Bittersweet Love. CATHY WILLIAMS
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‘I never was,’ Natalie said ambiguously.
‘Fine.’ He gave her a curt nod, his hand over the receiver. ‘My place. Seven sharp. I’ll get O’Leary to do something to eat.’
Natalie’s mouth dropped open in dismay. This was not her idea of agreeable overtime one little bit. True, she had been to his flat before to work, usually in the presence of other people when she was used mainly to take the minutes and attend to practicalities. But it had always made her feel uneasy.
Poring over files with no one else around, apart from O’Leary, his manservant-cum-general housekeeper, who was as deaf as post and generally retired to his quarters to watch television as soon as he feasibly could anyway, was not her idea of a fun night out
‘But…’ Natalie began in protestation, but he was already talking down the line, waving her away.
It wasn’t until she was almost ready to leave for home that she next got the opportunity to try and wheedle out of the nightmarish scenario, but Kane was having none of it.
‘Three of the files are at my place. The most complicated three, in fact.’ His eyes narrowed suspiciously on her. ‘Not trying to tell me that you can’t work a bit of overtime, are you? Because I needn’t tell you that this promotion will entail a fair amount of it. I won’t allow clock-watching.’
‘Of course I understand,’ Natalie said hastily, following him with her eyes as he prepared to leave for yet another meeting, this time with one of his financial directors.
‘Good,’ he said smoothly. ‘In that case, there’s no problem, is there?’
‘No problem,’ she agreed with vast understatement.
She got home with barely enough time to have a bath before she rushed back out. The phone was ringing as she stepped out of the bath, and for one fleeting moment of heady optimism she thought that it might be Kane cancelling his engagement.
No such luck. It took her a second or two before she recognised Eric’s voice, then she remembered that she had given him her telephone number, had agreed that they mustn’t lose touch. She rubbed herself dry, wandering around the bedroom with the receiver tucked behind one ear, awkwardly getting dressed in a pair of jeans and a thin cotton top with buttons down the front.
In her left ear, Eric chatted to her enthusiastically until she gently interrupted to tell him that she was going out and would have to say goodbye. She knew that he was going to arrange to see her; after all, hadn’t she given him every encouragement despite her ‘hands off warning? Even so, when he asked her to dinner later on in the week, she felt herself hesitate slightly.
Was it wise? Could she trust him? What if he wanted involvement, even though he had emphatically stated that it was the last thing on his mind?
Then she thought of Kane, the chiselled beauty of his features, the trail of women who flocked behind him, and on the spur of the moment she agreed with Eric that yes, dinner and the theatre would be wonderful.
‘I’m afraid it’ll have to be an early start,’ he said. ‘Can I meet you at your workplace? Say around six?’
It’ll do me good, she thought, catching a taxi to Kane’s flat in St John’s Wood. She wasn’t about to fall into the same old rut of all work and no play, promotion or no promotion. And Kane already knew of Eric’s presence in her life. She would not have to explain anything further to him.
It was raining steadily outside and she let her thoughts drift as the taxi wound its way along Finchley Road, taking ages because the traffic was appalling. Wouldn’t it be nice to live in the country? she thought. No traffic, no pollution, just wide open spaces. She had grown up in the country and although it was years since she had last lived there she still hankered for the peace and quiet.
Whenever she visited her sister in her delightful little house in Tamworth-in-Arden in the Midlands, she felt the same yen to pack in everything, Kane Marshall included, and do something really useful like become self-sufficient somewhere terribly rural.
Of course she wouldn’t.
‘You’d collapse from sheer boredom after a week,’ her sister always told her, whenever her thoughts became a little too fanciful. ‘London’s in your blood now. You’ll probably end up having to wean yourself out of it. Richmond first, then maybe Windsor, then the vegetable plot in the wilderness.’
But then vegetable plots in the middle of nowhere didn’t include Kane, did they? Dammit, she thought, don’t think like that! You’re in the process of trying to exorcise him, or have you forgotten? Thinking along those lines isn’t going to speed it up, is it?
She had to cover her head with her handbag when the taxi set her down outside Kane’s flat. The steady drum of rain had become more of a downpour and she arrived on his doorstep soaking wet. O’Leary opened the door for her and she shouted by way of apology for removing her shoes in the hall.
‘It’ s pouring outside! Don’t want to bring my mud into the lounge!’
O’Leary took her jacket and said, shaking his head, ‘Raining outside, is it?’
Obviously not wearing his hearing aid tonight, Natalie thought, her lips twitching. Most people would be mystified as to why Kane kept him on, but it didn’t puzzle Natalie at all. Kane could be surprisingly indulgent in some areas and this was one of them. O’Leary had been with his family for years and when his parents retired to the South of France he had inherited the old man without question.
‘Master Kane’s in the lounge,’ O’Leary was telling her, preceding her through the hall. ‘Work, work, work—don’t you young people ever know when to stop?’
Natalie knew better than to answer. Answering O’Leary without his hearing aid was an exercise in torture, so she clucked a bit and glanced around her. It really was a magnificent flat. It never ceased to impress her. The carpets were deep and in a soft, minty green colour, the walls, split by a dado rail in the middle, gave back the hues of green, but were mixed with creams and peaches as well, and were scattered with paintings, most of them impressionistic and all of them originals. Strange to think that someone as bold and self-assertive—in fact downright persuasive—as Kane Marshall could actually live in surroundings as restful as these.
O’Leary showed her into the lounge, yelling at Kane that the meal would be ready in half an hour sharp and could he please be prompt because there was a detective show on television that he wanted to watch.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Kane muttered, when O’Leary had departed, ‘why on earth do I keep on that old duffer?’ He turned towards the drinks cabinet and poured himself a gin and tonic for himself and a vodka and orange for her.
‘Because it would break your heart to see him go.’ Natalie accepted her drink, even though she would have preferred something non-alcoholic, and sipped from it tentatively.
‘I must be mad,’ he grumbled under his breath. ‘I should have sent him packing off to the South of France with my parents.’
The files had been dumped on the marble coffee-table in front of the fireplace, and Natalie sauntered across to them, picking one up and rifling through it.
The sooner they got down to business, the sooner she would be on her way home. She was about to tactfully lever the conversation around to one of the accounts when she heard a silky voice from the doorway and looked up to see Anna standing there, barefoot, her blonde hair loose and trailing down her back in a mass of tendrils. The other woman was staring at her with open malice. ‘Now I see why you cancelled our dinner date this evening,’ she said with a freezing smile, stepping into the lounge and moving gracefully over to the sofa. She slipped into a pair of flat gold ballet shoes and turned towards Kane. ‘Or maybe I don’t.’ A flick of a glance in Natalie’s direction. ‘If you’ve decided to supplant me with her, then your taste has certainly gone downhill.’
‘This is work, Anna. Not that I have to justify cancelling a dinner date