he said, ‘you’re fired.’
And he cut the connection.
Talie, looking around desperately for someone in uniform to grab and ask for help, suddenly found herself confronted by her knight errant, freed from the armour of navy pinstripe and looking totally gorgeous in a grey cashmere sweater that exactly matched his eyes.
‘Good heavens, are you going to New York, too? How brilliant! I thought I was going to be on my own with Jude Radcliffe, and everyone says he’s a total…’
She stopped. The girls in the office might well be right, but it occurred to her that saying the first thing that came into her head might not be wise since, knight errant or not, he had to be one of Jude Radcliffe’s famously bright young men. And, ignoring that enticing left eyebrow, which was inviting her to continue, she turned quickly to the elderly lady she’d rescued as she’d struggled with her trolley.
‘This is Kitty,’ she said. ‘She’s going to visit her new grandson in New Zealand. At least she would be if she could find her ticket.’
‘It’s all right, dear. I’ve found it. It was stuck between my book and my box of tissues.’
Talie breathed a huge sigh of relief as the woman finally produced the folder from the depths of her bag. ‘I’ll just take her to find her queue and then I’ll be right back.’
‘You’re going nowhere. Our flight has already been called. You should have been here an hour ago.’
‘I know, but there was an accident in the tunnel,’ she said, a touch less brightly as it occurred to her that her knight might be dressed casually for travelling, but his expression was as unyielding as granite. Typical. Just when she could do with a smile or two to allay nerves that were stretched to breaking point, she finally got ‘serious.’
‘And you had to give first aid?’ he enquired.
‘Not this time,’ she said, and, assuming he was teasing her, began to relax and smiled up at him. She was on her own with the smiling, she discovered. Losing her own rapidly, she said, ‘I’ll only be a minute—’
‘You’re not listening to me, Talie,’ he said, in a tone that stopped her in her tracks.
‘Oh, you know my name?’
‘It’s not a name. It’s the word that goes in front of “ho.”’
‘It’s short for Natalie,’ she replied, refusing to allow him to rile her, furious with herself for being foolish enough to daydream for a whole week about riding in the lift again with him. ‘The alternative is Nat,’ she said. ‘Which would you choose?’
There was a pause that lasted a heartbeat, no more.
‘Talie what?’
‘Calhoun,’ she said, certain that she’d won a very small victory. But, refusing to fall into the trap of smiling again, she offered him her hand in her most businesslike manner. ‘I’m standing in for Heather on this trip. Her daughter has—’
‘I know what her daughter has done,’ he said, taking her hand and clasping it in his, holding it a touch more firmly than was quite comfortable. Rather more ‘You’re not going anywhere’ than ‘How d’you do?’ ‘And I hope they run out of gas and air.’
‘That’s not very nice. I’m sure she didn’t do it deliberately.’ Then, seeing from his expression that she wasn’t doing herself any favours, she said, ‘I’m sorry, you have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.’
He didn’t immediately fill the void, but instead gave her a look that took in her entire appearance, from the top of her embarrassing hair, via the comfortable trouser suit—it had been a toss-up between style and comfort and, taking into consideration the fact that she’d be sitting in it for seven hours, she’d gone for comfort—to her lowest heels. Right now she wished she’d gone for style, four-inch heels and to hell with practicality…
At that moment Kitty stopped fussing with her bag and looked up. ‘Good Lord, aren’t you Jude Radcliffe?’ she said. ‘I bought shares in your company after I saw you on TV. You were so charming when that nasty interviewer was rude to you…’
‘Charm is all a matter of perspective. From Miss Calhoun’s point of view I’m a total…’ And that enticing left eyebrow invited her to fill in the blank.
The word that slipped from her lips wasn’t the one she’d heard applied to him. But it was near enough.
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