AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘It was awful, wasn’t it?’ he groaned as Kalera hesitated, searching for a tactful way to describe the scene. ‘I know I should have insisted on being there when you t
old him—’
She shuddered at the thought. ‘That would only have made things worse. Anyway, you’re so much persona non grata at Labryinth that you wouldn’t have got through the front door. The security guards have your photo.’
‘Really? I didn’t know that.’
Kalera bit her lip at the slip and he quirked an understanding eyebrow. ‘Don’t worry, the same kind of precautionary measures apply at InfoTech, except we have Royal’s face pasted to our games-room dartboard. You can tell him if you like.’
She could just imagine how that tidbit of information would be received. It would merely prove to Duncan that she had lied when she said that she and Stephen never discussed any aspect of their work, let alone anything that would compromise professional ethics on either side. She felt a small spurt of annoyance at the amusement on her fiancé’s face. There was nothing funny about departing a job she loved with a cloud over her honour.
‘No, thanks, I’m in enough trouble as it is.’
He caught the edge in her voice and smoothly adjusted his expression to one of remorseful concern. ‘I’m sorry, darling; I know how difficult this has been for you.’ He frowned. ‘Are you saying he threatened you?’
He sounded so incredulous that Kalera’s bruised sense of humour was warmed back to life by his effort to soothe her wounded sensibilities.
‘We are talking about Duncan Royal,’ she pointed out with a dry chuckle. ‘Of course he threatened me.’
Stephen didn’t share the joke. ‘I mean physically. I know how terrifying he can be in one of his rages. When we were at school he used to have the most frightful fits—that was one reason he was never made a prefect in spite of his brilliant academic record—he was simply considered too unstable. And then at university—well, he had a reputation for creating mayhem wherever he went…’
‘I knew you were briefly in partnership with him a few years ago, but I didn’t realise that your acquaintanceship went right back to your childhood,’ said Kalera slowly, aware of a slight sense of unease as it suddenly occurred to her that in spite of the illusion of intimacy created by their secret courtship she still had an awful lot to learn about the man she had promised to marry—and vice versa.
‘We both had parents who were fixated on their sons attending the “right school” and since our fathers were Old Boys who had boarded together it was fairly inevitable that we ended up in the same college.’ Stephen shrugged dismissively. ‘He was an arrogant bastard right from the third form—probably would have been expelled several times over if his father hadn’t been a leading QC and a heavy donator to school funds. As a senior his temper even terrorised the teachers.’
‘I suppose I must have become desensitised to him over the years,’ Kalera murmured, thinking that her own family background had been the perfect training ground for coping with Duncan Royal’s lightning-bursts of emotion. ‘Even when he’s yelling blue murder and throwing furniture—like he was this morning—I’ve never actually been scared of him….’
Stephen leaned forward, his wheat-blond hair burnishing his frowning forehead. ‘What exactly was he yelling at you?’
Kalera’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘You mean before or after he fired me?’
He looked suitably grave, but unsurprised. ‘I’m sorry, darling—I did warn you that was probably what would happen. But at least you don’t have to worry about being out of work. Even if he gets nasty and refuses you a reference, you know you can walk into a job at InfoTech tomorrow if you like—all you have to do is say the word…’
However fondly couched, ‘I told you so’ was still the most aggravating phrase in the English language, decided Kalera, her irritation tempered by the knowledge that Stephen wouldn’t be feeling quite so smug by the time she finished her story.
‘I did try to lead up to it delicately, but as soon as I mentioned your name he fired me on the spot,’ she admitted. ‘Then he called up Security and got two beefy guards to escort me out of the building. He wouldn’t even let me go back to my desk to get my things—’
Her mortification at her treatment was evident in her face as she remembered how it had felt to be marched off the premises like a common criminal.
Stephen’s eyes blazed with sympathy. ‘The bastard! But you’d already formally handed in your written resignation, right? You’re not going to let him get away with putting it around that you were fired—’
‘He won’t,’ she said, flattered by the unexpected heat of his anger. Sometimes she had worried that Stephen was a little too cool and self-restrained, even though it was those qualities about him which she had initially found so appealing. ‘Because he changed his mind before I even got out of the building. He rescinded the firing and demanded I work my notice after all.’
‘He what?’ Stephen collapsed back in his seat, looking thunderstruck.
Kalera didn’t blame him. The swift volte-face had been totally out of character. One of the strengths of Duncan’s charismatic leadership was his ability to make instant decisions based on pure gut instinct, and so rarely did his instincts fail him that he had established a reputation for never failing to act on a snap decision.
‘The guards had taken me as far as the front door and were about to fling me out into the snow when Duncan came racing across the foyer and ripped me out of their hands. He told them he’d made a mistake and then he dragged me back up to his office and locked me in.’
‘He did what?’ Stephen’s smooth baritone rose sharply and Kalera regretted her flippancy when she noticed the covert glances they were receiving from the surrounding tables.
Stephen noticed too and abruptly lowered his voice. ‘My God, he actually locked you in the office with him?’
He looked appalled but there was a tiny thread of speculation in his voice that for no reason at all made Kalera’s whole body flush with heat. She felt the colour rise in her face and suddenly wished her hair weren’t so long and straight that it flowed like water down the middle of her back instead of drifting in handy thickets around her face. Her wispy blonde fringe provided little concealment for her pink cheeks.
‘Not him. Just me,’ she hastened to explain. ‘He pushed me in and locked the door, and then he took off somewhere—to cool down, so he said…’
‘He kept you prisoner!’ Stephen’s raw shock made it sound as if she had been chained to a dungeon wall and flogged. ‘For how long?’
