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‘Of course he’s not suited to you at all,’ he informed her, not turning around, and she stood up, the notepad dropping to the ground. Her hands were trembling and she couldn’t believe her ears.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You heard me.’ He swung around to face her and his black, brilliant eyes swept over her from head to toe. ‘If you marry that boy you’ll be making the biggest mistake in your life.’
‘He is not a boy!’ was all she could find to say to that, which sounded utterly inadequate.
‘He’s way too pale, insignificant for you. You’d be bored to death within a year.’
‘I don’t believe that I’m hearing this! I don’t think I asked for your opinion!’
‘No, but you should be grateful for it. I’m saving you a lifetime of regret.’
He sat back down in the black chair, for all the world as though nothing had happened, as though he hadn’t just behaved in the most arrogant, high-handed manner conceivable. She looked at him furiously.
‘Oh, sit down,’ he told her impatiently, and she made a choking sound. ‘We have work to do, have you forgotten?’
‘How dare you tell me how to run my life?’ she bit out, sitting down with her hands pressed into her lap. ‘What gives you the right?’
‘I’m not telling you how to run your life,’ he grated, ‘I’m merely offering you advice.’
‘When I want advice, I’ll ask for it. Thank you!’
He shrugged in a gesture of dismissal, as though ready to move on to something else now that he had voiced his uninvited opinions, and she picked up the notepad from the floor, very tempted to hurl it at him.
‘Right,’ be said, staring down at the papers in front of him, and before she could utter another syllable he began dictating, his voice hard and rapid, the words flowing easily as he flicked through the stack of paperwork.
‘You don’t even know him,’ Abigail said through gritted teeth, when there was a pause before he moved on to the next document, and he said easily, expecting her to return to the subject,
‘I know enough. Don’t tell me that you’d be content to play the suburban housewife with a weekly allowance and a handful of screaming children.’
‘Lots of women do.’
‘But not you. You have an inner fire, Abigail. It’s there lurking-just beneath the calm surface.’
‘Thank you, Dr Anderson, for that valuable piece of insight. When can I expect your bill?’
He laughed. ‘Point proved. I don’t see that acid sense of humour going down at all well with the boyfriend.’
‘His name is Martin. And you’re never wrong, are you?’
‘I try not to make a habit of it.’ He began on the second letter and she stared down at the notepad, copying quickly as he spoke while her mind furiously tried to grapple with what he had just told her. Of course he didn’t know Martin, didn’t even know her, come to that, so as an onlooker he was highly unqualified to make sweeping generalisations about either of them. She knew that she should simply disregard every word he had just said, but anger tugged away at her, and as soon as he had stopped dictating she took up where she had left off.
‘Martin and I are very fond of each other,’ she said defensively, and he threw her an amused, mocking look.
‘I’m very fond of my cleaner, but I wouldn’t propose marrying her. So——’ he looked at her with gleaming eyes ‘—very fond of each other, are you?’
‘Yes, we are! I know that might not seem like a great deal to you, I know that that must seem the most boring thing on earth, but marriage is all about being fond of your partner.’
‘Oh, is it?’ He appeared to give this some thought, then he shook his head and drawled, ‘And I always thought a hint of excitement was a good thing.’
She knew what he was up to, of course. He was trying to provoke a reaction in her, trying to antagonise her into saying something which would compromise herself. She knew his tactics. She had sat in enough high-level meetings with him and had seen that particular ploy in action. He would needle in that cool, cynical way of his until he got the reaction he wanted, then he would pounce. She stared with intense fascination at the little scribblings on her notepad and didn’t reply.
‘I’ve jotted some notes in the margins of this report you did a couple days ago,’ he said, reaching across to slide it towards her, and she took it, still in silence.
‘Martin can be very exciting,’ she crossly heard herself say, ‘not that it’s any of your business.’
‘Of course,’ he murmured soothingly, and she wanted to hit him.
‘He’s a very warm, caring human being!’ she expanded in a high, indignant voice, her face hot.
‘I’m sure.’ The black eyes held hers for a moment, then he lowered them but not before she saw the amused glitter in them. Ha, ha, she thought, hilarious. What a riot, affording me the wisdom of his great mind.
‘Is that all?’ she asked stiffly. ‘May I leave now?’
He ignored her. ‘He told me that he’s looking forward to getting married, to settling down. He hopes to make it to accounts manager within the next two years. This was after he had delivered his informative lecture on the disgrace of being ambitious or having money.’
‘You brought out the worst in him. Anyway, what’s wrong with being an accounts manager? The world is full of very fulfilled accounts managers. You make it sound like a sin.’ Worse, she thought, he made it sound boring, which no doubt was exactly what he had intended.
‘A little dull, perhaps,’ he mused, and she scowled. ‘But to each their own, I suppose.’ He stood up and looked at his watch, then began rolling down his shirt-sleeves, tugging his tie into position. ‘I’ll be with Jim Henderson until lunchtime. Expect me back around two.’
He slipped on his jacket and she walked towards the door, her body rigid, as if she had just undergone an ordeal by fire. She should never have risen to his bait, of course. A bit late in the day to realise that now, but she would know better next time, if there was a next time. She moved towards the door, frowning, but before she could leave he had moved alongside her. She felt his proximity with a jolt of alarm. Silly. She started to brush past him through the doorway, but he barred her retreat with his arm and she was forced to look up at him.
As her eyes met his, her mouth went dry and she felt giddy.
‘You know,’ he said thoughtfully, his voice husky, ‘in that dress you wore, you looked…sexy.’
The silence was deafening. In it she thought she could hear the rapid beat of her heart, could almost hear the racing of her pulses.
She couldn’t think of a thing to say. Her mind had gone completely blank and she stared back at him, her pupils wide and dilated. What was going on here? Was he flirting with her? It was a situation which had never arisen before, and because of that she had imagined herself immunised against his charm. Now she felt as though her head was stuffed with cotton-wool and it took a great deal of effort to reply with anything remotely resembling calm.
‘It was my engagement party,’ she said, her mouth aching. ‘You wouldn’t expect me to wear a suit, would you?’
‘I have no idea what I would have expected,’ he replied, staring down at her. His eyes weren’t quite black, but they were very dark. She could see the flecks of brown in them, the black circle of iris, the long, thick eyelashes. ‘But whatever it was, you surprised me. I’ll bet your mother disapproved.’
She went pink. ‘Of course not! Why on earth should she?’ She had, of course.
‘No reason. Just that she looks as though she might frown heavily upon her daughter in the role of sex siren.’
‘Hardly that.’ She managed what she hoped sounded like a laugh, but her body was screaming as though he had touched her intimately, even though he hadn’t laid a finger on her. He didn’t have to. He was one of those men who could touch with their eyes. She dragged her gaze away from him and swept the fall of hair from her face with an unsteady hand.
‘You’ll be late for your meeting.’ Her voice was almost inaudible, but she thought that she had done very well by simply managing to say anything at all.
‘So I might,’ he agreed in a low, lazy voice, then his finger touched her neck, tracing the delicate ridges of her collarbone, down to the neat white lacy collar of her shirt. No further, but enough to make her breasts ache with awful arousal. She pulled back sharply and he laughed under his breath.
‘Look after the fort,’ he murmured, and she could feel his eyes on her without having to look. ‘See you later.’ With that he was gone, and as soon as the outer door had closed behind him she fell back against the wall, her body trembling all over as if she had ague. Gradually the wheels of her brain began churning into life again, but it was a while before she made it to her chair, to the cosy comfort of her computer.
The shock of what had just happened, which, she uneasily told herself, was precisely nothing, began to wear off and anger took its place. Anger that he had dared lecture to her on her life, anger that he had done his best to provoke an answering reaction from her, anger that he had had the audacity to flirt with her simply for the hell of it. Wasn’t that why she could never be attracted to a man like him, even though she could look at him and understand why so many women were? He threatened with his very presence. He had managed to imply that Martin was dull, boring, tepid, but excitement was like living on the edge of a precipice, never knowing when you would go hurtling down to the rocks below. She was, she reflected, not an exciting person. She had never been an exciting person. A ‘quiet little thing’ was how her mother used to describe her to her friends, and what was wrong with that? Look at where so-called excitement had got her in the past. Oh, it hadn’t broken her heart, nothing so dramatic as that, but it had given her a very illuminating and not to be repeated confrontation with mortification.
