Invitation to the Boss's Ball. Fiona Harper

the tall chipboard gates that barred her entrance to Cameron’s building. Now she was tempted to turn and run away on her chunkyheeled boots. She looked back down the road to where she’d parked her car.

      ‘Alice Morton?’

      She spun round to find a gruff-looking builder eyeing her up and down through a gap in the gate.

      ‘Yes,’ she said, finding her voice unusually croaky.

      He nodded towards the construction site. ‘This way,’ he said, and cracked the gate wider so she could pass through it. ‘The boss and some of the architects are inside. I’ve been told to take you to them. Oh—and you’ll need this.’

      He jammed a bright yellow helmet on her head. Alice was relieved for the second time this morning that the quiff hadn’t stayed. She’d have been digging hair pins out of her scalp for weeks if it had still been there.

      She clutched the old school satchel that held her drawings and ideas—Coreen had sworn it would make a funky alternative to a boring old briefcase—and followed the man along a path towards the new Orion building.

      And then she looked up and her feet forgot to walk.

       Wow.

      CHAPTER THREE

      CAMERON had said he wanted a ‘distinctive’ opening celebration, and now she saw why. These types of buildings had been considered ugly and out of fashion until relatively recently—left to crumble or bulldozed and replaced with yet another chrome and glass structure.

      The building was a low rectangle, with maybe only three or four storeys—it was difficult to tell where the divisions lay, because the whole width of the building was filled with tall windows with horizontal panes, punctuated by plain white pillars and, in the centre, a fabulously ornate doorway that made her think of Greta Gabo films and Egyptian tombs all at the same time.