‘Look, something rather exciting has come up and I need to talk to you. Can you come in here for a moment, please?’
‘Sure I can.’ Trying to project an enthusiasm she definitely wasn’t feeling, Rose pushed away the feedback form she had been completing and went out into the corridor towards Kerry’s room, which was situated on the other side of the passage.
Headliners was one of London’s most successful small head-hunting agencies, and Rose had worked there for two years. It specialised in placing people in jobs within the advertising industry and was famous for its youth, its dynamism and eclectic approach—all highly valued qualities when it came to dealing with their talented, but often temperamental clients!
Their offices were based in Maida Vale, in a charmingly converted mews cottage. It had been deliberately designed so that their workplace seemed more like a home from home, and was the envy of the industry! The theory was that relaxed surroundings helped people do their job better and, so far, the practice was bearing out the theory very nicely.
Rose could see Kerry working at her desk and walked straight in without knocking, since she had always operated an open-door policy. And although, strictly speaking, Kerry was her boss—she was only a couple of years older than Rose—she had never found the need to pull rank. Headliners eight employees all worked as a team, and not a hierarchy.
She looked up as Rose came in, pushed her tinted glasses back up her nose, and smiled. ‘Hi!’
Rose smiled back. ‘You wanted to see me?’
Kerry nodded and fixed her with a penetrating look. ‘How are you doing, Rose?’
Rose forced herself to widen her smile. ‘Fine.’ She nodded. And she was, of course she was. Just because she had spent the week since her lunch with Khalim thinking about him during every waking moment—it didn’t mean there was anything wrong with her. And even if when she went to bed there was no let-up—well, so what? Maybe sleep didn’t come easily, and maybe all her dreams were invaded by that same man—but that did not mean she was not fine. She wasn’t sick, or broke, or worried, was she?
She had tried displacement therapy, and thrown herself into a week of feverish activity. She had spring-cleaned her bedroom—even though it was almost autumn!—and had gone to the cinema and the theatre. She had attended the opening of an avant-garde art exhibition and visited her parents in their rambling old farmhouse.
And still felt as though there was a great, gaping hole in her life.
‘I’m fine,’ she said again, wondering if her smile looked genuine.
Kerry frowned. ‘You’re quite sure?’ she asked gently. ‘You’ve seemed a little off colour this week. A bit pale, too. And haven’t you lost weight?’
For a moment, Rose was tempted to tell her, but she never bought her problems into work with her. And, anyway, she didn’t have a problem! she reminded herself. ‘Oh, come on! Who isn’t always trying to lose weight?’ she joked.
‘True.’ Kerry indicated the chair opposite her. ‘Sit down.’
‘Thanks.’ Rose wondered what all this was about, and started to feel the first stirrings of curiosity. Kerry seemed terribly excited about something. And it must be something big because Kerry was the kind of seen-it-all and done-it-all person who wasn’t easy to impress.
‘What if I told you I’d just had lunch with a client—’
‘I’d say lucky you—I just had a boring old sandwich at my desk!’ And no need to mention that most of it had ended up in the bin.
‘A client.’ Kerry sucked in a deep and excited breath and then Rose really was surprised. Why, her sophisticated and sometimes cynical boss was looking almost coquettish! ‘The most surprising and unbelievable client you can imagine.’
‘Oh?’
‘What would you say if I told you that we are being hired by a—’ Kerry gulped the word out as if she couldn’t quite believe she was saying it ‘—prince?’ Kerry sat back in her chair and looked at Rose, her face a mixture of triumph and curiosity.
Rose felt as though she were taking part in a play. As though someone else had written the script for this scene which was now taking place. It was surely far too much of a coincidence to suppose that…that…Her heart was pounding unevenly in her chest. ‘A prince?’ she asked weakly, playing for time.
Kerry completely misinterpreted her strangulated words. ‘I know,’ she confided. ‘It took me a little while before I could believe it myself! I mean, there isn’t much that surprises me, but when a Lawrence-of-Arabia-type character walks into one of London’s top restaurants and every woman in the room sat staring at him, open-mouthed. Well, suffice it to say that I was momentarily speechless!’
‘That must be a first,’ said Rose drily, and forced herself to ask the kind of questions she would normally ask if her brain weren’t spinning round like a carousel inside her head. ‘What did he want?’
‘That’s the funny thing.’ Kerry picked up a pencil and twirled it thoughtfully around in her fingers. ‘He wanted you.’
Disbelief and a lurching kind of excitement created an unfamiliar cocktail of emotion somewhere deep inside her. ‘Me?’ squeaked Rose. ‘What do you mean, he wanted me?’
Kerry frowned. ‘Calm down, Rose—I’m not talking in the biblical sense!’
No, but you could be sure that he was, thought Rose, and her heart-rate rocketed even further.
Kerry smiled encouragingly. ‘He—’