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‘Ooh.’ He turned to his friends to pull a mocking face. ‘What got into your bed this morning, Miss Steele?’
‘No one?’ another man suggested, to raucous jeers.
‘We all know what’s wrong with you, ice maiden.’
‘Cut it out!’ Magenta said angrily. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
‘Apparently, you never are,’ one of the men murmured to his colleagues in a stage whisper.
As if that were the cue for the main player to enter the scene, the double doors at the far end of the office swung open and every head swivelled in that direction. Some of the women even stood at their desks as if royalty was about to enter the room. To say Magenta was stunned by this reaction wouldn’t even come close. ‘What the…?’
‘Quinn,’ Nancy told her tensely, hurrying away.
Magenta turned to say something to Nancy, but everyone including Nancy had returned to work the second Quinn arrived. And Quinn didn’t just arrive—he strode across the floor like a conquering hero. To make matters worse, all the women were giving him simpering glances when what he needed, in Magenta’s opinion, was a short, sharp, shock and someone to stand up to him. Whatever dream state they were both trapped in, this was getting out of hand.
But could this really be Quinn? Magenta’s head was reeling. Quinn in the sixties was none other than the gorgeous biker, in a jauntily angled Trilby hat and a dark overcoat that, instead of making him look silly, only succeeded in making him look like the master of the sexual universe.
‘Magenta,’ he said curtly, shrugging the coat off his shoulder and handing it to her along with his hat.
He knew her?
‘That’s a better look for you,’ he said, giving Magenta the most intrusive inspection yet. ‘I like to see a woman in a dress with some shape to it.’
What?
‘Keep it up,’ he said approvingly. ‘And remember, I expect the same high standards from my staff at all times—’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said smartly, playing along, which was all she could do—other than acknowledge Quinn was a beyond the pale chauvinist—as well as the best-looking man she had ever seen in her life. With his tough-guy body clothed in a sharply tailored dark suit and impeccably knotted tie, he looked amazing.
‘I’ll need you for a meeting later,’ he said, as though they had been working together for ever. There was not a shred of equality between them, Magenta registered with a spear of concern.
‘So no gossiping with the other girls in the kitchen when you’re supposed to be making my coffee,’ Quinn warned.
Would that be the coffee with the extra-strong laxative in it? Magenta wondered.
‘And absolutely no lunch break for any of you girls. You’ll have a lot of work to get through by the time I finish the meeting I’m going into now—understood?’
Actually, no, I’m a bit confused. Magenta thought Quinn had called a meeting to discuss her position with the company going forward, but perhaps that directive hadn’t made it through to the sixties. She decided to prompt him, if only to find out how much had travelled with her in the dream. ‘So, you’re having another meeting first?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Quinn demanded impatiently.
‘Another meeting before our meeting…?’
Quinn had no worries about touching Magenta. Taking hold of her shoulder in a firm grip, he steered her into an alcove out of sight of the rest of the office. ‘Not in front of everyone, Magenta…’ And then his eyes warmed in a way that made her heart stop. ‘Later, maybe—if I have the time.’
Magenta’s mouth formed a question, but she was so stunned by Quinn’s brazenly sexual behaviour her voice refused to function, and when she did speak it was only to ask Quinn what he wanted her to do with his hat and coat.
‘Why, hang it up, of course,’ he said as if she were one card short of a pack. ‘And when you’ve done that I’ll need plenty of coffee—hot, strong and black. Oh, and when you come into the meeting later, don’t forget your shorthand notebook.’
‘My—?’
‘You’re the office manager now, Magenta—that’s quite a promotion for you. You’ll have to sharpen up if you want to set the seal on this position.’
She’d set something in concrete—the deeds of the building, perhaps, before she dropped them from a great height on Quinn’s head…
But someone else owned the building now, she remembered, biting her lip. Steele Design had been called Style Design when her father had bought it. She had no stake at all here.
