And then he went and spoiled it all by saying carelessly, ‘Oh, and if you’re worrying about your own job, you needn’t. You’ll be taking charge of the new Bennett Enterprises window-dressing operation.’
Heather opened her mouth and found that her voice had completely deserted her. When it came, it sounded harsh and hurt her throat. ‘I don’t want or need your charity, Kyle,’ she stormed at him. ‘I can find my own job.’
‘Can you?’ His cynical disbelief hurt her almost as much as it infuriated her.
‘I’m fully qualified…I have my degree…’
His mouth was still twisted in that bitterly cynical way that always sparked off her temper, implying as it did that he had a greater and more powerful knowledge of something to which she was excluded.
‘I’m not questioning your qualifications, or your skill. But jobs of the type you’re qualified for aren’t exactly thick on the ground round here, are they? Think about it, Heather, what are you trying to say? That you want to leave here and go and try your luck in London? Perhaps if you’re lucky, landing yourself a job as the most junior member of a store window-dressing team, forced to carry out the instructions and ideas of others, always competing with younger and more enthusiastic graduates than yourself.’
The picture he was painting was grim enough to make her close her eyes and shudder. She hated the thought of working and living in London; she always had. She was not ambitious as such, but she loved her work; he was right, she would hate working under someone else’s direction. She was used to her father giving her a completely free hand and, if she was honest with herself, she enjoyed the responsibility.
A sudden thought struck her, the words almost sticking in her throat as she demanded huskily, ‘This is my father’s idea, isn’t it? He made you offer me this job…he asked you…’
‘Think what you like, Heather. I’m not prepared to discuss the whys and wherefores of a job offer with a potential employee. It isn’t my normal practice.’
Only just in time she stopped herself from bursting into a furious tirade. She looked suspiciously at him, wondering if he was trying deliberately to goad her into taking a stand.
‘I don’t want the job,’ she told him flatly.
‘You don’t? You’re a very lucky woman to be able to make such a decision,’ he marvelled cynically. ‘How are you going to support yourself without a job, Heather, or are you going to leave that small matter to your parents?’
And indirectly to him, Heather realised on a sudden mortified flood of realisation. She bit down hard on her bottom lip. Pride had forced her to reject his job offer because she suspected he was simply making a position for her because of her father, and yet if she didn’t take it, if she had no job at all…
‘Poor Heather…caught up in a no-win situation, aren’t you?’
‘And how you’re enjoying it!’ she retaliated sharply, her eyes narrowing as she glared at him.
To her chagrin, he laughed. ‘You remind me of a spitting wildcat when you narrow your eyes like that. You look for all the world as though there’s nothing you’d like more than to pounce on me and claw the flesh from my throat.’
To her horror, Heather felt a betraying heat spread through her body, not at the violence of his suggestion, but at the sexuality he had so cleverly cloaked beneath it.
She stared at him, nonplussed by her own reaction. His face was unreadable, so unreadable, in fact, that she had trouble in deciding whether or not she had actually heard that sexuality or imagined it.
‘If you don’t take the job I’ll have to find someone else to fill it. From what I’ve seen of your work, you’ve got the skills the operation will need.’
He was beginning to sound bored, and Heather caught the indifference edging up under his voice.
‘I don’t want charity, Kyle,’ she told him fiercely.
He looked at her. ‘You won’t be getting it. Now, do you want the job or not?’
She wavered between refusing it as her pride demanded and a far more commonsense approach. Her parents would be pleased and relieved if she accepted it; they would see it not as just a job, but as a sign that she had finally accepted Kyle.
‘I…I want it,’ she said huskily, bending her head so that he wouldn’t see the defeat in her eyes.
‘Good…I’ll see that you get an employment contract as soon as I get back from the States.’
It confused her to see him like this, very much in control, and all brisk and businesslike. It was hard to accept that this was the same person she had traded insults with for most of her growing years. The same teenager she had bitten in the leg in a fit of fury because he wouldn’t let her ride his bicycle! A rogue smile tugged at the corners of her mouth at that memory.
‘Why the smile? Not planning my early demise, I hope?’
She frowned. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘I don’t know…possibly something to do with a painting I once saw of Lucretia Borgia,’ Kyle told her drily.
‘Well, you’re quite wrong. I was just thinking about that time I bit you in the leg because you wouldn’t let me ride your bike.’