed them through his shrewd brain, and always came up with the right answer.

He remained standing where he was and she looked up at him with a bright smile.

‘I didn’t expect you,’ she said in a businesslike voice.

‘I dare say you didn’t,’ he drawled.

‘Successful trip?’

‘It would have been, if I hadn’t been privy to certain rumours circulating.’

‘Rumours?’

She managed a weak smile.

‘Rumour number one has it that you’ve been shirking your responsibilities here,’ he said coldly. ‘I don’t pay you to waltz into this office any time you feel like it.’

Beth gathered her wits together. This wasn’t a dictating session at all. She should have guessed that the minute she saw that forbidding expression on his face.

‘I didn’t realise that I had been,’ she ventured.

‘Really.’ He moved over to his chair and sat in it, inclining back, his hands clasped behind his head. ‘In that case, you don’t seem to be aware of the time you’re supposed to get here. I can assure you that it’s not ten o’clock.’

His voice was smooth and razor-sharp, and Beth looked at him with dislike. She had been spot-on when she had read arrogance behind her sister’s description of her boss. It was stamped all over him, but she was damned if he was going to stamp it all over her.

‘If I’ve been late on a couple of occasions,’ she said coolly, ‘than I apologise. It won’t happen again.’

‘It had better not. You’ve exhausted your first chance with me. Next time it happens and you don’t provide an acceptable excuse, you’re out. Understand?’

Beth swallowed her anger.

‘And what excuse would you consider acceptable?’ she asked with interest, forgetting that she was supposed to be holding on to her sister’s job and not kissing it sweet goodbye through the window. ‘Death, perhaps?’

Marcos’s mouth narrowed to a thin line.

‘Nor do I pay you to give me lip, is that clear?’ He stared at her and Beth defiantly met his gaze.

‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, fiddling with her pad.

This man was more than merely uncomfortable to be around. He was unbearable, and if Laura had been around she would quite happily have strangled her on the spot.

‘Have you prepared the groundwork on the St Lucian project?’ he asked, changing the subject.

He was trying to catch her out. Beth could sense it instinctively and she thanked her lucky stars that Laura had filled her in on all the details of the major jobs he was working on.

The St Lucian project involved an immense lot of work concerning the construction of an exclusive complex in St Lucia, the sort of complex that catered for the sort of people who never associated holidays with cost.

‘Yes,’ she responded calmly. ‘The groundwork’s all been covered and an appointment with the Minister of Tourism is scheduled for next week.’

It felt good to reel off the right answer. Marcos Adrino would have had no hesitation in reducing her to the size of a pea had she not been able to meet his question with an adequate response.

She got the feeling that he had no compunction when it came to eliminating dead wood from his company. Or, for that matter, from his life. She considered what her sister had told her about his private affairs, about the women who were drawn to him like iron filings to a magnet. Now, seeing him, she realised that he was the kind of man who treated women as disposable playthings. Men, she thought, she could well do without, and this breed of man was particularly on the objectionable list.

‘I do feel, however,’ she said, throwing in her own opinion on what Laura had told her about the project, ‘that more care should be taken to involve the visitors into the island life. A fabulous complex is one thing, but it can be enhanced by easy access to the local customs.’

‘You have opinions now, have you?’ he asked softly. ‘And since when has your efficiency extended beyond my orders?’

Beth didn’t answer. She would have to remember to act in character, and Laura would never have volunteered such an observation without being asked.

‘Is that all?’ she murmured, preparing to leave. ‘Sir?’

‘The name is Marcos,’ he answered easily, ‘use it. You always have. And no, as a matter of fact, that’s not all. Not by a long shot.’

Beth waited and the silence built around her like an electric field.

He had something else to say, and, from the sound of this particular brand of silence, whatever it was it wasn’t pleasant.

CHAPTER TWO

NEVER IN HER ENTIRE LIFE had Beth felt so acutely ill at ease. And the worst part was, Marcos Adrino wasn’t at all embarrassed at her discomfort. He continued to stare at her, those black eyes taking in absolutely everything, until she felt like jumping up from the chair and begging for forgiveness for whatever the hell it was she was supposed to have done, because he still hadn’t said.

He would have made a great interrogator, she thought. He certainly had the ability to fill his silences with unspoken threat.

‘I’ve been hearing other, slightly more distasteful rumours about you,’ he broke the silence, but there was still a dangerous softness to his voice. He idly picked up the silver letter-opener from his desk, running the edge along his finger with caressing delicacy.

Did he have to do that? Beth wondered nervously. Was he doing it on purpose? She didn’t think so. There was something absent-minded about his action, but even so, it was menacing.

No wonder, when Laura had spoken about him, her voice had been filled with awe.

Of course, she decided, falling back on her good, old-fashioned sense of practicality, any awe Laura felt towards him was totally misplaced. All that forbidding arrogance didn’t intimidate her at all. Well, not now anyway. Maybe to start with, but she had got the measure of him now, she decided.

He had something unpleasant to say to her and, instead of just coming right out with it, which was what any normal boss would have done, he was playing a cat-and-mouse game with her. Creating a shroud of tension around her, waiting for her to snap, at which point he would no doubt find the whole scenario hugely entertaining.

‘Oh, yes?’ Beth asked politely.

His mouth hardened. Any minute now, she thought, and he’ll tell me that I have an attitude problem. But she was damned if she was going to let Marcos Adrino walk all over her. He might treat the rest of the human race like that, but not her. Not if she had any say in the matter.

She fleetingly thought that she was supposed to be impersonating her sister and that Laura would never have dreamt of answering back to him, and promptly pushed the thought aside for future reference.

‘You don’t seem overly concerned,’ he said, dropping the letter-knife and standing up.

Beth followed his movements warily as he walked around the desk to perch on it directly in front of her.

Another little ploy, she told herself. Designed to make the guilty party feel inferior and vulnerable. It won’t work.

Her green eyes serenely met his, and she saw an expression of what? Puzzlement? Almost as though he was trying to figure something out. Then it was gone and he was looking at her with cold disapproval.

‘Of course I’m interested in whatever rumours you’ve heard,’ Beth agreed with the same level of controlled politeness in her voice. ‘Not that rumours are always based on fact.’

‘Your week off certainly seems to have turned you into a little philosopher,’ Marcos observed coolly. ‘I don’t remember you being so opinionated before. Who did you spend the time with?’

‘No one,’ Beth said hurriedly.

‘Not even David Ryan?’

So this is it, she thought, I might have guessed. Her face reddened and then just as quickly drained of all colour.

‘I see that’s managed to crack that controlled little façade of yours.’

‘May I ask who has been spreading these…rumours?’ she asked. Not that I’ll be able to deny them. Laura, she groaned inwardly, why on earth did you have to fool around with someone in the company? Why couldn’t you have contented yourself with any one of the hundreds of other men in London who had nothing at all to do with the Adrino corporation?

Marcos smiled coldly. ‘I really don’t think that’s relevant, do you?’

‘I suppose not,’ Beth said dully.

‘The fact is that you and Ryan have been sleeping together, haven’t you?’

‘I didn’t realise that what I did outside of company time—’

‘You know damn well that it’s not allowed. You’re my secretary and Ryan isn’t just one of the junior members of staff. He’s one of our directors.’

‘He is?’ She hadn’t thought to ask Laura what David’s status in the company was, and Laura had, naturally, tactfully omitted to mention it.

‘Don’t try and plead ignorance,’ Marcos bit out. ‘It won’t work. I had noticed that his work was becoming sloppy. Is that why he requested a transfer to Paris?’

‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him,’ Beth hedged, looking away.

‘I’m asking you. But don’t worry, your face says it all for you. No doubt you drove the poor fellow into a corner and he fled from the country to get away from you.’

‘I resent that!’ she exclaimed hotly, standing up. It was on the tip of her tongue to inform him that she wasn’t paid to sit in his office and be systematically insulted. That he could expect her resignation first thing in the morning. But, of course, she couldn’t. Laura would never have forgiven her if their convoluted efforts to secure her job had lasted precisely two hours and had resulted in Beth walking out.

She bit back her words and rearranged her features into what she hoped was an expression of subdued apology.

‘Sit back down,’ Marcos commanded abruptly. ‘You’ll leave when I’m finished with you. You’ve been playing with Ryan, and who else? Is he one of a succession of men you’ve been sleeping with in my company?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Because I won’t have it. I can do without being known as someone who has a tramp for a secretary.’

‘I am not a tramp!’ Two bright patches of colour had appeared on her cheeks, and she realised that she was perspiring all over.

‘I needn’t tell you that rumours of your affair with Ryan could very quickly spread into rumours of an affair with me.’

The black eyes glinted cynically at her. She wondered briefly whether that wasn’t bothering him as much as Laura’s love-affair with David. After all, it was easy for a boss to lose credibility with his staff if it was rumoured that he was sleeping with his secretary.

And that would be quite an easy assumption to make. He was attractive, she supposed, if you liked that sort of ruthless appeal, and he was aware enough of his own sexuality to realise that women were drawn to him.

‘I can assure you that you don’t need to fear anything on that score,’ she informed him stiffly.

‘No?’ He raised one eyebrow, and this time there was a distinct gleam of lazy amusement in his eyes.

It altered the hard contours of his face totally, and she caught a swift, disturbing glimpse of the sort of self-assured charm that could knock any defenceless woman for six.

But she was far from defenceless. Oh, no. She had always been a controlled person, and since Craig she had erected a good many barriers to protect her from ever again being taken in by a few charming smiles and some well-rehearsed chat-up lines. That glimpse of raw sex appeal, she firmly told herself, stood no chance.

‘No,’ she told him.

‘You mean you’re not attracted to me?’ There was slightly more amusement in his eyes now, and it made Beth angry. There had been nothing amusing in his accusations a minute ago and, if he thought that he could dictate her responses to him by turning on a bit of masculine charm, then he was in for an unpleasant surprise.

‘That’s right.’ She stood up and smoothed her skirt, then she bent to retrieve the shorthand pad and her pencil. And not once did she even glance in his direction. ‘Is that all, now?’

‘That’s all.’ He moved across to the window and stood staring broodingly out. The fine drizzle that had started earlier in the morning had not let up. She could see the persistent wetness clinging to the window-pane, as though the top of the building were stuck in the middle of a cloud.

She turned to go and halted at the door when she heard the deep timbre of his voice behind her.

‘Just so long as we understand each other,’ he said silkily. He had turned to face her, and Beth’s mouth suddenly went dry. No wonder this man had such a high opinion of himself. He was clever, that much was apparent in his eyes, and he knew it. He was powerful, and he knew it. And he was sexy, and that he was certainly aware of.

But he wasn’t perfect. If he were he would be able to see the stubborn hostility in her face.

‘I think we do, Mr Adrino.’

‘Marcos. I told you when you first got this job that everyone in the company was on a first-name basis.’

‘So you did,’ Beth murmured, unable to resist a smile as she thought that they had done it. They had really managed to pull the wool over Marcos Adrino’s sharp eyes. They had fooled him. He didn’t have a clue that the woman standing in front of him had never been interviewed by him for any job.

‘Care to tell me what that smile on your face is all about?’ he drawled. ‘I can’t imagine that the past hour has exactly filled you with a warm glow.’

You’d be surprised, Beth wanted to retort, still highly amused at the thought that she had fooled the infallible Marcos Adrino.

Her smile widened. ‘Just looking forward to my day’s work,’ she said blandly. ‘Job satisfaction is a wonderful thing.’

‘Isn’t it? And by the way,’ he added, as she opened the door, ‘what have you done to your hair?’

‘Oh, I had it cut,’ Beth said cautiously. Had her triumph been short-lived? ‘I fancied a change,’ she mumbled vaguely when he didn’t say anything.

‘You’ve succeeded,’ he said, sticking his hands into his pockets. ‘From where I’m standing, you’ve succeeded very well indeed.’

Beth stepped out of the office and shut the door firmly behind her. His words were ominously perspicacious. She really would have to remember that she couldn’t give in to the temptation to react in the way she customarily would have done. That she and Laura, identical twins though they were, were very different as two individuals.

She almost fell into her chair with the relief of no longer being in Marcos’s presence.

It hadn’t just been his relentless accusations, she thought suddenly, as she logged into the computer and ran her eyes briefly over the huge store of files, realising that she would have to work a lot of overtime to really understand Laura’s job fully.

There was something alarming about him. Maybe it was just that she was not accustomed to being confronted by a man who acted as though the whole world was designed to fall in with his orders.

Her little job in Cambridge had certainly not prepared her for this particular breed of man. Her own boss had been quite mild-mannered. A sympathetic middle-aged man with three children, all girls, who wore a look of perpetual harassment on his face. Whenever anyone joked to him about it, he would laugh and reply, what do you expect, living with four women?

Beth couldn’t imagine that Marcos Adrino had ever been mild-mannered. He had probably been born arrogant. She tried to imagine him as a baby and found that she couldn’t. The only image she could conjure up was that dark, devilish, ruthlessly handsome face.

She stuck a couple of horns and a tail on her mental image, chuckled and then settled into the laborious task of catching up with the outstanding workload of typing.

When Marcos next strode out of his office, he glanced across at her with surprise.

‘Dieting?’ he drawled, slinging on his coat and pausing to stand over her.

Immediately Beth felt her pulses begin to race.

‘Pardon?’

‘It’s nearly two o’clock,’ he told her, and she returned his curious stare with surprise.

‘Is it?’ she asked, consulting her watch and feeling unnervingly gauche and idiotic. ‘Oh, yes, so it is. I must have become a bit involved.’

‘So I see. Keep it up and you won’t feel the sting of my disapproval again.’

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied tartly, wanting to hit him, and his lips curved into a small smile.

‘I won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon. I have two meetings tomorrow at Harlow and Ridgewood’s. Last-minute arrangements; they probably won’t be in your diary. Finish compiling the research into Santo Domingo, will you? I want to get all that off the ground by the end of the month. Latest. I take it you won’t object to doing a bit of overtime to get it all cleared?’

‘Of course not.’ Had he really expected any other answer? The question had been phrased in such a way as to negate any other reply. Not that she had any objection to overtime anyway. For the salary that Laura was being paid, working long hours was more or less expected.

Not, she thought, that her sister had allowed that line of reasoning to enter her mind from what Marcos had told her. She would have to confront Laura with that.

He strode towards the door, and Beth subconsciously thought how graceful his movements were for someone of his height and powerful build. Stealthy, she corrected herself. Like a jungle animal. He probably slept with one eye open as well.

He paused just as he was about to leave and threw over his shoulder, ‘By the way, if Angela calls, make some excuse. She’s being a bit of a nuisance.’

With that he clicked the door behind him and Beth frowned. Angela? Who on earth was Angela? She was obviously meant to know who Angela was and was expected to dispatch her efficiently out of his life. Was this all in the line of duty? Ha!

She spent the remainder of the afternoon ploughing through the stack of dictated tapes and messages in her tray, occasionally breaking off to take phone calls and to rummage through the computer files, gradually building up a picture of Marcos’s extensive business involvements.

There was much more to it than hotels, although they were by far the bulk of his business. Hotels spread across the world, from New York to Tokyo.

In addition he had investments in several electronics firms and software companies.

Had he built all this from nothing? Even if he had not, the man was clearly a dynamo in the concrete jungle.

When she next looked at her watch, it had gone seven o’clock and she hastily packed up. This, she reminded herself, was only a temporary excursion into the Adrino corporation. Filling in time until Laura could take over. It wouldn’t do to start becoming too involved.

Now she understood why her sister had been so keen to keep her feet in the company.

She made her way back on the Underground to Laura’s flat, which was in Swiss Cottage. It was a rented apartment. Very comfortable and large enough really for two people, but lacking in character. Nothing like her little place, but then you never had the incentive to do anything with property that did not belong to you, she supposed.

Laura, anyway, had never been terribly houseproud. While she could spend hours browsing in an antique shop, Laura had always been more than happy to flit from boutique to boutique, spending all her money on clothes.

And it showed, Beth thought wryly, as she prepared herself a light meal of tuna and French bread. Her sister’s wardrobe was about five times the size of hers and the clothes were way out of her price range.

As soon as she had eaten, she telephoned her sister, waiting in frustration as she heard the flat ringing tone. Surely Laura wouldn’t be out living it up, for heaven’s sake? She hardly knew a soul in Cambridge. Beth herself only had a handful of good friends there. She had told them that she was going to be away for a while and that her sister would be looking after her flat, but none of them knew any of the details and she didn’t care for the thought of Laura spilling them unwittingly.

Her train of thought was broken by Laura’s voice at the end of the line.

‘Beth,’ she heard the voice distantly, and felt a sudden pang of longing to be back in her flat in Cambridge and far away from this dreadful affair. ‘How was your first day at work?’ There was a brief pause, then she continued anxiously, ‘You made out all right, didn’t you?’

‘Oh, none of your colleagues recognised anything amiss,’ Beth began. ‘They commented on the change of hairstyle but that was about all, and I’ve been doing a lot of work getting myself up to the mark on your work.’

‘You will remember that it’s not permanent, won’t you?’

Beth smiled. ‘Of course I will. Believe me, working for Marcos Adrino, invigorating though the work might be, isn’t my cup of tea.’

She heard her sister gasp down the line and her smile broadened. She could imagine Laura’s expression of horror that she had been plunged into the deep end so suddenly.

‘But he’s not back in England until the end of the week,’ she wailed.

‘Well, then, he’s obviously more unpredictable than you thought. He was there when I got in, and I don’t have to tell you that I almost had a heart attack when I heard his voice from behind me.’ She shivered involuntarily.

‘What did you do? What did you say? You didn’t give the game away, did you?’ Laura’s voice had risen to a panicky squeak.

‘No, and don’t get so excited, for heaven’s sake. Not in your condition.’ She sat down on the sofa, curling her legs underneath her, her eyes absent-mindedly wandering over the television which she had switched on earlier, having turned down the volume to make the phone call. It was a cheap thriller of some sort, and the entire cast seemed to be wearing expressions of either bewilderment or guilt.

‘Well? Tell me all the details. Hang on, I’ll just settle down here. Your cushions are so delicate. You need some great big ones on the floor.’

‘Thanks, but try not to give in to the urge to redecorate my flat. You’ve done quite enough at the moment, what with redecorating my life.’

‘So spill the beans. Tell all.’

‘Laura,’ Beth said bluntly, ‘what the hell has been going on in that office with you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean the man laid into me the minute I was in his office. He said that you had been shirking your job, coming late.’

‘Oh.’ There was a sheepish silence at the other end, then Laura burst out defensively, ‘It only happened a couple of times.’

‘A couple?’

‘Well, four or five.’

Beth sighed. ‘Well, he found out about the four or five times and he was livid.’

‘Oh, dear. I wonder who told him? I had morning sickness. Honestly, Beth, I just couldn’t drag myself into work on time, and I could hardly tell anyone, could I? I’m sorry. Although it’s kind of a relief that you were there to handle him. I’ve heard that he can be positively scary when he’s crossed. I would have just burst into tears, I know it. I’ve been very emotional since I got pregnant.’

‘Thanks,’ Beth commented wryly. ‘But I can tell you I wished I’d never been talked into this insanity.’

‘You’re not going to back out, are you?’ There was a hint of tears already in Laura’s voice.

‘No, but I want some honesty from you. This David character. Was he the only one? I mean…’

‘Beth! How could you even imply…!’

‘You can be a bit of a flirt,’ she stated flatly, ‘so don’t play the innocent with me, my girl. Don’t forget, I know you better than anyone else in the world. You’ve spent a lifetime mastering the art of getting yourself into scrapes with men, so don’t act as though you’re shocked by the question.’

‘I haven’t been sleeping around, if you must know,’ Laura said with asperity. ‘The minute I met David, that was it.’

‘Good.’ At least that was one less problem to worry about, Beth thought. She couldn’t have coped with an entourage of men beating a path to the top floor whenever the coast was clear.

‘What do you think of Marcos?’ She heard her sister’s voice and it was brimming over with curiosity.

‘I’ve met more pleasant people in my time,’ Beth answered firmly. ‘He’s every bit as arrogant as I expected him to be.’

‘But attractive, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I suppose so,’ Beth confessed grudgingly, remembering the feeling of hostility he had evoked in her, ‘though not my type. He’s too self-confident for his own good and he acts as though when he says jump he really expects the rest of the world to obey.’

‘Oh, they do.’

I can believe it, Beth thought. She changed the topic. She didn’t like talking about Marcos Adrino. It made her think of him, and thinking of him made her skin begin to prickle.

They chatted about what the weather was doing, Beth reminded Laura not to forget to water her plants and to collect a dress from the dry cleaners down the road, and it was only as she got into bed that she suddenly remembered Angela.

She had completely forgotten to ask Laura who the hell Angela was, and how she was supposed to handle her.

Then she decided that she didn’t care anyway. As far as she could see, it wasn’t part of her job description, or rather her sister’s, to deal with Marcos’s personal life, and if he didn’t like it, then he could lump it.

She put it to the back of her mind and there it remained the following morning as she busied herself with her twin tasks of briefing herself on the company, including the project in Santo Domingo, and typing up the reports that had been left on her desk after she had gone home.

Marcos had obviously put in an appearance at the company, and it must have been late because he had been nowhere to be seen when she had left. He must run on overdrive, she thought.

She was relaxing over her fifteen-minute lunch break comprised of a cup of black coffee and an apple, when the door to her office was flung open and Marcos swept in, bringing with him that feeling of restless energy that she had seen the day before.

‘I’ll have one of those,’ he said without stopping at her desk, ‘in my office.’

He strode into his office, slamming the door behind him and Beth winced. A very good afternoon to you too, she mouthed, gulping down her last bite of apple and moving over to the percolator.

He was poring over some paperwork at his desk and he barely glanced up when she entered.

‘Your coffee?’ she reminded him of her presence.

He stared at the cup, then he stared at her. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘It’s a cup of coffee,’ she answered. What else could it be? A jug of orange juice?

‘I don’t take my coffee black. I take it white, with one teaspoon of sugar.’ He leant back in his chair and scrutinised her. ‘Surely you should know that by now?’ he asked softly. ‘You’ve really changed, and more than just your hairstyle. Am I missing something here? Am I being a bit dense?’

Beth retrieved the cup from the desk, steadying her nerves. She had automatically poured him the same coffee as she had herself. Stupid. Little oversights like this made this dangerous game as glaringly obvious as if she had committed some larger, more noticeable mistake.

‘I’m sorry. My mind must have been elsewhere.’

‘Either that, or you left it behind in Cambridge.’

‘What?’ Beth asked sharply, smiling to hide the sudden tension she felt.

‘You went to stay with your sister, didn’t you? Jane told me.’

‘My sister?’ Her mind was working furiously. Who, she wondered, was Jane? The office spy from the sounds of it, and office spies could be extremely dangerous.

‘Something wrong with your hearing today, Laura?’ he asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

Beth smiled again. ‘Of course I went to stay with my sister. In Cambridge.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘I would have gone somewhere more glamorous, but my funds were a little low at the time.’ She would have to stop being so jumpy every time she thought that he was edging towards the truth. After all, there was no way that he could even suspect that Laura was miles away in her little flat, while she was here pretending to be someone she was not.

‘Where would you have gone?’ he asked curiously. ‘I would have associated you a few weeks ago with somewhere on the French Riviera, close to a few nightclubs, but perhaps I misread you completely.’

Beth shrugged non-committally. She didn’t like this sudden digression on to personal topics. There could be a lot of unexpected traps here. For a start, she didn’t know what Laura had told him about herself, if anything, and he wasn’t likely to dismiss another slip-up like the coffee. He was altogether too shrewd. His clever, calculating mind probably stored information that most normal people would forget within seconds. Stored it and had it quite handy to recall at a moment’s notice.

‘I’ve never been to the French Riviera,’ Beth finally volunteered, as he continued to look at her from under his dark lashes. ‘And I’ve never felt any particular wish to go, if you must know. In fact, I haven’t done a great deal of travelling at all.’

‘But you’d like to?’ he prompted.

Beth fidgeted uncomfortably. She didn’t like this. She was sure that he couldn’t give two hoots whether she hated the idea of planes, or else saved madly to go on one. Laura had said that he barely noticed her except in her capacity as secretary. So why the sudden interest now? She wondered whether he suspected something odd, a little thought hovering somewhere at the back of his mind. A little thought that he was beginning to explore.

‘Wouldn’t everyone?’ she answered distantly.

‘No. I personally have seen enough of airports to last me a lifetime. Hotel life, you know, outstays its welcome very quickly.’

‘Does it? I wouldn’t know. Anyway, I’ll make you a fresh cup of coffee now, if you like.’

‘Why,’ he drawled, ‘do I get the impression that you’re eager to get out of my company?’

His words, for reasons that she couldn’t fathom, sent a hot flood of colour to her cheeks. Or maybe it was the way he had spoken them, in that lazy, slightly speculative voice.

Whatever, there was no answer to that question and she left the office quickly, only realising how tense she had been when she exhaled her breath deeply in the safety of her own room.

By the time she re-entered his office she was perfectly in control of her senses once again, and the cup of coffee was precisely how he liked it.

He began to talk to her about work and she breathed a sigh of relief. When he talked about work, she was on relatively safe ground.

As she was leaving his office, she turned around and said on the spur of the moment, ‘Do you remember what you said to me about getting bored of hotel life very quickly?’

He looked up from his paperwork and nodded.

‘Well,’ Beth continued awkwardly, ‘it’s just a thought, but these projects in St Lucia and Santo Domingo—you could try and make them places that would never outstay their welcome.’

He looked at her assessingly.

‘Any suggestions?’

Beth laughed genuinely. ‘None at all. Don’t forget I’m inexperienced enough to find any sort of hotel life quite a novelty.’

He looked as though he was about to say something, but when he finally did it was only to inform her briskly that she could apply herself to giving the matter some thought, then he returned to his paperwork.

Effective dismissal, Beth thought, letting herself out, but she felt suddenly invigorated.

She was absorbed in reading one of the folders on St Lucia when the outside door to her office opened. But it wasn’t Marian, who normally peeped in with files or reports for Marcos.

This woman she had never seen before.

‘Can I help you?’ Beth asked, wondering how she had managed to bypass the usual security checks and make her way successfully to the top floor.

‘Is Marcos around?’ The woman smiled politely. She was very poised, every strand of blonde hair neatly tucked into a sophisticated chignon at the back of her neck.

‘Who may I say is asking?’

‘Oh, don’t bother to announce me,’ she said quickly, ‘I’ll let myself in.’

Before Beth could do anything to stop her, the woman had made her way to the connecting door, and Beth could just see Marcos’s dark head look up, then the door was very firmly closed.

She returned to her work, but her mind was seething with questions.

Finally, and with a feeling of ridiculous surreptitiousness, she called Laura at her workplace, and said without preamble, ‘A blonde woman just walked into Marcos’s office. She didn’t tell me who she was. Am I supposed to know?’

‘Blonde?’ Laura asked. ‘Very leggy and very glamorous? Probably wearing silk or cashmere?’

‘That’s the one.’ The woman had been dressed in a pale pink cashmere suit with a strand of pearls around her neck, and they didn’t look like the synthetic stuff either.

‘Remember I told you that Marcos is quite something with the women?’

‘Yes,’ Beth answered.

‘Well, that’s one of them. Angela Fordyce.’ She groaned down the phone. ‘He finished with her about three weeks ago, and under no circumstances were you supposed to let her in to see him!’

CHAPTER THREE

BETH TRIED TO SUMMON UP the feeling of bravado she had had the previous day when she had resolutely decided that Marcos could handle his own damned personal life.

But sitting here, in front of her computer, her eyes flitting warily across to the connecting door, it was difficult.

She had already been subjected to his cold anger and it was something she had no desire to experience again.

She frowned at the file she had been poring over a minute before, but the words were just a jumble of black and white. Eventually she gave up.

She could, she thought, leave for home. It was already half-past five. She chewed her lip, glanced across at the door again and remained undecidedly rooted to her chair for another half an hour.

This is ridiculous, she finally decided. Hovering about here like some sort of criminal waiting to stand before the judge.

She stacked her papers away and unhooked her coat from the coat-stand. Now that she had decided to leave, her feet couldn’t move fast enough, and by the time she made it to the ground floor she was positively churning with tension.

She only managed to regain some of her equilibrium on the Underground back to the flat, but even when she was safely indoors she found that she was plagued by the same sense of apprehension.

More alarmingly, her mind was fizzing over with questions that she knew shouldn’t concern her at all.

Was that the type of woman he fancied? Tall and blonde and with the sort of impeccable good looks that spoke of hours painstakingly spent in front of the mirror? Angela Fordyce, she found herself thinking uncharitably, didn’t look as though her brain had ever taxed itself with anything more complicated than whether her colour scheme for the day matched.

Not that it was any concern of hers anyway. The man was infinitely dislikeable, someone who constantly seemed to rub her up the wrong way. He was welcome to his following of leggy blondes. Peculiar though it might seen, they probably suited him. Men whose work lives ran on constant pressure no doubt found the company of brainless bimbos relaxing. They could unwind without the tiring obligation of actually having to respond to any manner of intelligent conversation.

She switched on the television, laughing at her line of thought. Am I really so bitchy? she wondered. She had never been before.

She had changed into a pair of tight jeans and a loose sweater and she had a sudden, unwelcome image of herself standing next to Angela Fordyce, her short bob hardly the most glamorous hairstyle in the world, her face bereft of any make-up, her feet inelegantly clad in a pair of thick woollen socks to stave off the cold.

With a little frown she shoved the image to the back of her mind and settled down to follow the detective movie. She liked detective movies. Something about them appealed to the logical processes in her brain. That was probably why she enjoyed the mathematical precision of her accountancy course. There was no room for emotive flights in an accountancy course. Things made sense with it. Two and two always added up to four.

Her mother once told her that it was a trait that she must have inherited from her father. He had possessed a fine mind, a mind that had enjoyed the precision of logic.

Laura, she had said, took after her. They were both volatile and emotional. Two and two, with a generous helping of imagination, sometimes added up to five.

Why, Beth thought pensively, had she suddenly remembered that? Was it because her cool, reasonable approach to life had recently been less reliable? Odd.

She refocused her attention on the small screen and was once again absorbed in various premutations of theory being volunteered by the chief detective, when there was a sharp knocking on the door.

She reluctantly got up, wondering who on earth it could be. Were there such things as door-to-door salesmen in London? Or maybe it was Katie. She had been meaning to get in touch with Katie, but hadn’t found the time so far.

She pulled open the door and her body tensed immediately.

‘Oh,’ she said, simply because she couldn’t find anything better to say, ‘it’s you.’

‘Surprised?’ Marcos walked past her into the small lounge, making no apology for his appearance even though it was after ten o’clock.

He stood in the centre of the room and stared with blatant curiosity around him.

Beth felt her hackles begin to rise.

‘I thought only doctors paid home visits,’ she said pointedly, shutting the door behind her. She would have preferred to leave it open, so that he could get the message that she really didn’t want him in the flat, but it was simply too cold outside for that.

Now that the door was shut, she had a sudden feeling of choking claustrophobia.

‘Funny,’ he mused, ‘I would have expected your flat to have more of an imprint of your personality on it. It looks as though you only use it as a place to sleep.’

‘Have you come here for something specific?’ Beth asked, reasserting her presence. She moved to the chair furthest away from him and sat primly on it, leaning forward slightly, her arms folded across her chest.

She was aware of her heart beating quickly and heavily. What was he doing here? He had obviously just come from work, he was still wearing his suit, although that didn’t exactly speak volumes, did it? She had left him at the office with Angela; who knows what they had got up to? He might have finished with her, but men, she knew, were very susceptible to a beautiful and willing woman, even a beautiful and willing woman who had gone past her sell-by date.

‘Why did you let her into the office?’ He looked at her through half-closed eyes.

‘What?’

‘You heard. Angela. Why did you let her into my office when I expressly told you not to?’

Oh, so this is it, she thought. He couldn’t even have the courtesy to wait until the morning before venting his anger.

She felt a stab of indignation. Some of that bravado that had eluded her earlier on was returning.

‘I could hardly put her under civil arrest just because she wanted to see you, could I?’

‘You could have told her that I was out,’ he said forcefully. ‘Or ill, or in a meeting. The list of excuses is endless. You’ve always managed to handle that sort of situation before.’

‘Have I indeed?’ So it was one of her unofficial duties, and one which her sister had happily complied with. Well, she had no intention of following suit.

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