Marriage Without Love. Penny Jordan

don’t know… I’m not dressed.…’

      ‘I wish that was true,’ Doug grinned appreciatively. ‘Of course you’re coming. I’ll go and let you two get better acquainted. Keep the coffee hot,’ he added as he strode out of the room.

      ‘Got them all going, haven’t you?’ Kieron commented. ‘I never thought you’d turn out to be a seductress.’

      She swallowed the insult, glad that she had her back to him.

      ‘Leave that,’ he instructed sharply, when she went to pick up the coffee percolator. ‘We’ve got work to do.’

      She accompanied him into his office, sitting down opposite him and angling her chair deliberately so that her legs were hidden by the desk. She didn’t imagine for a moment that he would want to ogle her, but she wasn’t going to give him the opportunity of suggesting that she might have wanted him to. His eyes were hard as he noted the manoeuvre, and as though in punishment he dictated at a speed far in excess of Doug’s more leisurely style. Briony wasn’t worried. She enjoyed taking shorthand and in other circumstances would have found his speed something of an enjoyable challenge. However, because it was him she concentrated grimly on making the neat outlines, her pencil poised for the next spate, as the ring of the phone interrupted them.

      He listened in silence, and then drawled,

      ‘Offended, my dear Gail? I’m highly flattered. It isn’t every day a beautiful woman invites me out to lunch. One suit you?’

      Flushing angrily at being forced to eavesdrop on his personal conversation, Briony gritted her teeth and stared coldly into space, caught off guard when he said evenly:

      ‘Right, read that last letter back to me, will you? I’ve forgotton where I was.’

      Briony was reasonably sure that he was lying. The letter was long and complicated, but she read through it without haste or check, her diction smooth and even. When she had finished she raised her eyes to find Kieron watching her with an exceedingly sardonic expression.

      ‘It’s almost like having my own personal computer,’ he mocked cruelly. ‘Don’t you ever feel like coming down off your mountain and joining the rest of the human race?’

      ‘Not as long as it includes you,’ Briony retorted bitterly, paling too late as she saw his expression.

      ‘So that’s it,’ he said softly, getting up from behind his desk and coming towards her. He was wearing an expensively tailored lightweight suit in dove grey, the narrow trousers moulding his thighs, and her eyes fastened helplessly on his lean hips as he came slowly towards her.

      ‘Don’t blame it all on me, Briony. You.…’

      ‘I was a stupid fool,’ she stormed bitterly. ‘And you took full advantage of that fact, didn’t you, Kieron? God, I hate you! If you burned in hell for ever more it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy me!’

      ‘Is that why you’re insisting on staying here?’ he grated at her. ‘Are you looking for revenge? Is that how your warped little mind works?’

      ‘I’m staying here because I need a job,’ she told him coldly. ‘And I don’t think the Board would be very impressed with their new editor if I told them why he was so anxious to get rid of me. Rival papers would love it, though, I’m sure. Selling sensation life stories seems to be all the rage these days. I wonder how much my exposé would be worth?’

      ‘It works both ways,’ he retorted softly. ‘By working for me, you’re putting yourself within my power, and after what you’ve just admitted, doesn’t that thought frighten you?’

      ‘Not in the least,’ Briony lied bravely. ‘You’ve already done your worst. Anything else could only be an anticlimax.’

      He gave her so much work that it was lunchtime before she could ring Gina to warn her that she might be late.

      The Italian girl was delighted to hear that she was going out. ‘You took my warning about Nicky to heart, eh?’ she teased. ‘I wish you luck in your search for a papa for him.’

      Briony had worked through her lunch-hour and expecting that Kieron would be detained by Gail had not thought to close her office door when she made her call. The result was that he walked in when she was right in the middle of it, and Gina was describing Nicky’s newest trick.

      ‘Personal call?’ Kieron said sardonically when she had finished. ‘First time I’ve seen a spark of life in you since I got here. Does Matt know about him?’

      ‘My private affairs are my own,’ Briony retorted, colour scorching her skin as she realised the inference he had drawn from her words. Of course he would think she meant love affairs. She turned her back on him, searching through the files for an article she needed. When she straightened up Kieron was standing right behind her. She could smell the faint tang of his aftershave. His skin was firm and tanned, the blue eyes framed with ridiculously thick dark lashes. Just like Nicky’s. Her heart pounded, and she bent down to close the cupboard drawer, trying to conceal her reaction. Kieron frowned suddenly.

      ‘You still use the same perfume.’

      Anger flooded her at his cruelty.

      ‘I’m surprised you remembered,’ she said bitterly. ‘But then reporters are trained to remember every small detail, however minor, aren’t they? That’s how you managed to piece together your scoop, wasn’t it? How boring it must have been for you to have to search through all the dross of my confidences for those precious nuggets! But well worth it in the end. As Gail said, the story made you famous overnight. As it did me, although in my case the word was “infamous”. I’m surprised you didn’t tell them all yesterday exactly who I was. Or can it be that you actually felt ashamed of admitting exactly how you got your story?’

      ‘You weren’t exactly unwilling,’ he reminded her harshly.

      ‘I wasn’t unwilling to let you make love to me, but I wasn’t given the opportunity to state my views on how you intended to use my confidences, was I? I wish I could think that having me working for you would put you through hell, Kieron, but we both know that you don’t have that much compunction, don’t we?’

      He reached for her, but she was ready for him, sliding behind her desk and sitting down. Anger blazed in his eyes, his skin stretched tautly across the bones of his face. He had removed his jacket and his thin silk shirt showed the smoothly muscled wall of his chest with its covering of dark hair. With a sense of shock she realised that he was intensely male; something she had never fully appreciated before. Because he had hidden that side of himself from her? Of course he had never been attracted to her. He was the sort of man who had women coming out of his ears. How he must have laughed at her naïveté!

      By five o’clock her desk was clear, but her head was pounding and all she wanted to do was to go home and go to bed. The heat in the city was oppressive, beating up off the pavements and clogging the air to mingle chokingly with the petrol fumes.

      When she went down to the cloakroom to freshen up several of the other girls were already there.

      ‘What a waste!’ a giggly blonde from Fashion moaned to her friend. They were bent over one of the basins and neither of them had seen Briony come in. ‘That gorgeous hunk of male and Ice-Cold Winters! I bet she wouldn’t know what to do with a real man. Look at that wet Matt she goes about with!’

      Someone kicked her on the ankle and she turned round complaining, her mouth dropping open when she saw Briony. For a moment Briony had a savage longing to tell her that she knew exactly what to do with a man like Kieron Blake, but she suppressed it, pretending she had heard nothing, which was stupid because the girl had a particularly shrill voice.

      ‘Ice-Cold Winters.’ Was that what they called her? She grimaced and then shrugged dismissively. What did it matter after all?