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‘And evidence of your living conditions proves that I was right on that score.’
‘Maybe I should have been a little more insistent with Mr Travis,’ she conceded, giving a little ground on this one thing—because he had yet to discover, in addition to all the other problems he had listed, the temperamental fridge and its even more temperamental close relative, the oven. ‘But I’m a big girl when it comes to dealing with everything else.’
‘That’s true enough on the surface,’ Luc murmured. ‘You might look the part but I have a feeling that it only runs skin deep.’
‘Look the part?’ Was he telling her that she was fat? She might not be a stick insect, but she wasn’t fat—plump, maybe, but not fat. And, if that was what he had meant, why was she stupidly asking for confirmation? Did her capacity for masochism never end?
‘You’re a big girl, Agatha. Funny, I hadn’t really noticed until now.’ Again he tried to equate the teenager with the woman next to him, and again that weird kick that shot through his body as if he had been suddenly hot-wired.
‘You mean the dress?’ she suggested in a taut voice. The very same dress she had exhibited for him, hands outstretched, vainly hoping that he might compliment her. They had reached the restaurant, but she wasn’t quite ready to drop the conversation, so when he parked and turned towards her she garnered her very small supply of courage and stayed put, arms folded, her full mouth flattened into a thin line. ‘I’m not ready to go in just yet.’
‘Pre-dinner nerves? Don’t worry. If he’s that good-looking, that charming and that interested in every word you have to say, I’m sure you’re in for a scintillating evening.’
‘It’s not pre-dinner nerves. It’s…it’s you! ‘
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You haven’t said one nice thing to me all evening. I know you would never have employed me to work for your company. I know you’ve been forced to help me out because you think you owe my family a favour—which you don’t, but you could at least try and be nice. You’ve told me that I’m no good at what I do…’
She tabulated all her points by sticking up her fingers one by one. ‘You’ve told me that the clothes I wear to work are horrendous because I don’t wear that uniform of tight suits and high heels, even though I’m hidden away most of the time. I need to invest in a new wardrobe just in case someone important sees me and falls into a dead faint, I suppose. You’ve told me that I wouldn’t have a clue how to look after myself in a place like London, you’ve told me how awful my bedsit is, and now? Now you sit there telling me that I look fat!’
Listing all those slights out loud hadn’t been a good idea. Taken one at a time, she could reason them away, but faced with all of them in their entirety was just too much. A wave of forlorn self-pity rushed over her; her eyes began to leak and it wasn’t long before the leak became a flood. When she found a handkerchief pressed into her hands, she accepted it gratefully and dabbed her eyes as her silly crying jag was reduced to the odd hiccup.
Embarrassment replaced self-pity. She blew her nose and stuffed the hankie into her bag.
‘Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I must be nervous; you’re right.’
‘I should be the one apologising.’ Luc had no time for weeping, wailing women, but for some reason the sight of Agatha in floods of tears had struck right to the heart of him. Hearing her neat little summary of everything he had said to her over the course of the evening had not been one of his proudest moments.
‘It’s okay,’ she whispered, desperate to remove herself from his presence where seconds before she had wanted to stay and speak her mind. She tilted her face to him. ‘Do I look a mess? I bet my make-up’s everywhere. What’s he going to think?’ She gave a wobbly laugh.
‘That you’ve got amazing eyes and that you’re anything but fat,’ he said roughly.
And just like that the atmosphere altered with sudden, sizzling electricity. It was as if the world had suddenly shrunk to the small space between them. She thought she could actually hear the rush of blood through her veins but then she realised that she was just imagining it. Thinking straight, this was the man who hadn’t had a good word to say to her.
‘You don’t have to say that.’
‘No. I don’t.’ But his voice had changed imperceptibly. ‘But, just for the record, you do have amazing eyes, and when I said that you’re a big girl now I didn’t mean it in the literal sense.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘I meant you’ve grown up. That dress makes you look sexy.’
‘Sexy? Me?’
‘You. Why do you sound so shocked?’
Because you’re saying it, she thought, while her face burnt and her pulses raced and her heart sang. ‘Let’s hope Stewart agrees! ‘ Just in case those laser-sharp eyes of his could bore a hole in her head and pluck out that inappropriate thought.
‘Stewart. The hot date. Yes.’ His voice was clipped and he reached to open his car door. ‘I’ll come in with you. Hang on…’ He leaned across and carefully rubbed his finger under her eye, and then he laughed softly when she jerked back in surprise.
‘Relax. Just a bit of smudged mascara. Anyone would think you’d never been touched before, Agatha.’
‘I…I have my hankie. Well, your hankie. I can do that! Could you switch on the light? I need to have a look at my face. Make sure my eyes aren’t too puffy.’ She laughed shrilly, and then chattered and tutted and avoided eye contact as she inspected her face in her little hand mirror, so that by the time she had finished dabbing and rubbing she could present him with a bright, tinny smile.
‘Right, all ready! Can’t wait!’
Three and a half hours later, a driving, bitter rain greeted her outside.
‘So, when can I see you again?’
Agatha looked at Stewart who was pressed a bit closer to her than she would have liked—unavoidable because they were both sheltering under his umbrella. She had made sure that the buttons on her coat were done up to the neck. Whilst it had been flattering to be the object of his compliments, she had felt uncomfortable under his roving eye, even though she knew that this was what she should have expected. Several times she had caught him addressing her cleavage.
Also, her mind had been all over the place, analyzing and re-analysing everything Luc had said to her, then picking apart what she remembered of their conversation so that she could begin the process all over again. She had had to ask Stewart to repeat himself several times, had failed to notice the quality of the wine, which he had brushed aside—although she knew that he had been offended from the mottled colour of his neck—and had left most of her main course because she had accidentally ordered the wrong thing from the menu, which was in Italian.
She had no idea why he wanted to see her for a second date, and it felt almost churlish to have to think about it when he had been so good to overlook her little lapses and show so much interest in everything she had to say about every aspect of her life and job, however insignificant the detail.
‘Tomorrow’s Saturday,’ he murmured. ‘I know a great little club in Chelsea. Anybody who’s anybody is a member. You wouldn’t believe the famous faces I’ve spotted there; you’d love it.’
‘Maybe we can do something next week.’
Stewart pouted with disappointment but picked himself up with remarkable ease, and as he reached out to hail a cab he pulled her close to him and, before she could wriggle away, planted a hot, laughing kiss full on her mouth.
‘Sure I can’t tempt you back to my place? I make a pretty good Irish coffee, if I say so myself.’
Agatha laughed and declined, and was guiltily relieved when he slid into the taxi, taking his umbrella with him, cheerily insouciant to the fact that she was now in the process of being drenched. And would therefore have to hail a cab, even though a taxi ride back to North London would be a ridiculous waste of money.
And, now that she did require one, there were none to be spotted. Although…
A familiar silver car pulled up to the kerb and she found the passenger door pushed open, waiting for her to oblige.
‘Get in, Agatha. Or risk pneumonia.’
‘Wow. How did you do that—show up just when I was about to start walking to the underground? Anyway.’ she straightened ‘…I can’t have you messing up your Friday night to give me a lift home because you feel sorry for me.’ She dug her hands into her pockets and began walking towards the underground while the car trailed her, sped up and then the passenger door was flung open again and Luc was glaring out at her from the driver’s seat.
‘Get in or I’ll have to get out, lift you up and chuck you in. Do you want that? Do you want that kind of scene in the middle of Knightsbridge? ‘
‘Have you been here the whole time waiting for me?’ she asked as soon as she was inside the car, luxuriating in the warmth and dryness.
‘Don’t be crazy, but I had to come back here for you.’
‘Why on earth would you have to do that? I know you think I’m a hopeless case, but I’ve been getting to and from work every day on public transport. I know how to use the buses and tubes! Course, it took a little time, but I got there in the end. Mum hates it. She keeps telling me that tubes are a breeding ground for muggers. And she’s only been to London a handful of times—and never on a tube! Gosh, sorry; I’m talking too much again.’ But like a bad dream all thoughts of her date had disappeared like a puff of smoke.
‘I got Antonio to call me when you were about to pay the bill.’
‘Who’s Antonio?’
‘The owner of the place. We go back a long way.’
‘What if Stewart and I had decided to move on to somewhere else—a club, or a bar? Or I could just have decided to go back to his place.’
‘Did he ask you to? ‘
‘As a matter of fact, he did.’
‘And you turned him down. Good girl. Wise decision.’
‘Who knows what I’ll say the next time he asks, though?’She looked across at him. He had changed out of his work clothes into a pair of dark jeans and a thick, black jumper. His coat had been tossed to the back seat. She was ashamed to admit even to herself that if she had all the time in the world, she would never tire looking at him.
He opened his mouth as though on the verge of saying something, only to think better of it.
‘So you’ve arranged another date, have you?’
‘Not as such…’ She teased those three little words out as long as she could. ‘Who knows?’
‘Who knows indeed? ‘ Luc intoned in a peculiar voice.
‘What have you done this evening?’ she asked a little breathlessly.
‘Work. I’ve been working on, eh, a very interesting project, let’s just say.’
‘Do you know, it’s great that you enjoy your job so much,’ Agatha said warmly. ‘Although it’s a little sad that you want to spend your Friday nights doing it.’
‘Your honesty is beyond belief, Agatha. I would have entertained myself in the usual way, but there was something a little more important I had to do. After doing that, I realised that I needed to have a little chat with you. Let’s just say that one thing gave rise to the other.’
‘Why are you being mysterious? What do we need to chat about?’ Why did the words ‘little chat’ inspire such feelings of dread? Was he about to sack her? Had she overstepped the line with her beyond-belief honesty?
Agatha quailed at the thought of returning to Yorkshire as a failed charity case—but London, even a bedsit in London, was impossible without a pay packet at the end of the month.
‘This isn’t the right place. I am going to take you to your house, you are going to ask me in for a cup of coffee and we can have our chat then.’
‘Can’t it wait until Monday? ‘
‘I think it’s better to get it out of the way. Now, relax; tell me about your evening. Take me through how a guy who leaves a woman standing in the pouring rain sees fit to entertain her.’
Now out of a job, Agatha didn’t think she had anything to lose by being totally, one-hundred percent honest. People were never honest with Luc, with the exception of his mother. They tiptoed around him, bowing and scraping, ‘yes, sir’, ‘no sir’. He was one of those lethally good-looking men who were just too powerful for their own good. He was unapologetic in his arrogance and in his assumption that he could play by his own unique set of rules.
‘I don’t want to be having this conversation with you.’
‘Why not? Are you embarrassed? There’s nothing to be ashamed of because it was a flop. These things happen. You just have to shrug it off and move on.’ Furthermore, she would be glad of his sterling advice when he filled her in on a few missing jigsaw pieces. His Friday night had been ruined, but he was upbeat about it.
Without the hassle of traffic, it took them less than half an hour before he pulled up outside her house, and Agatha hadn’t said a word for the brief drive. Her evening out had been disappointing, but there was a slow resentment building inside her at the way Luc had showed up for her, like a parent collecting a child from a birthday party. And then to hear him dismiss her date as a flop, something unfortunate that she should step over and forget with a shrug, made her even more angry.
She hadn’t asked him to start interfering in her life. He had barely noticed her for the past eight months, but now that he had been forced to he had decided to give the project his full and complete attention. But he still couldn’t conceal the fact that he found her annoying and a nuisance. Everything about her offended him, starting with the way she didn’t seem to know how to suck up to him sufficiently, and ending with the way she looked—and Luc, being Luc, he made no bones about hiding his reaction.
And now he needed to chat to her. It could only be about her job. He had gone away, added up all the reasons why she didn’t belong in his company and was going to break it to her that, however indebted he felt to her mother, having her as dead weight in his office was too steep a price to pay.
‘I know what you’re going to say,’ she burst out as soon as he had killed the engine. ‘And you can just tell me right here.’ She had unclasped her seat belt, and now she swivelled round to look at him.
‘You know what I’m going to say?’
‘Yes. I know what you think of me, and I know exactly what you’re going to say.’ The words tumbled out with feverish urgency.
‘I don’t think you have a clue what I think of you,’ Luc informed her huskily. ‘And you certainly don’t know what I’m going to say to you. And, no, we are not going to have this conversation in my car.’
‘I just want to get it over and done with,’ Agatha implored, but he was already out the car and she hurriedly followed suit, fumbling in her bag for the house key and feeling the tension escalate with every step up to her bedsit.
Stepping back into the room, she switched on the light and looked around it with new eyes, Luc’s eyes. She took in the discoloured walls, which she had tried to hide by sticking up two large, colourful posters, the sagging, tired furniture, the stained carpet peeping out from behind the thin Moroccan rug she had put over it and the seeping cold. He was right; who else would put up with all that?
‘I’m a failure, and you’ve come to terms with that, and you want to find a polite way of telling me to get lost,’ she said in a rush, before she had even removed her coat. ‘I’m sacked, aren’t I?’
‘Sacked? Why would I want to sack you?’ Eyes as green as the deep ocean stared steadily at her. ‘I want to tell you that I know Stewart Dexter and I know what he wants from you.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU know Stewart? ‘ Agatha’s mouth fell open and she gaped at him in complete bewilderment. ‘I don’t understand. You’ve never met him before; I didn’t introduce you…’
‘Take your coat off and sit down.’
‘If you knew him, why didn’t you come across to say hello? ‘ While she hovered, frantically trying to unravel this unforeseen turn of events, she found herself being helped out of her coat. ‘Well, I guess it’s a good thing that I’m not being sacked,’ she breathed shakily, clutching the one thing he had said that had made sense.
His fabulous green eyes settled on her and suddenly she felt very exposed in her tight black dress and her silly, high black shoes. It was a relief to sink into the chair facing him. When she glanced down, she was accosted by the embarrassing sight of her deep cleavage and abundant breasts straining against the soft, elastic fabric of her dress. She resolved to shelve the outfit first thing in the morning.
‘But I don’t understand why it was so important for you to race over to the restaurant to tell me this.’
‘When you mentioned the name of the guy you were meeting, it rang a bell, but I didn’t think anything of it,’ Luc said carefully. ‘I have a finger in a lot of pies and so I meet people from a range of industries. And Dexter is a common enough surname. But then I saw the guy at the restaurant and the alarm bells started ringing.’
‘Alarm bells? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You’re not going to like what I have to say.’ Never one to waste time beating about the bush, Luc now paused and considered his words carefully. Staring across the table at him, her eyes wide and perplexed, Agatha looked very, very young, and strangely enough the revealing nature of her dress only accentuated that impression.
‘How old are you? ‘ he asked roughly, finding himself momentarily sidetracked.
‘Sorry?’
‘Forget that. It’s not important. There’s no easy way to say this, but Dexter might not be the guy you think he is.’
‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about. You mean Stewart Dexter isn’t Stewart Dexter? Who is he, then?’
‘He’s someone who used to work for one my companies. When I thought I recognised him, I went back to the office and did a little research.’
‘You ran a background check on my date?’ Agatha trembled. ‘How could you do that?’ Her huge blue eyes, staring up at him, were full of reproach.
‘I’d advise any woman to run a background check on a man they’d picked up in a bar before they went out with him on a date, Agatha. This isn’t a small village in Yorkshire.’
‘I’m not ashamed that I trust people, Luc. I know you don’t, and I can understand why. Your father trusted George Satz and in return he had all his money stolen from him.’
The story had run in the local newspaper for weeks, with each new revelation of embezzlement producing a fresh torrent of speculation. With Elliot Laughton no longer around to defend himself, details went uncontested. Members of staff were interviewed and their bafflement at the scale of the financial losses only added to the scandal. At the time, Agatha had felt deeply sorry for Luc, although that was something she would never have shared with him. He had returned from university with a protective barrier around him that repelled words of sympathy. The whole business would surely have accounted for the man he was later to become—a man who would never know how to give anyone else the benefit of the doubt.
Her meandering mind returned to the present and she cleared her throat. ‘Well, almost all his money. So I can see why you’re so suspicious of other people—but I’m not. It would never occur to me to do a background check on anyone! Anyway, we were meeting in a public place, and there was no way that I was going to go anywhere afterwards with him.’ Her angry eyes locked with his and she leaned forward, her hands balled into fists.
‘Like I told you,’ Luc’s voice was cool and even and controlled, ‘You’re not savvy about the kind of guy a girl can get mixed up with in London. Dexter was sacked from the company a year and a half ago. He was a minor cog in one of the IT companies I took over. He was caught trying to hack into confidential programs to do with software. He was kicked out the second the breach was discovered by one of my people.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You don’t want to believe me. And I don’t want to be sitting here telling you this. But some good Samaritan’s got to fill you in on the man. Naturally, in the case of a dismissal of that nature, no references were forthcoming. He disappeared and, as far as I know, he isn’t working for any of the major players in the country. Did he mention the name of his employer?’
‘No.’ Agatha was beginning to feel giddy. ‘Are you sure about all this? I mean, it’s easy to confuse people…to think you recognise someone when you don’t know them really…’
‘I don’t make those kinds of mistakes.’
Agatha was immediately silenced.
‘Everyone makes mistakes,’ she muttered eventually.
Luc ignored that. ‘I could find out what outfit Dexter managed to inveigle his way into and get him fired, not least because he would have had to forge his references from my company.’
‘I’m not a child! If Stewart is really the person you think he is, then I can just ask him outright.’
‘And I’m sure he would come up with a very convincing story.’
‘And I would be so easy to convince, wouldn’t I? Because I’m green round the ears.’
‘How is it that you are so good at making me feel like a monster?’ he murmured softly. An unnatural urge to put his arms around her was squashed before it could take form. ‘I’m actually doing you a favour by telling you this.’
‘It doesn’t feel like a favour. Even if Stewart is who you say he is—and I’m still not certain that you haven’t got it wrong; people do get things wrong, even people like you—well, what does that have to do with me?’
‘I think Dexter sought you out.’
‘Sought me out? That sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory.’ Agatha’s head was in a whirl.
‘Course, it all could be pure coincidence, but my gut feel is that he decided to set up in competition. Have you any idea of the value of gaming software? Which is why it’s one of the most highly confidential areas of all my companies. I have computer-game designers working to create games that could outrun some of the biggest sellers. After Dexter’s hacking attempts, I made sure that all entries were closed down. If he really wanted to get his hands on some of my developing ideas, he might have thought that he needed to go down a different route.’
Realisation was beginning to dawn for Agatha. Naturally, Luc could be off target with his assumptions, but would he really ever make a mistake like that? When it came to business, his acumen was legendary. Everyone in the company reverently believed that everything he touched turned to gold; only someone blessed with an ability to make sound decisions would ever have possessed that Midas touch.
‘Question: has Dexter been asking you all sorts of questions about the company?’
Agatha twisted in her chair so that she could look at him. ‘Of course he’s been interested in what I have to say.’
‘I’ll bet.’
If only there had been a part of her that could really and truly believe that she hadn’t been used, she would have run with it. Instead, all she could volunteer feebly, was, ‘Everyone deserves a second chance. Even people who come out of prison get second chances.’
She belatedly realised how often the subject of her work had cropped up in the conversation. She had been flattered at the interest and had downplayed her role in the company. In fact, she hadn’t mentioned the broom cupboard once.
‘I think Dexter is manipulating you to access information,’ Luc told her bluntly.
‘What sort of information? This is too much. My head’s beginning to spin.’
Feeling disadvantaged on the chair, Agatha stood up and weaved a wobbly path to the kitchen so that she could pour herself a glass of water. She returned to find Luc standing by the window and idly peering out. He turned when he heard her but remained where he was, six foot two of towering alpha male with the subtlety of a sledge hammer.
Suddenly she was really angry that Luc was the one who had taken it upon himself to point her in the right direction by humiliating her and then calling it doing her a favour.