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‘Emergency—emergency!’ Mitzy chanted with brisk whimsy the moment she saw Roberta. ‘Joel has been called away to deal with some urgent business down Portsmouth way, and you’re to go to Zurich instead of him.’
‘Me?’ Roberta choked. ‘But I don’t have the authority to sign deals for Maclaines!’
‘You aren’t to sign anything,’ Mitzy informed her. ‘Just stall them until Joel can get there in a couple of days’ time.’
‘But that’s crazy logic!’ Roberta protested. ‘Franc Brunner was already turning shy on Friday afternoon. If we don’t strike while the iron is hot we may lose the deal altogether.’
Mitzy just shrugged, as if that wasn’t her problem, and picked up a bulky file which she held out to Roberta. ‘This is for you,’ she said. ‘Everything to do with Brunner’s is in it. Joel said you’ve to take it with you and sift through it with a fine-tooth comb, looking for loopholes, then use them as stalling fodder until he can get there. He reckons that Franc Brunner is pulling a fast one in the hopes of getting more money from us, and Joel is just not going to play.’
At last! Roberta thought with a deep sense of relief. At last Joel has seen the light of day!
‘Brunner, he said to remind you,’ Mitzy continued, ‘needs us more than we need him. So a bit of cold shoulder from us right now may help remind the crafty old devil of that. So I’m to put today’s meeting with Brunner back until tomorrow morning and you’re booked on the lunchtime flight out of Heathrow to Zurich today, so you’ve got the rest of today to go through that lot.’ She pointed at the file while ignoring Roberta’s blank-eyed consternation. ‘There’s a hotel room already booked in the company name,’ she went on briskly, naming one of the top international hotels, ‘and you’re going to have to hop to it if you want to go home and pack a bag before you catch that flight.’
‘When did Joel organise all of this?’ she asked in a bewildered voice.
‘This morning,’ Mitzy said, adding drily, ‘Very early this morning—when he chased me out of bed and had me in here at six-thirty, no less, and I am not amused!’
‘No,’ Roberta murmured thoughtfully, ‘I can see you’re not. If he had to inconvenience one of us, then why didn’t he have me dragged out of bed, since I seem to be the one all these orders are being thrown at?’
Mitzy just shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me to explain how his mind works,’ she sniped. ‘All I know is that, by the time I got in here, he was already running around like a demented fly. And all of that—’ she pointed to the file again ‘—was already compiled and waiting for you.’
‘So, what’s happened at Portsmouth?’ Roberta then enquired, remembering Joel’s dinner with Lou Sales last night.
‘Apparently Mr Sales has an engineering problem,’ Mitzy explained. ‘So Joel has gone down there to help sort it out. Which leaves me,’ she then added complainingly, ‘running this department all by myself!’
* * *
Well, perhaps it was for the best, Roberta decided as she waited to board her flight at Heathrow Airport. Falling out with Joel as well as Mac would do her no good in the end. She did, after all, have to work closely with him. And he was a good boss to work for most of the time. It was only where their relationship overlapped from business into the personal that things got complicated, and perhaps, from now on, she should make sure that it didn’t happen again.
Perhaps you should have applied the same piece of advice to the company chairman! she then told herself grimly. Then you wouldn’t be feeling as rotten as you’re feeling right now. Which, again, probably made Zurich the best place she could be for the next few days—if only because it placed her beyond temptation where Mac was concerned. At least in Zurich she couldn’t, even if she wanted to, weaken her resolve and see him.
Mac...she thought wistfully then, ruining all her good common-sense thinking by drifting off into a world dominated by the man. A man who exuded power and a menacing sexuality wherever he was or whatever situation he was in. Like in his office on the floor above her own, just sitting behind his big red leather-inlaid desk, he managed to ooze enough charisma to charge her up sexually. Or walking out of the bathroom at his Chelsea flat after an invigorating shower, so utterly at ease with his own nakedness that he would have the gall to grin at her wide-eyed, hungry stare because he knew what his nakedness did to her.
Arrogant devil, she thought now, but yearningly. Dressed or undressed he was one vibrantly sexy man. He even looked great in tennis whites, hard muscles rippling as he played with a power-house accuracy which showed how easily he could have taken the game up professionally with a little encouragement from his parents; he was that good.
But they hadn’t encouraged him, and that grim conversation they had once shared in the darkness of their bedroom one night came back to remind her. A night when they had made love with no interruptions to spoil the beauty of it, when she had listened to him talk, her body curled closely into his while he told her about himself, about his ambitions, his regrets, his secret dreams.
She had been so sure that he was coming to love her then; why else would he have opened himself up to her the way he had? The way he had peppered his words with soft, loving kisses and light touches, as though needing to reassure himself that she was there with him in the darkness while he talked, had confirmed as much, his voice quiet and low, telling her things she could have almost sworn he had never told anyone else.
Things about his early years at boarding-school, when he had missed his parents so much that he’d had to learn to channel his energies into something demanding or let the rest of the boys see how pathetically homesick he was. How it had been years later before he discovered that they’d all felt the same way—lost, lonely, vulnerable, rejected. Some had found their succour in hard study, others, like himself, had found it in sport. Not that he had sacrificed his education to it. Luckily, he’d admitted, he hadn’t needed to, since a natural ability to absorb facts and figures had helped him sail through his academic studies with a minimum of effort so that he could sink all of his passion into sport. Rugby, cricket, and above all tennis.
He’d told her of his sense of pride and achievement when he was selected to play for his county—only to have his parents block the chance. Sport, they’d told him, was all well and good in its place. But their eldest son was destined for better things. He was heir to the great Maclaine empire, which meant anything sporty had to take a back seat.
He’d told her how sheer frustration and disappointment had made him rebel then, and she could still feel the way his small grimace had brushed against her cheek when he’d told her how, that summer of his eighteenth birthday, he had reacted by chucking all his sporting equipment into the rubbish bin and refusing point-blank to play again—even for his school. He had gone a little wild after that, not only rebelling against his beloved sport but rebelling against life itself, refusing to conform to anything, and falling into one mad gaffe after another, until the ultimate gaffe had been to make Delia pregnant.
His parents were pleased—her parents were pleased, since their daughter had been behaving no better than he had been behaving. It meant they could slip the reins on their wild children and tug them firmly back into line. Their marriage, he’d heavily confessed, had been a disaster almost from the moment it had begun. They’d both been too young, both had had too many other things in life they would rather be doing than playing house and being parents themselves, when they were still of an age where even the word ‘parent’ was enough to make the
m burn with resentment. Their only saving grace, he’d conceded, was that they had both adored Lulu from the very moment she was born. They had doted on her, her grandparents had doted on her. And if in private he and Delia had fought like cat and dog, in front of Lulu, or their respective parents, they’d behaved like star-crossed lovers, if only to keep hidden from sight the misery that their recklessness had paid them back with.
He had showed no interest in anything sporty for years after that, then one day Joel had arrived at his door with two tennis rackets in his hand and a boyish grin on his face as he’d said, ‘Please, Mac, will you come out and play with me?’
Roberta heard Mac’s fond laughter echo back to her from that dark, special night, full of warm and loving affection for his only brother.
So he had started playing tennis again—against Joel mainly—once again using the game as succour to his feelings, venting all the angry frustrations he had been storing up inside because both he and Delia knew their marriage was on the rocks but neither would make the move to end it because they were both so reluctant to hurt Lulu and disappoint their parents yet again.
Roberta sighed to herself. The unhappiness and frustration Mac had endured through those years had been so palpable as he’d described them that she could still hurt for him now as much as she had done the night he had told her about them.
Then the crunch had come, she recalled. By then, he and Delia were leading virtually separate lives, except for the fact that they still lived in the same house. Mac was being groomed to take over from his father, whose heart condition was already a cause for concern, so he’d found himself working all the hours God sent him in an effort to ease his father’s workload while Delia just did her own thing, unfettered by a husband who really did not care what that thing was so long as she was discreet about it. Then one night he’d come home a day early from a business trip to the States, to find Delia with another man.
