The Baby Verdict

Why had the wretched Millicent given her no warning of what the man looked like?

True, there was arrogance stamped on those hard features, but any arrogance was well contained in a face that was the most powerfully sensual she had ever seen in her life before.

His hair was almost black, his eyes shrewd, cool, and wintry blue and the lines of his face were perfectly chiselled, yet somehow escaping from the category of routinely handsome.

Handsome, Jessica thought, was a combination of features that blended well together. Perhaps it was his expression and a certain mantle of accepted self-assurance, or maybe it was the overall impression of brains and power, but there was some intangible element to the man sitting in front of her that catapulted him into a category all of his own.

‘What are you doing in my chair?’ she asked stupidly, forcing down the immediate physical impact he had made on her and trying to retrieve some of her composure back from where it had been flung to the four winds.

‘Your chair?’ His voice was low, velvety and coldly ironic.

She instantly felt her hackles rise. It was easy to work out what his type was: the wealthy, clever, powerful, good-looking bachelor who assumed that the world lay somewhere in the region of his feet.

‘Sorry. I meant your chair in my office.’ She smiled sweetly and continued to look at him with a steady, unfaltering gaze.

Her momentary lapse at being confronted with such intense masculinity had now been put away in a box at the back of her mind, and her self-control was once again reasserting itself.

It never let her down. It had been her companion for such a long time, seemingly all twenty-eight years of her life, that she could avail herself of it effortlessly.

He didn’t bother to answer that. Instead, he nodded briefly in the direction of the chair facing him, and told her to sit down.

‘I’ve been waiting to see you for the past...’ he flicked back the cuff of his shirt and consulted the gold watch ‘...twenty-five minutes. Do you normally get into work this late?’

Jessica sat down, crossed her legs and swallowed down the lump of anger in her throat.

‘My hours are nine to five—’ she began.

‘Clock watching isn’t a trait I encourage in my employees.’

‘But I left work at a little after ten last night. If I got in at a little after nine, then I do apologise. I’m normally up and running here by eight-thirty in the morning.’ She bared her teeth in a semblance of politeness and linked her fingers together on one knee.

‘Robert sings your praises...’ he looked at the piece of paper lying in front of him, which she recognised, upside down, as her CV ‘...Jessica. I take it, by the way, that you know who I am?’

‘Bruno Carr,’ she said, tempted to add Leader of the Universe.

‘You’re younger than I imagined from what Robert has told me,’ he said flatly. He looked at her speculatively through narrowed eyes, as if weighing her up, and she wondered what her age had to do with the price of sliced bread. Instead, she thought, of making disparaging comments on her age, why didn’t he just cut to the nub of the matter and tell her why he was here? In her office, sitting in her chair, having used her telephone.

‘Would you mind very much if I had a cup of coffee? Before I launch into defending my age?’ That one she couldn’t resist, and he raised his eyebrows, unamused.

‘Millie,’ he buzzed, ‘two coffees, please.’ He leaned back into the chair, which dwarfed her even though she was tall, but appeared made for him. Even though he was camouflaged by his suit, she could see that he had a muscular, athletic physique and was tall. He would be, she reckoned, one of those rarities: a man she would have to look up to, even when she was in heels.

In record time there was a knock at the door and Millie fluttered in with a tray, on which were two cups, with saucers, instead of the usual mugs, a plate of biscuits and cream and sugar.

‘Will there be anything else?’ she asked, smiling coyly and hovering.

Oh, please, Jessica thought wryly. Was this the same delicate, porcelain girl who could make mincemeat of men? Bruno’s presence had obviously reduced her to the archetypal eyelash-batting, empty-headed bimbo she most certainly was not. No wonder the man wore that aura of invincibility about him, if women dropped like ninepins every time he was around.

‘For the moment.’ He looked appreciatively at a blushing Millie and gave a smile of such profound sensual charm that Jessica’s breath caught in her throat for the merest fleeting of seconds. Then she steadied herself and reached forward for the cup on the tray.

Yes, men like Bruno Carr were a dangerous species. The sort who should carry health warnings stamped on their foreheads so that women knew to steer clear of them.

Jessica’s mouth tightened as her mind flicked through the pages of her past, like a calendar blown back by a strong wind.

She remembered her father, tall, elegant, charming, always talking to her mother’s friends, making them feel special. It was only later, as she had grown up, that she had realised that his activities had extended well beyond merely talking and that his charm, never applied to his wife, had been only skin-deep.

‘Now,’ he said, once Millie had disappeared out of the door, ‘you’re doubtless wondering why I’m here.’

‘It’s crossed my mind.’ After all, she thought acidly, it’s hardly been your policy in the past to fraternise. At least not with the members of this particular offshoot company, however hugely profitable it was.

‘Has Robert said anything to you about his health?’ Bruno asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the desk.

‘About his health?’ Jessica looked at him, confused. ‘No. Why? Is there something wrong?’ She knew that over the past three months he had been leaving work earlier than usual, but he had told her that a man of his age needed to wind down eventually, and she had believed him.

‘Have you noticed nothing about his hours recently?’ There was cool sarcasm in his voice and she stiffened.

‘He hasn’t been working very much overtime...’

‘And he’s been delegating quite a substantial amount of his workload onto you. Am I right?’

‘A bit,’ she admitted, wondering why she had never questioned that.

‘And yet you didn’t put two and two together? Hardly a very positive trait in a lawyer. Shouldn’t lawyers be adept at ferrying out information and making assumptions?’

‘I apologise if I didn’t see anything sinister in his behaviour,’ she said with equal coldness in her voice. ‘Believe it or not, cross-examining my boss wasn’t part of my job specification.’ She could feel her anger going up a notch and was alarmed more by the fact that he had managed to arouse such a reaction in her than by what he had said.

Outbursts of emotions were not something that she was accustomed to dealing with. From a young age, as she had stood on the sidelines and watched the antics of her father and the misery of her long-suffering mother, she had learned to control her emotions, to keep them under lock and key.

‘Are you telling me that he’s ill?’ she asked tightly, worry in her voice.

‘Stomach ulcer. He’s on medication for it and has been for a while, but he’s now been told that he needs to have a sabbatical. At least six months away from the stress of a work environment.’

‘How dreadful. I wish he’d said something to me. I would have relieved him of far more of his workload.’ She thought of her boss—tall, grey-haired, kindly, always encouraging her and never backward in his praise when she’d done a good job at something—and felt a stab of guilt.

Bruno was right. Why hadn’t she put two and two together and worked out that he was not well?

‘It’s unfortunate,’ Bruno said, watching her face and reading her reaction, ‘but it’s not terminal.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know a great deal about stomach ulcers...’

‘I gathered that from the expression on your face.’ He raked his fingers through his hair, and she watched, half mesmerised by this simple gesture.

‘I’ve told him,’ Bruno said, ‘that the sooner he leaves the better. There’s no point jeopardising his health for the sake of a job. Which,’ he continued slowly, ‘brings me to you, and the reason I’m here.’

‘Right. Of course.’ She was still dazedly thinking of all the signs she had missed over the past few months.

‘You’re Robert’s second in command. I gather that you’re good at your job.’

What did he expect her to say to that? ‘I do my best.’