“Stop looking so damned beautiful,” Grant said 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 CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN Copyright

“Stop looking so damned beautiful,” Grant said

He continued. “It isn’t fair.... I’m a happily to-bemarried man. I’m sure this strange effect you have on me will wear off sooner or later, but in the meantime my view is that the best thing is to ignore it. And I would if you’d just stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” said Rachel.

“As if you wished I’d kiss you.”

“But I do wish you’d kiss me,” Rachel blurted out. “But I know you’re engaged to someone else, so I wasn’t about to suggest it.”

“All right,” said Grant in exasperation. “I can’t stand to see a woman cry, and I especially can’t stand to see you cry. I’m a teetotaler starting tomorrow. But this is strictly for medicinal purposes.” And then his mouth was on hers.

Linda Miles was born in Kenya, spent her childhood in Argentina, Brazil and Peru, and completed her education in England. She is a keen rider, and wrote her first story at the age of ten when laid up with a broken leg after a fall. She considers three months a year acceptable holiday allowance but has never got an employer to see reason, and took up writing romances as a way to have adventures and see the world.

Husband-To-Be
Linda Miles

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

A CLEAR February sky was turning a deeper blue, a brilliant orange sun was setting as Rachel Hawkins stepped into the street and left Morrison’s Feed & Supply for the last time. Out of another job. And everything had looked so promising too.

She’d run the place perfectly well for two months while Mr Morrison had followed doctor’s orders in Marbella. Profits were up, costs down; who could have guessed he’d be so annoyed by a few little changes?

‘Perhaps,’ he’d said sarcastically, ‘you may have noticed the words “feed” and “supply” above the door, you may have noticed the absence of the word “zoo”. There is a reason for this, Rachel, and the reason—’ a scowl had split the newly tanned face ‘—is that this is a feed supply business, and not a bally menagerie. I want that lot out by the end of the week.’ A dramatic hand had pointed to the back, which was certainly rather livelier than it had been in the days when empty feed sacks had been stacked there. ‘And you are going with them.’

Rachel sighed. Looking on the bright side, she’d managed to find homes for all the animals except one. Looking on the dark side, as far as Aunt Harriet was concerned, that probably left one too many. Rachel glanced down dubiously at the box with holes in which she’d put the tiny furry creature. He was quiet and perfectly house-trained, but Aunt Harriet had always refused to have a pet in the house, and something told Rachel that her aunt would not make an exception for William.

Looking on the bright side again, for the first time in years Rachel Hawkins had spent a whole six months not standing thigh-deep in a swamp, providing good, wholesome nourishment for mosquitoes. Any day now the papers would be splashing out in headlines on this new shock to the ecosystem, she thought flippantly. She could see them now: SHOCK! HORROR! PROBE! ACUTE HAWKINS SHORTAGE SPARKS MOSQUITO FAMINE! ‘They were dying like flies,’ said one horrified observer. Well, it was just too bad, Rachel thought with a grin.

Driscoll had said she’d be bored, but she hadn’t been; she’d loved every minute of it. She was still one hundred per cent committed to marrying Driscoll, but Rachel Hawkins was not—repeat not—going to be a professional scientist. Of course, going through four jobs in six months maybe didn’t give you much time to get bored, she admitted fair-mindedly. But she just knew she’d made the right decision. Sooner or later she’d find the right job. Maybe even a job that let her wear a suit.

A suit. That was what she needed right now, in fact. In the brilliant late afternoon sunshine an adjacent shop window showed only her own reflection dressed for the unseasonably warm weather, haircut to match. Mr Morrison hadn’t approved; what would Driscoll think? If only Brian, misfit stable lad and self-taught hair artiste, hadn’t decided he was the heir to the flying scissors of Sassoon! His ‘practice trim’ had left her looking like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz; she’d had to go to a professional to have it evened up.

‘It will have to be very, very short,’ the professional had warned ominously.

Rachel had had visions of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music—something short, boyish but very, very chic. She now eyed, doubtfully, the soot-black hair that framed her face, the enormous blue eyes under fly-away brows, the full, almost pouting mouth. Well, it was certainly short.

It would probably look chic, too, if she had, say, a Dior suit to go with it. For some reason, though, she didn’t look a bit like the respectable twenty-seven-year-old author of The Thing From the Swamp, Son of Thing and Thing Meets Godzilla—to use Rachel’s personal titles for her research. For some reason she looked like an eighteen-year-old punk. Maybe it was the Doc Martens? The black jeans? Or maybe it was the Spiderman T-shirt. Whatever, Driscoll wouldn’t like it.

Rachel sighed. Why was life so complicated? Still, first things first—she must have one last shot at finding a home for William, then find a suit...

And there, down the tiny cobbled street of Blandings Magna, was the suit of her dreams. Half-sleeves, round collar, knee-length skirt, all in a delicious slubbed silk... Of course, it was on somebody. It was on a blonde with a spectacular figure—someone who probably looked chic even in a T-shirt. The woman stood by a black Jaguar, perched precariously on absurd stiletto heels—completely unsuitable for the country, of course, but this didn’t occur to Rachel. She stared open-mouthed for an instant, then began gravitating down the street towards the Garment of her Dreams. So there was such a thing as love at first sight. She’d always wondered.

As she drifted forward, wide-eyed, someone slammed down the boot of the car and a man stood up. An earthquake would not have distracted Rachel from contemplation of the divine object—the way she felt now, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the earth had moved—but the man who came into view pulled her up short.

If the woman seemed out of place in a small, drowsy country town, the man was even more so. He had dark blond hair, very brilliant, rather mocking blue eyes in a deeply tanned face, and a mouth that looked as though it could be hard, though at the moment it was quirking with amusement. He was conventionally dressed in a dark suit, but everything about him said that here was someone who went after what he wanted; if convention was between him and it, convention had better get out of his way.

He was certainly very good-looking, but it was not this that made Rachel stare. Something about him was oddly familiar—hadn’t she seen those deep blue eyes before?

‘Any luck, Grant?’ the woman asked in a husky drawl. And suddenly Rachel placed him. It was Grant Mallett, of course—but what was he doing in a suit and tie? Rachel’s idea of keeping up with current events was to read Vogue and Scientific American, but even she had heard of Grant Mallett.

He’d been labelled everything from eco-warrior to rabble-rouser, but Rachel wasn’t fooled; this was a man who landed in trouble the way some men just naturally ended up in the nearest bar. If a tribe was being pushed out of its territory by loggers in the heart of the Amazonian rainforest, you could bet Grant Mallett had just happened to canoe a couple of hundred miles up an obscure tributary to turn up in the middle of the fracas. If poachers went after ivory in a Kenyan game reserve, it would just naturally be on the night when Grant Mallett had gone out on safari and accidentally got left behind.

He was persona non grata in eight separate countries, including his own; a man who’d been cursed in thirty or forty languages by officials who were ‘just doing their job’; naturally the British Press adored him. And he was definitely—but definitely—not Rachel’s type.

Rachel could get in quite enough trouble on her own account without someone like Mr Six Adventures Before Breakfast here. Go around with someone like that and you wouldn’t just find yourself standing in a swamp all your life—you’d find that the swamp was infested with piranhas. Thank goodness she was engaged to Driscoll—sensible, mature, reliable Driscoll. But what in heaven’s name could this lightning-rod in human form be doing in Blandings Magna? And what was the lovely blonde doing with him? It was, in Rachel’s opinion, an unnecessary risk to a perfectly good suit.

‘Sorry, Olivia, we must have left it back at the house,’ said Mr Mallett. Something in his voice suggested that the ‘we’ was for politeness’ sake.

Olivia shrugged. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, darling. Let’s just have a quick look in this antique shop before it closes, shall we? They might have something that would do for the private part of the house.’

Most of the residents of the village had acquired a pet from Morrison’s in the last month or so. Rachel now realised suddenly, joyfully, that one had not. Joyce, in the antique shop, was new to the district; she had a soft spot for William; probably she’d be only too pleased to have him for her very own.

She followed the couple into Blandings Magna Antiques.

‘It’s absolutely thrilling that you’ve decided to go through with it,’ said the woman, in a bored, drawling voice strangely at odds with her enthusiastic words. In anyone else Rachel might have thought it affected, but in her eyes the owner of The Suit could do no wrong. That was what she wanted to be like. Suave. Sophisticated. Someone who didn’t even own a pair of thigh-high rubber boots, never mind wear them. ‘Daddy says you might even get a knighthood, did I tell you?’

‘Oh. Hell. That is, terrific—but there’s many a slip,’ Mallett said hopefully. ‘It may yet come to grief. I thought the countryside had high unemployment, but I can’t even find a secretary...’

He joined her to look at a cherrywood dresser.

Rachel stopped, starry-eyed, on the threshold. That was what she’d be! She’d be a secretary! She saw, in an instant, a vision of herself in preposterous heels and a sophisticated suit, seated at a desk; air-conditioning would cool her in the summer, central heating warm her in winter. A coffee-maker in a beautifully appointed kitchenette would dispense freshly made coffee from freshly ground beans, while somebody who wanted an academic career stood in swamps and toughed it out with a battered Thermos.

While she stood at the door revolving visions of a wall-to-wall-carpeted, mosquito-free environment, the couple made its way slowly about the room, Olivia commenting on each item of furniture in exhaustive detail. Sometimes the flow was broken by a comment shot to Joyce—usually a disparaging remark about the price. Or sometimes a question was put to Mallett—but Mallett, who had always been decisive, indeed obdurate to the point of insanity on the question of, say, conditions in a refugee camp, now only shrugged and deferred to the views of his companion.

‘Whatever you think,’ was his constant reply. ‘I don’t know much about it; it looks all right to me; the money’s not a problem if you want it.’

‘But Grant,’ Olivia protested at last, ‘it’s not just for me, it’s for us. Surely you must have some opinion.’

Even Rachel, preoccupied with the double problems of a home for William and her future career as the perfect secretary, could not repress a certain interest in this development. Mallett had replied politely to all the questions put to him, but it was obvious enough that he had been fighting down colossal boredom with the subject. He certainly seemed the last person in the world to make the beautifully finished creature beside him happy. Were they about to discover their mistake? Would he feel trapped? The couple had stopped by a sideboard with a mirror set in the back; Rachel got a clear view of the rueful, humorous look in the blue eyes—no hint of regret there.

‘Olivia, my opinion is that the place will look a lot better if you follow your instincts instead of listening to someone who thinks a tent with a folding chair is over fumished. I’m pretty certain the science park will work in that location; I’m sure the house will work well for conferences, and I’m sure we can be comfortable in it. I’m glad to be settling down at last, but I haven’t got out of the habit of expecting to fit my living quarters in a rucksack. I keep thinking you’d be lucky to get that thing a mile in a jungle, which I admit is ridiculous when it will never have to leave the dining room—just give me a while to get used to the idea of having a dining room, will you?’

Olivia shook her head. ‘Where would you be without me?’ she asked.

‘I can’t imagine.’ He smiled down at her, shaking his head.

Even Rachel, who knew her type—and Grant Mallett wasn’t it—had to admit that the smile was pretty devastating. But Olivia seemed oddly immune; she raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow, and turned her attention again to the sideboard.

Rachel was about to return to her daydream when she was interrupted by Joyce, a woman with pepper-and-salt hair and the rather sardonic look of someone who has spent a lot of time in the antique trade. She’d been doing something or other with paperwork, in between replies to Olivia, just to take the pressure off the visitors; now a chat with Rachel looked just as good a way to put potential clients at ease. ‘Rachel!’ she exclaimed with pleasure. Her eyes fell to the box. ‘Don’t tell me—it’s not William?’ Joyce had heard all about Mr Morrison’s lack of enthusiasm for innovations at the Feed and Supply.

“Fraid so,’ said Rachel, clearing her head of a scene in which she opened the morning post with an enamelled letter opener elegantly held in a perfectly manicured hand. ‘The thing is that Basil and Stephen and Christopher all had such striking colouring that they went straight away, whereas poor old William...’

Joyce shook her head sympathetically. ‘So you’re keeping him yourself?’

‘Well...’

‘Let’s have a look.’ Joyce took the box, slid back the top, and looked fondly down. ‘Isn’t he a lamb?’ she said dotingly. William had just eaten and was sitting drowsily in one corner, but this was nothing to the eye of love.

‘I was actually wondering whether you wouldn’t like to have him?’ said Rachel, recognising her cue. But the reply was one she’d heard dozens of times before.

‘I’d love to,’ Joyce said regretfully. ‘But I really don’t think Jack would stand for it. You know what men are like. And it would simply wreak havoc if I kept him in the shop.’

Rachel sighed. She could hardly complain. She did know what men were like. Hadn’t she asked Driscoll? And hadn’t Driscoll said no?

She realised, suddenly, that The Suit was coming towards them. Mallett—who needed a secretary, and didn’t realize that one was standing in that very room—was examining a rather moth-eaten tapestry on the far wall.

‘I’m interested in the dining-room chairs,’ said Olivia. ‘Isn’t there some sort of reduction for the set?’

Rachel tactfully withdrew. Time to approach her new employer.

‘Excuse me...’ she began.

‘Yes?’ He turned to look down her; one preposterous eyebrow shot up at the T-shirt; a smile lurked on his mouth. He wasn’t her type, of course, but she had to admit that he was an eyeful.

‘I was wondering—’

And suddenly, with dreadful clarity, she heard a sentence from across the room.

‘What’s in the box? Is it a kitten?’

Rachel turned just in time to see Olivia take the box from Joyce and hold it up playfully. Suddenly, chillingly, it occurred to her that Olivia might be the kind of woman who thought it was engaging to take a small, fluffy animal and put it on her shoulder or in her hair. Something in the charming way she had just tossed back her blonde hair suggested the worst.

Olivia had stopped trying to see through the tiny holes; she was now tugging at the lid of the box.

‘Please leave him alone,’ said Rachel hastily.

‘Don’t be silly. I love animals,’ Olivia said sharply. The lid came suddenly off the box.

With almost comical haste Olivia’s head shot back as she recoiled instinctively with an exclamation of disgust. One of the preposterous heels skidded on the polished floor, then caught in a knot in the wood; the hand holding the box jerked, and the hapless William shot into the air, then fell to cling precariously to the lovely suit.

‘A-a-agh!’ A terrible shriek split the air. Olivia was brushing frantically downwards with the box.

‘Oh, do be careful!’ cried Rachel, rushing forward. But before she had come to the rescue the woman had at last knocked William to the ground. He slid smartly across the waxed boards, straight past Rachel, to bounce back against the wall at Mallett’s feet. He lay there for a moment or two, dazed but apparently uninjured, then began to hop clumsily away.

‘Kill it, Grant!’ shouted Olivia. ‘Kill it! Kill it!’

And to Rachel’s horror Mallett automatically turned, looked round for some sort of weapon, found none, and raised a foot.

There was only one thing to be done.

Rachel hurled herself at him in a tackle.

In the ordinary way, of course, there was no way that Rachel could have brought down a man a good six inches taller and fifty pounds or so heavier than herself; but he was off balance, one leg raised, the better to stomp on William. They toppled to the ground with a momentum that made the floor shake.

There was a moment’s dead silence.

Out of the corner of her eye Rachel saw Joyce take back the box and scoop William into it.

One worry taken care of. Well, at least she had his attention.

‘I understand you’re looking for a secretary,’ said Rachel.

The man beneath her, who seemed to be a mass of solid muscle, shifted slightly, so that Rachel slid from his muscular back to the floor. It occurred to her, belatedly, that it might not have been the best moment to bring up possible employment.

In a sudden, swift movement, he sat up and fixed her with an impossibly blue gaze. ‘A simple secretary by day... What’s your name?’

‘Rachel.’

‘A simple secretary by day, the scourge of criminals by night, Rachel, the Girl Spider, was to outward appearances like any other girl,’ he told her solemnly. ‘Little did her unsuspecting colleagues suspect that that demure exterior concealed a relentless crusader against all tramplers of the innocent and defenceless... I think I was thinking of someone with more conventional qualifications. Ever thought of working as a bodyguard?’

He wasn’t her type, but Rachel couldn’t help but be warmed by the laughter in the blue eyes. He was laughing at her, but he could have taken it worse. And he hadn’t said no—at least, he hadn’t said anything that she had to take as no for an answer.

‘I’d rather be a secretary,’ she said eagerly. ‘And I’ve got lots of qualifications. I’m sorry I jumped on you, but I was afraid you’d kill William.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ The scornful voice was Olivia’s. ‘What the blazes were you doing carrying something like that around in a box? I could have been killed!’

Rachel jumped to her feet, followed, with lazy grace, by her victim. ‘No, you couldn’t,’ she said crossly. Not even from The Glorious Suit would she take that kind of nonsense.

‘He’s a Mexican tarantula,’ she explained patiently. ‘So even if he did bite you it wouldn’t be dangerous, and he wasn’t going to bite you because he’d just been fed and was sleepy. You might have killed him, dropping him so carelessly. They’re very fragile, you know. Their bodies are just a brittle shell, so if you drop one it can crack and die.’

Rachel scowled. ‘I think it’s a bit much to kill an innocent spider that wasn’t doing anyone any harm,’ she added irritably. ‘You wouldn’t kill a dog for being in the same room with you, even if it could bite. Why should William be any different?’

Olivia came to take Mallett’s arm. He put it round her, and she nestled inside—rather implausibly, Rachel thought. ‘That’s nonsense,’ she said faintly. ‘I was terrified. Thank God you were here, Grant.’

This touching scene was interrupted by Joyce, who said practically, ‘But Rachel’s perfectly right, you know. He’s not at all aggressive—a perfect lamb, really.’ By way of demonstration she took William carefully from the box and placed him coolly on the flat of her hand.

Even now—jobless, and with a home still to find for William—Rachel could not help watching with a thrill of pride.

She’d trained as a zoologist, then specialised for years in ecology. When she’d tried to leave the field the feed and supply shop hadn’t been her first, or her second, or even her fifth choice job. When Mr Morrison had had to go to Spain unexpectedly, however, she’d been staying with her aunt and had agreed to help out.

In the owner’s absence Rachel had begun a sideline dealing in unwanted pets—creatures people had impulsively acquired and lost interest in, and which might otherwise have been abandoned. These had included several tarantulas, whose owners had got bored, and gradually Rachel had built up a small insect zoo.

She’d discovered that nine out of ten people seemed to dislike spiders in degrees ranging from mild distaste to severe phobia—and this in a country where all spiders were harmless and only a few were even capable of piercing human skin.

By her third week in the shop Rachel had been giving classes to people who wanted to overcome this, on the principle that anyone who could get used to a tarantula was unlikely to be worried by the odd spider in the bath. She’d even taken William to classes in local schools. The result was that the population of Blandings Magna was probably the freest of prejudice against spiders of any in the kingdom.

Joyce had been so nervous of spiders that she’d sworn it was wrecking her marriage—she’d had Jack inspect every room before she went in, to make sure the coast was clear, had been paralysed with fear if a spider appeared in the bath, had hardly been able to go into the cobwebby attics and cellars where some of the best antiques turned up. And now look at her! No, come what might, Rachel knew she’d used her time well.

Olivia did not reply. She was still cowering against Mallett’s muscular chest. Rachel was capable of being endlessly patient with people with genuine phobias, but she had spent too much time with them not to know the difference between the real thing and a fake. The woman’s original shock had been real, but now she seemed to be quite coolly turning it to her own purposes.

‘It’s all right, darling.’ Mallett stroked the blonde hair, his voice gentle; whatever her scepticism about Olivia, Rachel gave him full marks for his treatment of someone he thought genuinely terrified. ‘You probably weren’t in any danger, but I know they can be horrible to look at.’ He glanced at Joyce. ‘We take your point, but I think it might be better if you put him back in the box.’

It seemed to Rachel that the conversation was drifting away from the subject of real importance. ‘I’d be a wonderful secretary,’ she told him. ‘You just said you couldn’t find one. Why couldn’t I be yours?’

Olivia burst into scornful laughter.

‘I’m afraid I need someone familiar with scientific terminology,’ Mallett said tactfully. ‘It goes beyond the ordinary secretarial skills.’

‘But I am familiar with scientific technology. I—I studied biology at school,’ said Rachel. Perfectly true, as far as it went. If she went any further and told him about all her degrees and research papers she knew what would happen: she’d find herself standing thigh-deep in a swamp before you could say Jack Robinson.

‘He also needs someone with a rather different style of presentation,’ Olivia said sarcastically.

This was a subject dear to Rachel’s heart. ‘Well, naturally I wouldn’t dress like this for the office,’ she said. ‘I’d wear a suit. One like yours would be just right.’

Olivia’s eyes widened, and then she gave a rather malicious smile. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she drawled. ‘Karl is such a genius. I’ll give you the number of his showroom; maybe you can drop in next time you’re in Paris.’

Rachel flushed as the implication of this sank in. ‘Well—maybe I’d have to settle for a cheap imitation,’ she said gallantly.

‘Could be,’ Olivia said coolly. She glanced at Joyce. ‘Well, thanks for showing us round.’ Her eyes fell pointedly to the box in which William was once again immured. ‘I don’t think we’ll be needing those chairs, but I’ll let you know. Come on, Grant.’

Mallett gave Rachel a wink. ‘Chin up,’ he said. ‘I’m sure the right job will come along.’

The door closed behind them with a tinkle.

‘I’m awfully sorry; I lost you a sale, didn’t I?’ said Rachel.

Joyce shrugged. ‘Well, probably, but they’re lovely chairs—I’d hate to think of them wasted on her. The thing is, though, what on earth is Driscoll going to say?’

CHAPTER TWO

RACHEL knew what Driscoll was going to say. He was going to say she should apply for another research grant, and stand full-time in a swamp, or for a lectureship, and just stand in swamps doing fieldwork in the summer. He was going to say that if she didn’t want an academic career there was plenty of work in the private sector. He was going to bring up again his old idea of setting up an ecological consultancy together as part of an environmental assessment team.

Rachel knew she should be grateful. After all, you heard such terrible stories about men who didn’t like women to be their intellectual equals. Driscoll, to do him credit, took her career as seriously as he took his own.

He’d been thrilled by the prizes she’d won as an undergraduate, thrilled by the industry sponsorship she’d won for her doctoral research, thrilled by the awards her work had won. He’d collaborated with her lots of times when she’d been asked to help with environmental assessments relating to her area of expertise. He’d always insisted that she should be as dedicated and single-minded about her work as he was about his own, constantly developing a track record of publications, papers at conferences and consultancies.

Probably that single-mindedness was what she admired most about him. Driscoll was so mature about everything. He didn’t seem to mind the horrible boredom you had to put up with if you wanted to climb the academic ladder, or wanted to carve out a niche for yourself as a consultant. He just accepted mind-numbing specialisation as the price you had to pay for being a professional, whereas somehow Rachel never had got used to it.

She’d enjoyed her first research project, as an undergraduate, when she’d done a study of a bed of reeds and its inhabitants. Then it had won a prize, and then it had turned out that she was supposed to go on doing specialised population studies for the rest of her life, sometimes in a mangrove swamp, sometimes in the pampas, but always in a little area of research that she was supposed to make her own. All the other things she’d loved about zoology would be things of the past, unless she was lucky enough to teach a course on one some day. The main business of her life would be an expert on standing in swamps and counting what turned up there.

Rachel stared unseeingly down at the carrier bag in which William’s box was now concealed. Driscoll just didn’t seem to realise that she wasn’t cut out for a scientific career the way he was. She would be perfectly happy to go with him to whichever university gave him a permanent job—just as soon as he got a permanent job. Then she would find something interesting to do, and leave Meals on Wheels for Mosquitoes behind her.

Meanwhile she had to convince him that there was something else she was really cut out for, or he’d start nagging her to publish some more research, or, worse, actually do some more research. Confound Grant Mallett. He needed a secretary. She’d be perfect for the job. Why couldn’t he see that?

Still mulling over this problem, she sneaked into her aunt’s house by the back door, tiptoed upstairs to her room and put William’s box in the closet. Naturally she couldn’t keep him without consulting her aunt, but the subject was a delicate one; she just had to find the right moment.

That this was not the right moment was clear as soon as she’d traced her aunt to the kitchen. ‘Men!’ cried Aunt Harriet in disgust, chopping vegetables amid chaos. ‘Your uncle!’ she added darkly, ferociously dicing an onion. ‘Would you believe that he could decide to bring someone home for dinner on a Friday night, without warning, when he knows I do my weekly shopping on Saturday? What, I ask him, am I supposed to feed this guest? Dog food au gratin? “Oh, anything will do,” is the helpful reply. “He’s used to roughing it!” Roughing it!’ The blade smacked solidly down on the chopping-block.

Rachel devoted herself to putting together a salad. Perhaps this was not quite the time to mention another unexpected guest.

‘Who is it?’ she asked.

‘How should I know?’ Aunt Harriet asked belligerently. ‘I just cook here.’ She began morosely sautéing the onion in a skillet. ‘Some man who wants your uncle to do some renovations,’ she added dourly.

An hour later a respectable supper was on its way to being ready. Aunt Harriet seemed to want to brood over the finishing touches in solitude; Rachel retired to the front room to leaf through the fashion pages.

‘This spring, keep it simple,’ was the reassuring advice.

‘No fuss, no frills; perfect cut says it all. The shift, in bright white or fire-engine red, with a pair of strappy sandals...’

Rachel glanced gloomily down at her faded jeans, then back at the picture, where the model sat on a bar stool in a dazzling white shift—a snip at three hundred and fifty pounds. According to her magazine, you could wear it anywhere, but Rachel knew you couldn’t. That was what she liked about it. No one in her right mind would pay that kind of money for a dress, slip on a pair of strappy sandals and wade out into a stream to stain its hem with phytoplankton. It was a dress that demanded respect; wear it and no one would expect you to do anything more energetic than shop for another pair of strappy sandals.

Rachel was distracted from these wistful thoughts by the sound of two sets of footsteps approaching down the front walk. ‘Such a shame,’ said a familiar voice. ‘I’m afraid she wasn’t feeling well.’

Rachel sat up as if shot. If only she’d known! Another chance at the perfect job, and here she was, still in her Spiderman T-shirt...

But the door to the sitting room had opened. ‘Rachel, Mr Mallett will be staying to dinner,’ Uncle Walter explained. ‘Mallett, my niece, Rachel.’

Mallett stopped for an instant in the door, then came forward, his face alight with laughter. ‘We met earlier this afternoon,’ he said. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure.’ Polite, conventional words—but the brilliant blue eyes really did seem to be sparkling with delight. It occurred to Rachel that if she’d gone by his reputation she’d have expected someone hardbitten, cynical, world-weary. People had actually tried to kill him—yet he seemed to regard life as something arranged for his own amusement.

‘Isn’t that nice?’ said Uncle Walter. ‘Well, you’ll just have to entertain each other—Rachel’s fiance can’t be here either. I’ll just see if I can appease your aunt, dear—see if Mr Mallett would like a drink.’

‘Would you like a drink?’ asked Rachel politely.

‘Scotch and water. I didn’t know you were engaged,’ said Mallett, dropping into a chair and crossing impossibly long legs in front of him.

‘We’ve only just met,’ Rachel pointed out.

‘True enough. Who’s the lucky man?’

‘There’s a picture of him,’ said Rachel, handing him the drink.

Mallett took it. He glanced at the picture, which showed Driscoll, with black-rimmed glasses and black hair neatly parted, in a graduation photo, and burst out laughing. ‘You’re not marrying him?’ he exclaimed.

‘Of course I am.’ Rachel glared at him.

‘Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s mild-mannered Clark Kent. You can’t be serious.’

‘Driscoll is a first-rate researcher,’ said Rachel. ‘Not that it’s any business of yours. I applied for a job as your secretary; I did not ask for your advice on affairs of the heart.’

Mallett raised a preposterous eyebrow; he still seemed to regard the whole thing as a joke. ‘You seem to have the most extraordinary ideas of how to run your life,’ he commented. ‘I’ve only known you a couple of hours and even I can see this Driscoll isn’t up to your weight. And, as if that isn’t enough, you have the peculiar idea that you want to be a secretary. Can’t you find an opening as a liontamer?’

‘If I weren’t too polite,’ countered Rachel, ‘I might ask why you were planning to spend the rest of your life with a clothes-horse.’

He grinned. ‘But naturally you’re too polite. There’s a lot more to Olivia than meets the eye. Anyway, you’re just going by my reputation, which is highly exaggerated.’ The happy-go-lucky face was suddenly, unexpectedly serious. ‘But you’re right, of course—it is a departure. It’s time I settled down.’

He took a sip of his drink, then gave her a rueful grin. ‘The thing is, I’ve never settled to anything—something always comes up. I was going to be a scientist, you know—went off to Brazil to do an MA on sugar cane and soil erosion, suddenly this land-rights dispute blew up. Well, naturally I couldn’t sit on the sidelines. Finally I got kicked out of the country.

‘So my supervisor came up with another topic, and I went off to Malaysia—same result. Finally he got fed up with pretending I was going to finish a thesis. One thing led to another—I’ve made a fair amount of money over the years, and got a few people out of hot water, but you can’t go on that way indefinitely. That’s why this science park will be so great. We can give facilities to a lot of innovative inventors, see if they can’t come up with solutions to some serious problems.’

‘Hmm,’ said Rachel.

Mallett shook his head. ‘The thing I can’t get over is the way some people stay out of trouble,’ he said. ‘Everybody’s heard of me, but what does it all add up to? The man I really admire is someone you’ve probably never heard of—R. K. V. Hawkins. Amazing guy. No heroics—just an incredible record of solid research that no ecologically respectable company can afford to ignore.’ He finished his whisky and set it down. ‘Funny we never ran into each other, really—we’ve been in a lot of the same places.’

Rachel Katherine Victoria Hawkins opened her mouth and shut it again. She knew what would happen. She would tell Grant Mallett that he’d met the man of his dreams—and, next thing she knew, it would turn out he had a swamp he wanted her to go and stand in because the mosquitoes were looking run down.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t heard of him,’ she said truthfully.

Before Mallett could say any more about his hero, Aunt Harriet and Uncle Walter came in to announce dinner. The small group quickly filed into the dining room, and the discussion rapidly moved to the subject of the innovations to be introduced at the hall.

Rachel listened with gathering interest. The science park sounded a wonderful idea—she found herself positively drooling at some of the facilities Mallett wanted to provide. And the maddening thing was that she thought she probably would be perfect to coordinate and liaise at this end while Mallett travelled back and forth to London.

Meanwhile, Uncle Walter brought the conversation round to Mallett’s adventures. For the second time that day, Rachel had to give credit to Mallett for surprising niceness. You’d have thought he had nothing better to do in the world than repeat, for probably the five-hundredth time, a lot of stories for a middle-aged man of no influence or importance.

Uncle Walter and Aunt Harriet punctuated the stories with admiring exclamations of, ‘You don’t say!’ and ‘Think of that!’ Even Rachel was interested to hear some of the details that hadn’t made it to the Press—though naturally she was glad she wasn’t involved with the kind of man who let this kind of thing interfere with his research. Thank goodness Driscoll was more sensible.

‘Of course, Rachel has had quite an eventful career,’ began Uncle Walter. For a horrible moment Rachel expected her secret to be revealed. But Mallet came to her rescue.

‘I’ll bet she has!’ he exclaimed. ‘She’s quite a character, isn’t she?’ He grinned. ‘It’s not every girl, after all, that carries around a genuine Mexican tarantula as a companion. I met William this afternoon.’

There was a small silence.

‘William?’ said Aunt Harriet ominously.

‘Er...’ said Rachel.

‘I suppose,’ said Aunt Harriet, ‘that you were delivering him to a client?’

‘Er...’ said Rachel. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Do you mean to say,’ said Aunt Harriet, ‘that you have brought one of those frightful creatures into my house?’

‘I was going to ask you—’ began Rachel.

‘No,’ said Aunt Harriet. ‘I am not having one of those things under my roof.’

‘But it’s just till I find him a home,’ Rachel said pathetically.

‘Certainly not,’ said Aunt Harriet. ‘Driscoll wouldn’t like it. I can’t imagine what he’ll say when he finds out—’

And at this there was an unexpected interruption. ‘Well, if Driscoll wouldn’t like it it’s obviously out of the question,’ said Mallett, all wide-eyed innocence. ‘Tell you what, Rachel—you can keep him over at Arrowmead.’

‘How do I know I can trust you to look after him?’ asked Rachel.

‘Oh, you’d have to come and feed him,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Unless, of course, you think Driscoll would object.’

Rachel ground her teeth. ‘Of course he wouldn’t object!’ she exclaimed. Well, not once she’d explained, anyway. She paused, then added, ‘You know, if I’m going over there anyway, I might just as well be your secretary.’

‘A secretary!’ exclaimed Aunt Harriet, shocked. ‘Rachel, I don’t think Driscoll would like that at all!’

And now a look of pure devilry came into the brilliant blue eyes. ‘Do you really think so?’ said Grant Mallett. ‘Because I’m beginning to think Rachel is just the girl for the job!’

CHAPTER THREE

‘How could you?’ Rachel said accusingly. She stood by the Jaguar outside the house, William’s box in her hand, and glared at William’s future host, her new employer.

‘How could I what?’ Grant asked innocently. ‘Have seconds of dessert? Separate you from your favourite pet?’

‘You know perfectly well what I mean,’ said Rachel. ‘How dare you talk that way about Driscoll? You don’t even know him!’

‘I didn’t say a word!’ he protested. The brilliant eyes danced. ‘It was your aunt who thought he wouldn’t like William, remember? And how could I possibly disagree? As you say, I don’t even know him.’

‘So why did you give me the job just to annoy him?’

‘I think you’re imagining things,’ said Grant. ‘You kept telling me how good you’d be, and I do need someone down here fast. You convinced me you’d be a good thing. Of course, I have to admit that a man who’d even object to your working as a secretary sounds pretty Victorian. This is the twentieth century, after all, and women have just as much right as men to economic independence—but that’s for the two of you to discuss. I’m a complete outsider. It’s hardly for me to express an opinion, is it?’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Rachel agreed emphatically, but she gave up the argument as a bad job. ‘Do be careful with William, won’t you?’ She handed him the box.

‘I’ll make sure no one bothers him,’ he assured her. ‘And once you’ve started work you can keep him in your office, so he won’t feel lonely.’

‘When do you want me to start work?’ asked Rachel.

‘Well, if you could manage Monday that would be great, but I realise it’s short notice—’

‘No, Monday’s fine.’

‘Good.’ There was a short pause in which he seemed, uncharacteristically, at a loss for words. At length he set the box on top of the car and dug into a pocket. ‘Look, I hope you won’t be offended, but I’m still trying to raise some funding for this, so presentation actually does matter. I realise you weren’t planning to dress like this for the office, but you may still find an office job five days a week puts an unexpected strain on your wardrobe. Why don’t you go into town tomorrow and see if you can’t find a use for this? I don’t suppose they run to Paris couture, but I’m sure they’ll have something suitable.’

He took out a thick sheaf of banknotes and pressed them into Rachel’s hand.

‘Good, then that’s settled,’ he said hastily, snatched William’s box off the car, opened the door, and slid into the driver’s seat before Rachel could murmur a word of protest. The powerful motor roared into life—and the car disappeared down the street while Rachel discovered that she’d just had seven hundred pounds, in cash, thrust into her hand.

Rachel had qualms, at first, about actually spending the money she’d been given—but then a terrible, irresistible thought occurred to her. If she bought clothes with it she would have an ironclad reason why she couldn’t possibly give up the job—something Driscoll would otherwise be sure to insist on as soon as he heard of iL

She went into Canterbury and spent a day ecstatically buying separates. Previously, separates in Rachel’s wardrobe had consisted of T-shirts and jeans; now she acquired skirts in linen and silk, jackets, blouses, even a couple of waistcoats.

Maybe she didn’t look like Julie Andrews, she thought, admiring herself in a fitting-room mirror, but there was no doubt about it—the new clothes did make her look less like the drummer in a rock band and more like some sophisticated icon of the screen. It was just like Eliza being transformed into Miss Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, she decided. ‘How kind of you to let me come,’ she said to her reflection, trying to look like Audrey Hepburn. ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain.’

Driscoll never seemed to notice how Rachel looked: even on very grand occasions, when she set out to dazzle, the only thing that ever interested him was who’d got tenure. She’d come to take it for granted. That was just the way men were. The reaction of her new employer came as something of a surprise.

‘Wow,’ said Grant, the brilliant blue eyes seeming to widen to twice their normal size, and to blaze at about fifty times their normal intensity. Rachel had been escorted by some kind of man-of-all-work down long, dusty halls, through rooms swathed in sheets, to emerge at last at a small, chaotic office at the back of the house. Grant was leafing through stacks of brochures, drinking coffee out of a plastic cup. He’d looked up and clutched ostentatiously at the table for support.

‘Catch me if I fall,’ he told her. ‘I don’t think I can stand the shock. Did I say wow? I always think understatement is so much more effective, don’t you?’ He gave a wolf-whistle, which was probably his idea of something subtle and understated.

‘Let me get a good look at you,’ he added, putting down the coffee and walking around her to get the full impact of the very pale pink suit, its skirt as short as was consistent with good business practice, and high-heeled pink sling-backs. Rachel had made her face up—the kind of thing that fieldwork did not leave much scope for—with very pale foundation and lipstick, and just the faintest touch of charcoal eyeshadow and black mascara on her lashes; she’d thought the extra formality of the look was needed to counterbalance the rather shocking haircut. Her efforts seemed to have paid off.

‘Just promise me one thing,’ Grant said very seriously as he came round to the front again.

‘What’s that?’ Rachel asked suspiciously.

‘Promise me you will never, ever again wear jeans. It’s a sin to cover up those legs.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Of course, I have to admit I miss the T-shirt, but I suppose I should try to keep my investors’ minds on business some of the time.’

‘I thought you were engaged to be married,’ said Rachel.

‘I am engaged to be married, but it hasn’t affected my eyesight,’ said Grant. ‘It was an expression of purely aesthetic appreciation.’ The blue eyes danced at Rachel’s sceptical look. ‘Which is more,’ he added with a grimace, ‘than I can express for this place. It’s pretty chaotic, I’m afraid—one reason I’m so glad you can start today.

‘There’s a desk you can use somewhere under that pile of papers by the window, the phone’s on the floor, there’s a fax machine in the corner and a PC in a box in the next room—we’ll be linked by network to the London office, obviously, but that’s run into a couple of hitches, so you’ll have to use it stand-alone for now. Sorry it’s not already up and running, but I’ll configure it for you as soon as you’ve got your desk sorted out so you can get down to work—’

‘Oh, I’ll take care of that,’ said Rachel. ‘And I’ll see if I can’t sort out the link with the network. Are you using a contractor? I can’t imagine what the problem could be...’

‘I know.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s someone Olivia recommended, supposed to be as good as they come—I’ll give you the details and you can see what you can get out of him.’ He turned back to the table piled high with brochures. ‘Oh, and I’ll just give you the general picture about this place.’

He picked up a brochure and glowered at it.

‘Basically, there are two stages to the project,’ he told her. ‘I’ve already got planning permission to use this place for conferences, so now we’ve just got to get it up and running—as soon as possible, obviously, so we can cover our costs and start turning a profit. The science park is a longer-term thing, because we’ve got to get clearance for something that’s bound to have a much bigger impact, whether good or bad, on the area. The provisional deadline for getting the house ready is May, believe it or not, and if we could get some bookings for the summer so much the better.’

He slapped the brochure absent-mindedly against a thigh, and gave Rachel a rather rueful smile.

‘The thing is, my main interest really is on the science-park side, specifically in getting a core of high-powered inventors who can bounce ideas off each other. I don’t know much about conferences, to tell the truth; the centre was Olivia’s idea. I think she’s absolutely right in a lot of ways—good to give the place a high profile to attract the right people to the park, help with cash flow, and of course it will give us a fantastic base when we get married...’

Rachel felt her encouraging smile stiffen on her lips. ‘Yes?’ she said.

‘But I don’t have much of an idea what to aim at,’ he confessed. ‘I look through these things and it all seems so unnecessary. I mean, I once made a million dollars out of an idea I got from talking with a couple of people over a campfire, eating baked beans and drinking tea out of the tin the baked beans came in. Does anyone really need overhead projectors and felt display boards with Velcro attachments? But even I see that I can’t offer people baked beans from the tin followed by bean-flavoured tea.’

He tossed a few catalogues to the ground and sat on the edge of the table, tossed a few more to the ground and gestured for Rachel to join him. ‘I thought maybe we could put our heads together.’

Rachel stared at him.

‘What is it?’ He raised an eyebrow.

‘You’re not at all my idea of a self-made millionaire,’ Rachel blurted out. It was odd the way she felt she could say anything to Grant. Somehow, she had to weigh every word when she talked to Driscoll, even if he was her fiancé.

‘Really? Why? Is a profound respect for felt display boards with Velcro attachments supposed to come with the territory?’

Rachel shook her head. ‘No, but—aren’t you supposed to be steely-eyed and granite-jawed? Shouldn’t you have a five-year plan? Shouldn’t you be shouting at me for being five minutes late, or wearing too short a skirt—?’

‘I won’t hear a word against that skirt,’ he interrupted.

‘How could you just offer me a job on the spur of the moment? You should be grilling me on my qualifications—you didn’t even ask me to take a typing test!’ she said accusingly.

He considered a moment, absent-mindedly fanning the pages of the catalogue, then met her eyes with another of those quizzical smiles. Rachel didn’t know how Olivia could be so impervious to them—Rachel could feel her own mouth smiling back, could even feel her pulse speeding up, and she, after all, was madly in love with Driscoll.

‘Sorry, I suppose it must seem a bit haphazard.’ The blue eyes were mildly amused. ‘Well, it probably wouldn’t hurt to get a few things straight.’

He drummed his fingers on the table-top. ‘The thing is, the main thing you find out from any test is whether someone can pass the test. If you grill someone, you find out how they stand up to a grilling—but it’s not much of a way to getting at what you really want to know, and you may have alienated a first-class worker before their first day on the job. In my experience what actually matters is how much somebody wants to do a job, and how good they are at getting what they want—of course skills matter, but they’re secondary.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, you were persistent, and prepared to go for the job under embarrassing circumstances, in the teeth of probable opposition from your fiancé—so the will was there. And you were apparently somebody who’d succeeded in getting an ordinary member of the public on first-name terms with a tarantula, so I reckoned you could find a way when you had the will. It was just a hunch, but my hunches usually work out pretty well—if you ask me, that’s probably the thing self-made millionaires usually have in common.’

Rachel fought down an almost irresistible urge to ask if he’d had a hunch about Olivia. Or was she somebody else who’d wanted a job badly enough? Had Olivia convinced him she wanted the job of wife? But she’d seemed so perfunctory about everything but selecting the furniture! ‘Well, I’ll try to justify your faith in me,’ she said primly instead.

He laughed. ‘You already have. You look like a million dollars—definitely a credit to the firm. As for typing, I assume you wouldn’t have wanted the job if you didn’t have some knowledge of a keyboard. There won’t be a huge amount to get through, so as long as the finished product looks all right I don’t care whether you type a hundred words a minute or use the fast three-finger method.’

‘And what if I don’t work out?’ Rachel persisted, oddly curious.

‘Oh, I’ll just have to practise looking steely-eyed when I shave. Seriously, though—if you’re not up to the job I’ll have to get someone else in; it’s as simple as that—and I can certainly show someone the door if I have to. But even then I’d still think I could’ve made a more expensive mistake using some big recruitment agency that gave spelling tests and typing tests and couldn’t see the potential in a girl with a way with spiders.’

He opened the catalogue again and gestured beside him. ‘So there you have it,’ he said, with another of those knee-weakening grins. ‘The secret of my success. But my Achilles’ heel is a complete lack of sympathy for office or any other furniture—so any advice you can give will be more than welcome.’

Rachel hesitated, then hopped up to sit beside him on the table and look down at the furniture portrayed in the glossy pages. Suddenly her skirt seemed a lot shorter, she realised; an endless expanse of gleaming, Lycra-clad leg seemed to swing over the edge of the table. And Grant, suddenly, seemed not just close but disturbingly close. Their knees were almost touching; he’d put the catalogue on her lap now, and leant over her shoulder to inspect it. She could see the smooth, clean line of his jaw, the ashdark hair cut close to the skull around his ear, shading the bright gleam of hair that had been burnished by the sun.

‘Is something the matter?’ he asked, the brilliant blue eyes meeting hers. ‘I’m really not a hard taskmaster, you know.’

Rachel shook her head.

His eyes dropped to the page again. ‘I don’t know,’ he said gloomily. ‘This all seems so unnecessary. Do you know anything about conferences?’

He stretched out a hand to turn a page, accidentally brushing Rachel’s arm. She felt as if an electric shock had suddenly run up her arm; in her confusion she forgot that too much knowledge was a dangerous thing.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘I know all about conferences. You really don’t need to worry about all this paraphernalia—I mean, you need enough to look respectable, but it’s not the main thing.’ She was speaking rapidly to distract herself from his closeness now—saying the first thing that came into her head.

‘The thing you’ve got to remember is that the papers aren’t really the point—they’re an excuse. The overhead projectors are just to make it look like a good excuse. The big names will come and give papers they’ve put together in three days—they won’t waste time doing something big for a mere conference—and shoals of minor people will give things they’ve cobbled together to get a publication record.’

‘You’re very cynical, Spidergirl,’ he told her. ‘If you’re right, it’s hardly worth doing at all, is it? I might as well turn the place into an adventure park.’

Rachel shook her head. ‘Not necessarily,’ she assured him. ‘The point of it all is—it’s sort of like giving people a chance to have those conversations you had over a campfire drinking tea from a tin. Nobody’s going to pay an airfare to let someone sit by a campfire and eat baked beans, whereas people can get funding to go to a conference, especially if they’re giving a paper. And once they’re there—with a bit of luck—some sparks might fly.’

She flicked the catalogue dismissively. ‘Of course a lot of it’s just people promoting their careers, but a few ideas can come out of it. So the crucial thing is to make it easy for people to socialise outside the papers. Keep the bar or, better, bars open as long as you can. Have lots of little nooks where a few people can sit over coffee. Make it easy to get refreshments in an informal way any time of the day or night. Get that right and, frankly, no one will care whether you’ve got Velcro or Sellotape on your felt-backed boards.’

It was only when she reached the end of this little speech that she realised that Grant was looking at her oddly.

‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ he remarked. ‘I thought there was more to you than meets the eye.’

‘Oh...’ said. Rachel. ‘I lived in a university town for several years,’ she explained, perfectly truthfully. ‘I helped out at a lot of conferences.’ Mainly by giving papers, but never mind that.

‘I see,’ said Grant. He smiled. ‘I tried to go to a conference once. R. K. V. Hawkins was giving a paper on insect populations in the pampas. Then a crisis blew up at work and I missed him. But I refuse to believe it was just something R. K. V. threw together for the airfare.’

Before Rachel could think of a suitable reply to this the telephone rang. She looked wildly around; the sound seemed to be coming from a mound of papers in the corner.

‘I’ll get it!’ they both exclaimed, leaping from the table. This was a mistake.

The smooth soles of Rachel’s brand new shoes skidded on one of the brochures which had been tossed to the floor; Grant’s beautifully polished black loafers slipped on another. They toppled headlong to the ground.

Grant reached out a long arm and extracted the telephone from beneath the pile of papers. ‘Arrowmead Conference Centre,’ he said, as imperturbably as if he’d been sitting behind a twelve by ten black marble desk instead of entangled on the floor with a breathless secretary. ‘Oh—yes, she’s right here.

‘It’s for you,’ he said to Rachel, handing over the receiver.

Rachel held it to her ear.

‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Oh, hello, Driscoll.’

Grant had been on the point of sitting up, but he now simply propped himself on one elbow and gave her a lazy grin. ‘Tell him he’s a lucky man,’ he said. ‘Tell him if he tries to interfere with your career he’ll have me to reckon with.’

Rachel frowned. ‘No, it’s nothing, Driscoll—no, I—yes, I thought I’d give it a try—yes, I realise it’s a departure, but I—I really don’t think this is the time to discuss this.’

Driscoll ignored her. ‘Look, Rache, something big has come up. You got a letter from Bell Conglomerates—they want you to do an environmental impact study for them—plenty of scope for both of us.’

‘You opened it?’ said Rachel.

‘Of course I opened it. It could have been important. It is important. There’s not a moment to lose.’

‘But I’m not interested,’ protested Rachel.

Driscoll argued vehemently. At last, he said reluctantly, ‘Well, if you don’t want it, maybe I’ll apply on my own. Tell you what, why don’t we both go to London in person? Then you can put in a good word for me—you know, say you’re definitely not interested and that I’m the next best thing.’

Rachel hesitated. Driscoll had never been much of a one for fieldwork. Would he be able to do an independent survey if it turned out one was needed? But there was Grant’s philosophy, she reminded herself—and Driscoll certainly wanted the job badly.

‘Well, all right,’ she said at last. ‘When do you want to go?’

‘They’ve given you an appointment for Wednesday next week.’

‘I’ll see if I can make it,’ Rachel said reluctantly.

Grant was still looking at her, the brilliant blue eyes watchful. ‘Now, don’t tell me he’s talked you into quitting on your first day on the job,’ he said.

Rachel shook her head. ‘I’m afraid you won’t like it, though,’ she said hesitantly. ‘I’ve got to go up to London on Wednesday next week.’

Grant shrugged. ‘As a matter of fact, so have I. I’ll give you a lift, shall I? That way I can make sure you come back.’

CHAPTER FOUR

IN THE week before her appointment Rachel brought order to the chaotic office. She managed, through sheer obstinate perseverance, to get through on the phone to the firm handling the network, and got the computers connected to the London headquarters. She set up a filing system. She made a number of recommendations about requirements for the conference centre. She also spent a surprising amount of time talking with her eccentric, easygoing employer about things that seemed to have nothing to do with business.

Though Grant had abandoned an orthodox scientific career, he still had an active, wide-ranging interest in an extraordinary variety of scientific subject. The reception area was soon piled high with periodicals he pretended to think visitors might like to consult. He seemed to be unable to visit a bookshop without bringing away five or six things that ‘looked interesting’; this was his explanation, at any rate, for the large number of books that soon cluttered his office. He encouraged Rachel to borrow anything she liked; then he argued with her about it.

This was not, of course, for the most part in office hours. Olivia had gone back to London, since the upstairs was still uninhabitable. That didn’t stop Grant from camping out there—it just meant he had his evenings free. Just as Rachel was getting ready to leave for the day, he’d come in and ask a casual question about something she’d been reading. The next thing she knew three or four hours would have gone by.

One night he might bundle her into the Jaguar and take her off to a three-star country restaurant. On another he’d remember he had a couple of tins of baked beans and a carton of eggs upstairs. Either way, Rachel realised she hadn’t had such a good time in years. Grant had a knack for spotting what was original and interesting in new work; it was wonderful talking with him! In fact, she sometimes thought guiltily, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked about new developments in any field with Driscoll. Driscoll talked about the jobs that were going, and who was likely to get them. Well, of course you had to be practical, but it was wonderfully refreshing to talk to someone who was just interested in the subject.

If she was honest, Rachel had to admit that there was more to it than the thrill of discussing the latest developments in DNA research. She’d never spent so much time in the company of such a spectacular physical specimen, and there was no point in pretending she didn’t enjoy it. A fact was a fact, and as a scientist Rachel had a great respect for facts.

There was also no point in pretending she didn’t enjoy going into the office and getting a daily expression of aesthetic appreciation from said spectacular physical specimen. It was just a joke, of course, but it cheered her up anyway. The mosquitoes had never had much time for aesthetics: they’d just gone for blood.

Since he was engaged, and she was engaged, it was a lucky thing that there was no danger of her falling in love with Grant. He didn’t always talk about science. Sometimes he talked instead about hair-raising escapes he’d had.

Rachel didn’t know whether Olivia knew what she was getting into; maybe she didn’t believe she would ever personally be in danger. Rachel knew better. She might get short of breath sometimes at a certain look in those blazing blue eyes, she might sometimes feel her pulse quicken when he stood close to her—it didn’t matter. All it took was one blood-chilling reminiscence to expose these for the trifling physical phenomena they were. This man was trouble. Rachel did not like trouble. Therefore, this man was emphatically not her type.

Still, even if she didn’t want to marry him, she couldn’t imagine a more delightful, stimulating employer. This was the job for her. By the end of the week she was even more reluctant to accept the environmental assessment assignment.

The Tuesday night before the fateful interview was another three-star restaurant night. Grant came into the front office at five-thirty, finger in the middle of a book on alternative medicine, paced up and down for two or three hours talking heatedly about various questions it raised, and suddenly remembered he was starving. Rachel had told her aunt days before that she couldn’t count on being home in time for dinner; she was now able to rush down to the Jaguar with Grant without even an apologetic phone call.

Half an hour of expert driving through the country lanes brought them to one of the most famous restaurants in the county. Another fifteen minutes and they were devouring an appetiser of roasted vegetables while they argued about genetic engineering. Rachel had been thinking all day about the interview, and then trying not to think about it Now, as she gazed across the candlelit table at Grant’s blazing eyes and infectious smile, she decided for the fifteenth time that day not to think about the interview but just to enjoy herself while she could. And just as she’d reached this sensible decision she looked across the room, and saw Olivia at a table with a group of stylishly dressed older people.

Grant’s eyes followed hers. Rachel wondered for a moment whether he would mind being found having dinner tête-à-tête with another woman, but Grant seemed to have other things on his mind.

‘Oh, no,’ he groaned. ‘Did you see what I just saw?’

‘Olivia?’ hazarded Rachel.

‘My fiancée, yes,’ he agreed. ‘And, more to the point, my fiancée in the bosom of her family, and, as if that weren’t bad enough, in the company of her family’s friends. Well, we can’t pretend we haven’t seen them—we might as well get this over with. Come on.’

He stood up and escorted Rachel to the other table, where he performed introductions with an unusually subdued manner. ‘You remember Rachel,’ he told Olivia.

Olivia’s eyes widened. It was clear that she hadn’t recognised the scruffy spider-catcher in the dark-haired, beautifully groomed girl with Grant.

‘Of course,’ she said smoothly. ‘And you remember Rupert, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Grant said. He glowered at the distinguished, silver-haired man to Olivia’s right. ‘Rachel, I’d like you to meet Rupert Matheson, managing director of Glomac. Rupert—my secretary, Rachel.’

Matheson extended a beautifully manicured hand and shook Rachel’s. ‘Delighted,’ he murmured. ‘You’ll join us for a drink, of course.’ He pulled over a chair for Rachel before Grant could demur; Grant drew up a chair for himself and sat down with evident reluctance.

Matheson seemed somewhat amused by Grant’s ill-concealed distaste. ‘How are you getting on with raising funds for the science park?’ he asked.

‘Well enough,’ Grant said curtly.

‘It’s not easy sometimes for a small operation like yours,’ Matheson commented. Rachel stared at him in astonishment, then remembered that Glomac was one of the largest pharmaceuticals companies in the world.

‘I don’t see any problem,’ said Grant. ‘Of course it’s early days. The environmental impact assessment should be pretty straightforward, but obviously we’ve got to deal with a few formalities before we really get going.’

‘Quite, quite,’ agreed the older man. ‘Well, you’ve got a marvellous location. We may be interested ourselves.’

Grant merely raised an eyebrow.

‘And if the investors don’t come as fast as you’d hoped...’ Matheson paused and took a sip of his drink ‘...you might reconsider leasing the rights we spoke of. You know Glomac can develop the product on a much bigger scale; it would be worth our while to make it well worth your while.’

Grant drained his glass and set it down. “Thanks, but I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to leave you; our dinner has come.’

He stood up and stalked back to the other table, Rachel trailing behind him in perplexity.

‘A bigger scale,’ Grant said tightly. ‘Couldn’t they just. My God, he makes me sick.’ His face was black.

‘What was he talking about?’ Rachel asked.

‘I helped an Amazonian tribe to get some land rights a few years back. Now I’ve got an agreement with them to research and develop use of some of the native plants as medicines—there’s one that looks like it might be the next wonder drug.’ He gave her a grim smile. ‘Well, naturally Glomac would love to get its hands on it. More specifically, Matheson would love to be able to chalk up a spectacular money-spinner to himself—the company’s been stagnating since he took charge.’

‘And you don’t trust him?’

Grant shrugged. ‘He can’t afford to deal fairly with the tribe. To make the kind of money he wants, he’d have to get them off the land. They’ve had enough contact with civilisation so that they don’t have the kind of cash-independent existence they once had; Glomac would refuse to pay them a decent price for the product until they were desperate, then offer them an attractive deal to sell the land outright. I’m not saying Matheson would admit in so many words that it was acceptable for the tribe to end up in the slums of Recife, provided Glomac made enough money out of it, but he’d look the other way while it happened.’

He glanced contemptuously across the room. ‘It’s not easy for Olivia,’ he added. ‘He’s a friend of her father, so she can’t really cut the acquaintance.’

‘I see,’ said Rachel noncommittally. She took a sip of wine. It didn’t seem to her that Olivia’s friendliness to the man had been forced, but this was hardly something she could say to Grant.

The sparkle and spontaneity of their conversation seemed to have been quenched by the short visit to the other table. They ate quickly, not saying much; neither felt like lingering over dessert or coffee, and they left by mutual consent after another twenty minutes.

Rachel got into the car the next morning in a gloomy mood. Even Grant’s enthusiastic reunion with the pink suit failed to raise her spirits. If only Bell Conglomerates would listen to reason and take Driscoll instead. But would they?

The drive to London passed largely in silence. Grant seemed preoccupied by the encounter of the previous evening; Rachel was full of foreboding at the prospect of her interview. The more she thought about it, the less she thought Bell Conglomerates was going to take a substitute on her say-so. If she wasn’t careful, they’d suck her back into fieldwork before she could bat an eye—they’d sponsored her graduate work, after all, and might try to make her feel she owed them one.

That was problem number one. The second problem was her hair, or lack thereof. She still hadn’t broken the news to Driscoll—what if the shock put him off his stride? What if it lowered her credibility as a reference with Bell Conglomerates?

Well, she could do nothing about problem number one, but she could spare Driscoll’s sensibilities. She asked Grant to drop her off in Oxford Street, bought a shoulder-length black wig in Selfridges, and had plenty of time to arrange this artfully on her head before setting off to meet Driscoll. It wasn’t exactly her usual style, but Driscoll wasn’t exactly the noticing type.

They met in the lobby of Bell. Driscoll didn’t notice the wig. He did notice, and disapproved of, the pink suit, which he thought had too short a skirt. He explained that he’d confirmed the appointment in her name with the head of the company.

They went to the top floor, and were shown to a reception area outside the director’s office. Driscoll stood, hands clasped behind his back, looking out of the window; Rachel sat leafing through an old copy of Nature. Footsteps came bounding down the corridor.

‘Hawkins!’ exclaimed a familiar voice. ‘This is a real pleasure—I can’t tell you how glad I am to meet you at last. Terrific that you’ll be working for us. Won’t you come into my office?’

Under Rachel’s bemused stare, none other than Grant Mallett advanced on Driscoll and shook him heartily by the hand. A handshake was insufficiently cordial to express the intensity of his delight; he slapped him even more heartily on the back, then steered him through the door of the office. The door closed behind them.

Rachel expected them to bounce out again immediately, but the door remained shut for some time. Presently it opened again. Driscoll’s face was flushed; Grant’s, she was surprised to see, was uncharacteristically grim.

‘I’m afraid that’s not the way I do business,’ he said. ‘But, in any case, I particularly want Hawkins for this job, and as it was one of the conditions of the Bell grant that the recipient be prepared to do something of the kind there’s really nothing to be discussed. If you’ve brought Dr Hawkins with you I’ll have a word now—’ He broke off, and looked blankly about the reception area, then at Rachel, then around the room again, as if a stray zoologist might be hiding under a sofa, and then back, again, at Rachel.

‘Rachel?’ he said. He gave her a rather preoccupied smile. ‘I’d know that suit anywhere, but why, in God’s name, the wig?’ Before she could answer, he did a sudden double take, and looked again at Driscoll. ‘Oh, my God,’ he said. ‘You don’t mean...?’

‘Yes,’ Rachel said resignedly.

‘Your fiancé,’ said Grant. ‘Driscoll. I should have known there couldn’t be two. I’m sorry not to have better news for you both,’ he said, with painstaking politeness, ‘but I’ve someone else in mind for the job. Any idea where Hawkins might have gone?’ He flicked a glance at Driscoll. ‘I’d like to get this sorted out today.’

Driscoll stared at him. ‘I’ve already explained,’ he said rather sulkily, ‘that Rachel is not interested in the work. If you don’t believe me, ask her.’

There was a short silence. Grant looked at Driscoll. ‘Rachel?’ he said.

‘She would rather not take on any more fieldwork,’ said Driscoll. ‘I understand she’s working as your secretary down in the country; I think it’s a waste, but it’s what she prefers, and I can’t see why you won’t accept her recommendation for someone to take her place.’

Grant looked at Rachel. ‘Dr Hawkins?’ he said. ‘Dr R. K. V. Hawkins?’

Rachel sighed.

‘Let’s go into my office,’ Grant said grittily. ‘We have a few things to discuss.’

He stalked into the office, holding the door for Rachel, then slammed it behind them.

‘How could you?’ he growled.

‘How could I what?’ said Rachel, trying not to think of Driscoll stranded in Reception. Something told her that Driscoll would not appreciate this chance to catch up on missed issues of Nature and National Geographic.

‘I don’t know where to begin,’ said Grant, pacing up and down and glaring at her. ‘Wear that wig? Take the damned thing off, will you? Entertain for even two minutes the thought of marrying that unconscionable prat? Throw away a brilliant scientific career to advise me on how many bars to have, and whether to have a vending machine for biscuits? Pretend,’ he roared, ‘that you’d never heard of R. K. V. Hawkins?’

‘If you weren’t so sexist you wouldn’t have assumed it was a man,’ Rachel retorted. ‘And then you’d have made the connection yourself.’

‘What connection?’ snapped Grant. ‘Your uncle’s last name is Bright. It didn’t occur to me—’

‘That my aunt might be my mother’s sister,’ Rachel completed helpfully.

‘You’re right,’ said Grant. ‘In fact, you’re right about everything. I should grill prospective secretaries. Then I could squeeze out of them closely guarded secrets, like their last names. Next time some scientific genius comes along professing a little knowledge of scientific terminology I won’t waste money on a clothes allowance. You must have laughed your head off.’

‘Of course I didn’t,’ Rachel protested, suppressing a smile. ‘Well, only a little,’ she admitted. ‘But I was so tired of fieldwork. I wanted to work in an artificially controlled environment. I thought if I told you who I was you’d make me stand in some wretched swamp,’ she concluded bitterly.

Grant thrust his hands in his pockets. He smiled reluctantly. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘Sorry, R. K. V., but you’re definitely the man for the job.’

‘You told me never to wear jeans again,’ said Rachel.

‘You’ll have to waste some of your assets whatever you do—and no sacrifice is too great in the cause of science.’

Rachel sighed. She leant gloomily against the side of his desk, this time an immense block of glass and black marble which was about what you’d expect of a millionaire and company director. Gloomily she crossed her ankles and stared down at the long, Lycra-clad legs so soon to be encased in muddy jeans and Wellington boots.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.