the obligatory one-month notice. She had pleaded an unfortunate family matter and tactfully left it to her boss to decipher whatever he wanted from that obscure statement.
It had hurt a lot less than she had expected. Had she really spent so much time in a job that she had shed without too many tears? Or maybe it was the stirrings of what was awaiting her.
Laura had made the whole scheme sound like a marvellous adventure, but the following Monday morning, as Beth stood outside the impressive Adrino building, she felt far from adventurous.
She felt an impostor, dressed in her sister’s jade-green suit. Was there a law against this sort of thing? she wondered.
She smoothed her hair back nervously and chewed on her lip. All around her people rushed past, lots of little soldier ants hurrying to their jobs.
A dull sun was attempting to break the stranglehold of grey clouds but it was easy to see that it was a losing battle.
She felt a light spitting of rain and merged into the line of soldier ants, finding herself swept into the massive building.
If I don’t look at anyone, she thought, then I won’t risk ignoring any recognisable faces.
But she was perspiring with nerves as the lift whooshed up to the top floor, disgorging her into the plushest set of offices she had ever seen in her life before.
The carpet was of muted grey-blue and thick enough to make footsteps soundless. The offices lay behind smoke-coloured glass.
One of the secretaries looked up as she walked past and waved, and Beth waved back. Marian, secretary to Ron Wood, the financial director.
‘Nice week off?’ Marian asked, stopping her in her tracks, and Beth smiled and nodded.
‘A little eventful,’ she said, inwardly grinning at the accuracy of the description, ‘but relaxing on the whole.’
‘Good. I wish I had a week off coming up. I’m up to my ears in it. You’ve had your hair cut?’
Beth ran her fingers self-consciously through her bob. ‘Spur-of-the-moment,’ she said vaguely.
‘Suits you. Makes you look more businesslike. Not,’ Marian continued hurriedly, ‘that you didn’t look great with long hair.’
Beth accepted the compliment with a smile. She liked Marian straight away. She was in her middle thirties, tending towards plumpness and quite plain to look at with her short wavy brown hair and spectacles, until she smiled. Then her face lit up and was really very attractive.
‘See you later, anyway,’ she said with another wave, and Beth nodded, walking confidently towards her office which she knew was at the end of the corridor.
First hurdle, she thought, successfully manoeuvred and out of the way. It surely couldn’t be as simple as this. Life was never that simple. It always insisted on throwing in a few complications to making the going more interesting.
But right now her self-confidence was a notch higher.
There would be a stack of typing awaiting her—she knew that from what Laura had explained—but that would be no problem. She had spent a long time working with the same computer system.
She pushed open the door to her office and gasped.
It was a large room, carpeted in the same shade of muted grey, but the walls were covered by an elegant dove-grey wallpaper. Her desk was an impressive mahogany affair, and the filing cabinets, also in mahogany, were stacked neatly against the wall.
Opposite, a large abstract painting dominated the wall. It wasn’t the sort of thing she would have chosen herself, but she decided that she rather liked it. It was soothing.
Marcos Adrino had probably hand-picked it. She had had to revise some of her ideas on his appearance. From the picture in the company magazine, he was younger than she had originally thought, but she had no doubt that the paunch was still there. The handful of wealthy men she had met had all seemed to be slightly over-weight. Products of too much access to rich food.
She hung her coat on the coat-stand and settled comfortably into her chair, browsing through the pile of letters, most of which she could tell at a glance, from experience, simply needed filing. Faxed letters from the boss were awaiting typing.
Beth looked at the strong, aggressive handwriting and felt a twinge of relief that he wasn’t around. She could do with a few days breaking in before she faced him.
She switched on the computer terminal and was about to begin working on the first letter when the door behind her opened.
She heard his voice before she saw him. It was deep, and right now tinged with enough hardness to freeze her to the spot.
‘Here at last. In my office. Now.’
She swivelled around to see him vanishing back into his room, and her head began to throb with nerves.
One day into this, and already things weren’t going to plan. He was not supposed to be here today. He was supposed to spend most of his time out of the country. In fact, from what Laura had told her, he was supposed to be in Paris and Geneva until the end of the week. At least. So what on earth was he doing here?
She licked her lips nervously and wished that she had listened to her good sense and laughed her sister right out of town.
He was standing by the window waiting for her, his body negligently leaning against the sill, one hand thrust into his trouser-pocket.
The difference between the man in front of her and the one she had conjured up was so vast that she looked away in confusion.
Marcos Adrino was tall and, far from having a paunch, he had not a spare ounce of fat to be seen. In fact, he had the body of a superbly tuned athlete, broad-shouldered and lean-hipped. A body that looked powerful, even though it was covered by an expensively tailored charcoal-grey suit.
Beth cleared her throat and looked at him, taking in the hard, clever lines of his face, the black hair, the dark, penetrating eyes, the curve of his mouth.
Pull yourself together, girl, she told herself. You’re the sensible one, remember?
He was staring at her through narrowed eyes.
‘Sit down,’ he ordered abruptly.
Beth edged over to the chair and sat down, lowering her eyes to her shorthand pad, making an effort to steady her hand.
It wouldn’t do to look ill-at-ease. She got the feeling that this man picked up things like that, processed them through his shrewd brain, and always came up with the right answer.
He remained standing where he was and she looked up at him with a bright smile.
‘I didn’t expect you,’ she said in a businesslike voice.
‘I dare say you didn’t,’ he drawled.
‘Successful trip?’
‘It would have been, if I hadn’t been privy to certain rumours circulating.’
‘Rumours?’
