Beyond All Reason

Cover Page

Excerpt

About the Author

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Copyright

“You’re attracted to me. Aren’t you?”

Ross trailed his finger along her spine and Abigail’s body went rigid with tension. “I have more sense than to be attracted to you!”

“What has sense got to do with it?” An odd look flickered in the depths of his eyes.

“Everything,” she stated calmly. But her spine still tingled from his touch, and she realized with horror that Ross knew precisely what effect he had on her…

CATHY WILLIAMS is Trinidadian and was brought up on the twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago. She was awarded a scholarship to study in Britain, and went to Exeter University in 1975 to continue her studies in the great loves of her life: languages and literature. It was there that Cathy met her husband, Richard. Since they married Cathy has lived in England, originally in the Thames Valley but now in the Midlands. Cathy and Richard have two small daughters.

Beyond All Reason

Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

AS SOON as Abigail walked into her office, she knew that it was going to be a bad day.

She had had hardly any sleep at all the night before, had slept through her alarm clock and had had to rush about her small flat trying to dress and eat breakfast at the same time, and then, on top of all that, she had missed her bus to work and had had to engage in full-scale battle with three million other commuters on the Underground. Of course, she was late, and the note on her desk, with its bold, black writing telling her to ‘See Me’, didn’t fill her with a sense of eager anticipation. She looked at her boss’s door with a sigh, took a deep breath and knocked.

‘Yes!’

Abigail pushed open the door and stepped in.

Ross Anderson was sitting behind his desk. He looked up as she entered and stared at her, frowning.

‘Where have you been?’ he demanded. ‘I told you to come in at eight and it’s now——’ he looked at his watch as if he wanted to remind himself of the time which, she thought, was a joke because she could guarantee that he knew precisely how late she was, and simply wanted to ram the point home in that endearing way of his ‘—half-past nine.’ He sat back in his swivel chair and clasped his hands behind his head in an attitude of, Well, I’m waiting and be quick about it.

Abigail looked at him evenly. After one and a half years, Ross Anderson still had the power to make her feel uncomfortable. Those lean, dark, predatory good looks might charm the rest of the female sex into coy, blushing smiles and fluttering eyelashes, but she had always stoutly refused to let them do anything for her. She had had enough of good looks to last her a lifetime.

She answered him now in her usual calm, unhurried voice, ‘I’m sorry, I had a late night.’

‘You had a late night?’ He sounded incredulous, as if she had uttered some startling, incredible revelation of epic proportions. His black eyes skimmed over her with the insulting thoroughness which had not been on display for a very long time, not since she had informed him coldly that if he couldn’t respect her then he could look elsewhere for a personal assistant. She had just started working for him and had still been licking wounds and rebuilding defences, and had most certainly not been in the market for a flirtatious boss with more than his fair share of charm. In fact, if only he had known it, that glimpse of sexy charm so apparent when he had interviewed her had all but sent her skittering away in search of another job.

‘Doing what?’ he asked.

‘That’s none of your business. What did you want to see me about? I typed those letters you wanted and left them on your desk, and I’ve rearranged your meeting with Mr Grafton for next Wednesday.’

‘It damn well is my business,’ he retorted, ignoring most of what she had said, ‘when your late nights intrude on your working time.’

He stood up and walked around to the front of his desk, and then perched on the edge of it. Standing, he towered over her and she had to resist the temptation to walk right out of the room and back into the relative sanctuary of her own little office.

‘I don’t make a habit of arriving late,’ she defended.

‘Where were you last night?’

She lowered her eyes and said with reluctance, ‘I went out for dinner with a friend.’

‘Well, well, well. No need to act as though you’re confessing under torture. That only arouses curiosity. What friend?’

The amused curiosity in his voice made her head snap up in sudden irritation.

‘I don’t believe you know him, so there would be no point in telling you his name.’

‘Him? His name? A man?’ He smiled and that infuriated her even more.

As far as Ross Anderson was concerned, she was an open book. Unexciting Abigail Palmer with her shoulder-length brown hair, always neatly combed back, and her calm grey eyes. True he had once tried to use that easy charm of his on her, but she had firmly stamped on that, and he had shrugged with raised eyebrows. It wouldn’t have bothered him. Charm, as far as he was concerned, oiled the wheels of daily existence, but if she refused to play that game then she doubted that he really cared, just so long as she produced the level of dedication to her work that he wanted. Which was one hundred and ten per cent.

No doubt he had proceeded to assume that she was a quiet little mouse with an existence to match. How dared she have an outside life of which he was not aware? Least of all one that involved a man?

After a few weeks, when they had become used to one another, and ground rules had been tacitly accepted, she had caught him looking at her once or twice, a question in his eyes, trying to piece her together, just as he tried to piece everyone together, and she had always smilingly kept him at bay, and after a while, as they slipped into a comfortable working routine, he had given up.

She knew that he would not have been in the least puzzled if she had a vibrant social life, or if there were a string of ardent lovers waiting in the foyer for her when she was ready to leave. No, what puzzled him was her remoteness. She had discovered very quickly that remoteness was not a quality which was much in evidence in the women he dated. He was accustomed to beautiful, self-confident, outgoing types who laughed loudly, flirted like mad and generally made no effort to disguise what they wanted.

She knew that she was nothing like that and could never have been like that if she had taken a ten-year acting course in how to be a successful extrovert. Her personality had been too successfully moulded by her mother from an early age. How could you go through life, through all those formative years, having scorn poured on your efforts, without creating a wall of silent self-defence around yourself and a tendency to conceal what there was no need to reveal?

Experiences, especially of the bitter variety, left their acrid mark, and, where her background left off, her last disastrous brush with passion took up.

‘Well?’ he prompted. ‘You never told me that there was a man in your life.’

Abigail blinked. ‘No,’ she murmured, pretending to give the matter some thought. ‘You’re quite right, I didn’t.’

‘And you’re not about to.’

Not if I can help it, she thought.

‘I don’t see any point in bringing my personal life to work,’ she said by way of explanation.

‘I’ve noticed. Admirable, I’m sure, just so long as that personal life which you don’t bring to work doesn’t entail your getting here late.’

Abigail clenched her fists in impotent anger. Wasn’t this just like Ross Anderson? Normally she would have bitten her tongue and kept silent, but she was in no mood to be heroic this morning. There was a lot on her mind and all she really wanted was to submerge herself in her work and forget those niggling worries which, for the past three months, always seemed to be there in the background, somewhere, threatening to pounce.

‘I never complain about your personal life being brought into work,’ she muttered under her breath.

‘What?’ His voice was deadly calm and she flushed uneasily. She hadn’t expected him to hear that remark—she might have guessed that he had the ears of a hawk.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m awfully tired, and,’ she added for good measure, ‘I have a headache.’

He stood up and stared down at her and she looked back at him nervously.

‘Not too tired to function, I hope?’ he asked sarcastically. ‘You’re no good to me if you’re going to spend the day drooping around like some damned wilting flower.’ He strode over to his desk and began rummaging through the open files, and she watched him reluctantly. There was no doubt that he commanded attention. Under the tailored suit, his body was hard and very masculine. She had been to several client functions with him, and she had seen the way women were drawn to him, fascinated by his lazy charm and mesmeric sex appeal. He spun round and she raised her eyes to his, reaching out to take the stack of files.

‘I’ve attached some work in these which you’ll need to have typed by this afternoon,’ he said, flickering through each one while she watched with her mind miles away. ‘There are three reports which need some additional information slotting in. Hello!’ he bellowed. ‘Is there life here? Are you listening to a word I’m saying?’

Abigail jumped and looked up at him guiltily. ‘Of course I am.’

‘What the hell did you get up to last night with the man with no name, anyway?’ he asked and she didn’t say anything. ‘No need to answer that one,’ he murmured in a silky voice, ‘I get the picture.’

‘I’m sure you find it very amusing to speculate on my private life, Mr Anderson,’ she said coolly, taking the files from him because it gave her something to do with her hands, ‘but not all of us live in the fast lane like yourself.’

He laughed and folded his arms. ‘And what does that cryptic little remark mean?’ he drawled.

I won’t let him fluster me, she thought. She had learnt how to ride through his more provocative remarks with a sense of humour, without him seeing how addled they sometimes made her, and she looked up at him now, her face composed.

‘It means whatever you take it to mean, Mr Anderson,’ she said politely.

‘I take it to mean that you didn’t spend last night making passionate love with the man with no name.’

‘His name is Martin Redman!’ she snapped, immediately regretting her outburst because that only seemed to fuel his amusement. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get to my desk so that I can begin working on these files.’

‘Hurry off, then,’ he said, his mouth twitching at the corners, and much as she would have liked to flounce out of his office, she walked out in as calm and dignified a fashion as she could muster. Sometimes, she thought, sitting at her desk and switching on her computer terminal, sometimes I wish I could ram these files down his throat. That would go a long way to wiping the amused smile off his face!

Good old Fate. Trust it to have landed her this job eighteen months ago. At the time she had been working for a small firm of lawyers. Too small a firm, she later realised. She was the only secretary there, and her normal caution when it came to the opposite sex had gradually been eroded by the late nights she had found herself working. Ellis Fitzmerton had been one of her bosses, and she had gradually begun doing more and more work for him, knowing him in that casual but intimate way that was possible between two people who spent a great deal of working time together. There had been a drift towards take-away meals when overtime was necessary, often in an office empty but for the two of them. Legal talk had shifted to personal talk. The memory of it still made her flush. In retrospect, she couldn’t believe how stupid she had been. Ellis Fitzmerton was slick, good-looking, appealing. Little by little common sense had given way to an empathy she had never invited; and when, late one night, over a stack of files, of all stupid things, he had leant forward to kiss her, she had thrown caution to the winds and returned his passion. It had been an error of judgement which had lived to haunt her.

She shut the memory out and began typing the stack of letters, her fingers flying expertly over the keyboard, and she barely glanced up when the connecting door opened and he swept into the room, his black coat over one arm.

‘Feeling less tired now?’ he asked, propping himself with his hands on her desk, and she stopped what she was doing to look up at him. Up close, he was dauntingly handsome. His features were angular and the darkness of his hair and eyes gave a brooding impression that could be intimidating and vaguely cruel. She had trained herself never to respond to his unsettling good looks and she looked at him placidly.

‘Much less, thank you. When shall I expect you back from your meeting with Mr Robinson?’ She briefly scanned her desk diary and informed him that he was seeing one of the marketing people later on in the afternoon.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, his black eyebrows curving upwards, ‘I won’t be running behind schedule, so you needn’t fear that you’ll be called upon to do any overtime tonight.’

She snapped shut the diary. ‘Oh good,’ she murmured, gathering together her sense of humour which had threatened to desert her earlier on, ‘I am so relieved to hear that. You know how eagerly I wait for five o’clock every evening, bag in hand, jacket on, feet poised to flee and join the general stampede of clock-watchers.’

‘Oh, all right. I take back that crack.’ He stood up. ‘Tell Janet to have all the sales figures ready this afternoon, I don’t intend to waste my time standing around while she rummages through her folder in a complete flap.’

‘I’ll tell her,’ Abigail said. Poor Janet. Ross Anderson had a knack for making people nervous, and Janet was no exception. The last time she had a meeting with him, she made the mistake of forgetting some of her brief and had had to endure his barely contained impatience while she attempted to sort through her things for the relevant information.

‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ Ross had asked her afterwards, when Janet had finally left the office, with an expression of relief on her face, and Abigail had looked down at her notepad where she had been jotting down the relevant points of the meeting.

‘Nothing,’ she had said, which had made him scowl darkly at her.

‘She should have made sure that everything was prepared before she came in here.’

‘She’s human.’

‘I’m human,’ he had pointed out irritably, ‘but that doesn’t mean that I drift in and out of my meetings in a state of semi-chaos.’

Abigail had looked up at him wryly, and he had snapped, with a dark flush, that he was not obliged to justify his behaviour to her anyway.

He stood up now, glanced down at his watch and said that she could expect him some time after lunch.

As usual, after he left, the office seemed peculiarly empty and very restful. She worked steadily for the next two hours and then sat back with a little sigh of weariness.

She would have her lunch now, she decided, a yoghurt and some fruit, and she would try not to spend the next half-hour analysing her relationship with Martin. She enjoyed his company, he enjoyed hers and they felt comfortable with one another.

She peeled off the top of the carton and relaxed back in her chair, swivelling it around so that she was staring out of the window, although the view was hardly inspiring. Grey sky, grey tops of buildings, grey strip of road in between the buildings, and to the right an isolated, lonely green blob which constituted the nearest park. Sometimes she wished that she had never chosen London as a place to live, but it offered the best jobs and in a way she had become quite accustomed to its crowded streets and frenetic pace. Every time her mother travelled down from Shropshire to visit, she made a point of telling her daughter how silly it was to live in London when she was a country girl at heart, a description that always left Abigail feeling that by country girl she meant boring yokel. And that in itself was enough to guarantee that she stayed put, right where she was, in her tiny flat in North London.

She had just finished her yoghurt when the office door swung open and Abigail looked up to find herself staring into two very blue eyes.

‘May I help you?’ she asked, and for a while the other woman didn’t answer. She simply prowled around the office, the bright blue eyes scanning everything, until she found herself opposite Abigail’s desk.

‘You are Ross’s little secretary, I take it?’ Her voice was as cold as her eyes. ‘I’m Fiona St Paul. Perhaps Ross has mentioned me.’

‘No, I’m afraid he hasn’t.’

Since the other woman had no compunction about observing her, Abigail returned the scrutiny with one of her own. Fiona St Paul was very tall, very slender, with the smooth, sleek lines of a model. Her blonde hair was cropped short and her skin had the porcelain fairness that hinted of Scandinavian blood. Her voice, however, was very upper-crust English.

‘No,’ she said coolly, ‘I don’t suppose he would have. Not to you, anyway. Can you fetch him for me?’

‘Mr Anderson isn’t in at the moment, I’m afraid,’ Abigail said without too much regret.

‘Well, when will he be back?’ The scarlet lips were pursed with irritation.

‘Some time this afternoon.’

‘Some time? Some time? Could you be more specific than that?’

Abigail tried to smile politely and failed. ‘No,’ she said bluntly, ‘I cannot be more specific than that. Perhaps I could get him to call you when he returns.’

‘Yes, my dear, you most certainly could.’ She sat down on the chair opposite the desk and crossed her legs elegantly. She was wearing a pale blue silk suit and a thick, camel-coloured coat. ‘And could you call me a taxi? It’s absolutely tipping down outside and I can’t quite face standing out there trying to hail one.’ She inspected her nails, which were the same shade of scarlet as the lipstick.

This, Abigail felt very tempted to point out, is not part of my little secretarial duties, but she picked up the receiver and after a brief conversation managed to secure a taxi to arrive outside the building immediately.

‘Jolly good,’ Fiona said, standing up and brushing down her skirt. ‘And don’t forget to tell Ross that I dropped by and that I’ll see him tonight for the theatre.’ With that, she left the office, leaving behind her a waft of expensive perfume.

No wonder, Abigail thought, that he had had no hesitation in informing her that he would not be running late today. She gazed at the computer terminal and wondered at which stage this particular romance was. She had not heard mention of Fiona St Paul before but that didn’t mean that she hadn’t been on the scene for at least a couple of months. She certainly ran true to type as far as Ross’s women were concerned. Tall, elegant, self-assured. She switched on the computer terminal and thought of Martin.

‘Just your type,’ her mother had gushed when she had first met him four months ago.

‘Ordinary, you mean?’ she had asked drily, because her mother’s implied insults no longer drove her into paroxysms of self-conscious embarrassment the way they once had as a teenager.

‘Nice and stable,’ her mother had returned. ‘You don’t want to lose your head over a man you wouldn’t be able to keep. Remember that last fiasco of yours.’

It had been a mistake telling her mother about Ellis. She had immediately delivered a lecture on the impossibility of an ordinary girl handling someone like him. Never mind that she had never actually met Ellis Fitzmerton. That, according to her mother, had been a minor technical detail, and certainly not enough to stop her announcing her views on the subject.

Nice, stable Martin, Abigail thought now. She was very fond of him and when she had accepted his marriage proposal one week ago, she had done so safe in the knowledge that he would be a good husband, someone on whom she could rely. They had only been seeing each other for a matter of six months, but she knew that she felt relaxed and comfortable with him and that was what love was about, she was certain. He had been such a pleasant change from the suave, deceitful Ellis with his promises and declarations which had lasted all of six weeks, until the girlfriend she never knew he had returned from her glamour trip round the world, bronzed, beautiful and ready to resume where she had left off. Oh, the declarations had certainly gone by the board then, she thought bitterly. Love? Marriage? He had looked at her white face with wide-eyed incredulity. ‘You must have misread the signals, sweetie.’ He had shaken his head sadly, ruefully, pained at the thought that he might have given her the wrong ideas.

Martin was far too decent a human being ever to play games like that. She frowned and felt that little niggling worry which she immediately swept to the back of her mind.

It was after four when Ross swept back into the office. He paused by her desk and she reeled off his telephone messages, then she said, glancing down at the typed letters, ‘By the way, you had a visitor. A woman by the name of Fiona St Paul. She said that you’d know who she was.’

She thought of the other woman, that chic elegance wrapped up in expensive designer clothes, every nail manicured, every strand of hair firmly in place, and she felt an uncustomary jolt of jealousy. How ridiculous, she thought, with an uneasy inward laugh.

‘What did she want?’ Ross asked, slinging his coat over the spare chair and shrugging out of his jacket.

‘She expected to find you here,’ Abigail said. ‘She was disappointed that you weren’t in.’

‘Get her on the phone for me, would you?’ he said by way of response. ‘She works at Sotheby’s.’ He strode through to his office and Abigail looked at his retreating back with dislike. He rarely involved her in anything to do with his women. She knew of their existence because of the theatre tickets she booked for two, the intimate meals she reserved in expensive restaurants, the flowers she occasionally ordered, but beyond that they mostly remained a mystery. Several she had met in passing, and from them she had deduced that he was attracted to physical perfection. Now she got Fiona on the phone with a certain amount of unwarranted resentment and, as they connected, she heard his voice down the line, warm, full of sexy charm.

He certainly can turn it on, she thought, replacing the receiver softly. Even when he stormed through the office, subjecting her to his evil moods, she could tell that underneath that terseness lay the sort of lazy charm that most women would find hard to resist.

Ellis Fitzmerton might have been a bitter pill, but he had served his purpose. He had immunised her against folly, and that was why she had excelled in this job. Ross Anderson could not distract her.

Janet arrived for her meeting five minutes early, and spent the time chatting to Abigail while nervously contemplating the door.

‘He won’t eat you,’ Abigail said, following the line of her gaze.

‘No,’ Janet agreed, ‘but he still scares me half to death most of the time.’ And what could Abigail say to that when she fully understood the line of thought?