Читать книгу Power Games - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 10

‘The Gibbons file is on your desk. Mike Gibbons should be ringing you later this afternoon. His secretary promised she would try to contact him. Oh, and Franklins have been on several times asking for Jay. When they heard he was in New York, they asked if they could speak to you instead.’

‘Marcia stop fussing. I’ll manage. You get yourself off to the hospital. Richard will take you. The car’s waiting downstairs for you.’ Bram shook his head as his secretary attempted to interrupt him, and said firmly, ‘No arguments. He’ll get you there faster than any taxi.’

Although his voice had been calmly reassuring when he spoke to her, Bram was frowning as his secretary hurried out of his office. She had received a call half an hour earlier to say that her husband had been taken to hospital with a suspected heart attack. Quite naturally, she was now in a frantic state. She and her husband were in their forties, their two children at university. Marcia had worked for Bram for almost ten years, knew all his small foibles and, like the very best PAs, made sure that his office routine ran smoothly. She was panicking now, not just about her husband but, in a lesser way, about Bram as well.

Marcia was more than just his secretary; she was in effect his office manager. She knew all their major customers by name, unlike the junior secretary who would have to stand in for her. It was a pity that Louise, Jay’s secretary, was on holiday, Bram reflected as he mentally reviewed his diary for the next few days. He would have to cancel or rearrange as many of his outside appointments as he could in order to be on call in his office.

His frown deepened as he realised that one of the appointments that would have to be rearranged was the one he had with Taylor Fielding. Taylor Fielding. What, he wondered, had caused the fear he had heard in her voice when he spoke to her? Surely to God not him. She hadn’t struck him as the kind of woman who would be awed or intimidated by another human being’s worldly position or material possessions. Far from it. If anything, when they had met he had got the impression that she disapproved of him. Her attitude towards him had certainly veered towards the dismissive rather than the adulatory. He drummed his fingertips thoughtfully on the top of his desk. He was half-tempted to cancel his appointment with her. And do what? Ask Anthony to assign someone else to work with him? Abandon the project altogether? No, he could not take either of those evasive courses of action. Unfortunately, and perhaps at his own instigation, he and Taylor Fielding were fated to be on a collision course.

Grimly, Bram walked through to the outer office and asked the woman who had taken over from Marcia to ring through to the charity’s headquarters for him.

Taylor was in her office talking with Sir Anthony when the call came through. In such a small enclosed space it was impossible for her boss not to overhear their conversation, even though he had diplomatically walked over to the small window when he had recognised Bram Soames’s voice.

Taylor’s heart sank as she heard Bram explain that it was impossible for him to leave his office.

‘I apologise for having to change things at such short notice, but I was wondering if it is possible after all for you to come to me later this afternoon. I could send a car for you.’

Taylor closed her eyes. How could she refuse to go when Sir Anthony was there? He was bound to hear what she was saying and ultimately query her decision.

Sickly, Taylor nodded her head, and then, realising the idiocy of what she was doing, managed to utter a tortured agreement to the alteration in their original arrangement.

‘There was really no need to send a car for me. I am perfectly capable of walking half a mile or so, you know. Or was it supposed to be less an inducement and more a potential threat?’ Taylor demanded aggressively as Bram showed her into his office.

Bram had had an exasperating afternoon. The woman sent to take Marcia’s place was new to the company and inclined to treat him with a mixture of awe and feminine appraisal, which instead of finding flattering he found extremely irritating. So irritating, in fact, that he reacted with uncharacteristic heat to Taylor’s aggression.

‘I hardly think that providing you with transport can logically be considered a threat,’ he returned as he pulled out a chair for her and waved her into it.

‘That all depends on what viewpoint you look at it from,’ Taylor told him angrily. ‘Sending your driver to collect me could be seen almost as a form of coercion, of kidnap….’

‘Kidnap?’ Bram stared at her, his frown changing to an amused smile. ‘In broad daylight, on a busy London street?’

‘It has been known to happen,’ Taylor informed him, her face flushing as her eyes darkened with resentment at his amusement and the shadow of memories she still had to fight to suppress.

‘I see. Well, please enlighten me then. Having kidnapped you and had you brought here against your will, what is it exactly I’m supposed to do with you? As you can see, this office is hardly the place one would choose for a passionate seduction and—’

Taylor stood, her eyes flashing, her normal control exploded by the force of her fury. How dare he make fun of her like this! He knew quite well that she had not been talking about sex.

‘I will not be manipulated by you,’ she told him stormily. ‘I will not be forced into pandering to your ego or, just because it doesn’t suit your opinion of yourself, for you to be the one to come to me, you—’

Bram stared at her. He pushed his hand wearily into his hair.

‘Look. You’ve got this all wrong,’ he told her quietly. ‘I changed the venue of our appointment simply because my secretary has had a personal emergency—her husband has been admitted to hospital. Naturally she wanted to be with him, which meant that it would have been difficult for me to leave the office.’

Now it was Taylor’s turn to stare at him, the angry colour staining her fair skin slowly burning into a deeper flush of embarrassment.

It had disturbed her to be told that Bram Soames had sent a car to collect her; it had reminded her of… Defensively she switched her thoughts away from the past and back to the present, gnawing worriedly at her bottom lip as she acknowledged that she seemed to have made an error of judgement.

‘Look, why don’t we start again,’ Bram suggested firmly. ‘I promise you that I had no ulterior motive whatsoever in sending Richard to drive you. I simply thought it would save time—yours as well as mine. It never occurred to me that you’d think I was trying to coerce or bully you, and I apologise for that oversight.’

But not for his sexist remarks following her outburst against his actions, Taylor noted silently.

She looked calmer now, Bram observed, watching Taylor as she digested his comments, calmer and very alert. He suspected that her outburst had shocked her in much the same way that his own sexually verbal response to it had shocked him.

The strain of the latest tussle of wills with Jay coupled with the intensity of his desire to succeed in his mission to write this special program must be affecting him more than he realised.

‘Working together isn’t going to be easy—for either of us,’ he told Taylor quietly, abandoning his initial urge to cravenly ignore the hostility they seemed to generate towards each other in favour of a more responsible approach to the problem.

‘But I think I’m right in saying that ultimately we both want the same thing, which is a successful outcome to this project.’

‘If there can be one,’ Taylor agreed grimly.

‘You don’t believe there can?’

‘It’s been tried before without success.’

‘Which doesn’t mean that we can’t succeed.’

Against her better judgment Taylor found herself unexpectedly warming to that unanticipated ‘we.’ But then he was obviously the kind of man who was good at generating team spirit, at making others feel they were important, she warned herself.

‘Still, it’s a view you aren’t alone in taking,’ Bram continued. ‘My son, for one, certainly shares it.’ He gave her a wry look. ‘I shall just have to do my best to prove you both wrong, shan’t I. Can I get you a drink, by the way, tea…coffee…? It will have to be from the machine, I’m afraid.’

Taylor stared at him. Sir Anthony, for all his paternalism, would certainly never have suggested fetching a more junior member of his staff a drink from the office dispensing machines; nor indeed, Taylor suspected, would he have drunk one himself. Although she searched his face thoroughly, there was no trace of self-consciousness or mockery in Bram’s expression as he waited for her response.

Perhaps she had been wrong about him, Taylor acknowledged hesitantly…guilty of overreacting, of al-lowing her own prejudice to overshadow logic and reality.

‘I…coffee, please,’ she requested.

Taylor moved self-consciously in her chair, pressing a quelling hand to her rumbling stomach, as it gurgled protest at its lack of food.

It was almost seven o’clock but the time had passed so quickly she was astonished that it was so late.

Once she had managed to distance herself from her own fears and preconceptions, she had discovered that Bram was unexpectedly well informed about the problems he was likely to face in writing his program. Even more surprisingly, he was genuinely concerned for the plight of the people he was trying to help.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to keep you so long,’ he was apologising now, as her stomach protested even more volubly. ‘I hadn’t realised it was getting so late. There’s a very good Italian restaurant just round the corner where I frequently eat when I’m working late. Look, why don’t you join me for dinner there, and please don’t tell me that you’re not hungry.’

Taylor grimaced, suppressing the small spurt of panic that his suggestion reactivated. She really had nothing to fear from this man, she told herself. He was not remotely interested in her as a woman;

he was merely being polite. If she started to protest, to object, she was bound to arouse his suspicions and make herself look a complete idiot into the bargain. That comment he had made to her earlier when she had complained about him sending a car for her still rankled slightly.

It would be much easier—much safer—to fight down her instinctive reaction to his suggestion and accept.

Common sense, logic, told her that there was no way she would be in danger. He was quite obviously not a sexual predator, and most certainly not one who was so desperate for a woman…for sex, that he needed to waste his time attempting to seduce her, when no doubt there were countless women more than willing to fall into bed with him.

‘We’ll have to walk, though, I’m afraid,’ he added teasingly, when she thanked him and accepted. ‘Richard will have gone home by now.’

Despite her mounting colour Taylor still managed to look him in the eye.

He was just about to open the office door for her when it was thrust inwards, narrowly missing banging into Taylor. A whirlwind of a girl erupted into the room, apparently oblivious to Taylor’s presence as she flung herself headlong into Bram’s arms and demanded breathlessly, ‘Oh, you are still here…good…Bram, be a darling, will you, and take me out to dinner tonight. I haven’t seen you in simply ages, and it would be yummy going out with you. Even more yummy if we forgot about dinner altogether and went to bed instead…’ she added suggestively, her voice dropping to a throaty purr that made the fine hairs on Taylor’s nape rise in sharp reaction.

Bram, Taylor could see, instead of wrapping his arms around the girl as she so plainly wanted and Taylor had plainly expected—after all, she was everything a man could possibly want, startlingly pretty, young, coaxing and extremely sexy—Bram was, in fact, holding her firmly at arm’s length, his face registering not pleasure but rather an almost paternal sternness.

‘Plum, I’m sorry but I can’t. I’m already going out to dinner—’

‘What?’ For the first time Plum seemed to become aware of Taylor’s presence, her mouth drooping slightly as she studied her with keen competitiveness—and then dismissed her, Taylor observed wryly.

‘Oh, but—’ she started to protest as she turned back to Bram.

He stopped her calmly. ‘No buts.’

‘But, Bram, I need to talk to you.’

‘Not now, Plum, I’m afraid. As you can see, I’m busy.’

‘But you’ll ring me? Take me out to lunch?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Well, if you’re really too busy…’

The hostility in the girl’s eyes as she turned to look at her made Taylor acutely uncomfortable, but before she could speak, Bram was ushering Plum out into the corridor and Taylor had to wait for him to return before she could say quickly, ‘Look, you don’t have to give me dinner. I don’t want to cause you any problems with your… your friend.’

Try as she might Taylor couldn’t help stumbling betrayingly over the last word of her hastily rehearsed little speech.

It had surprised her how much the other woman’s obvious sexual possessiveness about Bram had affected her. But then it had been a long time since she had last been in close contact with such intense sexuality. The girl, whoever she was, seemed to wear it like a weapon, Taylor decided as she groped mentally for the right description. A gauntlet, a challenge which she threw down aggressively in front of Taylor, warning her off.

Not that she had had any need to do so. The last thing…

‘Plum isn’t my friend, and she certainly isn’t my lover, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ She heard Bram interrupting her turbulent thoughts. ‘She’s my goddaughter.’

‘Your goddaughter.’

Taylor couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice, and she knew her expression must have given her away when Bram continued quietly, ‘She’s going through a bit of a difficult time, and what she really needs more than anything is someone she can lean on, someone she can trust, someone who loves her as a person. It’s a pity that she and Jay don’t get on better, because…’

‘Jay?’ Taylor questioned, her curiosity aroused as Bram opened the office door for her and ushered her out. It wasn’t like her to allow herself to exhibit interest in other people; it involved too much risk, too much danger, and she was irritated with herself for having done so now. But it was too late. Bram was already starting to answer her question as he guided her towards the lift.

‘Jay is my son. He and Plum have known each other all their lives, well, at least all Plum’s life. Jay’s twenty-seven now and she’s only just coming up for eighteen.’

‘Twenty-seven.’ Despite what Sir Anthony had already told her, she felt slightly shocked. A brief glance in Bram’s direction as the lift started to descend confirmed what she already knew. Even under the starkly revealing light of the lift, he looked far, far too young to be the father of a twenty-seven-year-old. Not because he had deliberately tried to cultivate a younger image—on the contrary, his suit was sober and traditionally cut, his shirt white and his tie plain.

Just visible when one was standing as close to him as Taylor was now forced to do, were one or two slightly silvered strands of hair lightening the rich darkness of the rest. The fine lines fanning out around his eyes added to rather than detracted from his sexuality, and to judge from the way he moved his body beneath the covering of his suit…

Taylor swallowed uncomfortably, her own body suddenly far too hot.

It was years since she had experienced that kind of physical reaction to a man—years since she had allowed herself to experience it.

You were made for this—for love, for sex.

The words escaped from the barriers she had put up against such memories, and like the memory of the man who had spoken them they made her shudder in sick panic.

Bram frowned as he saw the tremor galvanising her body, and the way her face suddenly paled.

Just for a brief moment she had seemed to relax, the unguarded interest in her face when she queried Jay’s age such a contrast to her previous wary tension that Bram had surprised himself by wanting to go on talking to her so that he could prolong that interest. It was like watching someone suddenly come to life; seeing them as a whole three-dimensional figure for the first time.

The lift had stopped, and as they walked through the foyer and out into the street Bram paused to watch a young couple on the other side of the road. They had obviously had a quarrel, and the girl was refusing to get into their car. The young man, growing tired of her refusal, suddenly let go of the door he had been holding open and lunged forward, picking the girl up bodily. As he turned to deposit her in the car she tried to escape, wriggling protestingly in his arms.

Taylor, too, had stopped to watch, but when Bram laughed in amusement at their antics, Taylor turned on him, her face bone-white, her eyes so dark with anger and pain that Bram caught his breath at the intensity of emotion in them.

‘Of course, you would think it’s funny. You’re a man,’ Taylor told him bitterly. ‘And because you’re a man you think that it’s perfectly acceptable for another man to manhandle a woman, to physically force her to do something she doesn’t want to do, to use his physical strength to compel her into obeying him, forcing her….’

Taylor was literally shaking now, and Bram was caught between an instinctive desire to defend himself and his compassionate awareness of her distress.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the young man deposit the girl back on the ground with gentle care, her angry protests dying away as she reached up towards him.

‘Look,’ Bram commanded Taylor quietly, taking hold of her and firmly turning her round to face the previously warring couple.

The girl’s arms were wrapped firmly around her lover, her face tilted up towards his, one hand reaching up to pull his head down towards her own as she started to kiss him with passionate intensity.

Taylor, who had begun to pull away from his restraining hand, stiffened, her body as immobile as a statue, her attention riveted on the couple on the opposite side of the road. An aching, painful longing boiled up inside her, bringing sharp stinging tears to her eyes as emotions she had long thought forgotten and dismissed, suddenly filled her. She wanted desperately to turn away from the sight of that passionate, intense embrace, from the young woman’s obvious need for her lover.

Once she had felt like that, ached like that, loved like that, and through those emotions she had betrayed not just herself but had also caused…

The sound she made as she whirled round, pulling frantically against Bram’s restraining hand, reminded him of an animal caught in a trap; the low muted sound so riven with agony and fear that his immediate reaction was to reach out and take hold of her, to bind her to him so tightly that he separated her from her pain, protected her from it. Instinctively he fought down his reaction. She was a stranger to him, after all, a woman he barely knew, a woman whom his sense of self-preservation had already told him he would be wiser not to get to know.

Against his hand he could feel the indentation of her waist, so much sharper, so much narrower than her clothes suggested, her bones tiny and fragile beneath her skin. She wasn’t thin; the soft swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips, were richly feminine. But her bone structure was very delicate and her body was much lighter than it should have been, her flesh worn down by whatever deep-rooted anxiety it was that caused those shadows in her eyes, that sense he had of her wariness, her fear.

From her reaction to the couple on the other side of the road, her vocal outburst to him, he guessed that at some point in her life there had been a man, a relationship, which had caused her intense pain. The kind of pain that made her intensely suspicious of his sex and very determined to remain aloof and withdrawn from it.

He told himself that he was glad.

Firmly he withdrew from her, his hand dropping to his side. The young couple were now climbing amicably into their car, the small incident over, their quarrel apparently forgotten.

He glanced thoughtfully towards Taylor as she turned her face away from him in an attempt to conceal her expression, calmly falling into step beside her as he waited for her to make some comment, to give him some explanation for her reaction. One glance into Taylor’s shuttered face warned him against making any kind of comment.

Shakily, Taylor tried to compose her chaotic emotions. The small incident with the quarrelling couple had upset her more than she wanted to admit, disturbing old ghosts, reactivating feelings, fears she had thought she had long ago brought firmly under control.

The whole episode had left her feeling horribly weak and vulnerable; angry both with herself for being so susceptible to what she had seen and with Bram for witnessing that susceptibility. She knew she ought to be grateful to him for his tactful silence, his lack of uncomfortable curiosity, but instead the knowledge that he was aware enough of the intensity of her reaction to feel that she needed to be treated with caution and compassion only increased her feelings of angry panic.

She didn’t want him feeling sorry for her, knowing that she felt vulnerable. She wanted to be able to dislike him, to feel disdain and contempt for him, to dismiss him as someone who possessed the kind of personality traits she most disliked and feared instead of…instead of what? Instead of witnessing her reaction to a scene that not only had aroused her deepest fears and most painful memories, but also had resurrected far more dangerous and unwanted emotions and needs.

Watching that young couple embrace with such open passion, feeling the male touch of Bram’s fingertips against her waist, her body—

She faltered in midstep, overwhelmed by a sudden compulsion to tell him that she had changed her mind, that she didn’t want dinner after all…that she couldn’t spend any more time with him. But it was already too late; he was already pointing out the restaurant entrance to her, and her own logic was telling her that she had made enough of a fool of herself already.