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www.millsandboon.co.uk
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER ONE
AS THE dinner progressed, so the noise level rose. As a result, Crystal was finding it increasingly difficult to communicate with the guests immediately beside her, let alone the people seated on the other side of the long, narrow table.
‘I didn’t realise,’ Maureen Hilson was saying, leaning closer, ‘that the Ornamental You group employed so many people.’
Puzzled, Crystal frowned. ‘I thought you’d worked for them for years?’
‘I have, but I’ve never seen so many guests here before. They must have opened new stores by the dozen in the last decade.’ Maureen sounded worried. ‘I hope they knew what they were doing. Sometimes,’ she observed sagely, ‘I think it’s wiser to maintain the status quo, that is, not to expand, or, alternatively, to expand slowly and cautiously.’
‘You mean,’ Crystal commented, ‘that sometimes small really is beautiful?’ Maureen nodded, and Crystal went on, accepting a chocolate-coated mint sweet from the plate Maureen offered, ‘If there are so many prize-winners it seems to me that it might bring down the value of the awards.’
Maureen laughed. ‘These aren’t all prize-winners, dear.’ She took a sip of coffee. ‘After all, there are the two of us, aren’t there? If every shop has two—and remember, as the manageress, I was offered another assistant in addition to you—’
‘Which means,’ Crystal put in, ‘that some Ornamental Yous probably have a staff of three?’
‘Right.’
‘All the same, I wish you’d collect the award, Maureen,’ Crystal urged. ‘You’re the more senior of the two of us.’ After a mouthful of coffee she groped agitatedly for her glass, taking a mouthful of wine, then wincing at the resulting incompatible taste.
Maureen laughed at her expression. ‘There’s no need to be nervous, Crystal. I think it’s better for the store’s image to have an attractive young woman go up there and accept the award.’
‘But—’
‘Look, dear, all you have to do is smile, take the prize prettily, shake the hand that’s held out to you and then it’s over. Anyway...’ they joined the assembled company, moving into the ballroom for an evening’s dancing ‘...the awards aren’t being made just yet, so for the moment you can forget your “ordeal”, as you seem determined to regard it.’
Music of a soothing, after-dinner variety came from a group positioned on a platform at the end of the long room. Guests drifted into circles and Maureen became deep in conversation with an old acquaintance. Feeling a little lost, Crystal found a seat near by.
‘Hi.’ A bright-faced young man seemed to welcome the fact that she had joined him. ‘You new?’
Crystal smiled. ‘Yes and no. I was beginning to appreciate the meaning of the expression “lost in a crowd”.’
The young man’s hand came out. ‘Roger Betts.’ His clasp was firm, his brown hair cut short, his upper lip showing signs of an attempt to cultivate a moustache.
‘Crystal Rose.’
Roger laughed. ‘I like that. I can just imagine a rose made of crystal. I bet you’re fragile.’
It was Crystal’s turn to laugh. ‘Sometimes, very.’
He looked at her with something more than interest. ‘Where’s your part of the world?’
‘These parts. It just happened that the firm chose this area for the awards ceremony. Or so my manageress told me.’ She looked at his round face, his slightly over-solid build, and guessed that he was tall. ‘Do you work for Ornamental You?’
Roger nodded. ‘But not in the retail side. I work at Head Office. I’m an assistant buyer—I help to select the goods you sell—plus I’m involved in looking for new sites for Ornamental. I’ve got ambitions beyond the retail trade, though. I’m taking a part-time university course in chemistry. I use my earnings to subsidise my studies.’
‘How do you tie in your course work with your job responsibilities?’
Maureen had finished her conversation, noted with a pleased smile that Crystal was well occupied and moved away, only to be caught by yet another old friend.
‘It’s not easy,’ Roger was saying. ‘I spend almost every evening surrounded by textbooks. I write until my hand nearly drops off—then I drop off!’
‘Wouldn’t a computer or a word-processor help?’
He shrugged. ‘It would, but I’d have to attend yet another course to learn how to use one. I must sound as if I come from the Ark—a bloke who’s let modern technology pass him by.’ His mouth went on a self-derogatory downward turn, but also, surprisingly, managed to smile at the same time. ‘I’m one of those guys,’ he went on, ‘whose thoughts flow better from their brains to the paper via their hands, if you get my meaning, rather than being channelled first through a keyboard. You—er—’ his eyes crinkled at the corners ‘—you haven’t got one, I suppose?’
‘A computer? I have, as a matter of fact. In my last job I worked with one, and when they updated they sold off their equipment cheap to their employees.’
‘Oh, joy,’ said Roger, brightening. ‘You couldn’t—um—wouldn’t—?’ Then he shook his head. ‘Forget it. Your boyfriend would have my guts for garters, if you’ll forgive the expression.’
‘He can’t,’ she returned, smiling, ‘because I haven’t.’
‘What, you—no boyfriend? I can’t believe—’
‘I did have, but—’
‘Roger, you so-and-so,’ an older man, shorter in stature and bespectacled, fisted him playfully on the arm, ‘how’re things?’
Roger clapped the newcomer on the back. ‘Haven’t met, have we, since the last Ornamental nosh-up? Meet my new friend Crystal—or,’ with a grin, ‘is it Rose?’
‘Both suit,’ said the other, shaking Crystal’s hand. ‘Hi,’ with an appreciative smile. ‘I’m Ted Field. Been with Ornamental long? Haven’t had the pleasure of seeing you before.’
‘Flatterer,’ Roger remarked, waving a playful fist. ‘I found her first.’
‘That’s OK, mate,’ said Ted. ‘I’m married, remember?’
‘I’ve worked for Worldview for just under a year,’ Crystal told him. ‘Are you collecting a prize?’
‘Nope,’ Ted answered. ‘Are you? Yes? What for?’
‘Highest sales.’ Roger nodded as if he knew.
‘That’s great!’ exclaimed Ted. ‘Ours have taken a—’ With his hand he sketched a dive.
‘Yeah, a lot of the other branches aren’t that good, either,’ Roger agreed, ‘but Ornamental’s got some way to go before we hit the rocks.’ He held up crossed fingers.
‘Roger, Ted...’ Their attention was distracted, and Crystal took the opportunity to melt into the crowd. Maureen was in the centre of a chattering group, so Crystal made for the ladies’ cloakroom to repair her make-up.
In front of the tinted mirror she pressed on a little powder, then smoothed the silky floral fabric of her skirt, straightening the belted matching top and fiddling with the chunky amber beads around her throat. Their colour, along with the amber earrings she wore, picked up one of the shades in her outfit and echoed the auburn warmth of her shoulder-length hair. This she combed, fluffing it out around her face.
‘Hi,’ a plump blonde young woman said to her reflection. ‘You new here?’
Crystal answered the familiar question.
‘That all?’ The young woman’s eyes dwelt enviously on Crystal’s heart-shaped face. ‘Wish I had your complexion. And your looks. They’re just great. Your hairstyle suits your face. It’s what’s called oval, isn’t it? And there’s nothing wrong with your nose at all.’ Ruefully she rubbed her own, which had a tiny turned-up tip. ‘In fact,’ she studied Crystal enviously, ‘everything in your face goes with everything else, if you know what I mean. Lucky you. Not like me. My nose is the wrong shape for my cheekbones, and my chin’s kind of quarrelled with my mouth.’
‘Thanks a lot for the compliments,’ Crystal answered, ‘but you look more than OK to me too.’
‘I do?’ The girl looked down at herself and sighed. ‘I keep dieting, but my extra inches must love me—they just won’t leave me,’ she tossed over her shoulder as she left. ‘My name’s Shirley, by the way, Shirley Brownley. What’s yours?’ Crystal told her. ‘Crystal—nice.’
Following her out, Crystal found herself in a secluded corner of a lobby that led back into the ballroom. The whole tempo of the evening had, it seemed from her quick glance into it, speeded up.
The music had evolved from the soothing to the lively, and was plainly designed to bring couples on to the floor. A glimpse of the roving multicoloured beams that swung across then alighted on the gyrating dancers told Crystal that it had succeeded.
Feeling the extraordinary need to halt in her tracks, Crystal glanced around. Something, she felt with a curious shiver, was tugging at her, preventing her from joining the dancers. Her eyes were ensnared by two others, glinting pin-points of reflected light, owned, she saw, by a man who leant against a trellis-work threaded through with leafy sprays from a climbing plant.
On its way to his mouth, wrapped hygienically in a paper napkin, was a roast chicken leg, while beside him on a ledge was a pile of the same delicacy. Next to that was a partly empty bottle and a glass containing wine.
Crystal was only half aware of the man’s repast, which he was plainly enjoying, since most of her attention was riveted on the man himself. He was tall and broad and business-suited, a faintly mocking smile highlighting a handsome, if slightly arrogant face.
She found herself moving towards him as if he were playing a line and she was caught by the bait on the end. Little by little, he reeled her in. This can’t be happening to me, she thought, finding it quite impossible to free herself from his snare.
A few paces distant, she found herself pausing.
‘Yes?’ she heard herself whisper.
For heaven’s sake, her rational self lectured, you’ve never seen him before. What are you doing, talking to a complete stranger, and a man at that, when he hasn’t spoken a word to you?
He smiled, fully this time, and Crystal’s heart did a kangaroo leap. Holding her eyes, he reached for the plate of chicken drumsticks and held them out. She shook her head, so he felt behind him for another plate, of savouries this time, offering these to her.
‘I—I’ve eaten, thanks,’ she managed, her mouth peculiarly dry. The plate remained extended. They looked so inviting, those savouries, that the appetite she had scarcely indulged during dinner because of thinking about her ‘ordeal’ to come became rekindled, and she accepted one with a murmured, ‘Thank you, but—’
But what? she asked herself. He hadn’t so far uttered a word. She had done all the talking. Go back to the ballroom, her reason urged as she consumed the savoury. ‘Th-thanks,’ she added as he thoughtfully passed over a paper napkin. Extract yourself from this incredible situation and pretend it never happened, her reason was commanding, badgering her mercilessly.
‘Have another,’ the man offered, adding as she hesitated, ‘go on, spoil yourself.’ Like a lightning flash speeded up, his glance raked her, then was gone. ‘You have no need to worry about surplus weight.’
He had spoken at last! As if she had passed control of her reflexes over to the stranger, she took another, and he smiled, and once again she perceived that mockery was not far away.
‘Didn’t they feed you properly at dinner? You’ll have to complain to the management.’
‘I just wasn’t hungry.’ She frowned. ‘Weren’t you there?’
‘I arrived too late. I’ve just flown in from North America—Canada, to be exact.’
‘Ornamental You actually paid for you to take a trip to North America? I didn’t think they were that generous—or so I’ve heard.’
‘Excuse me.’ He selected another drumstick with a fresh paper napkin, and proceeded to demolish it with a series of quick bites. ‘I don’t eat airline food,’ he added between mouthfuls, afterwards adding a few savouries for good measure.
‘Which means you must be starving!’ she exclaimed.
His eyes did another quick, almost imperceptible reconnaissance of her person. ‘I am. And you are—?’
‘Crystal Rose.’ A quirk of his eyebrow forced her on to the defensive. ‘I have romantic parents.’
He laughed, and again Crystal’s heart leapt. Who was this man that he could affect her so much?
Taking a handful of paper napkins, he cleaned his fingers and picked up his glass. Then he put it down. A tray of drinks passed within sight. ‘You’re not a teetotaller?’ he asked. As Crystal shook her head he beckoned to the waitress. ‘Drink with me, Miss Rose,’ he said softly, lifting himself upright and moving towards her. With his glass he touched hers. ‘To the past. And to the future.’ He touched hers again. ‘May the two never meet.’
The wine was the same as that which she had drunk during the dinner, but it had miraculously transformed itself into nectar.
‘What did your toast mean?’ she heard herself asking as the wine decanted itself to every part of her. She finished every drop.
He put down his empty glass, taking hers. ‘Dance with me, Miss Rose.’
It was more an order than a question. ‘But I—’ ‘Don’t know you,’ she almost said, then contradicted her reason. I’ve known him all my life, she told it reproachfully.
Taking her hand, he led her into the ballroom and on to the dance-floor. The music had softened in quality, insinuating itself into the limbs, making them languid and flowing, the mind hazy. Yet Crystal found to her consternation that her heart was hammering, her skin jumping at the stranger’s touch.
The lights swooped and selected, rested, then moved on. ‘Why—?’ she began, her throat oddly parched. ‘Where—?’ She tried again. ‘Who—?’
His mouth took the law into its own possession, descending on hers, compressing, demanding, caressing, cutting off the question and momentarily robbing Crystal of breath.
Wide-eyed, she stared at him. Had there been a fleeting message in his dark gaze? Or something in his expression? Could it, she wondered, have been her subconscious mind linking with his, divining and intermingling with the thoughts that his contained? Or had it been someone passing and whispering to her? She didn’t know, but from somewhere came the words, He’s out of your reach... Crystal broke contact and looked around. There was no one near them.
‘You shouldn’t—’ she began, but those lips were back, tasting faintly of wine, playing with hers until they parted on an admonishing gasp, the arms around her having slipped to her waist. It was no use, she told herself helplessly, she was caught in this stranger’s magnetic field—hadn’t he used it to draw her to him?—and there seemed to be no way in which she could escape.
The music ceased, the dance ended. For a couple of seconds the lights were almost extinguished and only the dark outline of him remained. When they flashed on again he was gone.
* * *
The reappearance of food and drink put new life into the evening.
Maureen patted the seat beside her and Crystal joined her. ‘So pensive,’ Maureen remarked. ‘Won’t be long now, then you can relax. You found a dancing partner, then? The lights were so low that I couldn’t identify the man.’
‘I—what? Oh, yes.’ With a jerk Crystal returned to the present. The stranger’s arms still seemed to be holding her, the imprint of his mouth lingering alarmingly. ‘I enjoyed it,’ she added, quickly enough, she hoped, to avoid further questions, not wishing to talk about something that had become, quite foolishly, she realised, so precious to her.
A man materialised in front of her and her heart leapt, her eyes travelling upwards and bouncing disappointedly off the smiling face.
‘Hi,’ said Roger, holding out a plate and a glass of wine.
How could I have thought, Crystal reproached herself, that the stranger had come back to me? He hadn’t been real; she’d dreamt him up out of her subconscious, she told herself. Wasn’t she too old now to believe that dreams materialised, gained substance, came true?
‘Thanks a lot,’ she responded, accepting Roger’s offerings. ‘Just what I needed to boost my adrenalin for what’s to come.’
‘You won’t believe,’ said Maureen, ‘that this girl’s got butterflies because she’s going on the platform.’
‘I’m Roger Betts, by the way,’ he told Maureen. ‘There’s nothing to it, Crystal. All you need to do up there is—’
‘Shake hands,’ Crystal put in with a laugh, ‘and say thank you nicely. Maureen’s already told me.’
‘They’re assembling on the platform,’ Maureen commented, watching as various attractive-looking items were carried on and placed carefully on the long table behind which chairs had been placed.
Someone stepped to the front of the platform, hand raised for silence. After a few words of welcome and introduction he invited the prize-winners to assemble at the side of the platform. With Maureen’s and Roger’s encouragement ringing in her ears, Crystal followed the man’s instructions.
From where she stood, she heard but could not see the line of company executives filing on to the platform.
‘Know who all those guys are?’ a young man asked her.
Crystal shook her head. ‘I haven’t been with the firm long enough to know.’
‘Nor me,’ the young man answered.
Short speeches were made in voices she could not identify.
‘It is my pleasure to invite,’ the man was saying, ‘the chief executive of Worldview International, which is, as you all know, the parent company of Ornamental You nationwide, to present the prizes. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr Brent Akerman.’
As the applause died down names were called, and one by one the people in the group around Crystal ascended the short flight of steps to the platform. The long wait, she realised, only served to increase her apprehension.
‘Miss Crystal Rose.’ Her name rang out, and it was almost with relief that she trod upwards, reaching the platform at last.
In a daze, Crystal walked on, head high, heart racing, and lost her hand in the firm enveloping grip of the man standing at the side of the long table. A smile was ready on her face, the phrase ‘Thank you very much’ waiting to be spoken, but her lips failed to co-operate and the words were never uttered. She found herself staring directly into the eyes of her dancing-partner.
His lips moved and Crystal knew he was addressing her, and she forced herself to concentrate on his words.
‘Miss Rose,’ he was saying, ‘represents the branch of Ornamental You in this city. It is this branch that has achieved the highest sales of all. Miss Rose, we congratulate you and your manager, Miss Maureen Hilson, on your excellent achievement. You are both a credit to Ornamental You, not to mention Worldview International.’
With care he held aloft a crystal rose bowl, a beautiful object from which the light danced, refracting the colours of the spectrum. From all around there were sighs of admiration.
‘Never has there been,’ under cover of the sound came the words, to her and her alone, ‘a more appropriate prize, both in name and in beauty.’ Then the mask of detachment on Brent Akerman’s face was back in place, the smile neutral and totally professional.
As if from a million miles Crystal heard the applause. Descending the steps, she sank on to the seat between Maureen and Roger. Wonderingly she gazed up at the man from whom she had accepted the prize. Had she really discovered him behind the scenes, quite unselfconsciously devouring a scratch meal, which he’d offered to share with her? No, it just couldn’t have happened.
On the other hand, she thought, although she hadn’t invented the man himself, surely she had dreamed up everything else that had happened between them earlier that evening?
Yet, she pondered, if it had all been a dream, how was it that, when she closed her eyes, she could still feel the touch of his lips on hers, see the warmth of his smile and the moving lights reflected in his eyes? And in her mind experience all over again the incomparable sensation of dancing in his arms?
CHAPTER TWO
TWO weeks later Crystal arrived, as she always did, half an hour before Ornamental You was due to open. For once Maureen was there before her, reading a letter, a frown creasing her brow.
‘You’ve got one too, Crystal,’ she murmured. ‘I’ve been through this three times, but I still can’t work out what it’s all about.’
Crystal, experiencing an unaccountable feeling of foreboding, slit open the envelope that was addressed to her. Ever since Mick Temple’s letter had arrived out of the blue two years ago, telling her that their friendship was over because he’d found another girl, Crystal’s equilibrium had gone into the switchback mode every time an unexpected letter had come through her door.
But this wasn’t her door she had just closed behind her, it was the shop’s, which just had to mean that this official-looking communication in her hands meant business.
‘What do you make of it?’ Maureen asked, reading her missive yet again.
‘“Your presence is required—”’ Crystal read aloud ‘—note that word “required”, not “requested”—’ she pointed out ‘“—at a meeting of employees of the Ornamental You group of stores in Ye Olde Oak Tree Hotel, at seven-thirty p.m. on—”’ She counted on her fingers. ‘That’s only two days’ time. Too bad,’ she replaced the letter in its envelope, ‘if you’re booked for that evening. Are you going?’
‘Of course,’ Maureen answered. ‘It comes from Head Office. It’s like a royal command, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, dear,’ Crystal remarked, waving a feather duster over the varied stock displayed attractively around the shop.
‘Why are you assuming,’ Maureen returned, doing likewise, ‘it’s bad news? Might be the opposite.’
Crystal looked at the sparkling rose bowl that she and Maureen had won for highest sales. It stood in pride of place on a central revolving stand, the shop’s lights angled so as to glance with brilliant colour off its many facets. She couldn’t explain to Maureen, nor even to herself, why that letter they had each received seemed to bode ill rather than the opposite.
‘You mean, an announcement of an expansion of the business?’ Crystal asked. ‘But didn’t you tell me that they’d recently done that?’
‘That’s true. Oh, dear,’ Maureen added as she turned the ‘closed’ notice to ‘open’. The shop door pinged and two customers entered, wandering round.
* * *
‘STAFF MEETING ORNAMENTAL YOU‘, the blackboard in the hotel’s entrance foyer announced. ‘WOODLAND ROOM. THIS FLOOR.’
Maureen entered first, peering round the door. Voices welcomed her by name, smiles and nods greeting Crystal. Most of them Crystal recognised from the prize-giving dinner.
Roger Betts stood and beckoned to them.
‘You go,’ said Maureen. ‘I’ll have a word with some of the others.’
Seats were filling fast as Crystal took her place beside Roger. ‘Nice to see you again,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking of ringing you at work, but—well,’ he coloured a little, ‘I couldn’t quite summon up the necessary cheek to ask.’
‘Ask what?’ she enquired with an air of innocence. As he looked even more uncomfortable, she took pity on him. ‘Help you out with your notes, you mean?’
A brilliant smile lit his slightly sharp features. ‘You could? You mean, you’re willing...?’