The Corporate Bridegroom. Liz Fielding
Читать онлайн книгу.
the heavy midday traffic, he had plenty of time to regret the impulse that had prompted him to follow Romana Claibourne out of the office.
Heaven alone knew that he didn’t want to spend a minute in her company that wasn’t absolutely necessary. He had precious little time for ditzy blondes at the best of times. He had none at all for those who played at being ‘company director’ in the little time they could spare from shopping. He glanced at the designer label carrier bags, scattered about her long, narrow feet.
Encased in designer shoes with a price ticket to reflect the label, he had no doubt.
His lip curled at such conspicuous extravagance even while the man in him recognised the beauty of the feet, the slender ankles and the legs to which they were attached. There was a lot of leg to admire—Romana Claibourne clearly didn’t believe in hiding her best features.
She was pushing back her wild, thick mane of curls when she realised that he was staring at her. Every instinct warned him to turn away as she paused, querying his look. Instead, he did what he knew would most irritate her. He raised one brow…bored, unimpressed…and turned back to the more interesting view of passing traffic.
A charity gala, no matter how good the cause, wasn’t his idea of work. It wasn’t even his idea of fun. Such events were right at the bottom of his ‘must-do’ list. He’d far rather send a cheque and pass on the manufactured glamour.
But he could scarcely complain. She’d given him every opportunity to escape, offered to sort out the shadowing in a civilised manner; he’d simply assumed she was trying to get rid of him in order to get on with whatever that overnight bag had been packed for.
It was too late now to wish he’d simply asked her what she was doing for the rest of day. There was just something about the girl, the way she looked at him with those big blue eyes as if she was used to twisting men around her little finger and having them sit up and beg for more. He’d wanted her to know that he was made of sterner stuff.
The taxi finally came to a halt just upstream of Tower Bridge, where the burgundy and gold livery of Claibourne & Farraday was much in evidence on balloons and sweatshirts and a huge crowd was being whipped up into a state of wild excitement for the television cameras.
‘We’re here, Mr Macaulay.’
‘Niall, please,’ he said. Not out of any desire for informality, but because a whole month of being addressed as “Mr Macaulay” in a manner just short of insolent was not going to improve his temper.
And he could see for himself that they’d arrived.
It was what they were going to be doing that bothered him. Then, as he stepped out of the taxi and saw the C&F banner draped over the length of a very tall crane and a huge sign inviting participants to ‘Jump for JOY’, it became blindingly obvious.
He discovered that charity galas were not, after all, at the bottom of his list.
Charity bungee-jumping was right off the page.
‘It’s not always like this,’ Romana said, as she turned from paying the cab driver. ‘Some days are quite dull.’ She tucked the receipt into her wallet, then looked up and flashed a quick smile at him. ‘Although not many—not if I can help it.’
‘You’re going to jump?’ he asked. Silly question. Of course she was going to jump. She was being paid to have fun and she was enjoying every stupid, reckless minute of it.
‘Do you wish you’d gone back to your office when you had a chance, shadow-man?’ The challenge was light enough, but it was unmistakable. It said, Where I go, you follow.
‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘I’m finding the experience highly informative, but you appear to have misinterpreted the word “shadow”. You could have saved yourself the bother of organising a sweatshirt for me. I’m not playing follow-my-leader, Romana. I’m simply observing.’
She glanced up at him. ‘Scared, huh?’
He let that go. He had nothing to prove. There had been a time when he’d been as reckless as a man could be. But life had a way of mocking you. The gentlest of pastimes could be more dangerous than jumping into thin air.
‘Have you ever done this before?’ he asked.
‘Me? Good grief, no. I’m scared of heights.’ For a moment he believed her, then, when she had him hooked, she grinned. ‘How else do you think I managed to drum up so much sponsorship?’
‘You could have pinned your victims down and threatened to pour coffee over them unless they signed on the dotted line?’ he offered. She was bright and bubbly, and no doubt very good at this kind of mindless nonsense, but she wasn’t his idea of a company director.
She acknowledged his bull’s-eye with the slightest nod. ‘I’ll bear that in mind for next year. Thanks for the tip.’
‘There won’t be a next year.’
‘Well, no, not a bungee-jump, but…’ She suddenly realised that he wasn’t referring to the bungee-jump, but the imminent eviction of the Claibournes from the boardroom. ‘But I’ll come up with something equally exciting,’ she continued firmly. ‘If you’d like to show your own enthusiasm it’s not too late to phone your office and drum up some sponsorship yourself. It’s for a great cause, and I’m sure there are any number of people who’d pay good money to see you jump a hundred feet from a crane with an elastic band tied to your feet.’ Her smile was gratingly sweet as she offered him her phone. ‘It’s being broadcast on the internet,’ she added, ‘so they’ll be able to watch the whole thing live and get their money’s worth.’ Then, because she couldn’t resist it, ‘I’ll sponsor you myself.’
He’d just bet she would, but he shook his head. ‘I’ll stick to the arrangement we made. You do whatever you usually do. I’ll observe.’ No hardship on the eye, at least. Just on the brain. ‘You are jumping?’
‘One of the Claibournes had to make the opening jump and since India and Flora suddenly discovered pressing appointments elsewhere…’ She shrugged. ‘It’s a pity, though. If I’d known you’d be here I could have billed us both as the opening jump. We’ve already got the front page of Celebrity magazine for next week, but with you arriving out of the blue we could have sold pictures to the financial pages, too.’
‘How much have you raised in sponsorship?’
‘Personally?’ She glanced up at the crane. ‘Is it worth risking my neck for fifty-three thousand pounds do you think?’
‘Fifty-three thousand pounds?’ He was impressed, but he wasn’t about to show it. ‘That many people want to see you scared to death?’
‘Scared to death?’ Her eyes widened, making them appear impossibly large.
‘Isn’t that the point? You make a big thing out of being terrified of heights so your sponsors pay out to hear you scream.’
There was a pause before she said, ‘I must make sure to give them value for money. Thanks for reminding me,’ she said as her attention was claimed by a young woman bearing a sweatshirt.
‘Who’s the dishy bloke?’
‘Dishy?’ Romana didn’t have to follow her assistant’s avid gaze. Molly could only be talking about Niall. ‘He’s not dishy.’ He was mind-numbingly gorgeous. The kind of man that would have a girl dropping coffee and everything else if he so much as smiled. Maybe that was why he didn’t smile. It was too dangerous.
‘Crumbs, Romana, get your eyes tested. You don’t often get tall, dark and the look of the devil all in one package.’
That summed him up perfectly, and she felt a little tremor somewhere in her midriff that had nothing at all to do with jumping into space. ‘Should a married woman be having such thoughts about a man who is not her husband?’
‘I’m married, Romana. Not dead.’
‘Well,