Читать книгу War Of Love - Кэрол Мортимер, Carole Mortimer - Страница 4

IF ONE more opportunistic male used the excuse of patting the fluffy white tail on her bottom as a means of touching her, Silke knew she was going to scream!

The adolescent schoolboys had been bad enough, a small group of them taking much delight in tormenting her as they wandered around the store as a way of filling in time during their school holidays; Silke was positive that none of them could actually afford to buy anything in the prestigious store Buchanan’s, and she had seen the store detective, under the guise of a customer, eyeing them cautiously too. Although he hadn’t made any move to stop them when they had taunted Silke!

Just as he hadn’t blown his cover when an old man had approached her a few minutes ago. Perhaps he had considered that Silke, after dealing with the schoolboys herself, was more than capable of dealing with him too. And she certainly had. She didn’t care that the elderly man had twinkling grey eyes and a friendly smile; the way he had patted her bottom had been altogether too friendly, and had earned him a verbal rebuke of the most cutting kind!

Of course, she knew the way she was dressed was sure to provoke attention, had expected a few ribald jokes, but the familiarity was something else entirely. God, no wonder Nadine had decided she had something more important to do today; she had probably known exactly what this job was going to be like!

As it was, Silke intended having a word with her mother about the sort of—

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Silke spun round at the sound of that harshly accusing male voice—as quickly as she could in these stupid high-heeled shoes that went with the rest of this ridiculous costume. Whoever had chosen this bunny outfit had obviously opted for the overtly sexual rather than the cuddly, fluffy kind, and Silke was feeling very conspicuous with her long legs encased in silky black tights, and wearing a brief black bathing costume whose only similarity to a rabbit was the fluffy white pom-pom on her bottom. At least the fluffy white head with its long ears and face-mask had the advantage of covering up all of her hair and most of her face; she would hate anyone actually to recognise her wearing this costume!

And as she turned to face the owner of that grating voice she was glad of at least that amount of anonymity—because the thunderous-looking man who owned that more than cutting voice was looking—glaring!—straight at her! And, as far as she was aware, she had never seen him before. She would have remembered someone like him; he wasn’t a man anyone was likely to forget in a hurry. Or slowly, either, for that matter...

He was taller than average, well over six feet, Silke would guess judging from the way he towered over her, his black hair styled severely short, thick black brows over the coldest grey eyes Silke had ever seen, and the handsomeness of the rest of his face—a long, straight nose and sculpted lips over a squarely aggressive jaw—was marred by the fierce anger of his expression. And it was directed straight at her!

Nevertheless, Silke found herself glancing over her shoulder to see if she could be mistaken in thinking she was the object of his anger, instantly knowing that she wasn’t; for the moment there was a lull in the amount of people entering this section of this prestigious department store—and she was the only person in sight!

But, before she could reluctantly turn back to face the irate man, she felt the top of one of her arms clasped in a tight grip, the tray she held unbalancing precariously. ‘Careful, I’m—’

‘Move!’ that harshly irritated voice said economically, and Silke almost fell over in those ridiculously high heels as she was dragged across the department store in the direction of the lift, in full view of everyone.

Which was remarkable in itself; none of the people shopping, or indeed the staff, seemed to be taking the slightest bit of notice of the woman in the bunny costume being physically manhandled in front of their eyes by a fiercely angry man—in fact, on closer inspection, the staff seemed to be looking the other way! Of course, they were a superior lot, Silke had quickly discovered, looking down at the interloper in their midst dressed in the revealing bunny costume. But, even so, she would have thought at least one of them might have shown a little concern for her being abducted by a complete stranger in front of them!

‘Inside,’ the man at Silke’s side ordered grimly when she looked around desperately as the lift doors opened silently in front of them. Not that the instruction was really necessary; with that vice-like grip on her arm there wasn’t much chance of her going anywhere but where this man decided that she should!

Unless she decided to scream. Her mother had assured her that she had a singing voice that would stop traffic in its tracks, so a scream should surely achieve a similar effect. Not that she had ever put the singing to the test before either, but—

‘The top, Charlie,’ the man at her side tersely instructed the lift attendant.

That stopped Silke in her tracks. The top floor...? That was where all the executive offices of this store were housed, where all the executives of the exclusive Buchanan stores had their offices...

Silke slowly turned to look at the man who stood so rigidly disapproving at her side, the scream in her throat dying to a strangled whimper. What could she have done wrong during her brief time on duty to have aroused the attention of one of the higher echelons of Buchanan’s? She didn’t think she had done—

Oh, God—the elderly man, the one she had given a verbal dressing-down a short time ago—he couldn’t have complained about her behaviour, could he? His eyes had twinkled admiringly even after her verbal rebuke, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t thought better of the whole thing and complained to the management. Considering his behaviour, she should have been the one complaining! But that probably wasn’t the way the management of Buchanan’s would see it; they claimed that their staff were always polite and helpful; that, above all, ‘the customer was always right’. In this case it probably wouldn’t help for her to point out that she wasn’t strictly one of their employees. In fact, in some ways, it was worse that she wasn’t; her mother had been thrilled to get the call from Buchanan’s personnel department, and would be mortified if Silke had blotted her agency’s copy-book during their first job for them!

Silke looked up at the man she now knew to be one of Buchanan’s executives with beseeching green eyes. ‘If this has something to do with that elderly man earlier—’

‘Thanks, Charlie.’ As the lift doors opened he once again spoke to the lift attendant—once again ignoring Silke, except to pull her out of the lift this time, glancing down fiercely at her feet as she stumbled yet again in the high-heeled shoes. ‘If you can’t walk in the damned things, then for God’s sake take them off!’ he barked disgustedly.

Deep colour heated her cheeks, her mouth opening with a sharp rejoinder for his arrogance—until she realised the lift doors were still open, and ‘Charlie’ was watching them with avid interest. And Silke wasn’t about to provide any more of a floor show for him or anyone else, so she reached down with as much dignity as she could muster, to remove the offending—painful!—shoes.

The relief she felt at their removal was quickly forgotten as the man at her side gave a contemptuous snort. ‘Good God, girl, just how tall are you?’

Except that he was obviously an executive of the Buchanan group of world-exclusive stores, Silke still didn’t know who this man was, but even the little she did know about him didn’t give him the right to be personally offensive about her lack of height. She knew she was short—it had been the bane of her youth to realise she had stopped growing at only five feet tall—and she had told her mother she was going to look ridiculous dressed up as a bunny girl; most of the ones she had seen or read about were about six feet tall! But her mother had insisted that her lack of height would just give her a cute and cuddly look. If this man’s reaction was anything to go by, it was the last thing she looked; he couldn’t have been this offensive to someone who looked ‘cute and cuddly’!

Silke stuck her chin out defensively, instantly realising how futile the action was; this man couldn’t even see her chin behind the stupid rabbit mask, let alone that she was outraged.

‘Tall enough!’ she snapped, at once impatient with the stupidity of her words as much as with the ridiculous costume she was wearing. Tall enough for what? she thought self-disgustedly.

The man she had addressed the remark to obviously thought her retort was ridiculous too as he looked scornfully down his haughty nose at her!

Anything else she might have added in her defence was forgotten as she realised they were standing outside the personnel manager’s office. She had been sent up to Doug Moore’s office this morning when she had reported for work, and despite this arrogant man’s familiarity as he marched straight past the secretary in the outer office without so much as the politeness of acknowledging her existence, and into the personnel manager’s office itself, Silke knew that this man certainly wasn’t Doug Moore. Doug was a tall slender man, with slightly over-long blond hair, and a manner that was more than a little flirtatious.

A man Silke had known without a doubt she could deal with. Which was more than could be said for this other man! Although that wasn’t to say she wasn’t going to try...

But at the moment he was far from impressed by the fact that Doug Moore wasn’t in his office, turning abruptly on his well-shod heel to go back into the outer office, Silke still firmly clasped at his side, to speak to the now open-mouthed secretary.

‘Find Doug and send him to my office,’ he barked without preamble, not even pausing on his way out of the room to see if the poor woman had acknowledged his instruction.

And no wonder; it had been in the form of a royal command, Silke thought disgustedly, not in the least surprised, when she chanced to glance back, to see that the secretary had already picked up the telephone, obviously calling round in search of her boss. As ordered.

Really, this man, whoever he was, thought he was a one-man army, his orders to be obeyed without question. And, quite frankly, Silke had had enough.

‘Look, I don’t know who you are,’ she told him exasperatedly, attempting to pull out of his grasp, failing miserably, only succeeding in bruising her arm even further as his fingers merely tightened their vice-like grip. She was still being pulled unceremoniously down the luxuriously carpeted hallway towards what she supposed was this man’s own office. She took a deep, controlling breath, determined not to appear to be intimidated by this man. Even if she was! ‘But—’

‘No, you don’t, do you?’ the man bit out grimly, grey eyes narrowed ominously. ‘But I know who you are. Or at least what you’re supposed to be.’ He sounded angry again now. ‘You fall far short of requirements!’

She had told her mother herself that she was far too short and slight to be a bunny girl, but there was no need for this man to be continually insulting about her lack of assets!

‘Now look,’ she spluttered again, intending to tell him exactly what she thought of his opinion. And what he could do with it!

‘I have.’ As if to prove his point, he gave another disparaging glance down the slender length of her body in the revealing outfit. ‘And so has every customer who entered the store this morning! Are you Doug’s latest girlfriend, is that it?’ he scorned, sculptured mouth twisted derisively. ‘It’s difficult to tell what you look like under that ridiculous rabbit head, but I suppose you could be pretty. And I know Doug’s tastes run to the youthfully nubile, so I suppose it’s possible that could be the explanation. It isn’t an acceptable one. To me,’ he added harshly. ‘But it’s the only one I can think of for the moment.’

Silke was once again rendered speechless; the arrogance of the man! ‘Could be pretty’! ‘Youthfully nubile’! The chauvinistic— And then she remembered what she was—or rather, wasn’t!—wearing, and knew there was really no defence she could offer to this man’s scorn when she gave every appearance of being a half-dressed bunny girl!

She barely had time to register the comfort of the next outer office he dragged her through, without stopping, before entering the even plusher office beyond—obviously his own—before she spotted the elderly man of earlier sitting in one of the leather armchairs that faced the imposing desk, the hazy smoke from the cigar he was puffing on with enjoyment filling the room. Silke’s nose—behind the rabbit mask—wrinkled with distaste at the foul-smelling weed.

But at least she had her explanation now; this old man had complained about her verbal rebuke earlier. She couldn’t help wondering what explanation he had given for having earned such a rebuke; she doubted he had told the other man of the way he had touched her bottom with such familiarity.

‘I took the liberty of helping myself to one of your cigars—oh, I say, Lyon.’ The older man’s eyes widened with enjoyment as he spotted Silke at Lyon’s side—what a name! And yet somehow it fitted the man’s fierceness exactly. ‘I know I said she was an appealing little thing, plenty of fire, but you didn’t have to bring her up here to meet—’

‘Shut up, Uncle Henry,’ the man who still held Silke rasped wearily. ‘Sit,’ he instructed her curtly, nodding in the direction of the second chair that faced the opulence of the brown leather-topped mahogany desk, around which he now moved to sit in yet another leather chair, a swivel one this time, leaning forward once he had done so, resting his arms on the leather top, his narrowed, steely gaze fixed on her steadily.

Uncle Henry! So she had made the mistake of actually snapping indignantly at this man’s uncle. That explained a lot. Perhaps she should have realised before now that the two of them were related; they both had those unusual grey eyes, and they were both arrogant enough in their own way! ‘Uncle Henry’ had touched her earlier as if he had a perfect right to do so, and his nephew had dragged her up here without explanation just as if he had as much right. God, what a family!

‘No need to take that tone with me, Lyon,’ Uncle Henry told him without rancour. ‘I’ve told you before, it has little effect when I’ve looked after you since you were a baby; bounced you on my knee, held you when you cried, wiped your nose for you, changed your—’

‘That last claim is definitely a figment of your imagination, Uncle Henry,’ the younger man cut in harshly. ‘You employed a nanny for that particular task. In fact—’ his mouth twisted scornfully—did it ever do anything else? Silke wondered, looking at him ‘—I don’t remember too much of the “knee-bouncing” either; you were always too busy following your own interests!’

His uncle looked unconcerned. ‘Businesses don’t run themselves.’ He shrugged.

‘I wasn’t referring to those sorts of interests,’ Lyon told him drily.

The older man grinned, grey eyes—eyes the same colour as his nephew’s, but oh, so different in expression!—twinkling merrily. ‘So many beautiful women in the world, and so few years to enjoy them! You should try it some time, Lyon; it might make all the difference—’

‘That’s enough, Henry!’ the younger man snapped tautly, eyes glacial now as he turned his attention back to Silke.

Which she instantly wished he hadn’t. She had been finding the two men’s confrontation enlightening to say the least, but it certainly hadn’t improved Lyon’s temper—and it was now directed back at her!

Well, if he had brought her up here, as she suspected he had, to reprimand her for her behaviour towards his uncle earlier, then he could go ahead and do it—and after he had, she would tell him exactly what a dirty old man she thought his uncle to be. And from the brief conversation between the two men just now, that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to him! In fact, attack was her best defence, and she would get in her opinion of his uncle before he could even start on her.

‘I don’t know what your uncle has told you happened downstairs earlier, but—’

‘I thought I told you to sit,’ Lyon observed softly—too softly, dangerously so—completely ignoring her words. Again.

Which Silke was becoming more than a little tired of! ‘I may be wearing this ridiculous bunny outfit—’ her eyes flashed deeply green behind the mask ‘—but underneath this I’m a person, not an animal to be ordered about!’ She was breathing deeply in her agitation.

‘I’m glad you agree that what you’re wearing is—inappropriate,’ he rasped drily, again ignoring what she had really said. ‘If you would care to remove—’

‘I don’t care to remove anything!’ she cut in frustratedly. ‘And if you can’t control the way your uncle behaves towards women, no matter what they are wearing, then I suggest you keep him away from them. Preferably far away!’ she snapped, looking from him to his mildly surprised uncle, before once again turning back to the younger man. ‘The few sharp words I said to him earlier were well deserved, and I would do it again given the same circumstances.’ She glared pointedly at the older man.

Lyon was now looking at his uncle too. ‘Circumstances?’ he prompted softly, dark brows raised questioningly.

The older man looked a little uncomfortable now. ‘Well, as I said, Lyon, she’s an appealing little thing.’ He moved his hands dismissively, once again billowing smoke around the room from the half-smoked cigar he still held.

‘And, being the old rogue that you are, you couldn’t resist the appeal!’ his nephew realised, shaking his head disgustedly. ‘God, Henry, you really are—’ He broke off abruptly as the intercom buzzed on his desk. ‘Yes?’ he rasped impatiently into the innocent machine.

‘Mr Moore to see you, Mr Buchanan,’ came the disembodied voice of his secretary.

Silke missed the rest of the conversation, staring at the man who sat so confidently across the desk from her, at last beginning to realise exactly why he was so confident. Mr Buchanan! This man, the man who had forcibly dragged her into the lift and up to the executive floor of the department store, was a Buchanan.

My God, and not just any Buchanan, from the way he had behaved towards her from the first and the deference with which the staff had treated him, but Buchanan himself, the owner of the store! Unless he was the son; she had thought the owner of the Buchanan group was someone called Charles Buchanan. Although this man’s uncle had said he had effectively been Lyon Buchanan’s guardian since he was a baby, so... None of this really made any difference to the fact that this man was a Buchanan. And the man she had verbally rebuked earlier was his uncle!

She didn’t need any further telling to sit down; she almost fell into the waiting chair. What a mess! And her mother...! Oh, God, what her mother was going to say about this she just didn’t like to think.

Silke turned dazedly as the office door opened behind them to admit Doug Moore.

‘Ah, Doug, so glad you could join us at last,’ he told the other man silkily now, getting slowly to his feet, instantly putting his personnel manager at a disadvantage with his superior height—if he needed any added advantage. His position as owner of the store already more than gave him that!

The younger man looked puzzled by his employer’s obvious displeasure—obvious, despite the pleasantness of his tone; there was an air of menace about Lyon Buchanan that was unmistakable. ‘I was down in Ladies’ Fashions when I got your message—’

‘A pity you didn’t pay Confectionery a visit some time this morning,’ Lyon Buchanan told him icily. ‘Would you like to tell me what that is?’

‘That’ was Silke!

She had recovered enough from the shock of realising exactly who this man was to look up to see what Lyon Buchanan was talking about, only to discover he was looking directly at her. She was ‘that’. Her shock was replaced by indignation as she realised he was once again talking about her as if she weren’t a person, with feelings, but an object to be discussed. And she didn’t care who he was, he still had no right—

‘Good God!’ Doug Moore, the man who had been perfectly charming to her earlier this morning when they met—probably because of his penchant for ‘pretty, youthful nubiles’—was now looking at her with something approaching horror. ‘I—my God...!’ he said again, weakly this time, looking in need of a chair himself now. Except that there wasn’t another one available!

‘A bunny girl, Doug,’ Lyon Buchanan rasped with feeling. ‘You employed a damned bunny girl in a costume so revealing that every lecher within a hundred miles made a beeline for her.’ He looked pointedly at his uncle. ‘A bunny girl,’ he repeated again, as if he could still hardly believe it, ‘to give away our line of chocolate Easter bunnies. When it should have been a cute fluffy rabbit children would find appealing!’

At last Silke was being given an insight into exactly why she had been dragged off the shop floor and up here to the office of Lyon Buchanan himself—and it had nothing to do with what she had said to his uncle Henry! She had wondered at his puzzlement earlier concerning her accusations towards his uncle; now she knew it was because he had had no idea of the verbal encounter between his Uncle Henry and herself; the way his uncle had informed him she was dressed appeared to be the problem!

‘Forgive me if I’m wrong, Doug,’ Lyon Buchanan continued smoothly—his tone saying he knew damn well he wasn’t the one in the wrong, that he rarely, if ever, was! ‘But I thought we had agreed, during the meeting concerning this particular promotion, that we would contact an agency and take on someone who would—’

‘Wear a cute, fluffy bunny costume while giving away the chocolates,’ Doug Moore finished weakly, staring at Silke in the revealing costume as if he still couldn’t quite believe his eyes. ‘I don’t understand how the mistake could have happened—’

‘Oh, you admit there’s been a mistake?’ his employer prompted with raised brows, still supremely confident in the mistake’s not being of his making.

Just as Silke was. But she wasn’t sure it was completely Doug Moore’s either; the instructions her mother had received had been ambiguous to say the least—a simple request for a girl in a bunny costume to promote a line at the store. And when Silke had reported to Doug Moore this morning she hadn’t been in costume, had changed in the staff-room later, so neither of them had realised then that the mistake had been made. And that appeared to be what this was: a genuine mistake, brought about through lack of information on both sides.

Although from the look of increasing anger on Lyon Buchanan’s face he wasn’t going to be satisfied with that explanation! But it was the truth, so what more could any of them say?

‘Buchanan’s has a reputation to uphold,’ he told his personnel manager icily. ‘And I don’t believe having a barely clothed bunny girl in fishnet tights parading around the store is quite the image—’

‘I’m not wearing fishnet tights!’ Silke cut in indignantly as she stood up; she had drawn the line at that part of the costume that had been supplied to her, preferring to wear her own sheer black tights. Not much of an improvement, she knew, when the entire length of her legs was visible, but it was better than those awful things that had arrived with the rented costume.

Lyon Buchanan looked down the long length of his autocratic nose at her. ‘In that case, you have a series of holes in the tights you are wearing, which is just as bad—’

‘What can you expect?’ Silke demanded indignantly, her cheeks burning hotly from where she had looked down and realised he was right about the holes in her tights; there were at least half a dozen in the right leg, and another two on the left. And she hated ladders or holes in her tights, usually carried a spare pair around with her when she was out; but there was nowhere in the briefness of this costume that she could have put a spare pair of tights. ‘After the way you manhandled me earlier—’

‘Really, Lyon,’ his uncle drawled drily, eyes twinkling merrily once again. ‘It’s good to realise you have more than the stuffy Buchanan blood running through your veins after all; that you found the young lady’s charms equally—’

‘Don’t be more ridiculous than you normally are, Henry,’ Lyon Buchanan cut in impatiently.

‘Exactly,’ Silke snapped, equally unimpressed with the idea of this man’s making any overt moves where she was concerned; she thought he was the most insufferable man she had ever met! ‘I realise—now—that there has been some sort of mix-up concerning the sort of bunny costume you wanted—’

‘Oh, you realise it too, do you?’ Lyon Buchanan turned to her harshly. ‘Well, I’m—for God’s sake take that ridiculous head off; I refuse to carry on a conversation with a girl wearing a bunny girl costume and a rabbit’s head with buck teeth!’

He didn’t have to point out how stupid the white fluffy rabbit head looked, with its long floppy ears, a nose that twitched when she talked, and the unrealistically long front teeth. He didn’t have to, but it was just like this man—she had quickly come to realise!—to do so!

Her face flushed with embarrassment as much as with anger, Silke reached up to release the Velcro at the back of the mask, bending her head down to peel the fluffy mask away, shaking her hair back over her shoulders as she finally looked at the three men completely as herself, Silke Jordan, her silver-blonde hair long and straight to her shoulderblades, green eyes surrounded by thick dark lashes, her nose small and straight, her mouth full and pink, her chin pointed.

The admiration she had seen on Doug Moore’s face this morning returned to his eyes, and even Lyon Buchanan was looking at her with a certain amount of male assessment now. But it was the reaction of Uncle Henry—Silke didn’t know what else to call him; there certainly hadn’t been any opportunity for introductions!—that took them all by surprise. He took one look at Silke—and instantly collapsed back in his chair, clutching the left side of his chest, dropping the stub of his cigar on the carpeted floor as he did so!