Promoted: to Wife and Mother

A smile hovered around his mouth as he studied Perdita, her slender figure quivering with annoyance. Even if she hadn’t been banished to a corner on her own, she would have stood out in the room—in any room, he decided.

Although not strictly pretty, she was immaculately groomed, but it wasn’t her looks that drew the eye. Instead, there was a vibrancy about her, a forcefulness of personality that was evident in the generous mouth, the lively planes of her face and the dark, sharp eyes, in the quick gestures and the way she threw back her head and laughed.

‘I saw you in the bar last night,’ he told her. ‘You had the biggest group around you and you were making them all laugh. And this morning, at breakfast, no one was really talking until you came in and sat down. You were the one who broke the ice when they were handing out the questionnaires.’

‘There you are,’ said Perdita, not quite sure whether to be pleased that he had noticed her after all or put out at the faint undercurrent of laughter in his voice that suggested he found her somehow amusing. ‘That proves I’m a dolphin, surely? I was being fun and friendly…those are dolphin characteristics,’ she pointed out.

‘Yes, but a dolphin just likes to play along with everyone else. That’s why they’re all getting on over there,’ he said, following her gaze to the group in the corner, who did indeed seem to be having a much better time than the owls at the other end of the room. ‘But, if you were in that group, you wouldn’t just sit there being like everyone else. You’d be dominating it completely, and the group dynamics would be quite different.’

‘I would not dominate it!’ Perdita’s dark eyes sparkled with temper.

‘Oh, yes, you would,’ he said coolly. ‘They would all be laughing and having fun, but you would be the one making it happen, and making sure that they were all looking at you.’

Perdita eyed him with dislike. She didn’t want to admit that there was a certain familiarity about the scenario he had just described. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling to think that a perfect stranger could see through her quite so easily.

‘How come you know so much about it, anyway?’ she demanded.

He shrugged. ‘I’m interested in people.’

‘That’s not very panther of you,’ she said waspishly, and he grinned, a surprising smile that made him look suddenly younger.

‘All right, I’m interested in getting the most out of the people who work for me,’ he conceded.

‘That sounds more like it,’ sniffed Perdita, who was still feeling oddly jolted by the suddenness of his smile. It had really been quite startling to see how completely it transformed him, and then was gone again. ‘You seem very well-informed,’ she added with just a trace of sarcasm. ‘Have you been on courses like this before?’

‘A few,’ he said carelessly. ‘What about you?’

‘No, this is my first.’

‘You surprise me. Most firms take management training seriously these days.’

‘My ex-boss didn’t think they were worth spending any money on. There was talk about an assertiveness course a couple of years ago, but my colleagues threatened to strike if I was allowed to go on it. The feeling was that if I were any more assertive than I already was I would be unbearable. All nonsense, of course,’ said Perdita, who had told this as a story against herself often enough now to be able to treat it as a joke just as everyone else did.

Almost.

The man didn’t laugh. ‘You might have found it useful,’ he said.

‘I doubt it,’ she said airily. ‘I’ve got no time for these courses, to be honest. I think they’re all a waste of time. I’ve got far too much to do to be messing around with all this nonsense about peacocks and panthers. What’s the point of it all?’

She hadn’t really meant it as more than a rhetorical question, but the man replied anyway.

‘It’s about leadership, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘The idea is that you can lead a team more effectively if you’re aware of the different personality types and can recognise the different strengths each individual can bring to a particular task. An effective leader is one who is able to create an environment in which everyone can contribute to the best of their ability. It’s not about one type being better than another. Ideally you need a range of personality types on your team—but only if you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of each, and get everyone working together rather than at cross-purposes.’

‘You’re obviously a convert,’ said Perdita, her wide mouth turning down dismissively.

‘And you’re not?’

‘I don’t think that discovering that I’m a peacock or whatever is going to make any difference to the way I work, certainly,’ she told him. ‘I do my job, and I do it well. I tell my staff what to do and they do it. How much more leadership do they need?’

‘And then you wonder why you’re not a dolphin,’ he murmured. ‘Is it possible that you have a panther ascendant instead?’

How had he guessed that? Perdita gave him a hostile look. She didn’t have to admit anything. ‘It’s all rubbish, anyway,’ she grumbled, avoiding a direct answer, but there was a gleam in his eyes that suggested he might have a pretty good idea about what it would have been in any case.

‘Then what are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got no choice,’ she said. ‘The board have just appointed a new chief executive, some pretentious City hot shot who wants to impress us all with his forward thinking.’ Perdita snorted. ‘I think it’s all a lot of nonsense. The famous Edward Merrick hasn’t bothered to come and meet the workforce yet, but he’s already decided that all his executives will benefit from three days messing around in the Lake District.’

‘You don’t sound very impressed by him.’

‘Oh, I dare say he knows his stuff,’ Perdita acknowledged. ‘He’s got a great track record in turning companies around,’ she admitted grudgingly.

‘Then what’s the problem?’

‘I just think he should find out what’s happening on the ground before he starts swanning in and changing everything. OK, so the old chief executive lost his grip in the end, but the company is strong in lots of ways and frankly I’ve got better things to do than pander to a lot of fads about leadership.’

She pushed her hair behind her ears in an unconscious gesture of frustration. ‘Quite apart from anything else,’ she told him, ‘it’s really inconvenient timing—not that there’s ever a time when we aren’t busy in Operations. I keep thinking of all the work piling up when I’m away. I spent half the night catching up with emails as it is.’

Perhaps ‘half the night’ was a bit of an exaggeration, Perdita admitted to herself, but she had had to plug in her laptop and get on with some work. She couldn’t afford to treat these few days away like a total jolly, whatever some people—unspecified, she added mentally with a dark look at her companion—might think about her propensity for propping up the bar. She was a professional, after all, and it was obviously time to make sure that he knew it.

‘I’m Perdita, by the way,’ she said, offering her hand. ‘Perdita James. I’m Operations Manager for Bell Browning Engineering.’

He took her hand and smiled at her. ‘Ed Merrick,’ he said.

For a moment she was too taken up with the feel of his fingers wrapped firmly around hers to take in what he had said, but when the name finally registered Perdita’s carefully professional smile froze.

‘Ed?’ she echoed in a hollow voice, carefully withdrawing her hand. ‘Er…would that be Ed as in Edward, by any chance?’

‘Ed as in pretentious City hot-shot,’ he agreed equably.

Excellent. Perdita stifled a sigh. How to get off on completely the wrong foot with your new boss in one easy lesson by Perdita ‘Big Mouth’ James.

Her heart sank as she considered her options. She could fall back on the tried and tested technique of joking her way out of trouble, or she could make a grovelling apology.

Glancing at him, she was relieved to glimpse a glint of what she hoped was amusement in the grey eyes. Thank goodness he appeared to have a sense of humour! Grovelling wasn’t really her style, anyway.

So she leant forward confidingly. ‘I always think that if you’re going to have a good relationship, it’s best to start with an insult and then things can only get better,’ she said straight-faced.

‘Well, that’s one way of looking at it,’ said Edward Merrick, his look of amusement deepening. ‘I heard that you were famous for straight-talking,’ he went on, ‘but I hadn’t expected a practical demonstration quite so soon, I must admit!’

‘You mean you knew who I was all along?’ Perdita demanded, stiffening.

‘I’ve seen your CV,’ he said, ‘complete with a photograph that doesn’t do you justice at all.’

‘You should have told me who you were!’ Embarrassed at having been caught in unprofessional behaviour, Perdita characteristically went on the offensive. She was very glad that she hadn’t grovelled now! ‘I had no idea that you were going to be here. We thought there would just be the six of us.’

She looked over to where her colleagues were busy being owls, except for the head of Human Resources, who was a dolphin, of course. Had any of them realised that their new boss was among them? Surely one of them would have said if they had? She would have to warn them all off when they broke for coffee.

‘We were told that you wouldn’t be able to come,’ she added severely, glancing back at Edward Merrick, as if her indiscretion in describing her new boss to a perfect stranger was somehow his fault.