Then, as he waited for an opening in the seemingly endless string of traffic, she made a determined effort to pull herself together, concentrate on the matter in hand. ‘How long will it take to get to The Beeches? Can we make it by ten?’
‘I’ll do my best, but I’m running short of miracles for this week.’
Her groan was heartfelt. She should have left the minute the car had arrived, but she’d needed to sound out Beth. Without her support the whole thing would be a lot more complicated. She was going to need someone to mop her brow and hold her hand. Modern science might offer the perfect solution to her needs, but it wouldn’t be there to offer any of those extras, any of those tender touches.
‘Relax. If Miss Garland gives you a hard time for being late just suggest she tries driving through Knightsbridge at this time in the morning.’ His eyes crinkled in another of those killer smiles.
Miss Garland? He didn’t know? Didn’t realise who she was? It was her turn to smile.
‘And who shall I say sent the message?’
There was a hint of laughter in her voice and Dan glanced again at the mirror to check out what that mouth was doing. Actually, her mouth was worth looking at just for itself. Scarlet red and sexy as hell. ‘Daniel Redford. At your service, ma’am.’
‘I’ll be sure to tell her, Daniel Redford. In the meantime, since you’re at my service, will you please do your best to get me there on time?’
‘I’ll certainly try,’ he said, and, glancing over his shoulder, edged the car away from the kerb, forcing a cab driver to give way to him. The cab driver did not like it and expressed his feelings forcefully. Dan merely smiled and raised a hand in a gesture of thanks, as if the cabbie had given way politely. ‘I’ve heard she’s a bit of an old tartar,’ he said. ‘Your Miss Garland.’
‘Have you?’ The lady with the beautiful mouth seemed surprised. ‘Who told you that?’
‘She’s famous for it. Efficiency with a capital E. Are you a new girl?’
‘Er … no.’ The tartar in question wondered briefly what he would say if she told him the truth. She resisted the temptation. This was far more entertaining. ‘I’ve been with the agency since the very beginning.’
‘Oh, well, you’ll know all about her. What’s she like?’
‘I thought you knew all about her.’
He shrugged. ‘Only gossip.’
‘And the gossips say that she’s a tartar? No, wait, an efficient tartar.’
‘A very rich, efficient tartar I would imagine, if she charges the kind of fees that include chauffeur driven cars for her secretaries.’
He was making it up as he went along, she decided. Just to keep her talking. The thought made her want to smile. She tried very hard not to. ‘Her standards are certainly very high.’
‘I don’t suppose she’d approve of one her ‘‘girls’’ chatting with a common chauffeur, then?’
As long as they looked the part and did a good job, her ‘girls’ could chatter to whomsoever they wished, in their own time. ‘Are you common?’ she asked.
Amanda didn’t think so for a minute. His accent was pure London, but the streets had been pretty effectively scrubbed from it. And from the brief impression she’d had of him as he’d opened the door, waited for her to fasten her seat belt, she knew that few men of her acquaintance could have matched him for physical presence. He topped her by a head, with shoulders that could have borne the troubles of the world and the kind of bone structure that gave a face character. She catalogued his attributes and found none of them wanting. And there had been something distinctly uncommon about those eyes.
It occurred to Amanda that if she had been looking for a man, rather than a sperm donation, she would be hard pressed to find a more attractive proposition. The thought settled low in her abdomen and lingered there.
Was he common? It wasn’t the answer Daniel had expected, but it was certainly the one he deserved. He’d made the kind of remark that would leave a girl appearing snobbish, feeling uncomfortable if she didn’t answer, chose not to engage in conversation. Hardly the way to treat a paying customer, even if someone else was doing the paying.
He was pleased that she hadn’t fallen for it, but then his passenger was hardly a girl. She was a self-assured and very beautiful woman, far too mature to be taken in by that kind of line—by any kind of line for that matter. Looking the way she did, she was bound to have heard them all before. It would take originality to catch this lady’s attention, to hold it. It occurred to him that it was a long time since he’d met a woman capable of holding his.
‘I was a docklands brat,’ he said, leaving it for her to decide. ‘In the days when there were still docks worthy of the name.’ He still was, he realised, and smiled at the thought. He hadn’t moved very far from his roots.
‘In the days before the warehouses were bought by developers and converted into luxury homes for the seriously rich?’ He had been direct, assuming that the truth would put a brake on the conversation, but her mouth widened in another of those smiles. ‘A bit of a tearaway, were you?’
Got it in one. ‘I’m a model citizen these days,’ he assured her.
‘Mmm.’
The sound portrayed a world of doubt and Daniel laughed. Flirting was a bit like riding a bicycle; there might be a bit of a wobble when you hadn’t done it for a while, but it soon came back.
‘What about you?’ he asked.
Nice teeth, Amanda thought, looking at his smile reflected in the rear view mirror. Then gave herself a mental slap for checking him out feature by feature. As if she were looking over a stud horse. Nice mouth. ‘Am I a model citizen?’
‘That’s a given; after all you’re a Garland Girl. Highly trained, beautifully groomed and guaranteed trustworthy.’
Her shoulders lifted half a centimetre. The public relations image was still in place and doing the job, she was happy to note. It was the quality image she intended to exploit to the full with her plans for expansion. ‘I told you, Miss Garland has very high standards.’
‘Bad-tempered old tartars always use that excuse.’ Stuck fast in rush hour traffic, with nothing to do but look in his mirror at his passenger, he saw her mouth begin to form a protest, then give a little half-smile as if she were secretly amused by his less than flattering description of her boss, but she refused to join in. ‘How did you get to be one of the famous Garlands Girls?’ he prompted.
She’d been born to it, that was how. Garland had been her mother’s maiden name and she’d suggested that Amanda use it when she started the agency, rather than the family name of Fleming, just in case it had all gone pear-shaped. She’d been irritated at the time by this apparent lack of faith, but then a journalist doing a feature on secretarial agencies had coined the phrase ‘Garland Girls’ to describe her particular brand of educated, classy temps and it had stuck—become a brand-name almost. She was seriously thinking of trademarking it.
But she wasn’t about to tell this flirtatious chauffeur any of that. No matter how attractive his
