He drew back and was aware of her dripping her way into the back seat of the car.
‘I’m sorry. I’m soaking wet. Are you sure it’s all right? I mean, I wouldn’t want to damage the upholstery of your car.’
‘Close the door behind you. You’re letting the rain in.’
Sophie slammed the door shut with a feeling of exquisite relief. Anything to be out of that driving cold rain. She shrugged out of her coat, trying to ignore the cool green eyes on her, and then stuffed it on the floor well at her feet.
‘Thank you.’ She turned to him and tried a pleasant smile on for size. ‘I didn’t realise that you’d come back to the office. Patricia said that you would probably go straight home from your last meeting.’
‘One or two things to do.’ The rain had dampened down the curls and turned the copper-red colour to an odd sort of brown. Her face, devoid of make-up, was pale and damp. He wondered whether she ever looked in a mirror at all. ‘Where are you staying?’
Sophie gave him the address, which was on the outskirts of London, and Rafe frowned.
‘I haven’t got time to drop you there. You’ll have to drop me off first and then George will take you to where you live.’
Sophie opened her mouth to argue the point and then nodded her head. She had to get out of the habit of feeling awkward in Rafe’s presence, at least if she were to do her job with any level of competency. She had to will herself to talk to him so that she could find out what made him tick. He treated her like a kid because his mind was stuck in that groove, but that gambit only worked if she allowed herself to be treated that way.
‘That’s fine,’ she said coolly. ‘Did you have a productive day?’
‘The forecast is good on several fronts,’ Rafe said, sitting back and leaning against the door so that he could watch her more thoroughly. ‘What about you? Did you manage to make the rounds of the office and get hold of any juicy titbits about me?’
‘It seems you’re the perfect boss, Rafe. No one had a bad word to say about you, but then I don’t suppose they would have felt inclined to pour their hearts out to a virtual stranger.’
‘So, disappointment on that front, then.’
‘I admit my editor might have enjoyed some gossip,’ Sophie told him truthfully, ‘but it seems that you pay well and treat your employees fairly. Group meetings on a regular basis so that they can let off steam, pay reviews biannually, membership of a sports centre, bonus packages at the end of the year, the list goes on.’
‘What did you expect, Sophie? A tyrant who chained his workers to their desks and deprived them of everything but the basics?’
‘Of course not! But I’ve worked in an office. I know that there are always grumblings of discontent around if you look hard enough.’
‘Is that why you left your job? Because of the office politics?’ He realised that, although they had met socially off and on over the years, he knew very little about her. She had stuck in his head as someone who hovered on the sidelines, always standing out like a sore thumb but not for the right reasons. ‘You did a degree in Art,’ he remarked, remembering one piece of throwaway information his mother had given him at some point. He recalled thinking that that was exactly what he would have guessed she might have done, given her appearance.
‘How do you know that?’
‘My mother must have told me at some point. Why the jump from art to office work?’
‘Because finding a job that involved my art degree was impossible,’ Sophie informed him shortly. ‘Why do you think you weren’t content on simply taking over your father’s business? It was extremely profitable. Why did you feel compelled to expand it to the extent that you have?’
Rafe recognised the ploy. She was uncomfortable talking about herself and so made her answers as brief and monosyllabic as possible before changing the subject. He couldn’t blame her. When had he ever shown the slightest interest in her? But since they were cooped up with one another for two weeks, what normal human being wouldn’t show some level of interest?
‘Ah. The fascinating question of motivation,’ Rafe drawled. ‘What do you think?’
‘I can’t write an article on what I think about you. I have to write an article based on what I observe and what you tell me about yourself.’
‘No one likes to rest on inherited wealth. I branched out because I had to flex my own intellectual muscles.’
It was an answer within a non-answer. Yes, it provided facts in a nutshell, but that fascinating question of motivation that he had mentioned earlier remained unanswered. And Sophie got the feeling that he was all too aware of the fact and was not about to do anything about it. He was very private and any excavating of his character, which really was what her editor would want to see, would have to be done very carefully.
She would have to make him feel relaxed in her company and maybe then he might let slip the odd remark that would reveal something about himself.
It helped that he saw her as nothing more than an irritating kid who had grown up. Despite any surface interest he expressed in her and what she had been doing with her life, he honestly didn’t care.
She tried not to feel vaguely hurt and insulted by that. In a way, she almost preferred the dismissive hint of impatience, the glancing look that barely took her in, to the look he was giving her now. Green eyes coolly detached, as though she just happened to be something sexless and characterless that had happened to stray within his line of vision, thereby forcing him to react in one way or another.
In this case, pretending to show an interest in what she thought. Sophie decided that she didn’t much care. The object of the exercise was to get him to open up.
‘Well, it’s always good to set challenges for yourself,’ Sophie she said, hoping her voice had attained the right level of cosiness and warmth. ‘Actually, that’s what I told myself when I ended up working in an office.’
Rafe’s voice was polite and only mildly interested. ‘That your dreams of being the next Picasso were nothing compared to the challenges of mastering the filing system and coming to grips with PowerPoint?’
His wryly sarcastic response immediately had her hackles up. ‘Actually, I never had dreams of being the next Picasso. My degree wasn’t in fine art. I studied graphic design and illustration.’
‘And I take it the office where you worked had no available department that could make use of your skills?’
Sophie smiled reluctantly. ‘Not many legal offices do, although I did acquire a very sound knowledge of the basics of family law.’
Her face changed when she smiled. There was something graceful and cautious and very appealing about it.
‘We’ll be at my place in five minutes,’ he said abruptly. ‘I recommend you come inside and get into something dry. I don’t want the responsibility of sending you home in soaking wet clothes so that you can come down with pneumonia.’
‘In that case, I’ll take the responsibility away from you by telling you that I’m fine to make my way home and change when I get there. In case you
