‘In that case, I’ll expect you to join me for breakfast. Eight sharp. I want to go over some things with you before the first meeting.’
She nodded. It was an immense relief to be back in her safe secretarial role. The bellowing, she had decided on the plane, was infinitely better than the amused, probing curiosity.
She had no idea just how tired she was until she had had her bath and her dinner, which had arrived promptly. A salmon salad with avocado, lots of brown bread which was the best she could remember tasting, potato crisps and a bottle of ice-cold mineral water. She sat on the bed with her book optimistically in front of her, and after fifteen minutes she was fast asleep.
The following day, she was glad that she had had a good night’s sleep. There was a series of meetings to attend, complex affairs during which she took notes and listened first-hand to Ross’s dynamism as he discussed high finance with board directors, bankers, and lawyers. He had a sharp mind and an ability to read the flow of currents, so that every problem thrown at him was met with an answer. He wanted a takeover of an American firm, one that was ailing but wary of being ruthlessly poached.
Over dinner, which was hosted by one of the lawyers, they discussed legal details of the takeover, while she watched and listened, mesmerised by Ross’s breadth of knowledge. Occasionally, when the conversation turned to lighter matters, she contributed something, but she was content to remain in silence.
At the end of two long days and two gourmet dinners which were merely a continuation of business, but over a four-course meal, she wistfully thought that she had managed to see precisely nothing of Boston, so it was with a certain amount of excitement that on her last day she was told to relax and sightsee.
‘But won’t you need me at the meetings with Don Huston and his partner?’ she queried over breakfast, and Ross shook his head.
‘It’s all but sewn up,’ he said, with the confidence of the tiger that had just accomplished a difficult kill. ‘The nuts and bolts are all in place. My lawyers in England can take over the rest when we get back.’
‘Does it give you a thrill to do something like that?’ Abigail asked curiously.
He sat back and looked at her, and she didn’t need him to answer to work out what his reply would be. It was written on his face. He enjoyed the cut and thrust of power, the wielding of his intellect.
‘I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t,’ he said coolly. He took a sip of coffee. ‘What about you? Did you enjoy it?’
‘Very much,’ she admitted, ‘though I couldn’t see myself doing the same thing. I wouldn’t have the heart for it, never mind the brains.’
He looked as if he were about to say something, but then he glanced at his watch and stood up.
‘Shame we can’t sightsee together,’ he murmured, watching her, and she smiled politely.
‘Better that only one of us freezes to death out there rather than both of us!’
‘Get used to it,’ he said, slipping on his jacket. ‘I spoke to someone in England last night and it’s bitter over there. They predict snow.’
‘Weathermen always get it wrong though, don’t they?’ She was smiling, but the smile was laboured. Could the ‘someone’ he spoke to have been Fiona, by any chance? Had he been missing her?
It was easy to forget that Fiona existed, that life back there in London, in the real world, existed. Boston, for all its hard work and business dinners listening to legal talk, was like a step out of time. She had forgotten all about Martin and the headache that she had left behind, and the thought of Fiona, back there, enjoying her nightly conversations with Ross, was a sharp blast of reality.
She spent the remainder of the day enjoying the city as much as she could, given the weather. Whenever it became too unbearable outdoors, she found warm sanctuary in one of the malls and nursed her hands around a cup of coffee. No plans had been made for that evening, though Ross had hinted that he would be visiting a friend and she would be free to do what she liked. What she liked, at the end of what turned out to be a very long but highly enjoyable day, was another stab at room service. The first time had been so fantastic that she wanted to give it a second try.
She arrived back at the hotel at five-thirty, had a very leisurely bath, washed her hair, which she bundled up into a turban, and then dialled for delivery of smoked chicken with all the trimmings.
When she heard the knock on the door half an hour later, she trailed across to the door, still inappropriately clad in her white towelling bath robe, with her hair now combed but damp around her face, and opened it, smiling.
The last person she expected to see standing there was Ross. Her eyes opened and she automatically took a step backwards. He was dressed casually, in a pair of black trousers with a black jumper. With his dark colouring and hard features, there was something distinctly menacing about him. Was this what a highwayman looked like? She supposed so.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, clutching the lapels of her bathrobe as if they had a will of their own and were threatening to flap open at any moment.
His eyes drifted over her, taking in the tightly clutched bath robe, and his lips curled with amusement.
‘Not what you’re obviously afraid of,’ he said, leaning against the door-frame. He wasn’t barging into the room, in fact he wasn’t making any effort to enter at all, but she still found his presence oppressive.
‘Do you think I’m about to rape you?’ he asked, his eyes gleaming. ‘Or do you normally answer the door with an expression of panic on your face?’
‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ Abigail said stiffly. ‘I’ve ordered some room service and I was expecting one of the hotel staff.’
‘Ah. So you would have been quite relaxed, dressed like that, in front of a complete stranger. What does that say about me, I wonder?’
She knew very well what he was hinting at. That he made her nervous, and the logical step from that would be why.
‘I thought you said that you were going out this evening. To see a friend.’
‘Did I?’ He looked at her blandly, enjoying her discomfort as much as she was hating it. The man was a sadist.
Behind him, a tall, thin teenager arrived with a trolley of food and Ross stepped aside to let him enter. As Abigail ushered him in, thanked him, gave him a tip, she was acutely and agonisingly aware of Ross still standing there, watching the proceedings with leisurely interest, making no move to go.
‘Well,’ she said, once the boy had exited, red-faced, ‘have a good evening. I shall see you at breakfast.’
She made as if to close the door and he reached out lazily with one hand and forced it back.
‘You’re coming out to dinner with me,’ he decided coolly.
‘Thank you,’ she said equally coolly, ‘I’d kill for that, but as you can see…’ She spread her arm in an expansive gesture to include the neatly arranged food, now on the low coffee-table in the middle of the room. She gave him a rueful smile which he ignored, stepping into the room, his hands in his pockets, looking around him with absent-minded curiosity.
‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘And get dressed. The table is booked for seven-thirty. Seafood, I thought.’
‘I told you,’ she repeated crossly, ‘I’m not coming out to dinner with you. I’ve made alternative arrangements. Thank you all the same.’
It was water off a duck’s back. He continued prowling around the room, before moving to stand in front of her.
‘I don’t feel inclined to indulge in a pointless debate about this,’ he informed her with enough boredom in his voice to make the blood rush angrily to her head. ‘We both know that you’re coming with me, so why waste time arguing the toss?’
There were quite a few retorts that flew to mind at that high-handed, arrogant observation, but she found that when she opened her mouth nothing emerged but a strangled, fairly inarticulate sound.
He smiled. ‘Good. Now off you go to change. Nothing too formal. Legal Seafoods is a casual sort of place.’
It was futile protesting further. He would, she knew, remain where he was until she gave in, and being dressed in a bath robe with her hair hanging around her face in wet tendrils was not an advantageous point from which to conduct a winning argument.
Two months ago, she thought, Ross Anderson would never have been able to rouse this level of emotive response in her at a dinner invitation. Two months ago, she would have accompanied him politely to dinner, they would have discussed work, exchanged pleasantries on the weather, the city, whatever. Two months ago she still had her head firmly screwed on.
She bad-temperedly headed towards the bathroom, changed into a simple long-sleeved dress in a shade of dusky blue, applied some make-up, slipped on a pair of grey, high-heeled shoes and then reluctantly faced him across the bedroom.
‘There,’ he said, looking at her, ‘that wasn’t the end of the world, was it?’
He knows that phony placatory tone gets under my skin, she thought, but she wasn’t going to let him see that, so she smiled, shrugged and fetched her thick grey cardigan from the wardrobe, as well as her coat.
They travelled down to Reception in silence and Ross made sure that a taxi was ready and waiting for them directly outside the hotel before they braved the freezing cold.