His Girl Monday to Friday Page 5

  Barbara contemplated this intractable problem. It had been stewing away in her mind all afternoon, but it still looked intractable. Well, maybe she should let it percolate a little more.

  She strolled over to Charles’s chair, sat down and kicked off. Around and around…

  Barbara believed firmly that the harder a problem was the less point there was in trying to force through a solution. You had to give it time to come to you. For two hours she revolved-sometimes clockwise, sometimes counterclockwise—giving a solution the chance to come to her.

  Of course, sometimes before the solution comes to you another problem turns up instead.

  At eleven she heard voices in the corridor outside. ‘Sorry to drag you back,’ said Charles. There are a couple of things I need to look at.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘I’d like to see your office.’

  ‘Well, there’s not much to see,’ said Charles, mildly amused.

  That’s what you think, thought Barbara. She seemed to have been turned to stone.

  ‘Actually, I think I’ll just visit the ladies’ first,’ said the woman.

  ‘It’s just around the corner,’ said Charles. ‘First right, then left, then just across by the service lift—’

  ‘You can’t miss it,’ the woman said, laughing. ‘I might have been able to follow all that if we hadn’t finished the second bottle, Charles, but now I’m not even going to try. At least see me as far as first right.’

  Charles laughed. ‘What’s it worth to you?’

  ‘What did you have in mind?’

  Charles laughed again. ‘That would be telling. Come on, it’s this way.’

  Barbara leapt to her feet. She darted to the table and hastily stacked up her materials. She couldn’t risk leaving the room, but where could she go? The desk was open to the front—she couldn’t hide there. She looked around wildly. There was a closet where Charles kept a spare suit, she remembered, but none of the wall panels had knobs, even when they were actually doors. You were just supposed to know which panel to press.

  She ran to the nearest panel and pressed what looked like an indentation where a knob should have been. It swung open, revealing a security camera.

  She heard footsteps in the corridor.

  No time to look longer. She squeezed into the narrow cupboard, closing the door behind her.

  The panel was opaque to the room, but from this side it was see-through. She saw Charles come into the room alone, stride across to a filing cabinet and pull out some documents. He leaned against the cabinet, leafing through the file. A few minutes later a woman came through the door to join him.

  Barbara gulped enviously. The woman was tall and slim, with impossibly long legs and a model’s walk. Her hair was streaked blonde, her eyes were large and blue, she was immaculately made up and she wore a long black jacket that was just fractionally shorter than the short, clinging black dress she wore under it. She crossed the room, slipping the jacket off her shoulders, and came to stand by his side.

  Charles seemed to be finding his file more gripping than the dazzling woman at his side. He flipped through a couple of pages more, then back to the front.

  After about two seconds the woman decided to take matters into her own hands. She put one hand on his opposite shoulder, and kissed him full on the mouth.

  Exactly, thought Barbara. Why couldn’t I do that? Why did I let him just go on and on about being a grown-up?

  Because, said a snide little inner voice, you had absolutely no reason to think he was interested. This woman, unlike you, at least got asked out to dinner.

  Charles put the file to one side. He put a hand on the woman’s waist and began to kiss her with leisurely expertise. He didn’t exactly look carried away on a blaze of passion, but he was obviously enjoying himself. If he hadn’t been, Barbara thought acidly, he’d have gone back to the file.

  Barbara was beginning to feel rather sick. Of course, she’d always known about Charles’s multitude of girlfriends; obviously this kind of thing, and quite a lot more besides, had always been going on off stage. But it was one thing to know it and another thing to see it. Seeing his mouth on another woman’s mouth, seeing his hand move from her waist down over her hip to the top of her gleaming thigh, Barbara felt as though someone had kicked her in the stomach.

  I’ll just stop watching, she thought at last. I shouldn’t be watching anyway, so I’ll stop.

  She shut her eyes, screwing them tight. Why couldn’t she get over it? she thought despairingly. It wasn’t even as if she liked him. But every time she saw him again it was the same—she felt as if a bolt of lightning had nailed her to the spot, while he felt nothing at all. Was it always going to be like this? Was she always going to drift through life with nothing she cared about—no job that mattered, no one to love?

  Barbara gritted her teeth. Would it be different if she slept with him? She’d heard Charles make chilling comments on more than one occasion about some girl he’d chased and then dropped. Once she’d even shouted at him for being so selfish, and he’d only shrugged. ‘It’s not deliberate,’ he’d said. ‘You don’t know you’ll go off her when you’re crazy about her, but once it’s happened it’s happened, so what’s the use of pretending?’

  Well, maybe she could actually go off Charles and get on with her life. It wasn’t as if he was that particular, after all. He’d said she was beautiful. How hard could it be to seduce him? She could seduce Charles, go off him and find someone who wasn’t an arrogant swine to fall in love with.

  Barbara’s eyes were still screwed shut. In spite of all her efforts to distract herself, she felt as if all her attention was still directed towards the filing cabinet. She couldn’t hear much. Who knew what they were getting up to?

  I could seduce him, she told herself, but she didn’t believe it. Maybe if she made the first move Charles would respond. Safe in a closet, it seemed perfectly possible that she might actually make the move. But faced with the real Charles it would be a different matter. The very fact that she was so attracted to him would make it impossible. She’d look up into his eyes, and they’d be looking mockingly down at her, and her nerve would desert her.

  Barbara opened her eyes. The room was empty. The file was gone. If it hadn’t been for the drawer of the filing cabinet, just an inch ajar, she’d have thought she’d imagined the whole thing.

  She was about to burst back out into fresh air when she realised they might be anywhere. She waited another fifteen minutes to be on the safe side, but no one came into the office. She stumbled out of the security closet, back to the table, and set out again her materials.

  Now, suddenly, the solution came to her.

  What they should aim at, she decided, was an idiotproof core, something self-explanatory for the most essential day-to-day functions. Something so simple it didn’t need training. Something a temp just in for the day could use. Something as simple as a typewriter and a stack of pre-printed forms.

  The core would be presented in sober, businesslike black and white, and it could have a title like ‘Simple as a Typewriter’. Then there could be another section which showed all the snazzy options available for dazzling Barrett clients. The high-impact glossy colour would be kept for a section where it wasn’t just selling the product to Barrett, but showing Barrett how it would be selling itself to someone else. It could be called ‘Value for Money’ to appease Mr Banett—because, in fact, all the facilities would be the standard options on Mallory software, things Barrett wouldn’t have to pay extra for.

  Barbara sat down with the sample bids and began scrawling all over them. She covered a blank sheet of paper with balloons and arrows. She tore pages out of the samples and rearranged them. She tore pages out of the Barnett materials and interleaved them with the others. When she was satisfied with what she’d got she went out to her computer.

  Some of the material she needed was actually on the company network. She called up the files she needed and made co
pies. Then she got to work. She was tired, but she kept fuelling her excitement with the idea in a rather frenzied way to keep her mind off Charles. By four in the morning she had a preliminary draft in place.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘WE’LL be going to Prague tomorrow. Get us on a flight that gets us there by two, business class is fine, four nights at a hotel,’ said Charles. It was eight o’clock on Wednesday night.

  Barbara frowned. She loved Charles, but she didn’t think the universe revolved around him. The last thing he needed, in her opinion, was someone to make him think his drive and single-mindedness and ability to shut out other people gave him a moral right to be spared inconvenience.

  Unfortunately for the improvement of Charles’s character, the world—or at least the female half—thought otherwise.

  If she suggested to the other women in the office that a complaint might once in a while be in order, the response was always, ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t bother Mr Mallory!’ A string of dazzlingly beautiful women came to the office and waited, sometimes for as long as an hour, to be taken out to dinner by Charles. None of them ever reproached him for being late or walked out after five minutes, the way Barbara would have done. Or they’d call on the phone to find out why he was late, and apparently wait for hours in restaurants he’d assigned as rendezvous.

  As far as Barbara was concerned, the only thing that would have made the wait worthwhile would have been the chance to throw soup at the man who’d made it go cold, but Charles never seemed to get his comeuppance. Everyone seemed to think he was doing them a favour by showing up at all.

  It was time someone taught him a lesson.

  ‘Please,’ said Barbara.

  ‘And see if you can turn these around so I can work on them on the plane.’ He thrust a mass of scrawled papers across the desk.

  ‘Please,’ said Barbara.

  ‘Make sure you bring the laptop—no, make that two. I’ll give you my revisions so you can get on with them on the plane but I’ll be wanting some of the data files myself.’

  ‘What’s the magic word?’ said Barbara.

  Charles scowled. ‘I thought I was making it worth your while to put up with my manners. For five per cent of Mallorin I’d have thought you could live without the magic word.’

  Barbara looked him straight in the eye. ‘I can,’ she said. ‘And, yes, you’re making it worth my while. But you’re just as rude to everyone else—you’re not paying them over the odds.’

  ‘I haven’t heard any complaints,’ he said with a shrug.

  ‘No,’ agreed Barbara pleasantly. ‘But then you never listen to anybody except yourself, so it’s hardly surprising.’

  A sardonic black eyebrow shot up over one brilliant green eye. ‘I must be out of my mind,’ he remarked. ‘London, Secretary Capital of the World, and I deliberately shell out hundreds of thousands of pounds for one who can’t take a letter without trying to reform my character into the bargain. It’s sweet of you to go to all this trouble, Barbara, but just give it up as a bad job, would you?’

  Barbara knew the careless, charming smile she could expect if she gave in; she also knew she wanted the fleeting warmth of that indifferent caress just as much as all the others who went tiptoeing around so as not to bother Mr Mallory. Well, too bad.

  ‘No,’ she said flatly.

  She ran her hands through her hair in exasperation until it stood up in an excitable red mass over her crackling blue eyes.

  ‘You can’t do this, Charles,’ she said impatiently. ‘You’ve got first-rate people working here, but they’re not doing a first-rate job because whenever they run into problems the first thing they think is they mustn’t bother you. What on earth is the point of expanding into Eastern Europe when you can’t even get this place working properly?’

  ‘Something your wealth of experience has naturally qualified you to advise on,’ he said quizzically.

  Barbara met his eyes unsmilingly. ‘I don’t need a wealth of experience,’ she said. ‘I’ve been here a couple of weeks and I know more about the place than you do.’

  ‘Well, you always were a quick study,’ he said coolly. ‘At least where my business was concerned. Would you mind making those reservations before the travel agents close?’

  Barbara bit her lip. She punched in the numbers from memory. A recorded voice told her she was in a queue, then gave way to Handel’s Water Music in an unusual arrangement for bagpipes. They were lucky to have found an agency that stayed open late for business clients, but she could wish it was one with a different taste in music.

  ‘You know what I’m like,’ she said. ‘If you wanted someone to say “Yes, Charles”, “Of course, Charles”, “You’re so wonderful, Charles”, you could have had anyone else on the planet. If you were hoping I’d join the chorus you’re wasting your time and money.’

  He was about to reply when the travel agent came on the line. Barbara made the necessary arrangements and hung up.

  ‘You’ll have these for tomorrow,’ she said, picking up his mass of papers and turning back to the computer dismissively.

  She sensed, rather than saw, that Charles was still standing by her desk. She heard him pick up the phone, key in a number and wait.

  A few seconds went by. ‘Julia?’ said Charles. ‘Charles here. I hate to do this, but a crisis has come up and it doesn’t look as if I’ll be able to get away. Can we leave it till I get back from Prague? Should be some time next week… You’re a darling. Bye.’

  He put down the receiver.

  ‘Right, that’s that taken care of,’ he said coolly. ‘Leave that for now, Barbara. Let’s go and have dinner and get this sorted out.’

  Barbara whirled around on her chair. ‘What?’ she exclaimed furiously. ‘You actually, blatantly, shamelessly, gratuitously stand somebody up and then you have the nerve to expect me to have dinner with you instead? How dare you?’

  Charles flicked up an eyebrow in surprise.

  ‘Friend of yours?’

  Barbara searched, briefly, for words, and decided that the entire ‘Teach Yourself series from Albanian to Zulu could not do justice to the occasion. Her hand flew up before she could stop herself and there was a sharp, satisfying crack as her open palm connected with his cheek.

  She dropped her hand and stared at him defiandy. She knew she should say she was sorry—after all, it was completely out of line—but it was something she’d been wanting to do for years. Someone should have done it years ago. His skin had gone first white and then red under the blow, and that was satisfying, too.

  The look in his eyes wasn’t quite so satisfying. There was anger there—well, that was only to be expected. More worrying, there was speculation.

  ‘I thought you wanted me to do my own dirty work,’ he said.

  ‘How can you, Charles?’ Barbara glared at him. ‘Don’t you ever think of anyone but yourself? Just because you happened to think of something you’d rather be doing, you think—’

  She was interrupted, infuriatingly, by a howl of laughter. The green eyes sparkled and he looked suddenly very much younger.

  ‘Barbara, darling,’ he said, grinning, ‘if you think I’d rather have dinner with the one woman on the planet who won’t say “Yes, Charles”, “Of course, Charles”, “You’re so wonderful, Charles”, the one woman who won’t give me the time of day, let alone a kiss goodnight… I thought you thought this was important. The next week is going to be pretty frenetic so if there’s something we need to talk about we should talk about it now. Anyway, it was only a casual arrangement with Julia. I didn’t realise I needed to clear cancelling with you or I’d have explamed.’ His eyes were speculative again.

  ‘You say it was casual,’ Barbara protested. ‘As far as I can see, all that means is you felt you could change plans at the last moment. How do you know she looked at it that way?’

  He shrugged. ‘Because it’s a game for grown-ups, darling. I know you don’t play it. You’ll just have to take my word for it that people w
ho do know the rules.’

  ‘Which you make up as you go along,’ said Barbara. ‘What do they do—ask to be put on the mailing list for updates?’

  Charles gave her a maddening, indulgent smile. He took her coat off the coat-rack.

  Barbara hesitated. If she was going to have to go to Prague the next day this was going to cut into the time she needed for the Barrett presentation. She’d only got a preliminary draft so far; she was really going to have to push it if tonight was the last night she’d have to work on it. Besides, Charles had behaved abominably. She shouldn’t be rewarding him. On the other hand, this was a golden opportunity to show him some of the problems thrown up by his style of management. And when would she ever again get to have dinner with him?

  She compromised by continuing to argue.

  ‘And how do you know I don’t play the game, anyway?’ she added indignantly. She stalked around the desk and was about to snatch her coat when he held it for her to slip on. Reluctantly she slid her arms into the sleeves, standing just inside his arms. For just a moment his hands fastened on her arms, and then she was free.

  He was looking down at her with an odd, rueful smile that sat strangely on a face normally so hard. ‘Because you haven’t changed since you were eleven,’ he said.

  Barbara could feel her anger melting away in spite of herself at that quizzical, almost affectionate look. Well, knowing Charles, he knew exactly what he was doing. She scowled at him. ‘How would you know?’ she said pointedly.

  ‘I don’t think you want to know,’ he said, his mouth quirking up in another of those easy, charming smiles. ‘Let’s just say you still say exactly what you think. First rule of the game is not to give anything away—’

  ‘Unless you can wrong-foot someone,’ said Barbara. Her dark blue eyes met his defiantly. ‘I don’t like that rule. It doesn’t mean I’m completely inexperienced.’