Lynne Graham's Brides of L'Amour Bundle

Her fine brows pleated and she shrugged. ‘Yes…’

‘I’ve been asked to ensure that you take at least three weeks off effective from the end of this month—’

‘Three weeks…off?’ Pippa gasped in dismay.

‘I’ve also been authorised to offer you the opportunity of a sabbatical for six or twelve months.’

‘A…a sabbatical…are you serious?’ Pippa exclaimed in an even greater state of disconcertion.

Impervious to Pippa’s discouraging response, the older man went on to wax lyrical about the benefits of taking a work break. He pointed out that Pippa had not taken a gap year between school and university and had in fact commenced employment at Venstar within days of her graduation.

‘You spend very long hours in the office.’

‘But I like working long hours—’

‘Nevertheless I’m sure that you will enjoy de-stressing during your holiday in two weeks’ time and that you’ll consider the opportunity of extending your break with a sabbatical. Think of how refreshed you would be on your return to work.’

De-stressing? Ultra sensitive, Pippa picked up on that word and wondered if that was why she had been passed over in the promotion stakes. Did she come across as stressed to her colleagues? Irritable? Or was it that she seemed lacking in management skills? There had to be a reason why she had been unsuccessful—there had to be! Whatever, she was not being given a choice about whether or not she took a holiday and that bothered her. Why now and not before? Was there concern that she might not adapt well to the new command structure in the finance section?

Deeply troubled by her complete loss of faith in her own abilities, Pippa worked through her lunch hour and when, around three that afternoon, she glanced up and saw the empty desks around her, she frowned in surprise.

‘Where is everybody?’ she asked Ricky Brownlow when she saw him in his office doorway.

‘Left early to get ready for the party. You should be heading home too.’

Pippa hated to leave a task unfinished but then she recalled the events of the day and the holiday that had been pressed on her. That had been a hurtful lesson in the reality that she was not indispensable. Rising from her desk, she lifted her bag. She had reached the ground floor before she appreciated that the rain was bouncing off the pavements outside and, in her haste to depart, she had left her coat behind.

Too impatient to wait on the lift again, she took the stairs. The finance floor was silent and she was walking towards the closet where her coat hung when she heard Ricky Brownlow’s voice carrying out from his office.

‘When I was in Naples, Andreo D’Alessio made it very clear that he likes sexy, fanciable women around him,’ Ricky was saying in a pained, defensive tone. ‘He took one horrified look at the piccy of our Pippa Plain in the company newsletter and it was clear that she would never fit the executive bill in his eyes, so I backed Cheryl’s application instead. Cheryl’s less qualified, I grant you, but she’s also considerably more presentable—’

Pippa had frozen in her tracks. Pippa…Pippa Plain?

‘Pippa Stevenson is an excellent employee,’ a voice that she recognised as belonging to one of the older directors countered coldly.

‘She’s an asset as a backroom girl but her best friend couldn’t call her a looker or a mover or shaker. She has all the personality of a wet blanket,’ Ricky Brownlow pronounced with a viciousness that flayed Pippa to the bone. ‘To be frank, I didn’t think we’d be doing ourselves any favours if we ignored D’Alessio’s sexist preferences and served up Pippa Plain to him on his first day here!’

Shattered by what she had overheard but even more terrified of being found eavesdropping, Pippa crept back out to the corridor and fled without her coat. In that one devastating dialogue, she had learned why Cheryl instead of herself was to be Venstar’s next finance manager. Pippa Plain? Her tummy rolled with nausea but she refused to let herself cringe. Ricky Brownlow had laid it on the line: unlike Pippa, Cheryl was extremely attractive and popular with men. The curvaceous brunette’s looks rather than her ability had influenced her selection.

A cold, sick knot of humiliation in her stomach, Pippa swallowed hard and blinked back stinging tears. It was so unfair. That job had had her name on it and she had worked darned hard for promotion. Nobody had the right to judge another person on their appearance. It was utterly wrong and against all employment legislation and Venstar deserved to be sued for treating her so shabbily. She imagined standing up at a tribunal and being forced to relate Ricky’s demeaning comments and compressed her lips with a shudder of recoil. No, there was no way that she would take the company to a tribunal and make herself an object of sniggering pity.

Her best friend couldn’t call her a looker…Pippa Plain? Was that a fact? Doubtless Ricky would never credit that when she was fifteen years old a modelling agency had offered her a lucrative contract. Of course, her father had been outraged by the mere suggestion that his daughter would engage in what he deemed to be a lowbrow career. But for the eight years that had followed Pippa had secretly cherished the memory of her one stolen day of rebellion against Martin Stevenson’s strict dictates. She had gone to the agency in secret and let them make her up and do her hair. She had watched in fascination as cosmetic magic and clever clothing had transformed her from a pale, skinny beanpole into a glowing, leggy beauty. Then the old lech of a photographer had made a pass at her and sent her fleeing for home again, convinced that everything her father had said about the dangerous corruption of the modelling industry was true.

Why shouldn’t she try to effect even some small part of that transformation on her own behalf? She could attend the party looking her best just to confound Ricky Brownlow and that sexist louse, Andreo D’Alessio. How could a man be so stupid that he put beauty ahead of brains even in a business capacity?

Standing in the rain getting absolutely soaked through, Pippa dug out her mobile phone and rang her friend Hilary. Hilary Ross was a hairdresser and when asked if she could squeeze Pippa in for a last-minute hair-rescue mission, she was so taken aback by the request that she gasped, ‘Are you being frivolous at last? Is it Christmas or something?’

‘Or something,’ Pippa confirmed a little unevenly. ‘I’m going out tonight and it’s really important.’

Hilary had a heart the size of a world globe and told her to come straight over, while adding that Pippa should have known better than to think that she had to phone and ask one of her oldest friends for an appointment. ‘Especially when you only make the effort to get your hair done about once a year!’ she teased in conclusion.

Pippa caught an underground train that would take her to Hilary’s salon in the west London suburb of Hounslow. As she was jostled by other passengers while she stood in the aisle because there were no seats available Pippa’s teeming thoughts were troubled. Sad though it was to acknowledge, she was relieved that her father was not alive to be shamed and disappointed by her failure to win promotion. But then when had she ever managed to meet her pare

nt’s expectations and make him proud of her? she asked herself with pained and guilty regret.

Her mind travelled back almost six years to the summer that her family life had been destroyed. She had been just seventeen when her parents and three other families had gone on their final holiday together to the Dordogne region of France. Her friendship with Hilary Ross stretched back as far as their childhoods. The Ross family had been part of the group that had gone to France and as the holiday had been an annual event there had been no reason to suspect that that year would be any different from any previous year. But that particular summer everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong. In fact it had been a disastrous vacation for all concerned but nobody had had the nerve to admit that and it had still lasted almost the full six weeks.

No sooner had they arrived in France than her then best friend, Tabby, had got involved in a passionate secret fling with a French guy staying nearby and had become so besotted that she had scarcely noticed that Pippa had been alive for the remainder of their stay. During that same period, however, Pippa had had her heart broken and her self-esteem smashed without anybody even noticing.