Vacancy: Wife of Convenience. Jessica Steele

      CHAPTER ONE

      SHE had first seen him at her father’s funeral, and had not expected to see him again. But here he was standing in front of her, tall, as she remembered, dark-haired and somewhere in his middle thirties.

      Colly had not had the chance then to learn who he was; her stepmother of two years, only five years older than her, had monopolised him as they stood at the crematorium after the service. ‘Do come back to the house for some refreshment’, Colly had clearly heard Nanette urge.

      He had suavely declined, looked as if he might come over to Colly to offer his condolences, but she had been buttonholed by someone else and had turned away. He spoke to her now, though, apologising that Mr Blake—the man she was at the Livingstone building to see—was unfortunately incapacitated that day.

      ‘Silas Livingstone,’ he introduced himself. She had not known his name; he obviously knew hers. ‘If you could hang on here for ten minutes, I’ll be free to interview you in his stead.’

      ‘Would you rather I made another appointment?’ She would prefer not to do that. She was nervous enough about this interview as it was, and was unsure if she would ever have the nerve to come back.

      ‘Not at all,’ he replied pleasantly. ‘I’ll see you in a short while,’ he added, and was already on his way to the adjoining office.

      ‘Would you like me to wait elsewhere?’ Colly asked the smart, somewhere in her late thirties PA, who appeared to be handling at least three tasks at one and the same time.

      ‘Better not,’ Ellen Rothwell replied with a kind smile. ‘Mr Livingstone has a busy day. Now that he’s found a slot for you, he’ll want you to be where he expects you to be.’

      Colly smiled in return but decided to say nothing more. She found it embarrassing enough as it was that apparently, so Ellen Rothwell had explained, Vernon Blake’s present secretary had phoned around all the other applicants to cancel today’s appointments. But, on phoning Colly’s home at the start of business that day, had been informed that she was out and that there was no way of contacting her.

      She had known that her stepmother had a spiteful streak. To deliberately refuse to call her to the phone when she had been in all the time only endorsed that fact.

      Colly held back a sigh and tried to direct her thoughts to the forthcoming interview. Vernon Blake was the European Director at Livingstone Developments, and was looking for a replacement multilingual senior secretary. The salary advertised was phenomenal and, since Nanette wanted her to move out, would, if Colly were lucky enough to get the job, enable her to rent somewhere to live and be independent.

      That had been her thinking at the time of spotting the advert. Never again would she be dependent on anyone. She had read the advert again. ‘Multilingual senior secretary.’ What was so difficult about that? She could, after all, type. And, though a little rusty with her languages, she had at one time excelled in French and Italian, and had scraped through with a pass mark in Spanish and German. So what else did a multilingual secretary need?

      Watching Ellen Rothwell expertly deal with telephone calls, take notes in rapid shorthand and then calmly and charmingly sort out what seemed to be some sort of a problem, Colly realised that there was a lot else to being a secretary. And what experience of being a secretary did she have? Absolutely none!

      She almost got up then, made her excuses, and bolted. Then she remembered why she wanted this job that paid so much. Very soon she would be homeless. And she, who had never had paid work in her life, desperately needed some kind of well-paid employment.

      It hurt that her father had left his will the way that he had. His twenty-eight-year-old widow had inherited everything; his daughter