Fantasy Girl

Dee nodded. ‘Jake called this morning, but you were so engrossed in your accounts it seemed a shame to disturb you. I called Judith’s flat, but there was no answer.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s far from the first time she’s done this.’

‘I know,’ Natalie acknowledged, chewing on her bottom lip. ‘Judith’s turning out to be a problem.’ And she could be the reason Adam Thornton wanted to see her after all, but not for a pat on the back!

‘She’s always been a problem,’ Dee dismissed, sitting down to begin sorting the sheets into order. ‘And I warned you about letting her become Beauty Girl.’

Natalie didn’t mind the criticism. She and Dee had struck up a very close working relationship in the eighteen months they had been together, and that was the way it should be. With only the two of them running this agency they very often had to more or less read each other’s minds. They had been in agreement about Judith’s unsuitability to work for Thornton’s, but Jason Dillman had insisted it had to be her, so Natalie had had no choice. Unfortunately it was working out as badly as she had thought it would.

‘I’ll talk to her,’ she sighed.

Dee raised sceptical brows. ‘Will that do any good?’

‘I doubt it,’ she grimaced. ‘But I will anyway.’

‘When she decides to put in an appearance.’

‘Yes,’ Natalie gave a rueful smile, ‘there is that.’ In the past Judith had only come in to see them when she was getting short of money; the work was always available when she wanted it, but since she had been chosen as Thornton’s Beauty Girl her appearances at the agency had only been social ones, and not very often.

‘I know she means a lot to you, Natalie,’ Dee decided. ‘But I don’t think I’d be crying if she found herself another agency.’

Again Natalie made no comment at the criticism, knowing that it was mainly Dee who had to take the first disgruntled calls from clients Judith had let down, that her own calm to the stormy waters only came after Dee had taken the worst of it.

She wouldn’t be too upset if Judith left them either, she had hoped in a way that Thornton’s would take the other girl over exclusively for an unspecified amount of time. But the contract, drawn up by Adam Thornton’s own lawyers, demanded her services for a year only, and at the end of that year she was free to work for whoever she wanted to. Natalie knew she would come back to her for work, that things were made easy for her there. Not for Judith the effort of a taxing career—work when you have to and play when you don’t, that was her motto—and one she lived by regardless of other people’s feelings. It wasn’t an easy situation for any of them.

Natalie glanced at the plain white-gold watch on her slender wrist. A white-gold bracelet on her other wrist was her only other jewellery, her fingers were completely bare of rings, the nails painted the same vivid red as her lips. ‘I have to go now,’ she looked up. ‘I have half an hour to get to Adam Thornton’s office, that should give me time.’

Dee frowned. ‘But it’s only a few minutes away.’

She nodded. ‘I know. But he was insistent that he could only spare me fifteen minutes at eleven-thirty, so I daren’t be late.’

Her assistant shrugged. ‘I think it will only take you ten minutes, but you go ahead.’ She smiled. ‘Sounds the forceful type, doesn’t he?’

‘At the very least,’ Natalie grimaced her agreement. At twenty-five she wasn’t daunted by much, having confidence in herself and her ability. But Adam Thornton had made her feel like a gauche schoolgirl.

‘I wonder what he looks like,’ Dee mused.

‘Awful—if he’s anywhere near as unpleasant as he sounds!’

‘I found his voice rather sexy,’ Dee grinned. ‘I go for that gravelly sound, it gives an impression of power.’ She grimaced. ‘He’s probably awful, as you said.’

Natalie laughed. ‘Probably.’ She sobered. ‘If Judith should happen to call or come in …’

‘I’ll keep her here,’ said Dee in a hard voice. ‘By force, if I have to.’

Natalie knew the other woman would too, although she put the problem of seeing Judith from her mind, concentrating on what she was going to say to Adam Thornton. She had no excuse for Judith’s behaviour, except perhaps that she had warned Jason Dillman at the time. Not that that was really an excuse, more a way out, and Adam Thornton didn’t sound the sort of man to let anyone out of taking responsibility for their mistakes.

Her MG was parked in the car park beneath the building, and she raised a hand to the man on the gate as she drove the sports car out into the daylight.

Late autumn, the time when all the leaves had fallen from the trees, leaving them bare and grey. The sky was also cloudy and grey, the onset of winter bringing forth an icy cold wind, something Natalie didn’t feel in the warmth of her car.

She drove with a natural ability, her movements in this, as in everything, graceful in the extreme. The epitome of a hard-headed businesswoman she was not, although she could stand out for what she believed along with the best of them.

The trouble was she had no idea what to prepare herself for at this meeting with Adam Thornton! He could want to talk about Beauty Girl, or he could just want to discuss something else completely. Still, she was good at her job, she had managed to convince Jason Dillman of her competence so far, so there was no reason why she shouldn’t be equally convincing in front of the head of the company.

She knew little about the man himself, which meant Adam Thornton either guarded his private life with a vengeance, or else his private life was so ordinary that it wasn’t worth any newspaper writing about it. Natalie decided she liked the second version best; the idea of a middle-aged man with a harassed wife and a brood of children was much less daunting than the frightening picture that had been forming in her mind.

Frightening? She had stopped being frightened of anything the day she turned seventeen and discovered that a glowing smile and shy look from deep aquamarine eyes could melt even the hardest heart, that the soft pleading of her voice could usually get her anything she wanted. Adam Thornton wouldn’t know what had hit him if he proved difficult!

She parked the MG in T.C.B.A.’s private car park, admiring the silver Porsche parked next to it. Adam Thornton, the nameplate attached to the wall read. Her brows rose. Surely a middle-aged man with a harassed wife and a brood of children wouldn’t drive a car like this? It looked as if she would have to revise her thinking somewhat.

Oh, damn the man! She got out of her car, angrily slamming the door to lock it. She didn’t have the time to worry about Adam Thornton, she had a lot of things that needed her urgent attention back at the office, and the sooner she got back there the better.

T.C.B.A. occupied a whole building the size of the one Natalie rented two rooms in. Most of the ground floor was taken up as a reception area, and the heels of her stylish black shoes sank into the sea-green carpet as she walked over to the desk. The girl behind the desk was glamorous enough for Natalie to be able to offer her any number of jobs right here and now. In fact the whole building seemed to be overflowing with beautiful women as she took the lift up to the executive offices, and Adam Thornton’s secretary seemed to be the most beautiful.

‘Can I help you?’ the woman purred, her heavy make-up perfect, just the hint of a wave in her shoulder-length red hair, her eyes were a cool green. Her pale green dress moved silkily against her body as she stood up once Natalie had given her name. ‘Please sit down,’ she invited smoothly. ‘I’ll just go and tell Mr Thornton you’re here.’

Natalie moved with unhurried grace to sit in one of the four black leather armchairs in the luxurious office with the huge poster-size pictures of past advertising on the walls, having no idea how long she would be kept waiting. Ten minutes later she was glad she had sat down, as the secretary was still in with Adam Thornton.

It was a full five minutes after this when she emerged, swaying over to stand in front of Natalie’s chair. She was a woman of about thirty, with a cool sophistication that enabled her to look down her haughty nose at Natalie. ‘Mr Thornton will see you now, Miss Faulkner,’ she drawled, just as if she hadn’t kept Natalie sitting here for the last fifteen minutes.

But Natalie was very aware of it, glancing at her wrist-watch. Exactly eleven-thirty! So it was to be that sort of meeting, was it.

She stood up to follow the secretary, three or four inches taller than the other woman, the heels on her shoes adding extra inches to her already five feet eight inches in height, this fact giving a boost to the confidence that had started to wane during the fifteen-minute wait.

‘Miss Faulkner,’ the other woman introduced with a flourish before leaving the room, closing the door softly behind her.

But introduced to whom? The office looked empty to Natalie. It was the plushest office she had ever been in, with a sitting area to the right of her, with the same deep armchairs as in the office outside, a large drinks cabinet in the same mahogany as the wide desk directly in front of her, a wide black leather armchair with its back turned towards her the only thing remotely out of place. It was smoke spiralling from the latter that told her where Adam Thornton was, although he seemed in no hurry to acknowledge the fact.

Suddenly the chair spun slowly round. ‘You managed to get here this time, Miss Faulkner,’ the deep, gravelly voice mocked harshly, much more effective when not muffled by a crackly telephone line. Dee would have loved it!

Effective was a good way of describing the man himself—or electric. He seemed to fill up most of the wide-backed chair, his height as he sat seeming to indicate that he was extremely tall when standing, the dark grey pin-striped suit fitting smoothly across his shoulders, wide powerful shoulders that tapered to a narrow waist, leanly masculine. But it was his face that was electric, holding her startled blue-green eyes mesmerised. Taken as a whole it was a ruggedly handsome face, dissecting each feature in turn it was the face of a man who looked caged by the bonds of civilisation, it was the face of a savage.

Eyes the blue of an ocean glittered beneath dark jutting brows, a hawklike nose, firmly compressed lips, the cheeks lean and hard, deep lines grooved beside his nose and mouth adding to what she already guessed to be late thirties, early forties, his jaw was square and commanding, the column of his throat rugged, dark hair grew over-long past the collar of the white silk shirt he wore, the grey wings of hair over his temples adding to his distinction. His hands as he leant forward to rest them on the desk in front of him were long and tapered, the fingers on his right hand loosely holding a long thin cheroot, the smoke from which was fast filling the room, the aroma not unpleasant, as wasn’t the subtle smell of his aftershave.

It seemed to Natalie as if she had been looking at him for ever, and yet it had taken only a matter of seconds to notice everything about this man, all the time knowing that she was being subjected to as thorough appraisal herself, the fierce blue eyes giving away nothing of his thoughts.

Her outwardly calm demeanour gave away nothing of the inner jolt she had felt at coming face to face with such a man, although inwardly she was a conflicting mass of emotions. He had the appearance of a leashed tiger, impatient with the bonds of civilisation that meant he had to sit behind this desk, comfortable as it was, and be outwardly polite to someone like her.

But Natalie gave away none of her own feelings, the shock at his appearance, the confusion at his magnetism, meeting his gaze steadily. ‘I’ve already apologised,’ she said smoothly. ‘But if you would like me to do so again …?’ She arched dark brows over aquamarine eyes.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ he dismissed dryly. ‘I’ve already ascertained the fact that you were not informed of our earlier appointment.’

Natalie looked startled. ‘You have?’ she frowned.

He gave an inclination of his dark head, leaning back in the chair. ‘You were surprised by my call, seemed unsure of the mention of our ten o’clock meeting.’ He shrugged. ‘You knew nothing about it, so how could you be anything else? Please, sit down, Miss Faulkner,’ he invited softly.

Natalie sank gratefully into the black leather armchair facing his across the desk, crossing one leg gracefully over the other, uncomfortably aware of the expanse of slim silky leg that was exposed as Adam Thornton rose slowly to his feet, his height seeming to fill the room, well over six feet, as she had suspected, making her feel small and slightly vulnerable.

He moved to sit on the edge of the desk in front of her, his legs long and lean, his thighs powerfully muscled. His eyes narrowed as delicate colour entered her cheeks, leaning sideways to stub out the cheroot in the onyx ashtray with slow, stabbing movements. Suddenly he straightened, his expression harsh. ‘We may as well get straight to the point,’ he bit out, obviously intending to do so whether she wanted to or not. ‘I want the Grant girl taken off the Beauty Girl contract.’