Escape from Desire

It was ten to nine when Tamara knocked on the library door and walked in. Zach was sitting behind the large desk, studying some papers. He looked up when Tamara walked in.

‘Good morning,’ she said formally, smoothing her navy skirt with nervous fingers, feeling selfconsciously formal when faced with Zach’s lean, jeans-clad figure. He got up and walked round the desk to come and stand in front of her.

‘Quite the perfect secretary, aren’t we?’ he jeered. ‘But I’m glad you remembered about the hair.’

‘If you’re ready to begin,’ Tamara said quietly, ignoring his taunts.

Two hours later, her fingers cramped from taking shorthand, she gave a mental sigh of relief when Mrs Wilkes appeared with a tray of coffee.

‘No sugar for me,’ Zach said laconically, indicating that Tamara should pour. ‘Would you like to break for half an hour? I don’t want to overtire you.’

His last words made her temper flare. She was tired, her body stiff, but she was damned if she would let him see it.

‘That’s hardly likely,’ she said crisply. ‘By all means let’s continue while the book’s flowing. That way we’ll finish all the sooner.’

For some obscure reason her words seemed to annoy him, and Tamara had increasing difficulty keeping up with his dictation during the second half of the morning; one half of her mind concentrating on what he was saying while the other marvelled at his ability to work without checking or hesitating.

‘I think we’ve got the bones of the first chapter there,’ he announced just after half past twelve. ‘Lunch is at one. How long do you think it will take you to type that lot back?’

Judging by the number of pages of shorthand in her book, Tamara estimated that it would take her all afternoon and the best part of the evening as well.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said icily, ‘but I won’t stop until it’s done.’

It was a vow she was to regret as the afternoon wore on and the ache low down in her back grew steadily worse, as her fingers flew over the keys, her forehead creased in concentration.

‘Not still at it, are you?’ Mrs Wilkes exclaimed in disapproval at six o’clock when she came in to remove the afternoon tea tray.

Tamara used the interruption to check on the number of pages still to type, her heart sinking as she realised she was barely halfway through.

‘I’ll have to give dinner a miss tonight, Mrs Wilkes,’ she apologised. ‘Would it be asking too much for me to have a glass of milk and some fruit instead?’

‘Not as far as I’m concerned,’ Mrs Wilkes told her, adding roundly, ‘But if you ask me, you’re asking too much of your body, working all throug

h the day and half the night besides with nothing inside you.’

Zach had gone out. Tamara had heard the car, and besides, he had told her he had to go in to Bath for some reference books he needed, and all the time she was working her ears were alert for sounds of his return.

At eight o’clock she flexed her stiff shoulders and paused to drink her milk, wondering where he was. Perhaps he’d gone to see some friends … Julie perhaps … Jealousy tore through her, followed by an irrational surge of anger that he should be out enjoying himself while she was exhausting her mind and body on his book.

It was just after eleven when she pulled the final page of typing out of the machine, too exhausted even to check it. Picking up her tray, she took it to the kitchen and then wearily climbed the stairs.

In her bedroom it was almost too much of an effort to undress, but her muscles were so stiff and tense that she felt she needed the luxurious warmth of a bath to help her relax.

She was just on the verge of falling asleep when she heard the Porsche returning. She had left the manuscript on Zach’s desk—all forty-five pages of it and smiled grimly with weary satisfaction, sure that he had not expected her to finish it and that he had dictated so much purely to punish her.

She was awake at six, her sleep disturbed by unfamiliar sounds. Her straining ears caught footsteps disappearing in the direction of the stairs and she glanced at her watch in weary disbelief, before remembering Mrs Wilkes saying that Zach breakfasted at six.

Well, let him, she thought crossly, punching her pillow, but did that mean that everyone else had to be woken at the same godforsaken hour?

It was with considerably less energy that she went down for breakfast. Her back was still stiff, her shoulder muscles aching with tension, a terrible tiredness enveloping her.

‘Decent food, that’s what you need,’ Mrs Wilkes told her sharply when she saw her pale face. ‘Beats me how you young things think a body keeps on going when you don’t feed it properly!’

She tried to persuade Tamara into something more substantial than toast and tea, but Tamara’s still delicate stomach revolted at the thought of anything less bland.

At nine o’clock on the dot she presented herself in the library, too weary to admire, as she had done the previous day, the beautiful Aubusson carpet and the fine veneered yew bookshelves that lined the walls.

Zach was standing by the window, frowning over the typed pages in his hand.