Kitabı oku: «The Mistress Contract», sayfa 3

There was absolute silence for a screaming moment, but as Sephy glared at him the cool profile was magnificently indifferent. He’d make a fantastic poker player, she thought irrelevantly. No wonder he was so formidable in business.

‘The name’s Conrad.’

‘What?’ If he had taken all his clothes off and danced stark naked on the Mercedes’ beautiful leather seats she couldn’t have been more taken aback.

‘I said, the name is Conrad,’ he said evenly, without taking his eyes from the view beyond the car’s bonnet. ‘If we are going to be working together for some weeks I can’t be doing with Mr Quentin this and Mr Quentin that; it’s irritating in the extreme.’

She wanted—she did so want—to be able to match him for cool aplomb and control, but it was a lost cause, she acknowledged weakly as she sank back in her seat without saying another word. Game, set and match to him, the insensitive, cold-blooded, arrogant so-and-so.

CHAPTER THREE

THEY stopped on the way to buy flowers and chocolates for Madge—the flowers taking up the whole of the back seat of the car and the box of chocolates large enough to feed a hundred little old ladies for a week—and it was just after half past seven when the Mercedes nosed its way into the immaculate car park of the small, select private hospital on the outskirts of Harlow.

The dusky shadowed twilight carried the scent of the crisply cut lawns which surrounded the gracious building, and as Sephy nervously accompanied Conrad up the wide, horseshoe-shaped stone steps to the front door, her arms laden with flowers, the surrealness of it all was making her light-headed.

If anyone had told her that morning she would be spending part of the evening in the company of the exalted head of Quentin Dynamics she would have laughed in their face, but here she was. And here he was. All six foot plus of him.

She darted a glance from under her eyelashes at the tall, dark figure next to her and her heart gave a little jump. He exuded maleness. It was there in every line of the lean powerful body and hard chiselled face, and as her female hormones seemed horribly determined to react—with a life all of their own—to his own particular brand of virile masculinity it didn’t make for easy companionship.

Once they were inside the building the attractive, red-haired receptionist nearly fell over herself to escort them to Madge’s room, which—as Conrad had decreed—was the best in the place.

But Sephy didn’t notice the ankle-deep carpeting, exclusive and beautifully co-ordinated furnishings or the magnificent view from the large bay window over the lawns and trees surrounding the hospital. All her attention was taken up with the fragile, pathetic little figure huddled in the bed.

At a little over four foot ten Madge Watkins had always been tiny, but she seemed to have shrunk down to nothing since the day before and the effect was shocking.

Her grey hair looked limp and scanty, her skin was a pasty white colour, and the expression in her faded blue eyes stated quite clearly she was terrified. Sephy’s heart went out to her.

So, apparently, did Conrad’s.

The aggressive and ruthless tycoon of working hours and the mocking, contemptuous escort of the last forty-five minutes or so metamorphosed into someone Sephy didn’t recognise. He was quiet and tender with his elderly secretary, dumping the chocolates and the rest of the flowers he was carrying on a chair, before taking the shrivelled thin figure in his arms and holding her close for long moments without speaking.

Madge’s face was wet by the time he settled her back against her pillows, but then he sat by her side, talking soothingly and positively after he had drawn Sephy forward to make her greetings. After a while it dawned on Sephy that Conrad and his secretary had a very special relationship—more like mother and son than boss and employee. And it stunned her. Totally.

The receptionist brought them all tea and cakes at just after eight o’clock, and by the time they left, at ten to nine, Madge was smiling and conversing quite naturally, the look of stark dread gone from her eyes and her face animated.

‘You needn’t come again, lad.’

Once Madge had relaxed and understood Conrad had no intention of standing on ceremony in front of Sephy, she had referred to her brilliant boss as ‘lad’ a few times, and Sephy had realised that the special circumstances were allowing her to see the way they were normally when they were alone. Before this night she had never heard Madge give him anything but his full title, and even at the Christmas dances and such the elderly woman had always been extremely stiff and proper.

‘Of course I’m coming again, woman!’ His voice was rough but his face was something else as he glanced at the small figure in the bed, and Sephy was surprised at the jolt her heart gave.

‘No, really, lad. I know how you hate these places,’ Madge said earnestly.

And then she stopped speaking as Conrad laid his hand over her scrawny ones and said very softly, ‘I said I’ll be back, Madge. Now, then, no more of that. And you’re not rushing home to that empty house before you’re able to look after yourself either. You’re going to get better, the doctor’s assured me about that, but it’ll take time and you’ll have to be patient for once in your life.’

‘There’s the pot calling the kettle,’ Madge said weakly, her eyes swimming with tears again as his concern and love touched her.

It touched Sephy too, but in her case the overwhelming feeling was one of confusion and agitation and the knowledge that it had been a mistake—a big, big mistake—to come here with him like this. As the cold, ruthless, cynical potentate Conrad Quentin was someone she disliked, as the ladykiller and rake he was someone she despised, and as her temporary boss he was someone she respected, for his incredibly intelligent mind and the rapier-sharp acumen that was mind-blowing, at the same time as feeling an aversion for such cold, obsessional single-mindedness.

But tonight… How did she think about him tonight? she asked herself nervously as she watched him make his goodbyes to Madge. But, no, he was her boss—just her boss—and come tomorrow morning things would be back on a more formal footing and she would forget how she was feeling right now—she would; of course she would! She, of all people, knew that men like him—wildly attractive, charismatic brutes of men—were shallow and egocentric and could charm the birds out of the trees when they liked.

They had just reached the door when Madge’s voice, urgent and high, brought them turning to face her again. ‘Angus! I forgot about Angus. I can’t believe I could forget him. He’s had no dinner, Conrad.’

‘He could live on his fat for years, Madge, so don’t put on sackcloth and ashes,’ Conrad said drily, and in answer to Sephy’s enquiring face he added, ‘Madge’s cat,’ by way of explanation.

‘He’ll be wondering where I am—’

‘Don’t worry.’ Conrad cut short Madge’s tremulous voice, his own resigned. ‘I’ll pick him up on the way home and he can board with me for a while until you’re home again. Daniella loves cats, as you know—even Angus. She’ll look after him.’

Daniella? Who was Daniella? And then a prim voice in her head admonished, It’s nothing to do with you who Daniella is.

It was dark outside, the air a wonderful scented mixture of grass and woodsmoke and hot summer days after the sterile warmth of the hospital, and Sephy raised her head as she took several deep gulps of the intoxicating mixture.

‘Thanks, Sephy.’ His voice was unusually soft.

Surprised into looking at him, she became aware he was watching her closely from narrowed blue eyes, his hands thrust deep in his pockets and the brooding quality she had noticed about him more than once very evident.

‘Sephy?’ She stared at him, suddenly acutely shy without knowing why. ‘You said you didn’t intend to call me that.’

‘It seems the least I can do after you’ve helped me out so ungrudgingly this evening,’ he said with quiet sincerity.

It made her previous thoughts about him uncharitable, to say the least, and she could feel herself blushing as she said, ‘That’s all right; it killed two birds with one stone, actually.’

‘Yes?’ He glanced down enquiringly as they began to walk.

‘I’d been invited to a party that I didn’t want to go to but it would have been difficult to get out of it without a valid excuse,’ she explained quietly.

‘And there was me thinking you had succumbed to my irresistible charm.’

It was cool and light, but somehow she got the impression he wasn’t as amused as his smile would have liked her to believe, and something he had said earlier in the day—‘many a true word is spoken in jest’—came back to her. The male ego again. She mentally nodded at the thought. The male sex in general really did seem to believe they had been put on the earth to receive due homage.

‘Anyway, party or no, the least I can do is to feed you before I take you back,’ he said smoothly, for all the world as though she was a little lost orphan he had found wandering about the streets of London. ‘Come on, we’ll stop off for a bite to eat on the way home. I know I’m starving.’

She stared at him uncertainly, searching for the right words to refuse his invitation without appearing rude. Dinner with Conrad Quentin? She wouldn’t be able to eat a thing, she told herself feverishly as she stopped dead in her tracks. ‘But…’

‘Yes?’ He glanced down at her again and his eyes were cool.

‘What about Miss de Menthe?’ she said quickly. ‘I thought you were seeing her tonight?’

‘Cancelled,’ he said cryptically.

‘And there’s Madge’s cat.’ Thank goodness for Madge’s cat.

‘So there is.’ His gaze was distinctly cold now, and when she still didn’t move he made a quiet sound of annoyance and took her arm in one firm hand, guiding her along the winding path between bowling-green-smooth stretches of grass and into the car park.

His flesh was warm through the thin cotton of her cardigan, and it wasn’t the swiftness with which he was urging her along that made her suddenly short of breath. He was so big, so male, so much of everything if the truth be known. And knowing what he was like, all the women he had had, made her feel gauche and inadequate and totally out of her depth. He smelt absolutely wonderful. The unwelcome intrusion of the thought did nothing to calm the wild flutters of panic that were turning her stomach upside down.

He opened the car door for her when they reached the Mercedes, and as he leant over her slightly it took every ounce of her will-power to slide into the confines of the car with a small polite nod of her head, as though she was totally oblivious to his male warmth.

And then, as he walked lazily round the bonnet of the car, she took herself severely in hand. Conrad Quentin was one of those men who had everything—wealth, success and an alarming amount of sex appeal—and she’d better get it clear in her head now that she wasn’t going to let him intimidate her, consciously or unconsciously. If she was going to continue standing in for Madge, that was. Which she rather thought she was, crazy though that made her. Anyway, she had given him her word at the office earlier, so that was that. She couldn’t back out now.

‘You’re frowning.’

She glanced up to see a pair of very piercing blue eyes surveying her through the open driver’s door, and then, as she flushed hotly, he slid into the seat and started the engine with a flick of his hand.

Sephy waited for him to follow up on his terse statement, but when they had gone a mile or two and he still hadn’t spoken she swallowed drily, and then said quietly, ‘Mr Quentin—’

‘Conrad,’ he interrupted pleasantly.

She tried to ignore the long lean legs stretched out under the steering wheel and the delicious faint odour of what must be wildly expensive aftershave, and took another surreptitious swallow before she managed, ‘Conrad, there really is no need to buy me dinner. I’m sure you must be terribly busy, and I’ve masses of things to do when I get home—’

‘Don’t you want to have dinner with me, Sephy?’ he interrupted again, the even tone fooling her not at all.

She hesitated just a second too long before she said, ‘It’s not that. Of course it’s not that I don’t want to.’

‘No?’ It was very dry. ‘Well, we won’t labour the point. I take it you have no objection in calling in Madge’s place on the way back and picking up the terrible Angus? It is en route, so it makes sense.’

She wanted to ask, Why the terrible Angus? but said instead, ‘Yes, of course. That’s fine,’ her voice tight and stiff.

‘And it might be easier to drop him off at my house before I take you home; he doesn’t like travelling and it’ll be less stressful,’ he continued smoothly. ‘We don’t want to distress him.’

Put like that, she could hardly do anything else but agree. She had no idea where he lived, but somehow she didn’t feel she could ask him either. She just hoped it wasn’t too far from Madge’s.

Madge’s house turned out to be a small and awe-inspiringly neat semi in Epping, with a paved front garden methodically interspersed with miniature shrubs. The interior of the building smelt of mothballs and furniture polish and was as spick and span as the front garden. It was exactly Madge—which made Angus all the more of a shock.

The cat was an enormous battle-scarred ginger tom, with a shredded right ear, a twisted tail that looked distinctly the worse for wear and a blemished nose that bore evidence of numerous fights. He was the very antithesis of what Sephy had expected.

He was waiting for them in Madge’s gleaming compact little kitchen when Conrad opened the door from the hall, which had been firmly closed, and it was clear he was confined to that room of the house during the working day from the massive cat flap in the back door, which gave him access to the rear garden, and the big, warm comfortable basket in one corner of the kitchen, next to which were two saucers. Two empty saucers—a fact which the cat immediately brought to their attention by his plaintive miaows.

‘Oh, he must be starving, poor thing.’

Sephy was all concern as the enormous feline wound hopefully round her legs, but as she glanced anxiously at Conrad she saw him shake his head mockingly, and his voice was amused as he said, ‘He’d have you wrapped round one paw the same as he has Madge. If ever a cat could look after itself this one can, I assure you. Angus always has his eye to the main chance and he keeps everyone dancing to his tune.’

It takes one to recognise one.

For an awful moment Sephy thought she had actually spoken the words out loud, but when Conrad’s face didn’t change and he merely gathered up the cat basket and the saucers she breathed out a silent sigh of relief. She’d said more than enough already.

‘See if you can find a tin of cat food for tonight while I take these out to the car. Although once I get him home I dare say Daniella will be feeding him salmon and steak.’ Conrad shook his head again at the huge cat, who eyed him unblinkingly out of serene emerald eyes. ‘He boarded with us last year while Madge had a couple of weeks’ holiday with her sister, and he didn’t taste cat food once.’

‘Daniella?’ Sephy queried carefully as he passed her with the basket. She didn’t think it unreasonable to ask now.

‘My housekeeper,’ he tossed easily over his shoulder.

His housekeeper. As the kitchen door closed behind him Sephy stood staring into space as she pictured a nice, plump, middle-aged little body, and then, as she heard Conrad returning, quickly opened a cupboard or two for the supply of cat food.

Angus submitted perfectly happily to being carried out to the car, his two huge front paws resting on Conrad’s chest as he gazed solemnly at Sephy over Conrad’s shoulder when she followed them out. Once in the Mercedes, however, the calm composure faltered a bit as he crouched on the back seat and began to growl as Conrad started the engine. A low, heated and rather nasty growl.

‘Ignore him.’ Conrad appeared quite unconcerned. ‘He’ll keep that up until we reach home, but as long as he isn’t confined that’s all he’ll do. He just hates being shut in.’

‘How do you know that?’ Sephy asked nervously. The animal was half domestic cat, half lion, and she didn’t fancy having those vicious claws and teeth in the back of her neck.

‘Because I made the mistake of putting him in a cat carrier Madge had provided the last time,’ Conrad said evenly, his face expressionless. ‘It’s called learning the hard way.’

‘Bad idea?’

‘You could say that.’ It was clear the subject wasn’t a favourite one. ‘He’d ripped it apart and escaped before we were halfway home, and he leapt about the car like a demoniac maniac before he decided to take his revenge by scenting every corner.’

‘Oh, I see.’ The mental picture of her suave, cool, imperturbable boss being put in his place so completely by a cat was sweet, and although she managed to keep her face straight there was a gurgle of laughter in her voice as she said, ‘He’s a big cat.’

‘With a big bladder.’ The blue eyes raked her face for one moment. ‘I had the car cleaned three times before I got rid of the odour, and even then the smell wafted back on hot days.’

She glanced round at Angus, who was sitting quite quietly apart from the low, threatening growl in the back of his throat, and as honey-brown eyes met brilliant green she could have sworn the cat winked at her. She smiled at him, she couldn’t help it, and then turned back in her seat again, her eyes scanning the hard male profile at the side of her as she did so. The amusement left her features abruptly.

Somehow she was more entangled in Conrad Quentin’s life after a few hours than she was in Mr Harper’s after working for him for a few years. She didn’t quite know how it had happened, but something was telling her it was unwise at best, and at worst it was downright dangerous. He had something, a drawing power, a magnetism, and how was she going to feel when Madge was back at work and she was unceremoniously dumped back into Customer Services? But that was stupid—she’d feel relieved. Of course she would.

‘My house is on the outskirts of Edgware.’ His voice, calm and controlled and even as always, cut in on her racing thoughts. ‘And I do appreciate you helping me out like this, Sephy.’

The charm was out in full force, she thought with unusual cynicism, but then as she was complying with that determined, hard male will perhaps it wasn’t surprising. He was a man who didn’t like to be crossed, even in the smallest of things. ‘No problem. No problem at all,’ she said lightly, glancing out of the side window at the dark, shadowed road along which they were travelling. ‘Like I said, this has done me a favour in a way.’

‘Ah, yes, the party.’ There was a granite quality to his voice for a moment, and then it cleared as he said silkily, ‘This might surprise you but I don’t usually have to try and persuade a woman to spend time in my company, not since I made my first million anyway. And I can’t remember one refusing dinner before.’

She said nothing, simply because she couldn’t think of anything which would defuse what had suddenly become an electric moment.

‘This Jerry—do you intend to put the poor man out of his misery and go out with him, or is there someone else on the horizon?’ he asked conversationally, so conversationally she felt she couldn’t really ask him to mind his own business, as she would have liked to do and as she felt he deserved.

‘No to both,’ she answered shortly, hoping he would take the hint.

He didn’t. ‘So you’re fancy-free and single?’ he drawled easily. ‘Enjoying the odd date but without any ties or commitments?’ He didn’t look at her as he spoke, his eyes on the windscreen.

‘There hasn’t been an “odd date” for quite some time.’ She aimed to make her voice faintly amused, as though she wasn’t as taut as piano wire inside. ‘But, yes, I suppose you could put it like that.’ Not that my private life is anything to do with you.

He nodded slowly. ‘Are you a career girl?’ he asked evenly.

Bearing in mind who he was, she could really only answer in one way, but it had the added advantage of being the truth when she said, ‘Yes, I am, if being a career girl means I want to do well in my job and get somewhere.’

‘And you enjoy being independent and autonomous.’ This time it was a statement, and Sephy stiffened slightly. He saw too much, this man, and she didn’t like where the conversation was going.

She forced herself to take a deep calming breath before she shrugged and said airily, ‘Doesn’t everyone at some stage?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ he challenged smoothly.

‘Well, most of my friends think that way.’ Her voice was too defensive, and she recognised it even before he spoke.

‘I’m sorry, I seem to have touched a nerve,’ he said, in a voice which suggested he wasn’t sorry at all.

Arrogant swine! She gritted her teeth and stared straight ahead.

The rest of the journey was conducted in a silence in which Conrad seemed to feel extremely comfortable but which Sephy found unpleasant and disturbing to say the least. It didn’t help that he was completely oblivious to her and she was aware of every tiny movement he made—his strong capable hands on the wheel, his big powerful body, the way his trousers pulled tight over lean thighs…

Sexual attraction. The words were stark but Sephy faced them bravely, aware she had been putting off the moment all day. Okay, so she was sexually attracted to him and she hadn’t felt this way in years, not since… Her thought process hesitated, and then she followed through. Not since David.

David Bainbridge. The cliché of tall, dark and handsome. He had been the ultimate prize in the small village community near Banbury where she had been born, and the summer after she had finished her A levels and he had been home on holiday from university had been a thrilling one.

His father was something big in the City, and from the age of seventeen David had driven his own red sports car with a different girl in tow for every day of the week. Sephy had always been in awe of him, and consequently excruciatingly shy in his presence whenever the young people of the villages thereabouts got together. Her shyness had expressed itself in a cool aloofness that had earned her the nickname ‘Ice Maiden’ amongst the lads, although she hadn’t known about that at the time.

She had been a short fat toddler and a short fat child, and even at eighteen a vestige of puppy fat had remained. That, combined with her abundance of freckles and the ugly brace she had had to wear on her teeth, had made her self-esteem zero, but she had hidden her lack of confidence under a reserved, touch-me-not exterior that protected the vulnerable girl underneath.

And then that summer David had appeared interested in her. He had returned from university with a beautiful blonde who had stayed two weeks and then disappeared to visit her family in Sweden, and from almost the day Annika had left David had begun seeking her out at the local dances, picnics, visits to the pub and so on. He had been quite open about it.

She hadn’t been able to believe it at first, and then she had floated in a bubble of wonder and excitement as she had waited for him to ask her for a date, a real date, without any of the rest of the crowd along. She had dreamt about the moment for nights on end.

And then he had asked, one evening when a gang of them had been sipping ice-cold beer in the garden of the village pub. David had taken her aside and told her he was crazy about her, that he couldn’t understand how he’d never noticed her before, that he really wanted them to get to know each other better.

‘Come for a quiet meal at my place?’ he suggested softly, his arms round her waist and his ebony eyes looking into her dazed brown ones. ‘The parents are away so we’ll have the house to ourselves. We can get a video and just chill out with a pizza and a bottle of wine. Please, Sephy?’

And he kissed her, drawing her into him as his hands moved seductively over her body before wandering under the loose thin cotton top she had on and cradling her breasts, his thumbs rubbing and tweaking their hard points until she thought she’d melt right at his feet.

It was her first kiss, her first tentative sexual encounter, and it blew her mind. She had worshipped him from afar all her life and suddenly the impossible, the inconceivable was happening. He’d fallen for her. Her…

She was the girl he drove home in his flash red sports car that night, and as they waved goodbye to the others she felt as though she was in a wonderful, blissful dream.

And then the dream turned into a nightmare.

It was her friend Glenis who told her. Glenis came round the next morning, sympathetic and commiserating but with an edge to her pity that told Sephy the other girl was perhaps secretly relishing the drama too, to say that Robbie— Glenis’s boyfriend—had told her on the quiet that David was taking Sephy out for a bet.

‘A bet?’ Sephy looked into Glenis’s round eyes, owl-like behind their thick glasses. ‘I don’t understand.’

Glenis wriggled a bit, but she still took a delight in telling her. ‘One of the lads, I don’t know who, bet David that he couldn’t get the “Ice-Maiden”—that’s you—into bed on a first date,’ Glenis said conspiratorially. ‘And David said he could. His parents are away in America for a few weeks so he told the lads he’d do it at his house, and they could hide in a spare bedroom and then he’d call them in to prove it when he’d finished. I’m sorry, Sephy, but I couldn’t let you walk into that, could I? I had to tell you. I couldn’t believe it at first, but it is true, honest.’

She thanked Glenis somehow, and once the other girl had gone picked up the telephone with numb fingers and called David’s home. She didn’t think about what to say, she just asked him. And he didn’t even try to pretend once he knew he had been rumbled. That hurt as much as anything else. He was offhand and contemptuous and amused, and it was he who put the phone down on her.

She wanted to die for a time, dragging herself through each day and putting up a front whenever she was with the others until her nerves were as raw and lacerated as her heart. And at the bottom of her, whatever she tried to tell herself through the long sleepless nights when she tossed and turned until she thought she’d go mad, she knew David would have won his bet if she had gone to his home that night. She had been his for the taking and he had known it. Known she was crazy about him, that she adored him.

And then the holidays finished and David and some of the others went back to university. Months passed and she had the brace off and learnt to make the best of her naturally thick silky hair and smooth creamy skin; several hours at the gym each week toned her body and improved her shape. She took a college course in business management and secretarial skills, and, armed with that and her excellent A levels, left the womb-like village life and her mother’s small, pretty cottage and headed for London at the age of twenty.

But somehow, deep inside, she was still that small, hurt, shy teenager who had had the ground swept from under her feet and had been left vulnerable and exposed, and she had never fully realised it until this moment. She had carved a new life for herself, even dated occasionally—never the same man twice and always allowing nothing more than a goodnight kiss, although most of them had seemed to think ending up in bed was a good idea—and she’d become adept and composed at handling all of life’s ups and downs. And yet sexually and emotionally she had frozen that morning in front of Glenis, and it could have been yesterday so securely had the ice held.

And then this morning she had been drawn into Conrad Quentin’s fiery orbit and now the ice was melting. She was attracted to him. She didn’t want to be, but she didn’t seem able to control the feeling. And he was just another David at heart. Oh, he was undoubtedly wealthier, more powerful, more magnetic and fascinating, but basically he was a ruthless womaniser who worked hard and played hard and lived his life by his own set of rules.

Was she one of those women she’d read about? she asked herself searchingly. Women with a built-in self-destruct button who were always drawn to men who would use and abuse them; men who were charming and hypnotic but with a flaw that made them cruelly self-absorbed and narcissistic?

But, no, any woman would be attracted to Conrad Quentin; he was extremely fanciable, she reassured herself in the next moment. This was just a lust thing, however you wanted to dress it up, an animal awareness, something base and carnal, and as such quite easily controlled once it had been recognised.

And as she was as far out of his league of beautiful, famous models and starlets and the like as the man in the moon, it really didn’t matter too much one way or the other anyway. Conrad Quentin would never bother with someone like her—why, she’d worked for Quentin Dynamics for six years and he hadn’t even known she’d existed until fate had put her right under his nose!

Sephy had been lost in her dark thoughts and oblivious to the miles the powerful car had eaten up, so now, as a deep, husky voice at the side of her said quietly, ‘Here we are. Angus will soon be in Daniella’s tender care,’ she raised her head in startled surprise to see the car was pulling up in front of a nine-foot-high security wall with massive gates set in it, which Conrad opened smoothly with remote control from the car.