going ever faster in an effort to have her call a halt. She didn’t.
‘That’s it for now,’ he said irritably. Which was ridiculous. He’d asked for someone efficient and apparently that was exactly what he’d got. The fact that she had the impudence to poke a little fun at him was something he could live with. At least she didn’t fidget with her hair; she seemed blissfully unaware that it was threatening to descend untidily about her ears. ‘How long will it take you to type that?’
‘That depends on the software installed on your computer.’ He told her what it was. ‘No problem, I’ve used that before.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I should be done by three.’
Now she was just being ridiculous. ‘I’d rather have it accurate than rushed,’ he said.
Jilly didn’t bother to argue. ‘Five past three, then,’ she said, taking off her spectacles and rising to her feet. She paused in the doorway and looked back at him. ‘I’ll use the extra five minutes to make a cup of tea. The coffee has gone cold.’ Max stared at her. Garland Girls didn’t make tea. But then Jilly Prescott clearly wasn’t a Garland Girl. Not by a country mile. Where on earth had his sister found her? ‘I’ll make one for you too, if you like,’ she offered when he didn’t move.
‘No,’ he began. Then, ‘No, thank you. That won’t be necessary. And if you ask Harriet, my housekeeper, she’ll make you whatever you want.’ Then as the clock on the mantelpiece began to chime the hour he continued, ‘In fact since it appears to be lunchtime she’ll make you a sandwich or something, too. You started late so you won’t mind working straight through, will you?’
‘Not at all,’ she said, and Max Fleming was disconcerted to discover that he was quite unable to tell whether she was simply being polite or whether she was being just the smallest bit ironic. ‘I did wonder what I’d do for lunch,’ she added. ‘Working through certainly solves that problem.’ Ironic. Definitely ironic.
She went through to her own office and Max followed her. ‘Where are you from, Jilly?’ Max asked, and immediately regretted his curiosity. He wasn’t in the least bit interested in where she had come from. She was just a temp for heaven’s sake. Here today, gone tomorrow—at least if the last two weeks were anything to judge by…
‘Can’t you tell?’ Her eyes sparkled as she looked back at him. Now she had removed her spectacles he could see that they were like the rest of her, just a little too large for her face, but quite unabashed by his scowl they were brimming with laughter, bringing his train of thought crashing to a halt. Hadn’t Amanda warned this girl that he was a bad-tempered ogre who had been going through temps faster than the average person went through a page-a-day calendar? ‘Ms Garland gave me the impression that she could cut my accent with a knife,’ she continued cheekily, ‘and serve it up in wedges with clotted cream.’
‘Amanda was exaggerating.’ Jilly’s accent was elusive, not something to be cut, but spooned like warm honey over toast… ‘But somewhere north of Watford, I’d guess,’ he continued rapidly, disconcerted at the direction his mind seemed to be taking.
That was very nearly a joke, Jilly thought. ‘Then you’d guess right. Home is somewhere no one has ever heard of, but it’s near enough to Newcastle as makes no difference. Which reminds me, would it be possible to use your telephone? I’ll pay for the call.’
Pay? She was offering to pay for a phone call? He was beginning to doubt his hearing. For the past two weeks Amanda’s Garland Girls, with their designer clothes and perfectly rounded vowels, had been treating his telephone as if it had been installed for their own personal convenience.
‘I’m supposed to be staying with my cousin but she doesn’t know I’ve arrived yet,’ she continued confidingly. Then, ‘At least, she might do—I did leave a message on her answering machine…’ She gave a little shrug as if suddenly aware that she had been running on.
‘But you’d like to be sure?’
‘Well, the thing is, I rang from the station first thing this morning. When I arrived. I mean, it was early. Really early. I thought she’d be there.’
‘And she wasn’t.’
‘No.’
‘Perhaps she was out.’
‘At that time in the morning?’
Innocent or what? he thought. Well, it wasn’t up to him to suggest what her cousin might have been up to. ‘Jogging, perhaps,’ he suggested drily.
‘It’s a possibility,’ she agreed, but not with any conviction. ‘Anyway, I thought it might be better to wait a while and call her at work. I would have called from a box, but Ms Garland said you were—’
‘Desperate?’ A delicate pink suffused her cheeks as he filled in the word that she was suddenly unwilling to repeat, a delightful blush that turned this rather bold young woman into something a whole lot more vulnerable. ‘I was,’ he found himself admitting. ‘I am.’ Then because, as the target of those large brown eyes, he felt more than a little vulnerable himself, he continued abruptly, ‘But you’d better call your cousin before you start. I don’t want your mind wandering while you’re typing that report.’ He turned to go, then paused. ‘And you’d better ring your family, if you have one. Let them know you’ve arrived safely.’ Good grief, he was beginning to sound like a mother hen. ‘They might be worrying,’ he added more sharply.
‘Might?’ Her eyes fanned into tiny creases at the corners as she finally laughed and a dimple momentarily appeared beneath her cheek. Appeared and then was gone so quickly that he had to restrain himself from reaching out to touch the spot to convince himself that he hadn’t imagined it… ‘My mother will be wearing a track in the carpet pacing up and down waiting to hear how the job worked out.’ Hoping it hadn’t.
‘Then you’d better ring her straight away…before the damage to the carpet is irreparable.’
‘Ah, well, you see, I can’t do that—’
‘Why not?’ He knew he would regret asking the question, but their conversation seemed to be taking on a life of its own.
‘I can’t phone her until I’ve spoken to Gemma. I promised if anything went wrong, if she couldn’t put me up, I’d go straight home.’ She gave a little shrug, little more than a lift of her shoulders. ‘It’s my first time away from home, you see, and she worries.’
He did see. His own mother had worried about him. Still did, probably, but these days she knew better than to voice her concerns. ‘Then let’s hope that your cousin had simply slipped out for a few minutes. If she’s away you’re in big trouble—’
‘Away? In January?’ Jilly was incredulous.
Max followed her glance to the window, to the overcast greyness of a winter day in London. ‘Unbelievable as it may seem, there are places where the sun is still shining.’
‘Expensive places.’
‘Not these days.’ He could see that she considered his idea of expensive and hers were unlikely to coincide. ‘There’s always skiing—’ The word was out before he could stop it. Max had known it was a mistake to get involved. It was always a mistake to get involved.
‘Gemma’s not the athletic type.’
‘Not
