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‘The hell you do! You can stuff your job. I quit!’ she screamed. She turned and would have run for the door, except he caught her by the elbow in a punishing grip and wrenched her back around.
‘Oh, no, you can’t run away from this one. This is nothing to do with position or power. I don’t have to control your sex life, Harriet, and do you know why?’ He gave her a little shake. ‘Because I am your sex life. The only lover you’ve had since that cretinous fiancé dumped you is me! On New Year’s Eve!’
There was a strange buzzing in her ears and Harriet’s mouth went completely dry. ‘What do you mean?’ she whispered. ‘My God, what are you saying?’
He tempered his anger, his grip changing to one more supportive than imprisoning, but his voice was still implacably grim. ‘I mean, my dear, that, while you don’t seem to remember anything much about the staff party on New Year’s Eve, my memory of what happened between us is somewhat more lucid.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about…’ Harriet said faintly, the blood draining out of her face.
He caught her other arm as she swayed, gently turning her in the direction of a long, low-backed leather couch. ‘I know; that’s the one redeeming feature of this whole ridiculous mess. At least you haven’t been consciously trying to drive me insane. Come and sit down…’
She stiffened in resistance, clutching at his arm. ‘No, tell me now,’ she ordered wildly. ‘I need to know now…’
‘You need to sit down before you fall down.’ He let go of her experimentally and her knees sagged. ‘See?’ he said, straightening her up again and urging her across the thick carpet. ‘I’m not going to say anything else until you’re safely sitting down.’
‘You always have to control things…’ she complained vaguely, concentrating her woolly mind on placing one foot in front of the other. Finally she could sink into the fat leather cushions and the horrid floating sensation turned into one of leaden dread.
He sat down beside her, chafing her icy hands.
‘Only because I know there are so many other things that are completely out of my control. Like you totally blotting out what happened on New Year’s Eve. You were very resistant whenever I tried to bring the subject up, but perhaps you’ll tell me now—what do you remember about that party?’
She couldn’t look at him. She looked down at her feet instead—plain black shoes set primly together. ‘Nothing. I got sick. I went to sleep in one of the offices,’ she recited as if by rote. ‘Then I woke up and went home.’
‘Succinct but hardly comprehensive,’ he said gruffly, his chafing movements slowing. ‘The office you chose to sleep in was mine. You were there when I staggered in from the airport. I’d spent the previous five days crisscrossing the world, flying to various meetings in Europe, the States and Asia—a pretty arduous schedule even for someone with my energy levels—and I’d had a glass or two of what I thought was innocuous punch on the way up, so by the time I saw the little brown mouse curled up on my couch I was feeling somewhat disorientated…’
He paused for so long that Harriet was forced to look at him. He was waiting for her, his face harsh and unyielding, his blue eyes steely with intent.
‘I hadn’t turned the lights on and I don’t think you really realised who I was when you woke up—not at first, anyway, and by the time you did it didn’t matter. The details are a bit blurry because I was as close to drunk as I’ve ever been, but I remember you talking about what your fiancé had done to you and you were crying, so I lay down beside you and put my arms around you. You seemed so small and delicate and helpless, so unlike the brisk, capable Miss Smith that I had always thought could cope with anything…’
His even delivery faltered and he looked uncomfortable and, yes, faintly ashamed. ‘You were soft and trembling, you wanted to be comforted, and the comforting turned to kissing and the kissing to touching and you were so warm and so eager that one thing led to another—’
‘“One thing led to another”?’ Her nails curved into her palms. His words painted a picture of her practically seducing him. She would never have dared do anything like that, surely, no matter how drunk or delirious she had been? Not the mousy, conventional little thing she had then been, not with the cool and aloof Marcus Fox…in his office, for goodness’ sake!
‘We made love, Harriet.’ When he saw her eyes darken in instant rejection he abandoned the pretty euphemism and elaborated, ‘And yes, it was full sexual intercourse. We both had an orgasm.’
The raw, uncompromising statement was like a slap in the face. Harriet felt her cheeks sting and pulled her hands away from his to press them over the mortified flesh. She felt blistered all over with embarrassment. Suddenly it seemed all too horribly possible, especially when she thought about her recent sense of unease whenever she visited Marcus’s office, her acute awareness of him, the disturbingly erotic dreams she had been having in the last few months…
‘Afterwards you fell asleep again and I slipped out to make sure Security was tracking down the idiot who spiked the punch, and helping everyone get home. When I got back you were gone.’
‘Why didn’t you say something later?’ she cried.
‘I did try, but you seemed to have no idea what I was talking about. It was pretty obvious that as far as you were concerned it never happened—’
‘Maybe it didn’t,’ she said desperately.
Pride hardened into hauteur on the stern face. ‘Why would I lie? Believe me, it’s not something I’m very proud of—taking sexual advantage of a woman who was to all intents and purposes helpless.’ He stretched an arm along the back of the couch behind Harriet’s platinum head, causing the top of his robe to gape further. ‘The only redeeming feature is that at least we gave each other pleasure. I remember it was deliciously slow and sweet—a sort of innocent fumbling in the dark, almost as if we were both virgins—’
‘I don’t want to know!’ She clapped her hands from her cheeks to her ears, but she could still hear his awful revelations.
‘You can see what a dilemma I was in. Did I press the issue and possibly cause you more trauma, or leave you in blissful ignorance? A psychiatrist friend of mind said that if you genuinely had no recollection or you’d subconsciously blanked it out then I’d be better to let sleeping dogs lie…unless you started showing aberrant behaviour that could possibly be attributed to resurfacing memory—’
‘You consulted a psychiatrist?’ Harriet squeaked.
‘Only very informally…I never mentioned your name,’ he said gravely, absently winding one of her curls around his finger. ‘I was worried about you. I could see that you were in something of an emotionally fragile state. I felt I owed it to you to establish some kind of watching brief over you.’
Harriet sat straighter, so that her curls slipped beyond the reach of his toying hand.
‘Watching brief?’ Something occurred to her that made every cell in her body cringe. ‘I suppose you mean this whole business about Nicola’s job and me taking her under my wing was another one of your set-ups?’ she said hoarsely.
