Power Games. PENNY JORDAN

Damn him and his precious program! And yet, even as she cursed him mentally, Taylor acknowledged that she was being selfish and unfair. If he could succeed in writing such a program it would transform the lives of so many people.

      Perhaps, if she could just focus on that fact and hold fast to it, it might help to make the unbearable somehow bearable, she decided sombrely.

      Her office was situated at the top of the building, its narrow, barred window the only source of natural daylight. Some time ago it had been suggested that she move to a lower floor and a larger office with a much bigger window, but she had refused.

      It was pointless trying to explain to other people that the narrowness of her existing office window, its thick, almost opaque glass and steel bars, were infinitely preferable to her than something larger, which someone might look or step through. Just thinking about such a possibility made her shudder. How could she ever give up her job here and go somewhere else? Here, in surroundings where she had worked for years, her small eccentricities—as others thought of them—were tolerated; in a different environment…a new environment…

      She closed her eyes and then opened them abruptly as her telephone rang.

      Some sixth sense warned her who the caller would be, but it was still a shock to hear Bram Soames’s unmistakable warm male voice on the other end of the line.

      ‘I hope I’m not pre-empting things by telephoning you so soon,’ she heard him saying after he had identified himself. ‘But Anthony did promise he would speak to you as soon as he could about the possibility of our working together, and I was wondering if he—’

      ‘Yes,’ Taylor interposed tersely. ‘Yes, he’s told me.’ The palm of the hand gripping the receiver was already damp with anxiety, the forefinger of her other hand curling nervously in and out of the plastic-covered coil linking the receiver to the base unit.

      Bram could hear the tension in her voice and hoped that she wasn’t equally able to hear the reluctance in his. There was, he reminded himself firmly, absolutely no reason whatsoever why he should not work with her. No logical reason at all.

      So, why then, this gut feeling that he would be far safer to retreat?

      The silence from Taylor’s end of the line was slightly unnerving. If it hadn’t been for the slightly erratic sound of her breathing he might almost have thought she’d hung up on him.

      Firmly pushing his personal thoughts to the back of his mind, he said calmly, ‘I think before we can get down to any serious work we need to have a preliminary discussion. I was wondering if you were free tomorrow afternoon?’

      In her office Taylor flipped over the page of her diary. It was completely blank.

      ‘No, I’m sorry… I already have an appointment then.’ Did her voice sound as betrayingly unconvincing to him as it did to her? She almost hoped he would guess that she was lying and decide to ask Sir Anthony to suggest someone else to help him, and she held her breath as she waited for his response.

      ‘I see…. Well, in that case, I wonder…I’m eager to get started on this project as soon as possible. At the moment I’ve got some free time, but…’

      He paused while Taylor reflected coolly that if he had hoped to impress or bully her by playing the big powerful, dominant, successful businessman he was going to be disappointed.

      ‘I wouldn’t normally ask you to work outside office hours, but is there any chance that we could meet tomorrow evening, say about six-thirty?’

      Six-thirty—after the rest of the office staff had gone home and only the cleaners were around. Taylor cursed herself inwardly for the trap her fib had built around her.

      ‘I…in the office? I think the building is locked up at six,’ she told him quickly. ‘I don’t think…’

      ‘We could have our discussion here,’ Bram told her after a moment’s silence. ‘I could send a car for you and—’

      ‘No. No…there’s no need. I…’

      The total panic he could hear in her voice made Bram frown. She had struck him as such a contained, almost over-controlled person, on the surface at least, that he was unprepared for the intensity of emotion he could hear in her voice.

      ‘I…I’ll cancel my afternoon appointment,’ Taylor told him shakily. ‘I…what time did you have in mind?’

      ‘Two-thirty?’ Bram suggested diplomatically.

      ‘Yes…very well then…’ Taylor agreed. Her throat felt raw with tension, the muscles aching, the sound of her voice unfamiliarly husky.

      Her body was drenched in cold sweat and she was starting to shiver. It took her four attempts before she managed to put the receiver down correctly.

      If just talking to Bram Soames could affect her like this, then what was she going to be like when she was working with him? It was pointless, useless telling herself that a man with his sexual magnetism, his strong blend of power and charisma—a very obviously heterosexual man who had apparently chosen to remain unattached—was hardly likely to express even the remotest interest in her. The knee-jerk sexual male response she had witnessed in his body at their first meeting did not count. The fact that a man like Bram Soames could and no doubt did have his pick of eager women who made a career out of pursuing men like him, was not the point. The point was that he was a man.

      As she focused numbly on the small oblong of obscured daylight from her barred window, she acknowledged that in many ways the window was like her life, what to another woman would be restrictive was to her protective. She needed that protection.

      She knew there had been whispered speculation among her colleagues about her sexual orientation. The very fact that she shunned male company so determinedly was bound to give rise to it. But Taylor had no sexual or emotional desire for her own sex. A small, bitter smile twisted her mouth. Unbelievable as those who knew her or thought they knew her might find it, there had been a time when she, too, had dreamed of falling in love, getting married, having children; when sexually she had been open and curious.

      And if she was honest with herself, there were still times when, deep down, she felt those needs, nights when she lay awake not just tormented by her fears but filled with bitter anger as well.

      It was twenty years now. Twenty years, and there had not been a single day during that time when she had not been conscious of the past, when she had not been fearful of its being recreated, when she had not abandoned the habit of stopping, checking… watching…waiting.

      Twenty years. Almost a life sentence, she acknowledged bitterly, but her life was not over yet. She was thirty-nine, that was all.

      She could live to be twice that age; both her paternal and her maternal grandparents had. Her parents… She swallowed painfully. Neither of her parents had lived to see fifty. Their deaths haunted her still. They always would.

      ‘You must not blame yourself. You are not to blame,’ she had been told.

      Her head was beginning to ache, the tight knot into which she had pulled her hair dragging on her scalp. It was a luxury at night to let it down and release her neck muscles from the strain of supporting the heavy weight.

      Perhaps she ought to wear her hair short. The last time she had done so had been on her sixteenth birthday. The trip to her mother’s hairdresser had been a present paid for by her father, a ritual on the path to adulthood.

      She could remember how nervously she had watched her reflection in the mirror as the stylist lopped off her heavy, childish braids. The pretty urchin cut had emphasised the delicate bones of her face, made her eyes seem enormous. Her mother had frowned and commented that the style was rather too adult for her, but Taylor had seen in her father’s eyes male approval for her transformation. She wasn’t a child any more, she was a woman.

      She had kept her hair short for several years after that, and just before she had gone to university she had allowed the stylist to experiment with blonde highlights