Bonnie heaved a weary sigh, shaking her head as her eyes wandered back to the phone, now lying silent on her desk.
I didn’t handle that at all well, she thought regretfully. I let the man niggle me from the first moment, when he assumed I wasn’t one of the sales staff, merely because I was a woman.
Training had stopped her short of being rude, but there was no denying the coolness in her voice, or the pique behind her offer to transfer him over to one of the men.
Fortunately, he hadn’t called her bluff. She could do with an easy sale to start the week, after spending the whole weekend in bed with a tummy bug. Bonnie had topped the sales figures for the previous month, and had been hoping to repeat the performance for November.
Which meant she could hardly afford to look gift-horses in the mouth, and Mr Moneybags had sounded like a gift-horse.
What was his name, now? Vine-Hall. Yes, that was it. Vine-Hall. The name suited him. Pompous and arrogant!
‘That’s quite a scowl, love. Are you sure you should have come back to work this morning?’
Bonnie smiled up at the tall, lean man standing beside her desk. Gary was the only one of her male colleagues not at all undermined by her recent sales success. Forty-five and happily married, he was a genuinely nice man with a very relaxed personality and no ambition to do anything but make enough money to live on. Which he did nicely.
‘I couldn’t bear another minute in that house by myself,’ she answered truthfully. She hadn’t realised till yesterday how much she hated the place, forty-eight hours without a break within its walls bringing back that claustrophobic feeling of imprisonment which had swamped her during the last year of her three-year marriage.
Gary was frowning down at her. ‘You’re awfully pale,’ he said. ‘And you have dark rings under your eyes. Come on, I think you could do with a fortifying cup of coffee.’
‘I’ll go for that,’ she said, and stood up to accompany Gary down to the back room and the coffee-machine.
‘You’ve lost weight as well,’ he said as he went about making coffee for both of them.
‘Now I really like the sound of that.’
‘You’re not fat, Bonnie,’ he chided.
Maybe not, she thought, but having a womanly shape did have its drawbacks. Bonnie had found that in the male-dominated business world of real estate voluptuous curves could be more of a burden than an asset. When buying clothes nowadays, her first consideration was always whether the outfit would minimise her figure, not emphasise it.
The linen suit she was wearing that morning was a typical choice. A bland cream colour, it had a straight but not too tight skirt and a long, gently shaped jacket which could be kept buttoned up without restriction, the deep V-neckline filled modestly with a gold silk camisole the same colour as her hair.
‘I could do with less in certain areas,’ she said ruefully as she took the steaming mug Gary offered her.
‘Not from a man’s point of view.’
A reproachful glance from Bonnie only brought a nonchalant shrug. ‘I might be married, but I can still look.’
‘Just so long as that’s all you do.’
‘I’m not Neil, love.’
Bonnie sighed and sipped her coffee.
‘Is he still bothering you?’ Gary asked.
‘Not for the moment.’ He’d temporarily stopped asking her out, but only after she’d turned him down a zillion times. But Neil was the persistent type. He was also under the illusion that a widow was always a good mark, especially a young, attractive one who, to all intents and purposes, had not had a man in her bed for three years.
‘I’d watch him if I were you,’ Gary murmured.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I’ve come across blokes like Neil before. They don’t like losing... at anything.’
Bonnie nodded wryly. ‘So I’ve gathered.’
‘He was most put out at the meeting this morning when the boss spent more time fussing over your health than praising him for his weekend sales.’
‘Yes, I noticed that.’
‘Edgar did too, and he didn’t seem too happy with Neil’s attitude. Why do you think he kept him back afterwards?’
Bonnie grimaced. ‘He’ll only make things worse if he says anything.’
‘My feelings exactly. That’s why I thought I’d give you a quiet warning. Neil’s not likely to take a dressing-down too well. Thankfully, he’s heading the figures this month so far. It might be better if he stays there,’ Gary finished with a meaningful look.
Bonnie blinked her astonishment. ‘Are you suggesting I deliberately let him win?’
‘It might be the wisest course of action. Edgar isn’t going to fire Neil, love. He’s a top salesman. Life could get very awkward for you around here, however, if you keep making our young stud feel a failure in more ways than one. He’s only a baby, you know, and not used to rejection in the female department.’
‘He’s twenty-five, same as me,’ she grumbled. ‘About time he grew up a bit: Despite Gary’s suggestion sounding sensible, something very strong within Bonnie rebelled at the idea of holding back in deference to male ego. She’d spent her entire marriage doing that, and the damage to her self-esteem had been enormous. It went against the grain just to let Neil win. It really did!
Gary took her silence for agreement. ‘You could waste a nice lot of time trying to sell that dear old house which just came on the listings this morning. You know... the one perched on the bluff between here and Cairncross Bay.’
‘That monstrosity! It would take a magic wand to sell that place!’
Gary laughed. ‘Exactly. I’ve actually got the photo in my pocket here, since it’s my unenviable job to write a spiel for the window display. How shall I describe it?’ he joked as he held it out in front of him. ‘A handyman’s delight?’
She glanced down at it and shook her head. Lord, it looked like something out of The Munsters! Two-storeyed and wooden, the house had odd turret-like projections, large black chimneys, and small pokey windows. Add to that its ramshackle condition and the overgrown garden surrounding it, and images of ghosts weren’t far away.
Edgar had told them it was reputedly haunted. Bonnie didn’t wonder. And shuddered anew.
‘Who on earth is going to buy a dump like that?’ she mused aloud as she stared down at it.
‘An eccentric recluse with a passion for Frankenstein?’ came Gary’s mocking suggestion.
‘Very funny. We could have easily unloaded it to a developer for the fifteen fantastic acres it’s sitting on if it hadn’t been for that stupid
