The Boss's Proposal Read online

  ‘What?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘What have you got on your plate?’ His eyes scanned her CV then focused on her.

  ‘Well,’ Vicky stuttered, taken aback by the directness of the question, ‘I’ve only recently returned from Australia and I have a lot of things to do concerning…my house and generally settling in…’ This explanation skirted so broadly around the truth that she could feel the colour rise to her cheeks.

  ‘Why did you decide to go to Australia?’

  ‘My mother…passed away…I felt that the change would do me good…and I just happened to stay a great deal longer than I had anticipated. I landed a job in a very good company quite early on and I was promoted in the first six months. I…it was easier than coming back to England and dealing with…’

  ‘Your loss?’

  Vicky stiffened at the perceptiveness behind the question. She’d once considered Shaun to be a perceptive, sensitive person. Perhaps illusions along those lines ran in the Forbes family.

  ‘I would appreciate it if we could terminate this interview now.’ She began getting to her feet, smoothing down the dark grey skirt, nervously brushing non-existent flecks of dust from it rather than face those amazing, unsettling grey eyes. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve wasted your time. I realise that you’re a very busy man, and time is money. Had I been aware of the situation, I would have telephoned to cancel the appointment. As I said, I’m not interested in a job that’s going to monopolise my free time.’

  ‘Your references,’ he said coolly, ignoring her pointed attempt to leave his office, ‘from the Houghton Corporation are glowing…’ He looked at her carefully while she remained in dithering uncertainty on her feet, unable to turn her back and walk out of the office but reluctant to sit back down and allow him to think that the job in question was open for debate. ‘Very impressive, and all the more so because I know James Houghton very well.’

  ‘You know him?’ Several potential catastrophes presented themselves to her when she heard this and she weakly sat back down. It wouldn’t do for Max Forbes to contact her old boss in Australia. There were too many secrets hidden away there, secrets she had no intention of disclosing.

  ‘We went to school together a million years ago.’ He pushed himself up from the desk and began prowling around the room, one minute within her line of vision, the next a disembodied voice somewhere behind her. If his tactic was to unsettle her, then he was going about it the right way. ‘He’s a good businessman. A recommendation from him counts for a hell of a lot.’ He paused and the silence from behind her made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. ‘Where in Australia did you live?’

  ‘In the city. My aunt has a house there.’ There was an element of danger in this line of questioning but Vicky had no idea how to retrieve the situation.

  ‘Did much socialising?’

  ‘With whom?’ she asked cautiously. It would help, she thought, if he would return within her line of vision so that she could see the expression on his face—but then, on reflection, perhaps it wasn’t a bad thing that she couldn’t. After all, he would be able to see hers, and she had a great deal more to hide than he would ever have imagined in a million years.

  ‘People from your work.’ She could sense him as he walked slowly round to the side of her. His presence made her feel clammy and claustrophobic. Out of the corner of her eye, she could make him out as he lounged against the wall, hands shoved deep into his trouser pockets, head tilted slightly to one side as though carefully weighing up what she was saying. Weighing it up and, she thought with a flash of sudden foreboding, storing up every word to be used at a later date in evidence against her.

  Not that there would be a later date, she reminded herself. Powerful though he was, he couldn’t compel her to work for his company. He might grill her now because she had been stupid enough to make him think that there was more to her than met the eye, but very shortly she would be gone and he would be nothing more than a freakish reminder of how eerie coincidence could be. The thought of imminent escape steadied her nerves and she even managed to force a smile to her face.

  ‘Off and on. I had a lot of friends in Sydney. The Australians are a very friendly lot.’ She risked a sideways glance at him.

  ‘So I’ve been told. My brother certainly thought so.’

  ‘You had a brother out there?’ A slow crawl of treacherous colour stole across her face and she could feel a fine perspiration begin to film above her lip.

  ‘Shaun Forbes.’ He allowed the name to register. ‘My twin.’

  He had never told her. She’d known Shaun for nearly a year and a half and he’d never once mentioned that the brother whose name he reviled was his identical twin. She imagined now that it must have been deeply galling to have so spectacularly failed to live up to a brother who had emerged from the womb at the same time as he had and had been given exactly the same upbringing and privileges, yet had succeeded.

  Seeing Max Forbes had been a heart-stopping shock. There was enough in their physical make-up to send her spinning sickeningly back into the past and every memory she had spent so long trying to crush had reared their ugly heads with gleeful malice.

  ‘He was quite prominent on the social scene, I gather.’ His mouth twisted and he turned away and strode towards the desk.

  ‘No. The name doesn’t ring a bell.’ The words almost got stuck in her throat. This was what it felt like to be toyed with by the devil, she thought. Life had not been easy since she’d returned to England. The last batch of tenants to occupy her mother’s house had been cavalier in their treatment of it and, frustratingly, the estate agents who handled the rental had had nothing to say on the subject. So, on top of the uphill task of finding work and getting her finances straight, there was the little problem of the house, which needed a complete overhaul. Even the walls seemed to smell.

  And then there was Chloe.

  Vicky half closed her eyes and a wave of nausea rushed through her.

  ‘I’m surprised. James spent a lot of time in his company. I might have expected that you would have seen him at some point in the offices.’

  Vicky, whose vocal cords were failing to co-operate with her brain, shook her head and looked blankly at the man staring at her.

  ‘No?’ he prodded, glancing back down at her CV, and she made an inarticulate, choking sound by way of reply. ‘Well, perhaps not. Shaun probably wouldn’t have noticed you, anyway.’

  That succeeded in clearing her head admirably. He surely couldn’t have meant to insult her, but insult her he had. If only he knew that seek her out was precisely what his hideous brother had done. Charmed her with his smooth conversation and his offerings of flowers and empty flattery. Told her that she was destined to rescue him from himself, thanked her with tears in his eyes for making him want to be a better human being. And she’d fallen for all the claptrap—hook, line and sinker. It hadn’t taken long before the mask had begun to disintegrate and she’d begun to see the ugliness behind the charming façade.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ she said coldly.

  ‘Why did you decide to leave Australia if you had such a brilliant job and hectic social life?’

  The question was irrelevant, considering she had no intention of working for the man, but fear of arousing yet more of his curiosity restrained her from telling him to mind his own business.

  ‘I never intended to build my life out there. I felt that it was time to come back to England.’

  Chloe. Everything had centred around Chloe.

  ‘And you’ve had temp jobs since returning? The pay’s pretty poor, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘I get by.’ Lousy was the word for it.

  ‘And you’re living—?’ For a minute, the piercing grey eyes left her face and perused the paper in front of him. ‘—just outside Warwick…rented place?’

  ‘My mother left her house to me when she…died. It’s been rented out for the past few years.’

  He shove
d the paper away from him, leaned back in his chair with his hands folded behind his head and looked at her without bothering to disguise his curiosity.

  ‘Young woman, who’s just returned from abroad, and doubtless wants to refurnish house, rejects job that is vastly superior to the one for which she originally applied. Help me out there with a logical explanation? If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a mystery. I always feel that mysteries are there to be solved, and, by hook or by crook, guess what…?’

  ‘What?’ Vicky asked, mesmerised by his eyes. When she’d first met Shaun, the first thing she’d noticed had been his eyes. Those pale eyes and black hair and the chiselled, beautiful lines of his face. He was like an Adonis. If she’d had any sense, she would have seen past the outside to the man within and it wouldn’t have taken her long to notice the weakness behind the good looks, the restless feverish energy of a man who needed to find his fixes outside himself, the mouth that could thin to a cruel line in a matter of seconds.

  With that in mind, it sickened her that she could feel something inside her tighten alarmingly at the sight of his twin.

  ‘I always get to the bottom of them.’ He gave her a slow, dangerous smile and she shivered.

  Max Forbes was so like his brother, and yet so dissimilar in ways that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. If Shaun’s looks had captivated because of their prettiness, his brother’s hypnotised because of their power, and if Shaun had always known what to say to get the girls into bed, Vicky imagined that his brother achieved what he wanted by the very fact that he disregarded the normal little social conventions and said precisely what he wanted, despite the consequences. He had the sort of rugged, I’ll-do-as-I-damn-well-want charisma that women, she suspected, would find difficult to resist. Even Geraldine Hogg had become coy in his presence.

  Max Forbes looked at the small figure on the chair. She looked more like a child than a woman, with that pointed elfin face and pale, freckled skin. The picture of innocence. But his instincts were telling a different story. Something was not quite above board and his desire to find out what surprised him. He hadn’t felt so damned curious about anyone for a long time. He stared at her and felt a rush of satisfied pleasure when she blushed and looked away quickly.

  Oh, yes. Life had ceased to be merely an affair of making money and making love, both with a great deal of flair and, lately, not much pleasure or satisfaction. Vicky Lockhart had something to hide and the thought of discovering what sent a ripple of enjoyment through him. It was a sensation so alien that it took him a few seconds to recognise what it was.

  ‘Oh, how very interesting,’ she said politely, her brown eyes widening. The sun, streaming through the window, caught her hair and seemed to turn it to flames.

  It was, he thought, a most unusual shade of red, and, connoisseur that he was, he was almost certain that it hadn’t come out of a bottle. Of course, she wasn’t his type. Not at all. He’d always gone for tall, full-breasted women, but still, he felt his mind wander as he imagined what that hair would look like, were it not pulled back. How long was it? Long, he imagined. Long and unruly. Nothing at all like the sleek-haired women he dated. Did the hair, he wondered, match the personality? Underneath that sweet, childish façade was there a hot, steamy, untamed woman bursting to get out? He smiled at the passing thought and was startled to find that his body had responded rather too vigorously to the image he’d mentally conjured up. Getting aroused like this made him feel like an adolescent, and he cleared his throat in a business-like fashion.

  ‘I don’t know if Geraldine mentioned the pay…’ He waited for her curiosity to take the bait, then he rattled off a sum that was roughly twice what he’d had in mind for the job in question. He could see the glimmer of interest illuminate the brown eyes and her small fists clenched at the sides of the chair as though she had to steady herself.

  ‘That’s a very generous salary. She did mention that the pay would be more than the job advertised in the newspaper…’

  She wanted to accept. He could see it written on her face and he waited patiently for her to nod her head.

  ‘But, really, I’m afraid I must say no.’

  It took a few seconds for that to sink in.

  ‘What?’ Not much floored him, but for a passing moment he could feel himself rendered speechless.

  ‘I can’t accept.’

  He looked at the small, elfin face, the delicate mouth, the soft brown eyes fringed with impossibly long auburn lashes, and was assailed by a humiliating sensation of powerlessness. He couldn’t make her accept his offer—he wasn’t even that sure why he was so infuriated by her refusal; he just knew that he wanted to shake her until she agreed to work for him. The absurdity of his reaction was enough to make him shake his head and smile. He must be losing his mind. Wrapping up New York and then moving to the UK must have conspired to bring about some kind of subliminal breakdown, or else why would he now be staring at a perfect stranger and feeling this way?

  He glanced down at the desk and began drumming his pen on it.

  ‘Of course, if I can’t persuade you…’

  ‘I’m flattered that you’ve been prepared to try…’ She stood up and gave him an awkward and, he was irritated to see, relieved smile.

  ‘Thousands of people would kill for the job offer I’ve just made you.’ He heard his over-hearty voice and bared his teeth in a smile of good-mannered regret. His eyes flicked to her face and he could feel himself stiffen once again at the thought of what she would look like with her hair down. Then, to his utter disgust, and completing his inexorable decline into pubescent irrationality, he glanced down at her breasts, two small bumps underneath the bulk of shirt and jacket, and wondered what they would be like. Tiny, he imagined. Small, pointed, freckled with rosy nipples. Red hair tumbling down a naked body and rose-peaked breasts just big enough to fit into his…

  He virtually gulped and was obliged, as he stood up, to conceal his treacherous body by leaning forward on the desk and supporting himself on his hands.

  ‘Are you quite sure you won’t reconsider…?’

  ‘Quite sure.’ She looked at him uncertainly, then stretched out her hand, which he took and shook, paying lip service to good manners. He could tell that even that small gesture was not one she particularly wanted to make but courtesy had compelled her.

  What was her story?

  He made her nervous, but why? He didn’t threaten her…or did he? He wondered whether they’d met before, but he was sure that he would have remembered. There was something unforgettable about the ethereal delicacy of that face and the teasing disarray of that remarkable hair. She had been to Australia, however…

  ‘If I speak to James, I shall mention I’ve met you,’ he murmured, walking her to the door and he felt the momentary pause in her steps.

  ‘Of course. And do you…keep in regular touch with him?’

  ‘I used to. He occasionally kept an eye on my wayward brother.’

  ‘And he no longer does?’

  He picked up the struggle in her voice with interest.

  ‘My brother died a while back in a car crash, Miss Lockhart.’

  Vicky nodded, and instead of proffering the usual mutterings of sympathy rested her hand on the door knob and turned it, ready to flee. She knew that she should express some kind of courteous regret at that, but honesty stopped her from doing so. She had no regrets at Shaun’s fate. To forgive was divine, but it wasn’t human, and she had no aspirations to divinity.

  ‘Well, perhaps we’ll meet again.’ Perhaps, indeed. Much sooner than you think.

  ‘I doubt it.’ She smiled and pulled open the door. ‘But thanks for the job offer, anyway. And good luck in finding someone for the post.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE GARDEN had been the most distressing sight to greet her upon her return to England and to the modest three-bedroom cottage that had been her mother’s. She’d more or less expected to find the house in something of a state. It had seen a v
ariety of tenants, not all of them reliable family units, and even when her mother had been alive it had been in dire need of repair. But the garden had broken her heart. A combination of young children, cigarette-smoking teenagers and, from the looks of things, adults with hobnailed boots had rendered it virtually unrecognisable.

  One more thing, she thought wearily, to bring to the attention of the agency that had handled the letting, although what precisely the point of doing that would be, she had no idea. Marsha, the woman in whose hands Vicky had hurriedly but confidently left the house, had left the firm eighteen months back, and since then the house had been handled by a series of people, none of whom had done justice to it. Perhaps they’d thought that she would never return to England, or at least not quite as unexpectedly as she had in the end.

  It broke her heart to think of all the time and effort that her mother had spent in the small, immaculate garden. A decade ago, it had been her salvation after the death of her husband, Vicky’s father, and it had steadfastly seen her through her ups and downs, providing comfort and soothing her when her illness took hold and she no longer had the energy to go walking or attempt anything energetic.

  She’d laid borders and hedgerows and planted wild roses and shrubbery with the imagination of someone whose every other outlet had been prematurely barred. Vicky could remember the summer evenings spent out in it, listening to the sounds of nature and appreciating the tumult of colour.

  The cottage was set back at the end of a lane in a part of Warwickshire noted for its rural beauty. The small garden, now sporting an interesting array of weeds which formed a charming tangle around the occasional outcrop of lager bottles, ambled down to a white fence, beyond which stretched cultivated fields. A plot of reasonably well-maintained land bordered by trees separated the cottage from its neighbour, a rather more substantial family house to the right. To the left woodland kept the well-used roads at bay.

  Vicky, sweating in her layers of clothing and grimy with the exertions of her Saturday morning garden clear-out, peered through some bush at yet another aluminium can. Robert ‘call-me-Robbie’ at the agency had assured her that whatever she’d found in the garden had not been there when the house and grounds had been inspected, and she knew, anyway, that she was pretty late to be lodging complaints about the state of the garden. Only recently had she managed to find the time to do anything other than superficially maintain it, a thirty-minute job whenever she found the time to spare.