Reluctant Mistress. Natalie Fox
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.
‘I’m sorry,’ Robert said.
She glanced up at him. His face was ill at ease, a muscle pulsing at his throat. ‘Sorry for pointing out what was staring me in the face, what I should have seen for myself?’
How stupid she had been. Julia’s supposed dental appointments had coincided with Nigel’s lateness. On Tuesday she had pulled him up on it, obviously to no effect. And he wasn’t reaching his sales targets either. She had meant to deal with it sooner but pressure of other business had pushed it to the back of her mind.
‘Nigel isn’t reaching his targets...’ Robert started to echo her thoughts.
‘OK!’ Liza suddenly stormed, and as quick as her temper flared it cooled, and she slumped down in her chair. ‘I’m sorry; I’m just furious with myself for not seeing what was going on and dealing with it sooner.’ She looked up at Robert standing so powerfully in front of the desk. He seemed to fill the room with his presence. ‘I’ll have a word with the pair of them.’
‘A word isn’t good enough, Liza; fire them before I do.’ His voice was so deadly serious she felt a ping of dangerous apprehension down her spine.
Her lips tightened defiantly. ‘Since when have you told me what to do with my staff?’
‘Since when did you run Magnum?’ he shot back.
Raking a tremulous hand through her hair, she calmed her stretched nerves. ‘You gave me control over my advertising staff, Robert,’ she reasoned coolly. ‘Now you are trying to override me. Everyone deserves a second chance. You hired Nigel in the first place so you must have thought he had some worth, and I can’t fault Julia—she’s a damned good assistant. I don’t like firing people without just cause.’
‘And you think you haven’t just cause?’ He was angry now and Liza hadn’t intended that. ‘I don’t care what my staff get up to outside of office hours, but when they do it in my time I see red—’
‘You don’t know anything for sure,’ Liza argued.
‘I know that I saw them all but having it off in the rest-room earlier this week—’
‘Do you have to be so damned crude?’ Liza interrupted furiously.
‘Do you have to be so blind?’ he raked back, his eyes glittering jets of fury. ‘Because you’re as cold as ice yourself you can’t recognise sexual attraction in other people, even when it’s flashed in front of your eyes in neon!’
Tears of pain stabbed the corners of her eyes. Shooting to her feet, she turned away from him, clutched her arms tightly around her shoulders and stared painfully out at the rain.
‘That was unforgivable,’ she croaked weakly, and then her whole body tensed alarmingly as he came up behind her and eased her clenched fingers from her shoulders. His own hands smoothed over the warm wool of her black sweater.
‘I agree,’ he murmured, so close she felt the warmth of his breath on the back of her neck. She suppressed the shudder his contact spun down her spine. ‘It was unforgivable; nevertheless I apologise.’
Liza nodded her acceptance. ‘If...if you knew what was going on between them,’ she whispered, ‘why didn’t you dismiss them?’
‘Because, as you rightly said, it’s your place to deal with your own staff. I thought you would see it for yourself, but I realise now that I wasn’t being wholly fair on you. A new job, a mountain of other responsibilities—I’ve expected too much of you too soon.’
She was about to protest that she was coping, but her words froze in her throat as the office door opened. Robert’s hands flew from her shoulders as if he’d been stung, and Liza swung round so abruptly she nearly swayed into him.
‘Don’t forget the sales meeting at twelve,’ Robert said curtly as he crossed to the door, where Julia stood blocking his way with a curious expression on her face. She moved aside to let him pass, closed the door after him and turned to Liza.
‘I’m sorry my appointment took longer than expected,’ she said brightly, easing out of her coat. Her tone implied she had seen nothing.
But she had; Liza knew that with a tightening of her stomach muscles. Julia couldn’t have failed to see Robert Buchanan’s hands on his advertising director’s shoulders. Robert was almost all things, but an actor he wasn’t. The curtness of his voice hadn’t shadowed his guilt at all.
With a deep sigh Liza turned back to the mail; now wasn’t the time to dress Julia down for her conduct with Nigel. Julia could easily misinterpret what she had seen. The way her mind worked she wouldn’t see it the way it had been, even if Liza explained that Robert had been simply offering her an apology for his rudeness. And worse, if she did try to talk her way out of it, she would have to explain why she and Robert had argued in the first place.
Liza silently cursed her assistant’s lack of discretion. She had enough to cope with without this!
She did tackle Nigel later, though; called him into her office when Julia wasn’t around.
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Nigel, but the other sales staff are way ahead of you. You’ve only managed to sell two half-pages this week and that’s not good enough.’
He blushed deeply, flicked