A Nine-to-five Affair

Emmie looked up. ‘Any messages?’ Barden Cunningham wanted to know.

‘Mrs Neville Short rang,’ Emmie replied. ‘She didn’t want to leave a message.’

‘She’ll ring again, I expect.’

My stars! How about that for confidence? Though, since the diabolical hound most likely knew that Neville Short was at home, he wouldn’t be likely to ring Roberta while her husband was there. Emmie concentrated solely on being an efficient PA, and then told her employer of a business enquiry she’d taken before he went back to his own office and closed the door. She carried on with what she had been doing.

It was just around half past three when her intercom went. ‘Come in, Emily, please,’ her employer instructed.

Certainly, your libertine-ness! Without a word Emmie picked up her pad and went in. And for the next half an hour she took dictation or jotted down his instructions. She was still writing when the phone in her office rang.

Cunningham indicated she should stay where she was, and, reaching for the phone on his desk, pressed the appropriate button. ‘Cunningham,’ he said, and then there was a smile there in his voice as his caller announced herself. ‘Roberta! You cunning vixen, how’s it going?’ he asked.

Emmie didn’t like it. A kind of sickness hit her, and she wanted to dash out of there. She made to leave—she could come back later, when he’d finished chatting up the ‘cunning vixen’. Cunning, no doubt, because she was successfully fooling her husband! But Barden Cunningham motioned her to sit down again. All too obviously he didn’t give a damn that Emmie overheard his philandering phone calls. Why couldn’t he conduct his wretched affair outside business hours?

She had no idea what Roberta’s replies were, but what Cunningham was saying didn’t leave Emmie in very much doubt that the conclusions she’d drawn were correct.

‘You’re worrying too much!’ Cunningham teased. ‘I promise you he’s not likely to divorce you.’

Grief—how was that for confident! Even if Neville Short did find out about the affair, the poor chap so loved his wife he would never divorce her. Barden Cunningham was taking advantage of that! Locking up! He should be put down—preferably painfully! The call was coming to an end.

‘I’ll somehow manage to snatch a few moments with you tomorrow night at the theatre,’ Barden promised. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult.’

There was a pause as Roberta replied—and Emmie started to get angry. She knew full well that it was nothing to do with her, but, confound it! Not content to play fast and loose behind the cuckolded Neville’s back, it sounded very much as though Cunningham would be seeing them both at the theatre tomorrow, and—given half a chance—he would snatch his opportunity for a quick cuddle right under her husband’s—his friend’s—nose. Oh, it was too much!

‘You’ve nothing to worry about. I promise you, Neville has no idea what you’re up to,’ Barden soothed. ‘Now stop worrying. I’ll see you tomorrow. Everything will be fine.’

She’d bet it would, Emmie fumed. Quite plainly Roberta Short was getting the wind up that her poor husband might find out what was going on. And Barden Cunningham, who was no doubt no stranger to this sort of situation, was almost casual as he attempted to soothe Roberta’s anxieties.

‘Now what did I do?’

The tone was sharp. Emmie looked up—he had ended his phone call, though she would have known that from his tone of voice, which was oh, so very different from how it had been now that he was no longer speaking to his lady-love.

Emmie strove hard to keep a lid on her anger. ‘Do?’ she countered.

‘I’ve just about had it with you and your arrogance!’ Barden Cunningham snarled curtly. Arrogance? Her? Emmie could feel herself fighting a losing battle with her anger, even if she was desperate to keep her job. She sensed from his statement, ‘I’ve just about had it with you’, that she was on her way out, anyway. ‘So tell me what I did this time.’ He gave her a direct look from those no-nonsense cool grey eyes, and Emmie just knew that he was going to pursue this until he had an answer.

‘It’s none of my business.’ She felt forced, if she hoped to hang on to this job, to give him some sort of a reply.

‘What isn’t?’

As she’d thought. He wanted more than that. ‘When Mrs Short rang earlier she was very anxious that her husband didn’t know about it.’

‘So!’

Oh, abomination, he was immovable. ‘Add that to the conversation—well, your side anyway, which I’ve just overheard—and it’s obvious!’

‘What is?’

She wanted to hit him. He wanted her to come right out with it. Well, she’d be damned if she would. ‘If you don’t know, it’s not up to me to tell you!’ She could feel her temper getting away from her. Cool it, cool it, you can’t afford a temper.

‘You think—’ He broke off, and, putting her remark about Mrs Short being anxious about her husband knowing, together with the exchange he’d just had with her, he suddenly had it all added up. ‘How d—?’ He was angry; she could tell. That made two of them. ‘Why, you prissy little Miss Prim and Proper. You think I’m having an affair with—’

‘It’s nothing to do with me!’ Emmie flared. Her on-the-loose temper had no chance while that ‘prissy little Miss Prim and Proper’ still floated in the air.

‘You’re damned right it isn’t!’ he barked. He was on his feet—so was she. ‘What I do with my life, how I conduct my life, is absolutely, categorically, nothing whatsoever to do with you!’ he snarled. ’Got that?’

Who did he think he was? Who did he think he was talking to? Some mealy-mouthed, wouldn’t-say-boo typist? ‘It was you who insisted on knowing!’ she erupted, her brown eyes sparking flashes of fire.

She refused to back down, even though she knew he was going to well and truly attempt to sort her out now. Strangely, though, as she waited for him to rain coals of wrath down about her head, all at once, as he looked into her storming brown eyes, it seemed he checked himself—and decided to sort her out using another tack. For suddenly his tone became more mocking than angry.

‘Are you being fair, do you think, little Emily?’ he enquired charmingly.

She blinked. ‘Fair?’ She owned she wasn’t quite with him.

‘I don’t—scold—you over your affairs,’ he drawled, and she looked at him, momentarily made speechless. ‘But then,’ he went on coolly, ‘you’ve never had an affair, have you?’

She hadn’t. But pride, some kind of inverted honour, was at stake here. ‘I’ve…’ she began, ready to lie and tell him she’d had dozens of affairs—only she faltered. Given that it seemed it was she who had instigated this conversation, was she really discussing her love-life—or his view that she didn’t have a love life—with her employer? ‘How many affairs I’ve had, or not had, is entirely nothing to do with you,’ she jumped back up on her high horse, and told him loftily.

‘Typical!’ he rapped, soon back to snarling, she noted. ‘You think you can pass judgement on my out-of-work activities, but the moment I enquire into yours, it’s none of my business!’

‘Out-of-work activities’. That was a new name for it! But she’d had enough, and grabbed up her notepad. ‘Do you want this work back today or don’t you?’ she challenged hotly—and too late saw the glint in his eyes that clearly said he didn’t take very kindly to attitude.

Oddly again, though—when some part of her already wanted to apologise, while another part wouldn’t let her—instead of laying into her, as she’d fully expected, Barden Cunningham took a moment out to look down at her. She knew from her burning skin that she must have flares of pink in her cheeks. She was, however, already regretting her spurt of temper, and on the way to vowing never to get angry again, when still looking down at her, that glint of anger in those no-nonsense grey eyes suddenly became a mocking glint as he derided, ‘And there was I, putting you down as a mouse.’

That did it! Mouse! Apologise? She’d see him hang first! Mouse! What self-respecting twenty-two-year-old would put up with that? ‘Better a mouse than a rat!’ she hissed—and was on her way.

She went storming through the connecting door, not bothering to close it—she wasn’t stopping—and straight to her coat peg on the far wall. Even as she reached for her coat, though, and started shrugging into it, she was regretting having lost her temper. What the dickens was the matter with her? She couldn’t afford a temper!

Emmie dipped in the bottom drawer of her desk to retrieve her bag, knowing full well that even if she didn’t want to go there was no way now, after calling Barden Cunningham a rat, that he was going to let her stay.

Or so she’d thought. She had just straightened, her shoulder bag in hand, when his voice enquired coolly, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

She looked over to the doorway and saw he had come to lean nonchalantly against the doorframe. She hesitated, common practical sense intruding on what pride decreed. Oh, she did so like the work, and didn’t want to leave. Her breath caught. Was he saying that, despite her poking her nose into his private life and making judgements on his morals, he wasn’t telling her to go?

‘Aren’t I—dismissed?’ she managed to query.

For answer Barden Cunningham stood away from the door. ‘I’ll let you know when,’ he drawled—and added, with insincere charm, ‘You’ll be working late tonight.’

With that he went into his office, and, obviously utterly confident that she would do exactly as he said, and not bothering to wait to see if she took her coat off, closed the connecting door.

Emmie slowly put down her bag, relief rushing in because she still had this well-paid and, it had to be said, enjoyable job—while another part of her, the proud part, she rather suspected, made her wish she was in a position to walk and keep on walking.

A cold war ensued for the remainder of the day.

Working late was of no concern to Emmie, and she arrived at her flat around eight that evening, starting to feel quite astonished that, though her security was so vital to her, she had today, because she had been unable to control a suddenly erratic temper, put both her security and Aunt Hannah’s future tranquillity at risk!

Emmie got up the following morning, still wondering what in creation had got into her. She was aware that she had been tremendously shaken when her stepfather Alec had died. Her emotions had received a terrible blow. Her redundancy from Usher Trading around about the same time hadn’t helped. The worrying time she’d had of it when each of her successive jobs had folded had been a strain too. Had she perhaps grown too used to heading for the door when something went wrong, and had it become a habit with her?