enough request for an interview, she thought, as she dialled his number, but the signature was a give-away—a slash of black ink, harsh and arrogant, across the creamy paper.
His line was engaged, so she re-dialled and spoke to Seb.
‘You’re fired.’
‘That’s the fourth time this year,’ Seb said mournfully. ‘One day I’ll take her at her word, and then where will she be? And how are you, my honey flower? Did you enjoy your happy hols?’
‘I wish I could remember,’ Alix sighed. ‘I’ve now got to gently but firmly get rid of Mr Brant.’
There was a startled sound, then Seb said, ‘I can tell you now that you won’t. I tried to indicate that to Bianca, but there was no reasoning with her. She put the phone down on me in a hell of a rage.’
‘And broke a vase,’ Alix said ruefully. ‘I’ve just been picking the pieces up.’
‘Well, my advice is still to co-operate with Mr Brant, or you may have more than the pieces of a vase to pick up,’ Seb assured her. ‘Have you come across any of his books?’
‘Only by hearsay. I gather Bianca’s been reading some of them—the Kristen Wallace biography in particular.’
‘Well, I suggest you read them too, so that you know what you’re up against.’
When she had replaced the receiver, Alix sat for a moment or two staring at the phone as if it might bite her. Then slowly and carefully she re-dialled Liam Brant’s number. She did not know whether to be sorry or relieved when it was still engaged.
She looked at the internal telephone on her desk, wondering if she should ring Bianca’s suite to warn her she had been unable to get through to Liam Brant as yet, or whether she should go up and tell her in person, passing on at the same time Seb’s rather terse advice.
She needed to go upstairs anyway. She had her unpacking to do, and she needed to change. Bianca had been too overwrought to notice her brief cream denim skirt and sleeveless black top, and her bare tanned legs culminating in flimsy leather sandals bought from a street market, but she would notice eventually, and not be pleased.
When Alix had first come to work there, she had been so dazzled to find herself the possessor of a salary which exceeded anything she could reasonably have hoped for that she had plunged into an orgy of buying. She didn’t want the way-out things displayed in so many of the boutiques, but it was fun to choose things which enhanced her young slenderness, clothes which whispered to her entranced image in fitting room mirrors that she could be more than merely attractive—that she might even have the promise of beauty.
She had entirely forgotten what had happened after her first visit to the house, when she had been brought into this very room to meet her predecessor, whose abrupt departure had provided the reason for her being offered the job.
The girl had been tight-lipped and hostile, and Alix had been unsure how to defuse the situation, wishing very much that Lester Marchant who had brought her here and introduced them had remained to ease the way for her. But of course he hadn’t, she thought, her mouth lifting in a smile of wry reminiscence. Lester had problems of his own, even then.
‘So you’re the new secretary.’ The other girl had surveyed her from head to toe. ‘I don’t think you’ll last long. You’re not bad looking and Bianca doesn’t brook any possible rivals, you know. That’s why I’m going. I could handle the job, but someone bothered to give me a word and a smile at one of her cocktail parties when he should have been devoting all his attention to her, and that’s fatal.’
Hot with embarrassment, Alix said, ‘Perhaps you ought to know that Miss Layton is my aunt.’
‘She is?’ The other girl sounded astonished, rather than abashed. ‘Well, that’s probably the last time you’ll ever be allowed to tell anyone that. And it won’t save you from the limitations Bianca likes to put on her staff. Niece or not, you’ll submit to the image she wants, or you’ll be out. Now, I suppose I’d better show you how the filing system works.’
Alix had been too dazed by the harshness of the words to pay much attention to the demonstration that followed. She was torn with doubts anyway, knowing how her mother would react to the news that she had accepted a post as Bianca’s secretary, however high-powered and well paid, and beyond the wildest dreams of anyone as relatively young and inexperienced as she was. Whatever the trouble was between Bianca and her mother, she had an uneasy feeling that her decision to work for Bianca, to live in her house, to devote her waking hours to her interests, would improve nothing between the sisters.
Now, it seemed, she would have problems at work as well as at home. She had known a momentary impulse to cut and run, but now an older, wiser Alix knew that she would have regretted it bitterly if she had done so.
Even a few weeks afterwards when Bianca, her smiling lips belying her narrowed eyes, had suggested charmingly that perhaps some of her new clothes were more suitable to her leisure hours rather than an office environment, she had learned to swallow her humiliation. Because by that time she knew that nothing—not Bianca’s moods, or Monty’s hostility, or the silences at home which disturbed her most of all—could persuade her to abandon the sheer stimulation of her new job. And if Bianca wanted her hair tied demurely back instead of flowing freely over her shoulders, and preferred her to dress in quiet drab styles, which were both businesslike and unobtrusive, then she would not argue. It might be weak-willed, but Bianca was paying the piper, and handsomely too, and Alix had no real objection to her calling the tune.
So she dressed and behaved with the utmost discretion, and she made no men friends where she might conceivably be accused of poaching on Bianca’s preserves.
She told herself that she didn’t really mind either that Bianca had fulfilled her predecessor’s prophecy by describing Alix airily as a young cousin, explaining later, ‘A niece sounds incredibly ageing, darling. Don’t you agree?’
Alix was realistic enough to know that even if she had objected violently, it would really have made no difference. Bianca spent a lot of her time pampering her face and body, keeping the march of time at bay. It would have been hard at any time to guess her age, and Bianca clearly intended to keep people guessing for many years yet.
She tried Liam Brant’s number once more for luck, and grimaced as the engaged signal came steadily to her ears.
‘Talkative devil, aren’t you?’ she addressed him as she put the phone down.
As she crossed the hall, the doorbell rang, and she hesitated, wondering if she should answer it, but she could already hear Harris’s footsteps as he came up the basement stairs, and besides, Bianca wouldn’t thank her for receiving guests in her holiday gear. So she went on towards the stairs, returning a smiling greeting to Harris’ hearty, ‘Good morning, miss. A pleasure to see you, if I may say so.’
Of course he could say so, she thought, as she put her hand on the curve of the banister rail. He was the only one who had said anything of the sort, and it was nice to be welcomed.
She was still smiling when she turned slightly to see who was at the door. He was tall, and his shadow fell across the watery sunlight which was making a brave attempt to straggle across the hall floor.
His voice was low-pitched, resonant and cool. ‘My name’s Brant. Miss Layton is expecting me.’
As he spoke, he glanced across the hall
