Bittersweet Love

‘Seriously, Natalie. What do you think? Do you like the sound of my idea? It would be a promotion, and of course there would be a pay rise. I might even see my way to throwing in a company car as well.’

The offer had caught her by surprise. She looked at him levelly and saw that he was waiting for her response.

‘Can I let you have my answer tomorrow?’ she asked. Instead of the ready assent which she had expected, he frowned heavily and began fiddling with the fountain pen on his desk, tapping it on one of the files; then he gave an impatient sigh.

‘Is that really necessary?’ he snapped. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that you would have needed time to consider my proposition. In fact, most people would have jumped at it.’

Natalie stared at him, surprised. Was she being dense here? Was she missing something? She had thought her request the most natural thing in the world, but from his reaction anyone would have thought that she had asked for the impossible. What was going on here?

He stood up and prowled across to the large window behind his desk and stared down at the street below, his back to her, then he swung back around to face her, half perched on the window-sill, his arms folded across his chest.

‘I’m only asking for one night to think it over,’ Natalie informed him, still bemused.

‘Why? Do you need to consult someone? Can’t you make your mind up on your own?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You heard me. I’m offering you the chance of a lifetime, with a pay rise to match—’ he threw her a figure that made her inwardly gasp, then continued in the same flat, hard voice ‘—and you’re not sure whether you want to accept it or not? Don’t you think Eric will approve?’

Natalie’s eyes widened. What was he on about now? Then the realisation dawned. Of course. He had seen them together, albeit in the company of someone else, someone who didn’t count since she was Eric’s sister and had been introduced to him as such, and had jumped to the wrong conclusion. He still thought that she had done something with herself because of a man. He couldn’t understand the concept of a woman making the most of herself for herself.

Workwise he depended on her. This was his attempt to redefine his authority over her. Give her a promotion, make sure that she’s not going anywhere, and life can carry on as normal.

Natalie stared at him with frozen politeness. It was on the tip of her tongue to inform him that Eric had nothing whatsoever to do with her request, then she thought, Why should I?

‘Why should he disapprove?’ she asked blandly.

He didn’t care for that response. He preferred her to be uninvolved with a man. That was how she had been for the past five years and he had grown accustomed to it. She had always been able to fall in with his hours, his breakfast meetings, his weekend work at short notice.

He frowned but didn’t reply and she said on a sigh, ‘Look, if it means that much to you to have my answer now, then I accept.’

He relaxed visibly. ‘Personnel will fix up the new contract.’

‘I’ll pop along there this afternoon,’ Natalie promised. Sometimes there was something boyishly transparent about him. He moved back to his desk, but instead of resuming work he continued to stare at her until Natalie flushed awkwardly.

‘Shall I get along to my desk?’ she volunteered. ‘I might as well start sorting out my workload.’

He ignored her remark completely. ‘So I was right after all. Eric is the man in your life.’

Natalie shot him an impatient look and wondered whether she could get away with telling him that she had better things to do than stay in his office and discuss some non-existent boyfriend. Then she decided that her promotion really was too good to toss out of the-window in a fit of bravado. He might have given her the job for all the wrong reasons, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t a damn good job and she had no intention of jeopardising it.

‘If you say so,’ she said, glancing at her watch.

‘What do you mean “If I say so”? Is he or isn’t he?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought that that was any of your business,’ she said, restraining the urge to snap. Her feet were beginning to ache from standing up. She wanted to get back to her desk, but she knew well enough that that was impossible. Nothing incurred Kane’s wrath more easily than leaving before he was ready for you to leave.

‘He looks as dull as dishwater,’ he said with an oblique glance in her direction, and Natalie bristled.

‘Does he now?’ she queried softly, angry on Eric’s behalf even though she was not involved with him at all. What gave Kane Marshall the right to make snap judge-ments on anyone’s personality anyway? It was hardly as though he was as unblemished as the driven snow.

‘No need to get into a flap about it,’ Kane said with infuriating calm. ‘It was merely an observation.’

‘I am not in a flap,’ Natalie said stiffly, feeling very much like someone in a flap and wondering why. ‘And since it’s a free country you can make any number of observations that you like.’

He grinned at her and she glared back at him. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that he was your type at all, though,’ he murmured, pursuing his line of thought with utter disregard for her tightened lips and glacial expression. ‘Mind you, he does have a certain secure look, and women seem to yearn after security, for some peculiar reason.’

He lowered his eyes, the long, dark lashes drooping against his cheek and Natalie stared at him in frustration. He was deliberately provoking her and, like it or not, here she was, responding. Couldn’t she do better than this, for heaven’s sake?

‘I don’t yearn for security,’ Natalie informed him. ‘So much for your generalisations.’

‘Don’t you?’ There was a mixture of curiosity and interest in his eyes when he looked up at her. ‘You must be the exception to the rule in that case.’

‘Or else you’re completely off course in your sweeping comments about the female sex.’ She smiled sweetly, feeling her composure return with reassuring speed, ‘But no. I don’t suppose you could be wrong. That would be unthinkable.’

He laughed at that, his eyes warm with appreciation for her verbal barb, and she had to force herself not to respond to him. And he talked about women wanting security? she thought. She certainly hadn’t been lying when she told him that that was the furthest thing from her mind. Oh, no. Nothing as simple as a desire for security for her. Why settle for the easy course when she could waste her life secretly craving this sexy, arrogant, brilliant man sitting in front of her?

He glanced down at the file open in front of him, his hand on the telephone, and she knew that already his mind was back on work, after its short interlude wreaking havoc with her thoughts.

‘Do you need any help with the transferral of ac-counts to you?’ he asked, confirming her thoughts.

Natalie frowned. ‘If you give me a list of the ones you want me to take over, I’ll have a look at them this afternoon. I should be all right, but you might need to fill me in on any peculiarities with any of them.’

He nodded briefly. ‘Tonight,’ he said bluntly, already dialling his number. ‘I take it you’re no longer averse to overtime?’

‘I never was,’ Natalie said ambiguously.

‘Fine.’ He gave her a curt nod, his hand over the receiver. ‘My place. Seven sharp. I’ll get O’Leary to do something to eat.’

Natalie’s mouth dropped open in dismay. This was not her idea of agreeable overtime one little bit. True, she had been to his flat before to work, usually in the presence of other people when she was used mainly to take the minutes and attend to practicalities. But it had always made her feel uneasy.

Poring over files with no one else around, apart from O’Leary, his manservant-cum-general housekeeper, who was as deaf as post and generally retired to his quarters to watch television as soon as he feasibly could anyway, was not her idea of a fun night out

‘But…’ Natalie began in protestation, but he was already talking down the line, waving her away.

It wasn’t until she was almost ready to leave for home that she next got the opportunity to try and wheedle out of the nightmarish scenario, but Kane was having none of it.

‘Three of the files are at my place. The most complicated three, in fact.’ His eyes narrowed suspiciously on her. ‘Not trying to tell me that you can’t work a bit of overtime, are you? Because I needn’t tell you that this promotion will entail a fair amount of it. I won’t allow clock-watching.’

‘Of course I understand,’ Natalie said hastily, following him with her eyes as he prepared to leave for yet another meeting, this time with one of his financial directors.

‘Good,’ he said smoothly. ‘In that case, there’s no problem, is there?’

‘No problem,’ she agreed with vast understatement.

She got home with barely enough time to have a bath before she rushed back out. The phone was ringing as she stepped out of the bath, and for one fleeting moment of heady optimism she thought that it might be Kane cancelling his engagement.

No such luck. It took her a second or two before she recognised Eric’s voice, then she remembered that she had given him her telephone number, had agreed that they mustn’t lose touch. She rubbed herself dry, wandering around the bedroom with the receiver tucked behind one ear, awkwardly getting dressed in a pair of jeans and a thin cotton top with buttons down the front.