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‘I don’t care what level it is,’ said Barbara.
‘Yes, well, I really don’t have much of anything, to tell the truth, but I’ll let you know.’
Barbara hung up and glared at the phone. Devious, conniving, unscrupulous, Machiavellian...
She rang three or four other agencies, with similar results. Blast the man!
Of course, if she told her mother, Ruth would call Charles and tell him to call the whole thing off, but he knew Barbara wouldn’t give him away like that—it would hurt Ruth too much. She supposed she should feel flattered—he must have called every agency she’d ever worked for. He’d probably got the information from her mother—Ruth wouldn’t have realised the dastardly use he meant to make of it.
She could, of course, sign up elsewhere—but there was no guarantee he hadn’t called elsewhere. The problem was, no agency in the world was going to put the interests of a lowly temp, however well qualified, ahead of the Mallory Corporation. Charles wouldn’t have had to threaten to withdraw his patronage. He could have guaranteed to give the successful agency first shot at all his future business, and no agency would have passed that up. So now what? Barbara gritted her teeth, picked up the phone and dialled.
‘Good morning. Mr Mallory’s office,’ a voice said softly.
‘Good morning. I’d like to speak to Mr Mallory,’ Barbara said crisply.
‘I’m afraid Mr Mallory is in a meeting.’
‘He always is,’ Barbara said drily. ‘Could you put me through anyway? It’s fairly urgent.’
‘He’s asked not to be interrupted. Could I take a message?’
Barbara mused over a number of unrepeatable comments which she could hardly expect a secretary to transcribe. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘You can take a message. The message is, “Never in a million years.” He’ll know who it’s from.’
She hung up with a bang.
Her first thought was to call some of the firms she’d worked with over the years. Barbara had never worked for anyone who didn’t want her to work for them for ever. You weren’t really supposed to deal with people independently of your agency, but then it wasn’t exactly kosher of her agencies to cold-shoulder her as soon as she turned down an assignment with Charles. She could probably turn up something, but it would take time, and meanwhile she was furious. Instead of thinking of leads, she kept thinking of things to say to Charles.
At last, with the inspiration of genius, she realised that she could still say them to Charles. She would go to his office, say all the rude things she wanted to Charles and then look for work.
Half an hour later Barbara strode into the immense marble vestibule of the Mallory Building and took a lift to the twelfth floor. She fenced successfully with the receptionist and strode on, unchecked, down a long carpeted corridor to Charles’s corner office. A girl sat, weeping, by the word processor outside.
Barbara stalked to the door and flung it open, unchallenged.
Unfortunately, Charles was not in the office.
‘Where is he?’ Barbara asked tightly.
‘He’s in a meeting,’ the girl said damply.
‘Him and his ego,’ agreed Barbara. ‘Some things never change. Just where is this little tête-à-tête taking place?’
‘Sorry?’ sniffed the girl.
Barbara sighed. She dug a little packet of tissues from her bag and handed it over. ‘The meeting;’ she said patiently. ‘Where is it?’
The girl gestured at a conference room. Maybe he was in a meeting after all. So much the better; she could embarrass him in front of a roomful of millionaires. She walked to the door and flung it open.
Twenty men in dark suits stared at the door. Some were fat, some were fit; some were attractive, some were not; some were young and eager-looking, others middle-aged and bored—none was worth a second look. Charles, at the head of the table, was looking ever so slightly harassed, but he still outshone every man in the room, just as he’d always effortlessly put in the shade every man she’d ever known. She’d expected him to look seriously annoyed at the intrusion, but he merely raised an eyebrow.
‘Barbara,’ he said suavely. ‘So glad you could join us.’
She was standing in the doorway, hands on hips, blue eyes blazing, red hair crackling with energy. This was more like it, Charles thought with satisfaction, congratulating himself for getting Personnel on her trail. Just looking at her you knew you could throw anything at her and she’d cope. Maybe he’d send Personnel a dozen roses—women liked that sort of gesture. The morning had been an unmitigated disaster so far, but now that Barbara was here it was bound to pick up.
He explained to the room, in rather stilted German, that Miss Woodward was his assistant.
‘No, I’m not,’ said Barbara.
There was an irritated murmur of comment from the collected men. She heard Czech, Polish and something that sounded bizarrely like Arabic.
She’d expected Charles to try to hurry her out of the room but he merely stared at her, a challenge in his eyes. Well, if he wanted to challenge her, so much the worse for him.
‘There’s something I want to discuss with you,’ said Barbara. ‘Do you want to join me next door, or would you prefer to discuss it here?‘
He shrugged, raised an eyebrow and stood up. ‘Will you excuse me, gentlemen? This should only take a moment.’
He followed Barbara into his own office. ‘I don’t know what the hell this is all about, but couldn’t it wait?’
‘No, it could not wait!’ fumed Barbara. ‘How dare you ask all those agencies for me? How dare you make them refuse me any other work?’
‘Is that what you brought me out to hear?’ He glowered at her. ‘Of all the preposterous—Look, it’s perfectly common to request a specific person from an agency. We’re desperate to get someone in here fast so I told the office manager to contact the agencies you’d worked for. We certainly never told them not to give you any other work. But now that you’re here you may as well make yourself useful.’
‘Useful!’ exclaimed Barbara, at a loss for words to express her fury.
‘We’re having some difficulty with the minutes,’ he said coolly. ‘The young woman who was helping us was overoptimistic about her linguistic abilities. We’re taping everything, but you can see why we’d like a written record.’
‘Too bad,’ said Barbara.
Charles scowled. ‘Look, you’ve said you’re looking for work.’
‘I never said I wanted to be a slave.’
‘We were planning to pay you,’ Charles said sarcastically. ‘Look, I’ll give you what we’d have paid the agency—a hundred pounds if you stay today, five hundred to stay the week.’
‘Done,’ Barbara said gloomily. She followed him back across the hall.
The men around the table were all in a bad mood. They were tired of talking business in languages not their own about things they didn’t entirely understand. They looked with mingled irritation and appreciation at the girl at the door, her slim figure set off by a dark blue shift dress. Charles sensed the change of mood in the room. He glanced down at Barbara, seeing her suddenly as if for the first time. She was spectacular all right—but completely infuriating. They wouldn’t be so appreciative, he thought irritably, if they knew what a little hellcat she was.
Barbara frowned up at him, trying to make out the odd look on his face. Probably just wishing he’d negotiated her out of her lunch-break, she thought. She shrugged, closed the door and followed him down to his end of the table where she took a seat beside him.
Barbara took up a pad and pencil. Five men burst into argument at once, and part of her mind threw itself into disentangling the various strands. But she was sitting at Charles’s elbow and her whole body seemed to be aware of the fact that he was only a couple of inches away.
If she looked down at her pad she’d suddenly find that her eyes had refocused on something more interesting a foot or so from the pad—the long, powerful line of his thigh, the muscle straining against the businesslike dark grey of his trousers. Or, if she looked up to identify a new speaker, she would see out of the corner of her eye the close-cut black hair and aquiline nose of the man beside her, and she would find herself waiting for him to speak just so she could look at him without pretending not to.
Then he would speak, and it would be a relief to turn her head. She’d turn her head, and the brilliant green of his eyes would dash over her like a cold, careless ocean wave, leaving her shivering inside, struggling to get intelligible shorthand on the page.
In spite of these distractions, she managed to make some sense of the proceedings. She soon discovered that the meeting was running into real difficulties; the second language of most of those present was German, but there were two who spoke English, another two who spoke French and one who knew Italian. A complicated system of translation, in undertones, out of the various languages into German, or from German into one of the others, was going on. She couldn’t imagine what the transcription of a tape of this was going to be like.
It also became clear to her after a while that the man who was helping out the Italian speaker was slightly misrepresenting the drift of the discussion and the speaker’s responses, whether deliberately or unintentionally she wasn’t sure.
Half an hour went by. At last, hesitantly, she put a note in front of Charles. He nodded, and wrote, ‘We’ll break for coffee—take over afterwards.’
It occurred to Barbara that if they were going to break for coffee this would be a perfect opportunity to tell him what a swine he was, but something kept her silent. Perhaps it was the hapless Italian-speaking Czech. She thought the Pole who was helping him out was taking advantage of him, and if she left he’d have no one to help him. So she organised coffee, and when the second session began she sat beside him and took over the task of translation. It soon became apparent that he was an important player in the discussions. A number of points which had been agreed earlier were reversed, and everyone began to get very annoyed.
At last Charles called a halt to the proceedings. They would, he said, adjourn until the following day.
The men filed out of the room, talking animatedly—and for the most part angrily—in their native languages. Barbara began putting her notes in order.
‘Charles!’ she exclaimed suddenly. ‘I’m an idiot! I just went on translating Italian to German—but I could have just translated from Czech! It’s been a few years since I read Colloquial Czech, but I’m sure I could have done it—at least some of the time.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t, though,’ he said. He stood up and stretched, then turned to her and raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ll probably disapprove of this, but you may be more use to me if people don’t know how much you know. They’re likely to be a bit more open among themselves if they don’t realise you understand.’
Barbara was about to start arguing about this when she realised what was going on. ‘It doesn’t matter whether I approve or not,’ she said curtly, ‘because I am not going to work for you. Didn’t you get my message?’
‘Oh, I got it,’ he said. ‘I could have wrung the girl’s neck for not putting you through. You could have been here half an hour earlier.’
‘If I’d got through,’ said Barbara, ‘I wouldn’t have come.’
‘Then it’s just as well she didn’t put you through, isn’t it?’ he said with a shrug.
Barbara remembered something else. ‘What on earth did you say to that poor girl?’ she demanded.
‘I can’t remember. Something colourful, I expect.’ A pencil snapped between his long, clever fingers. ‘For God’s sake, take that look off your face. Do you have any idea how much time and money went into setting this meeting up? She said she knew French and German, and then turned out to be totally incompetent. What do you expect me to do—give her an A for effort?’
‘I expect you to be abominably rude,’ said Barbara. ‘When are you ever anything else?’
‘Oh, I can be quite nice when I choose.’
‘Yes, when you want to seduce someone,’ Barbara said scathingly.
‘If that’s what you think, I’d better be very rude to you. I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea,’ he remarked, throwing his papers into his briefcase and closing it.
‘I certainly wouldn’t think anything as ridiculous as that,’ she retorted.
The speed of her reply made the slight pause which followed all the more noticeable. ‘What’s ridiculous about it?’ He looked at her inscrutably. ‘You’re very beautiful. You must have seen they couldn’t take their eyes off you.’
Barbara was suddenly short of breath. ‘I thought you didn’t want to get involved with your secretary,’ she pointed out
‘I thought you weren’t going to be my secretary. Looks like I can seduce you after all.’ He’d looked weary at the end of the meeting, as well he might, with the prospect of the whole thing to do again the next day—but now a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
‘No, you can’t,’ she said curtly. ‘You can call my agency and tell them you don’t need me any more so they’ll find me another job.’
‘But I do need you.’ He scowled. ‘If you don’t type up those notes no one else is going to be able to, and God only knows what the meeting is going to be like when we pick up the threads. Finish the week, anyway—at least you’ll be quids in.’
Barbara was silent. She hardly knew which was worse—his infuriating, foul temper or the careless, easy charm which found its mark so surely.
‘Look, what on earth is the matter with the idea?’ Charles asked impatiently. ‘You won’t be stuck in London the whole time. We’ll be travelling to Prague and Warsaw. You’ll meet interesting people, have a chance to accomplish something. You’ll do a terrific job, and at the end of it you’ll be able to walk into something better if you want to. I don’t know why you’re so damned suspicious. All you’ve got going for you now is a record of Ds and the odd C, plus years of temping, which frankly isn’t the best passport into the higher echelons of the business world—’
‘I don’t want to be in the higher echelons of the business world,’ said Barbara. ‘I get bored too easily.’
‘I don’t think this will bore you,’ he retorted. ‘And you’d be ideal for the job. Stop playing hard to get.’
Barbara gritted her teeth. ‘I’m not playing hard to get, Charles,’ she snapped. ‘I am hard to get. But if it means that much to you, fine. How much are you expecting to make out of this? I don’t mean income, but net profit?’
‘If it works, a couple of hundred million...’
‘All right,’ said Barbara. ‘I want a salary of £25,000.’
‘Done.’
‘Plus overtime.’
‘Done.’
‘Plus five per cent of the shares of the company.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me,’ said Barbara.
‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘No,’ said Barbara, ‘I am not out of my mind. You’re out of your mind, Charles. If the right assistant is so crucial to the deal, you could take £100,000 and get people who are experts in these languages. You could get someone with terrific skills—you could even get someone who could cope with a dead fax machine in Vladivostok. And you’d still be quids in. If you have that much money to throw at it, you don’t need me. I’ll come in and type this up tomorrow, but I am going to Sardinia next month and nothing you can say or do can stop me.’
Charles looked down into the snapping blue eyes of his pseudo-sister and wondered, briefly, whether the real thing could be half as exasperating. Did he really want to put up with this for a year? A standard-issue secretary would have been a puddle on the floor by now. He couldn’t have that, of course, but wasn’t it possible to have a secretary who just got on with the job, without starting World War III?
He was about to tell Barbara to go to Sardinia and be sure not to write when the world-weary voice of Personnel echoed lugubriously in his mind. ‘The crème de la crème...can pick and choose,’ it said morosely. ‘They don’t like to be shouted at... We’re offering a competitive package...’ it said. ‘Experienced, highly qualified people... can get the same money and benefits elsewhere.’
Well, he thought grimly, there’s competitive and there’s competitive.
He looked at Barbara evenly.
“That’s silly money,’ he said. ‘You know you’re not going to get it. So what you’re saying is, you’d like something off the charts compared to the going rate for the job. Make me another offer.’
Barbara stared at him. The problem was, she didn’t want something off the charts—she just didn’t want the job. But if he was seriously prepared to throw serious money at her she could walk away from temping for an awfully long time...
“There’s a new issue of shares for this venture, isn’t there?‘ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said curtly.
‘Five per cent of that,’ said Barbara.
His eyes were as brilliant and as hard as emeralds. ‘Keep trying,’ he said.
Barbara looked at him thoughtfully. Just how far was he willing to go? Or, to put it another way, what would irritate him the most? And suddenly she knew exactly what to say.
A couple of years ago Charles had started up a tiny company to act as a launchpad for miscellaneous inventions that didn’t fit well in the main company. Compared to the big Mallory Corporation it was nothing—but Barbara had a hunch it would hit the stratosphere a few years down the line. The fact remained that on paper it wasn’t worth much. The price of its shares was low—mere was no reason in the world why Charles shouldn’t let her have a few of them.
‘Five per cent of Mallorin,’ she said. ‘And that’s my final offer.’
He thrust his hands into his pockets. There was a long silence, in which he stared first at the carpet and then at Barbara with undisguised dislike.
‘All right, damn you,’ he said. ‘You’ll have the contract by the end of the week. But the Mallorin stock is conditional on your completing the year.’ He handed her the cassette from the day’s meeting. ‘For that kind of money I’d like the minutes typed up in time for tomorrow’s meeting. I want you in the office at seven a.m. sharp.’ And he strode from the conference room without waiting for a reply, and slammed the door shut behind him.
CHAPTER FOUR
BARBARY stayed at the office until midnight, coaxing the minutes into sense. She’d been hired for her languages so she prepared them in English, French and German, made copies and left the stacks on her desk.
At six o’clock the next morning she woke to the bleat of her alarm clock. She turned it off and snuggled back into the covers. Why on earth had she set it for such an ungodly—?
Argh.
Blearily she sat up in bed and looked out of the window onto a glorious day. A perfect day for leaving for Sardinia. Instead she’d agreed to be a slave for a year for a mere five per cent of Mallorin. She should have stipulated ten per cent if she had to be out of bed by ten. Too late now.
At seven-fifteen she staggered into the lift at Mallory, precariously balancing a cardboard tray laden with an assortment of pastries and three coffees. Charles could have one; it would take at least two, she reckoned, just to keep her eyes open.
At seven-seventeen she emerged from the lift. Charles’s door was open.
‘You’re late,’ came the curt comment from within.
Barbara approached the room gingerly. It faced east; brilliant yellow sunshine was streaming into the corridor. Narrowing her eyes, she entered the office and flinched.
‘I told you I wanted you here at seven.’ Charles was pacing up and down, a Dictaphone in his hand. He looked sickeningly fresh and energetic, his jaw freshly shaved, hair slicked down, eyes piercing, tie beautifully knotted.
‘I brought breakfast,’ said Barbara.
‘I don’t eat it,’ said Charles.
‘Naturally,’ said Barbara. ‘You’re too busy dictating. I understand. You just carry on and I’ll join you presently.’
Charles scowled. ‘It’s a complete waste of time. If you have trouble waking up in the morning you’d do better to get some exercise. Go for a run as soon as you get up.’
Barbara shuddered. ‘Is that what you did?’ she asked.
‘I went to the gym for an hour.’
Barbara winced. She sank feebly into the nearest chair—the enormous, leather-covered chair that stood behind Charles’s desk. She stretched out a nerveless hand for her first caffe latte—she’d asked for three shots of espresso—and lifted it carefully to her lips.
Charles prowled up and down in front of his desk.
‘Don’t mind me,’ Barbara said pleasantly, reviving slightly under the influence of the coffee. ‘I know you must want to get on with work.’
She selected a croissant from the pile and bit into it Lovely, lovely food. Lovely coffee. Perhaps she would live.
‘I hope you’re not planning to calculate your overtime based on a seven o’clock start,’ Charles said acerbically. ’For this you think you’re worth five per cent of a company?‘
Barbara yawned. ‘More like ten per cent, but you got a good deal.’
Charles glowered at her. He really did look marvellous, Barbara thought sleepily. Marvellous to wake up next to, except that you’d never get the chance because he’d be off to the gym in the middle of the night.
‘A good deal!’
‘Did anyone ever tell you you’re beautiful when you’re angry?’ she asked dreamily.
‘Are we going to have to go through this every morning?’ Charles asked through gritted teeth.
‘Every morning!’ Barbara stared at him in horror. ‘You don’t start this early every morning!’
‘I do,’ he said even more grittily. ‘And so will you.’
‘No, I won’t,’ said Barbara. She put down her coffee and stood up. ‘The deal’s off. I’m not going through this for a year. I’ve done the minutes in English, French and German. There are about ten copies of each on my desk; they should be pretty clear. I really don’t think your seventeen-minute start in dictation would have been that much of a handicap for me, but it’s not my problem. I’m going to Sardinia.’
Charles stalked out to her desk. He came back, leafing through a set of minutes.
‘These are good,’ he said.
‘So glad you like them,’ said Barbara. She started on another croissant.
Charles paced up and down, turning the pages.
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘You can start at eight.’
‘I’d rather go to Sardinia,’ said Barbara, ‘but I did say I’d take the job. I might be willing to start at nine.’
Charles seemed about to say something when his eye was caught by the German minutes, which were now on the top of the stack. He gritted his teeth again.
‘Your problem is your blood sugar is low,’ Barbara explained helpfully. ‘That’s why it’s so important to eat a good breakfast. Otherwise you’re likely to be irritable and short-tempered.’
‘I’m not irritable—’ he began.
‘Have a croissant,’ urged Barbara. ‘Or a Danish pastry. It will help you to get everything in perspective.’
Charles threw the minutes onto a nearby chair. ‘I must be mad,’ he remarked.
‘No, you just have low blood sugar,’ Barbara reassured him. ‘Have something to eat and you’ll feel much better.’
For a moment she wondered whether she’d gone too far. She kept forgetting she no longer had to deal with the easygoing, self-mocking seventeen-year-old Charles who’d laughed at her teasing. Now she was dealing with the driven, self-made entrepreneur who clearly saw her as the single greatest obstacle in his race to take over Eastern Europe. On the other hand, if she once started being scared of Charles...
‘Have something to eat and you’ll make me feel better,’ she went on provocatively. ‘I went to all this trouble to bring something for you—it’s simple good management to show your appreciation. When a member of staff goes out of her way to do something helpful you should show you appreciate the initiative. It’s good for staff morale.’
It occurred to her that she suddenly felt wide awake—wonderful what arguing with Charles did to sweep away the cobwebs.