Loe raamatut: «Contracted: Corporate Wife»

CHAPTER ONE

THE lift doors slid open, and out stepped Louisa Dennison, bang on time. As always.

Watching her from across the lobby, Patrick was conscious of a familiar spurt of something close to irritation. Dammit, couldn’t the woman be five seconds late for once?

Here she came, in her prim little grey suit, whose skirt stopped precisely at the knee, not a hair of her dark head out of place. She looked sensible, discreet, well groomed, the epitome of a perfect PA.

Patrick knew that he was being irrational. He had been lucky to inherit such an efficient assistant when he’d taken over Schola Systems. Lou—her name was the only relaxed thing about her, as far as he was concerned—was a model secretary. She was poised, punctual, professional. He never caught her gossiping or making personal phone calls in the office. She showed no interest whatsoever in his personal life, so Patrick never felt obliged to ask about hers. No, he couldn’t ask for a better PA.

It was just that sometimes he found himself wishing that she would make a mistake, just a little one. A typing error, say, that he could pick her up on, or a file that she couldn’t lay her hand on immediately. Maybe she could ladder her tights, or spill her coffee. Do something to prove that she was human.

But she never did.

The truth was that Patrick found Lou secretly intimidating at times, and it annoyed him. If there was any intimidating to be done, he was the one who liked to do it. Grown men had been known to tremble when he walked into the room, and his reputation as a ruthless executive was usually enough to make people tread warily around him.

Not Lou Dennison, though. She just looked at him with those dark eyes of hers. Her expression was usually one of complete indifference, but sometimes he suspected it also held a quiet irony that riled Patrick more than he cared to admit. It wasn’t even as if there was anything particularly special about her, he thought with a tinge of resentment. She was attractive enough, but she had to be at least forty-five, and it showed in the lines around her eyes.

That cool, composed look had never done anything for him, anyway. He liked his women more feminine, more appealing, less in control. And younger.

‘I’m not late, am I?’ Lou asked as she came up to him, and Patrick repressed the urge to glance ostentatiously at his watch and announce that she was a good fifteen seconds overdue.

‘Of course not.’

He forced a smile and reminded himself that it wasn’t actually Lou’s fault that high winds had forced the closure of the east coast line that evening, that it was too far to an airport, or that he would rather be having dinner with almost anyone else. There had been no way he could have got out of asking her to share a meal with him since they were both stranded, but he was hoping they could get it over with quickly and then go their separate ways for the rest of the evening.

He nodded in the direction of the restaurant. ‘Shall we go straight in? Or would you like a drink first?’

The drink option was such a patent afterthought that Lou was left in little doubt that Patrick was looking forward to their meal with as little pleasure as she was. Clearly she was supposed to meekly agree to eating straight away, but Lou didn’t feel like it.

She’d had a long day. It had begun with a five o’clock alarm call, progressed to getting two squabbling adolescents out of the house earlier than usual, continued with delays on the tube, followed by a stressful train journey with Patrick Farr. This was the first time they had had to travel to secure a contract, and she hadn’t thought her presence was necessary, but Patrick had insisted.

In the end, the meeting had been successful, but it had been long and intense, and Lou had been looking forward to getting home and enjoying a rare evening on her own to wind down with a stiff gin and a long bath without her children banging on the door and demanding to know what there was to eat or where she had put their special pair of torn jeans, which they needed right now.

And now she was stuck in this hotel with her boss instead. It wouldn’t have been too bad if Patrick hadn’t felt obliged to invite her to have dinner with him, or if she’d been able to think of a way of refusing without sounding ungracious. As it was, it looked as if they were both condemned to an evening of stilted conversation, and for that she definitely needed a drink!

‘A drink would be lovely, thank you,’ she said defiantly, ignoring the way Patrick’s thick brows drew together. He was evidently a man who was used to getting what he wanted—especially as far as women were concerned, if rumours were anything to go by. No doubt Lou was expected to fall in with his wishes like everyone else.

Tough, she thought unsympathetically. If he didn’t like it, he shouldn’t have asked her!

‘Let’s try the bar, then,’ he said, with just the suggestion of gritted teeth.

Lou didn’t care. In the three months since Patrick Farr had taken over Schola Systems he had made it obvious that he had no interest whatsoever in his new PA. Not young and pretty enough, clearly, Lou thought dispassionately. She didn’t mind that, but she didn’t see why she should pander to his ego in her free time. She wasn’t actually working this evening, and it wouldn’t do Patrick Farr any harm not to get his own way for once.

The bar was even worse than Patrick had feared. By the time they had realised that there would be no more trains to London that night, and that all road and air traffic was equally disrupted by the weather, all the best hotels had been booked out.

It was a long time since he had stayed anywhere this provincial, he thought, looking around the bar with distaste. It was overflowing with vegetation, and so dark that they practically had to grope their way to a table, which did nothing to improve his temper.

‘What would you like?’ he asked Lou as he snapped his fingers to summon the barman, although whether the man would be able to find them in the gloom was another matter.

‘A glass of champagne would be nice,’ said Lou composedly as she settled herself and smoothed down her skirt.

Patrick was surprised. She hadn’t struck him as a champagne drinker. He would have thought champagne too fizzy and frivolous for someone so efficient. He could imagine her drinking something much more sensible, like a glass of water, or possibly something sharp. A dry martini perhaps. Yes, he could see her with one of those.

Lou lifted her elegant brows at his expression. ‘Is that too extravagant?’ she asked, thinking that a glass of champagne was the least that he owed her after the day she had had. And it wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford it. The Patrick Farrs of this world could buy champagne by the truckload and think of it as small change.

‘We did win that contract,’ she reminded him, a subtle edge to her voice. ‘I thought we should celebrate.’

‘Of course.’ Patrick set his teeth, perfectly aware that he should have suggested a celebration given the size of the contract they had just won. ‘I’ll have the same.’

The barman had fought his way through the artificial jungle and was hovering. Opening his mouth to ask for two glasses of champagne, Patrick changed his mind and ordered a bottle instead. He wasn’t going to have Lou Dennison thinking that he was mean.

‘Certainly, sir.’

Sitting relaxed in her chair, she was looking around the gloomy bar, apparently unperturbed by the silence while they waited for the barman to come back. She was quite unlike the women he was usually with in bars, Patrick reflected. He liked girls who were prepared to enjoy themselves a bit.

Take Ariel, for instance. Ariel was always thrilled to be out with him. That was what she told him, anyway. If she were here, she’d be chatting away, entertaining him, exerting herself to captivate him.

Unlike Lou, who was just sitting there with that faintly ironic gleam in her eyes, unimpressed by his company. What would it take to impress a woman like her? Patrick wondered. Someone must have done it once. She was Mrs Dennison, although he noticed that she didn’t wear a wedding ring. Divorced, no doubt. Her husband probably couldn’t live up to her exacting standards.

Uncomfortable with the situation, Patrick leant forward and picked up a drinks mat, tapping it moodily on the low table between them. It took a huge effort not to glance at his watch, but chances were he wouldn’t be able to read it anyway in this light. It looked like being a long evening.

Lou was thinking the same thing. Patrick’s moody tapping was driving her mad. It was just the kind of thing Tom did when he was being at his most annoying. Her fingers twitched with the longing to snatch the mat out of his hand and tell him to stop fiddling at once, the way she would if Tom were sitting there irritating her like this.

But Tom was her son and eleven, while Patrick Farr had to be in his late forties and, more to the point, was her boss. And she couldn’t afford to lose her job. She had better hold back on the ticking-off front, Lou decided reluctantly.

She was gasping for a drink. Where was that champagne? The barman must be treading the grapes out there. It couldn’t take that long to shove a bottle in an ice bucket and find a couple of glasses, could it? If it didn’t arrive soon, she was going to have to take that mat anyway and shove it—

Ah, at last!

Lou smiled up at the barman as he materialised out of the gloom, and Patrick’s hand froze in mid-tap as he felt a jolt of surprise. He hadn’t realised that she could smile like that.

She never smiled at him like that.

She smiled, of course, but it was only ever a cool, polite smile, the kind of smile that went with her immaculate suit, her perfectly groomed hair and her infallible professional manner. Not the warm, friendly smile she was giving the barman now, lighting her face and making her seem all at once attractive and approachable. The kind of woman you might actually want to share a bottle of champagne with, in fact.

Patrick sat up straighter and studied her with new interest as the barman opened the bottle with an unnecessary flourish and made a big deal of pouring the champagne.

The boy was clearly trying to impress Lou, Patrick thought disapprovingly, watching his attempts at banter. She had only smiled at him, for heaven’s sake. Anyone would think that she was hot, instead of nearly old enough to be his mother. Just what they needed, a barman with a Mrs Robinson fixation.

And now he was tossing his cloth over his shoulder in a ridiculously affected way as he placed the bottle back in the ice bucket, and telling Lou to enjoy her drink. Patrick noticed that he didn’t get so much as a nod, which was a bit much given that he was paying for it all.

‘Thank you,’ Lou was saying, with another quite unnecessary smile.

Patrick glowered at the barman’s departing back. ‘Thank God he’s gone. I was afraid that he was planning on spending the whole evening with us. I’m surprised he didn’t bring himself a glass and pull up a chair.’

‘I thought he was charming,’ said Lou, picking up her glass.

She would.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve got a taste for toy boys!’

‘No—not that it would be any business of yours if I did.’

Patrick was taken aback by her directness. She was normally so discreet.

‘You don’t think it would be a bit inappropriate?’ he countered.

Lou stared at him for a moment, then sipped at her champagne. ‘That sounds to me like a prime case of pots and kettles,’ she said coolly, putting her glass back down on the table.

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Patrick.

‘I understand that your own girlfriends tend to be on the young side.’

Patrick was momentarily taken aback. ‘How do you know that?’

She shrugged. ‘Your picture is in the gossip pages occasionally. You’ve usually got a blonde on your arm, and I’ve got to say that most of them look a good twenty years younger than you.’

That was true enough. Patrick didn’t see why he should apologise for it. ‘I like beautiful women, and I especially like beautiful women who aren’t old enough to get obsessed with commitment,’ he said.

Ah, commitment-phobic. That figured, thought Lou with a touch of cynicism. She knew the type. And how. Lawrie had never been hot on commitment either, but at least he had warmth and charm. Patrick didn’t even have that to recommend him.

She studied him over the rim of her glass. He was an attractive enough man, she admitted fairly to herself. Mid to late forties, she’d say. Tall, broad-shouldered, well set up. He had good, strong features too, with darkish brown hair and piercing light eyes—grey or green, Lou hadn’t quite worked that one out yet—but there was a coolness and an arrogance to him that left her quite cold. He seemed to go down well with young nubile blondes, but he certainly didn’t ring any of her bells.

Not that that was likely to bother Patrick Farr much. She was a middle-aged woman and it was well known that you became invisible after forty, particularly to men like him. She doubted that he had registered anything about her other than her efficiency.

‘I’d no idea you took such an interest in my personal life,’ Patrick was saying, annoyed for some reason by her dispassionate tone.

‘I don’t. It’s absolutely nothing to do with me.’

‘You seem to know enough about it!’

‘Hardly,’ said Lou. ‘The girls in Finance have taken to passing round any articles about you so that we can get some idea of who’s running the company now. You took us over three months ago, and all we know about you is your reputation.’

‘And what is my reputation, exactly?’ asked Patrick.

Lou smiled faintly. ‘Don’t you know?’

‘I’d be interested to hear it from your point of view.’

‘Well…’ Lou took a sip of her champagne—it was slipping down very nicely, thank you—and considered. ‘I suppose we’d heard that you were pretty ruthless. Very successful. A workaholic, but a bit of a playboy on the side.’ Her mouth turned down as she tried to remember anything else. ‘That’s it, really.’ She glanced at him. ‘Is it fair?’

‘I like the successful bit,’ said Patrick. ‘As for the rest of it…well, I certainly work hard. I know what I want, and I always get what I want. I like winning. I’m not interested in compromising or accepting second best. If people think that’s ruthless, that’s their problem,’ he said. Ruthlessly, in fact.

‘And the playboy side?’

He made a dismissive gesture with his glass. ‘People only say that if you’re rich and don’t tie yourself down with a wife and children. I like the company of beautiful women, sure, and I meet lots of them at the parties and events I’m invited to, but I’d much rather work than swan around on yachts or waste money in casinos or whatever it is playboys do.’

‘I see. I’ll tell the girls in Finance that you’re really quite boring after all, then.’

Patrick looked up sharply from his glass and met Lou’s eyes. They held a distinct gleam of amusement and he realised to his amazement that she was teasing him.

There was a new sassiness to her tonight, he thought, and he wasn’t at all sure how to take her. Lou Dennison had always been the epitome of an efficient PA, quiet, discreet, always demurely dressed in a neat suit, but he had had no sense of her as a woman beyond that.

Now, suddenly, it was as if he were seeing her for the first time. The dark eyes held a challenging spark, and there was a vibrancy and a directness to her that he had never noticed before. Patrick’s interest was piqued. Perhaps there was more to Lou than was obvious at first glance.

He knew nothing about her, he realised. If he’d thought about it at all, he might have imagined her going home to an immaculately organised flat somewhere, but the truth was that he had never really considered the fact that she had any existence at all outside the office. What did she do? Where did she go? What was she really like?

He ought to know, Patrick thought with a twinge of shame. She had been his PA for three months. Of course, they had been incredibly busy trying to turn the failing firm around, and she wasn’t exactly easy to get to know. She never encouraged any form of social contact…or was it just that he had been too intimidated by her composure to make the first move?

Patrick wriggled his shoulders uncomfortably. He should have made more of an effort. She was the closest member of staff to him, after all. The truth was that he was more used to women flirting and fluttering around him. No way would Lou Dennison indulge him like that. She wasn’t the flirting kind.

On the other hand, what did he know? Maybe it was time to find out more about her.

‘So what about you?’ he asked her. ‘Do you live up to your reputation?’

Lou looked surprised. Well, that was better than indifference or irony, anyway.

‘I don’t have a reputation,’ she said.

‘Yes, you do,’ Patrick corrected her. ‘I heard all about you before I got to Schola Systems. I heard that it was you that ran that company, not Bill Sheeran.’

Lou frowned. ‘That’s rubbish!’

‘Don’t worry, I don’t believe it for a minute. If you’d been running the company, you would never have let it go under. You’re too competent to let that happen.’

She grimaced slightly. ‘Competent?’ It didn’t sound very exciting. Not like being a playboy. ‘Is that what people think of me?’

Her glass was empty. Patrick lifted the bottle and held it over the ice bucket to let it drip for a moment. ‘Competent…efficient…practical…yes, all those things.’

‘You don’t have much choice about being practical when you’ve got kids to bring up on your own,’ said Lou with a sigh.

‘It’s easy to be laid-back when you’ve just got yourself to worry about,’ she said, oblivious to the fact that his head had jerked up in surprise. ‘It’s different when the rent is due and there are bills to be paid and every morning you’ve got a major logistical operation just to get the kids up and dressed and fed, and to check that they’ve got everything they need and that all their homework is done and that they’re not going to be late for school.’

Patrick hadn’t got over the first revelation. ‘You’ve got kids?’ he said, ignoring the last part of her speech. He stared at her. Children meant mess and chaos and constant requests for time off, none of which he associated with Lou Dennison.

She had raised her brows at the incredulity in his expression. ‘Just two. Grace is fourteen, and Tom’s eleven.’

‘You never mentioned that you had children,’ said Patrick accusingly.

‘You never asked,’ said Lou, ‘and, to be honest, I didn’t think you’d be the slightest bit interested in my private life.’

He hadn’t been—he wasn’t, Patrick reminded himself—but, still, she might have said something. He felt vaguely aggrieved. Two children, adolescent children at that, were a big thing not to mention.

‘Why have you kept them a secret?’

‘I haven’t,’ said Lou, taken aback. ‘There’s a framed photo of both of them on my desk. If you’re that interested, I’ll show you tomorrow!’

‘There’s no need for that, I believe you,’ said Patrick, recoiling. He had no intention of admiring pictures of grubby brats. ‘I was just surprised. I’ve had secretaries with children before, and they were always having time off for various crises,’ he complained. ‘After the last time, I vowed I’d never have a PA who was a mother again.’

‘Very family-minded of you,’ said Lou.

Patrick’s brows drew together at the unconcealed sarcasm in her voice. ‘I haven’t got anything against families,’ he said. ‘It’s up to individuals whether they have a family or not, but I don’t see why I should have to rearrange my life around other people’s children. I had a PA once whose children ended up running the office. We’d just be at a critical point of negotiations, and Carol would be putting on her coat and saying that she had to get to the school.’

‘Sometimes you just have to go,’ said Lou, who had somehow managed to get to the bottom of another glass of champagne. ‘Especially when your children are smaller. At least my two are old enough to take themselves to and from school, but if anything happened, or they were ill, then I’m afraid that I would be putting on my coat too.’

Patrick looked at her as if a dog he had been cajoling had just turned and snapped at him, but he refilled her glass anyway. ‘Am I supposed to find that reassuring?’

‘I’m just telling you, that’s all,’ said Lou. She looked at him directly. ‘Is it going to be a problem for you that I have children?’

‘Not as long as they don’t interfere with your work,’ said Patrick.

‘You know that they don’t, or you would have known about their existence long before now,’ she said in a crisp voice. ‘That doesn’t mean there won’t be times when I will need to be flexible, and, yes, sometimes at short notice.’

‘Oh, great.’ Patrick hunched a shoulder and Lou leant forward.

‘You’re obviously not aware of the fact that Schola Systems has always had a very good reputation for family-friendly policies,’ she admonished him. ‘I was lucky to get a job there when I had to go back to work and the children were small, and especially to have such an understanding boss. Bill Sheeran was always flexible when people needed time at home for one reason or another.

‘It won him a lot of loyalty from the staff,’ she added warningly, ‘so if you were thinking of holding parenthood against your employees, you might find yourself without any staff at all!’

‘There’s no question of holding anything against anyone,’ said Patrick irritably.

He didn’t want to hear any more about how marvellous Bill Sheeran had been. Not marvellous enough to save his own company, though, Patrick thought cynically. It was all very well being friendly and flexible, but if Patrick hadn’t taken over all those admiring employees would have been spending a lot more time at home than they wanted. There was no point in being family friendly if your firm went bust and your staff found themselves out of a job.

‘I just wish you’d told me, that’s all,’ he grumbled to Lou.

Lou didn’t feel like making it easy for him. Honestly, the man never even asked her if she’d had a nice weekend on a Monday morning. ‘If you’d shown any interest in your new PA at all, you would have known.’

‘I’m showing an interest now,’ he said grumpily. ‘Is there anything else I need to know?’

‘Is there anything else you want to know?’ she countered.

‘You don’t wear a wedding ring,’ said Patrick after a moment.

‘I’m divorced. Why?’ The champagne was definitely having an effect. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got a problem with divorce as well as children?’

‘Of course not. I’m divorced myself.’

‘Really?’

‘Why the surprise? It’s not exactly uncommon as you’ll know better than anyone.’

Quite, thought Lou. ‘You’re right. I don’t know why I was surprised, really. I suppose it’s because you don’t seem like the marrying kind,’ she said, thinking of his lifestyle. Playboy or not, he clearly didn’t spend much time at home.

‘I’m not,’ said Patrick with a grim smile. ‘That’s why I’m divorced. We were only married a couple of years. We were both very young.’ He shrugged. ‘It was a mistake for both of us. That’ll be a bit of news for the girls in Finance,’ he added, not without a trace of sarcasm.

‘I’ll pass it on,’ said Lou, smiling blandly in return.

Patrick held up the bottle and squinted at the dregs in surprise. ‘We seem to have finished the bottle,’ he said, sharing out the last drops and upending it in the ice bucket. ‘Do you want another? Your toy boy is probably longing for an excuse to come over and see you again!’

Lou rolled her eyes. ‘I think I’d better eat,’ she said, ignoring the toy-boy crack.

The champagne had slipped down very nicely. A little too nicely, in fact. She was beginning to feel pleasantly fuzzy. She might even be a bit tipsy, Lou realised, hoping that she would be able to make it to the restaurant without falling over or doing anything embarrassing. They hadn’t had time for a proper lunch and it was all starting to catch up with her.

She felt better in the restaurant. The waiters fussed around, bringing bread and a jug of water without being asked. Obviously they could see that she needed it.

Lou took a piece of bread, and spread butter on it. This was no time to worry about her diet. She needed to line her stomach as quickly as possible.

She tried to focus on the menu, but kept getting distracted by Patrick opposite. He had been easier to talk to than she had expected. Of course, the champagne had probably helped. He certainly wasn’t as brusque and impersonal as usual. She had even found herself warming to him in a funny kind of way. It was as if they had both let down their guards for the evening. It must be something to do with being stranded away from home and tired…and, oh, yes, the champagne.

She really mustn’t have any more to drink, Lou decided, but somehow a glass of wine appeared in front of her and it seemed rude to ignore it. She would just take the occasional sip.

‘So,’ said Patrick when they had ordered. ‘What’s happened to your children tonight? Are they with their father?’

‘No, Lawrie lives in Manchester.’ There was a certain restraint in her voice when she mentioned her ex-husband, he noticed. ‘I knew I’d be late back to London even if the trains had been running, so I arranged for them to stay with a friend. They love going to Marisa’s. She lets them watch television all night and doesn’t make them eat vegetables.’

Which was probably more than Patrick needed or wanted to know. He was only making polite conversation after all. She was getting garrulous, a sure sign that she had had too much to drink. Better have another piece of bread.

‘Have you got any children?’ she asked, thinking it might be better to switch the conversation back to Patrick before she started telling him how good at sport Grace was or how adorable Tom had been as a baby.

‘No,’ said Patrick, barely restraining a shudder at the very idea. ‘I’ve never wanted them. My ex-wife, Catriona, did. That’s one of the reasons we split up in the end.’ His mouth pulled down at the corners as he contemplated his glass. ‘Apparently I was incredibly selfish for wanting to live my own life.’

Lou frowned a little owlishly. ‘But isn’t the reason you get married precisely because you want to live your life with another person, that you want to do it together and not on your own?’

She’d spoken without thinking and for a moment she thought she might have gone a bit far.

‘I told Catriona before we got married that I didn’t want children,’ said Patrick, apparently not taking exception at the intrusiveness of her question. ‘And she said that she understood. She said she didn’t want a family either, that she didn’t want to share me with anyone else, not even a baby.’

He rolled his eyes a little as if inviting her to mock his younger self who had believed his wife, but Lou thought she could still hear the hurt in his voice. He must have loved Catriona a lot.

‘We agreed,’ Patrick insisted, even as part of him marvelled that he was telling Lou all this. ‘It wasn’t just me. I thought we both wanted the same thing and that everything would be fine, but we’d hardly been married a year before she started to lobby for a baby.’