A Professional Marriage. Jessica Steele

having more or less cleared her desk, began to expand on matters other than the work which Chesnie would be dealing with.

      Barbara was full of praise for Joel. Yeatman Trading had been going through a very tough time when he had joined the firm. He had seen at once what needed to be done, and had done it—had transformed the company—and been rewarded with a seat on the board.

      ‘And now,’ Barbara continued, ‘within the next year Winslow Yeatman is going to retire.’

      ‘The chairman?’ Chesnie had picked that up from somewhere during the past two weeks.

      ‘None other,’ Barbara agreed. ‘And Joel wants that job—very badly. He has very progressive ideas, and believes that to be able to put those ideas into effect he needs to be chairman.’

      ‘Will he get it?’ Chesnie asked.

      ‘If there’s any justice he will,’ Barbara answered. ‘It’s largely through his efforts that a firm that was heading for the rocks has gone from strength to strength this past ten years. He, more than anyone, is responsible for its growth and expansion. He’s ambitious and hard-headed when it comes to business. But he’s good. They certainly don’t come any better.’

      Chesnie had seen that much for herself in the short time she’d been there. ‘You think he might not get it?’ she asked.

      ‘Nothing’s certain. The problem here is that this started off as a family firm a hundred or so years ago, and, although new blood such as Joel has gradually infiltrated, over half the board are family members. Three of whom I know for a fact want a Yeatman to head the company. There are nine people on the board, excluding the chairman, and while I know there are three of the directors who are for Joel, he can’t vote for himself, so that leaves two other votes as yet unaccounted for. Should the vote be split and Winslow Yeatman have to make the casting vote then it’s more than likely he’ll favour a family man.’

      ‘One of his family?’

      Barbara shook her head. ‘A man with a family. He also wants what is best for the firm.’

      ‘Doesn’t J…Mr Davenport have a family?’

      ‘He’s not married.’

      Chesnie felt a little surprised. ‘Some woman named Felice phoned for him last week, and a woman named Gina phoned to speak to him on Monday. I put them in the wife and daughter slot.’

      ‘Girlfriends.’ Barbara corrected Chesnie’s assumption. ‘He’s more than happy with his bachelor lifestyle.’ She gave a wicked grin. ‘Though his fellow director, Arlene Enderby, née Yeatman, recently divorced, non-working but taking her cut just the same—and who just happens to be the chairman’s niece—has got her eye on Joel.’

      ‘Does he know?’

      Barbara gave a whoop of laughter. ‘I’ve an idea that there’s not much that goes on in the female mind that Joel doesn’t know. He’s taken her out a couple of times, so I’m positive she will have filled in any gaps.’ At that point Barbara seemed to collect herself. ‘And I’m talking too much—must be the champage—I’m not used to it. Either that or some instinctive feeling that you’ll be better able to help him get what he deserves and has worked for if you know more of what’s going on.’

      At a quarter to five Joel Davenport, who must have entered his office by the outer door, rang for Barbara to go in to see him. She came out ten minutes later, emotional tears in her eyes, a cheque in one hand, a jeweller’s box in the other, and a gorgeous bouquet of flowers in her arms.

      ‘Oh, Chesnie,’ she said, emotion still with her after the presentation she had just received, ‘I do so hope you’ll be as happy working here as I have been.’

      ‘I’m sure I shall,’ Chesnie answered with a smile, but more hoped that she could do the job. For, aside from the everyday difficulties and stress that were part and parcel of the job, from what Barbara had said earlier it seemed there was a lot of in-fighting going on too.

      For a fact, there were three board members who were against Joel Davenport getting the chairman’s job.

      Chesnie suddenly felt swallowed up by an unexpected huge wave of loyalty, and she determined that if there was any small thing in her power she could do to help him get that chairman’s job, she would do it. Then she laughed at herself. What on earth did she think she, a PA, could do that would help when it came to electing the new chairman?

      CHAPTER TWO

      IT WAS four weeks since Barbara had left, and Chesnie was thankful that in those four weeks she had not had to phone Barbara or needed to call on the services of Eileen Gray, a kind of floating PA who, while not wanting the pressure of being anyone’s full-time PA, was so good at the job that the company did not want to let her go.

      Chesnie drove to work that Monday four weeks after Barbara’s departure and for the first time truly believed that she could do the job of Joel’s number one PA.

      It had not been an easy four weeks. Joel Davenport, for all he made his job seem effortless, had an appetite for work that at first had caused her to work in overdrive just to try and keep up with him.

      She worked late; once, when he was out for the day, staying at the office until gone nine at night to catch up and so have her desk clear for the next morning.

      Most evenings she staggered home to make a quick snack, get her smart business clothes ready for the morning, and fall into bed. Sometimes she dreamed of him, but that was hardly surprising; he had become a dominant force in her life.

      On one weekend she had visited her grandfather in Herefordshire, and another weekend she’d gone to see her parents in Cambridge. Robina had been there, having left Ronnie for a ‘final’ time. She was divorcing him, she’d declared in floods of tears, she’d had enough. Ronnie had phoned, and there were more tears as Robina had screeched a list of his faults down the phone at him.

      All that hate and recrimination had served only to freshly endorse for Chesnie that she’d got the better bargain when 23 she’d decided never to marry. Though she had to smile—when would she get the chance? Working for and with such a high-powered, work-oriented man, she didn’t have the time to date, much less to build any kind of relationship.

      Which reminded her. Nerissa had telephoned last night to say Philip Pomeroy had rung again and could he have her sister’s number?

      ‘You didn’t give it to him?’ Chesnie had asked, guessing that Philip wanted to ask her out; she didn’t have time to go out. By not letting him have her newly connected number, she was spared having to make excuses.

      ‘I promised you I wouldn’t,’ Nerissa had confirmed.

      With her new-found confidence in her ability to cope with her job, Chesnie parked her grandfather’s car, swung into the building and took the lift to the top floor. It went without saying that Joel Davenport would already be hard at work. Unless he was out of town he was always in before her.

      An involuntary smile lit her mouth as she recalled that first Monday after Barbara had gone. Hoping to look as cool and as poised as she was striving to look, Chesnie, feeling a bundle of nerves, had entered her office. No sooner had she sat down, though, and Joel Davenport had come to greet her as if it had been her first day.

      ‘Good morning, Chesnie,’ he’d said pleasantly. ‘We haven’t frightened you off, then?’

      She had given him her guarded smile. ‘Good morning, Mr Davenport,’ she’d replied and, inwardly churning, ‘I don’t scare easily,’ she had added.

      He’d studied her, nodded, and then commented, ‘That’s what I like to hear. The name’s Joel,’ he indicated, and her first day as numero uno had begun.

      The door between the two offices stood open today, as it sometimes did when she went in. ‘Good morning,’ Chesnie called to the dark-blond-haired man absorbed in