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Nora snatched it up, glaring at the two photographs of the half-clad couple under the splashy headline. In the larger picture the woman locked in Blake MacLeod’s embrace in the doorway of his beach house could have been anyone, but the smaller inset showed the moment the kiss had broken off and Nora’s back was no longer to the camera, her face clearly identifiable. No, not camera, she thought furiously—cell-phone. The furious Hayley had had the last word after all. She must have taken the photos with her phone, and now the PXTs were in the public arena.
Nora scanned the copy with rising ire. The story was heavy on conjecture and light on facts, concerned mainly with drooling over Blake’s reputed past bedding of several celebrities and how close-mouthed he generally was about his affairs. But it did identify Nora by name—oh, why had she foolishly introduced herself to Hayley?—and a little journalistic rummaging had mis-identified her as a stock analyst for Maitlands and threw up the connection between the company she worked for and TranStar.
‘This is all total rubbish!’ she declared, flinging it back down on Ruben’s desk.
‘Yes, well, unfortunately one of our employees brought it to the notice of management and all hell has broken loose,’ he said. ‘And someone has confirmed that you and MacLeod did spend that weekend away together, including the Friday you were supposedly home sick…’
Nora’s heart plummeted. Kelly! Or Ryan. Or both of them. She, who had never made an enemy before, suddenly seemed to be besieged with influential foes!
‘But they’re saying I might have passed on inside information! That’s just ridiculous—I didn’t know anything about the takeover to pass on,’ Nora cried.
‘I know, but with your security clearance you have access to a lot of sensitive stuff, and maybe you didn’t even realise what he was doing. You know, you’re way too trusting, Nora. Do you really think he’s just interested in you…?’ Ruben probably thought he was being supportive; he didn’t even realise how insulting he was being, to Nora as well as to Blake.
‘Don’t I get a hearing first? What if I refuse to accept this suspension?’ she said angrily.
But no amount of argument could budge her boss.
‘Nora, under the terms of your contract, I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.’ Ruben was beginning to looked alarmed by her unaccustomed fierceness. ‘If you’ll hand in your keycard and your laptop, I’ll get a member of the security staff to escort you out.’
A short time later Nora stood in front of the towering PresCorp building on the fringe of the city’s wharf district, buffeted by a stream of lunch-time workers exiting the building. She had not only burnt her bridges, she feared she had set fire to her entire transport system with her explosion of outrage.
She shouldered her capacious bag—the one which had been searched by security before she left Maitlands—and stalked across the marble foyer to the information desk.
‘Where do I find Mr MacLeod’s office?’ she asked the bored-looking man who was signing for a delivery.
‘Executive suite’s on the seventeenth floor,’ he informed her, without looking up from the clipboard. ‘Take the lift over there to the tenth-floor lobby, turn left and follow the signs. The executive lift will take you the rest of the way.’
Nora was so busy stewing over what she was going to say if and when she got in to see Blake, that it was only as she was stepping out on the seventeenth floor that she realised that ‘executive lift’ had been a euphemism for one of the fashionable glass-sided monstrosities, and that she had ridden up looking out over the city without even registering the fact. Smoothing down her navy skirt and making sure her fuchsia blouse was tucked in, she approached the executive receptionist, who exhibited the polished sympathy of a hardened professional as she listened to Nora’s request for a personal meeting with the most sought after man in the building.
She obviously didn’t read the tabloids because, before Nora had even finished speaking, she launched into her stonewalling routine.
‘Hi, there! Here to see Blake?’
Nora turned and for a moment didn’t connect the smooth-faced young man in the Hugo Boss suit with the bristly, bronzed surfer.
‘Oh, hello, Steve. Have you started your internship already? That was fast work.’
He grinned. ‘I got suspended from school for smoking and persuaded Blake to take me on early. You might say we exchanged favours. He rang me down at the beach last Tuesday afternoon, foaming at the mouth about his TVR being in a ditch somewhere up in the hills and asking me if I would ride back to town with the mechanic to make sure he didn’t treat her too harshly.’
Nora blushed. ‘Oh, dear. Did he say how it happened?’
‘Funny thing, he never did. He was as touchy as hell about it!’ Steve gave her a familiar wink that suggested he knew more than he was telling. He was definitely a tabloid reader! ‘Hey, you want me to take you along to his office?’
The receptionist intervened with stern talk of back-to-back appointments, but the upshot of his friendly interference was that she eventually conducted Nora into a spacious office with a huge picture window that looked out over the glittering Waitemata Harbour.
Her stomach lurched, not at the sight of the bobbing ferries docked far below, but at the wizened sprite of a man with a thick shock of white hair who was seated behind the huge wooden desk in front of the window. A man whose portrait hung prominently in the waiting area.
‘I think there must be some mistake—’ She started backing out.
‘No, no!’ Sir Prescott Williams leapt to his feet. ‘When Sandra said you were waiting for Blake I told her to bring you in here. Wanted to meet you.’ He limped around the desk, his dark suit jacket flapping open, and seized Nora’s hand, shaking it with a vigour that made her teeth rattle. ‘Prescott Williams—you can call me Scotty—Blake always does. It’s Nora, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Sit down! Sit down!’ He led her over to a buttoned leather couch and urged her into it, standing over her, rocking on his heels, brows beetling over his black-button eyes. ‘I can get Sandra to bring some tea, if you like. Or what do you say we both have a real drink? Sun well over the yard-arm and all that!’ He sprang across the room and whipped open a bulging drinks cabinet, rubbing his hands together as he looked over his shoulder at her. ‘Join me in a whisky? Or do you prefer that rot-gut vodka that Blake drinks?’ He spun around, his face creasing with sudden inspiration. ‘Or we could open a bottle of champagne—make a proper toast.’
The thought of vodka made Nora feel green, and why she would want to toast the smoking ruins of her career and reputation was beyond her. She decided to try to assert some ownership of the situation. ‘Sir Prescott, I don’t know what you’ve read in the papers, but—’
‘Oh, no need to worry about the papers.’ He waved a knobbly blue-veined hand in contempt. ‘Blake has all that well in hand. Told me the whole story. Silly girl Hayley got the wrong end of the stick! Typical—not the sharpest tool in the box! Whisky, was it you said you wanted?’ He clinked the glass hopefully and Nora knew that if she didn’t say yes he would gallantly refuse to have one himself.
