The Boss's Proposal

Vicky, busy looking around her, puffed and panted an agreement. Somehow she found it difficult to associate Shaun with clean, efficient, seemingly well-run surroundings like these. She could feel her mind going down familiar paths and focused her attention on Geraldine and what she was saying, which appeared to be a congratulatory monologue on the massive and successful Forbes Holdings, of which Paxus PLC was a small but blossoming satellite. She wondered whether any mention would be made of Shaun, or even the brother, the one who lived in New York, but there was no mention of either in between the steady stream of growth, profit and share price chat.

‘’Course, I’ve worked for the family for twenty years now. Wanted a career teaching sport, but I did the back in, my dear, and ended up going along the secretarial road. Not that I’ve regretted a minute of working here,’ she confided, and just when Vicky imagined that the bracing talk might become less factual and more personal, Geraldine paused in front of a door and knocked authoritatively.

‘Yes!’

Mysteriously, Vicky saw that the plain, down-to-earth face had turned pink and, when Geraldine pushed open the door and poked her head in, her voice was almost kittenish.

‘Miss Lockhart here for you, sir.’

‘Who?’

‘Miss Lockhart.’

‘Now?’

Vicky gazed, embarrassed, at the unappealing abstract painting on the wall opposite. Was this ‘surprise’ job offer also a surprise to the man in question, or were heads of organisations exempt from good manners?

‘I did inform you a week ago…’ Geraldine said, lapsing into her more autocratic voice.

‘Show her in, Gerry, show her in.’ At which, Geraldine pushed open the door wider and stepped back to allow Vicky through.

The man was sitting behind a huge desk, lounging in a black leather swivel chair which he had pushed away from the desk so that he could cross his legs in comfort.

Under the rapid pounding of her heart, Vicky was dimly aware of the door gently being shut behind her, and then she was left, stranded, in the middle of the large office, like a fish that had suddenly found itself floundering in the middle of a desert. Her breathing was laboured and she hardly dared move a muscle, because if she did she suspected that her shaky legs would collapse completely.

All she could see was the nightmare in front of her. The dark hair, the strong angular face, those peculiar grey eyes.

‘Are you all right, Miss Lockhart?’ The question was posed in an impatient voice from which could be dredged not even passing concern. ‘You look as though you’re about to faint and I really haven’t got the time to deal with a fainting secretary.’

‘I’m fine. Thank you.’ Fine, she thought, considering the shock that had rocked her to the foundations. She was still standing, wasn’t she? If that wasn’t fine, what was?

‘Then sit down.’ He nodded curtly at the chair facing him. ‘I’m afraid it slipped my mind that you were supposed to be coming today… Your application form’s somewhere here…bear with me for a moment…’

‘That’s fine!’ Suddenly Vicky found her voice. ‘In fact, there’s no need to waste your time interviewing me. I don’t think I would be suitable at all for this job.’

She just wanted to get out of the office and out of the building as fast as her legs could take her. Her skin was on fire and her temples were beginning to pound.

He didn’t immediately answer. Instead, he paused in his search for the elusive CV and the pale grey eyes became suddenly watchful as they scanned her flushed face.

‘Oh, really?’ he said slowly. ‘And why do you think that would be?’ He stood up. A towering, well-built man, he strolled to the bay window behind his chair, from where he perched against the ledge, all the better to watch her.

Between the host of emotions and thoughts besieging her, Vicky tried to locate a functioning part of her brain which might come up with a good excuse for showing up at this company for a job, only to spuriously announce that she had to leave immediately. Nothing was forthcoming.

‘You know, you do look a little nervous.’ He brushed his chin reflectively with one finger while continuing to scrutinise her face with the lazy intensity of a predator eyeing up potential prey. ‘Not one of these highly strung, neurotic types, are you?’

‘Yes,’ Vicky agreed, ready to clutch any lifeline offered that might get her out of the place, ‘highly strung and very neurotic. No use to a man like you.’

‘A man like me? And what kind of man might that be?’

Vicky dropped her eyes rather than reveal the answer to that particular question. The strength of the response she would give him might just blow him off his feet.

‘Sit down, why don’t you? You’re beginning to interest me, Miss Lockhart.’ He waited until she had made her way to the chair and flopped down, then allowed a few more seconds to pass, during which he looked at her as though trying to unravel the workings of her mind.

‘Now, tell me why I’m beginning to feel that there’s something going on here that I know nothing about.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I’ll let that pass.’ He flashed her smile that indicated that the subject had been dropped but by no means abandoned.

He has a God complex, the bastard. He’s always felt that he could run my life, along with everyone else’s. She could hear Shaun’s voice, high and resentful as it always had been whenever he spoke about his brother. Vicky’s tightly controlled mind slowly began to unravel as her eyes locked with Max Hedley Forbes. Because that was his name. She’d heard it often enough from Shaun’s lips. A litany of bitterness and antagonism towards a brother whose mission in life, she’d been told often enough, had been to undermine as many people as he could in the minimum amount of time. He’d been a monster of selfishness, Shaun had said to her, a man who only knew how to take, a man who rode roughshod over the rest of the human race and most of all over his one and only brother, whose name he’d discredited so thoroughly that even his father had chosen to turn his back on his son.

It had never occurred to her when she applied for this job that fate would be waiting for her just around the corner. Max Forbes lived in New York and had done for years. She’d never thought that she would end up finding him in an office building in Warwick, of all places. The past squeezed her soul and she briefly closed her eyes, giving in to the vertigo threatening to overwhelm her.

Shaun might have turned out to be a nightmare, but nightmares were not born, they were made. The world and the people in it had shaped him, and the man coolly inspecting her now had been pivotal in the shaping of his brother. However awful Shaun had been, wasn’t this man opposite her worse?

‘So,’ the dark, velvety voice drawled, dragging her away from her painful trip down memory lane and back to the present, ‘you claim to be neurotic and highly strung, yet—’ he reached forward to a stack of papers on the desk and extracted one, from which he read ‘—you still managed to sustain a reasonably high-powered job in Australia from which you left with glowing recommendations. Odd, wouldn’t you agree? Or perhaps your neuroses were under control at that point in time?’

Vicky refrained from comment and instead contented herself with staring out of the window, which offered a view of sky and red-brick buildings.

‘Has Geraldine given you any indication as to why this post has become available?’ He moved around the desk and perched on it, so that he was directly facing Vicky, looking down at her.

‘Not in any great detail, no,’ Vicky told him, ‘but honestly, there’s no point launching into any explanations. The fact of the matter is…’ What was the fact of the matter? ‘The fact of the matter is that I had really set my heart on working in a typing pool…’

His lips twitched, but when he answered his voice was serious and considering.

‘Of course. I quite understand that you might not want to compromise your undoubted talents by getting a good job with career prospects…’

Vicky shot him a brief look from under thick, dark lashes, momentarily disconcerted by the suggestion of humour beneath the sarcasm. ‘I have an awful lot on my plate just now,’ she said vaguely. ‘I wouldn’t want to take on anything demanding because I don’t think that I would be able to do it justice.’

‘What?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘What have you got on your plate?’ His eyes scanned her CV then focused on her.

‘Well,’ Vicky stuttered, taken aback by the directness of the question, ‘I’ve only recently returned from Australia and I have a lot of things to do concerning…my house and generally settling in…’ This explanation skirted so broadly around the truth that she could feel the colour rise to her cheeks.

‘Why did you decide to go to Australia?’

‘My mother…passed away…I felt that the change would do me good…and I just happened to stay a great deal longer than I had anticipated. I landed a job in a very good company quite early on and I was promoted in the first six months. I…it was easier than coming back to England and dealing with…’

‘Your loss?’

Vicky stiffened at the perceptiveness behind the question. She’d once considered Shaun to be a perceptive, sensitive person. Perhaps illusions along those lines ran in the Forbes family.

‘I would appreciate it if we could terminate this interview now.’ She began getting to her feet, smoothing down the dark grey skirt, nervously brushing non-existent flecks of dust from it rather than face those amazing, unsettling grey eyes. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve wasted your time. I realise that you’re a very busy man, and time is money. Had I been aware of the situation, I would have telephoned to cancel the appointment. As I said, I’m not interested in a job that’s going to monopolise my free time.’

‘Your references,’ he said coolly, ignoring her pointed attempt to leave his office, ‘from the Houghton Corporation are glowing…’ He looked at her carefully while she remained in dithering uncertainty on her feet, unable to turn her back and walk out of the office but reluctant to sit back down and allow him to think that the job in question was open for debate. ‘Very impressive, and all the more so because I know James Houghton very well.’