Time Fuse. Penny Jordan

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      CHAPTER ONE

      SELINA glanced tensely at her watch, forcing herself to appear calm and relaxed as she linked her hands together in her lap and sat well back in her chair. It was irrational that now, when she had already expended so much mental anguish on what lay ahead, she should be suffering these second thoughts. The pros and cons had already been weighed and having been weighed had been again, and in the end, there could have been no other decision. Not to accept the opportunity fate had handed her would be tantamount to running away, and she had learned long ago during the traumatic days of her childhood that that was simply to court further pain and humiliation. No, when she had first heard about this vacancy from her present employer she had had to resist a strong compulsion to tell him that she had no desire to apply for it, but would he have understood? Might he not have started to ask questions she could not answer, and anyway, hadn’t there been a stronger compulsion; a need she had thought conquered but which flourished inside her still…a desire to see and know for herself?

      She trembled slightly, a tall girl with sleek blonde hair; she took after her mother in looks and her father in build. The hint of sensuality in the arrangement of her features that she had inherited from her mother often caused the freezing disdain with which she des-patched her would-be lovers to come as something of a shock. They couldn’t know that she used that disdain to cloak fear and pain. ‘Baked Alaska’ one wit had called her when she was up at Oxford; all melting sweetness on the outside and cold as ice on the inside.

      Better by far to be considered cold than easy game. Her grey eyes hardened slightly, her muscles clenching. She must not think of the past now. But wasn’t now exactly the time she should be thinking of it? Easy game; she could still vividly remember one of her mother’s lovers describing her thus, and she herself had lived too long with the soul-searing agonies of such a label—albeit at second-hand—to be in any doubts about that.

      They had not got on well, she and her mother. She was her father’s child, she had once told her and ironically she had known herself unloved because of that. Doubly ironic really when one…

      ‘Miss Thorn?’ The pleasant voice of the secretary interrupted her thoughts. ‘Sir Gerald is ready for you now. Won’t you please come in?’

      His office was everything one would expect from an eminent QC, the very air redolent almost with the smell of respectability and wealth. The palms of her hands were sweating slightly, and she wished more than anything else, at this particular moment in time that she could simply turn tail and run. Fool, fool, she derided herself… What was she doing here?

      She was here because she wanted a job as Sir Gerald’s PA she reminded herself as she faced her prospective employer. Tall, with a shock of white hair, the photographs she had seen of him had not done him justice. There were lines on his face that had not been put there merely by time, a warmth in his smile she had not anticipated and which left her unbalanced.

      ‘Miss Thorn.’ He reached across his desk to shake her hand and Selina had to quell a ridiculous urge to touch him. As though he sensed her hesitancy he looked at her. Forcing a smile she extended her hand. His grip was firm without dominating.

      ‘Please sit down.’

      Breathe deeply, keep calm, she admonished herself doing as he bid. It had been hard-won the elegance and grace with which she now moved. She had been a tall gangly girl, ill at ease with her own body, who had had to force herself to accept that the grooming of the mind alone was not sufficient.

      Oxford had done much to change her, but some things could never be lost. She still possessed a residue of antipathy towards the male sex which could sometimes reassert itself, often at life’s most awkward moments, and when it did she told herself that it was a combination of fear and pain. At university she had once been asked by a rejected lover what her hang-up was; why she insisted on remaining a virgin. She could have told him; by then she had learned enough about herself and others to analyse and study herself objectively with cool distance, but knowing herself was easier than implementing a change.

      Once long ago she had dreamed of possessing an office like this for herself, of earning praise and recognition for her legal skills, but like all other daydreams it had been destroyed by reality. Foster children did not come from backgrounds wealthy enough to provide the financial backing for a legal training. It had been a hard blow to accept, but she had accepted it, and now she was here applying for a post that at least would bring her into contact with that side of the law she found most stimulating.

      Her prospective employer was talking; his initial questions were simple to answer,