‘Why don’t you get a cleaner?’
‘Because it’s an unnecessary luxury.’
‘Don’t I pay you enough?’
‘More than enough,’ she said, restlessly wondering where this conversation was leading. She glanced at him from under her lashes, trying to determine his mood. ‘I happen to rather enjoy cleaning,’ she murmured finally. ‘I find it relaxing.’
‘You’re the first woman I’ve ever heard say that.’
Perhaps you mix with the wrong sort, she felt like telling him. Not that he would have appreciated women who wanted to tidy his house for him. She thought that he would probably run a mile if he were ever to be confronted with a domestic type. Domesticity was not a characteristic he would find especially appealing in a member of the opposite sex. He didn’t want cosy nights in watching television, he didn’t want home-cooked meals, he didn’t want the little lady ever to wear an apron and attempt to tidy him up into a candidate for marriage.
‘You were telling me that you have a new client on board?’
‘I have a file here somewhere.’ He pulled open the drawer of his desk and rummaged briefly inside, frowning. ‘Now where did I put the damned thing? I was sure I stuck it in my drawer.’
‘Perhaps Rebecca filed it away,’ Alice said helpfully.
‘Why would she do that?’ Victor asked irritably.
‘Because she might consider it one of her duties? Filing tends to come into the job specification for a secretary. Even for those who don’t complete their secretarial courses.’
He slammed shut the drawer of his desk and favoured her with a narrowed look. ‘Sarcasm, Alice?’ He raised his eyebrows expressively. ‘Since when?’
Alice didn’t say anything. Normally, she bit back any retorts she might have fermenting in her head. Normally, she maintained an even, placid demeanour. She did her job and very rarely allowed herself the luxury of personal input. But two weeks in the sun had stirred something inside her. There had been a lot of young couples there, blissfully wrapped up in one another, oblivious to the outside world. The hotel specialised in honeymoon holidays, and from that point of view had not been chosen with a great deal of foresight, because for the first time Alice had been conscious of her own relentlessly single state. True, Vanessa was single as well, but her life was brimming over with men. She emanated a certain vivacious attractiveness that drew them in droves.
Her own situation was, she acknowledged realistically, slightly different. No men beating a path to her door, although she had a few male friends who occasionally asked her out to dinner, or the theatre, and it was only now, strangely, that she felt the lack of them. Perhaps, she thought, because she had crossed the thirty threshold. Time suddenly seemed to be moving faster. The gentle breeze that had flicked over the pages of the calendar was gathering momentum, flicking those pages faster and faster.
She smiled at Victor, meeting his speculative look with studied incomprehension, and decided that any restlessness was best left at home, or at least locked away in a compartment in her head that was inaccessible to anyone apart from herself.
‘What did you and that flatmate of yours get up to on holiday?’ he asked curiously, and Alice could have kicked herself. Victor Temple enjoyed getting his teeth into a challenge. For the past year and a half, she had shown him one face, and although at the beginning he had asked polite questions about her outside life he had quickly realised that answers would not be forthcoming, and he had soon lost interest.
Now, stupidly, she had afforded him a glimpse of someone else behind the efficient smile.
‘Oh, the usual things,’ Alice said vaguely.
‘Really? Like what?’
‘You said it yourself: we swanned around the pool and turned to leather.’ Most of the couples, she thought, had looked young enough to be her children. Or perhaps she just felt old enough to be their mother. A sudden, sour taste of dissatisfaction rose to her throat and subsided again. Whatever was the matter with her? she wondered irritably. She had never been prone to self-pity, and she hoped that she wasn’t about to become a victim of it now.
‘You couldn’t have spent a fortnight doing just that.’
‘We went to the beach a few times as well.’ She would have liked to somehow draw the subject back to the stately home, and the portfolio of other clients awaiting attention, but she knew that to have done that would only have succeeded in sharpening his curiosity still further. In a minute, he would become bored trying to extract information from her and he would give up.
‘Good bathing?’
‘Cold.’
‘And what about in the evenings? What do young single girls get up to when they go abroad on holiday?’ He grinned, amused at her discomfort, which annoyed her even more.
‘I would have thought that you knew the answer to that one,’ Alice said evenly. ‘After all, we do enough advertisements on the subject.’
‘Ah, yes.’ He sat back and gazed at her thoughtfully. ‘Nightclubs, bars.’ He paused. ‘Sex.’ He allowed the word to drop between them, like forbidden fruit, and she went bright red.
‘I’m not that young,’ was all she could think of saying by way of reply.
‘You mean that you’re too old for nightclubs? Bars? Or sex? Or all three?’
She snapped shut her notepad and glared at him openly. ‘What I do on holiday is none of your concern, Mr Temple. If you’re really that interested in finding out what the young single female gets up to on holiday, then I suggest you go along yourself and find out firsthand. I’m sure that you’d find no end of women willing to show you.’ She heard herself with dismay and confusion, alarmed that he had managed to provoke her into a response that was extraordinarily out of keeping with her normally unobtrusive work persona.
‘Well, well, well.’ He linked his fingers together and inspected her. A long, deliberate and leisurely inspection that was as unwelcome as it was disconcerting. She could feel her nails biting into the notepad and for the life of her she couldn’t think of a way of wriggling out of her embarrassment.
‘Quite a show of temper,’ he said, in the voice of a scientist who suddenly discovered that his experimental mouse had unexpected talents.
‘I’m sorry,’ Alice said in as brisk a voice as she could manage. Now she felt like bursting into tears, which was ridiculous. She had obviously been doing too much thinking and Victor’s insinuations that she was a dull bore didn’t help matters. ‘Perhaps we could get on with...’
‘Oh, no, not so fast. I’m intrigued.’ He linked his fingers behind his head and continued to stare at her. ‘I was beginning to wonder whether there was anything behind that efficient veneer.’
‘Oh, thank you very much,’ Alice muttered.
‘Now I’ve offended you.’ He didn’t sound contrite. In fact, he sounded as though he was enjoying the situation enormously. The devil, she thought, works on idle hands. He had spent two weeks like a bear with a sore head and now he was catching up. He was relieved that she was back and relief had awakened some dormant desire to have a bit of a laugh at her expense.
‘Not at all,’ she said, gathering herself together.
‘You never told me what you did on that holiday of yours. Something obviously happened. You’re not your usual self. What was it? Did you meet a man?’ He smiled as though amused at the thought of that. ‘What was he like? Do you realise that I know very little about your private life? Considering the length of time you’ve been working for me?’
‘Yes.’ And that’s just the way I’d like it to stay, her voice implied.
‘I