The Mistress Contract, page 2
Still, she didn’t have to like him, she reminded herself sharply, as she became aware he was waiting for her reply. She managed a careful, impersonal smile and said politely, ‘I’m sure she will, Mr Quentin.’ No, she didn’t have to like him, and with any luck the resilient Madge, who was about four-foot-ten and looked as if a breath of wind would blow her away but must have the toughness of a pair of old boots to have lasted this long with her high-powered, vigorous boss, would be back at her desk within the week.
Not that she had much chance of lasting a week—half a day would be doing pretty good, Sephy thought ruefully.
He nodded abruptly, closing the interconnecting door as he said, ‘Twenty minutes, Seraphina, and then I’d like you in here with the Breedon file, the Einhorn file and notebook and pencil.’
Pat, Pat, Pat… As the door closed Sephy leant limply against Madge’s desk for a moment. How could you blackmail me with friendship into this position?
And then she straightened sharply as the door opened again and he poked his head round to say, ‘Why haven’t I seen you before if you’ve worked here for six years?’ as though she had purposely been hiding in a cupboard all that time.
It was on the tip of her tongue to answer tartly, Because I’m not a model-type femme fatale with long blonde hair and the sort of figure that drives men wild—the type of woman Conrad Quentin usually went for if the newspaper pictures were to be believed—but a very ordinary, brown-haired, brown-eyed, slightly plump little nobody. But she felt that would be pushing her luck too far. Instead she gritted her teeth, forced a smile, and said quietly, ‘You have seen me, Mr Quentin. We have spoken on at least two or three occasions.’
‘Have we?’ He frowned darkly. ‘I don’t remember.’
He clearly considered it her fault, and she was prompted to retort, with an asperity it was difficult to temper, ‘There’s no reason why you should, is there? You’re a very busy man, after all.’ He was often abroad on business, and Quentin Dynamics was only one of his many enterprises, all of which seemed to have the Midas touch, and it was to this Sephy referred as she added quickly, ‘You can’t know everyone who works for you, and the way you’ve expanded over the years…’
‘I trust that is a reference to my business acumen and not my waistline?’ And he smiled. Just a quick flash of white teeth as he closed the door again, but it was enough to leave her standing in stunned silence for some long moments. The difference it had made to his hard cold face, the way his piercing blue eyes had crinkled and mellowed and his uncompromising jawline softened, had been…well, devastating, she admitted unsteadily. And it bothered her more than anything else that had happened that day.
But she couldn’t think of it now. She seized on the thought like a lifeline and took a deep, shuddering breath as she glanced towards the filing cabinets. She was here to stand in for the formidable Madge and she had to make some sort of reasonable stab at it. She had been used to looking after Mr Harper for four years and virtually carrying that office at times; she could do this. She could.
Twenty minutes later to the dot she knocked at the interconnecting door, the files and her notebook and pencil tucked under one arm.
She wished she had worn something newer and smarter than the plain white blouse and straight black skirt she had pulled on that morning, but it was too late now. They were serviceable enough, but distinctly utilitarian, and because she had overslept she hadn’t bothered to put her hair up, as normal, or apply any eye make-up.
Oh, stop fussing! The admonition came just as she heard the deep ‘Come in’ from inside the room. Conrad Quentin wouldn’t be looking at her, Sephy Vincent. He wanted an efficient working machine, and as long as she met that criterion all would be well.
She opened the door and walked briskly into the vast expanse in front of her. The far wall of the room, in front of which Conrad Quentin had his enormous desk and chair, was all glass. Before she reached the chair he gestured at, Sephy was conscious of a breathtaking view of half of London coupled with a spacious luxury that made Mr Harper’s little office seem like a broom cupboard.
‘Sit down, Seraphina.’
That was the fourth or fifth time; she’d have to say something. ‘It’s Sephy, actually,’ she said steadily as she sat in the plushly upholstered armless chair in front of the walnut desk, crossing her legs and then forcing herself to look at him. ‘I never use my full name.’
‘Why not?’ He had been sitting bent over piles of papers he’d been scrutinising, but now he raised his head and sat back in the enormous leather chair, clasping his hands behind his head as he surveyed her through narrowed blue eyes. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
The pose had brought powerful chest muscles into play beneath the thin grey silk of the shirt he was wearing, and at some time in the last twenty minutes he had loosened his tie and undone the top buttons of his shirt, exposing the shadow of dark body hair at the base of his throat.
Sephy cleared her dry throat. ‘It doesn’t suit me. Even my mother had to agree she’d made a mistake, but I was born on the twelfth of March, and on the calendar of saints Seraphina is the only woman for that day.’
He said nothing, merely shifted position slightly in the black chair, and now she was horrified to find herself beginning to waffle as she said, ‘Mind, it could have been worse. There’s a Gertrude and a Euphemia in the next few days, so perhaps I ought to be thankful for small mercies. But Seraphina suggests an ethereal, will-o’-the-wisp type creature, and I’m certainly not that.’
He leant forward again, the glittering sapphire gaze moving over her creamy skin, soft mouth and wide honey-brown eyes, and he stared at her a moment before he said, his tone expressionless, ‘I think Seraphina suits you and I certainly don’t intend to call you by such a ridiculous abbreviation as Sephy. It’s the sort of name one would bestow on a pet poodle. Have you a second Christian name?’
‘No.’ It was something of a snap.
‘Pity,’ he said laconically.
She didn’t believe this. How dared he ride roughshod over her wishes? she asked herself silently. She was searching her mind for an adequately curt response when he switched to sharp business mode, his eyes turning to the papers spread out over his desk as he said, his tone keen and focused, ‘How familiar are you with the Einhorn project?’
As luck would have it she had been dealing with the problems associated with this particular package over the last weeks, and she had just spent ten of the last twenty minutes delving into the file to see if there were any confidential complications Customer Services hadn’t been privy to. ‘Quite familiar,’ she answered smartly.
‘Really?’ He raised his dark head and the hard sapphire gaze homed in. ‘Tell me what you know.’
She considered for a moment or two, trying to pull her thoughts into concise order, and then spoke quietly and fluently as she outlined what had been a disastrous endeavour from the start, due to a series of mistakes which Sephy felt could be laid fair and square at Quentin Dynamics’ door.
He looked down at his desk as she began talking, a frown creasing his brow as he listened intently without glancing at her once. As she finished speaking the frown became a quizzical ruffle, and he raised his head and said, ‘Brains and beauty! Well, well, well. Have I found myself a treasure, here?’ And then, before she could respond in any way, ‘So, you think we should take the full hit on this? Reimburse for engineering call-out charges as well as a free upgrade for the software?’
It probably wasn’t very clever to tell him his company had made a sow’s ear out of what should have been a silk purse within the first half an hour of working with him, but Sephy took a deep breath and said firmly, ‘Yes, I do.’
‘And Mr Ransome’s report, that recommends we merely reduce the cost for the new software?’
Mr Ransome was trying to cover his own shortcomings with regard to the whole sorry mess, but Sephy didn’t feel she could be that blunt.
She didn’t answer immediately, and the blue eyes narrowed before she said quietly, ‘He’s wrong, in my opinion, and although the firm might save a good deal of money in the short term, I don’t think it will do Quentin Dynamics’ reputation any good in the long term.’
He gave her a long hard look. ‘Right. And you think that is important?’
‘Very.’ Now it was her turn to hold his eyes. ‘Don’t you?’
He folded his arms over his chest, settling back in his seat again as he surveyed her thoughtfully. The white sunlight streaming in through the plate glass at the back of him was picking up what was almost a blue sheen in his jetblack hair, and Sephy was aware of the unusual thickness of the black lashes shading the vivid blue eyes as she looked back at him.
He had something. The thought popped into her consciousness with a nervous quiver. Male magnetism; a dark fascination; good old-fashioned sex appeal—call it what you will, it was there and it was powerful. Oh, boy, was it powerful!
‘Yes, I do,’ he said quietly. He stared at her a moment more and then snapped forward, speaking swiftly and softly as he outlined various procedures he wanted put into place. ‘Internal memos to Customer Services, Marketing and Research,’ he added shortly. ‘You can see to those, I presume? And a letter to Einhorn stating what we have decided. And I want a complete breakdown from Accounts of all costs.’
‘You want me to write the memos and the letter?’ Sephy asked quickly as he paused for breath.
‘Certainly.’ The piercing gaze flashed upwards from the papers on the desk. ‘That’s not a problem, is it? I need my secretary to work on her own initiative most of the time, once I’ve made any overall decisions. I can’t be bothered with trivialities.’
Sephy nodded somewhat dazedly. She could see Madge earnt every penny of her salary.
He continued to fire instructions and brief guidelines on a whole host of matters for some few minutes more, and by the time Sephy rose to walk back to Madge’s desk she felt as though she had been run over by a steamroller.
She had enough work to last her two or three days and she had only been in there a matter of minutes, she told herself weakly as she plopped down on her chair. He was amazing. Intelligent—acutely intelligent—and with a razor-sharp grasp of what was at the heart of any matter that cut straight through incidentals and exposed the kernel in the nut.
And he scared her to death.
She worked solidly for the rest of the afternoon, her fingers flying over the keys of the word processor as the pile of papers for signature grew. Apart from telephone calls and a brief stop for coffee—delivered on a silver tray from the small canteen at the basement of the building by one of the staff and drunk at her desk—she didn’t raise her head from the screen, and it came as something of a shock when she glanced at her wristwatch just after half past five.
She quickly gathered up all the correspondence awaiting signature and knocked at the interconnecting door, hearing the deep ‘Come in’ as butterflies began to flutter in her stomach.
He glanced up from his hand-held dictating machine as she entered, his expression preoccupied. He had been running his hand through his hair, if the ruffled black crop was anything to go by, and the tie had gone altogether now, along with a couple more buttons being undone, which exposed a V of tanned flesh and dark curling body hair.
The butterflies joined together in an explosive tarantella, and Sephy forced herself to concentrate very hard on a point just over his left shoulder as she smiled brightly and walked across to his desk. ‘Correspondence for signature,’ she squeaked, clearing her throat before adding, ‘The post goes at six, so if you could look at them now, please? I didn’t realise what the time was.’
He glanced at the gold Rolex on his wrist. ‘Hell!’
‘What’s the matter?’ Sephy asked guardedly.
‘I’ve a dinner engagement at seven,’ he muttered abstractedly. ‘Look, ring her, would you? Explain about Madge, and that things are out of kilter here, and say I’ll be half an hour late. She won’t like it—’ he grimaced slightly ‘—but don’t stand any nonsense.’
‘Ring who?’
‘What?’ He clearly expected her to be a mind-reader, as no doubt the faithful Madge was. ‘Oh, Caroline de Menthe; the number’s in here.’
He threw the obligatory little black book which he’d fetched out of a drawer across the desk.
‘Right.’ She took a deep breath and let it out evenly. She had heard of Caroline de Menthe. Everyone in the world had heard of the statuesque French model, who had the body of a goddess and the face of an angel and who was the toast of London and every other capital city besides. And she was his date. Of course she was. She was the latest prize on the circuit so she’d be bound to be, wouldn’t she? Sephy thought with a shrewishness that surprised her.
Once back at her desk she thumbed through the book, trying to ignore the reams of female names, and then, once she had found Caroline de Menthe, dialled the London number—there were several international numbers under the same name. She spoke politely into the receiver when she got through to the Savoy switchboard.
It was a moment or two before Reception connected her, and then a sultry, heavily accented voice said lazily, ‘Caroline de Menthe.’
‘Good afternoon, Miss de Menthe,’ Sephy said quickly. ‘Mr Quentin has asked me to call you to say he is sorry but he’ll be half an hour late this evening. His secretary has been taken ill and he is running a little behind schedule. He will pick you up at about half past seven if that is all right?’
‘And you are what? An office girl?’ The seductive sultriness was gone; the other woman’s tone was distinctly vinegary now.
‘I am standing in for Mr Quentin’s secretary,’ Sephy stated quietly, forcing herself not to react to the overt rudeness.
There was a moment’s silence, and then the model said curtly, ‘Tell Mr Quentin I will be waiting for him,’ and the phone went dead.
Charming. Sephy stared at the receiver in her hand for a moment before slowly replacing it. Caroline de Menthe might be beautiful and famous and have the world at her feet, but she didn’t have the manners of an alley cat. She glanced at the interconnecting door as she wrinkled her small nose. And that was the sort of woman he liked? Still, it was absolutely nothing to do with her. She was just his temporary secretary—very temporary.
The telephone rang, cutting off further deliberations, and when she realised it was the hospital asking for Mr Quentin she put the call through to him immediately.
It was a minute or two before the call ended and he buzzed her at once. She opened the door to see him sitting back in his chair with a stunned look on his dark face. ‘It’s cancer,’ he said slowly. ‘The poor old girl’s got cancer.’
‘Oh, no. Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Sephy said helplessly. He looked poleaxed and positively grey, and she was amazed how much he obviously cared.
‘They think it’s operable and that she’ll be okay in the long run, but it’ll be a long job,’ he said flatly, after taking a hard pull of air. And then he made Sephy jump a mile as he drove his fist down on to the desk with enough force to make the papers rise an inch or two. ‘Damn stupid woman,’ he ground out through clenched teeth. ‘Why didn’t she say something? The consultant said she must have been in pain for some weeks.’
‘She probably thought it was viral, something like that,’ Sephy pointed out sensibly. ‘No one likes to think the worst.’
‘Spare me the benefit of inane female logic,’ he bit back with cutting coldness.
She swallowed hard. Okay, so he was obviously upset about Madge, and she would ignore his rudeness this time, but if he thought she was going to be a doormat he’d got another think coming! She wouldn’t take that from anyone.
‘Hell!’ It was an angry bark. ‘This is going to hit her hard. Her job is her life, it’s what makes her tick, and she’s been with me from the start. She’ll hate the idea of being laid low, and she’s got no friends, just a sister somewhere or other.’
Sephy remained silent. This was awful for Madge, and difficult for him, but once bitten, twice shy. She was saying nothing.
‘So…’ He rose from the desk and turned to the window so his back was towards her. ‘She’s covered by the company’s private health plan, but make sure she’s in the best room available; any additional costs will be covered by me personally. And send her some flowers and chocolates and a selection of magazines. Is there anything else you, as another woman, would think she’d like?’ he asked, turning to face her with characteristic abruptness.
She stared at him. ‘A visit?’ she suggested pointedly.
His eyes narrowed into blue slits and he was grimly silent for a full ten seconds before he said expressionlessly, ‘I don’t like hospitals,’ as though that was the end of the matter.
‘If she’s as lacking in friends as you said she’d still like a visit,’ Sephy said stolidly. ‘She must be feeling very vulnerable tonight, and probably a bit frightened.’
She saw his square jaw move as his teeth clenched hard and then he sighed irritably, a scowl crossing his harsh attractive face. ‘She’s probably exhausted right now,’ he snapped tightly. ‘It doesn’t have to be tonight, does it?’
Sephy thought of the ravishing Caroline de Menthe waiting at the Savoy and smiled sweetly. ‘That’s up to you, of course, but a little bit of reassurance at a time like this goes a long way,’ she said with saccharine gentleness.
She gathered up the pile of correspondence, now duly signed, as she spoke, and then felt awful about the covert bitchiness when he said, his tone distracted, ‘That’s excellent work by the way, Seraphina. I trust you’ve no objection to standing in for Madge for the next few weeks?’
She hesitated for a moment, his big, broad-shouldered body and rugged face swimming into focus as she raised her head from the papers in her hands, and then, as he raised enquiring black eyebrows she forced herself to smile coolly. ‘Of course not,’ she lied with careful composure. ‘If you think I’m up to the job, that is.’
