‘Ah…!’ Tyler let out a hiss of satisfaction. He had it now.
Mary Thomas…Of course.
‘I do remember you,’ he said slowly. ‘You were the one who spilt coffee all over the conference table at some meeting.’
Of course, he would remember that. Mary bit her lip and averted her eyes from the stain on his shirt. ‘I’m not usually that clumsy,’ she said.
‘And you stood up to me over that guy…What was his name?’ Tyler clicked his fingers impatiently as if trying to conjure the name out of thin air.
‘Paul Dobson,’ Mary supplied, since there was no point in pretending she didn’t know.
‘Dobson…yes. You told me I was wrong.’ He eyed her with new interest. Very few people dared to tell him he was wrong about anything.
It was all coming back. He could remember the shocked silence around the table as Mary Thomas had spoken out, the scorn in her voice, how taken aback they had all been, as if some gentle kitten had suddenly puffed up to twice its size and lashed out without warning.
‘I hope I put it a bit more diplomatically than that,’ said Mary, her heart sinking. He would never give her work if he associated her with trouble.
‘There was no diplomacy about it,’ said Tyler. ‘You told me flat out that I was wrong and should be ashamed of myself.’
He had been furious at the time, Mary remembered, marvelling now that she had ever had the nerve, but when she risked a glance at him she was sure she detected a gleam of something that might even have been amusement in the chilly blue eyes. It had a startling effect, lightening the grimness of his features and making him seem suddenly much more approachable.
‘You told me I was a bleeding heart,’ she countered, emboldened.
‘So you were,’ he agreed. ‘But a bleeding heart who got her own way, I seem to remember.’
Mary nodded. ‘You were fair,’ she acknowledged.
That was one thing you could say about Tyler Watts. He might be rude and impatient, and the most difficult and demanding of employers most of the time, but he was straight and he didn’t ignore or manipulate facts that didn’t suit him. Irritated he might have been, but he had listened to what she had had to say about Paul Dobson. The upshot had been a special inquiry, and Tyler had been prepared to reconsider his decision when he knew more.
Well, that explained why she had seemed so familiar, anyway. Tyler felt better. He didn’t like being puzzled or uncertain. Having solved the mystery, he could move on, but he was remembering something the HR director had once told him: ‘Mary Thomas may be young, but she’s got an instinctive understanding of human relationships.’
And, if that were still so, maybe Mary Thomas could be of some use to him after all.
‘Why did you leave Watts Holdings?’ he asked her.
Mary, trying to relaunch into her sales pitch, was thrown by the abrupt question. ‘I wanted to work in London,’ she said, puzzled by his interest. ‘I grew up in York and I was really lucky to get a job with you after I graduated, but after three years I was ready to spread my wings.’
‘You could have got a job with us in London.’
He sounded almost peeved that she hadn’t. She hadn’t realised that joining Watts Holdings was supposed to be a lifetime commitment. Mind you, there had been some fanatically loyal members of staff who probably thought of it that way. There tended to be a very high turnover amongst the rest, though, most of whom were terrified of Tyler Watts. Mary had only managed to survive three years by not being important enough to have much to do with him.
Still, better not tell Tyler that. She had been tactless enough for one evening.
‘I wanted to broaden my experience,’ she said instead.
‘Hmm.’ Tyler’s hard eyes studied her with such intentness that Mary began to feel uncomfortable. ‘And now you’re back in York?’ he said.
‘Yes. I’ve been back a few months now,’ she told him, relieved that he seemed to be getting back to the business in hand, which was about winning some work.
‘I’ve recently set up a recruitment agency,’ she went on, ready to launch back into her spiel and wishing that her feet didn’t hurt so much. ‘I offer a complete headhunting service for junior staff. Companies tend to spend a lot of money recruiting senior members of staff and skimp on employees at lower grades, but it’s a false economy in my view.
‘A financial investment in finding exactly the right person, however lowly the job, pays dividends,’ she said. ‘If all your staff, from janitors to chief executives, are doing the job they’re best suited to, your entire company will function more efficiently.’
Tyler was unimpressed. ‘Sounds expensive,’ he commented.
‘It’s more expensive than accepting anyone who happens to have the skills to do the job,’ Mary agreed. ‘But less expensive than realising you’ve appointed someone who doesn’t fit into the team or who doesn’t work effectively with their colleagues.’
She was beginning to perk up a bit now. Tyler’s expression might be unresponsive, but at least he was listening. ‘Before I look for the right person for you, I need to understand the company culture, and that means working very closely with your human resources department. It’s important to know exactly what the job entails and what sort of personality would fit most comfortably into the existing team.
‘I see my job less as matching skills and requirements, and more about forging successful human relationships,’ she finished grandly. She always liked that bit.
Relationships, the dreaded R word! Tyler was sick of hearing about them. He had recently spent a weekend with his best friend and his wife, and Julia had spent her whole time banging on about ‘relationships’ and making free with her advice.
‘For someone so clever at business, you’re extraordinarily stupid when it comes to women,’ she had told him bluntly. ‘You’ve got no idea how to have a relationship.’
Tyler had been outraged. ‘Of course I do! I’ve had loads of girlfriends.’
‘Yes, and how many of them have lasted more than a few weeks? Those are encounters, Ty, not relationships!’
Tyler was fond of Julia in his own way, but her comments had caught him on the raw, especially after that reunion he had gone to with Mike where all his peers seemed to be measuring their success suddenly in terms of wives and children rather than share value or racehorses or fast cars.
‘That’s what being really successful is nowadays,’ Mike had said, amused by Tyler’s bafflement. ‘You’re going to have to get yourself a wife and family, Tyler, if you want to be the man who really does have it all!’
‘And you won’t be that until you learn how to have a relationship,’ Julia added. ‘If you want to be the best, Ty, you’re going to have to get yourself a relationship coach.’
It was all rubbish, of course, but her words had rankled with Tyler. He liked being the best—needed to be the best, even—and he wasn’t prepared to accept that there was anything he didn’t do well, even something as unimportant as relationships. He didn’t do failure, in any shape or form.
Now here was Mary Thomas going on about relationships too.
‘What is it with all this relationship stuff nowadays?’ he demanded truculently. ‘Why is it no one can just do the job they’re paid to do any more? Why do they all have to spend their time forging relationships?’
‘Because unless they do form relationships, they won’t work effectively,’ said Mary, who was wishing Tyler Watts would stop talking and let her get out of these shoes. ‘You know, it’s not a big deal,’ she