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www.millsandboon.co.uk
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
IT was quite a long way from the canteen to the office of the Editor of the Daily Globe, especially when one was carrying a tray holding two tea cups, a pot of tea, milk and sugar, but Briony Winters was used to it. Her small, slight frame belied her strength just as her soft, feminine features belied her nature.
She pushed open the door of the outer office, which was hers, noticing with a frown the heavy masculine topcoat flung carelessly over the spare chair. Doug Simons, her boss, often had visitors, but very few of them wore coats like that. It was wool, and expensive, meticulously tailored and lined in silk. Briony put down the tray, wondering about whether to give up her own cup for the visitor, when she realised that the inner door was not quite closed.
‘Well, you’ll have no problems with the job, of course,’ Doug was saying. ‘Not after working on the Telegraph.’
‘Which, I take it, means I could have in other areas.’
Although the man’s voice was faintly muffled, there was no mistaking its hard inflexibility, and Briony frowned, her lips drawing together in a cold line.
‘Well, it’s just Briony…’
The very mention of her own name should have been sufficient to send her out of earshot, but despite allegations among the male staff of the paper to the contrary, Briony was only human.
‘Briony?’
Again that note of sharp query.
‘Briony Winters, my secretary,’ Doug supplied. ‘Well, your secretary now. She might give you a hard time at first… until she gets used to you.’
‘She might…? My God, no wonder your sales are slipping if you allow your secretary to dictate to you, Doug!’
The coolly insolent words made Briony’s fingers curl angrily into her palms. For two pins she’d march right into Doug’s office and demand to know exactly why he thought it necessary to explain to his replacement that he might have ‘problems’. Didn’t she fulfil her secretarial duties with a good deal more efficiency and effectiveness than any of the other secretaries?
She had been away on a fortnight’s holiday when the news of Doug’s promotion broke and had come back to find the paper in an uproar, with Doug due to leave for New York only three days after his replacement arrived. Since the Globe had been taken over by an American newspaper group, such transatlantic moves had become commonplace, and Briony hadn’t been unduly surprised to hear that Doug’s replacement was from the States. She herself didn’t particularly like American men. They were inclined to be brash and noisy. And worse, they didn’t know when to take ‘no’ for an answer. She stared angrily at the door. Doug had no right… no right at all to discuss her like this.
‘What is she?’ she heard the other man say sardonically. ‘Some sort of female dragon? A Women’s Libber with her hair in a bun and thick ankles?’
‘No way,’ Doug said dryly. ‘As it happens, she’s got one of the sexiest bodies I’ve ever seen.’
Outside the door Briony writhed in furious resentment. Doug had never given the slightest inkling that he had even noticed her body, and if he had she wouldn’t have continued to work for him.
‘Woe betide you if you try to touch it, though,’ Doug was warning his companion. ‘Briony has a hang-up where men are concerned. She can’t stand them, and it isn’t a sham. Something to do with something that happened in her teens.’
‘A teenage romance goes wrong and turns her into a man-hater? Come on, Doug. These are the nineteen-eighties!’
‘Well, some people take things harder than others. I’m just warning you to take things easy. She’s the best secretary I’ve ever had—works hard and is meticulously efficient.’
‘Maybe so,’ the hard voice said curtly. ‘But if she wants the kid glove treatment she shouldn’t be working on a paper. Secretaries are expendable, Doug,’ the man added in a bored voice, ‘even the best of them.’
Briony gripped her desk, her voice white with fear and shock. There had been redundancies on the paper the summer before and she had been terrified, then, that she might lose her job. It was something she daren’t even contemplate. She depended on it too heavily. It paid well, and Doug had always been flexible about hours, which had been an added bonus. But now Doug was leaving and she would be working for a man she had already decided she hated, without even meeting him. He was still talking to Doug, and she moved away from the door on legs suddenly weak and trembling. Whoever he was, he was no American. His accent was English. She could tell that even though his voice was muffled by the door.
The intercom buzzed and she flicked it down, her voice coolly remote as she answered Doug.
‘Come into my office for a moment, would you, Briony?’ he requested. ‘There’s someone here I’d like you to meet.’
There was a small mirror on the wall behind her, but she didn’t bother to look in it. She stood up picking up her notebook and pencil through sheer force of habit, a small girl, with a mane of dark red hair that curled thickly round a perfectly oval face. Her skin was pale and creamy; almost translucent. She had delicate features and large green eyes which looked as though they might once have been vulnerable but which now reflected only the image of whoever looked into them. Looking into Briony’s eyes was like looking at a one-way mirror, from the wrong side, one of her infuriated male colleagues had once said. The only time anyone saw any expression in them was if some man tried to sexually belittle her. Then they filled with bitterness and contempt. Slender to the point of fragility, there was a steel-like quality about her, a coldness which allowed no one to trespass close enough to discover the woman she might be beneath the layers of ice in which she was encased. She was twenty-three and as composed as a woman ten years older. ‘Frigid’ and ‘incapable of feeling were just two of the many insults frustrated males had hurled at her, but they pleased rather than offended. Where men were concerned her emotions were completely burnt out, leaving nothing but bitter hatred.
Despite that, Doug was envied his secretary. She was cool, and calm, and could be relied on completely in an emergency. Her job was no sinecure. She was on the go from nine until six every day, working late quite often, and always ready to work through a lunch-hour or give up free time if it was necessary. The other girls joked that she didn’t have a private life, and that the paper was her family; and although they were reluctant to admit it, most of them felt slightly in awe of her.
As she pushed open the door Doug smiled at her. Doug Simons was in his mid-fifties, a power-house of human energy, who had worked in newspapers since he left school. He and Briony got on very well—or at least she had thought they had until she heard him discussing her so freely. Happily married with a grown up family and a wife on whom he doted, he represented no threat to her defence systems. Neither did he constantly annoy her with unwanted sexually based conversation or false flattery of a type insulting to both her intelligence and her taste. Men thought they only had to smile and wheedle and girls would gladly jump into bed with them. Well, not her!
Doug smiled warmly at her, his expression faintly ingratiating as though he was half afraid of what she might do or how she would react.
She smiled back—a slight widening of warmly curved lips to show even white teeth, the smile not reaching her eyes, which remained as clear and cold as glass.
Doug’s companion had his back to her. He didn’t turn to look up at her, nor did he betray any other awareness of her presence, and she prickled with animosity. His hair was dark and thick, brushing the collar of the expensive suit he was wearing, and she stiffened as warily and antagonistically as a cat faced with a large, threatening dog.
‘Kieron, meet your new secretary, Briony. Briony—Kieron Blake.’
She at least had had the advantage of hearing his name, and thus the precious gift of a few seconds to prepare herself. He had had nothing, and she observed the shocked incredulity of his expression with grim satisfaction. Navy-blue eyes swept slowly and disbelievingly over her; looking for the scars? she asked herself bitterly. He wouldn’t find any. She had concealed them all too well.
‘Briony?’ His eyebrows rose in contemptuous accusation, and although inwardly terrified, Briony refused to be drawn. Let him think what he liked. He hadn’t changed. The long-boned Celtic face was still as physically compelling; the high cheekbones and harsh male features still as disturbing. His skin was tanned, the thick dark hair worn slightly longer than she remembered, and the suit more formal. He had himself under control now, the shock carefully masked, only the faint clenching of his jawbone revealing the control he was having to exert.
‘Kieron’s going to need all the help you can give him until he settles in, Briony,’ Doug told her, sublimely unaware of the undercurrents eddying fiercely around him. ‘I’m going to take him round and introduce him to the other editors and then we’re going out to lunch. Anything urgent, get Phil to deal with it, will you?’
Phil Masters was Doug’s assistant, a tall gangly Scot with a shock of red hair and a temper to match.
Doug and Kieron were standing up, Kieron extending his hand to her, his expression a mingling of contempt and indifference, which changed to anger as she withdrew automatically from him.
With Doug looking on she could hardly make a scene, but the touch of those cool brown fingers against her own skin made her shake with a sickness and fear that left her drained and trembling. And this was only the beginning.
As she walked back into her own office, Kieron murmured something to Doug, and the connecting door was closed. Alarm prickled over her, fears she had thought long submerged suddenly filling her mind and obliterating everything else.
‘How long has Briony worked for you?’ Kieron asked Doug casually as the latter picked up his coat.
‘Umm, about eighteen months. Best secretary I’ve ever had.’ He hadn’t been as unaware of Kieron’s reaction to Briony as he had pretended, and naturally he was curious as to its cause. ‘Am I right in thinking you know her?’
‘I once thought I knew someone who looked like her, but it turned out that I didn’t know her at all.’
His tone of voice warned Doug not to probe.
‘I’m not surprised to hear she’s a man-hater,’ he added sardonically. ‘She’s one of those women who seem to get a thrill out of leading men on and then kicking them in the teeth. Quite a hang-up!’
Doug didn’t argue the point. Whatever relationship had once existed between Briony and Kieron was their business and theirs alone, but he could foresee fireworks between them in the not too far distant future, if they were going to work together.
The two men emerged from the office, and Briony darted a quick look at Kieron’s shuttered face. It told her nothing. When they had gone she stared unseeingly at her typewriter, ignoring the over-flowing ‘in’ tray, her mind racing frantically in circles as she tried to think of a way of ensuring that she need never set eyes on Kieron Blake again.
There wasn’t one, of course. Not unless she gave up her job, and that was impossible. In a more buoyant economic climate she might have done so, even if it meant taking a drop in salary, but to take the risk in the middle of a depression would be extremely foolhardy. She needed her salary. Every penny of it. She closed her eyes, shivering suddenly with cold. The office door opened and she jerked upright, her face paper-white, but it was only Matt Dyson, one of the sub-editors. It was the joke of the Globe that while Briony gave every other male the cold shoulder, Matt Dyson, the original worm who never turned, was her only male escort.
‘Is something wrong?’ he asked, eyeing her with mingled uncertainty and embarrassment.
Doug referred unkindly to Matt as her ‘lame dog’, and it was true that his long face often wore an expression of anguished apology. He was nervous and introspective and the other men often made fun of him behind his back. He had once confided to Briony that he had wanted to become a painter, but that his parents had disapproved. He was in his late twenties, with fair, thinning hair, and mild hazel eyes. His wife had left him two weeks after Christmas, and now in April he still hoped every day that she would miraculously return to him. He worshipped the ground she trod, although Briony could not see why. Mary Dyson was a dumpy brunette, narrow-minded and everything that Briony disliked in her own sex. She had often contemplated telling Matt that his wife might treat him a little better if he treated her a little worse, but she had no intention of getting involved in other people’s personal problems.
‘Lunch with me?’ Matt asked hesitantly. ‘Or have you another date?’
She hadn’t, and she didn’t particularly feel like eating, but she knew that she could not remain in her office thinking about Kieron Blake.
To her surprise Matt took her to a fashionable new restaurant which had recently opened, and had become a favourite haunt of Globe staff. It was inclined to be rather pricey, and since she knew that Matt was having problems making ends meet, Briony frowned, wishing he had taken her somewhere more modest. Now she would have to insist on paying for her own meal and he would be hurt and offended.
The restaurant was full apart from one table set for six and one vacant one for two next to it. The waiter removed Briony’s coat with a flourish and a look in his eyes which immediately made her own harden as she directed a freezing stare at him.
Matt dithered over the menu. He always did, and Briony had grown used to it. In contrast she had decided what she was going to eat immediately, and she gave her order coolly, while Matt cast anguished glances, first at the menu and then at the hovering waiter. It took all of five minutes and they still had to endure the fiasco of choosing the wine. Matt hadn’t a clue about wine and normally ended up hot and bothered and very obviously patronised by the wine waiter. Briony sat through it all with detached uninterest, throwing a cool smile at Matt when he eventually managed to make up his mind, which he accepted with the gratitude of a dog being thrown a bone.
They had just started on their main course when the table adjacent to them filled up. Briony was conscious of being scrutinised but refused to look up. Matt turned to say something to her, and upset his wine glass, an expression of abject apology on his face as the contents cascaded over the table and dripped on to her cream wool skirt. She stood up, shaking off the moisture and assuring him that no harm had been done. As she sat down again she realised that the occupants of the other table were Doug and Kieron, and four other deputy editors from the paper.
Doug grinned at her, but it was Kieron Blake of whom she was most aware, her hands shaking beneath the narrowed blue stare he turned upon her.
‘Come and join us,’ Doug invited, calling over a waiter to move the tables together. ‘We’ll soon catch up with you.’
Briony willed Matt to refuse, but of course he didn’t, and somehow she found herself sandwiched beween Doug and Kieron while Matt sat opposite her next to the Features Editor, Gail Wyndham.
Gail and Briony had never been particularly friendly. Gail was a tall blonde, a career woman first and foremost but one who made no secret of her enjoyment of the opposite sex. It was rumoured that she knew every attractive male on the Globe intimately, and watching her openly flirting with Kieron Blake Briony suspected that it would not be too long before he joined that list. He was letting Gail make all the running, his manner lazily amused, just enough awareness in it to encourage her, and Briony felt faintly sick as she watched them together. One of the other men tried to engage her in conversation, but she cut him off abruptly, shocked to discover that Kieron had switched his attention from Gail to her, his eyes alert and watchful, a cynical twist to his lips.
‘I’ve been dying to meet you for ages,’ Gail murmured softly, stretching out a plum-tipped hand to touch his arm. ‘You were quite a celebrity on the Street even before you went to the States.’
‘Oh?’
Under the table Briony gripped her hands together until her knuckles showed white. From the moment she had seen Kieron Blake in Doug’s office she had known this moment would come. It seemed ironic that after so many years of nightmares about it, the confrontation should arrive just when she had at last hoped she was over them. Inwardly she was shaking with mingled sickness and fear, but years of hiding her feelings and repressing them behind a blank wall helped her to concentrate on her food, although if anyone had asked her what she was eating she would not have had the faintest idea.
‘The Myers case,’ Gail continued in a husky voice. ‘It made newspaper history—the sort of scoop we all dream about. While the rest of the press were speculating about what part of the world James Myers might have disappeared to, you managed to discover that he was right here in this country all the time, posing as his sister’s boy-friend.’
‘The Myers case?’ Doug frowned. ‘Wasn’t he the crooked financier? The one who was reputed to have salted millions away?’
‘Yes. It wasn’t a very pleasant business,’ Kieron said coolly. ‘The man had been indulging in a form of legal robbery for years, but then he made a fatal slip and got found out. Everyone knew what was going on but no one could prove it, and before the police could build up a case against him it was rumoured that he’d skipped the country.’
‘Only you knew differently,’ Gail admired. ‘How on earth did you find out the truth? By all accounts he was quite a master of disguise, and had been coming and going quite freely for weeks, posing as his sister’s boy-friend.’
‘Yes. He was hoping to leave the country when things had cooled down a bit. I had a few lucky breaks.’
‘And a guillible informant, if all one hears is true,’ Gail laughed. ‘Didn’t you get most of the detail for the story from Myers’ sister’s flatmate?’
‘I never disclose my sources,’ Kieron told her, smiling to soften the words. Briony could tell that Doug was impressed by this apparent show of loyalty and she could feel Kieron’s eyes upon her across the width of the table, but she refused to look up. No matter what he might pretend to others, she knew the truth!
‘In that case you didn’t need to,’ Gail said frankly. ‘I wonder what on earth happened to that girl? There was some talk of her being tried as an accomplice at one stage.’
‘Tried? but.…’ Kieron caught himself up, but not before Briony had observed his momentary shock with bitter satisfaction.
‘Surely you knew?’ Gail queried.
‘As a newspaper editor you should know better than merely to assume the obvious,’ Kieron parried.
Because he had no other defence against the question, Briony thought angrily.
‘It was a very clever piece of reporting,’ Doug observed, joining the conversation, his words jarring a nerve Briony had thought long dead.
‘Clever?’ she burst out before she could stop herself, her eyes burning with resentment, a loathing in her voice she did nothing to hide. ‘Is that what you all think? That it’s “clever” to destroy someone’s life, just to get a front-page story? Well, I don’t. I think it’s despicable. Hateful!’ She broke off, realising that the others were exchanging puzzled and amused glances.
‘Come on, love, aren’t you taking it a bit personally?’ one of the other men commented. Briony knew Kieron was waiting for her to speak, but she couldn’t. How could these cynical, worldly people understand the effect of their sophisticated moral code on others less worldly? And Kieron’s attempts to pretend that he hadn’t known.… That he had actually cared.… God, how she hated him!
‘Something wrong, Briony?’ Kieron asked her smoothly, giving her name faint emphasis. ‘You don’t seem to be enjoying your lunch.’
‘The lunch is fine,’ she retorted bleakly, ‘but if you’ll all excuse me, I’ve got work to do.’ She glanced at Matt, not wanting to embarrass him in front of the others by offering to pay for her own lunch, and then shrugged the concern away. She could settle up with him later.
She had just walked past the table when she heard Gail say triumphantly, ‘Beth Walker—that was the girl’s name!’
Briony froze, her eyes dilating with fear, her hands cold and clammy.
‘Beth Walker,’ Kieron repeated softly, and Briony knew without looking at him that he was watching her.
She walked back to the office on legs which almost refused to support her, each breath a conscious effort. Her instinctive response was to grab her coat and leave before Doug and Kieron got back. But she could not.
On impulse she reached for a phone book, dialling the number of a well-known employment agency. The girl on the other end was helpful but regretful. In normal circumstances, she told Briony, they wouldn’t have the slightest difficulty in placing her, but the way things were at the moment it might be months before they could find her a job which came anywhere near approaching her present highly paid one.
She slumped in her chair, not entirely surprised, wondering what on earth she was going to do. She felt as though her life had suddenly turned into a horrendous nightmare. Beth Walker. When she had discarded that name she had discarded the past, or so she tried to persuade herself, but it hadn’t been easy. There were too many intrusive memories, too much that could not simply be forgotten. She had changed her name by deed poll after the attentions of the Press became too much to bear. It was ironic really that she should end up working for a newspaper. It had been from necessity rather than inclination. She had needed a job that paid well, and employers who were prepared to take her on without digging too deeply into her past. Doug had taken her completely on trust, and for that alone she felt she owed him a debt which could never be entirely repaid. One had to experience the contempt and loss in faith of others before one could appreciate fully the value of trust.
She had once trusted Kieron Blake. And not just trusted him. Even now it made her feel sick to think how gullible she had once been.
The first time she had seen him had been at the flat she shared with Susan Myers. He had come, so he told her, to interview Susan for a gossip column article, and she had not been surprised, because although she and Susan lived together, their life styles were entirely different.
They had been brought up in the same small village. Susan was the spoiled and petted daughter of the local ‘lord of the manor’, Sir Arthur Myers, and his wife, and Briony had got to know her through her father who was their doctor. They had gone to school together, although never particularly intimate—Susan moved in a different, faster crowd, and it was only the death of Briony’s parents within six months of one another—her father from a heart attack and her mother from a broken heart—that brought them together.