“If you’re quite finished? Sir?” About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Copyright

“If you’re quite finished? Sir?”

Victor shook his head impatiently and muttered, “Will you stop calling me sir?”

“Would you prefer boss?” Alice asked politely. “That way we can make sure we both know precisely who lays down the laws, whatever those might be.”

“I wouldn’t allow anyone else to speak to me like that....”

“Then,” she said, walking toward him and thrusting out her chin, “sack me.”

“Sack you? Right now, that’s not exactly what I had in mind.”

Part of her had known what he intended to do, but the thought had seemed so incredible that she’d dismissed it. So when he bent his head toward her, she was totally unprepared. She tasted his mouth as his lips crushed hers in a hungry, urgent exploration that sent an explosion of excitement through her body....

CATHY WILLIAMS is Trinidadian and was brought up on the twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago. She was awarded a scholarship to study in Britain, and went to Exeter University in 1975 to continue her studies into the great loves of her life: languages and literature. It was there that Cathy met her husband, Richard. Since they married, Cathy has lived in England, originally in the Thames Valley but now in the Midlands. Cathy and Richard have three small daughters.

Cathy Williams writes lively, sexy romances with heroes to die for! Look out for her next book in our Expecting miniseries, coming soon!

Sleeping With The Boss

Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

ALICE pushed open the glass double doors to the office block, and at once had that comfortable feeling of coming home. She had just returned from a fortnight’s holiday in Portugal—two weeks of hot weather, blue skies, blue sea, cocktails round the pool every evening with the girl she shared a flat with. And at the end of it she had boarded the plane back to a grey, cold England that was emerging reluctantly from bitter winter to sulky spring, with a feeling of muted relief.

Most people dreaded the thought of their holiday ending.

‘I could stay here for ever,’ Vanessa had told her four days into the holiday, luxuriating at the side of the pool with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

‘You’d be bored stiff after a month,’ Alice had said, rubbing suntan cream evenly over her body in the hope that a golden tan might endow her with at least a glowing, healthy look. She had long abandoned any ambitions of glamour. She was simply too thin and too unremarkable for that.

‘Okay,’ Vanessa had conceded. ‘For ever might be a bit much, but I wouldn’t spit in the face of an extra two weeks.’

Alice had obligingly agreed, but by the end of two weeks she had had enough, was itching to get back behind her desk.

Now, she pushed through the double doors, headed towards the lift, and wondered whether it wasn’t rather sad that she had actually missed her work. What kind of statement was that about her personal life? She was thirty-one now, and it didn’t take a leap of imagination to see herself in ten years’ time, a quiet little spinster who pottered at home on weekends and looked forward to Mondays. Not a pretty scenario.

As usual when she started thinking along those lines, she pushed the thought to the back of her mind. There had been a time when she had been brimming over with enthusiasm, when she had made her plans and dreamed her dreams and had been young enough and naive enough to assume that most of them would fall in line. That was years ago, though, and she could hardly remember the girl she had been then.

She opened the door of her office to hear the sound of a telephone being slammed down from her boss’s office.

Was this what she had missed? She was hanging up her coat when he yanked open the connecting door and confronted her with his arms folded and a thunderous frown on his face.

Alice looked back at him, unflustered. Over the past year and a half she had become accustomed to Victor Temple’s aggression. He could be intimidating, but he had never intimidated her. Or at least he had initially, but she had refused to crack under the ferocious impact of his personality, and after three weeks’ temping she had been offered the job permanently.

‘Well, I needn’t ask whether you had a good time or not.’ He confronted her, arms still folded, as she made her way to her desk and switched on her computer.

‘It was very pleasant. Thank you.’ She looked at him and was struck, as she always was, by the sheer force of his physical presence. Everything about him commanded immediate attention, but it went far beyond the mundane good looks of dark hair, grey eyes and a muscular physique. Victor Temple’s uniqueness came from a restless energy, a self-assurance and an unspoken assumption of power that defied description. When he spoke, people automatically stopped in their tracks and listened. When he walked into a room, heads swivelled around, eyes followed him.

In the beginning, Alice had been amazed at the reactions of perfect strangers towards him. He had taken her out for lunch a couple of times, with clients, and she had seen the way men frowned, as though trying to place him, simply because he seemed to be the sort of person who should be recognised, the way women stared surreptitiously from under their lashes.

‘Spent all day swanning around a pool, turning into leather?’

Alice looked at him and wondered, not for the first time, how she could possibly enjoy working for a man for whom common politeness was a concept to be blithely ignored, unless it suited him.

‘And very relaxing it was, too,’ she said, refusing to be provoked into a suitable retort. He had positioned himself directly in front of her desk and Alice sat down and pointedly began sifting through the mail she had brought from Reception, efficiently extracting the bits she knew she would be expected to deal with.

However infuriating and demanding Victor Temple could be, they somehow worked well together, and gradually, over time, he had delegated a sizeable workload to her. He trusted her. Advertising was a demanding business to be in; some of their clients could be sensitive and temperamental. Alice knew that he found her useful in dealing with them. She never allowed her attention to waver and was clever at soothing frayed tempers whenever he wasn’t around to deal with them personally.

In return, she was paid well. Far better, she knew, than she would be in any other job on the open market It was a blessing and a trap at the same time, because leaving would have meant a huge cut in pay and she had become accustomed to a certain level of comfort over time. She could afford her holidays abroad, the occasional meal out at an expensive restaurant. Could even run to the odd designer outfit, if she chose to; but she never did. Designer clothes, she acknowledged, called for designer-style bodies—on her they would hang sadly around her thin frame, tacitly admitting defeat.

‘Well, at least one of us had a relaxing fortnight’ He managed to make this sound as though she had deliberately connived to ensure that his fortnight had been a stressful nightmare.

‘Has it been very busy here?’ she asked, abandoning her inspection of the computer screen in front of her and looking up at him. He had perched on the edge of her desk and showed little inclination to move. ‘How did the Finner campaign go? Have they signed up?’

‘Just.’ His mouth twisted and he gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘No thanks to that airhead temp you employed to cover you.’

‘Rebecca came very highly recommended by the agency,’ Alice protested. ’I wouldn’t have taken her on otherwise!’ She paused and frowned at him, shrewdly working out in her mind what had happened. She had seen it before. Perfectly level-headed girls who somehow became flustered adolescents by the time Victor was through with them. He had the unnerving habit of issuing orders like bullets from a gun, and any signs of inefficiency were treated with scathing contempt. His patience was something he kept on a very short leash.

‘What agency? The agency specialising in idiots?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’d hardly take on someone I thought was incompetent, would I? That would just mean that I’d return from holiday with a two-week backlog of work to be done.’ She glanced at the stack of files on the desk out of the corner of her eye, and thought that they closely resembled a two-week backlog of work.

Victor followed her gaze and said triumphantly, ‘Point proved. The girl barely knew how to type.’

‘Her speeds were well above average.’

‘She went to pieces every time I attempted to dictate something to her.’

Alice looked at him with clear-eyed comprehension, mentally picturing the scene. Victor’s definition, she suspected, of going to pieces no doubt meant that the poor girl had asked questions along the way instead of following what he was saying, which would have been punctuated by frequent telephone interruptions and emerged as the basis of a letter which she would have been expected to translate into lucid, crystal-clear coherence with full background knowledge of the client. Poor girl. Next time, Alice thought, she would make sure that she employed someone older, with enough presence of mind to bounce back after a day of Victor Temple’s demands.

‘There’s no need to give me that look,’ Victor said irritably.

‘What look?’

“The look that implies that somehow it’s my fault if I end up with a temporary secretary who apparently hasn’t completed her course. I’m a perfectly reasonable man.’

Alice nearly laughed out loud at that one. ‘Oh, absolutely,’ she murmured, restraining herself. ‘Could I get you a cup of coffee?’

‘Bring it into my office. I want to go through some files with you. We’ve just got a new client on board. Some titled fool who wants us to do a discreet advertising campaign for his stately home. Refuses to let anyone deal with it but me.’

‘Stately home?’

‘I‘ll discuss it with you in my office.’ He stood up and raked his fingers through his hair. Alice looked at him and it flew through her mind—a thought so brief that it barely left an indentation—that she had yet to come across a man as compellingly attractive as Victor Temple. The angles of his face were hard, bordering on arrogant, but for all that there was a certain underlying sensuality about him. It was there in his mouth, in his dark-fringed eyes, in the supple grace of his body. He never worked out and probably wouldn’t recognise the inside of a gym if he saw it, but his body was sleek and well-toned. A lean, athletic body which was apparent beneath the cut of his suit.

Was that one of the reasons why they worked so well together? She could acknowledge, in a detached, clinical way, that he was almost frighteningly good-looking, but he did not appeal to her. Tall, dark-haired and handsome all added up to the sort of man she knew, instinctively, was best avoided. She had already made one mistake in that direction and it was a mistake she would never repeat.

In turn, she was quite simply not his type. He did not sport a line of ever-changing women. She had met them both, and they both slotted into the same category—sexy, blonde and, at least from the outside, highly undemanding on the intellectual front. They had both struck her as the sort of women who accessorised what they wore to match their lipstick and nail varnish, and in high winds would somehow still manage to hold onto an immaculate hairdo and impeccable make-up.

His last secretary, who had left six months before she had arrived, had been, according to some of the girls in the office, a fifty-something harridan with a penchant for tweed skirts, even in summer, and sensible shoes. Then had come a dizzying and unsatisfactory array of young girls, none of whom had stayed the pace.

Alice knew that what he appreciated in her were her mind and her lack of obvious sex appeal. It was either a flattering or alternatively depressing comment on her, depending from which side of the fence it was viewed. As for her, she welcomed it with relief.

When she went into his office, he was on the phone; he leaned back in his chair and motioned to her to sit down, watching her as she did so.

Alice was suddenly acutely conscious of her appearance. There had been nothing in the slightest way sexual about his look, but there had been a certain unexpected appreciation there—must a flicker, but enough to register in her subconscious. The applications of sun cream had done the trick, eventually. She had not developed a deep tan, but there was a pale bronze glow about her which was quite becoming.

She sat down now, smoothing her skirt with her fingers, and gazed straight ahead of her, out through the window to the oppressive blue-grey sky outside. Glow or not glow, she didn’t need a mirror to tell her what she lacked. Her straight dark hair, falling to her shoulders, was shiny enough and easy to look after, but, coupled with her fine-boned face, somehow managed to give her a background, girl-next-door look, and she lacked curves. She knew that and it didn’t bother her except, occasionally, when she happened to be in the company of someone blatantly sexy, at which times she would feel the smallest twinge of envy that there was an entire world of clinging, low-cut dresses that would for ever be out of her range.

‘Hello?’ She heard the deep timbre of his voice and refocused her attention back to the present.

‘Sorry. I was miles away.’

‘And not a particularly pleasant place, judging from the expression.’

Alice blushed and looked down at the notepad on her lap. Sometimes it was easy to forget just how shrewd Victor Temple could be when it came to reading other people’s minds. His own, he kept suitably under lock and key.

‘Just thinking what needs doing when I get back home,’ she improvised, and he raised his eyebrows with a certain amount of sarcastic amusement

‘Well, so sorry to drag you back to mundane office matters.’ He sat back with his arms folded and subjected her to a leisurely stare. ‘I can’t imagine your flat being anything other than scrupulously tidy,’ he drawled, which brought more colour to her cheeks and she returned his look with a Sash of sudden anger.

‘It’s a mess,’ she said flatly, defying him to contradict her. ‘Books everywhere, clothes everywhere, dishes not washed.’ She stared down to conceal the rebellious glint in her eyes. Did he think that she was prim and proper and precise? Did he think that, because she was efficient at work and well organised, she was exactly the same out of work? For all he knows, she thought, I could lead a scorching and raunchy life the minute I leave this office block.

‘I’m impressed,’ he told her, amused at her tone of voice. ‘Vanessa not pulling her weight?’

‘Post-holiday clutter,’ Alice said, stifling an inclination to scowl. ‘We’ve hardly had time to unpack our cases.’

‘Why don’t you get a cleaner?’

‘Because it’s an unnecessary luxury.’

‘Don’t I pay you enough?’

‘More than enough,’ she said, restlessly wondering where this conversation was leading. She glanced at him from under her lashes, trying to determine his mood. ‘I happen to rather enjoy cleaning,’ she murmured finally. ‘I find it relaxing.’

‘You’re the first woman I’ve ever heard say that.’

Perhaps you mix with the wrong sort, she felt like telling him. Not that he would have appreciated women who wanted to tidy his house for him. She thought that he would probably run a mile if he were ever to be confronted with a domestic type. Domesticity was not a characteristic he would find especially appealing in a member of the opposite sex. He didn’t want cosy nights in watching television, he didn’t want home-cooked meals, he didn’t want the little lady ever to wear an apron and attempt to tidy him up into a candidate for marriage.

‘You were telling me that you have a new client on board?’

‘I have a file here somewhere.’ He pulled open the drawer of his desk and rummaged briefly inside, frowning. ‘Now where did I put the damned thing? I was sure I stuck it in my drawer.’

‘Perhaps Rebecca filed it away,’ Alice said helpfully.

‘Why would she do that?’ Victor asked irritably.

‘Because she might consider it one of her duties? Filing tends to come into the job specification for a secretary. Even for those who don’t complete their secretarial courses.’

He slammed shut the drawer of his desk and favoured her with a narrowed look. ‘Sarcasm, Alice?’ He raised his eyebrows expressively. ‘Since when?’

Alice didn’t say anything. Normally, she bit back any retorts she might have fermenting in her head. Normally, she maintained an even, placid demeanour. She did her job and very rarely allowed herself the luxury of personal input. But two weeks in the sun had stirred something inside her. There had been a lot of young couples there, blissfully wrapped up in one another, oblivious to the outside world. The hotel specialised in honeymoon holidays, and from that point of view had not been chosen with a great deal of foresight, because for the first time Alice had been conscious of her own relentlessly single state. True, Vanessa was single as well, but her life was brimming over with men. She emanated a certain vivacious attractiveness that drew them in droves.

Her own situation was, she acknowledged realistically, slightly different. No men beating a path to her door, although she had a few male friends who occasionally asked her out to dinner, or the theatre, and it was only now, strangely, that she felt the lack of them. Perhaps, she thought, because she had crossed the thirty threshold. Time suddenly seemed to be moving faster. The gentle breeze that had flicked over the pages of the calendar was gathering momentum, flicking those pages faster and faster.

She smiled at Victor, meeting his speculative look with studied incomprehension, and decided that any restlessness was best left at home, or at least locked away in a compartment in her head that was inaccessible to anyone apart from herself.

‘What did you and that flatmate of yours get up to on holiday?’ he asked curiously, and Alice could have kicked herself. Victor Temple enjoyed getting his teeth into a challenge. For the past year and a half, she had shown him one face, and although at the beginning he had asked polite questions about her outside life he had quickly realised that answers would not be forthcoming, and he had soon lost interest.

Now, stupidly, she had afforded him a glimpse of someone else behind the efficient smile.

‘Oh, the usual things,’ Alice said vaguely.

‘Really? Like what?’

‘You said it yourself: we swanned around the pool and turned to leather.’ Most of the couples, she thought, had looked young enough to be her children. Or perhaps she just felt old enough to be their mother. A sudden, sour taste of dissatisfaction rose to her throat and subsided again. Whatever was the matter with her? she wondered irritably. She had never been prone to self-pity, and she hoped that she wasn’t about to become a victim of it now.

‘You couldn’t have spent a fortnight doing just that.’

‘We went to the beach a few times as well.’ She would have liked to somehow draw the subject back to the stately home, and the portfolio of other clients awaiting attention, but she knew that to have done that would only have succeeded in sharpening his curiosity still further. In a minute, he would become bored trying to extract information from her and he would give up.

‘Good bathing?’

‘Cold.’

‘And what about in the evenings? What do young single girls get up to when they go abroad on holiday?’ He grinned, amused at her discomfort, which annoyed her even more.

‘I would have thought that you knew the answer to that one,’ Alice said evenly. ‘After all, we do enough advertisements on the subject.’

‘Ah, yes.’ He sat back and gazed at her thoughtfully. ‘Nightclubs, bars.’ He paused. ‘Sex.’ He allowed the word to drop between them, like forbidden fruit, and she went bright red.

‘I’m not that young,’ was all she could think of saying by way of reply.

‘You mean that you’re too old for nightclubs? Bars? Or sex? Or all three?’

She snapped shut her notepad and glared at him openly. ‘What I do on holiday is none of your concern, Mr Temple. If you’re really that interested in finding out what the young single female gets up to on holiday, then I suggest you go along yourself and find out firsthand. I’m sure that you’d find no end of women willing to show you.’ She heard herself with dismay and confusion, alarmed that he had managed to provoke her into a response that was extraordinarily out of keeping with her normally unobtrusive work persona.

‘Well, well, well.’ He linked his fingers together and inspected her. A long, deliberate and leisurely inspection that was as unwelcome as it was disconcerting. She could feel her nails biting into the notepad and for the life of her she couldn’t think of a way of wriggling out of her embarrassment.

‘Quite a show of temper,’ he said, in the voice of a scientist who suddenly discovered that his experimental mouse had unexpected talents.

‘I’m sorry,’ Alice said in as brisk a voice as she could manage. Now she felt like bursting into tears, which was ridiculous. She had obviously been doing too much thinking and Victor’s insinuations that she was a dull bore didn’t help matters. ‘Perhaps we could get on with...’

‘Oh, no, not so fast. I’m intrigued.’ He linked his fingers behind his head and continued to stare at her. ‘I was beginning to wonder whether there was anything behind that efficient veneer.’

‘Oh, thank you very much,’ Alice muttered.

‘Now I’ve offended you.’ He didn’t sound contrite. In fact, he sounded as though he was enjoying the situation enormously. The devil, she thought, works on idle hands. He had spent two weeks like a bear with a sore head and now he was catching up. He was relieved that she was back and relief had awakened some dormant desire to have a bit of a laugh at her expense.

‘Not at all,’ she said, gathering herself together.

‘You never told me what you did on that holiday of yours. Something obviously happened. You’re not your usual self. What was it? Did you meet a man?’ He smiled as though amused at the thought of that. ‘What was he like? Do you realise that I know very little about your private life? Considering the length of time you’ve been working for me?’

‘Yes.’ And that’s just the way I’d like it to stay, her voice implied.

‘I hope you’re not thinking of deserting me to get married and have babies.’

Alice winced. The prospect of that couldn’t have been further from reality. Marriage? Children? She had buried any such thoughts a long time ago. It seemed like decades ago.

‘You’ve never struck me as the sort of girl who wants to rush into all that,’ he continued musingly, not bothering to wait for her reply. His grey eyes held a question, one she refused to answer. None of this had anything to do with him.

She held her breath, not knowing whether to reply or maintain her silence in the hope that he would eventually shut up, and was saved a decision by the telephone.

It was a protracted conversation, and by the time he got off the phone he had obviously forgotten all about her and her private life. He opened one of the files on his desk, and Alice breathed a sigh of relief.

As he dictated letters to her, and her hand flew over the notepad, turning pages, she realised that she was writing, listening, following orders, but with her mind halfway to somewhere else.

She didn’t want Victor Temple showing any sort of interest in her, even interest of the most casual nature. She had become accustomed to their well-tuned, impersonal relationship. Now she could feel her eyes drifting to him, surreptitiously taking him in, just like all those women whose eyes travelled over him whenever he was in their company.

She woke from her semi-reverie to hear him talking to her about his latest project.

‘It’s a rather grand house.’ There were a series of photos which he began to extract from a folder, flicking through them, turning the pictures this way and that with a frown. ‘Handed down through the generations. The gardens have been landscaped by someone rather famous. The inside of the house itself is quite special, and apparently there are all manner of royal connections, albeit in the past.’

‘Why have the owners come to you?’

‘Owner. Just the one chap and I gather the cost of running the place is proving to be a strain on his bank balance. Reading between the lines, I’d say that the chap in question has eaten his way through quite a bit of the family money and now finds himself with a title and not much else to go with it.’

He looked up and tapped his fountain pen on his desk. ‘Usual story. Large family inheritance which has gradually been whittled down through the ages. Now there’s just the house and the upkeep is fabulously high. Our client figures that if the house is opened to the public he might be able to recover some of the costs of running it. Our job is to sell it, discreetly.’

‘Oh, right.’ She was almost back to normal now, thank heavens. Mind firmly anchored on the task at hand, and Victor back to his usual self. That brief moment had been unsettling to say the very least.

‘Have a look at the photos. Tell me what you think.’

He handed the large, glossy prints to her, and Alice felt a cold chill of horror spread through her. It started in the pit of her stomach and gradually spread through her body until she felt as though her limbs had frozen completely. She couldn’t move. She could hardly think straight. She sifted through the photographs with shaking hands and then placed them on the desk in front of her.

‘Well? What do you think?’ He looked up from the file, which he had been scanning.

‘What sort of advertising campaign does he have in mind?’ Alice asked faintly. Her brain, which had been temporarily numbed, now began working in overdrive. There was no reason, she told herself, that this project should intrude on her life. There was no need for her to involve herself in it in any way whatsoever. She would remain calm, cool, collected.

Victor’s eyes narrowed. ‘A series of spreads in one of the more prestigious country magazines. He wants to open the house and grounds to visitors. In due course, he has plans to turn the place into a country hotel.’

‘I see.’

‘Where the hell are you this morning, Alice?’

‘What do you mean?’ She attempted a smile but the muscles in her face felt stiff.

‘I mean,’ Victor said very slowly, with exaggerated patience, ‘you look as though you’ve seen a ghost. You’re as white as a sheet. Don’t tell me that you’ve picked up some bug on holiday. I don’t think I can stand another fortnight with a temp.’

‘No. I’m fine.’ She swallowed, and rummaged around in her head for something intelligent to say about the campaign. ‘Yes! It doesn’t sound as though it should be a terribly difficult job. I mean, the house more or less speaks for itself.’

‘Right. That’s what I thought.’ He began explaining what he had in mind, while she half-listened and nodded—she hoped in all the right places. ‘I’ve made an appointment for us to visit in a week’s time.’ He snapped shut the file. ‘We should get more of a feel for the place when we see it.’

‘We!’

‘Naturally. I’ll want you there to observe and take notes.’ He scrutinised her face. ‘Why? Is there a problem with that?’

‘No!’ There wasn’t a problem with that, she thought wildly. There were several thousand problems with it. ‘It’s just that I’m not sure whether I shall be able to find the time... I mean, it looks as though Rebecca has left quite a backlog of work to be brought up to date. And then, some of the accounts are a bit behind. I shall have to devote some time to chasing them...’ Her voice drifted off into silence and he looked at her as though she had taken leave of her senses.

‘You can clear the backlog in a matter of a day or two,’ Victor said slowly, as though talking to someone mentally deficient. ‘And Sam’s handled some of the overdue accounts. I made sure that she brought them up to date. Any more excuses?’

‘I really would rather not be on this particular job,’ Alice confessed flatly, when she couldn’t think of another excuse to give him. It made no difference anyway. She recognised that glint in his eye. She could throw a million excuses at him and short of her taking to her bed with a broken leg he would simply demolish them one by one until he had got what he wanted. Namely, her presence there.

‘Why not?’

‘I’d rather not go into it, if you don’t mind. I’m only asking you to respect my request.’

‘And I’d rather you did go into it, if you don’t mind. When I hear what you’ve got to say, then I’ll tell you whether I shall respect your request or not.’

Typical, she thought with helpless, frustrated despair. Typical, typical, typical. Anyone else would have simply nodded and let the matter rest. Anyone else with even an ounce of sympathy would have trusted that her reasons were valid, and would have acquiesced to her request. But not Victor Temple, oh, no. If he saw a Keep Out sign, then his immediate response was to try and get in. And he wouldn’t be content to try and find the easiest entrance. He would simply take the quickest route and would use whatever methods he had at his disposal. The man was a shark.

How could this have happened? How could the one man in the world she wanted to have nothing to do with, with the one stately house in the world she would rather never have re-entered, have chosen the one advertising company in the country she worked at to promote his wretched place?

She knew how, of course. Victor Temple ran the tightest ship. His advertising firm was highly respected because it was highly successful.

But, she reasoned, she need not divulge any of her private affairs to him. She nodded, defeated. ‘All right. I’ll come with you. Perhaps you could give me the precise date so that I can enter it into the diary?’

‘Dates. We’ll be there for a total of three days.’

Could it get worse?

‘And do you mind telling me why,’ Victor said casually, before they moved on to other things, ‘you’ve changed your mind?’

‘Yes. Actually, I do.’

The shrewd grey eyes looked at her carefully, as though he was seeing her for the first time.

‘What a day of revelations this is turning out to be,’ he said dryly. ‘First your little display of temper, and now some deep, dark secret. I’m beginning to wonder what other surprises you have in store for me.’

‘It’s no deep, dark secret,’ Alice told him, and she punctuated the lie with a light laugh. ‘And I don’t have any surprises in store for you, or anyone else for that matter.’

‘Well. I suppose we shall just have to wait and see.’ He returned her laugh with one of his own, but she could tell from the expression in his eyes that his curiosity had been aroused, and she contemplated the prospect of three days at Highfield House with sick trepidation.

They said that you could never really leave your past behind. Sooner or later it caught up with you.

Now her past was catching up. All she could do was ensure that it didn’t sink its claws into her.

CHAPTER TWO

THE following week was a nightmare. The pace at work was frantic. It seemed as though hundreds of clients had all decided to descend upon them at precisely the same time. The phone hardly stopped ringing, and the meetings were endless. Victor could exist indefinitely on a diet of no sleep—his stamina was amazing—but Alice could feel her nerves shredding as she trudged to meeting after meeting, taking notes, writing up minutes and in between catching up on everything else.

Portugal and sunshine seemed like months ago. And it didn’t help matters that Highfield House hung over her head like a dark cloud, full of the promise of thunder.

Her capacity to remember amazed her. All those years ago, and still she could recall entire conversations with James Claydon, as though they had taken place the day before. And it seemed as though each passing hour added another little snippet of recollection, another small, bitter memory of the past she had spent four years trying to forget.

On the morning they were due to travel up, her nerves had reached such a point that she felt physically ill when she went to answer the door to Victor.

He had decided against having his chauffeur drive them and as she pulled open the door she saw, immediately, that he had not dressed for work. No suit. In its place, dark green trousers, a striped shirt and a thick cream woollen jumper over it. Alice looked at him, taken aback by his casual appearance, and after a few seconds of complete silence he said sarcastically, ‘I do possess the odd change of clothes.’

‘Sorry.’ She bent to pick up her holdall, which he insisted on taking from her, and then followed him out to his car—a black convertible Jaguar which breathed opulence.

‘There really was no need for you to wear a suit,’ he said as she settled into the passenger seat. ‘This is supposed to be a relaxing three-day break. We’ll stroll round the grounds—’ he started the engine and slowly manoeuvred the car out ‘—have an informal, guided tour of the house so that we know which rooms will lend themselves to the most flattering photographs, discuss the history of the place.’ He shot her a quick, sidelong look. ‘No power meetings. I’ll expect you to make some notes along the way, naturally, but that’s about it.’

‘I didn’t think,’ Alice said, glancing down at her navy blue outfit, the straight-cut skirt and waist-length jacket, and the crisp white shirt underneath. The sort of clothing that was guaranteed to make the most glamorous woman totally asexual. She had chosen the ensemble deliberately. She supposed that she would meet James at some point during their stay, very likely as soon as they pulled up, and she needed the sort of working gear that would put her in a frame of mind that would enable her to cope with the encounter.

With any luck, he might well not recognise her at all, though it was highly unlikely. She had changed during the past four years, had cut her hair, lost a fair amount of weight, but most of the changes had been inside her. Disillusionment had altered her personality for ever, but physically she had remained more or less the same.

She tried to picture him, after all this time and with so much muddy water stretching between them, and her mind shut down completely.

‘I hope you’ve brought something slightly less formal than what you’re wearing,’ Victor told her. ‘We don’t want to intimidate the client. Which reminds me. There’s a file on the back seat Read it. It contains all the background information you need on him. Might find it useful.’

Alice hesitated. She had debated whether she should tell Victor that she knew James, or at least had known him at one point in time. After all, how would she explain it if he greeted her with recognition, as he almost inevitably would? On the other hand, she had no desire to open that particular door because Victor would edge in before she could shut it, and then subject her to a barrage of questions, none of which she would be inclined to answer.

In the end, she’d decided that she would go along with the premise that she didn’t know their client from Adam, and if James greeted her like some long-lost friend, then she would simply pretend that she had forgotten all about him; after all, it had been years.

Years, she thought on a sigh, staring out of the window and making no move to reach behind her for the file. Four years to rebuild the life he had unwittingly taken to pieces and left lying there. Four years to forget the man who had taken her virginity and all the innocence that went with it and for three years had allowed her the stupid luxury of thinking that what they had was going to be permanent.

She could remember the first time she had ever laid eyes on him. It had been a wet winter’s night and she had been working for his father for almost a month. Despite that, she had still not seen most of Highfield House. There had been just so much of it. Rooms stretching into rooms, interspersed with hallways and corridors and yet more rooms. And of course Henry Claydon, wheelchair-bound, had not been able to show her around himself.

She could explore, he had told her, to her heart’s content, and had then proceeded to pile so much work onto her that she had barely had time to think, never mind explore the outer reaches of the house.

She had loved it, though. Sitting in that warm, cosy library, surrounded by books, taking notes as the old man sifted through files and documents, watching the bleak winter outside settling like a cold fist over the vast estate and beyond. So different from the tiny terraced house in which she had spent most of her life before her mother died. It had been wonderful to look outside and see nothing but gardens stretching out towards fields, rolling countryside that seemed to go on and on for ever.

She had grown up with a view of other terraced houses and the claustrophobic feeling of clutter that accompanied crowded streets. Highfield House was like paradise in its sheer enormity. And she’d loved the work. She’d loved the snatches of facts, interspersed with memories, which she had to collate and transcribe into a lucid format, all part of a book of memoirs. She’d enjoyed hearing about Henry Claydon’s past. It had seemed so much more colourful than her own.

She had been working on, alone, in the study, when James Claydon had walked through the door, and against the darkness of the room, illuminated only by the spotlight on the desk, he had appeared like a figure of the night. Long, dark coat, dark clothes. And she had fallen in love. Hopelessly, madly in love with handsome, debonair, swarthy James Claydon.

‘Do I get an answer to my question?’ Victor asked. ‘Or do you intend to spend the entire journey with your head in the clouds?’

‘What? What question?’

‘Oh, good heavens,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘you’re as good as useless like this. I hope you intend to snap out of it sufficiently to be of some help to me on the trip. I don’t want you drifting down memory lane when you should be taking notes.’

‘Well, I did ask whether I might be excused from this particular job.’

‘So you did. And you never gave me your reason. Is it the house? You lived around here, didn’t you?’

Alice looked at him, surprised that he would remember a passing detail on an application form from eighteen months back.

‘Well? Didn’t you?’

‘Not very far away,’ she admitted reluctantly. It had. been her first job after her mother died, and London the bolt-hole to which she had fled in the wake of her miserable affair. Still, the first she had seen of Highfield House had been when she had applied for the job of working alongside Henry Claydon, even though the name was well enough known amongst the townspeople. It was a landmark.

‘How close? Everyone knows everyone else in these little country villages, don’t they?’

‘No,’ Alice said bluntly. ‘The town I grew up in was small but it wasn’t that small. People who live in the city always imagine that anywhere fifty miles outside of London is some charming little hamlet where everyone is on first-name terms with everyone else.’

‘And it isn’t?’ Victor exclaimed with overdone incredulity. ‘You shock me.’

‘Ha, ha.’

‘Oh, dear. Don’t tell me that your sense of humour has gone into hibernation.’

Alice shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something had changed between them, almost unnoticeably. It was as though his sudden curiosity about her background had moved them away from the strictly working relationship level onto some other level, though what she couldn’t make out. Whatever it was, it made her uneasy.

‘So, what’s the town like?’ He glanced at her and continued smoothly, ‘Might be interesting if we’re to find out how saleable Highfield House is for visiting tourists.’

Alice relaxed. This kind of question she could cope with. ‘Picturesque,’ she said with a small frown as she cast her mind back. ‘The high street is very pretty. Lots of black and white buildings which haven’t been mown down in favour of department stores. There’s still a butcher, a baker...’

‘A candlestick maker...’

She smiled, almost without thinking. ‘Very nearly. Or at least, there was when I was last there.’

‘Which was...?’

‘A few years ago,’ she said vaguely.

‘Any historic sights nearby?’

‘Remains of a castle. I’m sure there must be quite a bit of history around it, but if there is, then I’m the last person to ask because I don’t know. Stratford-upon-Avon’s not a million miles away.’

‘Sounds good. Any stately home that’s open to the public can only benefit from having interesting surroundings.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ she said, wondering for the first time whether the town would have changed much, whether her mother’s old house was still standing, whether Gladys and Evelyn who had lived on either side were still finding things to argue about. She had not given any of this much thought for years, but as the Jaguar ate up the miles she couldn’t help casting her mind back.

‘So Highfield House is close to the town centre...?’ Alice glanced at him and his face was bland. Interested, but purely from a professional point of view. Or at least that was what his expression told her.

‘Not terribly. At least twenty minutes’ drive away and not readily accessible by public transport.’

‘Set on a hill, though, from what I remember from the photos. Quite a commmanding view.’

‘Yes.’

‘And correct me if I’m wrong, but there was an old man there, wasn’t there? James Claydon’s father, I believe.’

‘That’s right.’ He had never known about her infatuation with his son. James had only appeared occasionally. She could remember anxiously looking forward to his arrivals with the eagerness of a teenager waiting for her first date. And he inevitably would arrive with flowers, or chocolates, or little trinkets which he would bring from London, or wherever else he had been. And there would be a few days of stolen heady passion, followed by weeks of agonising absence.

‘Died... Can’t quite remember when...’

‘After my time, I’m afraid,’ Alice said shortly. ‘I’d already left for London by then.’

‘Ah, so you did know at least something of what was going on at Highfield House. Wasn’t the old man a widower?’

‘Yes, he was.’

They had cleared London completely now, and she looked out of her window, marvelling at how quickly the crowded streets gave way to open space. It was still very developed, with houses and estates straddling the motorway, yet there was a feeling of bigness that she didn’t get in the heart of London.

Victor began chatting to her about one of their clients, a problem account, and they moved on to art, music, the theatre. She could feel some of the tension draining out of her body. He was good at conversing and could talk about practically anything. His knowledge stretched from politics to the opera and he spoke with the confidence of someone who knew what they were talking about. It was a valuable asset when it came to dealing with other people, because he was informed enough on most subjects to pick up on the slightest hint of an interest and expand on it. He could put people at ease as smoothly as he could intimidate them when the occasion demanded.

She rested her head back and half-closed her eyes, not thinking of Highfield House or James Claydon, or any of those nightmarish thoughts that had dogged her for the past few days.

‘What made you decide to come down to London to work?’ he asked, digressing with such aplomb that it took her a few seconds to absorb the change of subject.

‘I thought that I might get a more invigorating job in the capital,’ she said carefully.

‘So you swapped the open fields for the city life.’ It wasn’t a question. It was more said in the voice of someone thinking aloud. Musing, but with only the mildest curiosity expressed.

‘It’s not that unusual.’

‘Quite the opposite.’ He paused. ‘What exactly were you doing before you came to work with me?’

‘Oh, just a series of temp jobs,’ Alice said, dismissing them easily.

‘And before that?’

She gave him a guarded look. ‘I wasn’t working for a company,’ she said evasively. On her application form, she had not extended her work experience beyond her temporary jobs, all of which had earned her glowing references; and because she had joined the firm as a temp herself there had been no in-depth questioning about her work background. Her experience within the company and the fact that she had worked smoothly with Victor had been all that was necessary.

‘Still at secretarial school?’

‘No.’ The nakedness of this reply forced her to continue. ‘I worked freelance. Actually I was transcribing a book.’ Well, it was the truth, shorn of all elaboration, and Victor nodded thoughtfully.

‘Anything interesting?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Was it ever published?’

‘I have no idea.’ She doubted it At the time, Henry Claydon had shown no real rush to finish his memoirs. It was a labour of love, something of a hobby. He’d certainly had no need of any money it might have generated. No, she was sure that it had remained incomplete.

‘Bit odd for you to take off for London in the middle of a job like that...’

She didn’t care for this line of questioning. She knew where it was leading, but she was wary of the circuitous route. This was how Victor was so clever at manoeuvring people into revealing more than they had bargained for.

‘The money wasn’t very good,’ Alice told him, truthfully enough, ‘and it looked as though it was a book that could have taken decades to write. I simply couldn’t afford to stay in the end.’ It was a sort of truth.

‘He must have been disappointed.’

‘He?’

‘He or she. Whoever was writing this mysterious book. You must have built up some kind of rapport, working in such intimate conditions.’

Alice shrugged. ‘I suppose so, although, to be fair, I did give him six months’ notice.’

‘Ah. So it was a him.’

‘That’s right.’ She could feel him testing her, trying to persuade confidences out of her. She had given him the irresistible—a shady past lying underneath the crisply ironed shirts and the sober working suits. When she thought about it, she realised that it had been a mistake to react to those photos. She should have agreed instantly to the trip up and then promptly cancelled at the very last minute, when it would have been too late to rearrange the whole thing. True, she would not have been thanked by any of the secretaries who might have found themselves replacing her, but then she would have been spared the ordeal that lay ahead. And, almost as important, she would have been spared Victor’s curiosity, which, once aroused, might prove unstoppable.

‘What kind of book was he writing?’ he asked casually, and Alice suddenly realised where all his questions were leading.

Victor Temple thought that she had been having some kind of affair with Henry Claydon. Except he had no idea that Henry Claydon had been her employer at the time. She could almost hear his brain ticking over.

‘Documentary of sorts,’ she said, thinking that this could be her way out, as far as revealing too much of her past was concerned.

‘Lots of research?’ He gestured to her to check the map, glancing across as she laid it flat on her lap and followed the road sequences with her finger. They had left London behind and she felt an odd stirring of nostalgia as the open spaces became more visible. Over the past two days the weather had cleared, and as the Jaguar silently covered the miles everywhere was bathed in sunshine. The sky was a hard, defined blue and everything seemed to be Technicolor-bright.

‘A fair amount.’

‘You’re not very forthcoming on this chap of yours,’ he said idly. ‘Can’t have been a very interesting job. How long were you there?’

‘Three years.’

‘Three years! My God, he must have been a methodical man. Three years on a book! And one that wasn’t even completed by the time you left.’

‘Oh, yes, he was terribly methodical.’ That was the truth. Henry had indeed been very methodical, despite a charming inclination to side-track down little paths, little reminiscences that brought his recollections to life. ‘And, of course, he wasn’t writing all the time.’ If Victor thought that she had been having an affair with this mysterious stranger, then let him. He should never have assumed that she was fair game as far as his curiosity was concerned anyway.

‘No, I guess he had to work occasionally? To pay the bills?’

‘He did work in between, yes.’ She paused, leaving his unspoken assumptions hanging in the air. ‘Do you mind if I have a quick look at the file on Highfield House?’

Victor glanced at her with a quick smile. ‘Sure. Good idea. You can tell me what you think. We never got around to that, if I recall.’

‘So we didn’t,’ Alice agreed. She stretched back, just managing to grab hold of the file, and began to leaf through it, grateful that Victor was driving and couldn’t read the expression on her face as she scanned the photographs of Highfield House.

It hadn’t changed. The grounds looked as immaculate as she remembered them. There was a picture of James, standing with his back to the house, leaning elegantly against the side of his Land Rover, and her heart gave a little leap of unpleasant recognition. It was difficult to define any sort of expression on his face, but he appeared to have changed very little. Some weight had settled around his middle, but it did very little to detract from the overall impression of good looks. Was he married now? Victor had said nothing to intimate that he was. No Mrs Claydon had been mentioned. On that thought, she snapped shut the folder and returned it to the back seat.

‘Well? What are your thoughts?’

‘It’s a large place. What does the owner expect to do if it’s opened to the public?’

‘Restrict his living quarters to one section of the house. Shouldn’t be too difficult in a house of that size.’

‘I can see why he might need the money,’ Alice said, injecting as much disinterested speculation into her voice as she could. ‘Must cost an arm and a leg running a place that big. The grounds themselves look like a headache. Heaven only knows how many gardeners he would need to employ.’

‘Not as many as in the past. I gather, from the covering letter that was sent, that quite a bit of the land has already been sold off. Still, there are still two formal gardens, including a rose garden, a miniature maze and a small forested area.’

Alice remembered the forested area well. She used to enjoy walking through it in the early evening, after they had stopped working. In spring it was quite beautiful, with the trees coming into bloom, and in autumn the leaves lay like a rich russet carpet on the ground. The three years she had spent there seemed as elusive as a dream, yet as clear as if she had been there yesterday.

She worriedly bit her lip and hoped that James would not overreact when he saw her. If she played her cards right, she might even manoeuvre to confront him on her own, when Victor was safely tucked away somewhere. That way, she could tell him to keep quiet about their relationship, that she had moved on from the past and she did not need reminding of it. He had always, she thought reluctantly, been a very decent sort of person. Things had ended on a sour note but in retrospect that had been mainly her fault. Reading too much into a situation. Not understanding that wealth preferred to stick to its own.

She felt faint with humiliation, even now, as she remembered the surprise and dismay on his face when she had mentioned marriage, commitment, a long-term solution, the apology in his voice as he’d stammered through his explanation. That he wasn’t ready to settle down. Oh, he liked her well enough, and he was basically too decent to say outright what had been written all over his face: that as a long-term proposition she simply was not suitable.

Alice rested her head back against the seat and could feel her heart hammering madly in her chest. She hadn’t thought of that traumatic conversation in years. At first, she had been able to think of nothing else. Every word had burnt itself into her brain until she had thought that she was going mad, but gradually, over time, she had made herself think of other things whenever the temptation to dwell on it had risen inside her.

She had learnt to reduce the entire episode to a philosophical debate. It was the only way that she could put it behind her. It had altered her whole approach to the opposite sex, she had sealed off her emotions behind locked doors, and that was how it would have stayed if fate had not intervened. If Victor Temple had been more sympathetic. She heard him dimly saying something to her and she murmured something in response.

‘What the hell does that mean?’ he asked harshly, breaking into her reverie, and she pulled herself up with a start.

‘For God’s sake, Alice! What turn-off are we supposed to take? That map’s in front of you for a reason!’

‘Sorry.’ She studied the map, not having a clue where they were, and eventually, when she asked him, he pointed out their location with an ultra-polite precision that only thinly veiled his irritation with her.

She was never like this at work. Usually, he had only to ask something once and she caught on, competently carrying out his instructions. But then, her head had never felt as woolly as it did now.

‘Look,’ he said, after she had stumbled out their route, frowning hard in concentration because her brain just didn’t seem to want to co-operate. ‘I don’t know what the hell happened up here, but it was years ago. Haven’t you managed to put it behind you by now?’

‘Of course I have,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m just a little rattled at coming back here after all this time.’

‘Must have been quite a miserable business if it’s managed to keep you away from your home for so long.’

Alice could feel her defences going into place. She had been a private person for such a long time that the ability to confide was alien to her. And anyway, Victor Temple, she thought, was the last person on earth she would wish to confide in.

She glanced across at him and wondered whether she would have been susceptible to that animal charm of his which other women appeared to find so irresistible, if experience hadn’t taught her a valuable lesson.

Hard on the heels of that came another, disturbing image. The image of him in bed, making love to her. She looked away hurriedly. Thank heavens she was immune to his charm, she thought. If James had been a catastrophic mistake, then the likes of Victor Temple would have been ten times worse. He was just in a different league, the sort of man destined to be a danger as far as women were concerned.

She licked her lips and put such silly conjecture to the back of her mind.

‘He probably doesn’t even live in the area any longer,’ she heard him say.

‘Who?’

‘The man you had your affair with. The one you were working for.’

She knew that he was taking a shot in the dark, and she opened her mouth to contradict him, then closed it. Let him go right ahead and think that. It suited her.

‘I can’t imagine you having a wild, passionate fling,’ he said with slow, amused speculation. He looked across at her and their eyes met for a brief moment, before he turned away with a little smile on his lips.

‘What sort of time scale do we have for this project?’

‘Not a very adroit change of subject, Alice.’

She could discern the laughter in his voice and was unreasonably nettled by it. Just as she had been earlier on. He had categorised her, stuck her on a dusty shelf somewhere. Another spinster-to-be, past her sell-by date. Age had nothing to do with it but, reading between the lines, she was, to him, so unappealing sexually that she disqualified herself from the marriage stakes.

‘I don’t have to explain my private life to you.’

‘Do you to anyone? Is there another man in your life now?’

‘No, and I’m quite happy with the situation, as it happens.’

‘Really?’ He was enjoying this conversation. She could hear it in his voice. ‘I thought all women wanted to get married, settle down, have children. Keep the home fires burning, as they say.’

Alice winced inwardly at that.

‘Not all, no. This is the twentieth century, in case you hadn’t noticed. There are lots of women around who prefer to cultivate their working lives.’ She had never spoken to him like this before, but then their conversations had never touched on the personal before. Or at least not this personal. On a Friday he might ask her, in passing, what plans she had for the weekend, but he had never shown the least interest in delving any further.

‘I think that’s something of a myth,’ he said comfortably. ‘I personally think that most women would give an arm and a leg for the security of a committed relationship.’

Alice didn’t say anything, not trusting herself to remain polite.

‘Wouldn’t you agree?’ he persisted, still smiling, as if pleasantly energised by the fact that her common sense was struggling to hold back a desire to argue with him.

She shouldn’t say anything. She knew that. She should bite back the urge to retort and, if she had to speak, should take refuge in something utterly bland and innocuous.

‘You seem to find ones who don’t want committed relationships,’ she was horrified to hear herself say.

‘What on earth do you mean?’

Alice wished that she could vanish very quickly down a hole. She had gone too far. There was nothing in his voice to imply that he was annoyed, but he would be. Cordial though he could be, he kept a certain amount of space around himself and barging in with observations on his private life was the most tactless thing she could have done. He was her employer after all, and she would do well to remember that. She could have kicked herself.

‘Nothing!’ She almost shouted it at him in an attempt to retrieve her remark. ‘I didn’t mean anything.’

‘Oh, yes, you did. Go on. Explain yourself. I won’t fly into a fit and break both your arms, you know.’

Alice looked warily at him, the way she might have looked at a tiger that appeared friendly enough for the moment, but could well pounce at any minute.

‘I—I was being sarcastic,’ she stammered eventually. ‘It was uncalled for.’

‘Right on at least one of those counts, but, before you retreat behind that cool facade of yours, tell me what you were thinking when you said that. I’m interested.’

Interested, she thought suddenly, and unlikely to be offended because she was just his secretary, and when you got right down to it her opinions would not matter to him one way or the other. She felt stupidly hurt by that.

‘Okay,’ she said with energy. ‘You said that most women want commitment. In which case, how do you feel about breaking hearts when you go out with them and refuse to commit yourself?’ This was not boss/secretary conversation. This was not what they should be talking about. They should be discussing the route they were taking, the weather, holidays, the cinema, anything but this.

‘I give them a great deal of enjoyment.’

Alice could well imagine what nature of enjoyment he had in mind, and more graphic, curiously disturbing images floated into her head.

‘Well, then, that’s fine.’

‘But would be more fine if I slotted a ring on a finger?’

‘Not for you, I gather.’

‘Or necessarily for them. What makes you think that they don’t tire of me before I have a chance to tire of them?’ He looked across at her and grinned at the expression on her face. ‘Well, now, I expect I should take that as a compliment.’ Which made the colour crawl into her face, because she knew that he could see perfectly well what she was thinking. That he was the sort of man a woman could not possibly tire of. When, she wondered in confusion, had she started thinking like that?

‘I recognise where we are now,’ she said. She closed the map on her lap. ‘We should be coming into the town in about fifteen minutes. Highfield House is on the other side. I can show you which signs to follow.’ She stared straight ahead of her, and before he could return to their conversation she began talking about the town in great detail, pointing out places she remembered as they drove slowly through, covering up the lapse in their mutual detachment with a monologue on the charms of the town she had left behind.

As they headed away from the town and back out towards the countryside, she began mentally bracing herself for what lay ahead of her.

The sight of Highfield House, rising up in the distance like a matriarch overlooking her possessions, made her feel faint with apprehension. Her voice dried up.

‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ he murmured, misreading her sudden silence.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘And you can breathe a sigh of relief. We’re out of the town now and I take it there were no sightings of your past...?’

‘No. No sightings.’ Breathe a sigh of relief? If only!

CHAPTER THREE

THE car pulled smoothly up into the huge courtyard outside Highfield House and Alice fought the urge to slide very low down into her seat, so that she would not be visible to whoever happened to approach them.

Which, as she saw with a great wave of relief, wasn’t James, but a girl of about nineteen, dressed in a pair of jeans and a jumper and holding a duster in one hand. She pulled open the door, stood there with one hand on her hip, and waited for them to emerge. Alice wondered what had happened to the staff who had been in attendance when Henry had been alive. There had been a middle-aged couple who had lived in permanently, and three cleaners who came in twice a week, in addition to the gardeners and a cook.

Victor was the first to open his car door and as he walked up to the house Alice hurriedly sprang into action and flew behind him, sticking on her jacket in the process.

Up close, the girl looked even younger. Her yellowish hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she was chewing gum.

‘We’re here to see James Claydon,’ Victor said, and was met with frank, adolescent appraisal.

‘Not here.’

‘And where is he?’ he asked stonily.

‘Gone to the vet’s with the dog.’

‘The blasted man could have called and asked us to drive up another day,’ he muttered darkly to Alice, not much caring whether the girl at the door heard or not.

‘A bit of an emergency, it was,’ the girl explained helpfully, straightening up. ‘Anna, that’s the dog, got into some bother with one of the fences out towards the paddocks and the vet said to bring her down immediately. He should be back, he said, in about forty minutes and in the meantime I’m to show you where you’ll be staying.’

She had now turned her frank appraisal to Alice, but after a few seconds she resumed her fascinated inspection of Victor, who had stuck his hands in his pockets and was scowling.

‘Brought any bags?’ the girl said brightly, and Alice smiled at her. It wasn’t her fault that she had to deliver a perfectly acceptable message to someone whose tolerance level of other people was close to zero. It had also cheered her up, momentarily, not to be confronted with James.

‘In the car,’ she said. ‘Shall we fetch them?’

‘And I’ll show you up. By the way,’ the girl said, focusing a little more on Alice and steering clear of the gloweringly silent Victor, ‘I’m Jen. I come up here to clean twice a week.’

‘Must take you for ever,’ Alice said as Victor strode towards the car to get their bags. ‘I’m surprised there aren’t any...staff...’ What on earth happened to all of them?

‘Used to be. God, I hate chewing-gum after a while.’ She removed a piece of tissue from her jeans pocket, folded the chewing-gum inside it, and returned it to her pocket. ‘But now there’s just me, and of course the gardeners. Actually, it’s not too bad. I only have to clean part of the house; the rest is closed off. And James, that’s Mr Claydon, isn’t fussy. In fact, he’s hardly up here. Comes and goes. You know.’

She led the way up the stairs, relishing the break in whatever it was she had been doing, chatting interminably the whole way up and finally depositing them in their bedrooms.

‘I’ll be seeing you later,’ she said cheerfully to Alice, who looked around her room, grateful that it had not been her old one.

‘What?’ She looked vaguely at Jen.

‘I’m here for a couple of days. Cooking, you know.’ She propped herself against the door-frame and grinned. ‘Home economics was the only thing I did well at school. My cooking’s a darn sight better than my cleaning.’ She flicked the duster unenergetically at the door-frame as though swatting a fly. ‘More fun, too.’

As soon as she had disappeared, Alice positioned herself by the bedroom window and sat on the windowseat, staring out. The house, she thought, hadn’t changed internally at all. It didn’t seem as though even an ornament had been rearranged. But thoughts of the house were not on her mind. She wanted to wait for James. As soon as his car pulled up, she intended to run down to meet him so that she could steer him clear of mentioning anything to Victor that might indicate that they once knew each other. That, she decided, had the saving grace of both safeguarding a part of her life which she had no intention of exposing, and doing away with the awkwardness of a meeting neither of them would have wanted.

She had rehearsed the conversation in her head a million times by the time the Range Rover pulled up outside. It seemed like for ever, but when she looked at her watch she realised that it had been under forty minutes.

For a few seconds she watched as he got out of the car, released the dog from the boot; then she headed down the stairs quickly, taking them two at a time and looking around to make sure that she wasn’t being observed by Victor.

Why, she wondered, did it matter so much whether Victor found out about her past or not? Everyone had a past and nearly everyone’s past had a skeleton of sorts in it.

But, for some reason, it did. For some reason she found the idea of him knowing too much about her unsettling. It was as if some part of her suspected that if the distance between them was eroded, then something would be unleashed, although she wasn’t sure what.

She almost ran into James as he was tossing his jacket over the huge mahogany table in the hall. He spun around at the sound of her footsteps, no doubt expecting it to be Jen, and whatever it was he had been about to say became a strangled gasp of shock. They stared at one another, speechless, and finally he said. ‘My God! Alice Carter! What on earth are you doing here?’

Confronting your fears was always easier than fearing the confrontation. Alice looked at him and thought, He’s just a man, a jigsaw piece in a puzzle that has its place amongst all the other pieces. And her memories of him had somehow given him a status that reality, now, was quickly dissipating. He was neither as tall nor as good-looking as she had remembered. He looked weaker than she remembered, less of a force to be reckoned with. She hardly even felt bitter now, although time might well have succeeded in accomplishing that.

‘I have to have a word with you, James,’ she said urgently, glancing over her shoulder.

‘But what...what are you doing here?’ He looked dazed.

‘In the kitchen,’ Alice said, grabbing his arm and halfpulling him in the general direction of the kitchen.

She half-expected to find Jen there, relaxing with a cup of coffee and probably smoking a cigarette, but when they got there it was empty. She looked around her, struck by the familiarity and the strangeness of it all. The same weathered bottle-green Aga, the same solid wooden units, the same huge pine table, even. Nothing was out of place. It looked as though it was seldom used, as no doubt was the case if what his cleaner had said was true.

‘I can’t believe it’s you, Ali,’ he said, regaining his power of coherent speech. ‘My God, you’ve changed. You’ve had your hair cut!’ He made it sound as though, in four years, having one’s hair cut was a reckless adventure.

‘Sit down, James.’

He sat down and continued to stare at her in the manner of someone who was looking at a ghost. The fact that he had been caught off guard also helped to boost her confidence. She had spent days agonising over what her reaction would be when she finally saw him for the first time in years, dreading the memories that would surface. A sense of purpose had melted all that into the background.

‘You look great,’ he said, observing her with the same boyish enthusiasm that had won her over in the first place; except now it did nothing for her at all. Oh, he had been enthusiastic all right, until it had come to the crunch. Was it any wonder that her impressions of men tended to be a little jaded? If and when she ever found a man, she would make sure that he was a solid, dependable type. Charm was something that she would steer well clear of.

‘I’m here with Victor Temple,’ Alice said, cutting short any temptation he might have had to go over old times. ‘I work for him.’

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