A Professional Marriage

Good, she’d got his attention. He waited—waited for her to speak first—and she felt quite irritated about that too. But she had been at pains to adopt a cool front; she wasn’t about to let it slip now.

‘Your father called,’ she began evenly, pleasantly. ‘He was disappointed not to see you,’ she added. ‘We went to lunch,’ she informed him, when Davenport said nothing.

‘No doubt you were able to help him over his disappointment,’ he threw in sourly, and at that moment pugilistic tendencies awakened in Chesnie that she’d had no idea she possessed. To her amazement she felt a momentary desire to poke Davenport Junior in the eye with something sharp and painful. ‘Who paid?’ he asked abruptly, his tone toughening.

What was it with him? The nerve! ‘Your father was my guest,’ she answered primly.

‘He conned you into taking him to lunch, didn’t he?’

‘Not at all. I liked him,’ she began. ‘He—’

‘I’ll reimburse you!’ Joel Davenport cut in sharply—and her anger went soaring, and with it her cool image.

‘No, you won’t!’ she flared hotly, and saw him smile—every bit as if he really enjoyed fracturing the cool front she’d displayed this past six weeks.

He shrugged. ‘So I won’t,’ he agreed, his tone all at once silky, and picked up his pen.

Chesnie went swiftly back to her own office. She felt then that she hated him. He’d done that on purpose—made her forget her poise for a moment. She didn’t want her front fractured; it made her feel vulnerable. She did not care for the feeling.

She slammed into her work and wanted nothing to do with him. This was what happened when you let personalities in on the scene. Meeting his father, liking him, laughing with him, had put a severe dent in the Chesnie Cosgrove she preferred to show the world. It seemed as if one Davenport had softened her up for another. Well, she wasn’t having it.

By four that afternoon her cool exterior was firmly back in place. At four-fifteen Larry Jenkins from Accounts came into her office with a query that wasn’t strictly in her domain, but she was pleased to be able to handle it. Though Larry didn’t stay long when the door opened and Joel Davenport strode in.

Joel watched him hastily leave. ‘I hear this corridor is alive with senior executives in need of guidance from you on some urgent matter or other,’ he commented.

What was she supposed to answer to that? And how did he know? Though she supposed that not a lot got by him—even when he wasn’t around! ‘Is there something you need guidance with?’ she enquired coolly of his visit—and didn’t hate him any more when he actually laughed, as though the way she’d bounced that back at him had amused him.

‘Are you still mad at me?’ he asked, with such a wealth of natural charm there that she began to like him very much again.

‘You deliberately provoked me!’ she accused primly.

‘Did I?’ he asked innocently—and a moment later was all business and instruction.

Chesnie went home that night in a happy frame of mind. She liked her job, had never felt so stimulated by any work she had done before, and she liked her boss too. He was…Chesnie came to, to realise she had drifted off for quite some time to thinking of Joel Davenport, her good-looking boss. My, did he have it all. Gina had rung him this morning, but he hadn’t stayed talking to her above a minute. Chesnie had an idea that Gina was on her way out.

Aware that her employer would be flying up to Scotland first thing on Thursday morning, Chesnie went into the office earlier than usual on Wednesday, so she could complete any information he needed to take with him before he left the office that night.

‘Good morning,’ she called as she went in, and hardly thought he would notice her early arrival.

‘Couldn’t sleep?’

She should have known better—there was no detail small enough that he’d miss. She grinned to herself and started her day.

She did not feel like grinning when, in Joel’s office, taking notes later that morning, the phone on her desk rang. Saving time, Joel stretched out a hand and pressed a button to divert the call to his phone, and took the call himself.

Whoever it was had been put through to the right phone in the first place. ‘Who wants her?’ he demanded. And while Chesnie was thinking it must be some business call, because her family would only phone in the direst emergency, he was charmingly saying, ‘I’m sorry, Pomeroy, my PA isn’t available just now.’ So saying, he put down the phone and terminated the call. Then, as cool as you like, he calmly carried on from where he had left off.

Feeling little short of amazed, Chesnie stared disbelievingly at her employer. Even while she was recognising that someone named Pomeroy had phoned to speak to her, and that the only Pomeroy she knew was Philip Pomeroy, Chesnie was astonished that Joel Davenport had not passed the call over to her.

She quickly found her voice. ‘Anyone I should ring back?’ she enquired politely, annoyance straining at the leash.

Joel looked across at her, his blue glance icy. ‘How do you know Philip Pomeroy?’ he demanded.

Ready to tell him it was none of his business, Chesnie decided that one of them should show some manners here. ‘I met him at a party.’ She forced the words out.

Joel grunted, didn’t look impressed, and stated coldly, ‘You do know he’s with the opposition?’

‘Opposition?’

‘In case you didn’t know he heads Symington Technology—our competitors in the technology field.’

‘I didn’t know,’ Chesnie answered, and started to feel cross that Joel Davenport was as good as reminding her that the work she did for him was highly confidential. She resented that unsaid reminder, resented his icy manner, and tilted her chin a defiant fraction. ‘You obviously know him better than I do,’ she replied, her control back. And, knowing she was pushing it, ‘Do you happen to have his number?’

Icy blue eyes bored into hers; she refused to back down. ‘I shouldn’t bother,’ he replied shortly. ‘He’ll ring again.’

Chesnie was still silently mutinying against Joel Davenport when she went back to her desk. She didn’t particularly wish to speak to Philip Pomeroy—and thank you, Nerissa, for telling him where I work—but that was for her to decide, not Davenport. He spoke to his girlfriends when they rang him at the office. Where did he get off not allowing her that same courtesy? Even if Philip Pomeroy was the opposition.

Chesnie was not feeling any more Davenport-friendly when, around midday, just as he had predicted, Philip Pomeroy rang again. Had the door between the two offices not been open, and Joel Davenport privy to everything she said, Chesnie might well have refused Philip’s invitation to dinner. As it was, she knew full well he had heard her ‘Hello, Philip’ and would more than likely be tuned in. Stubbornly she determined that Davenport should know exactly what she thought of his offensive, if unspoken, reminder that her work was highly confidential.

‘Say yes,’ Philip was urging. ‘You can’t still be unpacking.’

She glanced through to the other office—Davenport appeared to be working, but she knew his capability to handle several things at once. ‘I’d love to go out with you,’ she heard herself reply—and loved it when Davenport turned his head to glance her way. He was unsmiling. She smiled—she couldn’t help it—then dipped her head so he shouldn’t see her smile, though she guessed he had.

‘Tonight?’ Philip was pressing. ‘Give me your address and I’ll pick you up at—’

‘Er—I can’t tonight,’ she interrupted hurriedly. Heaven alone knew what time she would finish work tonight. Tomorrow, though, with Joel up in Scotland, should be much easier. ‘I can make tomorrow if—’

Philip snapped up the alternative, asked again for her address, and when she had told him where she lived he, as busy as she, said he would look forward to tomorrow and rang off.

After that Chesnie was too busy to give thought to anything but the work she was involved with. She stayed late at her desk; so too did the man in the next room. At ten past seven she tidied her desk for the day, double-checked that Joel had all the information he would need for his trip, and went in to see him.

They spent another ten minutes finalising everything, then she said she was going home—and found she was looking into a pair of inscrutable sharp blue eyes.

He was unsmiling at first, but then relaxed to say quietly, ‘You’re turning out to be something of a treasure, Chesnie Cosgrove.’

Her heart gave the most peculiar bump, and she was so delighted by the compliment that she almost fell for his charm and smiled. But she wasn’t forgetting his attitude earlier in the day, so she remained pleasant, but otherwise aloof, as—like any well-brought-up PA would—she wished him a pleasant trip and went home.

Strangely—or perhaps, she mused, it wasn’t so strange—Joel Davenport was in her head very much that night. She could not remember ever being so annoyed with an employer before. Hector Browning didn’t count; it was his father she had worked for.

Feeling unable to settle, Joel Davenport still in her head, she rang her sister at half past nine. ‘I expected you to ring before this,’ Nerissa said by way of apology. ‘He rang, didn’t he?’

‘Did you have to tell him where I work?’

‘What else could I do? You said not to give him your phone number. And anyway, I ran out of excuses. Where’s he taking you?’

‘I don’t know. He’s calling for me at—’

‘Hah!’ Nerissa cut in. ‘You’re going out with him!’