Читать книгу Mistletoe Mistress - HELEN BROOKS, Helen Brooks - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

‘AND he wants your answer tomorrow morning, is that right?’ Charles’s voice had been sleepy when he’d answered the phone—it was past midnight after all—but once Joanne had begun to talk the telephone had fairly crackled with excitement.

‘He wants to know if I’m interested enough to go on to the next phase,’ Joanne answered quietly, ‘and if I am he’ll put me more fully in the picture.’

‘And are you?’ Charles asked evenly.

‘I suppose so, but if I don’t make a go of it and I’m left with egg on my face...’

‘And if you do make a go of it the world’s your oyster,’ Charles said steadily. ‘Think of it, Joanne; it’s a dream of a career move, and frankly it sounds like he’s only asking you to do what you’ve been doing for me for five years. We’ve worked so closely together there isn’t a thing you don’t know about managing a publishing house.’

‘But this one is so much bigger.’ That sounded rude and she added quickly, ‘Well, a bit bigger, and it’s in France and—’

‘You could do it and Hawk Mallen knows it or else he wouldn’t have offered you the job.’

‘Charles, I’m sorry I phoned you at this time of night, but I don’t feel I know enough about the Mallen Corporation and ... and Hawk Mallen to make a decision. Would you mind filling me in on what you know?’

‘On Hawk or the Mallen empire?’ Charles’s voice was very dry.

‘Both.’

By the time they finished the call, fifteen minutes later, Joanne knew the Mallen Corporation had been founded by Hawk’s American/French grandfather over fifty years ago, beginning with a textile warehouse shop that quickly grew into a string of the same and then diversified into more avenues than even Charles was sure of. The old man had had one son, Hawk’s father, who, as Hawk had already mentioned, had been killed in an automobile accident, thereupon making Hawk a millionaire several times over at the tender age of twenty.

Charles had said more, much more, but Joanne had found her attention wandering more than once as a pair of very blue, piercingly intent eyes kept swimming into her consciousness. Hawk Mallen was a mesmerising man to be with and the compelling weight of his personality stayed long after the man himself had gone. He exuded energy and power and vigour, and those moments in his arms on the dance-floor... She shut her eyes as her senses swam. If she took this job—if—she would make sure she never put herself in such a vulnerable position again.

Her thoughts continued along this same path once the call had ended and she had showered and slipped into bed.

Other women, more worldly, experienced women, might be able to handle a man like Hawk and enjoy the challenge, but he frightened her half to death. She shut her eyes tightly in the warm darkness, her toes curling into the linen covers.

Not that he had behaved as anything but the perfect gentleman on their ride home, seeing her to her door with a polite handshake and almost distant smile that would have sat well on a maiden aunt. In fact from the moment he had explained about the job one could almost have called his attitude cool, certainly formal... She refused to recognise even a shred of pique at his lack of interest. It suited her—the fact that he was concerned only with her ability to do the job he had in mind. It did. She knew only too well how the man-woman relationship, with all its complications, could prove a time bomb that ruined the lives of everyone within a mile radius.

As though it were yesterday her mother’s face was there, pretty, irritated, as she had handed her over to the social worker at the home. ‘It will only be for a little while, Joanne.’ Her mother had clearly wished she were anywhere but in the neat, orderly office with officialdom present. ‘Just until Mummy gets a nice house to live in.’

The ‘nice house’ had taken three years to achieve, three years in which she was moved from foster home to foster home, until, at the age of seven, her mother had married. Not again—she had never been married to Joanne’s father who had deserted his pregnant girlfriend once the good news was imparted—but for the first time. That marriage had lasted nine months, and by the time she was eight she was back in a foster home again, with the knowledge that her mother could barely wait to see the back of her.

When she was nine her mother had married Bob, and it had been at his insistence that she was once again placed in her mother’s care.