She felt heartsore for him, only able to guess at how it must feel to have suffered that kind of tragedy.
Tom, his son, had been twenty-two years old and just on the point of leaving university. He had been an intelligent and well-liked young man, and the accident which had killed him had been so meaningless that it was no wonder Alan was even now unable to accept what had happened.
The driver of the other car had been drinking...had crossed the centre of the road, to plough right into Tom’s car, killing both Tom and himself outright. There was no easy way for any parent to accept something like that, and now the business which should have been passed on to Tom had been sold to someone else.
‘I’ve called a meeting of the workforce for ten o’clock,’ Nicola reminded her boss as she put down his coffee in front of him.
‘Luckily the men are all working locally on the house in Duke Street, and although we’re paying them for it I’ve arranged that they will take an early lunch-hour to attend the meeting...’
The contract for renovation of a house just outside the town centre, work they were doing for a local estate agency which was moving from its existing modern premises to this much older and far more attractive property, carried stiff penalty clauses for failure to meet time requirements. Privately Nicola thought that, in view of the notorious tardiness of their foreman, the penalty clauses were going to make the contract unprofitable to them, and suspected that in accepting it Alan was betraying just another indication of how Tom’s death had affected him. When she had first come to work for him, he had had his finger firmly on the pulse of the business, with everything under his control. Now things were different, and she often found she was gently having to point out to him various pitfalls in the contracts they took on, almost to the point where she was often the one redrafting the contracts to make sure that they were actually going to be profitable to them.
The only place which could accommodate all of the firm’s employees was an empty storage shed adjacent to the office-block, and it was here that the staff were going to gather to officially meet their new boss.
From the window of her office, Nicola had a clear view of the yard and of everyone who came and went in it, and so at ten to ten, when a battered looking Land Rover was driven noisily into the yard, she gave vent to a small sigh of exasperation.
A potential client, much as his or her business was needed, was not someone who could be properly dealt with right now, with their new owner about to arrive at any moment.
The Land Rover was mud-splashed and had at one time or another been involved in some kind of minor accident. It looked very much like any local farmer’s vehicle.
It stopped right in front of the office-block and the driver got out.
He was tall, with broad shoulders encased in a windbreaker jacket, his jeans dusty and well-fitting, a pair of battered trainers on his feet. His hair was thick and dark, not black, more a rich, warm brown, growing a bit too low into his collar. His hand, she saw as he slammed the Land Rover door, was brown from constant exposure to the elements.
And then he turned his head, and in doing so caused Nicola’s entire world to turn upside-down, her body frozen with shock, her entire life-force numbed by the sight of him.
No. It wasn’t possible...it couldn’t be possible. It was a mistake. She was wrong... It couldn’t possibly be the same man. After all, it was all of eight years ago...and she had only seen him then in the half-light, and only on that one occasion...
But it was him. She knew there was no mistake...knew there could be no way she would ever make a mistake about a thing like that. And besides, she hadn’t only recognised him with her eyes, but with her senses as well, each one of them reacting betrayingly to him...each one of them remembering. She shuddered inwardly, wanting to close her eyes, wanting to block out his image, odd, panicky flashes of memory swamping her...
Men when drunk did not make careful or considerate lovers—that was received opinion. They were careless, thoughtless, unskilled and lacking in awareness of their partner’s needs or wants. That was what one always heard, but he—this man—had been different...had left her—
She shuddered again, causing Evie to stare anxiously at her and ask, ‘Are you OK? You’ve gone dreadfully pale.’ She came over to Nicola’s desk, and then, as her attention was caught by what was going on outside, commented excitedly, ‘That’s him... The new boss... Matthew Hunt. He’s arrived then... You’d better warn Alan.’
Matthew Hunt? This was Matthew Hunt? Nicola had to grab hold of her desk to keep her knees from buckling beneath her. Impossible! It couldn’t be. It must not be. Matthew Hunt. Her new boss. The same man who...
She swallowed hard as the full horror of the situation hit her, her mind in complete turmoil as she sought frantically for something to hold on to, something to stop her from drowning in her own terror.
What if he recognised her? What if he...? But no. That was impossible... He had only seen her the once, her hair had been longer then, and she had just had that dreadful disaster of a perm which had left her looking like something out of a horror film. She closed her eyes, shuddering deeply, trying not to remember how she had looked that night...the dress she had worn, bought in a fierce, reckless mood of defiant misery...the make-up she had put on...the way she had behaved... No. He wouldn’t recognise her. Her own parents wouldn’t have recognised her...
Her heartbeat was returning to normal, her body still tense, wary. She could hear Evie excitedly telling Alan that Matthew Hunt had arrived. Any minute now he would be walking into the office—his office. When he did she must be ready...prepared. She must—
She took a deep breath. The office door opened and he stood there, looking at her.
It shocked through her, as he studied her, how familiar everything about him was, right down to the piercingly intelligent way he was watching her...just as though he was somehow not quite a part of the general run of the human race...as though somehow he was elevated from it... superior.
She remembered how she had noticed that about him that night—that and, of course, his spectacular good looks, his very obvious maleness...
‘Miss Linton?’
It was a statement, not a question, and she responded to it automatically, saying a little shakily, ‘Yes, I’m Nicola Linton, Mr Hunt.’
The smile he gave her wasn’t kind or warm.
‘Make it Matt,’ he told her coolly. ‘Outdated lip-service to respect, when it’s sycophantic and not genuine, isn’t something which appeals to me...’
His comment shocked her out of her personal terror, making Nicola stare and frown.
He hadn’t recognised her, she knew that, but it was evident from his manner towards her that he was not well-disposed to her. Her eyelashes flickered defensively; she knew she was not popular with the male workforce, who made fun of her behind her back and laughed about her primness, but better that than— She swallowed hard. This man was going to be her boss. Unless she gave up her job, which she did not want to do, she was going to have to find a way of getting on with him. Jobs weren’t easy to come by out here, and she had no wish to commute to the city, and certainly no wish to move there. Whatever had caused his antipathy towards her, it certainly wasn’t the past... She was safe from that horror, at least.
As she made some inane comment, she was aware of being in a state of intense shock, of speaking and moving automatically, as a means of defence, while really all she longed to do was to turn tail and run just as far and as fast as she could from the man watching her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Alan coming out of his office. Evie beamed enthusiastically at Matthew Hunt, who gave her a surprisingly warm smile.
A sensation unlike anything she had ever experienced before seemed to pierce right through