“I‘d just like to make sure there hasn’t been some mistake.” 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 CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN EPILOGUE Copyright

“I‘d just like to make sure there hasn’t been some mistake.”

“Mistake?” Barbara said blankly.

“I’d like you to kiss me where you can see what you’re doing.” Charles grinned at her, the old heart-stopping, knee-weakening grin that he’d been turning on girls so carelessly ever since she’d known him. “It was dark in the car,” he said seriously. “You might not have realized you were kissing a selfish, arrogant swine with no consideration for his staff.”

Barbara wasn’t going to take this lying down. “Don’t be silly,” she said loftily. “It was just a kiss. I didn’t think it was necessary to ask for a character reference.”

“I’m so glad to hear you say that, Barbara,” he said gravely, the gleam in his eye belying his tone of voice. “Because I’m going to kiss you again and I’d hate for you to be kissed by a selfish, arrogant swine and not know what was happening until it was too late.”

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 the minimum acceptable holiday allowance but has never gotten an employer to see reason, and took up writing romances as a way to have adventures and see the world.

His Girl Monday to Friday
Linda Miles

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘NO,’ SAID BARBARA.

She buried her nose ostentatiously in Colloquial Romanian. It was the fifth time she’d said it, and the fifth time she’d read that page on the compound perfect, and for the fifth time, as with all the other four, neither of the other two people in the room paid a blind bit of notice.

Barbara was curled up in the window-seat of her parents’ sitting room. To her right were a pleasant view of a garden, rose bushes, a glimpse of Richmond; to her left squashy furniture in floral fabrics and a confusion of unfinished projects. Half-knitted jumpers, half-patched quilts, half-embroidered napkins trailed from baskets, bookshelves, the backs of chairs. Among the confusion were her mother Ruth, a woman incapable of thinking badly of anyone, and Charles Mallory, a man only a woman who couldn’t wouldn’t think badly of.

‘What a marvellous idea!’ Ruth exclaimed now, for the sixth or seventh time. ‘It’s wonderful that Barbara has so many interests, but I sometimes feel she has a tendency to pick things up and put them down. It would be good for her to see something through to the end—and what a chance to use all those languages!’

Ruth had always thought of Charles as a son; it was wonderful the way he’d thought of Barbara when he could have had anyone. ‘It seems as if it was meant!’ She beamed at Charles over the ribbing of a sweater she’d just started from a pattern out of a magazine.

Charles grinned—somehow Barbara managed to see this even though she wasn’t looking at him but at page 181 of Colloquial Romanian. It was the grin that had sent all the girls in his class weak at the knees that first year he’d come to stay with her parents fifteen years ago; she could just about remember the devastating effect it had had when she’d first seen it, age eleven.

His face was harder now—the mouth ruthless in repose, the green eyes cold and penetrating as steel, the lines of jaw and nose and forehead almost brutal now that the black hair was cropped so close to the skull—but the grin still lit up his face in the way that had been so irresistible at seventeen. Now, of course—well, now was another matter.

‘She was the first person I thought of,’ he said.

He thrust his hands in his pockets and began pacing up and down the room, his long legs tracing an awkward path through the clutter.

“This is the biggest thing I’ve done,’ he said. ‘Eastern Europe is going to start taking off any day—we’ve got to get in now. I need someone with the right skills to back me up. Not easy to find, and I can’t afford to spend six months looking.’

‘No, indeed,’ Ruth said sympathetically, finishing a row.

‘And, anyway, the hell of it is you can’t give a recipe for the right package of skills—I need a quick study. It’s going to be a roller-coaster ride and I need someone who can cope with that.’

‘Barbara would be perfect!’

‘And I need someone I can count on.’

That was the last straw. Barbara stopped pretending to read.

‘Well, you can’t count on me,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to do it I’m not interested. I do not want to work for you.’

At last she had their attention.

‘Barbara!’ her mother exclaimed reproachfully.

Charles scowled—no smiles for the Perfect Secretary. ‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re a self-centred, bad-tempered, high-handed, arrogant swine,’ said Barbara.

She lifted her chin defiantly, shook the glossy dark red fringe from her eyes and raised brilliant blue eyes to glare, furiously, at the only man she had ever loved.

‘Barbara!’

‘And that’s an understatement!’ she added unrepentantly.

‘It’s not a job for shrinking violets—’ he began.

‘It’s not a job for anyone who cares about common courtesy. There are people who think drill sergeants shouldn’t write books of etiquette because they’re too polite. I suggest you find the other one, and hire him.’

‘You only worked for me one day—’

‘It was one day too many.’

“The circumstances were unusual. It won’t usually be that bad; it should be a lot of fun.’

He’d stopped frowning. He wasn’t grinning, but there was just a fraction of a smile at his mouth. All those years as a driven man of business, self-made millionaire, had left their mark, but the smile had all its old heart-stopping charm. Who was the fool who’d said love was blind? Barbara could feel her own mouth returning the smile, her heart quickening, but she could read the temper in his eyes too. He was fighting down his impatience, partly because of Ruth, of course, but mainly because he wanted to get his way.

‘Really?’ Barbara said sceptically. ‘Does that mean you’ll do your own dirty work?’

The little spark of temper flashed in his eyes, but he was still half smiling. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning if you’ve got half a dozen girlfriends you don’t want to see any more you should tell them it’s over, not tell your secretary to tell them you’re in a meeting. Do unusual circumstances mean that usually you’ve only got one or two to brush off, or that you’re dealing with that yourself these days?’

There—maybe that would show Ruth what he was really like.

Annoyingly, her shot seemed to have misfired. Charles raised an eyebrow.

‘Is that what’s bothering you? I don’t remember who I was seeing then, but I don’t think I was trying to brush anyone off. I tell women not to call me at the office; I don’t have time for social calls if I’m working on something, but if you don’t like a polite lie you can tell the truth. I’ll let you know if there’s anyone I want to talk to.’

It should have been a relief that there was still no one serious. As far as she knew, there never had been. Well, in a way it was a relief. But she was chilled by his indifference, just as she’d always been.

His parents had sent him back to England to stay with her family for his last two years of school. Within days the phone had been ringing off the hook. Barbara hadn’t been surprised. She’d never seen anyone as handsome as the new guest—of course all the girls at school had wanted to call him. But because she was living in the house she’d seen the dark, handsome face change expression as he picked up the phone; seen it stiff with boredom, stifling yawns; seen him glance at the clock, make monosyllabic replies, reach for the remote control of the TV, change channels for the football.

Sometimes she’d picked up the phone herself. A girl would ask, elaborately casual, if Charles was there. ‘I’ll go and see,’ Barbara would say.

Charles would mouth, ‘Who is it?’ And sometimes, when she’d told him, he’d shaken his head or given a thumbs-down. It had been terrifying to see how little he cared, how bored he was by the adoration he won so easily, and it seemed she’d always known, as long as she’d known him, that she must never let him know what she felt.

She’d teased him and pestered him and mocked him as if she’d really been his little sister, and he’d enjoyed it in a funny kind of way—perhaps because it had made a change from the uncritical worship he’d got from girls his own age. Maybe he’d even liked her, a little, before it all went wrong.

‘It’s not the only thing I don’t like about it,’ said Barbara. ‘This could go on for months. You know I hate the idea of a permanent job; I don’t like to work anywhere for more than a couple of weeks—let alone with someone who thinks ten hours is a short working day. If I’ve worked a month I think I deserve a holiday. At least as a temp I can go away whenever I feel like it. Give me one good reason why I should give all that up to be sworn at for eleven months out of twelve by you.’

‘money,’ said Charles.

‘I don’t know how much you’re offering,’ said Barbara, ‘but it’s not enough. No can do. I’m going to Sardinia next month; I’ll send you a postcard—“Having a wonderful time, stay where you are.”’

‘How much do you want?’

‘You wouldn’t want to pay it,’ said Barbara.

This was too much for her mother. ‘Barbara!’ she protested. ‘Charles needs your help! Surely it’s not too much to ask you to put off travelling just until he has this project on its feet? He’s just like one of the family—you should be glad to help him.’

‘I’d have thought I’d be the last person he’d want to help him,’ Barbara blurted out before she could stop herself. ‘It didn’t do him much good the last time I tried.’ She met his eyes defiantly; she remembered, even if he didn’t.

Her mother looked blank. Charles gave her a sardonic look. Oh, he remembered, all right. ‘I wouldn’t say that, exactly,’ he said coolly. ‘I wouldn’t be where I am today if you hadn’t.’

‘Fine,’ said Barbara. ‘Then I don’t owe you anything.’

‘I don’t think I’d say that either,’ said Charles. ‘I think you still owe me, don’t you?’

‘Then I’ll pay you some other way,’ said Barbara. ‘You’re impossible to work for, and I want to see Sardinia before I die, and the answer is no. Why does it have to be me, anyway?’

‘Because you can take shorthand at a hundred and eighty words a minute.’

‘So can thousands of others.’

‘And type a hundred words a minute.’

‘Ditto.’

‘And because you’ve frittered away your time ever since you left school, travelling around whenever you could get out of the country and working your way through the entire “Teach Yourself” series from Albanian to Zulu.’

‘Is there really a Teach Yourself Zulu?’ asked Barbara, diverted. She’d bought Teach Yourself Yoruba once, on impulse, but hadn’t got round to reading it.

‘I don’t know, but if there is you can read it on your lunch-break.’

‘You don’t give lunch-breaks.’

‘And because this project is going to run into a lot of problems,’ he went on, just as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Logistical problems, a lot of them--just getting people on the phone at the same time, or in the same place, and making sure everybody’s got the relevant information in a form they can understand so everyone knows what everyone is talking about when they get together. I want to hand that over to someone else, and I’ve never seen a problem you couldn’t get over or around.’

He ran an impatient hand over his cropped black head, scowling. ‘I could go through a recruitment agency and come up with someone with a slew of As at A level, or a degree in a couple of the languages, or star-spangled secretarial qualifications—or maybe a mixture of the above—and still end up with someone who’d come trailing back to me because some fax machine in Vladivostok is on the blink, or because all the hotels in Kiev are closed for the winter...’

The ice-green eyes met hers suddenly, without the trace of a smile. It was hard to believe the man who was speaking now had been the carefree, handsome boy she’d once known.

‘I hadn’t realised you’d disliked working for me so much last time, but it doesn’t matter—I still need you. I can’t afford to have a secretary who’s emotionally involved; at least you shouldn’t have any problem maintaining a purely professional relationship. Work out how much it’s worth to you to put up with my bad temper and my girlfriends and my habit of forgetting about lunch, and do it for the money.’

Barbara’s mother was staring at him in dismay. ‘But Charles, dear,’ she protested. ‘I’m sure Barbara doesn’t dislike you—we all think of you as one of the family. People aren’t always very polite to members of their family, you know—I used to have terrible rows with my brother, who could be absolutely exasperating, but it didn’t mean we weren’t fond of each other.’

A faint frown of impatience creased his brows at the intervention, then was gone.

‘Well, it seems I can be exasperating, at any rate,’ he said. The smile that warmed his face was for Ruth’s benefit only. ‘I expect you remembered the fondness after the rows, though, so let’s not embarrass Barbara by asking her to agree to the rest in the middle of the—shall we say argument? Anyway, I’d rather she did it on terms that made it worth her while. I know she doesn’t like long-term engagements. If she takes this on she should walk away with something that will let her do what she wants.’

Barbara realised that he was speaking carefully, trying to smooth over the animosity which he knew would distress her mother. He hadn’t wanted to bring the subject up here, she knew. He’d tried to arrange a meeting in town, and she’d said she was too busy. The result was that he couldn’t browbeat her into doing what he wanted. It was to his credit that he was trying not to hurt her mother—that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have bullied her shamelessly if he could have got her on neutral ground.

A shaft of late afternoon sunlight slanted in the window, bathing the faded furniture, the ancient carpet, the half-finished jumpers and cushion covers in golden light. She’d seen it from just that angle so many times. The window-seat had been her favourite refuge, and she’d sat there, reading voraciously, throughout her childhood.

For a year she’d sat there every evening while Charles had watched television and done his homework—on the rare occasions he could be bothered to do it. He’d been very bright, and very lazy, and had done very badly at school in those days, doing only what could be done in commercial breaks.

Barbara had been very bright and very hard-working, but she’d done very badly at school because she got bored easily. She’d hated to do anything twice, and as she’d read ahead of the class in her books she could never be bothered to do homework by the time the class had reached the subject. It had also bored her to revise for exams.

She would pester Charles to talk about what he was doing and sometimes, if the TV programme was bad enough, he would answer her questions. Sometimes he would tell her to shut up, and if she persisted he’d hand her the book with a malicious smile—except that she loved reading his books, loved holding something that was his, loved understanding an actual A-level text because she thought he’d be impressed.

On the nights when there was something good on TV she’d sit, looking at the homework he should be doing or looking across the room to where he sprawled on the sofa, his eyes narrowed, half-hidden by the shock of black hair that fell in his face. In those days she couldn’t watch him enough, couldn’t know enough about him—but she’d thought he’d paid no attention to her.

Just for a moment, ridiculously, she felt a piercing sweetness at the thought that he’d noticed her. Not just noticed—thought about her. It wasn’t just that he remembered what she’d done, though that was a surprise in itself. He’d thought about the sort of person she was, about what she could and couldn’t do.

Just that little hint of awareness was enough to release a flood of longing—a terrible, impossible wish that he might think about her as much as she thought about him, that he might look at her the way she looked at him. He was standing now in the golden light, waiting for her to name a figure. Her eyes were drawn to him, the way they always were when he was in the room, and it hurt to look away when she forced herself to.

He was impossible to work for. He was selfish, arrogant, she hated long-term engagements and she’d done something to him that he would never forgive. He would never have come to her now if he hadn’t been forced into it by his business. It would be agony to be with him every day—and the prospect was terribly, terribly tempting.

‘I’m sorry, Charles,’ she said abruptly. ‘It’s not a question of money—I just can’t do it.’

Her mother looked disappointed. ‘Well, naturally Charles doesn’t want to force you to do something you don’t want to do, darling,’ she said, sublimely oblivious to his impatient look. ‘It did seem such a wonderful opportunity, but if you’re sure, we won’t talk about it any more. I do hope you’re staying for dinner, Charles.’

‘I’d love to,’ he replied. ‘And of course I won’t press Barbara, but I trust she’ll change her mind.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ said Barbara, and she lowered her eyes to gaze, for the sixth time, at the account of the compound perfect in Colloquial Romanian.

‘Neither would I,’ said Charles, and he added, in a low voice that only she could hear, ‘I never bet on a sure thing.’

CHAPTER TWO

CHARLES MALLORY took the folder of letters for signing out of his in-tray, opened it, pulled out the first letter and glared. Where did they find these people? he thought in exasperation. An impatient finger jabbed the button of his intercom.

‘Temsa,’ he said.

‘Yes, Mr Mallory,’ said an almost inaudible voice.

‘Have you ever thought of using the spell-check facility before printing out a document?’ he asked.

‘Is there a spelling mistake?’ whispered the voice. Charles fipped through the rest of the pile, scowling. ‘Falicitate‘ for ‘facilitate‘, ‘mofidy‘ for ‘modify’, ‘myrtptidr’ for God only knew what. Where did they find them?

‘It’s also quite helpful to proofread a document before bringing it in to be signed,’ he added silkily. ‘I’ve signed the one that’s fit to be seen,’ he added, suiting action to the words. ‘The rest will have to be done again. I’ll bring them out to you.’

He closed the folder, stood up and stalked to the door. He emerged just in time to see the rapidly retreating back of the latest temp disappear through a door clearly marked ‘EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. ALARM WILL SOUND IF OPENED.’

The howl of a fire alarm filled the building. Where did they find them? he thought bitterly, punching the buttons of the alarm disenable with the ease of long practice. He stalked back to his desk and punched the extension of Personnel with the ease of equally long practice.

‘Good morning, Mr Mallory,’ said the resigned voice of Personnel. ‘I heard the alarm. Such a shame. I felt sure she’d last till lunch-time.’

Charles drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘I don’t know what the problem was,’ he said. ‘I simply reminded her of the existence of the spell-check and suggested she proofread her work. She should know that without being told. If she doesn’t know without being told she should at least be able to take a little constructive criticism.’

Personnel sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Mallory, but she was the only one the agency had available. All the other temps had been here before and refused to come back.’

‘Well, try another agency,’ said Charles.

‘None of the other agencies had anyone who hadn’t been here before.’

‘What’s the matter with them, anyway?’ said Charles. ‘I’m not asking for Wonderwoman. I just want an experienced secretary with the usual skills and the maturity to deal with a high-pressune environment.’

‘Yes. Mr Mallory,’ Personnel said doubtfully. ‘It’s just—’

‘It’s just what?’ snapped Charles.

‘The really experienced, highly qualified people can pick and choose. We’re offering a competitive package, of course, but the crème de la crème can get the same money and benefits elsewhere, and they don’t like to be shouted at.’

‘Shout!’ Charles exclaimed indignantly. ‘I never shout. Obviously, if a whole project has to be redone because someone hasn’t shown the intelligence of a child of two I might get a little impatient...’

‘Apparently, you use a tone of voice that has been perceived as shouting,’ Personnel said diplomatically.

‘Ridiculous,’ scoffed Charles. Why couldn’t they find someone like Barbara? Someone who didn’t dissolve in tears if you asked a simple question? Someone who’d catch your mistakes and oversights in a report, instead of adding fifty of her own? Her agency had given her an assignment with him one day a couple of years ago. He’d never had such a dream of a secretary before or since.

His fingers drummed on the desk again. He needed a decent permanent secretary if he was going to take on Eastern Europe. He’d been planning to go to Barbara’s flat and talk her round. With Ruth out of the way it should have been easy enough. But he hadn’t had the time, and if he waited any longer he’d find Barbara had left for Sardinia. Maybe it would be better after all just to get her in as a temp and take it from there. At least it would give him a chance to concentrate on work for a change.

‘I really don’t have time to go tiptoeing around some hypersensitive girl who can’t even spell,’ he said. ‘See if you can’t get Barbara Woodward through one of the agencies, will you? Make it worth their while. We’ve certainly sent enough business to pretty much every agency in town—that must give us some clout. Do whatever it takes to get her in.’

CHAPTER THREE

BARBARA wanted to take one more temp assignment before leaving for Sardinia. She’d had money saved, but had spent some of it on a multimedia course in Bengali. On Monday she rang Jobs for the Girls, her agency, to ask for an assignment, and was immediately offered a position with the Mallory Corporation.

‘It’s a marvellous assignment,’ enthused Sue, her supervisor. ‘Directorial level, open-ended, great rate. Terribly flattering—they asked for you specifically.’

‘I’d rather not,’ said Barbara, wishing she’d called Charles a few other names while she’d had the chance. Devious, conniving, unscrupulous...

There was a little silence. ‘Hmm,’ said Sue. ‘Well, I don’t seem to have anything else on the books just at the moment, but obviously I’ll keep you posted. Let me know if you change your mind.’

Barbara hung up and dialled Girl Monday-to-Friday. ‘Barbara, I’ve got just the thing for you,’ said Cathy cheerfully. ‘This is a terrific place—Mallory Corporation, central London, taxi home after ten, free dinner, directorial level, top rate, open-ended...’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Barbara, ‘but I’m looking for just a couple of weeks.’

‘Well, you could go there for a couple of weeks and see how you go...’

‘I’d rather try something else.’

‘Hmm,’ said Cathy. ‘Well, the thing is, things are pretty slow right now. I don’t have a lot else to offer, nothing really that would suit your qualifications.’

‘I don’t care what level it is,’ said Barbara.

‘Yes, well, I really don’t have much of anything, to tell the truth, but I’ll let you know.’

Barbara hung up and glared at the phone. Devious, conniving, unscrupulous, Machiavellian...

She rang three or four other agencies, with similar results. Blast the man!

Of course, if she told her mother, Ruth would call Charles and tell him to call the whole thing off, but he knew Barbara wouldn’t give him away like that—it would hurt Ruth too much. She supposed she should feel flattered—he must have called every agency she’d ever worked for. He’d probably got the information from her mother—Ruth wouldn’t have realised the dastardly use he meant to make of it.

She could, of course, sign up elsewhere—but there was no guarantee he hadn’t called elsewhere. The problem was, no agency in the world was going to put the interests of a lowly temp, however well qualified, ahead of the Mallory Corporation. Charles wouldn’t have had to threaten to withdraw his patronage. He could have guaranteed to give the successful agency first shot at all his future business, and no agency would have passed that up. So now what? Barbara gritted her teeth, picked up the phone and dialled.

‘Good morning. Mr Mallory’s office,’ a voice said softly.

‘Good morning. I’d like to speak to Mr Mallory,’ Barbara said crisply.

‘I’m afraid Mr Mallory is in a meeting.’

‘He always is,’ Barbara said drily. ‘Could you put me through anyway? It’s fairly urgent.’

‘He’s asked not to be interrupted. Could I take a message?’

Barbara mused over a number of unrepeatable comments which she could hardly expect a secretary to transcribe. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘You can take a message. The message is, “Never in a million years.” He’ll know who it’s from.’

She hung up with a bang.

Her first thought was to call some of the firms she’d worked with over the years. Barbara had never worked for anyone who didn’t want her to work for them for ever. You weren’t really supposed to deal with people independently of your agency, but then it wasn’t exactly kosher of her agencies to cold-shoulder her as soon as she turned down an assignment with Charles. She could probably turn up something, but it would take time, and meanwhile she was furious. Instead of thinking of leads, she kept thinking of things to say to Charles.

At last, with the inspiration of genius, she realised that she could still say them to Charles. She would go to his office, say all the rude things she wanted to Charles and then look for work.

Half an hour later Barbara strode into the immense marble vestibule of the Mallory Building and took a lift to the twelfth floor. She fenced successfully with the receptionist and strode on, unchecked, down a long carpeted corridor to Charles’s corner office. A girl sat, weeping, by the word processor outside.

Barbara stalked to the door and flung it open, unchallenged.

Unfortunately, Charles was not in the office.

‘Where is he?’ Barbara asked tightly.

‘He’s in a meeting,’ the girl said damply.

‘Him and his ego,’ agreed Barbara. ‘Some things never change. Just where is this little tête-à-tête taking place?’

‘Sorry?’ sniffed the girl.

Barbara sighed. She dug a little packet of tissues from her bag and handed it over. ‘The meeting;’ she said patiently. ‘Where is it?’

The girl gestured at a conference room. Maybe he was in a meeting after all. So much the better; she could embarrass him in front of a roomful of millionaires. She walked to the door and flung it open.

Twenty men in dark suits stared at the door. Some were fat, some were fit; some were attractive, some were not; some were young and eager-looking, others middle-aged and bored—none was worth a second look. Charles, at the head of the table, was looking ever so slightly harassed, but he still outshone every man in the room, just as he’d always effortlessly put in the shade every man she’d ever known. She’d expected him to look seriously annoyed at the intrusion, but he merely raised an eyebrow.

‘Barbara,’ he said suavely. ‘So glad you could join us.’

She was standing in the doorway, hands on hips, blue eyes blazing, red hair crackling with energy. This was more like it, Charles thought with satisfaction, congratulating himself for getting Personnel on her trail. Just looking at her you knew you could throw anything at her and she’d cope. Maybe he’d send Personnel a dozen roses—women liked that sort of gesture. The morning had been an unmitigated disaster so far, but now that Barbara was here it was bound to pick up.

He explained to the room, in rather stilted German, that Miss Woodward was his assistant.

‘No, I’m not,’ said Barbara.

There was an irritated murmur of comment from the collected men. She heard Czech, Polish and something that sounded bizarrely like Arabic.

She’d expected Charles to try to hurry her out of the room but he merely stared at her, a challenge in his eyes. Well, if he wanted to challenge her, so much the worse for him.

‘There’s something I want to discuss with you,’ said Barbara. ‘Do you want to join me next door, or would you prefer to discuss it here?‘

He shrugged, raised an eyebrow and stood up. ‘Will you excuse me, gentlemen? This should only take a moment.’

He followed Barbara into his own office. ‘I don’t know what the hell this is all about, but couldn’t it wait?’

‘No, it could not wait!’ fumed Barbara. ‘How dare you ask all those agencies for me? How dare you make them refuse me any other work?’

‘Is that what you brought me out to hear?’ He glowered at her. ‘Of all the preposterous—Look, it’s perfectly common to request a specific person from an agency. We’re desperate to get someone in here fast so I told the office manager to contact the agencies you’d worked for. We certainly never told them not to give you any other work. But now that you’re here you may as well make yourself useful.’

‘Useful!’ exclaimed Barbara, at a loss for words to express her fury.

‘We’re having some difficulty with the minutes,’ he said coolly. ‘The young woman who was helping us was overoptimistic about her linguistic abilities. We’re taping everything, but you can see why we’d like a written record.’

‘Too bad,’ said Barbara.

Charles scowled. ‘Look, you’ve said you’re looking for work.’

‘I never said I wanted to be a slave.’

‘We were planning to pay you,’ Charles said sarcastically. ‘Look, I’ll give you what we’d have paid the agency—a hundred pounds if you stay today, five hundred to stay the week.’

‘Done,’ Barbara said gloomily. She followed him back across the hall.

The men around the table were all in a bad mood. They were tired of talking business in languages not their own about things they didn’t entirely understand. They looked with mingled irritation and appreciation at the girl at the door, her slim figure set off by a dark blue shift dress. Charles sensed the change of mood in the room. He glanced down at Barbara, seeing her suddenly as if for the first time. She was spectacular all right—but completely infuriating. They wouldn’t be so appreciative, he thought irritably, if they knew what a little hellcat she was.

Barbara frowned up at him, trying to make out the odd look on his face. Probably just wishing he’d negotiated her out of her lunch-break, she thought. She shrugged, closed the door and followed him down to his end of the table where she took a seat beside him.

Barbara took up a pad and pencil. Five men burst into argument at once, and part of her mind threw itself into disentangling the various strands. But she was sitting at Charles’s elbow and her whole body seemed to be aware of the fact that he was only a couple of inches away.

If she looked down at her pad she’d suddenly find that her eyes had refocused on something more interesting a foot or so from the pad—the long, powerful line of his thigh, the muscle straining against the businesslike dark grey of his trousers. Or, if she looked up to identify a new speaker, she would see out of the corner of her eye the close-cut black hair and aquiline nose of the man beside her, and she would find herself waiting for him to speak just so she could look at him without pretending not to.

Then he would speak, and it would be a relief to turn her head. She’d turn her head, and the brilliant green of his eyes would dash over her like a cold, careless ocean wave, leaving her shivering inside, struggling to get intelligible shorthand on the page.

In spite of these distractions, she managed to make some sense of the proceedings. She soon discovered that the meeting was running into real difficulties; the second language of most of those present was German, but there were two who spoke English, another two who spoke French and one who knew Italian. A complicated system of translation, in undertones, out of the various languages into German, or from German into one of the others, was going on. She couldn’t imagine what the transcription of a tape of this was going to be like.

It also became clear to her after a while that the man who was helping out the Italian speaker was slightly misrepresenting the drift of the discussion and the speaker’s responses, whether deliberately or unintentionally she wasn’t sure.

Half an hour went by. At last, hesitantly, she put a note in front of Charles. He nodded, and wrote, ‘We’ll break for coffee—take over afterwards.’

It occurred to Barbara that if they were going to break for coffee this would be a perfect opportunity to tell him what a swine he was, but something kept her silent. Perhaps it was the hapless Italian-speaking Czech. She thought the Pole who was helping him out was taking advantage of him, and if she left he’d have no one to help him. So she organised coffee, and when the second session began she sat beside him and took over the task of translation. It soon became apparent that he was an important player in the discussions. A number of points which had been agreed earlier were reversed, and everyone began to get very annoyed.

At last Charles called a halt to the proceedings. They would, he said, adjourn until the following day.

The men filed out of the room, talking animatedly—and for the most part angrily—in their native languages. Barbara began putting her notes in order.

‘Charles!’ she exclaimed suddenly. ‘I’m an idiot! I just went on translating Italian to German—but I could have just translated from Czech! It’s been a few years since I read Colloquial Czech, but I’m sure I could have done it—at least some of the time.’

‘I’m glad you didn’t, though,’ he said. He stood up and stretched, then turned to her and raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ll probably disapprove of this, but you may be more use to me if people don’t know how much you know. They’re likely to be a bit more open among themselves if they don’t realise you understand.’

Barbara was about to start arguing about this when she realised what was going on. ‘It doesn’t matter whether I approve or not,’ she said curtly, ‘because I am not going to work for you. Didn’t you get my message?’

‘Oh, I got it,’ he said. ‘I could have wrung the girl’s neck for not putting you through. You could have been here half an hour earlier.’

‘If I’d got through,’ said Barbara, ‘I wouldn’t have come.’

‘Then it’s just as well she didn’t put you through, isn’t it?’ he said with a shrug.

Barbara remembered something else. ‘What on earth did you say to that poor girl?’ she demanded.

‘I can’t remember. Something colourful, I expect.’ A pencil snapped between his long, clever fingers. ‘For God’s sake, take that look off your face. Do you have any idea how much time and money went into setting this meeting up? She said she knew French and German, and then turned out to be totally incompetent. What do you expect me to do—give her an A for effort?’

‘I expect you to be abominably rude,’ said Barbara. ‘When are you ever anything else?’

‘Oh, I can be quite nice when I choose.’

‘Yes, when you want to seduce someone,’ Barbara said scathingly.

‘If that’s what you think, I’d better be very rude to you. I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea,’ he remarked, throwing his papers into his briefcase and closing it.

‘I certainly wouldn’t think anything as ridiculous as that,’ she retorted.

The speed of her reply made the slight pause which followed all the more noticeable. ‘What’s ridiculous about it?’ He looked at her inscrutably. ‘You’re very beautiful. You must have seen they couldn’t take their eyes off you.’

Barbara was suddenly short of breath. ‘I thought you didn’t want to get involved with your secretary,’ she pointed out

‘I thought you weren’t going to be my secretary. Looks like I can seduce you after all.’ He’d looked weary at the end of the meeting, as well he might, with the prospect of the whole thing to do again the next day—but now a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

‘No, you can’t,’ she said curtly. ‘You can call my agency and tell them you don’t need me any more so they’ll find me another job.’

‘But I do need you.’ He scowled. ‘If you don’t type up those notes no one else is going to be able to, and God only knows what the meeting is going to be like when we pick up the threads. Finish the week, anyway—at least you’ll be quids in.’

Barbara was silent. She hardly knew which was worse—his infuriating, foul temper or the careless, easy charm which found its mark so surely.

‘Look, what on earth is the matter with the idea?’ Charles asked impatiently. ‘You won’t be stuck in London the whole time. We’ll be travelling to Prague and Warsaw. You’ll meet interesting people, have a chance to accomplish something. You’ll do a terrific job, and at the end of it you’ll be able to walk into something better if you want to. I don’t know why you’re so damned suspicious. All you’ve got going for you now is a record of Ds and the odd C, plus years of temping, which frankly isn’t the best passport into the higher echelons of the business world—’

‘I don’t want to be in the higher echelons of the business world,’ said Barbara. ‘I get bored too easily.’

‘I don’t think this will bore you,’ he retorted. ‘And you’d be ideal for the job. Stop playing hard to get.’

Barbara gritted her teeth. ‘I’m not playing hard to get, Charles,’ she snapped. ‘I am hard to get. But if it means that much to you, fine. How much are you expecting to make out of this? I don’t mean income, but net profit?’

‘If it works, a couple of hundred million...’

‘All right,’ said Barbara. ‘I want a salary of £25,000.’

‘Done.’

‘Plus overtime.’

‘Done.’

‘Plus five per cent of the shares of the company.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me,’ said Barbara.

‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘No,’ said Barbara, ‘I am not out of my mind. You’re out of your mind, Charles. If the right assistant is so crucial to the deal, you could take £100,000 and get people who are experts in these languages. You could get someone with terrific skills—you could even get someone who could cope with a dead fax machine in Vladivostok. And you’d still be quids in. If you have that much money to throw at it, you don’t need me. I’ll come in and type this up tomorrow, but I am going to Sardinia next month and nothing you can say or do can stop me.’

Charles looked down into the snapping blue eyes of his pseudo-sister and wondered, briefly, whether the real thing could be half as exasperating. Did he really want to put up with this for a year? A standard-issue secretary would have been a puddle on the floor by now. He couldn’t have that, of course, but wasn’t it possible to have a secretary who just got on with the job, without starting World War III?

He was about to tell Barbara to go to Sardinia and be sure not to write when the world-weary voice of Personnel echoed lugubriously in his mind. ‘The crème de la crème...can pick and choose,’ it said morosely. ‘They don’t like to be shouted at... We’re offering a competitive package...’ it said. ‘Experienced, highly qualified people... can get the same money and benefits elsewhere.’

Well, he thought grimly, there’s competitive and there’s competitive.

He looked at Barbara evenly.

“That’s silly money,’ he said. ‘You know you’re not going to get it. So what you’re saying is, you’d like something off the charts compared to the going rate for the job. Make me another offer.’

Barbara stared at him. The problem was, she didn’t want something off the charts—she just didn’t want the job. But if he was seriously prepared to throw serious money at her she could walk away from temping for an awfully long time...

“There’s a new issue of shares for this venture, isn’t there?‘ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said curtly.

‘Five per cent of that,’ said Barbara.

His eyes were as brilliant and as hard as emeralds. ‘Keep trying,’ he said.

Barbara looked at him thoughtfully. Just how far was he willing to go? Or, to put it another way, what would irritate him the most? And suddenly she knew exactly what to say.

A couple of years ago Charles had started up a tiny company to act as a launchpad for miscellaneous inventions that didn’t fit well in the main company. Compared to the big Mallory Corporation it was nothing—but Barbara had a hunch it would hit the stratosphere a few years down the line. The fact remained that on paper it wasn’t worth much. The price of its shares was low—mere was no reason in the world why Charles shouldn’t let her have a few of them.

‘Five per cent of Mallorin,’ she said. ‘And that’s my final offer.’

He thrust his hands into his pockets. There was a long silence, in which he stared first at the carpet and then at Barbara with undisguised dislike.

‘All right, damn you,’ he said. ‘You’ll have the contract by the end of the week. But the Mallorin stock is conditional on your completing the year.’ He handed her the cassette from the day’s meeting. ‘For that kind of money I’d like the minutes typed up in time for tomorrow’s meeting. I want you in the office at seven a.m. sharp.’ And he strode from the conference room without waiting for a reply, and slammed the door shut behind him.

CHAPTER FOUR

BARBARY stayed at the office until midnight, coaxing the minutes into sense. She’d been hired for her languages so she prepared them in English, French and German, made copies and left the stacks on her desk.

At six o’clock the next morning she woke to the bleat of her alarm clock. She turned it off and snuggled back into the covers. Why on earth had she set it for such an ungodly—?

Argh.

Blearily she sat up in bed and looked out of the window onto a glorious day. A perfect day for leaving for Sardinia. Instead she’d agreed to be a slave for a year for a mere five per cent of Mallorin. She should have stipulated ten per cent if she had to be out of bed by ten. Too late now.

At seven-fifteen she staggered into the lift at Mallory, precariously balancing a cardboard tray laden with an assortment of pastries and three coffees. Charles could have one; it would take at least two, she reckoned, just to keep her eyes open.

At seven-seventeen she emerged from the lift. Charles’s door was open.

‘You’re late,’ came the curt comment from within.

Barbara approached the room gingerly. It faced east; brilliant yellow sunshine was streaming into the corridor. Narrowing her eyes, she entered the office and flinched.

‘I told you I wanted you here at seven.’ Charles was pacing up and down, a Dictaphone in his hand. He looked sickeningly fresh and energetic, his jaw freshly shaved, hair slicked down, eyes piercing, tie beautifully knotted.

‘I brought breakfast,’ said Barbara.

‘I don’t eat it,’ said Charles.

‘Naturally,’ said Barbara. ‘You’re too busy dictating. I understand. You just carry on and I’ll join you presently.’

Charles scowled. ‘It’s a complete waste of time. If you have trouble waking up in the morning you’d do better to get some exercise. Go for a run as soon as you get up.’

Barbara shuddered. ‘Is that what you did?’ she asked.

‘I went to the gym for an hour.’

Barbara winced. She sank feebly into the nearest chair—the enormous, leather-covered chair that stood behind Charles’s desk. She stretched out a nerveless hand for her first caffe latte—she’d asked for three shots of espresso—and lifted it carefully to her lips.

Charles prowled up and down in front of his desk.

‘Don’t mind me,’ Barbara said pleasantly, reviving slightly under the influence of the coffee. ‘I know you must want to get on with work.’

She selected a croissant from the pile and bit into it Lovely, lovely food. Lovely coffee. Perhaps she would live.

‘I hope you’re not planning to calculate your overtime based on a seven o’clock start,’ Charles said acerbically. ’For this you think you’re worth five per cent of a company?‘

Barbara yawned. ‘More like ten per cent, but you got a good deal.’

Charles glowered at her. He really did look marvellous, Barbara thought sleepily. Marvellous to wake up next to, except that you’d never get the chance because he’d be off to the gym in the middle of the night.

‘A good deal!’

‘Did anyone ever tell you you’re beautiful when you’re angry?’ she asked dreamily.

‘Are we going to have to go through this every morning?’ Charles asked through gritted teeth.

‘Every morning!’ Barbara stared at him in horror. ‘You don’t start this early every morning!’

‘I do,’ he said even more grittily. ‘And so will you.’

‘No, I won’t,’ said Barbara. She put down her coffee and stood up. ‘The deal’s off. I’m not going through this for a year. I’ve done the minutes in English, French and German. There are about ten copies of each on my desk; they should be pretty clear. I really don’t think your seventeen-minute start in dictation would have been that much of a handicap for me, but it’s not my problem. I’m going to Sardinia.’

Charles stalked out to her desk. He came back, leafing through a set of minutes.

‘These are good,’ he said.

‘So glad you like them,’ said Barbara. She started on another croissant.

Charles paced up and down, turning the pages.

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘You can start at eight.’

‘I’d rather go to Sardinia,’ said Barbara, ‘but I did say I’d take the job. I might be willing to start at nine.’

Charles seemed about to say something when his eye was caught by the German minutes, which were now on the top of the stack. He gritted his teeth again.

‘Your problem is your blood sugar is low,’ Barbara explained helpfully. ‘That’s why it’s so important to eat a good breakfast. Otherwise you’re likely to be irritable and short-tempered.’

‘I’m not irritable—’ he began.

‘Have a croissant,’ urged Barbara. ‘Or a Danish pastry. It will help you to get everything in perspective.’

Charles threw the minutes onto a nearby chair. ‘I must be mad,’ he remarked.

‘No, you just have low blood sugar,’ Barbara reassured him. ‘Have something to eat and you’ll feel much better.’

For a moment she wondered whether she’d gone too far. She kept forgetting she no longer had to deal with the easygoing, self-mocking seventeen-year-old Charles who’d laughed at her teasing. Now she was dealing with the driven, self-made entrepreneur who clearly saw her as the single greatest obstacle in his race to take over Eastern Europe. On the other hand, if she once started being scared of Charles...

‘Have something to eat and you’ll make me feel better,’ she went on provocatively. ‘I went to all this trouble to bring something for you—it’s simple good management to show your appreciation. When a member of staff goes out of her way to do something helpful you should show you appreciate the initiative. It’s good for staff morale.’

It occurred to her that she suddenly felt wide awake—wonderful what arguing with Charles did to sweep away the cobwebs.

The spark of temper in his eyes showed he knew she was baiting him. ‘I’ll have something if it will hurry you up finishing your own breakfast and getting on with work,’ he said.

He put a couple of croissants on a plate and took one of the cups of coffee.

Barbara swivelled in the big leather chair. Around and around. ‘What a marvellous chair,’ she remarked on her fourth time around. ‘Do you ever do this?’

‘No,’ said Charles.

‘Too busy,’ said Barbara, rotating again. ‘Too important. Things to do, people to see. Got to set a good example for the staff.’

She put a foot down to stop the chair so that it faced the window. It was only seven-thirty, and the street was still fairly empty—but people were coming down it in ones and twos, a briefcase in one hand, a gym bag in the other, and all these early risers were disappearing through the doors of the Mallory Corporation building. No doubt the effect of Mr Mallory’s good example. There was something depressing about it.

‘Dictations to dictate,’ she added flippantly. She gave the wall a kick with her foot to start the chair around again.

It swivelled perhaps three inches, before coming to an abrupt stop. Barbara found that she was now looking up into the thunderous face of the good example to his staff. She was about to protest indignantly when the Great Motivator took hold of her arms and pulled her roughly to her feet.

‘Don’t you think it’s about time you grew up?’ Charles was speaking through clenched teeth. She must have hit a sore spot. Well, it was good to know there was a chink in his armour.

‘I am grown up,’ said Barbara. ‘I don’t personally call not swivelling in chairs the benchmark of maturity—’

‘Neither do I,’ Charles agreed drily. ‘I was thinking of a few other things, such as doing something with the talents you’ve been throwing away ever since I’ve known you. You should have people to see and things to do yourself. You should have a company of your own, damn it. You could do anything you want—’

‘I was doing exactly what I wanted before you interfered,’ said Barbara breathlessly.

He was still holding her arms; the brilliant eyes blazed down into hers. Unbidden, the thought came to her that he might have held her just so if he’d meant to kiss her. It was something she’d imagined about five thousand times, at a conservative estimate, and this was as close as she was ever likely to get: Charles glaring down at her for not wearing shoulder pads and running a boardroom.

A sardonic eyebrow shot up. ‘The ambition takes my breath away.’

Her eyes fell to the firm, sensuous mouth, now curved in something uncomfortably like contempt. What would happen if she kissed him instead? At least she’d know what it was like...

‘I don’t know why you’re complaining,’ she said, dragging her eyes back to meet his. ‘I thought you needed a multilingual secretary. Where would you be if I weren’t?’

‘Struggling along somehow, I imagine.’ He shook her impatiently. ‘We both know you’ve a good mind. I don’t underestimate myself and, unless yours has mysteriously deteriorated since the age of eleven, I’d say yours is as good as mine. What do you expect me to think when I see someone as good as I am making silly jokes and swinging in my chair like a pretty fool with straw for a brain? Do you think it makes it better that you’re not a man? You should be ashamed of yourself.’

Barbara stared into his eyes. How beautiful they were—the green iris rimmed with black, the lashes thick and long, and then above, the black slash of brow... She zeroed in on the essential element in the lecture.

‘Do you really think I’m pretty?’ she asked.

Charles ground his teeth. He dropped his hands from her arms in disgust. ‘This is a waste of time. I’ve got work to do. Forget I said anything. Do whatever you want with your life as long as it includes typing up dictation for an hour before the meeting.’

‘Yesterday you said I was beautiful,’ said Barbara. ‘Did you mean it?’

He flicked her a glance. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Can we get back to work?’

‘But,’ said Barbara.

‘But what?’

‘Nothing,’ said Barbara. She had the feeling that if she said anything she would say something so stupid it would permanently destroy his flattering estimate of her intelligence. She could almost hear herself blurting out, ‘If I start my own company will you kiss me?’ Bad idea. ‘If I win a Nobel prize, I mean just supposing, would you maybe just for one night—?’ No. No. No.

It was getting up so early that had thrown her off balance. There was something about this queer inhuman hour that did something to your inhibitions. Maybe it was because it all seemed so dreamlike. She dreamed about Charles sometimes, and he was always much nicer in her dreams than he was in real life, so that in the small hours of the morning—around eight, say—Charles would kiss her or she would kiss Charles and she would try as hard as she could not to wake up.

He ejected a tape from the recorder and handed it to her. ‘Get started on this and see how far you get. I’ve just given the names and the gist. You can flesh out the letters and I’ll vet them when you’re done.’

This was the genuine Mallory mode. For some reason it was only now that he’d reverted to type that she was struck by how completely out of character his outburst had been. At the time it had seemed just another case of Charles ordering people around. But...

She stared down at him, ignoring the tape in the peremptorily outstretched hand.

Since when had Charles ever been interested in anyone but himself? At seventeen he’d been self-centred and lazy; now he was self-centred and driven. And since when had he been so completely inconsistent? Last week she’d just been a cog he wanted in his machine, and he’d gone about getting it with his usual ruthlessness. Yesterday he’d been just the same. Now it seemed no sooner had he got her than he was telling her ruthlessly that she was wasting her life as a humble cog.

What was going on?

She’d once had a dream in which it turned out that Charles had been in love with her all along. Unfortunately, she’d never been able to have it again, and it didn’t look as though life was going to improve on the dream—it wasn’t exactly likely that Charles, who was confidence personified, would keep his feelings to himself. But in that case... Well, was it just something left over from his days as honorary older brother?

‘Do you think I should start a company?’ Barbara asked.

He glanced up at her, his expression unreadable. ‘Do whatever you like.’

‘Do you think I could?’ she asked.

‘Considering that you say you get bored with anything that lasts more than a month, I’d say almost certainly not.’

Barbara felt that she was somehow not getting to the bottom of this, but she didn’t know what else to ask. She took the tape from his hand; as her fingers brushed his an electric shock seemed to travel from his fingers to hers and up her arm. She snatched her hand away, watching him covertly to see if he’d noticed anything—or perhaps felt it too. But Charles was already slotting a new tape into the recorder.

She took the cardboard tray, with its one remaining coffee and a few stray pastries, out to her desk and turned on the computer. None of the other secretaries on the floor were in yet, but more people were turning up with briefcases and the ubiquitous gym bags.

Some of them seemed to be in fairly good shape, but none seemed to have emerged bristling with energy like Charles. In fact, Barbara thought, some of them looked almost haggard. Charles drove people hard, she knew, and she knew it often had the effect of galvanising them to achieve things they couldn’t have otherwise. But should they really all look so tired?

Her forehead creased in a slight frown. Soon she’d forgotten the problems, however, and was deep into turning Charles’s cryptic comments into courteous, businesslike letters.

CHAPTER FIVE

TWENTY Eastern European businessmen sat around a large conference table, making important-looking notes on yellow pads. Sometimes one would say something in German, and someone else who was lucky enough not to know the language would give Miss Woodward a winning smile and ask her to translate. ‘It will be easier if you sit beside me, yes?’ he would say, and nineteen envious pairs of eyes would follow the dazzling redhead as she made her way around the table.

Well, he’d be envious too if he didn’t know her better, Charles thought wryly, watching Barbara slip into a chair with a charming smile. In fact, if he didn’t know her better he’d definitely want to know her better, he thought, his eyes lingering, in spite of himself, on the vivid face. Just as well he knew what an obstinate, crossgrained, exasperating—He remembered suddenly that he’d as good as held her in his arms that morning. He might as well have kissed her for all the good talking had done.

He saw in his mind’s eye the sleep-drenched blue eyes, the soft, full mouth, and in his imagination his head bent and—No. Charles brought his imagination under control with an effort.

He couldn’t afford to think that way. The meeting was actually going well. Now that Barbara was there at least they weren’t glaring at each other with the look that said, I have no idea what you’re talking about but I don’t care because I don’t like you. He needed a permanent secretary. He was about to pay a lot of money to get Barbara to keep the oils wheeled for the next year. He couldn’t afford to even think about jeopardising that by even thinking about what it might be like to... With more effort he brought his imagination under control again.

Another speaker started talking in English. The man to Charles’s left directed a charming, helpless smile at Miss Woodward and asked her to translate. The nineteen envious pairs of eyes followed Barbara as she walked back around the table and took a seat between Mallory and the man who was lucky enough not to know English. Charles suppressed a smile as Barbara bent towards the visitor and murmured something in the visitor’s language of choice.

She should really stop wasting her talents one of these days, he thought. He should have another talk with her about that, he thought, and remembered again his last talk with her, about wasting her talents, and remembered that he couldn’t afford to think that way.

‘Well, I think we’ve reached an agreement in principle,’ he said. ‘Let’s move on to the next question.’

Barbara translated in a low voice for the man beside her. The meeting didn’t seem to be going too badly, she thought. It was hard to stay on top of everything because as well as translating she was also trying to take notes, and as well as trying to take notes she was also trying not to notice Charles. Well, she thought she was doing all right with two out of the three. Part of her mind was taken up with turning English into serviceable German, part was engaged in the fraught task of transcribing the rather heated discussions and part watched Charles, effortlessly dominating the room.

Her confrontation with him that morning seemed to have made her even more acutely aware of him. In spite of herself, her eyes were drawn to the hard, clean line of his jaw, the fierce nose, the eyes as bracing as cold seawater.

What it would be like to go through a year of this she couldn’t imagine.

On the other hand, she reminded herself, she had permission to start work at nine. She wouldn’t be seeing Charles alone at a time when they should really both have been in bed. She would just have to avoid seeing him at odd hours, and maybe everything would be all right.

A week went by in which Barbara thought she could follow this resolution. Charles continued to come in at a time which was really late the previous day and he usually left around nine for a dinner date. Barbara came in at nine and stayed until ten or eleven or twelve, and she kept meticulous records of every extra second of her overtime. During the day there was so much work she was able to keep her mind off handsome, horrible Charles for five or even ten minutes at a time. He didn’t make any more comments on her looks. He didn’t tell her to start a company. Everything was going to be just fine.

But nothing could ever be fine around Charles for long.

As well as making an assault on Eastern Europe, the company was still expanding aggressively within the UK. It was making a bid to develop a highly dedicated version of Mallory software for one of the biggest corporations in the country, along with a comprehensive set of training materials, and the bid had been delegated to one of Charles’s brilliant, hard-working subordinates.

Mike Carlin was also in charge of developing potential Polish clients, a brief which had turned out to be bigger than they’d expected. On Monday afternoon Charles called him in to check progress. Barbara sat, taking notes. Mike looked hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, but Charles didn’t seem to notice anything. He kept pelting him with questions which the younger man answered somehow.

Finally Charles said, ‘Well, everything seems to be going in the right direction. I don’t need to tell you that time is of the essence.’ He grinned. ‘Speaking of which, Barrett have just called to say they want to move things up by two weeks. It should still leave plenty of time for fine-tuning, but you’ll need to get a move on. How’s the bid coming along?’

Mike looked so tired he couldn’t really have looked worse, but Barbara could have sworn he turned pale. He stammered, ‘Well, it’s getting there.’

‘Getting pretty close to the wire now,’ said Charles. ‘I’d like to see what you’ve got so far.’

‘It’s...it’s...it’s in half a dozen different pieces. You can’t really get an idea—’

‘Well, whatever you have,’ said Charles. ‘Look, I’ll have your secretary bring the stuff up.’

He picked up a phone and dialled an extension.

‘Mallory here. Look, could you dig out the Barrett files and bring them up? Mike’s going to walk me through them. The Barrett file. Barrett. That’s right, and don’t take all day, will you? Thanks.’

He hung up and began to take Mike over some points relating to the Polish clients.

About fifteen minutes later a secretary came into the room, carrying a single slim file.

‘I’m afraid this is all I could find,’ she said apologetically.

Charles took it and leafed through. It was just a few sketches of proposals.

‘This must be the preliminary file,’ he said impatiently. ‘I want the more recent stuff. Mike, why don’t you bring it up for me?’

Barbara saw the look of desperation on Mike’s face. Impulsively she said, ‘I haven’t sent it back down yet, Charles. Sorry, I hadn’t quite realised what you were talking about.’

Both men stared at her blankly.

‘I did a couple of extended assignments at Barrett as a temp,’ Barbara said fluently. ‘They have some pretty rigid ideas of how they like things done. Mr Carlin gave me his drafts, and while they looked attractive in themselves there were some things which wouldn’t go down well with their head of services—and at the end of the day that’s who will probably have the deciding vote. I said I’d go through and make suggestions.’

‘Well, let me see what you’ve got,’ said Charles.

‘Don’t be absurd,’ Barbara said firmly, while Mike and his secretary stared at her in awe. ‘You’ll have to see them anyway after my suggestions have been processed; there’s absolutely no point in wasting time looking at them twice. You’re much better off looking at something that has the responses to company policy in place—otherwise you could end up just changing things that would change anyway.’

‘Tomorrow, then,’ said Charles.

‘They’ll be ready Friday,’ said Barbara.

‘I’d like to see what you’ve got tomorrow,’ said Charles.

‘I’ll be happy to see what I can do,’ Barbara said pleasantly. ‘I take it you won’t be needing me for the rest of the day.’

‘I can’t possibly spare you for the rest of the day,’ said Charles. ‘I’ve got a stack of things that got put to one side because of this meeting which have got to go out today.’

‘Fine,’ said Barbara. ‘I’ll get the Barrett proposal to you on Friday, then.’ She smiled at him angelically, then added, ‘I have a few questions for Mr Carlin so I’ll just follow him down to his office, if that’s convenient.’

She raised an eyebrow at the hapless Mike, who nodded weakly.

Downstairs, with his door closed, he collapsed at his desk and held his head in his hands.

‘Thanks for coming to my rescue,’ he said, ‘but he’ll have to know sooner or later. There’s no way I can do it in time. Better he should know now...’

Barbara had opened the slim folder. There were a few sheets of paper, not much more than random jottings.

‘Hasn’t the company made any other bids?’ she asked.

‘Sure, but nothing this size, and anyway there just isn’t the time. If I dropped all the Polish stuff and did this I’d just end up dropping all the balls.’ He closed his eyes, succumbing for a moment to the tiredness which had been sapping his strength for weeks.

‘You’ve got some material from Barnett, presumably?’ said Barbara, ignoring his defeatism.

‘Yes, but you don’t seem to understand.’ His voice sharpened at last in exasperation. ‘There simply isn’t the time—’

‘For you to do it,’ said Barbara. ‘Of course I understand that. But it’s not too late for me.’ She smiled at him encouragingly. ‘I really did work for them once, you know. I think I know how to package it so they’ll like it. I’ll throw together a rough draft. Once he’s got that you can just tell him you think the Polish side needs a hundred per cent attention. Tell him the groundwork’s been done on Barrett and he should get somebody else to polish it up.’

He looked at her dully. ‘Pass off your work as mine?’ he said. ‘I couldn’t do that.’

Barbara shrugged. ‘You know you do good work.’ she said. ‘Next time you’ll stand up to Charles, instead of letting him give you more than you can reasonably handle. So in the long run the company’s better off. Isn’t that the main thing?’

He frowned, drumming his fingers on the desk. ‘I don’t know...’ he said. ‘I know Mallory says you’re brilliant, but—’

‘He says what?’ said Barbara.

‘Have I got this wrong? He told me some story about the Vendler Morris report on the single currency...’ His eyes closed briefly, then opened wearily again. ‘Typical Vendler Morris fiasco. They kept putting people on it and then taking them off whenever a major client asked for them—whole thing a shambles, serial nervous breakdowns among the secretaries. Then they got in a temp who turned out to be some kind of crazy linguist with a head for numbers and was on the project, unlike their own staff, for three consecutive months...’

Barbara suppressed a shudder. She’d been lured into the assignment with an iron-clad assurance that it would be for no more than three weeks. She’d gone into it with the plan of going off to Crete at the end of the three weeks. She’d been given one of the documents as a simple proofreading job, but had seen problems with the numbers and had started cleaning things up.

Before she knew it the three weeks had become four, then five, then six, and still Vendler Morris and the agency had insisted that if she could just stay ‘one more week’ they’d have everything under control. She hadn’t realised Charles knew about it, but he’d developed some software for Vendler Morris a few years back—he must have heard about it then.

Carlin looked at her sceptically. ‘Well, we’re not talking three months—we’re talking a couple of days.’

‘Yes,’ said Barbara, ‘but in this case I really do have some idea of what you’re up against. At least it’s worth a try.’

He didn’t really look convinced, just too tired to argue the point any longer. ‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind...’

‘I’ll probably enjoy it,’ Barbara said truthfully.

She took the materials away with her, and for the first time since she’d started working for Charles she deliberately took a lunch-break away from her desk.

Barbara went to the cafeteria and loaded her tray with a slice of chocolate cake, a slice of cherry cheesecake, a slice of peppermint white chocolate mousse cake and a cappuccino. There was nothing like dessert for stimulating the mental processes—unless it was three desserts.

She went to a corner of the cafeteria and looked through the previous bids and the materials they’d been sent from Barrett. Then she closed the files and forced herself not to think about them. She let the information percolate through her mind while she finished the last of the cakes, and for the rest of the afternoon, while she rushed through six simultaneously top-priority jobs for Charles, she let the Mallory bids and the Barrett materials glare at each other deep in her subconscious, shouting, ‘Mutually incompatible, hate at first sight.’

Charles went off for a dinner date at nine. Barbara always knew the names of Charles’s dates—they were scrawled on the pages of his desk diary in his bold, careless hand, and sometimes crossed out, too, with the same careless hand. Tonight was Karina. As always, Barbara had to force herself not to form a mental image of the woman. She’d only end up tormenting herself, picturing the beautiful image in Charles’s arms.

As soon as Charles was out of the office Barbara whipped out her materials. Her desk was crowded with the word processor, letter trays, stationery drawers, Rolodex and other paraphernalia of secretarial existence—there was really no place to work. Luckily an office with plenty of work space had just been vacated. Charles had his own monumental desk, of course, and he also had a table for smaller meetings.

The table, in Barbara’s opinion, was just what the doctor ordered for this ailing project. She went into Charles’s office, spread out her files and surveyed them glumly.

The problem was that she was faced with not just two but three philosophies of business, the world and life.

The philosophy of the Mallory Corporation was that ten thousand years of human evolution had been heading, with many a false turn and blind alley, for the last, greatest and most glorious monument to the human spirit—the computer. Hardware was lovely and software was lovelier and there was no problem that could not be solved by a combination of the two. The materials for previous bids dazzled the reader with glossy coloured pages, bursting with tables and pie charts and imaginative templates, and apparently they’d been persuasive: Barbara gathered that the bids had been successful.

The philosophy of Norman Barrett, seventy-two-year-old founder of the Barnett Corporation, was that a manual typewriter and a competent typist were all that any business really required to function efficiently. He was suspicious of gimmicks; he was suspicious of three-colour printing and glossy paper because the bottom line was that at the end of the day he was the one who’d be footing the bill for all that unnecessary folderol.

The philosophy of the head of services at Barrett was in its way more progressive. The HOS did not want to go back to the Stone Age; up-to-date technology was, in his view, essential to the competitiveness of a business. The HOS, however, believed that a software package should be capable of performing complex tasks, while at the same time removing all scope for initiative from the support staff actually using it.

Secretaries should be like trains, speeding along predefined tracks of templates and macros and strictly forbidden to venture cross-country, exploring all the ingenious inventions of the Mallory whizkids.

On the other hand, a bid should make clear that the ingenious inventions would be available to the select small number of personnel who could be trusted with them. It should also be visually appealing as a matter of pure professionalism. A bid was supposed to look impressive—it was the contractor’s chance to show off its stuff, and if it didn’t dazzle it couldn’t be worth much.

Barbara contemplated this intractable problem. It had been stewing away in her mind all afternoon, but it still looked intractable. Well, maybe she should let it percolate a little more.

She strolled over to Charles’s chair, sat down and kicked off. Around and around...

Barbara believed firmly that the harder a problem was the less point there was in trying to force through a solution. You had to give it time to come to you. For two hours she revolved-sometimes clockwise, sometimes counterclockwise—giving a solution the chance to come to her.

Of course, sometimes before the solution comes to you another problem turns up instead.

At eleven she heard voices in the corridor outside. ‘Sorry to drag you back,’ said Charles. There are a couple of things I need to look at.’

‘That’s all right,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘I’d like to see your office.’

‘Well, there’s not much to see,’ said Charles, mildly amused.

That’s what you think, thought Barbara. She seemed to have been turned to stone.

‘Actually, I think I’ll just visit the ladies’ first,’ said the woman.

‘It’s just around the corner,’ said Charles. ‘First right, then left, then just across by the service lift—’

‘You can’t miss it,’ the woman said, laughing. ‘I might have been able to follow all that if we hadn’t finished the second bottle, Charles, but now I’m not even going to try. At least see me as far as first right.’

Charles laughed. ‘What’s it worth to you?’

‘What did you have in mind?’

Charles laughed again. ‘That would be telling. Come on, it’s this way.’

Barbara leapt to her feet. She darted to the table and hastily stacked up her materials. She couldn’t risk leaving the room, but where could she go? The desk was open to the front—she couldn’t hide there. She looked around wildly. There was a closet where Charles kept a spare suit, she remembered, but none of the wall panels had knobs, even when they were actually doors. You were just supposed to know which panel to press.

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