‘Did you leave because of Eric Gallway?’
The luminous green eyes cooled and she said steadily, ‘That really is none of your business, Mr Lindley.’
‘No, it isn’t, is it?’ he said softly, but his eyes implied otherwise. ‘Now, there are one or two other minor considerations that come with this job,’ he said slowly, resting both his elbows on the table and leaning towards her. He had rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt so that she had an ample view of strong forearms, liberally sprinkled with fine, dark hair.
‘Minor considerations?’ Shannon met his thoughtful, speculative look with a stirring of unease. What minor considerations? She didn’t care for the word ‘minor’. Somehow it brought to mind the word ‘major’.
‘There are a few duties connected with this job that will require some overtime…’
She breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn’t afraid of hard work and clock-watching had never been one of her problems. If anything, she’d often found herself staying on to work when she could have been going home.
‘I’m fine with overtime, Mr Lindley,’ she said quickly. ‘Alfredo will vouch for that.’
‘Good, good.’ He paused and his dark eyes flitted across her face. ‘These duties, however, are possibly not quite what you have in mind.’
‘What do they involve, Mr Lindley?’ Shannon asked faintly, for once lost for words in the face of the myriad possibilities filling her imaginative mind. She hoped that he wasn’t about to spring some illegal suggestion on her because she’d just become accustomed to thinking that gainful employment was within her reach and to have it summarily snatched away would be almost more of a blow than the original loss of her job.
‘I have a child, Miss McKee…’
‘You have a child?’
‘These things do happen as an outcome of sexual intercourse when no contraception has been used,’ Kane said with overdone patience. ‘As,’ he added mildly, ‘you are probably aware.’
Shannon failed to take offence at his tone. ‘I—simply never associated you with a child,’ she stammered, realising belatedly that her admission might give him the idea that she had been speculating wildly about him behind his back.
‘And may I ask why?’
‘You just don’t look…the fatherly sort…’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘I mean,’ she said hurriedly, as his eyebrows slanted upwards, ‘you were always at the restaurant so early… I just assumed that you weren’t much of a family man… How old is your child?’
‘Eight and it’s a she. Her name’s Eleanor.’
‘Oh, right.’ Shannon paused long enough to digest this piece of information. ‘And if you don’t mind me asking, what does all this have to do with me?’
‘At the moment I have a nanny in place to—’
‘You have a nanny in place?’ She gave a snort of derisory laughter.
‘Would you do me the favour of not interrupting me every five seconds?’
‘Sorry. It’s just the expression you used.’
‘I have a nanny in place who takes Eleanor to school in the mornings and brings her back home. Under normal circumstances, I would have a live-in nanny but Carrie has always insisted on having the evenings to herself and I’ve been loath to replace her because she’s been there since Eleanor was a baby.’
‘What about your wife? Does she work long hours as well?’ Shannon’s voice was laced with curiosity.
‘My wife is dead.’ He glanced down and she felt a rush of compassion for him and for his child. She tried to imagine a life with no siblings, no mother, an absent father and a nanny—and failed.
‘I’m sorry.’ She paused and then asked curiously, ‘When did she die?’
‘When Eleanor was born, actually.’ There was a dead flatness in his voice which she recognised. She’d heard her mother use that tone whenever someone asked her about her husband. She’d used detachment to forestall questions she didn’t want to answer. ‘The pregnancy was fraught, although the birth was relatively simple. Three hours after Eleanor was born, my wife haemorrhaged to death.’
‘I’m so very sorry, Mr Lindley.’
‘So occasionally I might need you to act as babysitter, for want of a better word. My old secretary was very obliging in that respect but, as I said, she now lives in Dorset. Naturally, you would be paid handsomely for the inconvenience.’
Shannon cradled the cup in between her hands, rubbing the rim with her thumbs. ‘Looking after a child could never be an inconvenience,’ she said quietly.
‘So.’ He signalled for the bill and she could sense his eagerness to be off the subject of his child and back into the arena of discussing work. ‘When would you be able to report for work?’
‘Whenever you want.’
‘What about next Monday morning? Eight-thirty sharp. And, naturally, I needn’t tell you that your first month will be a probationary one.’
‘On both sides, Mr Lindley,’ Shannon told him, just in case he got it into his head that she would somehow feel obliged to work for him even if she hated the job, simply because he had offered it to her out of duty.
‘I wouldn’t—’ he graced her with such a powerful smile that her heart seemed to stop for a few seconds ‘—dream of expecting otherwise.’ He stood up and politely offered her a lift to wherever she was going. When she declined, he nodded briefly in her direction before ushering her out of the coffee-bar.
The fresh, cold air whipped around her and for a few seconds, she had the unreal sensation that it had all been a vivid dream. She had always been particularly good at dreaming up improbable scenarios. Perhaps this was just another one. But, of course, it wasn’t. She had quit one job and then Fate had smiled on her and decreed that she land another within hours of losing the first. Wasn’t that just like life? Things, she had always thought, were never quite as black as they seemed. All you ever needed to do was leap over the first sticky patch and, sure enough, things would right themselves. There was always room for healthy optimism.
The healthy optimism stayed with Shannon for the remainder of the week and right into the weekend, which was spent with Sandy who seemed agog at the turn of events. She kept referring to ‘the luck of the devil’ and the way that Irish blarney could get a girl what she wanted until Shannon was forced to point out that the man was obviously impressed by all the secretarial potential he had spotted in her while she had waited tables.
‘Ha! Perhaps he spotted other potential,’ Sandy whispered darkly over their celebratory pizza.
But even that failed to quench her optimism.
She dressed very carefully on the Monday morning, making sure that everything matched and that there were no unknowing eccentric touches which had always been permissible at the radio station and at Alfredo’s but most certainly would not be in most normal working environments. She looked regretfully at her floppy hat as she left the bedsit, and at her flat black lace-up shoes which were her faithful companions whether accompanied by skirt or trousers. Neither would do. Blue skirt, white blouse, blue and black checked jacket, which unfortunately was the only one she possessed and as a hand-me-down from one of her sisters didn’t fit quite right, and, of course, her coat, one of her more expensive purchases from her working life at the radio station.
Her hair had presented a bit of a problem. Braids didn’t seem right for a secretarial job in a normal office environment, but wearing it loose wasn’t an option because as far as she was concerned, it was just too red, too beacon-like, so she tied it into a low ponytail which she held in