… who the hell of?’ he challenged her.
It had been on the tip of her tongue to say, ‘Me’, but suddenly, for no real logical reason, her heart started to beat too fast and she found she could not actually say the word.
‘I suppose you mean Ryan,’ he told her, answering his own question. ‘My God, that only underlines what I was just saying. If you really think I could ever be jealous of a creep like that …’
As he studied her downbent head and the way her dark hair swung over her face, concealing her expression from him, Mark knew that he had over-reacted. The bright morning sunshine highlighted the chestnut shine on her hair and the lissom softness of her body.
His own ached abruptly in a sharp spasm of sexual response. He wanted to pick her up and carry her over to their bed, spread the soft, warm femaleness of her underneath him and make love to her with such passion that she would not be able to suppress her sharp cries of pleasure, her body’s response to him, her need and desire for him. He wanted, he recognised, her recognition of him as a man … as a source of power and strength. That knowledge shook him, disturbing him, making him reject the sexual message his body was giving him.
What he wanted, a cold black corner of his mind told him, was her acknowledgement of his power over her, her subservience to him.
But no, that could not be true. He was not that kind of man; he never had been; that kind of egotistical need was a male trait he despised. Their relationship was one of mutuality and respect.
Or at least it had been. Deborah seemed to have more respect for Ryan these days than she did for him.
Test her, a small inner voice urged him. Let her prove to you that you’re wrong.
‘If you’ll take my advice you won’t go,’ he heard himself saying.
Deborah lifted her head and frowned as she looked at him. ‘I don’t have any option. I have to go,’ she told him. ‘Ryan …’ When she saw the expression on his face, she reminded him quietly, ‘He is my boss, Mark.’
‘Yes,’ Mark agreed equally quietly.
It was only later, when she was actually in her own office, that Deborah asked herself why she had not pushed Mark to explain more rationally why he felt she should not attend the cremation.
Admittedly Philippa Ryecart was not involved with the company in any official capacity and until she had had her first meeting with the bank, who were the company’s main creditors, she would not know to what extent Andrew’s personal assets were involved. It was not unknown in such cases where a man knew his business was failing for him to withdraw as many of its assets as he could, converting them into funds for his private use, and it would be part of her job to discover if this had happened.
Scavenging among the rotting carcasses of the dead, Mark had called it, and she supposed to some extent he was right.
It all depended, though, on what attitude you took. ‘The company’s creditors have every right to try to recover their money,’ she had pointed out to him defensively.
‘Every right,’ Mark had agreed and had then added, ‘How will you feel, Deborah, telling people that they’re going to lose their jobs; that their redundancy money and very probably their pension as well has gone?’
‘I’m not responsible for the company’s failure,’ Deborah had defended.
‘No, but you’re the one who’s going to have to stand there and tell them … you’re the one who’s going to have to look at their faces and see the fear in them.’
‘Stop it,’ she had told him fiercely, asking, ‘Why are you doing this to me, Mark? It’s my job, you know that …’
‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ he had apologised, his face softening as he’d recognised her distress.
They had made it up and she had told herself that it was silly to feel so hurt, but now they were quarrelling again.
It had been tempting this morning to admit to him that she didn’t want to go to the cremation, but Ryan had warned her against letting her emotions get in the way of doing her job properly. He had also let it slip that some of the other partners felt he was taking a risk in allowing her so much responsibility and that they had felt he should have appointed a man to head the team, with her as second in command.
She now felt honour-bound to prove to them that she was up to the job, not just for her own sake but for Ryan’s as well.
She had wanted to explain all this to Mark but his attitude had made it impossible for her to confide in him. It hurt her that he couldn’t be a little more understanding, that he couldn’t seem to see how important it was to her that she prove herself, and how much she needed his support and approval.
Ryan came into her office just as she had finished making arrangements to see the bank. He smiled at her as she replaced the receiver and said softly, ‘I like the suit. Black looks good on you.’
As his glance flickered over her, Deborah suspected that it wasn’t only her smartly cut black business suit that he was envisaging her in. Ryan would definitely be the black underwear, stockings and suspender type, she acknowledged, but she let his slow, sensual appraisal of her pass without comment, saying meekly, ‘I’m due at the crematorium at two; it seemed the right thing to wear.’
‘Ah, yes … pity … I was going to suggest you join me for lunch. I’m seeing Harry Turner, the bank’s regional director, and I thought it would give you an opportunity to do a bit of networking.’
Deborah shook her head with genuine regret, half hoping he would suggest that she give the crematorium a miss, but he didn’t. If he had done, would she have told Mark the truth or would she have let him assume that she had not gone because he had not wanted her to? She frowned. Why should she need to employ such deceit? She and Mark had always been totally honest with one another.
Mark saw Ryan leaving Deborah’s office. He had been on his way there himself to apologise for his surliness this morning, but now he abruptly changed his mind.
He had never liked Ryan; he admitted that freely. There was something about the man, about his attitude to life and to other people, that irked him. Ryan, while paying lip-service to the views and opinions of others, nevertheless still managed to betray an arrogance and lack of consideration for any viewpoint but his own which left Mark breathless … and envious?
No, of course not. But he was aware that in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of his peers here at work, according to the ancient code of male approval he would be judged inferior to Ryan.
Ryan was a swaggering, macho buccaneer of a man who, despite the fact that modern conditioning demanded that his male peers disapprove of him for those traits, still, because of those very characteristics, secretly appealed to a part of the male instinct.
And the female? Did Deborah perhaps secretly despise him and wish he were more like Ryan?
Mark frowned. Was it really Deborah’s contempt that he feared, or his own? Was it in her eyes that he feared comparison with Ryan, or his?
His thoughts were too uncomfortable to pursue; they opened up a vein of insecurity and weakness within himself from which he instinctively retreated.
As
