The Parenti Marriage: The Reluctant Surrender. PENNY JORDAN
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for one minute that that was his intention, Giselle.’ Moira tried to comfort and placate her. ‘In fact I gained the impression that he rather admires you for what you are doing—as indeed I do myself. It can’t be easy for you.’
Giselle’s body stiffened as she heard the pity in the older woman’s voice.
‘What can’t be easy for me? Wearing cheap clothes? I can think of plenty of things that would be far harder to bear.’
Moira tried another tack.
‘A large part of Saul’s business comes from the international high finance set, and it is all about convincing them that becoming partners with him and investing in his construction projects will bring them good returns. For that reason he believes that it is important to maintain the right kind of image. We have a mainly young staff, and their standards of grooming tend to be high.’
‘So it isn’t for my benefit that he has given instructions that I am to be shamed and patronised, then,’ Giselle challenged her, ‘but for his own?’
‘For his own and for yours,’ Moira insisted.
‘I won’t do it,’ Giselle told her fiercely. ‘He can get someone else from the firm—in fact I wish he would.’
‘Do you? That would mean being sent back to your employers in disgrace. Saul is their most important client. I can understand how you feel, but you have your CV and your future to think of. And with your greataunt’s care to provide, taking any kind of risk with your earning potential might not be a good idea.’
What Moira was saying made good sense, Giselle knew. But that did not mean that she had to welcome hearing it.
The initial surge of adrenalin-boosted fury Moira’s announcement had brought subsided now, leaving Giselle feeling emotionally raw and shaky.
Moira put her hand on Giselle’s arm. They were in Giselle’s office, where she had come to pass on Saul’s instructions.
‘I do understand how you must feel, and indeed how I would feel myself, were I you,’ she told her calmly.
No, she didn’t, Giselle thought inwardly. How could she? How could anyone? She was the one who had been subjected to the humiliation Saul was heaping on her. She was the one who had been mocked and taunted and…and kissed by him until she was reduced to a molten aching longing.
‘I cannot and will not allow Saul to buy my clothes. And since I cannot afford to buy the kind of clothes for myself he seems to deem necessary for those who work for him—’
‘It is not Saul who will be paying for them; it is the company. If as an employee you were required to wear a uniform you would not object to your employer providing that uniform for you, would you?’ Moira challenged briskly, and continued without giving her time to respond. ‘This is just the same. Saul requires you to wear the same “uniform” as his other employees.’
‘I won’t do it,’ Giselle repeated. ‘And I shall go and tell him so.’
‘You can’t,’ Moira told her, stepping in front of her as Giselle made to head for the door. ‘He isn’t here. He’s flying to New York this morning. Don’t make your mind up right now, Giselle. The appointment isn’t until four o’clock.’
This was her punishment for last night, Giselle decided after Moira had gone. She was sure of it.
Her mobile rang whilst she was still brooding on her situation. Her caller was Emma.
‘You’ll never guess what,’ Emma told her without preamble as soon as Giselle had answered the call. ‘Bill Jeffries has been called in from annual leave and suspended from work until further notice because Saul Parenti has queried some of his costings. And I should warn you, Giselle, that Bill is blaming you—and gunning for you as well. You’re lucky you’re working at Parenti’s and not over here, I can tell you.’
Listening to Emma, Giselle gripped her mobile more tightly, torn between disbelief that Saul had actually taken her disclosures seriously enough to report them to the partnership for further investigations, the realisation that she must after all have been wrong about him trying to trick her, and the recognition that the door to her escape route from Parenti had just swung closed on her.
An hour later, on her way to the communal coffee machine, one of the other girls smiled at her and asked her if she was settling in okay. Giselle couldn’t help but notice how smart Aimee looked. Her black suit wasn’t shiny from being over-washed—but then it had probably never been anywhere near a washing machine Giselle reflected ruefully. It looked far too expensive for that.
‘Saul’s gorgeous, isn’t he?’ Aimee chatted whilst she got her coffee and Giselle queued next to her. ‘Pity he’s so anti-commitment and settling down. Mind you, if he wasn’t I dare say we’d all be trying our best to become the future Mrs Saul Parenti. There’s no chance of that, though. Not with him having said so often and so publicly that he intends to remain single and family-free. Oh, it’s my birthday at the end of the month—you’re welcome to join us for drinks after work if you’re free.’
The other girls here did seem to be welcoming and friendly, Giselle acknowledged, and the drinks invitation was one she would have liked to take up if…
If what? If she could afford to dress like they did?
Some of the coffee she had just made herself slopped over onto the counter as her hand shook betrayingly. It wasn’t just expensive clothes that separated her from her co-workers, Giselle reminded herself. There was their differing attitudes to Saul as well. The reason he didn’t want to commit and settle down was probably because he couldn’t imagine any woman ever being good enough for him, Giselle thought cynically as she made her way back to her office, with her coffee. They seemed eager and ready to adore him, whilst she loathed him.
By three o’clock she had made up her mind what she had to do over the issue of Saul providing her with new work clothes—or rather she had had that decision made for her as a result of Emma’s telephone call.
As angry and resentful as it made her, she would have to accept Saul’s diktat.
When she went to inform Moira of her decision she couldn’t bring herself to meet the older woman’s gaze.
Right now there was nothing she longed for more than the financial independence to refuse both this secondment and the clothes he deemed good enough to go with it. But of course she couldn’t. Not whilst her great-aunt was so financially dependent on her. She owed her elderly relative so much, and nothing—not even her own pride—could be allowed to stand in the way of doing everything she could to repay the debt of loyalty and love she owed her.
Without her great-aunt she would have ended up in a children’s home—or worse. Giselle felt the old familiar sickness and fear rising up inside her. It was Saul’s fault that she was feeling like this, with her old fears being dragged up from their burial ground to torment her.
Giselle could feel Moira’s pity for her in the silence surrounding them.
‘It will make your working life here much easier if you can accept that Saul is a law unto himself,’ she told Giselle, breaking that silence. ‘And that he does not like having his decisions questioned.’
Half an hour later, stepping out into the street, Giselle witnessed a young couple stopping to exchange a tender kiss and her heart turned over inside her chest.
A dangerous emotion was filling her—a sharp, searing feeling of pain and regret because she would never be kissed like that, because for her there would never be a time when she was held in a man’s arms in an intimate moment of trust and love between them.
That emotion was still worrying her over an hour later, as she sat in the private fitting room of Harvey Nichols’ personal shopping suite with a cup of coffee in her hand whilst she waited for the shopper and her assistants to return with a selection of clothes for her to try on.
Why,