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‘He wants us to get married as soon as possible and get a place together. He’s so different. He’s talking about the future, children; I can hardly believe it’s Pete.’
‘If anyone deserves a happy ending it’s you, Maggie,’ Kim had said warmly.
‘I think he half expected me to contact him in spite of all I said before I left, and when I didn’t it convinced him this was make or break time. He’ll never know how near I came, time after time, to picking up the phone, though,’ Maggie added ruefully. ‘He’s staying out here with me for a short holiday and then we’re flying home together the third week of September, so I’ll see you then.’
‘What’s the ring like?’
‘Oh, Kim, it’s gorgeous! Three emeralds enclosed by a border of diamonds.’
There was more of the same, and the two women chatted for another two or three minutes before they finished the call. The news gave Kim a warm glow all through the following Saturday, spent at Lucas’s home with Melody, and the Sunday when Lucas took them out for Sunday lunch before they visited an antique fair in the afternoon, returning home early because Melody had a headache.
But Monday morning
started badly. One of Melody’s school shoes disappeared off the face of the earth, a full glass of milk hopped off the breakfast bar and hurled itself on to the floor—according to a tearful Melody—and then Kim couldn’t find her car keys. By the time they turned up under a cushion Kim was running half an hour behind schedule, which wouldn’t have mattered so much normally but in view of the important meeting due to start promptly at nine in Lucas’s office mattered immensely.
Since their weekend jaunts, Kim had become almost obsessive about fulfilling all of her responsibilities at the office. The last thing—the very last thing—she wanted was for Lucas to think she was presuming on their relationship; she still hesitated to call it friendship, even in her mind. Friendship should be a pleasantly relaxing, easy, agreeable type of thing, predictable and harmless. Lucas didn’t fit one of those criteria.
Kim was constantly on tenterhooks around him, vitally and exhaustingly alive. She was exhilaratingly aware of every little thing about him—the slightest inflexion of his voice which told her the sort of mood he was in, the way his intimidatingly intelligent mind never stopped selecting and storing data, the way he could strike with deadly intent and accuracy. And yet he’d allowed her to see his private side too, that seductive and fascinating part of him that was much more dangerous than anything he displayed in his working life.
On arriving in Kane Electrical’s car park, the heavy driving rain exploded into a cloudburst as soon as Kim opened the car door, and in spite of the doors to Reception only being a few yards away her light summer coat was soaked through after her breathless dash.
Great. Raindrops were trickling down her neck and dripping off her fringe as the lift whisked her up to the top floor. Ten minutes past nine and she looked like a drowned rat.
Once in her office she could hear voices from the other room, and after switching on her desk lamp—the morning had turned as dark as night—she hurried into her private cloakroom and stripped off her wet coat, quickly dabbing her fringe and the rest of her hair before peering in the mirror at her damp face.
‘Kim?’ The knock on the cloakroom door corresponded with Lucas’s voice. ‘Are you okay?’
Whether it was the irritations and panic of the morning, or the fact that she felt she had been living on a knife-edge ever since she had first come to work for Lucas, or simply that her period was due soon and she was ready to argue with the bricks in the wall, Kim didn’t know, but suddenly she felt angry.
She wrenched open the door and glared up into Lucas’s face as she said, ‘Of course I’m okay. You haven’t left them all in there to come and ask me that, have you? What will they think?’
‘Think?’ He hadn’t liked her tone and the chiselled face told her so. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about you nipping out here,’ she snapped back testily, aware she was being horrendously unfair but unable to stop herself. ‘They’ll either think you’re checking up on me or that we’re having an affair.’
He stared at her as though she had gone mad. ‘In the first place I have never “nipped” anywhere in my life,’ he said icily, ‘and in the second this is the first time you have been later than half past eight in all the time you’ve worked for me. When I saw a light go on and you still didn’t make an appearance, I wondered if you’d had a bump on the way to work in view of the atrocious weather conditions.’
‘Well, I haven’t.’
‘So it appears.’ The silver eyes narrowed into slits of light. ‘And as for anyone making a judgement on what I do and don’t do as far as my secretary is concerned, it’s none of their damn business.’
‘In other words, you don’t care what assumption they might make,’ she said frostily, as an errant raindrop trickled down her forehead.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He was really furious now; the grey eyes were positively shimmering with white heat.
‘I’m not being ridiculous.’ She knew she ought to stop, she knew it but her tongue seemed to have a life of its own. ‘You might think it’s okay for people to think we’re having an affair but I don’t! Word has probably already got around that we’ve been seeing each other out of work; what do you think that looks like to everyone?’
‘That we like each other?’ Lucas suggested with a silky smoothness that spoke of controlled rage.
‘You know what they’ll think, especially with your reputation,’ she shot back tightly.
‘That enough, Kim.’ He looked as if he was about to shake her.
‘No it’s not. Not nearly enough.’ She couldn’t remember how all this had stared but suddenly she knew this moment had been brewing for weeks, if not months, perhaps from the first days of their relationship when he had started to inveigle himself into her life and into her heart.
She couldn’t be what Lucas wanted her to be. She didn’t have the will-power or the strength to try, or the courage to face the pain and rejection if he decided she wasn’t good enough. Graham had told her she was an empty shell—beautiful packaging with no present inside was how he had described it, once. Useless in bed, frigid, cold—he’d thrown accusation after accusation at her until, in spite of herself, she had begun to believe them. She didn’t dare sleep with Lucas and see the disappointment in his eyes…
‘Come into my office when you’ve calmed down and are ready to begin work,’ Lucas said with cold emphasis. ‘We’ll discuss this later.’
