Читать книгу His Girl Monday To Friday - Linda Miles - Страница 9

CHAPTER FOUR

BARBARY stayed at the office until midnight, coaxing the minutes into sense. She’d been hired for her languages so she prepared them in English, French and German, made copies and left the stacks on her desk.

At six o’clock the next morning she woke to the bleat of her alarm clock. She turned it off and snuggled back into the covers. Why on earth had she set it for such an ungodly—?

Argh.

Blearily she sat up in bed and looked out of the window onto a glorious day. A perfect day for leaving for Sardinia. Instead she’d agreed to be a slave for a year for a mere five per cent of Mallorin. She should have stipulated ten per cent if she had to be out of bed by ten. Too late now.

At seven-fifteen she staggered into the lift at Mallory, precariously balancing a cardboard tray laden with an assortment of pastries and three coffees. Charles could have one; it would take at least two, she reckoned, just to keep her eyes open.

At seven-seventeen she emerged from the lift. Charles’s door was open.

‘You’re late,’ came the curt comment from within.

Barbara approached the room gingerly. It faced east; brilliant yellow sunshine was streaming into the corridor. Narrowing her eyes, she entered the office and flinched.

‘I told you I wanted you here at seven.’ Charles was pacing up and down, a Dictaphone in his hand. He looked sickeningly fresh and energetic, his jaw freshly shaved, hair slicked down, eyes piercing, tie beautifully knotted.

‘I brought breakfast,’ said Barbara.

‘I don’t eat it,’ said Charles.

‘Naturally,’ said Barbara. ‘You’re too busy dictating. I understand. You just carry on and I’ll join you presently.’

Charles scowled. ‘It’s a complete waste of time. If you have trouble waking up in the morning you’d do better to get some exercise. Go for a run as soon as you get up.’

Barbara shuddered. ‘Is that what you did?’ she asked.

‘I went to the gym for an hour.’

Barbara winced. She sank feebly into the nearest chair—the enormous, leather-covered chair that stood behind Charles’s desk. She stretched out a nerveless hand for her first caffe latte—she’d asked for three shots of espresso—and lifted it carefully to her lips.

Charles prowled up and down in front of his desk.

‘Don’t mind me,’ Barbara said pleasantly, reviving slightly under the influence of the coffee. ‘I know you must want to get on with work.’

She selected a croissant from the pile and bit into it Lovely, lovely food. Lovely coffee. Perhaps she would live.

‘I hope you’re not planning to calculate your overtime based on a seven o’clock start,’ Charles said acerbically. ’For this you think you’re worth five per cent of a company?‘

Barbara yawned. ‘More like ten per cent, but you got a good deal.’

Charles glowered at her. He really did look marvellous, Barbara thought sleepily. Marvellous to wake up next to, except that you’d never get the chance because he’d be off to the gym in the middle of the night.

‘A good deal!’

‘Did anyone ever tell you you’re beautiful when you’re angry?’ she asked dreamily.

‘Are we going to have to go through this every morning?’ Charles asked through gritted teeth.

‘Every morning!’ Barbara stared at him in horror. ‘You don’t start this early every morning!’

‘I do,’ he said even more grittily. ‘And so will you.’

‘No, I won’t,’ said Barbara. She put down her coffee and stood up. ‘The deal’s off. I’m not going through this for a year. I’ve done the minutes in English, French and German. There are about ten copies of each on my desk; they should be pretty clear. I really don’t think your seventeen-minute start in dictation would have been that much of a handicap for me, but it’s not my problem. I’m going to Sardinia.’

Charles stalked out to her desk. He came back, leafing through a set of minutes.

‘These are good,’ he said.

‘So glad you like them,’ said Barbara. She started on another croissant.

Charles paced up and down, turning the pages.

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘You can start at eight.’

‘I’d rather go to Sardinia,’ said Barbara, ‘but I did say I’d take the job. I might be willing to start at nine.’

Charles seemed about to say something when his eye was caught by the German minutes, which were now on the top of the stack. He gritted his teeth again.

‘Your problem is your blood sugar is low,’ Barbara explained helpfully. ‘That’s why it’s so important to eat a good breakfast. Otherwise you’re likely to be irritable and short-tempered.’

‘I’m not irritable—’ he began.

‘Have a croissant,’ urged Barbara. ‘Or a Danish pastry. It will help you to get everything in perspective.’

Charles threw the minutes onto a nearby chair. ‘I must be mad,’ he remarked.

‘No, you just have low blood sugar,’ Barbara reassured him. ‘Have something to eat and you’ll feel much better.’

For a moment she wondered whether she’d gone too far. She kept forgetting she no longer had to deal with the easygoing, self-mocking seventeen-year-old Charles who’d laughed at her teasing. Now she was dealing with the driven, self-made entrepreneur who clearly saw her as the single greatest obstacle in his race to take over Eastern Europe. On the other hand, if she once started being scared of Charles...

‘Have something to eat and you’ll make me feel better,’ she went on provocatively. ‘I went to all this trouble to bring something for you—it’s simple good management to show your appreciation. When a member of staff goes out of her way to do something helpful you should show you appreciate the initiative. It’s good for staff morale.’

It occurred to her that she suddenly felt wide awake—wonderful what arguing with Charles did to sweep away the cobwebs.

The spark of temper in his eyes showed he knew she was baiting him. ‘I’ll have something if it will hurry you up finishing your own breakfast and getting on with work,’ he said.

He put a couple of croissants on a plate and took one of the cups of coffee.

Barbara swivelled in the big leather chair. Around and around. ‘What a marvellous chair,’ she remarked on her fourth time around. ‘Do you ever do this?’

‘No,’ said Charles.

‘Too busy,’ said Barbara, rotating again. ‘Too important. Things to do, people to see. Got to set a good example for the staff.’

She put a foot down to stop the chair so that it faced the window. It was only seven-thirty, and the street was still fairly empty—but people were coming down it in ones and twos, a briefcase in one hand, a gym bag in the other, and all these early risers were disappearing through the doors of the Mallory Corporation building. No doubt the effect of Mr Mallory’s good example. There was something depressing about it.

‘Dictations to dictate,’ she added flippantly. She gave the wall a kick with her foot to start the chair around again.

It swivelled perhaps three inches, before coming to an abrupt stop. Barbara found that she was now looking up into the thunderous face of the good example to his staff. She was about to protest indignantly when the Great Motivator took hold of her arms and pulled her roughly to her feet.

‘Don’t you think it’s about time you grew up?’ Charles was speaking through clenched teeth. She must have hit a sore spot. Well, it was good to know there was a chink in his armour.

‘I am grown up,’ said Barbara. ‘I don’t personally call not swivelling in chairs the benchmark of maturity—’

‘Neither do I,’ Charles agreed drily. ‘I was thinking of a few other things, such as doing something with the talents you’ve been throwing away ever since I’ve known you. You should have people to see and things to do yourself. You should have a company of your own, damn it. You could do anything you want—’

‘I was doing exactly what I wanted before you interfered,’ said Barbara breathlessly.

He was still holding her arms; the brilliant eyes blazed down into hers. Unbidden, the thought came to her that he might have held her just so if he’d meant to kiss her. It was something she’d imagined about five thousand times, at a conservative estimate, and this was as close as she was ever likely to get: Charles glaring down at her for not wearing shoulder pads and running a boardroom.

A sardonic eyebrow shot up. ‘The ambition takes my breath away.’

Her eyes fell to the firm, sensuous mouth, now curved in something uncomfortably like contempt. What would happen if she kissed him instead? At least she’d know what it was like...

‘I don’t know why you’re complaining,’ she said, dragging her eyes back to meet his. ‘I thought you needed a multilingual secretary. Where would you be if I weren’t?’

‘Struggling along somehow, I imagine.’ He shook her impatiently. ‘We both know you’ve a good mind. I don’t underestimate myself and, unless yours has mysteriously deteriorated since the age of eleven, I’d say yours is as good as mine. What do you expect me to think when I see someone as good as I am making silly jokes and swinging in my chair like a pretty fool with straw for a brain? Do you think it makes it better that you’re not a man? You should be ashamed of yourself.’

Barbara stared into his eyes. How beautiful they were—the green iris rimmed with black, the lashes thick and long, and then above, the black slash of brow... She zeroed in on the essential element in the lecture.

‘Do you really think I’m pretty?’ she asked.

Charles ground his teeth. He dropped his hands from her arms in disgust. ‘This is a waste of time. I’ve got work to do. Forget I said anything. Do whatever you want with your life as long as it includes typing up dictation for an hour before the meeting.’

‘Yesterday you said I was beautiful,’ said Barbara. ‘Did you mean it?’

He flicked her a glance. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Can we get back to work?’

‘But,’ said Barbara.

‘But what?’

‘Nothing,’ said Barbara. She had the feeling that if she said anything she would say something so stupid it would permanently destroy his flattering estimate of her intelligence. She could almost hear herself blurting out, ‘If I start my own company will you kiss me?’ Bad idea. ‘If I win a Nobel prize, I mean just supposing, would you maybe just for one night—?’ No. No. No.

It was getting up so early that had thrown her off balance. There was something about this queer inhuman hour that did something to your inhibitions. Maybe it was because it all seemed so dreamlike. She dreamed about Charles sometimes, and he was always much nicer in her dreams than he was in real life, so that in the small hours of the morning—around eight, say—Charles would kiss her or she would kiss Charles and she would try as hard as she could not to wake up.

He ejected a tape from the recorder and handed it to her. ‘Get started on this and see how far you get. I’ve just given the names and the gist. You can flesh out the letters and I’ll vet them when you’re done.’

This was the genuine Mallory mode. For some reason it was only now that he’d reverted to type that she was struck by how completely out of character his outburst had been. At the time it had seemed just another case of Charles ordering people around. But...

She stared down at him, ignoring the tape in the peremptorily outstretched hand.

Since when had Charles ever been interested in anyone but himself? At seventeen he’d been self-centred and lazy; now he was self-centred and driven. And since when had he been so completely inconsistent? Last week she’d just been a cog he wanted in his machine, and he’d gone about getting it with his usual ruthlessness. Yesterday he’d been just the same. Now it seemed no sooner had he got her than he was telling her ruthlessly that she was wasting her life as a humble cog.

What was going on?

She’d once had a dream in which it turned out that Charles had been in love with her all along. Unfortunately, she’d never been able to have it again, and it didn’t look as though life was going to improve on the dream—it wasn’t exactly likely that Charles, who was confidence personified, would keep his feelings to himself. But in that case... Well, was it just something left over from his days as honorary older brother?

‘Do you think I should start a company?’ Barbara asked.

He glanced up at her, his expression unreadable. ‘Do whatever you like.’

‘Do you think I could?’ she asked.

‘Considering that you say you get bored with anything that lasts more than a month, I’d say almost certainly not.’

Barbara felt that she was somehow not getting to the bottom of this, but she didn’t know what else to ask. She took the tape from his hand; as her fingers brushed his an electric shock seemed to travel from his fingers to hers and up her arm. She snatched her hand away, watching him covertly to see if he’d noticed anything—or perhaps felt it too. But Charles was already slotting a new tape into the recorder.

She took the cardboard tray, with its one remaining coffee and a few stray pastries, out to her desk and turned on the computer. None of the other secretaries on the floor were in yet, but more people were turning up with briefcases and the ubiquitous gym bags.

Some of them seemed to be in fairly good shape, but none seemed to have emerged bristling with energy like Charles. In fact, Barbara thought, some of them looked almost haggard. Charles drove people hard, she knew, and she knew it often had the effect of galvanising them to achieve things they couldn’t have otherwise. But should they really all look so tired?

Her forehead creased in a slight frown. Soon she’d forgotten the problems, however, and was deep into turning Charles’s cryptic comments into courteous, businesslike letters.