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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
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
‘WHEW!’ Janice collapsed down into the chair opposite Laura, her notebook dropping on to the desk in front of her. ‘I think my fingers are going to fall off!’ she groaned.
‘Rough, was it?’ Laura sympathised.
‘Rough!’ Janice leant back wearily. ‘I didn’t think so many people could all talk at the same time, and so fast too. I’ll be glad when Dorothy gets back,’ she moaned.
Dorothy Palmer was James Courtney’s personal secretary, and Janice and Laura were her secretaries. But Dorothy had gone down with ‘flu yesterday morning and had unwillingly been sent home, her last instruction being for Janice to sit in on the board meeting today and take the notes she usually took herself.
‘She only went off yesterday,’ Laura pointed out.
‘She’ll be back tomorrow, you can depend on it. In all the time I’ve been here I’ve never known Dorothy to take more than two days off, no matter how ill she is.’ Janice bent over her notepad, grimacing. ‘Now I’ve got to get these notes typed up before Mr Courtney starts screaming for them.’
‘Would you like me to do it?’ Laura instantly offered.
‘No—thanks,’ the other girl sighed. ‘I’m going to have trouble reading it back myself—and I wrote it! I’ll tell you what you could do for me, though. Mr Courtney would like a tray of coffee taken through to his office. Could you do that for me?’
Laura instantly stood up, smoothing down the straight skirt of her tailored black suit, a pale green blouse worn beneath the fitted jacket, her shoulder-length auburn hair secured with a tortoiseshell slide at her nape. She had taken to wearing the more mature clothing and severe hairstyle after being turned down for several jobs because of her youthful appearance. The clothes and hairstyle made her feel older than her nineteen years, giving her the confidence to try for this job at Courtneys. As her application and interview had been successful the image must have worked.
She had only been employed at Courtneys for three weeks, and so far she had had little to do with James Courtney himself, and the prospect of taking in his afternoon coffee, tea being preferred in the morning, filled her with apprehension.
‘You know where to go, don’t you?’ Janice asked absently, her attention still on her hastily scribbled short-hand notes.
‘I—Yes, I know.’ Laura turned to go down to the executives’ restaurant.
‘I should call down first,’ Janice advised. ‘That way they’ll have the coffee ready for when you get down there.’
‘Oh yes, of course.’ She picked up the telephone and dialled the number.
‘Two cups,’ Janice murmured, biting the end of her pencil. ‘Mr Courtney has someone with him.’
Laura put the order in, hearing the flurry of activity when she told the girl the coffee was for Mr Courtney and smiled to herself as she went down the two floors in the lift. James Courtney had the effect of putting most people in a state of confusion, including herself, and she had no doubt the women in the canteen were even now rushing about preparing the fresh ground coffee Mr Courtney preferred, and putting a plate of his favourite chocolate biscuits on the tray too.
The first time she had collected his coffee tray she had been surprised by the presence of the biscuits, but she had been assured by Doreen in the canteen that Mr Courtney had a weakness for them. Laura found it difficult to think of that tall, distinguished man having any weaknesses at all; he always seemed like a very cold individual to her.
‘Got a visitor today, has he?’ Doreen asked conversationally as she handed over the tray.
‘Yes,’ Laura smiled.
‘Dorothy not back yet?’
It was amazing how gossip spread about this firm. ‘No,’ she shook her head, not one who liked to gossip herself.
‘Like working for Mr Courtney, do you?’ Doreen probed.
‘I—Yes.’
‘Nice man,’ Doreen nodded. ‘A bit abrupt, but he knows what he wants. I like a man who knows what he wants.’
‘I—Yes, he seems very nice,’ Laura evaded; she found James Courtney more than ‘a bit abrupt’. He frightened the life out of her every time he barked an order at her. But she didn’t usually have a lot to do with him personally, thank goodness! If she worked directly for James Courtney she might not even have lasted the three weeks she had been here, Janice was senior, next to Dorothy, and so her own dealings with James Courtney kept to a minimum—and that was the way she liked it.
‘I should take that up now,’ Doreen advised curtly, obviously deciding she wasn’t going to get much information out of Laura.
Laura flushed, making a hasty exit. Doreen had obviously expected to have a cosy little chat with her about Mr Courtney, most of his employees seeming to find this haughty man an interesting topic of conversation. Although what Doreen thought she could possibly relate about the man she just didn’t know, James Courtney barely acknowledged her existence, let alone confided in her!
Janice glanced up as she entered their office. ‘I should take it through, he’s buzzed for it twice already.’
Her face showed her dismay. ‘But wouldn’t you rather—–’
‘Don’t ask me to take it in, Laura,’ the other girl sighed impatiently. ‘I’m up to my eyes with this typing. And he can’t eat you,’ she added derisively.
‘He can try,’ Laura grimaced.
‘Go on in,’ Janice laughed. ‘If you let his coffee get cold he just might eat you at that!’
Laura swallowed hard, taking a deep breath before moving to knock on the inner office door. The abrupt ‘enter’ was not welcoming, and her hands shook as she picked the tray up to enter the room.
The two men inside instantly stopped talking, the one sitting in front of the desk rising politely to his feet, James Courtney remaining seated, obviously not considering his junior secretary worth the act of politeness. Laura eyed him nervously, finding him as daunting as she usually did, not sparing a glance in the other man’s direction. James Courtney looked back at her broodingly, not welcoming her interruption at all.
In his early sixties, James Courtney was nevertheless still an attractive man, his thick hair iron grey, his face ruggedly lined, the eyes a pale blue, his mouth set in its usual thin line. Laura couldn’t ever remember seeing him smile, although surely no one could be this grim all the time.
She looked down at the desk, searching for a space to put the tray down. There didn’t appear to be one.
‘Let me,’ a deep voice remarked from behind her, and the man moved forward to move some of the papers aside.
Laura gratefully put the heavy tray down, and turned to thank the man. The words caught and held in her throat, as she found herself looking at the most devastatingly handsome man she had ever seen in her young life, his slate grey eyes widening as she continued to stare at him.
But she couldn’t have looked away if her life had depended upon it, feeling almost mesmerised, caught in a spell she had no will or wish to break. This man was taller even than James Courtney, being at least a foot taller than her own five feet two inches. He was a man in his mid-thirties, with a lean ripcord body that oozed power and determination, his face even more powerful as he continued to meet her wide-eyed stare. His eyes seemed to be constantly changing colour, at one moment a light silver, at others almost black. His nose was long and straight, his mouth jutting out determinedly above the strong jaw, his skin deeply tanned. The dark suit fitted him perfectly, the snowy white shirt emphasising the deep tan on his face and strong, tapered hands.
Laura couldn’t ever remember noticing so much about one person on first sight before, finding herself fascinated by the deep cleft in his chin, the way his dark hair grew thickly over his collar, styled casually back from his face, the face she couldn’t look away from. It was as if time suddenly stood still, allowing her to look her fill of this man she felt captivated by. And she didn’t ever want to stop looking at him.
She knew it was stupid, knew that a man of the thirty-five-thirty-six she guessed him to be was probably married with a couple of children, that he wouldn’t be interested in her even if he weren’t married, and yet her attraction to him was so strong the rest of the world had ceased to exist.
But her silent admiration of him couldn’t last, she had known it couldn’t, and finally he was the one to break it.
‘Thank you, Miss—–?’ He looked at her enquiringly.
His voice was as fascinating as the rest of him, deep and husky, and she shivered with excitement as she wondered how it would feel to have such a man make love to her. She blushed scarlet at the intimacy of her thoughts, groaning inwardly as she realised how the tide of red colour would clash with her auburn hair.
Heavens, she must be making a prize idiot of herself, standing here goggle-eyed about a perfect stranger. ‘Jamieson,’ she supplied jerkily, cursing herself for the way her voice quivered.
‘Jamieson?’ he echoed softly.
‘I—er—Yes, sir,’ she licked her lips nervously, ‘Laura Jamieson.’
‘That will be all, Miss Jamieson.’ James Courtney spoke to her for the first time since she had entered the room, his voice curt.
She blushed anew. ‘Er—yes, sir.’ She turned to flee the room, aware that she had made more of a fool of herself in front of the older man than she usually did.
‘And tell your colleague to hurry with those notes,’ he snapped. ‘Dorothy doesn’t usually keep me waiting this length of time.’
‘Er—no, sir.’ Now she was sounding like the idiot she was acting! But James Courtney couldn’t know that Dorothy didn’t usually keep him waiting because she had Janice and herself do the typing for her.
She liked Dorothy immensely, and found the older woman kind and helpful, the three of them working very well together in their spacious office. As James Courtney’s personal secretary it was only right that she should pass on the more mundane task of typing to her juniors, her other duties time consuming enough.
She hurried from the room, aware that the two men had already dismissed her from their minds as they resumed their conversation. She closed the door behind her with a sigh, realising that she was trembling, her hands shaking almost incontrollably. That man, a man whose name she didn’t even know, had affected her more deeply than any person she had ever met.
Janice looked up from her typing. ‘All right, love?’ she asked concernedly. ‘You’re looking a little pale—you aren’t coming down with the ‘flu too, are you? I’ve heard the whole company is getting it.’
‘I—No, I—I feel fine.’ She moved to the seat behind her desk. ‘That man—the man with Mr Courtney, who is he?’
Janice shrugged. ‘One of the board members, I suppose. At the end of the meeting Mr Courtney just said coffee for two in his office, I couldn’t tell you who was going to be with him. What does he look like? I should be able to tell you his name if you describe him to me.’ She grimaced. ‘Most of them are distinguishable.’
That strong, arrogant face instantly came back into her mind, each sharp angle, each hard feature vividly imprinted in her memory—and her heart?
She pushed that disturbing thought to the back of her mind. She had made enough of a fool of herself for one day without imagining that mind-shattering attraction she had experienced was love. Love came slowly, with familiarity, not in a fraction of a second, and not with a complete stranger.
‘Well?’ Janice prompted, eager to get on with her work.
Laura forced herself to make the description rationally. ‘Very tall, dark, with grey eyes. Oh—and he has a deep tan, as if he’s just been on holiday.’
Janice smiled, nodding. ‘He has.’
‘He has?’
‘Mm,’ the other girl nodded again. ‘He got back the day before yesterday, from the Bahamas. The man you’ve just described is Gideon Maitland.’
Gideon—his name was Gideon. ‘Oh?’ She tried to sound casual in her interest, but knew she had failed when Janice smiled sympathetically.
‘Don’t worry,’ she consoled, ‘we’ve all been through it.’
‘Through what?’ Laura asked resentfully.
‘Falling in love with Gideon Maitland.’ Janice sighed. ‘Not that it got any of us anywhere. He just isn’t interested, not in the likes of us anyway.’
‘I’m not in love with him,’ Laura said indignantly. ‘I just—Well, he—I just wondered who he was. Does he work here? I’ve never seen him before.’ She would have remembered him if she had.
‘I told you, he’s been in the Bahamas. And he more than works here, he’s being groomed to take over as chairman when Mr Courtney retires next year.’
Laura couldn’t help her look of surprise. ‘Isn’t he a little young for that? Surely Mr McNee is next in seniority?’
‘Next in age, you mean,’ Janice grinned. ‘But Mr McNee isn’t Mr Courtney’s son-in-law, Gideon Maitland is.’
‘I didn’t know Mr Courtney had a daughter,’ Laura gasped. She hadn’t even realised he had been married, let alone that he had children. With this knowledge Gideon Maitland moved even farther out of her orbit—if he had ever entered it!
‘He doesn’t, not any more.’ Janice shrugged. ‘She died a couple of years ago.’
‘Oh, how terrible!’ Laura’s sympathy was sincere, even though a few seconds ago she hadn’t even known the other woman existed. It was always tragic to hear of a death, especially as the other woman couldn’t have been all that old, mid-thirties at most. She shook her head. ‘No wonder Mr Maitland isn’t interested in women.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Janice snorted. ‘I just said he wasn’t interested in office girls. Now actresses are a different matter.’
Laura looked startled. ‘Actresses?’
‘Well, one actress in particular, actually. You’ve heard of Petra Wilde, haven’t you?’
A mental image of the sultry actress instantly sprang to mind. Tall, with hair the colour of ebony, her eyes the aquamarine of a clear sea, the other woman was spectacularly beautiful, admired as much for that perfect beauty as she was for her splendid acting.
‘When she won her Oscar last year,’ Janice related with relish. ‘Guess who was there with her?’
‘Gideon Mailtand,’ Laura said dully.
‘Mm,’ Janice nodded excitedly. ‘There’ve been rumours of them going to marry for months, although I doubt it will happen now. Maybe she isn’t the maternal type. After all, not many women would be willing to take on another woman’s child.’
‘What child?’ Laura frowned her puzzlement, feeling as if she had lost Janice somewhere in this conversation.
‘Gideon Maitland has a little girl. Didn’t I explain that? No, I don’t suppose I did. Well, Gideon and Felicity—that’s Mr Courtney’s daughter—were married for ten years before she became pregnant. I think Mr Courtney had just about given up on them. Anyway, she finally became pregnant, and then she died during the birth. The baby almost died too.’
‘But Felicity—Mr Maitland’s wife died?’ It sounded a terrible tragedy to her.
‘Yes,’ Janice nodded; she was a pretty blonde in her late twenties, just waiting for the right man to come along so that she could give up work and have his children. ‘I think Natalie is about eighteen months old now, so Felicity died that long ago. I can still remember Mr Courtney’s face when he came in to work the next day. He looked as if his whole world had fallen apart. He lost his wife the same way, you know.’
‘And—and Mr Maitland? How did he react? He must have been shattered, losing his wife like that when they’d waited so long to have a child.’
‘Hard to say,’ Janice shrugged. ‘He didn’t come back to work for a couple of months, and by that time I suppose the worst of it was over. Although he had changed,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘He became even more withdrawn into himself. Not that he’d ever been the chatty type, but at least he used to say good morning once in a while. Now he barely notices your existence.’
‘It must have been hard for him,’ Laura excused, feeling Gideon Maitland’s pain as if it were her own. ‘I’m sure it can’t have been all that easy bringing up a baby on his own, especially as it’s a little girl.’
Janice gave a scornful snort. ‘Men like Gideon Maitland can afford to pay people to bring up their children for them.’
‘Oh, but surely—–’
‘Natalie has a nanny to take care of her, a friend of the family, so I’ve heard. Gideon Maitland is reputed not to have a lot of time for her.’
‘He probably blames the little girl for the death of his wife.’
‘Probably,’ Janice agreed. ‘But I—–’
‘Miss Lawson!’ James Courtney’s voice came clearly over the intercom.
Janice pulled a face at Laura, moving to answer him. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘Are those notes typed up yet?’ he rasped.
‘Er—almost,’ she invented.
‘Bring them in as soon as they’re finished.’ The intercom was switched off.
Janice wrinkled her nose. ‘What does he think I’m going to do with them?’ she said dryly.
Laura laughed. ‘He just isn’t a patient man.’
‘Neither is Gideon Maitland,’ Janice was obviously enjoying talking about him, especially to the newcomer Laura was.
Laura looked down at her desk. ‘What’s his daughter like?’
The other girl shrugged. ‘I’ve never seen her. But if she’s anything like her mother then she’s lovely. Felicity Maitland was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’
Laura’s eyes were wide. ‘More beautiful even than Petra Wilde?’
‘Much more,’ Janice nodded. ‘She was tall and blonde, and very sophisticated. She used to make me feel like a dowd every time she came to the office.’
Considering how attractive Janice’s blonde beauty was Laura knew that the other woman must have been exquisite. She always felt inadequate when in the company of such women, her childish features set in a heart-shaped face, her huge green eyes seeming to dominate her other features, her nose small and snub, her mouth slightly tilted at the corners, her little chin had a determined tilt to it, a determination that was rarely asserted, although once she was roused to temper anything might happen. No doubt Felicity Maitland had had a good dress sense too, whereas she dressed to look efficient at the office in an effort to make up for her obvious youth, the tailored suits and fitted blouses worn for effect rather than style or elegance.
Right now she felt the dowd Janice said she usually felt, even the brightness of her hair dulled by its confinement. A man like Gideon Maitland wouldn’t even spare her a second glance, if indeed he had spared her a first one, and she was a fool for wishing he would.
She bent over her typewriter as she heard him taking his leave of James Courtney, the two men obviously arranging to meet at Gideon’s house later that evening, possibly for dinner.
She couldn’t stop herself, she just had to look up, to catch one last glimpse of him. After all, there was no saying when she would get to see him again, he had been back two days already and this was the first she had seen of him. He was just striding past their open office door, those grey eyes flickering over her coldly before he looked away again, James Courtney’s little mouse of a junior secretary dismissed from his mind—if she had ever entered it!
‘Miss Lawson!’ James Courtney had obviously reached the end of what little patience he possessed, his voice over the intercom chillier than ever.
‘God, what a bear!’ Janice frantically collected up the disordered typewritten sheets.
‘I’d better get on too,’ Laura grimaced. ‘He’ll want these letters for signing before he leaves at five.’
But her mind wasn’t on what she was doing, her usually faultless typing having a few errors today. Her secretarial qualifications were excellent, she wouldn’t have been employed at Courtneys if they weren’t, but when she had attained these qualifications she hadn’t had to contend with piercing grey eyes looking back at her from the keyboard of her typewriter, or to see Gideon Maitland’s hard face every time she glanced at her notepad.
The man was haunting her, his hard face was constantly on her mind. And it just wasn’t like her. She very rarely dated, spending most of her evenings at home, usually with her widowed mother, both of them missing her brother Martin. He had gone to America to work two years ago, claiming that there were more opportunities over there. And there did seem to be, his rapid advancement in the advertising company he had gone to work for seeming to prove his point.
Even through her preoccupation with Gideon Maitland Laura could see her mother’s excitement when she got home later that evening, guessing the reason to be the long-awaited letter from Martin. Her brother was notoriously bad at writing letters, and their mother couldn’t understand why she only received replies to one in every four letters she wrote him. Laura was more inclined to make excuses for him, continuing to write to him even though he rarely replied, knowing that he had a demanding job, and an even more demanding social life, a constant stream of girls seeming to pass through his life.
‘Yet another girl-friend!’ her mother tutted disapprovingly. ‘I don’t think he’ll ever settle down and give me grandchildren. You’ll probably marry before he does.’
Laura snorted at the unlikelihood of that, looking about sixteen now that she had changed out of her work clothes and released her hair. It splayed across her shoulders in natural waves, the colour now a deep rich red, her loose-fitting tee-shirt a pale green, her denims old and faded.
‘How’s his work going?’ she asked interestedly.
‘You know Martin,’ her mother dismissed, obviously reading the letter for about the tenth time. ‘Ever the optimist. He thinks there’s a chance he could be made a partner in the near future.’
That sounded like Martin. He was very like their father had been, always craving change, new excitement. He had worked for Courtneys a couple of years ago, and it was because he had said what a good company they were to work for that Laura had applied for the job there. And he had been proven correct; Courtneys were a good company to work for, very good to their staff.
They needed to be over the next few days, as the majority of the staff went down with ‘flu, Janice among them.
The day she worked for Mr Courtney on her own was the worst day she had known since her employment here. He was a brute of a man to work for, and how Dorothy coped with him all the time she had no idea. He allowed no respite for the fact that instead of his usual three secretaries he was now reduced to just his very junior secretary, demanding the same efficiency from her that he usually got from a full staff.
Her coffee-break went by the board as he dictated letters to her in his quick decisive manner; luckily her short-hand speed fast enough to keep up with him. Her lunch-break had to be given a miss too, as the telephone rang constantly and prevented her typing the letters.
‘Not finished yet, Miss Jamieson?’ he came back from his own lunch to bark at her.