easily, temper and composure apparently perfectly restored, 'but unfortunately that's where they'll have to stay-in your head. Now, where were we? Oh, yes, I was trying to save you from looking ridiculous…'
She spluttered, gulped, but was forced to admit silently to herself that she didn't dare call his bluff.
He had raised dark eyebrows at her mini paroxysm but when no verbal abuse was forthcoming smiled nastily before continuing, 'Charles has left messages for you over half of Europe, there is a letter explaining the full details of the merger with Mallen Books sitting on your doorstep at home, which is repeated at length on your answer machine, but I presume, from your rather undignified outburst out there, you haven't received any of them?'
She didn't reply, and he didn't seem to expect one as he went on, 'I suggest you go home and read the letter, pop round and see Charles, do whatever it is that women do to cool down, and then we'll go from there.'
'You're dismissing me?' she asked with icy hauteur.
'Don't you ever listen?'
She had got under his skin. For all his apparent equanimity she had definitely got under his skin, she noted with some hidden satisfaction as she watched him take a deep hard pull of air before shaking his head slowly.
'You're a very intelligent woman, Miss Crawford; I know that much from your file and all that Charles has told me about you. I've seen some of your work and it's impressive, damn impressive, so what's happened during this jaunt round Europe to that noteworthy brain of yours? Are you really determined to throw your job- and the considerable salary that goes with it-to the wind on little more than a whim, a temper tantrum, because you weren't in the know when all this happened? I know Charles respects both your work and you as a person, but he had to make a fast decision on our offer and you simply weren't around to confer with. Okay?'
He thought her reaction was petulance because she hadn't been consulted about the merger? She stared at him in amazement, unable to believe she was hearing right.
'Okay?' he said again, his voice cool and biting.
'Mr Mallen, I couldn't care less if you took over this firm and a hundred others besides every day for a month,' she said furiously. 'That's not the issue here.'
'Really?' He smiled a smile that wasn't a smile at all.
'Yes, really.' She had never wanted to wipe a smile from someone's face so violently before. 'The only thing that concerns me is the way you've got rid of Charles. This firm was his lifeblood, his reason for living, and don't tell me I don't know what I'm talking about,' she warned testily as he opened his mouth to interrupt. 'I know Charles-I know him better than you for a start- and to leave this firm would be like leaving his own child. He built Concise Publications up from nothing, sacrificed for it, lived his life around it, and now you sweep in and throw him out as though he's nothing.'
'You've got this all wrong-'
'Oh, spare me.' He wasn't used to being spoken to like this, and his displeasure was evident in the narrowing of the brilliant blue eyes and hard line of his mouth. A sensual mouth, firm and full, with a sexy bottom lip- She caught the thought as it materialised, shocked to the core at its inappropriateness, and it made her voice harsh as she went on, 'You've got rid of Charles and I don't doubt for a minute that he won't be the last to go. Well, I'll make it easy for you, Mr Mallen, and resign right now. I've no wish to continue working under the new administration, okay?'
The last word was said with exactly the same emphasis he had placed on it a few moments earlier and spoke of her utter disgust more strongly than anything she had said before.
'I don't believe I'm having this conversation.' As Joanne went to rise he pushed her back down in the seat with a mite more force than was necessary. 'And sit still, damn it,' he growled angrily. 'I haven't finished yet.'
'But I have.' This time when she rose he let her, his eyes unblinking as she smoothed down the pencil-slim skirt over her hips and tugged the matching jacket into place with shaking hands. He was a brute of a man, a cold, arrogant tyrant. She'd seen plenty of the same since coming to London from her university in Manchester eight years ago, and had never stopped thanking the guardian angel who had led her to Concise Publications and the Brigmores. She couldn't have wished for a better boss, and Clare had become more than a friend, almost a mother…
'How can someone who looks so fragile be so impossible?' he asked with a quietness that had all the softness of tempered steel. 'I've met some troublesome females in my time but you take the biscuit hands down.' He had straightened as she'd stood, and now she became fully aware for the first time of his considerable height and bulk, his broad-shouldered, lean body towering over her five feet six inches in a way that made her feel positively minute. And she was aware of something else too, something…undefinable, magnetic that pulsed from the hard male frame with a drawing power that was formidable, and it was this that made her swing round on her heel and make for the door without another word.
'Is that it?'
In any other circumstance, with any other man, the look of utter surprise on his face as she turned round would have made her smile; as it was she stared at him for a moment before she said, 'There's no point in continuing this, is there?'
'You really intend to throw in the towel because you consider Charles has been hard done by?' He surveyed her cynically, his mouth hard. 'What sort of relationship did you have with your departed boss anyway?' he added silkily, his meaning plain.
'I don't even intend to acknowledge that with the favour of a reply,' she said icily, her eyes wishing him somewhere very hot and very final as she glared at him one more time, before opening the door and sweeping into the outer office with a regality that wasn't lost on Hawk Mallen as he watched her go.
He liked her style. He watched her cross the outer office and exit without turning her head or faltering in her purpose. Yes, whatever else, she had one hell of a way with her.
Once in the corridor outside, Joanne set her face in a practised smile and made for the lift, passing the other offices on the exalted top floor of Concise Publications without looking to left or right. There were three floors in all, and as the lift took her swiftly downwards Joanne found she had gone into automatic, her whole being concentrating on getting out of the building and into her car without the humiliation of breaking down. One of Charles's editors-no, not Charles's any more, she corrected herself painfully-was in Reception and raised a hand to her as she passed. 'Everything all right?'
'Fine, fine.' She smiled and nodded but didn't stop, her mind registering the stupidity of her reply in the circumstances.
Once in her snazzy little red car she sat for a whole minute just breathing deeply before she could persuade her shaking hands to start the engine. Her whole life, the interesting, vital life she had fought for so hard, had just been turned upside down and the shock waves had her head buzzing.
She should have phoned Clare and Charles last night-she had meant to-but her flight from France had been delayed and when Melanie had offered her a bed for the night, rather than her having to drive right across London in the rush hour to her flat, she'd accepted gratefully. And then she had had a bath, and they'd eaten, and consumed one of the bottles of wine they'd brought back between them…
'Damn, damn, damn…' She turned and glanced at her huge rucksack in the middle of the back seat, surrounded by bags of wine and boxes of Belgian chocolates she'd brought back as presents, and then slipped off the jacket to the suit she had borrowed from Melanie and flung it on the seat beside her as she started the engine. Well, it was too late now; she had quite literally walked into the lion's mouth and definitely come off the worse for wear, but the main thing was to touch base with Charles and see how he was. It was so ironic that all this had happened during the first real holiday she had had in years, she thought miserably as she steered the car out of her reserved space in Concise Publication's small car park, and on to the busy main road.
The urge to see Charles was overwhelming, and as his house in Islington was on her route home she headed for there, forcing herself to concentrate on the morning traffic rather than her jumbled thoughts that were flying in all directions. The September day was balmy and mellow, the warm sunshine pleasant but lacking the fierce heat that had characterised July and August, but Joanne was oblivious to the weather as she drove through the London streets in a turmoil that made her soft full mouth tight and stained her creamy, sun-tinted skin an angry red.
It was ten o'clock when she drew up outside Charles and Clare's large three-storeyed terraced house in its wide and pleasant street, and by five past she was seated in a cushioned cane chair in the garden with a box of tissues at her elbow and a steaming cup of coffee in front of her. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cry on you…'
Clare, who was sitting on the arm of Joanne's chair, pulled her closer to her maternal bosom as Charles tut- tutted from his vantage point opposite. 'It's our fault, Joanne; it must have been such a shock to you,' Clare said
