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‘It was a vicious circle…feeling guilty for wanting you, watching you, wanting you even more…feeling even guiltier. Waiting, plotting, planning for the most auspicious time to edge a little closer without frightening the timid prey into taking flight…only to have you suddenly take off in my face and buzz around in and out of my reach like a demented honey-bee.’
He put a finger on the lower lip of her gaping mouth and held it open, so that he could sip the sweet nectar there. ‘And then,’ he said huskily, ‘when I finally had you exactly where I wanted you—then you wanted to treat me like a casual fling!’
There was a knock at the door and he turned his head to yell hoarsely, ‘Open that door, whoever you are, and you’re fired!’
The door opened instantly, and Susan Jerome marched briskly in, leaving the door swinging wide behind her. In the outer office a group of suited executives did a violent double take at the sight of their dishevelled chairman sprawled on his office couch with an equally rumpled companion.
‘Marcus! Don’t tell me you still can’t keep your hands off the girl!’ his mother-in-law thundered. ‘Can’t you at least exercise some self-restraint? If this is the way you two carry on when you’re alone together I’m surprised that either of you manages to get any work done at all!’
The censorious outburst, bristling with outraged italics, was thoroughly justified. This time there was absolutely no doubt as to what she had interrupted.
Marcus flopped back on the couch with a loud groan, placing his arm across his eyes, while Harriet hurriedly scrambled off, buttoning her shirt and trying to find the shoes that had dropped off her feet. When the group of young executives riveted outside the door fanned back to their various departments the gossip would spread through the building like wildfire. All she could think of was the damage that this would do to Marcus’s reputation, and how much he would hate being the subject of cheap jokes amongst his employees…especially blonde jokes!
‘Mrs Jerome—uh—I know you’ll want to be the first to officially congratulate us!’ she said loudly, tucking her shirt back into her skirt. There was a strangled sound from the couch behind her, but Harriet held her head high under the bullet-grey stare. She didn’t want Marcus to lose his mother-in-law’s respect either. ‘Marcus and I have just become engaged,’ she said in ringing tones.
At that moment Clare Broadbent leaned apologetically into the room and hurriedly pulled the door closed, shutting out their avid audience.
‘I’m afraid that we got carried away in the heat of the moment,’ Harriet said unblushingly to Susan Jerome in her normal voice. ‘I’m sure, given the special circumstances, you can understand—’
‘Of course she can, darling.’ Marcus’s arms came sliding around her waist, pulling her back hard against his supporting body. ‘She remembers what it was like to be in love, don’t you, Susan?’
The answer was a stiff ‘harrumph’!
‘Thank you for springing to my protection so recklessly, by the way, darling,’ Marcus murmured into the blonde curls at the back of Harriet’s head. ‘I’m very flattered, and delighted to accept your very proper proposal. By way of a thank-you I hope you’ll accept this wildly extravagant token of my undying respect…’
Harriet looked down as his hands fumbled at her waist and saw that he was opening a small velvet box. She gasped when she saw the blaze of diamonds inside. He stepped around in front of her and picked up her left hand, kissing it before sliding the ring on her finger.
She looked nervously at Susan Jerome, but to her surprise the woman was smiling at them rather sentimentally.
‘Marcus! You know I only said that because it was the first respectable explanation I could think of on the spur of the moment,’ she hissed at him.
‘A meeting of minds, darling,’ he agreed, preventing her frantic efforts to remove the ring by the simple expedient of interweaving his fingers with hers. Her protest died in wonder at the expression in his eyes: no restraint, no holding back, just sheer, blue, laughing joy.
‘You only pre-empted me by a few minutes,’ he informed her. ‘I love you, Harriet, and if you think I’m letting you wriggle out of this one after the wild dance you’ve led me you can think again. Susan is here to help with the wedding arrangements, aren’t you, Susan?’
‘I told you on the phone I would,’ came the tart reply. ‘Although it should be a church. I don’t approve of this register office business.’
‘Ah, well, there could be a bit of a rush, you see, Susan. I think my fiancée might have another little announcement to make…’
Harriet, who had been dazed by the realisation that Marcus had already discussed marrying her with his mother-in-law, looked at him, doubt splintering her happiness. ‘You knew about the baby?’ she faltered.
‘Not knew…hoped,’ he said gravely. ‘That’s what you are to me, Harriet…all my hopes and my dreams for the future.’
And while he kissed her shocked italics richocheted around the room. ‘The poor girl is pregnant? Marcus, how could you? Well, that settles it; it’s the register office first thing in the morning!’
CHAPTER TEN
MARCUS FOX stood in his nineteenth-floor office, looking down with a wry twist to his mouth at the tawny blonde in the short black swing-coat cutting a swathe through the afternoon lunch crowd in Aotea Square. Causing chaos and proud of it, he thought with humorous resignation, watching the heads whip round to follow her progress across the square.
He bent his eye to the telescope in front of him and brought her into focus. She walked with a jaunty, confident stride, swaying provocatively on her high heels, her hair flirting about her shoulders with every step, the multicoloured, sun-streaked strands such a perfect blending of the most sought-after shades that it couldn’t possibly be natural.
She was gathering stares all right, but most of them were for the three miniature versions of herself whom she had in tow. They stretched out to the side of her, joined hand in hand like a string of identical paper-cutout dolls, in their little black coats and patent leather shoes and baby-fair curls.
Marcus had time to sign several letters and dictate a memo before the door to his office flew open and the tribe burst in.
‘Darling!’ Harriet threw her arms wide in greeting and Marcus’s eyebrows lifted as the buttonless black coat split open and revealed a new fire-engine-red dress. It buttoned down the front and was short and fashionably tight over her rounded breasts and slim hips, and he could feel his loins tighten involuntarily and his mouth go dry.
He swallowed and averted his eyes and saw Nicola, an elegant young lady with a sleek chignon and a power suit, as befitted a junior executive and heir to a business empire. She had strolled in behind Harriet, in time to catch his reaction, and she rolled her eyes and grinned wickedly at his expression.
