Reluctant Mistress

She looked at him quickly. Such thoughtfulness. Somehow out of character. ‘Thank you, but it wasn’t necessary. I’m not a sentimentalist. One door closes and another opens, if you get my drift.’

‘Ice drift, I’d say,’ he said lazily. ‘Now, what do you want to do about staffing? I’ve already got a team of seven telephone-sales people lined up for you, but is there anyone you want to bring over from Soho? David is the factotum around here, but you’ll need a personal assistant.’

Julia! Liza’s heart twisted guiltily. She hadn’t given her assistant a thought. She hadn’t returned to the office after lunch with Robert Buchanan. There hadn’t seemed much point as the magazine was being folded that very afternoon.

‘What happened to the staff? I didn’t go back yesterday.’

‘I’ve placed a lot of them elsewhere. There were casualties, of course.’

‘John?’

‘A hefty redundancy payment he didn’t deserve.’

‘So you have a heart after all.’

‘The power of the Press,’ he murmured, draining his coffee.

‘Until I make my own judgement, that’s all I have to go on,’ she retaliated coolly. ‘I’d like Julia to carry on working for me, if that’s all right with you. She’s been with me for three years and we work well together.’

‘She has a weakness for the opposite sex, my sources tell me.’

Liza levelled cool green eyes at him. Was there nothing he didn’t know? ‘You have something in common with her, then.’

For only a second his jaw tensed angrily, then he gave a small smile. ‘That’s what I like about you. I could make and break you, but you still plough on, don’t you? Beware, Liza; I can take so much and then I might be tempted to give you what you deserve.’

‘And what might that be?’

‘Push me far enough and you might find out. What you don’t realise is that your puerile little insults could well turn out to be the turn-on of the decade for me. And maybe that’s what you’re working on. I might just take up the challenge you’re throwing out to me.’

Colour flushed her neck and threatened her cheeks. ‘I wasn’t aware I was issuing one.’ Trust him to twist everything she said his way.

‘You’re either remarkably astute or simply naïve. By your past record with men, I’d opt for the latter, but one thing I’ve learned in my thirty-seven years—never underestimate the wiles of women.’

She wasn’t going to let that pass. ‘It works both ways, you know. You tell me you don’t mess with your employees, yet you couldn’t keep your hands off me yesterday afternoon. You kissed me and then calmly told me it was a one-off. It’s you who’s remarkably astute or simply naïve,’ she echoed stiffly. ‘I’ll opt for the former!’

‘On the contrary, I think I’m rather making a fool of myself. Yesterday was a grave error on my part, but understandable. You’re a very beautiful lady and the temptation to seduce you is great. I understand how you feel, too; women fall at my feet like ninepins.’ There was a hint of humour in his eyes.

With a snort of disdain to cover her amusement at his inflated egotism, she told him flatly, ‘There is no doubt that you are a very attractive animal. So is a Rottweiler, but I wouldn’t give it house-room!’

To her surprise, he laughed. ‘You really are the most amazing lady. So where do we go from here?’

She stood up and placed her empty coffee-cup on the tray. ‘You have a choice: fire me or not.’ She was playing with dynamite and knew it. But she had learnt a lot about him in this brief interchange of insults. He was adept at winding her up, but she had the ability to do likewise to him. If he kept her on she’d put her heart and soul into her work; he knew that or he wouldn’t have considered her in the first place. As for the personal side of their relationship, it was going to be non-existent. She could handle him—of that she was sure. And he could handle himself!

‘I wouldn’t dream of firing you,’ he told her, standing up. ‘Not yet, that is.’

‘Another threat?’

‘More or less. And, as you so very rightly said, it works both ways. Neither of us can afford to get emotionally involved with each other. Let’s both be warned off, shall we?’

He extended a hand to her in a gesture of goodwill, and Liza took it. He held on to her long enough to resurrect that frisson of awareness deep inside her. She was first to break the contact.

‘What do you want me to do about Julia?’

‘David can get in touch with her and she can start tomorrow.’

‘Thank you,’ Liza smiled.

‘I’m not doing you a personal favour,’ he assured her, dark brows drawn together seriously. ‘But if you say she’s good at her job I’ll go along with it. Now, to work. I’ll introduce you to your sales team. I’m afraid you’re going to live in my pocket for the next few weeks. Working for Magnum is light years away from Leisure Days....’ He took her arm and guided her out of the calm of her office into the mêlée of a frantic publishing house. And so her first day under Robert Buchanan’s corporate umbrella began.

* * *

Three weeks later Liza stood by her sitting-room window, sipped her first coffee of the day, and realised that she was extremely happy. The job was panning out superbly. Robert had been right: she’d lived in his pocket, scarcely been out of his sight these past weeks. Her admiration for him had grown by the day. He knew his business all right, and his relationship with his staff was faultless. He had a knack of getting the best from everyone, and Magnum Enterprises rolled happily along on well-oiled wheels.

It started to rain again and Liza turned away from the window. As far as she could see there were no clouds on her horizon; even the pain of losing Graham had reduced to a small ache that only occasionally surfaced when she was particularly tired.

‘I hate to ask, but could you bear a working weekend?’ Robert suggested as soon as she arrived in her office that Thursday morning.

She looked at him in surprise. ‘It’s no problem for me, but what for? I thought everything was on schedule.’

‘It is, but next week I want to introduce you to the European staff. We’ll be going to Amsterdam for starters and then on to Paris and Madrid. It will mean at the very least a week out of here, and I want to make sure everything runs smoothly while we’re away.’

Liza’s heart raced at the thought. She was already liaising with the overseas advertising-sales offices and found it so stimulating she couldn’t wait to get out there and meet these people in person.

‘Sounds marvellous.’ She grinned and picked up the unopened mail from her desk.

‘Shouldn’t Julia be dealing with that?’ Robert observed quietly.

‘She’s at the dentist this morning.’

‘Second time this week.’

Liza’s eyes shot up from the envelope she was slitting. ‘So?’

‘Her teeth look perfectly all right to me.’

Liza tensed. ‘What are you implying? That she’s off out shopping somewhere?’

‘Could be.’ He shrugged his wide shoulders. ‘But it’s more than likely she’s indulging herself in bed with Nigel Barnes from your sales team.’

Shocked, Liza let the letters fall to her desk. For some reason she didn’t disbelieve him, knowing how fast Julia worked, but what really shook her was Robert’s being the one to tell her.

‘I think you must be mistaken...’ she started to protest, colour flushing her cheeks. Robert had seen what she had failed to. Her first mistake.

‘I’m not,’ he assured her quietly.

Liza crossed the room and opened the door of her office. Nigel Barnes was conspicuous by his absence. All the sales team but him were at their consoles, busy on the phones.

She shut the door and went back to her desk. ‘I’ll deal with it,’ she clipped tightly, and picked up the pile of letters.