To Tame a Proud Heart. Cathy Williams
had wanted to make up for—for the lack of a mother, for the long hours he worked and, most of all, it had been his way of showing her how much he loved her.
But maybe Oliver Kemp was right. Maybe showering her with material things had taken away from her that hungry edge that drove people on to succeed. She thought of her friends—all pampered, all the indulged products of wealthy parents, charming enough people to whom hardship was unknown and suffering was measured in terms of missed skiing holidays.
‘But those are my personal feelings,’ he said coolly, breaking into her introspection. ‘Personal feelings have no place in a working environment, though. Just so long as you do your job competently then we’ll get along just fine. Abuse your position, my girl, and you’ll soon discover the limits to my tolerance.’
They stared at each other, and she felt panic rise up in her throat. This was never going to work out. He disliked her and he disliked everything that she stood for.
‘Thank you for making me feel so warmly welcomed into your organisation, Mr Kemp,’ she said stiffly, and his lips curved into an unwilling smile which totally altered the forbidding angularity of his face.
He stood up to show her into her office. ‘I see,’ he murmured over his shoulder, their eyes meeting, ‘that that biting tongue of yours might be something I shall have to tolerate. However,’ he continued, turning away and walking into the outer office, ‘there’s no need to dress in designer clothes.’
He sat on the edge of her desk, waiting for her to sit down, then he leant towards her. ‘I say this for your own benefit. The people with whom you’ll be mixing don’t come from such a rarefied background as you do.’ He reached out to finger the lapel of her expensive shirt. ‘Too much of this and you might find yourself distanced by a group of very nice people indeed.’
She didn’t pull away from his touch, but she wanted to. Instead, as he strolled back into his office, she found that her body had become rigid, and she only began to relax as she sorted out the stack of typing which lay at the side of the computer.
At twelve o’clock he emerged from his office and informed her that he would be out for the rest of the day. She watched as he slipped on his jacket, adjusted his tie, and breathed a sigh of relief when the door closed behind him.
He made her tense and it wasn’t simply due to the insults which he had flung at her. There was something watchful about him—something that stirred a certain uneasy wariness in her. He was like a shark, circling the water around her, content to watch, but she would do well to remember that sharks bit.
He had left her enough work to fill her time until five o’clock, but in fact she stayed on until nearly six-thirty, familiarising herself with his filing system, and familiarising herself also with some of the books on the shelf which he had informed her would have to be read, digested and memorised.
She had no idea how much of that had been said because he contemptuously believed that she would never manage such a task, but if she was to stay working with the loathsome man then she would make damned sure that by the end of her stint he would have to swallow everything he had said.
Her father was not at home when she got back—tired, but oddly elated at having spent the day doing something productive—but Rupert was. Bridie had let him in and Francesca found him in the sitting room, on his second glass of gin and tonic.
He looked at her as she walked in and said without preamble, ‘Nasty rumour has it that you’ve got a job.’
Francesca looked at him and grinned. She was very fond of Rupert Thompson. She had known him casually for two years, but it was really only in the last seven months that they had become close, much to her father’s disgust. He had no patience with men like Rupert. He thought that he should buckle down and find himself a job or, failing that, join the Army—as if joining the Army would suddenly change sunny-tempered Rupert into an aggressive work-machine.
The only thing that held him in check was his daughter’s repeated reassurance that nothing was going on between them. Rupert was fun. He didn’t want her as a passionate lover and the feeling was mutual.
She took off her coat, tossed it onto a chair and went across to the bar to pour herself a glass of mineral water.
‘Nasty rumour,’ she said, sitting down on the sofa, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet underneath her, ‘is right.’ She looked at him. ‘You could always follow my example,’ she added, and he grinned at her infectiously.
‘And lose my reputation? Never.’
As it happened, he did have a job of sorts, but in typical Rupert-style he had long ago decided that delegation was a talent that was much underrated. And, in fairness, it worked for him. His parents had died ten years ago, leaving him a fortune, along with a vast estate which he had happily left in the efficient hands of the managers who had looked after it from the year dot.
He signed things that needed his signature, spent enough time at his country home to ensure that things were being run profitably, and there his input ceased. He made sure that all his employees were treated well, received unstinting loyalty in return, and cheerfully had his good times on some of the immense profits that came his way.
‘So tell all,” he commanded, settling back comfortably with his drink, and Francesca obliged, carefully editing out the unpleasantness of her interview. She wasn’t given to confiding private feelings to other people—a legacy, she had always assumed, of having been the only child of a single-parent family.
‘Kemp,’ Rupert murmured thoughtfully. ‘Kemp, Kemp, Kemp. I know that name.’
‘Their electronic stuff is all over the country, Rupert,’ Francesca said drily. ‘And they’re branching out all the time,’ she heard herself saying. ‘They’ve moved into Europe and are hoping to capture the Far East fairly soon.’ One day, she thought suddenly, and I sound like an advertising brochure. Had Oliver Kemp been that successful in influencing her thoughts? She found the idea of that slightly disconcerting.
‘No, no, no.’ He waved aside the explanation. ‘What I mean is this—I’ve heard of that man personally.’
‘Really?’ She felt a sudden rush of curiosity which, she told herself, she had no intention of satisfying. Oliver Kemp was an arrogant bastard, and whatever he did in his private life had nothing to do with her. She would work for him because a combination of pride and guilt would make her, at least for the time being, but beyond that her interest stopped.
Rupert, immune to subtle shifts in atmosphere, blithely ignored this one and continued in the same thoughtful voice, ‘Oliver Kemp. I’ve seen him around.’
‘You’ve seen most people around,’ she pointed out. ‘You’re hardly one of life’s shrinking violets, are you?’
He laughed, pleased at that. ‘Good-looking chap,’ he said, draining his drink and eyeing the empty glass meaningfully. She ignored the hint. As far as she was concerned he drank too much anyway, and she had no intention of assisting the situation.
‘You can have some mineral water, Rupert,’ she said eventually, and he sighed in resignation.
‘Too much of this stuff is bad for you,’ he said when she handed him the glass of water. ‘Haven’t you heard that?’
‘No, and nor have you.’
‘A glass of wine, according to the experts, does wonders for some organ or other. Heart, I believe.’
‘I would sympathise if your input was restricted to one glass per day.’
‘Oliver Kemp,’ he said, not commenting on that one, ‘was in the gossip columns not too long ago. That’s why the name rings a bell. Don’t you ever read the gossip columns?’
‘Too trivial,’ she replied airily, and he laughed with great humour.
‘Ever since they announced that we were about to become engaged?’
‘Stupid people.’