Beyond All Reason

‘And since when do the secretaries dictate the orders?’ Ross enquired, with an edge of flint in his voice.

‘I apologise,’ she said calmly, breathing deeply to clear her head and restore her balance, ‘but I refuse to be subjected further to this dissection of my private life.’

He looked as though he was about to debate that point, but in the end he shrugged his broad shoulders and stood up, reaching out to hand her her notepad.

‘You’ll be needing this,’ he murmured with amusement, and their eyes met. To hide behind again, he might just as well have said, and she took it without rising to the bait.

Why did he have this effect on her? she wondered desperately. Why did he have this tight, strangling effect on her? Martin never did. They spent their time chatting, going for walks, and she never felt as if the world was closing in on her.

She put it down to dislike, and yet there were times when they worked so well together that she felt almost a mental bond with him. It was aggravating. Of course, she should never have accepted this job in the first place. She should have gone to work for some safe, fatherly figure with a receding hairline and a comfortable paunch. Someone whose presence didn’t threaten her. She would have too, if the job description and the pay package hadn’t been so irresistible.

They walked back to the office in silence. She could feel his presence alongside her, dark, oppressive, alarming.

‘Rebecca was quite taken with that boss of yours,’ Martin had said the night before. ‘Began giggling and batting her eyelashes the minute he came through that door with that I’m-better-than-everyone-else air about him.’ His voice had been laden with derision. ‘Still, he’s the sort of chap women fancy, I suppose. Bit too aggressive by half for you, though, I should think,’ he had added, looking at her for confirmation, and she had agreed fervently, although her wayward mind had conjured up an image of Ross naked, in bed, his muscled body relaxed, his mouth curved into that cynical, charming smile, and she had forced the image away with angry recoil.

Now that wayward mind of hers was threatening to invade her calm again, and she resolutely thrust it back.

Ross went straight through to his office, expecting her to follow, which she did, breathing a sigh of relief as he returned his attention to work.

He ploughed through documents on his desk, leaning forward to explain to her what he wanted done, listing meetings that he wanted set up within the next fortnight. She kept her head bent, taking notes, nodding, watching the strong forearms, the dark hair curling over the gold metal band of his watch with stubborn fascination.

‘These columns need updating,’ he told her, his eyes flicking over the paper. ‘The correct figures are attached at the back. You’ll have to go through them and replace whatever needs replacing.’

She craned forward to see what he was talking about and he said impatiently, ‘Come around the desk. You’ll twist your neck in that position.’

‘Yes, of course, Mr Anderson,’ she said neutrally, moving around to stand behind him.

He had rolled the sleeves of his shirt to the elbows and she stole a surreptitious glance at his powerful forearms. She wished that she hadn’t because immediately a disjointed thought rushed into her head: what had he and Fiona done last night? She imagined him caressing the tall, elegant blonde with those strong hands, and crossly shoved the unpleasant image to the back of her mind.

‘Look,’ he said, jabbing his finger at a row of black figures, ‘here. These are last month’s sales figures, which need replacing, but I want you to keep these graphs handy.’ He sifted through to the graphs and she leant forward slightly to follow what he was saying, frowning and trying to puzzle out how she could update sixteen pages of information without having to redo the whole thing from top to bottom.

She peered forward, her eyes intent, and the silky cowlnecked shirt gaped to expose a tantalising glimpse of pale breasts restrained by the small cups of her lacy bra. She didn’t notice. Her mind was busy trying to work out the complexities of the job in front of her. It was only when she glanced away from the report that her eyes fell on what Ross had already observed, judging from the expression on his face.

He had turned the swivel chair so that he was directly facing her and there was a lazy grin on his lips. She straightened quickly and looked at him, forcing herself to meet his gleaming dark eyes.

He clasped his fingers together, challenging her to say something, which she didn’t. His eyes drifted from hers and did a leisurely sweep of her body, resting briefly on her breasts, which hung heavy and aching under the stare. Her nipples pressed against the lacy material and she had to force herself not to surrender to the terrible, crazy thought of what it would feel like to have Ross touch them, with more than just his eyes.

What the hell was happening to her? Not even Ellis had ever awakened this depth of arousal in her. True, her body had willingly responded to his when he had made that first pass in the semi-darkness of his office, and true, over the ensuing weeks she had enjoyed their stolen caresses, the husky timbre of his voice as he had explored her body with his hands, sometimes at the most inappropriate moments, but what she felt now was so intense that she almost caught her breath.

She had thought that her fling with Ellis had been an aberration, a temporary insanity. Certainly one of the nice things about Martin was that he hadn’t pushed her into sex. They were both content to kiss, but he had not frantically tried to get her into bed, and that had been a relief. Desire was no basis for a long-term relationship. She had found that out the hard way.

‘I think I’ve got that,’ she said coolly, moving back around to her chair and not looking at him.

He was still smiling in a way that made her want to hit him, and eventually she said crisply, ‘And by the way, I still have that Haynes report to do. I had to phone around several people to get the information you wanted and some of them weren’t in when I called. I should have it ready and on your desk by this afternoon.’

‘Very enterprising,’ he said silkily. ‘What would I do without you?’

‘Find someone else, I expect,’ Abigail returned neutrally.

‘Easier said than done. But stupid speculating over a problem that doesn’t exist, isn’t it?’

She didn’t say anything. She was remembering Martin’s desire to start a family and the adjunct that when they did so she would leave work. At the time—and it had only been mentioned once—she had given it little thought, not wanting to immerse herself in details such as those when they weren’t even married yet.

‘Or does it?’ he asked softly, reading her expression, and she went red. When she wasn’t careful, when she wasn’t guarding her expression, this man could see right through her, to what she was thinking. A dangerous skill. ‘Married women usually lose interest in their jobs,’ he murmured, picking up his fountain pen and thoughtfully twirling it with his long fingers. ‘Their honeymoon seems to scramble their brains and they come back with their heads still in the clouds and their minds on children and nappies. You seem to have your head screwed on all right at the moment, despite the tired eyes and the late arrival yesterday, but——’ he looked at her ‘-—your lover strikes me as the sort of man who can’t wait to get the little woman behind the kitchen sink. Am I right?’

CHAPTER THREE

ABIGAIL’S hand was still poised over her notepad. It was beginning to ache, and she lowered it.

The hard cold sunshine streamed in through the large glass panes and threw Ross’s face into disturbing shadow so that she found it difficult to read his expression. Was he merely expressing curiosity or was he really worried that she was about to stack her papers neatly together on her desk and take her leave?

‘I don’t know what gives you that idea,’ she stammered, and he stopped twirling the fountain pen in his fingers, putting it on the desk so that he could lean back in his chair, looking at her through his lashes.

‘Isn’t he?’ he asked by way of response, and she felt like a butterfly pinned against the wall.

‘These letters,’ she suggested coaxingly, in an attempt to change the conversation, and his lips twisted into a crooked smile,

‘Won’t work, Abby,’ he said softly, and she felt herself begin to bristle from head to toe. She didn’t have to sit here and be cross-examined! Explaining her personal life to him wasn’t part of her secretarial duties. She hadn’t asked him to turn up on her doorstep the evening before, but he had anyway, and now he was acting as though the brief visit entitled him to make sweeping statements on her relationship with Martin. It was ludicrous!

‘I understand that you might be worried about my leaving this job when I get married——’ she began, and be cut in in a voice that took her by surprise,

‘When? Has a date been set?’

‘No, but engagements normally lead to weddings, don’t they?’ she said in a dulcet voice.

His jaw hardened, and he stood up, walking to the window to stare down. She could see the reflection of his face on the glass, the stiff line of his back. She saw it all with a sense of dismayed fascination.