Innocent In The Boardroom. Joss Wood
pointed out with remorseless logic. ‘We didn’t end up talking about George, as it happens.’
‘And that was a mistake.’ She breathed a silent sigh of relief as the bill was brought to them, and then breathed an even bigger sigh of relief when the proprietor approached and began enthusiastically quizzing them on what they thought of their meal, his sharp black eyes dancing between the two of them.
So she hadn’t answered his question. And he wasn’t sure why he wanted to find out anyway. But he did. What was it they said about wanting what you couldn’t get?
He watched as she rose, terminating all personal conversation.
‘I shall get a taxi home,’ she told him firmly.
He ignored her. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
He ushered her out into a much cooler evening—suitable weather finally for her starchy suit and jacket. He made a call on his cell phone and his car, complete with driver, appeared from nowhere. It pulled over and he opened the passenger door for her. When she was inside, he leant down so that he was looking at her on eye level.
‘You’ll be happy to know that you’ll be spared my company.’
He grinned, and she had one of those intuitive moments of knowing that he knew exactly what had been going through her head.
‘I’ll get Jackson to drop you home and we can pick up where we left off at a later date.’
‘What later date?’ She worried at her lower lip. If she could stick a few definite meetings in her work diary then she would be able to get a handle on seeing him again. And over her dead body if it was going to be in another cosy little restaurant.
‘I’ll get back to you on that one.’
‘But don’t you want to get this mess sorted out as quickly as possible?’
‘You can keep an eye on all the business accounts for suspicious activity, but if there’s none then why not let George enjoy his last supper, so to speak?’ He stood up, slapped the hood of the sleek, black Maserati, and remained watching as it disappeared from view.
He hadn’t felt so invigorated for a long time.
And what, he wondered, was a guy to do about that?
FOR THE PAST few years Kate had seen her place of work as a refuge. There, she had felt in charge of her life, had worked hard at putting together all the building blocks that gave it definition and purpose.
Now she felt jumpy. On tenterhooks. Always on the lookout for Alessandro who, for the past couple of days, had often appeared to talk to her. About a client with a thorny tax problem, two overseas companies whose vast returns had generated questions about splitting them into smaller fragments, an acquisition that would mark a significant branching out from electronics, shipping and the leisure industry into publications...
‘Cape would normally handle this, but seeing that he’s on an extended holiday abroad, and seeing that that extended holiday is likely to become permanent, you’d better start getting acquainted with some of his responsibilities...’
This at five-thirty earlier today, when most of her colleagues had mentally switched off in preparation for leaving and had been all agog at the appearance of the big man.
She had kept as cool and collected as she could but her nerves had been all over the place. Surely the head of finance should be handling this situation? she had ventured, watching askance as he had perched on the side of her desk and then dragging her eyes away from his muscular thighs and the way the fine fabric of his trousers was stretched taut over them. But, no. Watson Russell was swamped by several huge ongoing deals—and besides, these matters would qualify as fairly small peanuts for him.
Afterwards, some of the girls had hovered, waiting for her to emerge from her office, and had proceeded to ply her with questions. None of the questions had had anything to do with work. They had wanted her opinion of him. As a hunk. Kate had made it a point never to engage in conversations like that, but she had been pinned to the wall and had found herself admitting that he was all right but not her type.
So how come he’s been around so much...is something going on...?
Argh! She had become just the sort of giggly, girly type she had never been, and it had left her all hot and bothered.
And he still hadn’t committed to a meeting so that he could look through what she had found out—which, as it turned out, was not very much at all. George had been dipping his hands in the till, but it hadn’t been going on for very long and the amounts, in the big scheme of things, weren’t that significant.
She would talk to Alessandro about that—try and find some compassion in him for the older man—but she didn’t hold out much hope.
Now, at home far earlier than she normally would have been, on yet another hot summer evening, Kate looked at her work computer with jaundiced eyes.
It wasn’t yet six and she couldn’t face sitting in front of her computer and picking up where she had left off during the day.
Wandering through her very nice little ground-floor flat, she had plenty of time to think about the social life she lacked.
The back door was flung open and she could smell the neighbours barbecuing. Aside from the pleasant couple with two kids living next to her, she had no idea who her neighbours were.
At work, having almost given up on asking her, two of her colleagues had invited her to go to the pub with them and she had felt a little surge of panic because...
Because her whole life was devoted to work.
How had that happened? Okay, she knew how, and she knew why, she just didn’t understand how it had all run away with her so that she had lost all her perspective.
Not only was her social life practically non-existent, but where was the guy she should be dating? Where was the exciting sex life she should be having?
She had had one boyfriend, three years previously, and he had fallen off the face of the earth because he had wanted more attention than she had been prepared to give. He hadn’t understood that she had been taking professional exams and had had to study when she wasn’t holding down the demanding job at the accountancy firm she had left as soon as she had qualified.
At the time she had been miffed—because how hard would it have been for him to just give her some breathing space? Surely it had been enough that they’d had fun on the weekends? But he had wanted more than just fun on the weekends.
So now here she was—alone. She wouldn’t have wanted to be with Sam still. No, in retrospect, he hadn’t been the man for her, even though he had ticked a lot of the right boxes. But shouldn’t she have moved on? Be having a good time finding his replacement? Somewhere?
She lived in London, for heaven’s sake!
Frustrated with the direction of her thoughts, she slammed shut the French doors at the back so that she couldn’t be reminded of what she was missing by the smell of barbecue wafting into her house.
Then she had a shower.
Then, in a pair of tiny shorts and a cropped top, she prepared to wait out the annoying train of thoughts that were suddenly bothering her.
For which she blamed her wretched boss, who had somehow managed to get under her skin, to make her feel somehow inadequate...
And as soon as she started thinking about Alessandro she found that she couldn’t stop.
He was just so alive and vital and brimming over with restless energy. Next to him, she felt like a pale, listless shadow, going through the motions of having a fulfilling life when she wasn’t.
Absorbed