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‘Hmm, sounds like a bad case of Porsche-envy to me, Marcus,’ she murmured provocatively, and he gave her a crushing look.
‘I don’t happen to subscribe to the myth that a car is a sexual metaphor. If I cared to own one of these I would; however, I happen to think that it’s an exercise in pointlessness having so much horsepower lying idle under the bonnet when the maximum speed limit around town is fifty kilometres an hour—’
‘Harriet went a bit faster than that, though, didn’t you, Harriet? She almost got a speeding ticket, but the policeman who stopped us was very nice; he let her off with a warning.’
Harriet had time to wish that Nicola were a little less honest in her excitement as Marcus’s head went up with a jerk, his deep voice echoing around the concrete walls.
‘She what?’
If the roof to the car park had been any lower he would have hit it literally, as well as figuratively.
‘I just let it surge a little bit at the wrong moment,’ she admitted. ‘The officer was very understanding when I explained that I was still getting used to the gears.’
‘I’ll bet he was,’ growled Marcus out of the stern corner of his mouth, his eyes flicking over her bare arms and legs. ‘He must have wondered who was more out of control—you or the Porsche.’
‘At no time were we in any danger,’ Harriet responded hotly. ‘You know I wouldn’t have driven carelessly with Nicola in the car.’
‘Not even to show off a little?’
She bristled with disdain. ‘When you drive a Porsche you don’t have to show off. That’s the whole point of owning one.’
He surprised her with a bark of genuine laughter. ‘True. And yes, I do know that, however reckless you might seem, your conscience would never let you put anyone else’s life at risk.’
She was sure that there was something in the comment that she should object to but as she turned it over in her mind he asked, ‘So how much did you pay for this showy little piece?’
‘None of your business,’ said Harriet, at the same moment as Nicola piped up with the answer.
The black eyebrows shot up and Harriet smirked. ‘Got a good deal, didn’t I?’
‘If you’d told me you were on the market for a new car, I could have negotiated one more cheaply through the dealer who handles our fleet cars.’
This time it was her blood pressure which shot up. ‘I wasn’t “on the market”,’ she said. ‘I just bought it on impulse.’
‘On impulse,’ he repeated.
‘Yes.’ She flashed him her teeth. ‘You do know what that is, don’t you, Marcus? An action that’s not tiresomely planned and/or had all the fun negotiated out of it!’
‘Yes, I do know what an impulse is. It’s stealing the chairman’s reserved car-park space out from under his nose. Move it, Harriet, or I’ll call the building supervisor and have it towed away.’
Genuinely shocked, Harriet spread her hands protectively over her car’s gleaming paintwork. ‘You wouldn’t! Not a Porsche!’
‘A Porsche is just another car as far as I’m concerned. And do you remember what I told you, Harriet,’ he added silkily, ‘about issuing dares?’
She remembered everything about that night. Harriet tried to look unconcerned. ‘All right; it was only a joke anyway. I knew it was your car behind me.’
‘I did manage to figure that out,’ he said drily, and turned to his daughter. ‘What made you decide to eat extra early today? I was surprised to go down to Filing and find you’d both already gone. I was going to take you out to lunch.’
Nicola’s small face registered her disappointment. ‘I didn’t know. But…you took us out yesterday and Harriet said there was no way you’d be free two days in a row…’
‘Did she indeed?’ The cool blue eyes looked amused, as if he knew that the sole reason why she had decided they would take an early lunch-break was to avoid just such a recurrence.
Harriet lifted her chin. ‘You told me yourself that your lunchtimes were fully booked up for the next couple of weeks, so naturally I didn’t think that it was even a remote possibility.’
‘My schedule has undergone some rearrangement since then,’ he said smoothly. ‘I find myself with some unexpected free time.’
Harriet felt a flutter of panic. ‘What a pity our lunch-hour is over, then,’ she oozed sweetly. ‘I know what a stickler you are for timekeeping and not wanting Nicola to receive any special treatment just because she’s your daughter. I’ll just shift my car and we’ll be on our way back to the office.’
She took the unsmiling inclination of his head as an indication of acceptance and hurried to carry out her task, wincing as she c
