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‘Like I said, I’d be happy to give you a lift.’
She might have given his well-packed leathers a thorough inspection and found them more than to her liking, but she didn’t know him from Adam. ‘I never accept lifts from strangers,’ she informed him, tilting her chin at what she hoped would pass for an unapproachable angle.
‘Very wise,’ he said, calmly wheeling along at her side.
‘Don’t you ever give up?’
‘Never.’
Her heart was thundering. Why?
She was heading off towards the side entrance and the employee lockers where her gym clothes were stowed, and was looking forward to closing the door on his arrogant face…right up to the moment when he gunned the engine and rode away.
She stared after the streak of black lightning until it disappeared at the end of the road, feeling…wistful.
Well, she’d blown it, so it was no use crying over lost opportunities now.
Had there been something special about him—an instant connection between them? Or was that the wanderings of an exhausted mind?
Far more likely, Magenta decided. The biker could have insisted on fixing her tyre if he’d really wanted to.
Whatever happened to chivalry? Women like her, Magenta concluded, women who accepted equality as their right and who scowled if a man so much as offered to open a door for them.
Having retrieved her gym clothes from her locker, she threw them on, together with a warm jacket and a scarf. Returning to her car, she lifted the cover concealing the spare…
No spare!
She stared in disbelief at the empty space, and then remembered her father saying something about a puncture a few months back. They had matching cars, which at one time Magenta had thought cute. Not today; her father must have told the mechanics to help themselves to her spare and had forgotten to ask them to replace it.
It was her own fault for not checking.
The business was falling down around her ears, she might not even have a job after Christmas and she was crying over a flat tyre. Pressing back against the car, she shut her eyes, waiting for the tears to stop threatening. Finally, having convinced herself it was no use worrying about something she couldn’t change, she decided to go inside, get warm and call a cab. Or she could always catch the underground; there was a tube station near her house.
And here came the security guard. Hurrying over to him, Magenta explained she would call someone to come and rescue her car.
When she returned to the office her father was ready to leave, to sign the deal to sell his shares.
‘I thought you’d gone,’ Clifford Steele complained, checking the angle of his silk tie. ‘No family members muddying the water until this new man has settled in and I have his money in the bank—those are the rules.’
‘And I was obeying them. I was just loading up the car when I discovered I had a flat. And guess what?’ Magenta added dryly. ‘I don’t have a spare.’
‘Call a cab,’ her father advised without a flicker of remorse. ‘Can’t stay,’ he added, wrapping a cashmere muffler around his neck. ‘I’m off to sign the final papers. Just make sure you’re out of here in case Quinn decides to come and take a look at his latest acquisition.’
She heard the note of resentment in her father’s voice and kissed his cheek. It couldn’t be easy selling out to a younger, more successful man. Clifford Steele might be high-handed, and his extravagance might have brought the company to its knees, but he was her father and she loved him and would do nothing to risk his comfortable retirement. It was up to her to sort the mess out now in an attempt to try and save her colleagues’ jobs.
If the new owner allowed her to.
Gray Quinn might not keep her on, Magenta realised anxiously. Thanks to her father’s outdated belief that men ran businesses while bricks and mortar provided better security for a woman, she owned the building but not a single voting-share.
‘As you’re still here, make yourself useful,’ her father instructed. ‘I’m sure the men would like a cup of coffee before you go. So you’re a senior account exec,’ he added with impatience when he saw her face. ‘But no one makes a cup of coffee like—’
‘A well-trained woman?’ Magenta suggested, tongue-in-cheek.
‘Like you, I was about to say. You work too hard, Magenta, and you take yourself far too seriously. Stress isn’t good for a woman your age,’ her father commented in his usual tactful manner. ‘If you’re not careful it will give you wrinkles. You should take a break—get a decent night’s sleep.’
‘Yes, Dad.’ Her father might have stepped straight out of their sixties campaign, when men had a high opinion of themselves and women were still working out how to let them down lightly, Magenta mused wryly. ‘That’s just the way it is’, her father was fond of telling her whenever she complained he was a dinosaur. ‘That’s just the way you are’, she always amended fondly.
