He had her letter in front of him, and he took it between two fingers, holding it as though it were something he had fished out of the bin, something a little unsavoury.
‘I take it that this is not a joke?’
‘No, it’s not,’ Abigail agreed tonelessly. The way his thick black hair sprang back from his face, that was something she would have to forget.
‘Fine.’ His voice was cool. ‘You’ll have to get to work on recruiting your replacement.’
That hurt. She hadn’t expected a flood of emotion, but this didn’t even qualify as a light shower.
‘Of course,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’ll be in touch with the employment agencies today, unless you’d like to recruit someone from inside the company.’
He shrugged and looked bored. ‘It’s all the same to me, just so long as she can do her job.’
‘I know Mary who works in the sales department has been looking for a change.’
‘Mary? Who’s Mary?’
‘She works for Mr McGregor’s team,’ Abigail said, and he nodded.
‘The blonde one with the legs?’
‘That’s right.’ Her throat was threatening to seize up but she faced him with a bland expression.
‘Just make sure that that’s not all she comes qualified with. I don’t want someone whose only asset is looking ornamental.’
‘Of course not. I’ll set up an interview for this afternoon.’ She stood up and he leaned back in the swivel chair and fixed her with icy eyes.
‘Sit back down.’
She sat back down, feeling nervous and miserable. She knew him well enough to know that he would never let himself become dependent on anyone. The true strength in any company, he had once told her, was to ensure that no one was irreplaceable. Valuable, yes, but not irreplaceable. Why should she have felt that her departure meant more to him than a temporary inconvenience?
‘I take it,’ he said coldly, ‘that you intend to explain why I came in here this morning to find your letter of resignation on my desk?’
‘You know why,’ she said quietly.
‘Oh, but I want you to tell me, face to face.’
‘Very well. I don’t see how I can work efficiently for you after what’s happened between us.’
‘We made love and now you think that I won’t be able to keep my hands to myself, even though you want to put it all behind you?’
‘No, that’s not it,’ she stammered, and he gave her a humourless smile.
‘No? Then please elucidate. I’m dying to hear.’
‘When you asked me, when you said that we could…’ She faltered and he bared his teeth in another smile.
‘Have an affair?’
‘I told you that I would think about it, and I have. I’ve decided that I couldn’t. It would be wrong for me.’
‘Fine, that’s your prerogative, but I still don’t see what that has to do with whether you leave or stay. Not unless there’s something that you aren’t telling me?’
He stood up and strolled across to the window and absentmindedly stared down before turning to face her.
‘Something like what?’ This is it, she thought, he’s going to inform me in that way of his that I’ve fallen in love with him, and I’m going to shrivel up in embarrassment.
‘Let’s put it this way.’ He leant forward against the desk, propping himself up, and stared at her with hard eyes. ‘When Plan A with your ex-boss failed to net you the marriage you wanted, and Plan B failed because your ex-boyfriend wasn’t liquid enough for your liking, did you decide that Plan C, to slot me in the winning post, was the next best thing? Only to discover that I was rather more reluctant to be drawn into marriage than you had expected?’
Her eyes flared angrily. ‘That is the most despicable thing I have ever heard in my whole life!’
She stood up and he roared, ‘Sit back down!’
‘I suppose you heard all that from your girlfriend?’ Abigail said bitterly. ‘Just as I suppose you won’t believe a word I say if I try to deny it all?’
‘Feel free to deny.’
‘None of it’s true. You know why I left my last job.’ She looked at him defiantly, but there was a tell-tale flush on her cheeks. ‘I was wrong about Ellis, but I never wanted to marry him for money! And as for Martin—don’t you think that I might have guessed that he was short of cash from his job? He hardly came to fetch me from my flat in a Rolls-Royce!’
‘And what about me?’ he asked softly. ‘Did you think that you could get me to marry you? Did you believe that sleeping with me would put a ring on your finger?’
When she replied, her voice was icy and controlled. ‘I was a fool to sleep with you,’ she said, ‘and no, I never considered marriage at the end of it. I might have been a fool, but I would have had to be certifiable ever to expect that for an instant.’
She should have known that Fiona would never have uttered empty threats. She had run to Ross with her devious little fabrications and she had been right. Nothing about any of the accusations rang true, but there was just that little thread of possibility which would have stirred his suspicions. Suspicions were impossible to fight, they were too nebulous. It was like trying to get hold of a cloud.
‘In that case, why the sudden urge to leave? Do you think that you’re so irresistible that I would make your life here hell?’
‘That’s not fair,’ she said unhappily, and he looked away, a dark flush spreading over his face.
‘I told you once that I never beg. Not for you or for any woman. Whether I believe what Fiona said or not is irrelevant. Did you think that by handing in your resignation you might provoke me into fighting for you?’
‘It was the last thing on my mind,’ Abigail replied truthfully.
‘Of course, you know that you’ll never find a job as good as this one, or as well paid,’ he said coolly, and she nodded, fighting down the urge to burst into tears.
‘Something will come up. Would you want me to work out my full notice?’ she asked, hoping not. Her full notice was six weeks and she didn’t know whether she could face him, every day, for six more weeks. Just sitting here now, looking at him, thinking about how much she was going to miss his sometimes arrogant, sometimes volatile, sometimes charming, always intelligent, company, made her go numb.
‘I damn well would,’ he informed her, leaning forward and linking his fingers together. For the first time she caught the glimpse of anger behind the cool mask, and it didn’t really surprise her. ‘Don’t think,’ he said in a smooth, cruel voice, ‘that you can run off because you’ve suddenly decided that it’s become too uncomfortable here for you, whatever the bloody reason. You’re not about to leave this office in a state of chaos because of something personal.’
‘I would never do that,’ she protested, meeting his eyes. ‘I would make sure that my replacement was fully trained before I even thought of going.’
‘Which should take just about the length of your notice, don’t you think?’
She stood up. ‘Is that all?’ she asked, and he nodded, looking down at the work on his desk and waving her away with a dismissive gesture.
He knew how to hit where it hurt most, she thought, walking back to her desk. He wouldn’t give her, or any woman, she suspected, the satisfaction of showing a display of raw emotion. He didn’t need anyone and he had made the point as bluntly as if he had posted a sign on her desk telling her so.
She telephoned the sales department later that morning, and told Mary that her position was becoming vacant, and would she like to apply for the post? By mid-afternoon, she suspected that her resignation would be public property within the company, and by the following afternoon every other branch throughout the country would have heard. In an office, news travelled like wildfire, especially news that had to do with the boss. She wondered what sort of speculation would circulate as to the reasons for her departure, and decided that she didn’t care. She was on friendly terms with a few people within the organisation, but not so close that she would have been offended by their curiosity.
Ross emerged at lunchtime and told her in a distant, curtly polite voice that he would be away for the rest of the afternoon. He gave her a list of things that needed to be done, and then left, without a backward glance.
She read everything into his remoteness. It remained with her for the rest of the day and preyed on her mind. Ross Anderson was telling her, without having to spell it out word for laborious word, that their brief passionate encounter meant nothing to him, and that her decision to leave was one that wasn’t going to upset his world. He was also telling her that if she had even been thinking of commitment with him, then she had been living in cloud cuckoo land, and that was a bitter pill to swallow because it was the one thing she had known all along, right from the very first moment when her attraction to him crept out into the open, and still she had plunged on, still she had given herself to him.
She went into work the following day, to find that Ross’s cool, polite manner was still there, freezing her out, reminding her of his indifference. He barely glanced in her direction and when he did his eyes rested on her with the courteous blankness of a stranger. He still gave orders, but his voice was restrained, and when she brought Mary in to see him she got the feeling that replacing her was a technicality which he saw as only a minor hiccup.