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‘Oh, Mark.’ Deborah pushed her hand briefly into her hair. ‘The last thing I need right now is more hassle.’ Briefly she explained to him what had happened with Ryan, adding, ‘I’m beginning to feel that Ryan regrets promoting me, that…’
‘Since it hasn’t got you into his bed, I imagine he does,’ Mark agreed cynically.
Deborah stared at him.
Ryan’s predilection for brief affairs was of course no secret and she was well aware that had she given him the slightest encouragement he would have had no hesitation in adding her to his list of conquests, but for Mark to imply…
She was too angry and upset to guard her words.
‘What are you trying to say… that the only reason Ryan picked me for this job was to get laid?’
Mark shrugged irritably. ‘Oh, come on, Deborah. You know how Ryan operates.’
The angry contempt in his voice made her face burn. ‘That’s not fair,’ she told him fiercely. ‘I earned that promotion; it had nothing to do with…’
‘With what? The fact that he wants you? Oh, come off it!’ When he saw her face Mark sighed. ‘Look, I’m not saying that you would go to bed with him, but you must have known when he offered you the job what the score was…’
‘He offered me the job on professional merit,’ Deborah insisted, two hot coins of colour still burning her cheeks.
‘Did he?’ Mark questioned bitterly. She couldn’t believe that Mark, Mark of all people, was doing this to her.
‘You’re not being fair,’ she told him angrily now. ‘You’re deliberately trying to undermine me, Mark, to make me feel bad about taking the promotion because you…’
‘Because I what?’ Mark demanded. ‘Because I’m such a bloody failure that I can’t stand the thought of you doing well? Well, if you think I’m lying, Deborah, I suggest you spend a little more time in the general office now and again. Last week the odds were all in favour of Ryan winning out, but it seems that the weekend you spent away with me has lowered his chances.’
‘They’re just jealous,’ Deborah protested. ‘It’s just a typical male way of putting women down, bullying and demeaning them. Everyone knows that I’m living with you; that Ryan doesn’t interest me in that way.’
‘Everyone… does that include Ryan?’
‘Of course it does! Mark, why are you doing this? I’m having a hard enough time trying to cope with the job and Ryan without…’
‘You asked for my opinion,’ Mark reminded her.
* * *
‘Nice one,’ Ryan complimented as they left the Inland Revenue offices. ‘You handled that well.’
‘Thanks.’
Initially Deborah had been very wary when Ryan had asked her to accompany him to a meeting with the Revenue to discuss the tax affairs of one of his private clients. The tax authorities were questioning their client’s interpretation of a certain grey area which had allowed him to take advantage of a tax loophole, and Deborah had been alarmed when Ryan had initially left her to answer the inspector’s questions.
His behaviour towards her had been so erratic these last couple of weeks that she wasn’t sure if she was being offered a chance to prove her competence or thrown to the wolves. Even now, as he smiled approvingly at her, she still wasn’t.
She had tried to push her quarrel with Mark and the things he had said to the back of her mind, to reassure herself that she had simply caught Mark at a bad time, when he was feeling particularly low about his own work, and that he couldn’t possibly have really meant what he had said about the reasons behind her promotion.
Neither of them had referred to their quarrel since, and on the surface Mark seemed to have reverted to his normal calm self.
On the surface?
On the way back to the office Ryan continued to discuss with her the interview with the
Inland Revenue, and by the time she was back at her own desk Deborah was feeling more optimistic. Everyone had a bad spell now and again, she told herself firmly, and Mark was entitled to his just like everyone else. But still deep down inside her there was a small sore place that wouldn’t quite heal over. Mark knew how much she loved him. And he knew how sensitive she was on the issue of being judged professionally only on merit. It had been a subject they had discussed at great length in the days when they were both still training.
It hurt her to have to acknowledge it, but deep down inside herself she suspected that Mark was jealous of her success.
She had discovered that increasingly recently she was having to monitor her conversations with him, to check to make sure she was not saying anything which would draw attention to the progress of her career and the stagnation of his. And when she did talk about it she could almost feel him withdrawing from her.
She had tried to discuss it with him, but somehow the issue had become too sensitive for her to do so. And that hurt as well.
