girl’s smart; she’s really got you figured out,’ Johnny told him with a certain enjoyment. There had always been an element of friendly competition between the two men where women were concerned. Johnny put his arm round Natalie’s waist. ‘So I’m still in there with a chance, sweetheart?’
She let his arm stay where he had put it, and smiled at him without answering.
Sam said curtly, ‘Have you noticed the time, Johnny? You should be in the studio getting your discs set up for the show by now, shouldn’t you? Panic bells will be ringing in the control room if you don’t show up soon.’
Instantly agitated, Johnny looked at his watch. ‘God, you’re right! I must run. See you both.’ Carrying his mug of black coffee in one hand, he rushed out, letting the office door slam shut. Sam walked round his desk and sat down, tapping his long fingers on the wooden surface.
Giving Natalie a long, hard stare, he said, ‘If you have any sense at all you won’t start dating Johnny. He isn’t your type, you know.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that!’ Natalie couldn’t agree more, in fact. She liked Johnny very much, but she wasn’t sexually attracted to him. All the same, she wasn’t having Sam dictating her private life. Give the man an inch and he was the type to take a mile—a real little office Napoleon. Either his mother had brought him up believing he was God’s gift to the female sex, or he had an over-abundance of testosterone.
‘Women have no judgement whatever where men are concerned!’ Sam informed her.
She looked at him drily. ‘Oh, I have a pretty shrewd idea what makes you tick.’
‘Do you indeed?’ he drawled, his mouth ironic. ‘I doubt it. But I wasn’t talking about myself. You know what I meant. Johnny Linklater is a great guy, and a buddy of mine, but I wouldn’t trust him with one of my sisters.’
Natalie smiled at that, believing him. She knew Sam worried about his two younger sisters; it was one of his more endearing qualities. She knew, too, that his mother hen attitude drove both of them mad. They had confided in her one day a few months back, asking her how they could get him to stop trying to run their lives for them. Natalie had advised them that their wisest course was not to tell Sam anything they thought he might not like, although she couldn’t help thinking that they should be more grateful for the care and concern Sam had always given them both.
Sam had been standing in for their dead father for years and he had got the habit, hadn’t yet realised that Jeanie and Marie had grown up. They were both over twenty now; they had a right to make their own decisions, choose their own boyfriends, live their own lives.
‘Just watch it with Linklater. The man’s chronically unfaithful and completely irresponsible,’ Sam said tersely.
‘I’ve been looking after myself since I was sixteen,’ said Natalie. ‘I can manage Johnny, don’t worry.’
Sam laughed angrily. ‘Famous last words! A lot of other women have thought they could manage Johnny, but they all failed. Oh, well, if you want to make a fool of yourself I can’t stop you—let’s get down to work.’ He reached for the audience research figures, his face set like concrete.
Natalie sighed—now he was going to be in a sulky mood all day, was he? Why were men so childish?
They spent half an hour going through the figures, then they moved on to skim through the mail; Sam dictated a few letters in reply, before starting on a memo to be sent to all the production offices on keeping costs down and using studios more economically and efficiently. It was one he sent out every few months. At first people were very careful, but slowly standards would slip and back would creep all the bad habits into which big organisations slid if nobody kept an eye on them.
He was halfway through dictating his memo when the phone rang and he picked it up. ‘Hello? Yes, speaking.’ He looked startled. ‘Oh, hello, Jeanie—anything wrong? What? No, I haven’t seen any of this morning’s papers.’ His voice shot up to a roar, making Natalie jump. ‘What? Said what?’ he yelled into the phone.
There was a silence while he listened, his face darkening, his eyes glittering with temper, then he said, ‘No, it isn’t! Of course not. She what? Oh, my God. Well, tell her it was all just a joke. No, you tell her. If I ring her she’ll keep asking me stupid questions and probing like a dentist... Well, I know she worries about me, she’s always telling me she does, but... No, I won’t ring her. I want you to do it. Are you listening, Jeanie? Hello? Jeanie?’
He slammed the phone down and stared at it as if it were a snake. ‘Damn. She hung up on me.’
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Natalie.
He looked at her with grim eyes. ‘They’ve heard about last night. It’s all your fault!’
The injustice took her breath away. When she got it back she burst out in a muddled flood of words. ‘It wasn’t me who got drunk and proposed to me! It wasn’t me who gave me his signet ring and insisted I wear it!’
‘It’s your job to keep me out of trouble. That’s what I pay you for!’ he snapped at her, like a piranha lunging for a meal.
She snapped right back at him. ‘Oh, and all this time I thought I was hired as your secretary, not your keeper! Silly me. Remind me to change the job description when I advertise for my successor tomorrow!’
‘What?’ He looked taken aback, his brows jerking together in a scowl.
‘I’m handing in my notice!’ she said, reckless enough at that moment to jump off the top of the building. She didn’t want to leave, of course; she certainly hadn’t planned to go. She loved her job, loved working at the radio station—her work was so various and stimulating, she never knew what she would be doing each morning when she came into work. She hated to admit it but she even loved working with Sam, except when he was in a bad mood; he was a good boss, he trusted her, left her with plenty of responsibility. She liked that, enjoyed the equality they usually shared. He let her speak her mind; he listened. They had a good relationship.
But since last night everything was different. He had changed the atmosphere between them—or had she? No, it was down to both of them. Last night it had been Sam who’d behaved badly, but she had been stupid to take the game so far this morning. She should just have given him back his ring and let the matter drop. Why had she been so stupid? Now everything had become too personal, too charged, and Natalie couldn’t cope with it. She wanted to get away.
Sam glowered at her. ‘We’ve had enough bad jokes for one day, Natalie!’
‘I’m not joking. I’m resigning. As of today,’ she told him, and got up to walk out. But Sam got up too, uncoiling that long, powerful body and making her back away. There was a sense of threat about him when he looked at you like that. Anyone with any sense got out of his way.
‘You’re doing nothing of the kind!’ he said through his teeth. ‘I need you.’
Her heart flipped at the words—what did he mean by that? Was he admitting that...? But then Sam went on talking, and her heart slowed again.
‘You’ve got to talk to my mother!’ he told her fiercely. ‘According to Jeanie, she’s planning some big party to celebrate our engagement. She’s even working out where we should get married, and when, and how many guests we ought to have. You must ring her at once and put a stop to
