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‘Margaux will have a much better idea than me of which system would be best for you,’ she told him when he confessed that he had hoped she might be the one to advise him. Linda’s lighthearted comment had alerted her to the danger of inadvertently encouraging him to believe theirs could be more than merely a business relationship. He was a very sensitive man, and the last thing she wanted to do was to hurt him, but she sensed from his reaction to her statement that he had picked up the subtle distancing message she was giving him.
It was almost one o’clock when she eventually left the farm. In addition to raising the subject of the computer and appropriate software package, Eric had also made tentative enquiries about how he might best set up a pension fund for himself, and Debra knew that once she got back to the office she would have a lot of work to do, liaising with her colleagues so that they could advise him.
Tax was her special field of operations, but Eric, like a good many of their smaller clients, preferred to deal with one specific person rather than each individual expert.
Debra had been wondering recently if there was some way in which this could be achieved, and so far she had not managed to come up with a solution, but she made a mental note to bring it up at the next office brainstorming session.
It was coming up to her stepfather’s birthday, and she told herself that she must not forget to buy him a card. He was a keen gardener and she had ordered a very special old-fashioned climbing rose for him, which was presently being cosseted at her local garden centre.
As she drove back into Chester she glanced at her watch. She didn’t really have time for lunch— she had too much to do—but if she drove home she could leave her car there and buy her stepfather’s birthday card on her way back to the office.
Because she had been so young when her own father had died, and could not really remember him, she had formed a very close relationship with Don, her stepfather, and she smiled mischievously to herself as she picked out a card for him emblazoned with the words, ‘To my most favourite man.’
She paid for it and tucked it between the two files she was carrying to make sure that it didn’t bend.
Back in her office, she read quickly through her notes and then dictated an aide-memoire for herself and a couple of memos, one to Margaux Livesey, the head of their computer department, and the other to Ian Rothsey, who was in charge of pensions and other allied insurance schemes.
She then rang through to Margaux’s office to ask her if she could spare her half an hour.
‘Just so long as it is half an hour, because I’m due to see Marsh after that. Come straight up,’ Margaux offered.
Twenty minutes later, when Debra had finished outlining Eric Smethurst’s situation, Margaux confirmed, ‘I don’t think we should have too much trouble sorting him out with a suitable package. It depends just how much he wants to take on board. There are farms which even have computer-controlled feeding systems for their livestock.’
‘I don’t think he’ll want to go that far. Not at this stage. He can’t afford to. When he inherited the farm from his uncle it was very run down. There were a lot of tax problems to sort out, back tax to pay, that sort of thing, and it’s still very much touch and go whether or not he makes a success of it. I hope he does—’
There was a knock on Margaux’s door.
‘That will be Marsh,’ she told Debra, standing up.
Debra stood up too, and as they walked to the door together Margaux opened it, smiling at Marsh and saying to Debra, ‘Don’t worry about your farmer. We’ll make sure he gets the right package. You’ve obviously got a soft spot for him.’
Thanking her, Debra turned to leave, intending to step past Marsh, but he moved at the same time that she did, so that instead she virtually walked into him.
She had a heartbeat’s space of time to control her expression, to avert her face and to lower her eyelids, while inwardly she was sickly conscious of the immensity of her body’s ability to record and remember so many small and diverse details about him that she had immediately recognised his personal body scent, immediately recalled the exact configuration of muscles and sinews that were his, immediately sensed that the tension in his body was spiked with far more than any human being’s automatic reaction to being walked into by another.
She was still shaking half an hour later, still unable to concentrate properly on what she was supposed to be doing, still so appalled and absorbed by the emotional shock of her physical response to him that when someone rapped on her office door she could barely manage to croak out a, ‘Come in.’
She froze as the door opened and Marsh walked in, watching him warily as he walked over to her desk.
What did he want? Why had he come to see her? Her heart started to pound frantically.
‘You weren’t here last week when I explained to the others the way I consider that a business such as ours should be run,’ he began, refusing the seat she offered him.
Since she was sitting down, while he stood, Debra immediately felt that he had put her at a deliberate disadvantage. She was tempted to stand too, but she withstood the impulse, trying to breathe deeply, to push away from herself her awareness of him as a man and to concentrate on the reality of him as her ultimate boss.
‘I put a very high premium on professionalism, and as a part of that professionalism I do not expect members of my staff to further their private relationships in the firm’s time. In fact, I do not consider it wise for members of my staff to form personal relationships with our clients at all. And, if such a relationship is formed, I would prefer it if the member of staff concerned asked another colleague to take over the affairs of the client. And in fact I find it extraordinary that I should have to bring this matter up, especially in view of the excellent, not to say glowing reports in your staff records. “A valuable and hardworking employee” was how they described you.’
For a moment Debra was too angry to speak. How dared he think... suggest... ? She could feel the ire building up inside her, demanding an outlet. She wasn’t normally given to angry outbursts; they were foreign to her nature, but that he should dare to suggest that she would behave with such a lack of professionalism galled her to the point where she could not contain what she felt.
She stood up, angrily pushing back her chair, facing him across her desk, flags of temper flying, dark banners of colour against her pale skin, her eyes bright with emotion.
‘I do not use my work to facilitate my private relationships,’ she told him furiously. ‘I, like you, would consider that to be completely unprofessional and totally unacceptable.’
‘Really?’ His sarcasm stung. ‘So tell me, how do you view using your holiday to do a spot of moonlighting, playing at detectives?’
So that was it, Debra recognised sickly. Perhaps she should have been expecting this kind of attack, but stupidly she had not, and because of that, she recognised, she had no real defences against it.
All she could think of to say was that what she did in her own private time was her own affair.
