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She walked briskly to the end of the table, facing David down the length of it. ‘Mr Hartley, we have chaos in the office,’ she announced, showing no perturbation at all at dropping bombshells in the boardroom.
‘I know that.’ His voice had the low rumble of an incipient earthquake.
‘You’ll be pleased to hear that the Sutherland contract has arrived. All signed, sealed and delivered,’ she stated wearily, as though it was one more chore to deal with on top of everything else.
‘Good.’ He gave her a frozen smile.
‘How we’re going to get that amount of product out on to the market in time, I do not know.’
‘Miss Ross...’ he looked sharply at the German delegation ‘...please take control of yourself.’
‘Fifteen hundred units,’ she burbled on. He knew as well as she knew how grossly exaggerated that figure was. The German delegation did not.
‘Miss Ross,’ he said sharply, ‘this is confidential information. Please be careful what you say. Where’s Jordan?’
She aimed a sigh of exasperation at him. ‘Mr Jordan left to clinch a huge deal with a string of business colleges,’ she went on, treating his warning about confidentiality as totally irrelevant in the circumstances. ‘Sell, sell, sell. That’s all he can do. The man is like a robot.’
‘I didn’t know he’d gone.’ David looked vexed. ‘He’s supposed to be here.’
‘I haven’t had a moment to tell you.’ Caitlin put some vexation into her voice. ‘As you’re aware, the phone-lines have been engaged all morning. All the other salesmen are out, too. Every blasted one of them. We can’t cover the volume of work that’s pouring in. For one thing, we need more phone-lines...’
David passed a weary hand over his face. ‘What point are you coming to, Miss Ross?’
‘There’s an overload of work. I’m needed elsewhere. The matter is urgent,’ she stated emphatically. ‘I require permission to leave the office. It’s mandatory. I need to take the afternoon off to attend to what has to be done.’
Danger signals glimmered in his eyes. ‘I have guests here from a foreign country who have to be attended to and looked after with the proper courtesy and respect, Miss Ross. Permission refused!’
Caitlin set her mouth into a long-suffering line. She threw a glance at the heavens as though praying for patience. She had seen him do the same action this morning, so had no trouble in duplicating it. It didn’t work any better for her than it did for him.
Patience was not bestowed on her.
She dropped her gaze to David and gave him a long, glittering glare. Then she tossed her hair in defiance, flounced around the table to where he sat, and slapped the Sutherland file down in front of him.
‘Sir!’ She took a deep breath. Her breasts lifted, drawing every eye on either side of the table to the lace inserts of her blouse. Her hands planted themselves on her hips. ‘Something has to give,’ she declared with passionate conviction. ‘It’s prob-ably me!’
Everyone was quite fascinated by now. She had their full attention. Including David’s. Especially David’s. She hoped he was getting the underlying personal message loud and clear. She was not going to go his way any more.
‘Something is going to give,’ he said grimly, ‘and I agree that it’s likely to be you.’
‘You need to employ more staff.’
‘I’ll certainly be dealing with that, Miss Ross.’ The purpose behind those words was unmistakable. She had not only crossed the Rubicon, she had committed hara-kiri on every level by not staying in the pigeonhole he’d built for her.
‘Can we go into recess on this?’ She would give him one last chance to be reasonable.
‘Not at the present moment.’
Green eyes sizzled into blue, giving him her message in no uncertain terms. ‘Very well,’ she snapped. ‘Please understand I can no longer handle all you require of me. I cannot meet the standards you demand of me. The overtime is excessive and unrewarding. We have come to the end of the line, you and I. Finis. Full stop. Goodbye.’
He was rising to his feet. ‘Miss Ross!’ he cried out hoarsely, obviously shaken to his bootstraps. Such antics had never been seen in this boardroom before.
‘Stay where you are, Mr Hartley. There’s no need to say or do anything. Business comes first. Remember this morning.’ She hoped he did.
With another toss of her hair she turned to march away from him. There was one last thing she could do. She would do it and end this farce. She took three steps, stopped, then swung back to address the head of the German delegation. Herr Schmidt was a big, burly man with sharp grey eyes. He had a poker face, revealing nothing of his thoughts.
‘There are no design defects in our products, Herr Schmidt. You are wasting our time. Mr Hartley is simply being too polite to tell you that to your face.’
The implication was clear. If he chose not to buy the licence, the loss was his, not theirs. She gave him a full eyeful of scorn, then resumed her march from the room, her hair swinging, her hips swinging, and the deal with the German delegation swinging.
Five pairs of eyes followed her out of the room. No one broke the silence which enveloped them.
Win or lose, Caitlin didn’t care any more. If David didn’t want to play the hand she had dealt him, that was too bad! As best she could, she had made up for her lapse in carrying out his instructions. The dance with the devil was over. She closed the door behind her with finality.
That action did nothing to fill the aching void in her heart. Why do women love so foolishly? she wondered. They hurt only themselves.
Back in her own office, the strong scent of the roses mocked the secret dreams and desires she had so fondly nurtured. The irrational hope she had so blindly fostered in her heart was dead. David Hartley was never going to change. The romance in his soul was encased in concrete surrounded by barbed wire and porcupine quills.
But it was best not to think about him now. She had to act on the decision she had made. No wavering. No waiting. There would be no softening coming from him. If she took nothing else away from her association with David Hartley, she would take her self-esteem and self-respect.
Tears pricked her eyes as she walked around her desk and flopped listlessly into her chair. She had been so happy to receive such lovely gifts. Why couldn’t it have been David asking her to ‘be his Valentine’? She had no idea who else might be declaring his interest in her. She wasn’t interested in anyone else. Someone had wasted an awful lot of money on nothing.
Maybe it was a mistake. Perhaps the Valentine gifts were meant for someone else. A mistake could easily be made because there was no name on the card. She was probably the recipient of mischance and some other woman was missing out on the pleasure meant for her.
With a heavy sigh, Caitlin rolled her chair around to face her computer. She switched it on and brought up the Microsoft Word program. It wouldn’t take long to type up an official letter of resignation to end her employment by David Hartley. She would leave it on his desk and go.
Her mother needed her. Her father had to be found. As far as her family was concerned, this St Valentine’s Day had brought nothing but misery and despair. Caitlin hoped she could do more for her parents than she could do for herself. Her one-sided love-affair was definitely on skid-row, but if her parents’ marriage could be rescued, at least that would be something.
Her fingers flew over the keyboard. She re-read what she had typed on to the monitor, nodded her satisfaction, then switched on the laser printer and waited for the fateful page to roll out.
She was on her feet, ready to pick up the page and sign her name to it, when she heard her office door open. She glanced around automatically.
Her heart thudded with apprehension when she saw David enter and close the door behind him. She didn’t want another confrontation with him. What was over was over.
‘Caitlin...’
‘You’re supposed to be looking after your guests.’
The printer whirred. She turned back to it. David could say what he liked. She wasn’t going to let it affect her. The page that would put an end to everything between them rolled towards her.
‘We’ve gone into recess for twenty minutes to re-establish contact with reality,’ he stated, conveniently forgetting that he had ruled out a recess when she had suggested it. ‘We’re going to relook at what direction we’re all coming from,’ he went on, his voice coming closer and closer. He paused. ‘Caitlin, you were magnificent!’
An accolade indeed, coming from David, but it came too late. Caitlin steeled her heart against responding to him.
The phone rang.
David automatically picked it up. Slowly and deliberately, Caitlin signed her resignation.
‘It’s for you,’ he said, holding the receiver out to her.
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