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A Professional Marriage
By Steele Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Copyright © 2002 Harlequin Enterprises Limited
All right reserved. ISBN: 037303721X
Chapter One
"Mr. Davenport will see you now."
Chesnie's insides had been on the fidget for the last half-hour and now renewed their churning. But she rose elegantly to her feet and maintained her cool exterior and followed Barbara Platt - the woman whose job she was hoping to secure for herself - into the adjoining office.
"Chesnie Cosgrove." Barbara Platt introduced her to the tall, dark-blond-haired man who was rising from his chair.
"Thank you, Barbara." He had a pleasant, well-modulated voice, but as his present PA went out and closed the door Chesnie noted that there was something about the thirty-six or thirty-seven-year-old man who turned his blue gaze on her that said he could be exceedingly tough if the occasion demanded it. "Take a seat, Miss Cosgrove," he invited, in one sweeping glance taking in her slim five feet nine inches of height, her immaculate business suit, her red-blonde hair, green eyes and what one of her sisters had called her "pale, flawless complexion to die for."
"You found us without any trouble?" Joel Davenport opened pleasantly.
The vast offices of Yeatman Trading would be hard to miss. "Yes," she replied evenly, and that was all the time he had available for pleasantries, it seemed, for in the next split second her jobinterview with him was underway.
"So - tell me about yourself," he opened.
"My qualifications are -"
"Were I unaware of your three years' experience as a senior secretary, your excellent typing speeds, and - according to your previous employer - your outstanding organising and communication skills, you wouldn't be sitting here," he cut her off.
Did she really want this job? He was tough! She'd had a couple of interviews with Human Resources before she'd got this far; clearly there was nothing about her business background that hadn't been passed on to this man. She wondered about going back to Cambridge to work - but hadn't she made up her mind to make a complete break? She decided to give Joel Davenport another chance.
"I'm twenty-five," she informed him, and managed to stay outwardly cool when she realised that if he'd seen her application - and he seemed the kind of man who left nothing to chance - then he already knew that. "I've been working in Cambridge." He already knew that too. Stay cool, Chesnie, stay cool. The fact was, though, that she didn't know what she could add to what he already knew; her second interview had been thorough in the extreme. She stared at him, this man she was hoping to work for, green eyes staring frankly into blue, and, feeling defeated, asked the only question possible. "What would you like to know?"
He studied her, not a smile in sight. She'd had more appreciative glances. "You're well qualified. Your reference from your last employer is little short of glowing. Lionel Browning obviously thought the world of you."
"And I him," she answered. Lionel Browning had been an absolute darling to work for. A touch muddle-headed, true, which was why he had left so much to her - and which would all stand her in very good stead were she lucky enough to land this job.
"Why then leave?"
Chesnie opened her mouth to trot out the same reason she had given Human Resources: advancement in her career. To a certain extent that was true. But, had matters not come to a head when Lionel's son, Hector, had decided to come into the business she didn't know if she would ever have been able to leave muddle-headed Lionel to run things on his own. But suddenly she found she did not want to lie to this direct-looking man. "I'd been thinking for some time that I wouldn't mind something more challenging to get my teeth into," she began truthfully.
"But ...?" She looked back at Joel Davenport. He was cool, cooler than she. And he was sharp - my word, he was sharp. He knew, for all she was sure she hadn't slipped up anywhere, that there was more to it than that.
"But I probably wouldn't have been able to leave Lionel had it not been for his son coming into the business." She halted, too late regretting she had let this tough-looking man see she had a softer side when it came to her exemployer. "Hector Browning's own firm went bust. So he decided he'd come and give his father a hand."
"You didn't get on?"
"It was part of my job to get on with everyone," Chesnie answered, not taking kindly to having her professionalism questioned.
"So what went wrong?"
She had an idea this interview was going very badly, and decided she'd got nothing to lose by telling that which, hurt and humiliated, she had not told another living soul. "Everything!" she answered evenly, adjusting her position on her chair, catching the flick of his glance to her long slender and shapely legs now neatly crossed at the ankles. "On the same day I heard from my landlord that he'd decided to sell the property - and, no desperate rush, but would I care to look for a flat elsewhere? - I had a row with Hector Browning."
"You usually row with the people you work with?"
"Lionel and I never had a cross word!" Chesnie retorted - and inwardly groaned. She'd be having a row with Joel Davenport any minute! And she wasn't working with him, or for him - or ever!
He was unperturbed. "Hector Browning rubbed you up the wrong way?"
"That I could, and did, cope with. What I was not prepared to stay and put up with was that - was that ..." Joel Davenport waited, saying not one word, which left her forced to continue. "'From the various snide remarks Hector Browning had made I knew he resented my closeness to his father, my affection for him and his affection for me. He - Hector ..." Again she hesitated, but the fact that she knew herself innocent made her tilt her chin a fraction. "When he that day accused me of having an affair with his father," she made herself go on, " knew that one of us would have to go. Blood being thicker than water, I also knew it would be me."
"You handed in your resignation."
"I left last week - the end of the month."
"And were you?" Joel Davenport asked.
"Was I what?"
"Having an affair with his father?"
Her eyes widened in surprise and annoyance that anyone could ask such a thing. Somehow, though, she was able to maintain the outer cool she showed to the world. "No, I was not!" she stated clearly, and, not wishing to say any more on the subject, she left it there.
To his credit, Joel Davenport allowed her to do so. He nodded, at any rate - she took it that he believed her. "Human Resources will have explained the package that goes with the position." He took the interview into another area. "Obviously the salary, pension and holiday entitlement are acceptable to you or you wouldn't have proceeded with your application."
"It's a very generous package," Chesnie stated calmly. Generous! It was a sensational salary!
"The successful candidate will earn every part of it," he replied, which she felt hinted that she was not the successful candidate. Though when he continued she began to wonder ... "The job as my PA demands one hundred per cent commitment," he advised her, and surprised her by adding, "Your qualifications aside, you're a beautiful woman, Miss Cosgrove -" he did not seem personally impressed "- and no doubt have many admirers."
About to deny she had any, Chesnie, who just wasn't interested in relationships, suddenly felt feminine enough to want to go along with his view that she had a constant stream of admirers at her door. "They wouldn't interfere with my work," she replied.
"I may need you to work away with me on occasion," he went on. She knew from the job description that there were times when Joel Davenport required his PA to accompany him on overnight stays when he visited their Glasgow offices, and had no problem whatsoever with that. "Supposing such an occasion arose at short notice - say, half an hour before a theatre date with your favourite man?"
"I'd hope my favourite man would enjoy the theatre just as much without me," she replied promptly, and thought she caught a momentary twitch of her serious interviewer's mouth - quite a nice-shaped mouth, she suddenly realised - but it was come and gone in an instant.
"There's no one man in particular in your life?"
"No," she replied. Who had the time? Or the inclination, for that matter?
"No marriage plans?" he asked sternly, her one-syllable answer insufficient, apparently. But she resented his question. She hadn't asked him if he was married or about to be! She studied him for a moment. Good-looking, a director of the expanded and still expanding multi-national Yeatman Trading - he had it all, which no doubt included some lovely wife somewhere.
Suddenly she became aware that as she was studying him, so keen blue eyes were studying her. "I'm not remotely interested in marriage," she stated bluntly, belatedly realising his question, in light of his statement that the job as his PA demanded one hundred per cent commitment, was perhaps a valid one.
"You sound as if you've something against marriage," he commented.
Excerpted from A Professional Marriage by Steele Copyright © 2002 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
