Читать книгу One Night with Her Brooding Boss - Кэтти Уильямс, Cathy Williams - Страница 13

‘LOOK, Magenta, I don’t want to rush you,’ Nancy said in a way that clearly said that was exactly what she wanted to do. ‘But Quinn’s only slipped out for an eleven o’clock appointment.’

‘So what?’ Magenta said impatiently. ‘He’s got a damn nerve.’ She was still looking round, trying to take everything in. She could understand Quinn wanting to live the sixties in order to give the campaign that final fizz of authenticity—hadn’t she done the same thing herself? But didn’t he know there was such a thing as going too far? ‘Nancy, what’s been going on here?’

‘The usual?’ Following her glance, Nancy gazed around the office.

‘The usual,’ Magenta repeated grimly. ‘Is it usual to remove the computers?’

‘The what?’

‘Okay, so Quinn’s got you playing his game,’ Magenta said. ‘I can understand that you don’t want to lose your job—I’m just thinking of all the expense involved in putting this right again—’ She had already reasoned that the reorganisation of the office would have been fairly easy if Quinn had copied the layout from the old photographs on the wall, but there were other things she couldn’t account for. There was a different feel to the place, never mind the look, which was dated, a little drab and definitely not the right environment to encourage cutting-edge design work. She thought it boring, not to mention inhospitable. There were different phones too, but it was the ergonomically unhelpful furniture that really concerned her—and single glazing? Had Quinn gone mad? Never mind the expense, what about condensation? Cold? If people were uncomfortable at work, productivity would suffer. Didn’t Quinn know anything?

And there was a different smell too…

Cigarette smoke?

‘Nancy!’ Magenta exclaimed with increased urgency.

‘Are you all right, Magenta?’ Glancing round, Nancy grabbed a chair and tried to press Magenta into it.

‘I’m fine.’ She was anything but fine. What had happened here? Had Quinn got people in to dress the offices like a sixties stage-set? And how was it possible she had slept through those changes? But it wasn’t just the noise element that concerned her; these changes were too thorough, too perfect, too convincing.

Magenta’s throat dried. This wasn’t some office teambuilding exercise. This was reality. This was reality for Nancy and for all the people here. It was Magenta who was out of sync. She must have fallen down the rabbit hole, like Alice, while she’d been asleep and landed in the sixties. And now the shock of being trapped inside a dream was only exceeded by her dread of meeting Quinn. From what she’d gathered, he was just the sort of man who would slot right into the sixties, where men ruled. Quinn obviously thought they did.

Magenta took a few steadying breaths while Nancy looked on anxiously. Magenta’s heart was pounding uncontrollably, but whatever had happened she would have to manage it.

She looked as much a part of the sixties as everyone else in the office, Magenta reassured herself, with her carefully made-up face, perfect hair and vintage cream wool dress. Though you could have bounced bullets off her underwear, it did outline her shape to the point where her breasts were outrageously prominent. That, believe it or not, was the fashion. It could best be described as ‘sex in your face’. No wonder Jackson had commented; she should have known better than to dress like this, but had done so innocently. Back in the real world, it had made her feel sexy—and after the encounter with the biker she had wanted to prove to herself that she still could feel that way. Now she realised drawing attention to herself in a sixties office was asking for trouble.

But, on the plus side, she had been researching the era for quite some time, so even locked into this bizarre dream she wasn’t entirely out on a limb. She could even accept and be a little reassured by the fact that the dream seemed to be influenced by her research; there was certainly plenty of raw material here. Although quite how the summer of love, the sexual revolution and the Whisky a Go Go, the first disco in America—which just happened to be Quinn’s homeland—would manifest themselves remained to be seen.

She would have to rely on what she knew if she was going to anticipate and avoid some of the problems, Magenta concluded. She would draw on that knowledge now—and her first action would be to open all the windows and let the smoke out.

Predictably everyone complained that it was too cold. ‘Well, you can’t smoke in here,’ Magenta insisted. ‘It’s against the law.’

‘Since when?’ one of the younger guys asked, swinging his arm around her waist to drag her close so she had no alternative but to inhale his foul-smelling breath.

‘And that is too,’ she informed him, removing his searching hand from her tightly sculpted rear end.

‘Ooh.’ He turned to his friends to pull a mocking face. ‘What got into your bed this morning, Miss Steele?’

‘No one? ‘ another man suggested, to raucous jeers.

‘We all know what’s wrong with you, ice maiden.’

‘Cut it out!’ Magenta said angrily. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

‘Apparently, you never are,’ one of the men murmured to his colleagues in a stage whisper.

As if that were the cue for the main player to enter the scene, the double doors at the far end of the office swung open and every head swivelled in that direction. Some of the women even stood at their desks as if royalty was about to enter the room. To say Magenta was stunned by this reaction wouldn’t even come close. ‘What the…?’

‘Quinn,’ Nancy told her tensely, hurrying away.

Magenta turned to say something to Nancy, but everyone including Nancy had returned to work the second Quinn arrived. And Quinn didn’t just arrive—he strode across the floor like a conquering hero. To make matters worse, all the women were giving him simpering glances when what he needed, in Magenta’s opinion, was a short, sharp, shock and someone to stand up to him. Whatever dream state they were both trapped in, this was getting out of hand.

But could this really be Quinn? Magenta’s head was reeling. Quinn in the sixties was none other than the gorgeous biker, in a jauntily angled Trilby hat and a dark overcoat that, instead of making him look silly, only succeeded in making him look like the master of the sexual universe.

‘Magenta,’ he said curtly, shrugging the coat off his shoulder and handing it to her along with his hat.

He knew her?

‘That’s a better look for you,’ he said, giving Magenta the most intrusive inspection yet. ‘I like to see a woman in a dress with some shape to it.’

What?

‘Keep it up,’ he said approvingly. ‘And remember, I expect the same high standards from my staff at all times—’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said smartly, playing along, which was all she could do—other than acknowledge Quinn was a beyond the pale chauvinist—as well as the best-looking man she had ever seen in her life. With his tough-guy body clothed in a sharply tailored dark suit and impeccably knotted tie, he looked amazing.

‘I’ll need you for a meeting later,’ he said, as though they had been working together for ever. There was not a shred of equality between them, Magenta registered with a spear of concern.

‘So no gossiping with the other girls in the kitchen when you’re supposed to be making my coffee,’ Quinn warned.

Would that be the coffee with the extra-strong laxative in it? Magenta wondered.

‘And absolutely no lunch break for any of you girls. You’ll have a lot of work to get through by the time I finish the meeting I’m going into now—understood?’

Actually, no, I’m a bit confused. Magenta thought Quinn had called a meeting to discuss her position with the company going forward, but perhaps that directive hadn’t made it through to the sixties. She decided to prompt him, if only to find out how much had travelled with her in the dream. ‘So, you’re having another meeting first?’

‘What are you talking about? ‘ Quinn demanded impatiently.

‘Another meeting before our meeting…?’

Quinn had no worries about touching Magenta. Taking hold of her shoulder in a firm grip, he steered her into an alcove out of sight of the rest of the office. ‘Not in front of everyone, Magenta…’ And then his eyes warmed in a way that made her heart stop. ‘Later, maybe—if I have the time.’

Magenta’s mouth formed a question, but she was so stunned by Quinn’s brazenly sexual behaviour her voice refused to function, and when she did speak it was only to ask Quinn what he wanted her to do with his hat and coat.

‘Why, hang it up, of course,’ he said as if she were one card short of a pack. ‘And when you’ve done that I’ll need plenty of coffee—hot, strong and black. Oh, and when you come into the meeting later, don’t forget your shorthand notebook.’

‘My—?’

‘You’re the office manager now, Magenta—that’s quite a promotion for you. You’ll have to sharpen up if you want to set the seal on this position.’

She’d set something in concrete—the deeds of the building, perhaps, before she dropped them from a great height on Quinn’s head.

But someone else owned the building now, she remembered, biting her lip. Steele Design had been called Style Design when her father had bought it. She had no stake at all here.

Now she found herself staring at the back of her own office door as Quinn closed it in her face.

Then it flew open again. ‘Magenta?’ Quinn rapped. ‘My office. Now.’

You could have heard a pin drop behind her. They all anticipated her immediate dismissal, Magenta guessed. She countered that expectation with her sweetest smile. ‘Of course,’ she replied respectfully; respectful was good—essential—at least until she learned the ropes. Walking inside, she shut the door behind her.

‘Let’s get one thing clear,’ Quinn said, handing Magenta the hairpiece she had left on his desk. ‘You do not use my office in my absence for grooming purposes. You do not come in here at all, unless at my express invitation. And, if I’m at work early, you are too.’

‘And how would I—?’

‘How would you know?’ he interrupted, narrowing his eyes. ‘I was coming to that. Do you have your notebook? No? Carry it with you at all times? You have a “must do” list, don’t you? When I give you a memo to alert you to the fact that I will be in here at six in the morning, I expect you to note it down. Why are you late, by the way?’

Magenta opened her mouth and wondered which of the million and one reasons on the tip of her tongue would work best in Wonderland. ‘I apologise,’ she said, thinking better of making a fight out of it just yet. ‘I just thought you might appreciate a couple of days to become acclimatized.’

‘Acclimatised? I’ve come over from the States, not the moon. What’s wrong with you limies?’

Limies? Whoah; that was an old term Magenta guessed hadn’t been used much since the war. The term was a hangover from the way-back-when days, when British sailors were given limes to counteract scurvy. Surely they were way past that?

‘I need you here on time, Magenta,’ Quinn continued to rap. ‘You’re my assistant as well as the office manager. If the job’s too much for you, just let me know.’

‘It isn’t—I mean, yes, sir,’ Magenta spat out crisply, stopping just shy of a salute.

This was novel. This was annoying and confusing. And, alarmingly, it was pretty amazing too. Quinn was pretty amazing, with all that dark hair escaping his best attempt to tame it from falling over his brow. And those eyes, steely and fierce—not to mention the body currently concealed beneath some pretty sharply tailored clothes. Here at last was a man who was really worth taking on. Had she met her match at last? Forget all that nonsense about not wanting to add him to her workload; she would gladly put Quinn on her ‘must do’ list.

‘Please accept my apologies.’ She wanted to keep the job, such as it was, didn’t she? ‘I forgot you intended making such an early start. And I’ll be sure to remember my, er, “must do” list in future.’

‘Be sure you do. Just remember, this might be your first day on the job, but it gets you no special favours from me. I expect you up to speed by the end of the day. And any thoughts you might have had about taking time off before the holidays, cancel them.’

She had to swallow her pride. She’d been doing a lot of that recently, but it would only be until she found her feet down this complicated rabbit-hole—or, better still, until she woke up. ‘I’ll get the coffee, shall I?’

‘Yes, you do that,’ Quinn agreed. ‘And take that dead rat with you.’

‘Of course.’ She was only too happy to drop the horrible hairpiece in the first bin she found.

The men filed in and sat around the boardroom table as Magenta set the coffee down in front of Quinn. Her team, nearly all female, could have run rings around them, she concluded five minutes into the meeting. What were the women doing sitting outside typing? Surely some of them had flair?

She glanced at Quinn as he rubbed a hand across his eyes, as if he had forgotten something. Was it too much to hope he had intended to include some of the women in the meeting?

‘I should have asked for coffee for everyone,’ he apologised—to the men. ‘Magenta? ‘ he added brusquely, shooting an impatient glance her way.

She wasn’t going to snap back in front of the men, she decided. Quinn might have lost all sense of business protocol by speaking to her so rudely, but she hadn’t. ‘No problem at all,’ she said pleasantly, sweeping out of the room, surprised by the openly admiring glances she was attracting. She would gladly exchange those looks for a return to the casual acceptance of her gender she was used to. The men’s gazes burning a hole into her back made her really uncomfortable, though she was pleasantly surprised when one late arrival rushed to hold the door for her. Were her sensibilities changing too?

No. She bridled outside the room, hearing some very male laughter erupting behind the door. Quinn barked a command and there was silence, but Magenta got the distinct impression that the laughter had been directed at her.

She made the coffee and took it into the men, but held back from serving it. If they wanted a coffee, then one of them would have to pour it. She left the room and returned with her notebook as instructed. She didn’t know shorthand, but she could write fast.

And she had to. Quinn wasn’t short of ideas, most of which she agreed with, but it would have been nice if he consulted his team along the way, rather than issuing instructions. He ignored her completely. She might have been invisible. ‘Can I ask a question?’ she said at one point.

‘If you want to leave the room, you don’t have to be coy,’ he said while the men sniggered and Magenta’s cheeks flamed red.

‘I don’t want to leave the room,’ she said, conscious of the other men looking on with interest as the little drama unfolded.

‘Then please be quiet,’ Quinn rapped impatiently. ‘Can’t you see we’re having an important meeting here?’

And clearly it was a meeting she wasn’t up to taking part in, according to Quinn, who seemed stuck in a chauvinist mindset.

What to do? She could argue her point, but it would only be counterproductive in this company. She wanted Quinn to listen to her and to take her seriously. She would have to play this subtly for the sake of the team she had already decided she must build—at least until she got the hang of the workings of this strange new world.

But as she sat through the meeting, Magenta’s anger grew. As she’d thought, many of the men weren’t up to much, while she was increasingly certain that the women currently wasting their talents typing up dictation were being held back. Everything was upside down. She sighed, frustration beating at her brain. She was impotent to do anything about it until she’d worked things out.

‘Magenta?’

She jumped with surprise as Quinn rapped out her name.

‘If you find it so hard to pay attention, I can always get someone to replace you—’

Quinn wasn’t joking. She was in imminent danger of losing her job. And this might be a crazy dream-world, but right now it was all she had got.