Читать книгу Power Games - Пенни Джордан, PENNY JORDAN - Страница 9

‘You’re seconding me to work with Bram Soames? But what about my work here?’ Taylor asked sharply, her forehead pleating in a frown as she confronted Sir Anthony across his desk, and fought to conceal from him the shock his announcement had given her.

‘You’ve said yourself that since we installed this new computer system you’ve got time on your hands,’ Sir Anthony reminded her.

‘To a point, but there are things…surely someone else…’ Someone else, anyone else, Taylor thought as she fought to control her panic. It had never occurred to her when her boss had asked her to spare him a few minutes, what he intended to say to her. The very thought of working closely with an unknown man filled her with anxiety. Her fear of anyone guessing what she was feeling was almost as strong as the anxiety itself.

‘There isn’t anyone else,’ Sir Anthony was saying now. ‘At least no one with your experience. I appreciate that what I’m asking falls outside your normal field of operation, but if Bram can produce a viable working program—’ He gave a small lift of his shoulders.

‘If he can produce a working program,’ Taylor countered. ‘It’s been tried before without any real success.’

‘Yes, I know that and so does Bram, but since he’s prepared to give up his time free of charge—’

‘Free of charge? There’s no such thing as a free lunch,’ Taylor commented cynically. ‘He must be expecting to get something out of it.’

‘Not Bram,’ Sir Anthony denied.

‘Why? What makes him so different?’ Taylor asked the question almost reluctantly, unwilling to be drawn into discussing a man she had already decided she didn’t want to like.

‘Well, Jay, for a start,’ he told her, explaining when he saw her frown.

‘Jay is his son. Bram had to take full responsibility for him when his mother was killed in a car accident. He was still at university at the time. Bram’s parents did offer to adopt the boy, but Bram wouldn’t hear of it. He said that Jay was his son. His responsibility. A lot of men would have let them go ahead, ducked out…. Bram’s tutors did their best to dissuade him. They were forecasting a brilliant future for him. He had a first-class brain. But he wouldn’t listen. Jay came first.’

‘And that makes him a candidate for sainthood?’ Taylor asked sharply. ‘Women…girls in their thousands make that kind of sacrifice every day of the week without getting any praise for it. Far from it.’

‘Maybe so,’ Sir Anthony allowed, ‘but it’s their choice to become mothers. Bram had no choice. No say in whether or not he became a father.’

‘Rubbish,’ Taylor retorted angrily. ‘He had every choice. Presumably his son’s mother didn’t tie him to the bed and force him to impregnate her.’

Taylor could tell from Sir Anthony’s expression that her sudden forthrightness had surprised him. It had surprised her as well. Any kind of discussion that touched upon sexual matters, even in the mildest way, was normally something she avoided like the plague, but her boss’s comments, his attitude, had angered her so much that she had felt impelled to speak out.

‘Bram was only fourteen when Jay was conceived,’ Sir Anthony told her quietly. ‘It isn’t a subject that he ever liked discussing….’

‘But he made sure, all the same, that everyone knew he wasn’t to blame,’ Taylor remarked bitterly.

She knew she was overreacting, but she just couldn’t withhold the words or control the emotions that lay behind them, even though she knew she would regret her outburst later.

‘It wasn’t actually Bram who told us,’ Sir Anthony answered her. ‘It was his father. He was very bitter about the way the girl’s family had treated Bram, and about the way he felt Bram’s life had been blighted by what happened. Bram has always put others’ needs before his own.’

Taylor realised that she was wasting her time continuing to protest about being seconded to work with Bram, little though she liked the idea.

Little though she liked it? Loathing was a closer description to what she was actually feeling. Loathing, fear, panic, anger, but most of all fear… Fear at the thought of working closely with a man she did not know. Fear at the thought of being subjected to his will, his domination, fear at the thought of having to be alone with him, fear at its most basic and damaging level, fear in its most humiliating and degrading form; fear of a woman for a man simply because he was a man.

But, of course, there was no way she could explain those feelings to Sir Anthony, no way she could explain them to anyone.

When she read articles in magazines about people who had contracted the HIV virus and were afraid of the consequences, of making their vulnerability public, Taylor knew exactly what they were suffering. She had suffered like that for twenty years, albeit on a different plane. She knew exactly what it felt like, the fear, the pain, the isolation, the feeling of being apart, different from the rest of the human race. She knew exactly what it was like to have to guard her every comment in case she unwittingly betrayed herself; to remove herself from any kind of physical or emotional contact with other people; to protect them from the consequences of any kind of intimacy with her at the same time as she protected herself.

The past, her past, was always with her, a constant reminder, and a constant warning….

‘Look, I can see you’re not keen on the idea of working with Bram,’ Sir Anthony acknowledged, ‘but—’

‘No. I’m not,’ Taylor agreed, interrupting him to snatch at the escape route he was unwittingly offering to her.

There was no point in trying to explain to him that it wasn’t just Bram Soames she didn’t want to work closely with, it was any and every man.

It had taken almost two years before she had finally conquered her anxiety enough to feel comfortable working with Sir Anthony, before her brain and her emotions finally caught up with what her instincts were telling her—that her boss was the happily married man he purported to be and that his kindness towards the female members of his staff sprang from a genuine, slightly old-fashioned avuncular and protective attitude towards the female sex as a whole, rather than from some hidden, ulterior motive. However, to feel comfortable working with Sir Anthony was one thing. Bram Soames was something—someone—altogether different.

‘If it’s any consolation to you, I suspect that Bram is as reluctant to work with you as you are with him,’ Sir Anthony told her.

‘You suspect?’ Taylor questioned him sharply, stifling the unexpected stab of feminine chagrin his comment gave her. Why should she feel annoyed because Bram Soames didn’t want to work with her? For years she had trained herself not to be in any way responsive to men, to treat them as though they simply did not exist. It was easier that way…safer…for her, for them.

‘Bram is rather better at concealing his feelings than you are,’ Sir Anthony answered her dryly.

‘Try looking at the fact that I want you to work alongside him as a compliment rather than a punishment,’ he coaxed. ‘Because that is what it is. I know how you feel about your work, Taylor. After all, I’ve tried hard enough in the past to prise you away from your precious archives and to get you to play a far more active role on the public relations side of things. You’ve got the brain for it and the expertise and you’ve got a very special gift for being able to put your point across—when you choose to use it.

‘Now that we’ve put in that new computer system and you’ve got spare time on your hands…’

Taylor could feel the panic starting to explode inside her. Public relations work, anything that brought her into the public eye in any way at all, terrified her. At least, if she was working with Bram Soames her contact would be limited to him and conducted in circumstances over which she would have some control.

‘No one knows the history of the society as well as you do,’ Sir Anthony was saying persuasively, ‘which is why I want you to work alongside Bram. This project is too important to allow personal feelings to prejudice it. I appreciate that the two of you might not exactly become kindred spirits, but…’

‘But for the sake of the cause, I should be prepared to sacrifice myself,’ Taylor suggested wryly, her mouth twisting slightly.

‘Actually, that wasn’t what I was going to say,’ Sir Anthony rebuked her mildly. ‘I was simply going to point out that you’re not being very fair to Bram. He’s a very likeable chap, you know. Kind. Well-intentioned. Most women—’ he began and then stopped, as though he realised that he was treading on very dangerous ground.

‘Most women would what?’ Taylor demanded. ‘Most women would welcome the chance to work so closely with a handsome, rich, available, heterosexual man?’

How could she explain to her boss that those very attributes that in his eyes made Bram Soames so attractive to the majority of her sex, only served to increase her own fear and revulsion, because the one thing he had not mentioned in that brief catalogue, which as far as she was concerned was the most important, was the word power; no man could possess all the attributes Sir Anthony had just listed and not be conscious of the power they gave him. Power over her sex, power over her, and, as she had good cause to know, power could be abused.

‘So, it’s agreed then,’ she heard Sir Anthony say firmly. ‘I’ve suggested to Bram that I leave it to him to liaise with you. I know you’ll do your best to help him.’

He stood, leaving Taylor with no option but to follow suit and to allow him to shepherd her towards his office door.

Later on in the safety of her own office she could feel the shock starting to sink in. She ought to have taken a firmer stand, to have refused outright to work with Bram Soames. But how could she have done so? By giving up her job? She wasn’t financially independent enough to do that; jobs like hers weren’t easy to come by. And besides, she liked her job. She liked its solitude, its security and safety. She liked the reassurance of the routine she had established. The thought of leaving and trying to make a fresh start somewhere else filled her with even greater panic.

Damn Bram Soames! Damn him and his precious program! And yet, even as she cursed him mentally, Taylor acknowledged that she was being selfish and unfair. If he could succeed in writing such a program it would transform the lives of so many people.

Perhaps, if she could just focus on that fact and hold fast to it, it might help to make the unbearable somehow bearable, she decided sombrely.

Her office was situated at the top of the building, its narrow, barred window the only source of natural daylight. Some time ago it had been suggested that she move to a lower floor and a larger office with a much bigger window, but she had refused.

It was pointless trying to explain to other people that the narrowness of her existing office window, its thick, almost opaque glass and steel bars, were infinitely preferable to her than something larger, which someone might look or step through. Just thinking about such a possibility made her shudder. How could she ever give up her job here and go somewhere else? Here, in surroundings where she had worked for years, her small eccentricities—as others thought of them—were tolerated; in a different environment…a new environment…

She closed her eyes and then opened them abruptly as her telephone rang.

Some sixth sense warned her who the caller would be, but it was still a shock to hear Bram Soames’s unmistakable warm male voice on the other end of the line.

‘I hope I’m not pre-empting things by telephoning you so soon,’ she heard him saying after he had identified himself. ‘But Anthony did promise he would speak to you as soon as he could about the possibility of our working together, and I was wondering if he—’

‘Yes,’ Taylor interposed tersely. ‘Yes, he’s told me.’ The palm of the hand gripping the receiver was already damp with anxiety, the forefinger of her other hand curling nervously in and out of the plastic-covered coil linking the receiver to the base unit.

Bram could hear the tension in her voice and hoped that she wasn’t equally able to hear the reluctance in his. There was, he reminded himself firmly, absolutely no reason whatsoever why he should not work with her. No logical reason at all.

So, why then, this gut feeling that he would be far safer to retreat?

The silence from Taylor’s end of the line was slightly unnerving. If it hadn’t been for the slightly erratic sound of her breathing he might almost have thought she’d hung up on him.

Firmly pushing his personal thoughts to the back of his mind, he said calmly, ‘I think before we can get down to any serious work we need to have a preliminary discussion. I was wondering if you were free tomorrow afternoon?’

In her office Taylor flipped over the page of her diary. It was completely blank.

‘No, I’m sorry… I already have an appointment then.’ Did her voice sound as betrayingly unconvincing to him as it did to her? She almost hoped he would guess that she was lying and decide to ask Sir Anthony to suggest someone else to help him, and she held her breath as she waited for his response.

‘I see…. Well, in that case, I wonder…I’m eager to get started on this project as soon as possible. At the moment I’ve got some free time, but…’

He paused while Taylor reflected coolly that if he had hoped to impress or bully her by playing the big powerful, dominant, successful businessman he was going to be disappointed.

‘I wouldn’t normally ask you to work outside office hours, but is there any chance that we could meet tomorrow evening, say about six-thirty?’

Six-thirty—after the rest of the office staff had gone home and only the cleaners were around. Taylor cursed herself inwardly for the trap her fib had built around her.

‘I…in the office? I think the building is locked up at six,’ she told him quickly. ‘I don’t think…’

‘We could have our discussion here,’ Bram told her after a moment’s silence. ‘I could send a car for you and—’

‘No. No…there’s no need. I…’

The total panic he could hear in her voice made Bram frown. She had struck him as such a contained, almost over-controlled person, on the surface at least, that he was unprepared for the intensity of emotion he could hear in her voice.

‘I…I’ll cancel my afternoon appointment,’ Taylor told him shakily. ‘I…what time did you have in mind?’

‘Two-thirty?’ Bram suggested diplomatically.

‘Yes…very well then…’ Taylor agreed. Her throat felt raw with tension, the muscles aching, the sound of her voice unfamiliarly husky.

Her body was drenched in cold sweat and she was starting to shiver. It took her four attempts before she managed to put the receiver down correctly.

If just talking to Bram Soames could affect her like this, then what was she going to be like when she was working with him? It was pointless, useless telling herself that a man with his sexual magnetism, his strong blend of power and charisma—a very obviously heterosexual man who had apparently chosen to remain unattached—was hardly likely to express even the remotest interest in her. The knee-jerk sexual male response she had witnessed in his body at their first meeting did not count. The fact that a man like Bram Soames could and no doubt did have his pick of eager women who made a career out of pursuing men like him, was not the point. The point was that he was a man.

As she focused numbly on the small oblong of obscured daylight from her barred window, she acknowledged that in many ways the window was like her life, what to another woman would be restrictive was to her protective. She needed that protection.

She knew there had been whispered speculation among her colleagues about her sexual orientation. The very fact that she shunned male company so determinedly was bound to give rise to it. But Taylor had no sexual or emotional desire for her own sex. A small, bitter smile twisted her mouth. Unbelievable as those who knew her or thought they knew her might find it, there had been a time when she, too, had dreamed of falling in love, getting married, having children; when sexually she had been open and curious.

And if she was honest with herself, there were still times when, deep down, she felt those needs, nights when she lay awake not just tormented by her fears but filled with bitter anger as well.

It was twenty years now. Twenty years, and there had not been a single day during that time when she had not been conscious of the past, when she had not been fearful of its being recreated, when she had not abandoned the habit of stopping, checking… watching…waiting.

Twenty years. Almost a life sentence, she acknowledged bitterly, but her life was not over yet. She was thirty-nine, that was all.

She could live to be twice that age; both her paternal and her maternal grandparents had. Her parents… She swallowed painfully. Neither of her parents had lived to see fifty. Their deaths haunted her still. They always would.

‘You must not blame yourself. You are not to blame,’ she had been told.

Her head was beginning to ache, the tight knot into which she had pulled her hair dragging on her scalp. It was a luxury at night to let it down and release her neck muscles from the strain of supporting the heavy weight.

Perhaps she ought to wear her hair short. The last time she had done so had been on her sixteenth birthday. The trip to her mother’s hairdresser had been a present paid for by her father, a ritual on the path to adulthood.

She could remember how nervously she had watched her reflection in the mirror as the stylist lopped off her heavy, childish braids. The pretty urchin cut had emphasised the delicate bones of her face, made her eyes seem enormous. Her mother had frowned and commented that the style was rather too adult for her, but Taylor had seen in her father’s eyes male approval for her transformation. She wasn’t a child any more, she was a woman.

She had kept her hair short for several years after that, and just before she had gone to university she had allowed the stylist to experiment with blonde highlights woven into the strands of hair that framed her face.

Her mother had denounced the effect as far too sophisticated and her father hadn’t even noticed the change. Both had been preoccupied then over her sister, who had written from Australia breaking the news of her impend-ing marriage.

‘We don’t want a big fuss, just a quiet ceremony for the two of us…’ she had written to Taylor. ‘And besides, I know our parents don’t approve of what I’m doing.’

That had been a gross understatement of their parents’ views. It had shocked Taylor to hear her parents say that they wanted nothing to do with her sister until she came to her senses and returned home-alone.

Somewhere at the back of her mind she had always been aware that their love came attached to a price tag, but seeing the actual evidence of that suspicion left her feeling very vulnerable, which was why-Her telephone rang again, and she reached out to answer it, glad to escape the painful introspection of her thoughts.

The cab driver gave Taylor a brief smile as she stopped outside the small block of apartments where Taylor lived.

She was a fairly new driver for the firm; most of their regular clients were considerably older than Taylor, who she thought looked about her own age, and, as far as she could see, perfectly healthy.

When she asked curiously in the office about her, no one had been able to tell her anything other than the fact that Taylor had been a regular customer for some years.

The block of apartments was set in neat, well-kept gardens, screened from the main road by trees and shrubs. Initially, when she had gone to view the property Taylor had been put off by this aspect; anything designed to screen the property from the road could also provide a screen for someone trying illicitly to enter the apartments. But in the end she had forced herself to overcome her unease and accept that she was unlikely to find anything better.

The apartment did, after all, fulfil all her other criteria. The large detached Victorian house had been carefully converted into six good-sized apartments, all designed to meet the needs of retired couples. The conversions had been advertised as possessing all the latest security features, locking windows and intercoms.

Taylor had also liked the fact that all the other occupants were people who believed in keeping themselves to themselves; quiet retired professional couples or singles who exchanged polite pleasantries if and when they met before retreating thankfully into their own private domains.

Her own apartment was slightly cheaper than the others and slightly larger, since it was in what had originally been the attic.

It had two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, a large, pleasant sitting room, a small dining room, an even smaller study, which just about housed her desk and bookshelves, and a neat galley kitchen.

Since no one other than herself was ever allowed inside, there was no one to comment about the apartment’s lack of homely touches. There were no small pots of herbs on the sunny kitchen windowsill, no leafy green plants in the sitting room, no family mementoes—materially worthless, but sentimentally irreplaceable—marring the elegant perfection of the sitting room, decorated and furnished in a cream colour. Even Taylor’s bedroom with its cool eau-de-Nil colour scheme had an almost anonymous feel to it, as though its owner was afraid to leave any personal stamp on the room in case it betrayed her in some way.

Automatically Taylor paused before entering the lift, turning to glance over her shoulder.

The hallway was empty. She stepped quickly into the lift and pressed the button.

Once again, when the lift stopped and the doors opened, she paused to check before stepping out of it, walking quickly across the dove-grey carpeting into the foyer of her apartment.

It took time to unlock the special double lock to her apartment door. Taylor stood sideways as she did so, which made the task more difficult but gave her a clear view both of the lift and of the stairs.

Once inside her apartment she relocked the doors. And then, as she always did, she walked slowly and almost nervously through every room, checking the empty spaces and the locked windows.

Only when this had been done did she allow herself to relax enough to go into her bedroom and close the thick curtains which screened out the light so effectively she had to turn on a lamp before she removed her suit jacket and started to unpin her hair.

As she opened the drawer in her dressing table where she kept her pin box she paused, hesitated and then, so quickly that it was almost as though she was afraid of what she was doing, she reached into the back of the drawer and removed a heavy silver photograph frame. Holding her breath, she turned it over and stared almost greedily at the photograph inside.

A girl’s face smiled back at her. She had an open, warm smile; her whole expression one of intelligence and confidence.

Her eyes were blue-grey, her hair a riot of thick, dark red curls. The photograph was only a head and shoulders shot, but it conveyed the impression of someone who would be lithe and quick, a positive dynamo of movement and life. For a teenager, she possessed remarkable composure and self-assurance. It radiated out of her…as did her obvious joy in life, her happiness.

As Taylor returned the photograph to the drawer she could feel a burning sensation stinging the back of her eyes. Her throat ached. Fiercely she blinked away her tears. Her emotion was inappropriate and selfish, and it would mean nothing to the girl in the photograph. Why should it?