Bittersweet Yesterdays. Kate Proctor
she begged.
There was nothing she wouldn’t put past him, and the thought of having to live it down with her colleagues was something that didn’t even bear contemplating—especially Sarah Mitson, her closest friend, to whom she still hadn’t got around to divulging her complicated relationship to Mark.
‘Why, Lucy, sweetheart, I do believe you’re grovelling,’ he murmured complacently, releasing her and flashing her a wickedly taunting look as he stepped forward and held the door open for her.
Her eyes trained on the rich green carpeting beneath her feet, Lucy entered.
As with all the Waterford London offices, this general typing complex was magnificently equipped and almost lavishly appointed. Though she had no other work experience with which to make comparisons, Lucy had learned from the comments of staff from several of the departments within the company that Waterford’s wholly deserved their envied international reputation where staff pay, conditions and, most of all, job satisfaction were concerned. To refer to where she worked, as most did, as a ‘typing pool’ she knew was a complete misnomer. And it was too to refer to her colleagues simply as typists. Of the six of them, three were graduates, attracted by the company’s liberal internal promotion policies and lack of sex discrimination. Two current heads of department had started their careers in this very office. And she was the duffer among them, thought Lucy resignedly as she trudged, head bowed, towards her desk—acutely conscious of Mark close on her heels and the palpably loaded atmosphere permeating the suddenly hushed office.
‘My, my—and what have we been up to?’ teased Sarah wickedly beneath her breath as Lucy, now scarlet-faced, passed her and halted at her own desk.
She loved Sarah dearly, she thought resignedly, noticing how her friend had openly abandoned all idea of work to gaze with wide-eyed interest on what was going on around her, but there were times, such as right now, when she could happily throttle her.
She dug a large plastic bag out of one of the drawers and then proceded to tip the entire contents of all the drawers into it.
‘Heck, Lucy—you haven’t been fired, have you?’ exclaimed Sarah, her look turning to one of horrified suspicion.
Lucy glanced pleadingly over at her friend, now on her feet and regarding her with a look of shocked indignation, then towards Mark, standing impassively by her desk.
‘Of course not—but I’ll have to explain later,’ she muttered in Sarah’s direction, then flashed her an imploring look—when it came to defending her friends, Sarah’s normally placid nature could become startlingly aggressive.
‘Is that it?’ enquired Mark, glancing with open disdain at the overflowing carrier bag Lucy was now hoisting precariously in her arms.
She nodded and, casting what she hoped was a reassuring look in her stunned friend’s direction, followed him as he began marching out of the office.
‘Hang on a minute, Mark,’ she exclaimed when they had almost reached the door, and could have bitten off her tongue for her carelessness in speaking in what, to her colleagues, must have sounded an astounding familiar way to address the supreme boss. ‘I’ve forgotten my coat.’
He turned and faced her, his expression long-suffering. ‘OK—wait there while I get it,’ he muttered, striding back past her. ‘Where is it?’
‘I’ll get it,’ offered one of the other girls, having difficulty keeping her face straight as she raced off, then returned and handed Lucy’s coat to a deceptively patient-looking Mark.
‘Is that it?’ he asked Lucy, in tones of equally deceptive patience as he slung her coat nonchalantly over his shoulder.
She nodded, deciding she could collect her scarf and boots, which she had just that moment remembered, later.
‘Come on, then,’ he snapped, striding past her, ‘we haven’t got all day.’
Gritting her teeth, she followed him down the corridor and into the lift, where she maintained a frigid silence which her companion showed no inclination to break on their journey back to his suite of offices.
No wonder she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell even Sarah about her unfortunate connection with the Waterford family, especially not this monster, she fumed resentfully to herself as she entered the office that was to be hers—her pride simply hadn’t the stomach for it.
She placed the carrier bag on the desk and tipped its contents on to it.
‘Right—now that you’ve reduced this place to the sort of mess only you would feel at home in, perhaps we can go and eat,’ drawled Mark from the doorway, flinging her coat across the room at her as he left to get his own.
Clutching her coat to her, she raced out after him.
‘I’ll not last five minutes here—so what’s the point of my bothering?’ she demanded. ‘And as for having lunch with you, it’s an ordeal I’ve decided to skip!’
‘Damn it, Lucy,’ he exclaimed, striding threateningly towards her, ‘stop behaving like a spoiled brat—I’ve told you there are things I need to discuss with you!’
‘Perhaps if you stopped treating me like a child I’d—’ She broke off in consternation as the memory of how much a woman she had felt in his arms seared suddenly through her.
‘You were saying?’ he mocked softly, both his words and the disconcertingly predatory gleam in his eyes leaving her in no doubt that he sensed what was going through her mind. ‘Lucy, I think we ought to go—before I’m tempted to give you further proof that I no longer regard you as a child.’
CHAPTER TWO
BY THE time they were seated in the restaurant, Lucy was feeling as miserable physically as she was mentally. Without her scarf, a voluminous cashmere wrap which had been a birthday present from her mother and James, she was frozen; and without her boots her feet had been soaked in the rain.
‘No wonder you’re cold,’ said Mark unsympathetically, catching her shiver, despite the warmth surrounding them, as he finished giving their order. ‘You’re not exactly dressed for December weather.’
‘Only because you didn’t give me time to get changed into something suitable,’ snapped Lucy, acutely conscious of a completely new dimension to the edgy tension she generally experienced in his company, yet unable to pinpoint its cause.
‘As your coat was all you claimed to have with you,’ he replied in innocent tones, ‘I can only assume you’re complaining I didn’t give you time to go home and change—and that’s hardly a reasonable complaint.’
‘What did you want to talk to me about?’ she demanded wearily. She knew this patronisingly innocent mood of his of old, and it was one that more often than not reduced her to gibbering rage.
‘Perhaps I should have ordered you a brandy to warm you up,’ he murmured, disregarding her words totally. ‘You have, I take it, learned to hold your liquor by now?’
Lucy was mortified to feel her cheeks flame.
‘Ha, ha,’ she ground out, inwardly squirming. At sixteen she had, quite by accident, managed to get herself well and truly drunk on an innocuous-tasting punch she had unfortunately assumed to be a concoction of nothing but fruit juices.
‘How old were you at the time?’ enquired Mark, once again displaying that disconcerting knack of reading her mind.
‘Sixteen,’ snapped Lucy, then rounded on him bitterly. ‘And if you hadn’t dragged me along to that wretched do, only to dump me in a corner and order me to blend in with the wallpaper, I wouldn’t have spent the entire evening drinking in order to relieve the boredom!’
‘Is there nothing you’ve ever done that hasn’t been someone else’s fault?’ he asked, his tone as icy as the eyes