'Me?' She knew she was repeating herself but this was just not possible; he had to be teasing her in the most cruel way imaginable.
'It would mean giving up your fiat and moving to France,' he said quietly, 'and of necessity the position would be on a six-month trial basis. All your expenses would be paid, of course, and you'd have the same salary Pierre did.' He mentioned a figure that made her mouth fall open. 'The firm is already part of Mallen Books and so you wouldn't be completely out on a limb; you'd have a ready-made avenue of contacts and back-up-a security blanket so to speak. But…' He leant forward in his seat, his dark face cold. 'You would have your work cut out to turn the thing round, especially in the present climate. Still interested enough to think about it?'
Joanne looked at him in a daze. She couldn't say a word; she just couldn't.
'If you are interested, we can throw a few facts and figures your way and start the ball rolling. I'd like the new manager installed within weeks and as you are as free as a bird there won't be any messy working-of-notice delay. If you're not…' the piercing eyes were holding hers as though in a vice '…then you will be paid twelve months' salary as a gesture of appreciation for all you've done for Charles's firm in the past, and that's the end of it Well?'
He relaxed back in his seat and grinned, the same devastating, knee-trembling grin as before, his blue gaze washing over her stunned countenance. 'What's it to be, Joanne?'
CHAPTER THREE
'And he wants your answer tomorrow morning, is that right?' Charles's voice had been sleepy when he'd answered the phone-it was past midnight after all-but once Joanne had begun to talk the telephone had fairly crackled with excitement.
'He wants to know if I'm interested enough to go on to the next phase,' Joanne answered quietly, 'and if I am he'll put me more fully in the picture.'
'And are you?' Charles asked evenly.
'I suppose so, but if I don't make a go of it and I'm left with egg on my face…'
'And if you do make a go of it the world's your oyster,' Charles said steadily. 'Think of it, Joanne; it's a dream of a career move, and frankly it sounds like he's only asking you to do what you've been doing for me for five years. We've worked so closely together there isn't a thing you don't know about managing a publishing house.'
'But this one is so much bigger.' That sounded rude and she added quickly, 'Well, a bit bigger, and it's in France and-'
'You could do it and Hawk Mallen knows it or else he wouldn't have offered you the job.'
'Charles, I'm sorry I phoned you at this time of night, but I don't feel I know enough about the Mallen Corporation and…and Hawk Mallen to make a decision. Would you mind filling me in on what you know?'
'On Hawk or the Mallen empire?' Charles's voice was very dry.
'Both.'
By the time they finished the call, fifteen minutes later, Joanne knew the Mallen Corporation had been founded by Hawk's American/French grandfather over fifty years ago, beginning with a textile warehouse shop that quickly grew into a string of the same and then diversified into more avenues than even Charles was sure of. The old man had had one son, Hawk's father, who, as Hawk had already mentioned, had been killed in an automobile accident, thereupon making Hawk a millionaire several times over at the tender age of twenty.
Charles had said more, much more, but Joanne had found her attention wandering more than once as a pair of very blue, piercingly intent eyes kept swimming into her consciousness. Hawk Mallen was a mesmerising man to be with and the compelling weight of his personality stayed long after the man himself had gone. He exuded energy and power and vigour, and those moments in his arms on the dance-floor… She shut her eyes as her senses swam. If she took this job-if-she would make sure she never put herself in such a vulnerable position again.
Her thoughts continued along this same path once the call had ended and she had showered and slipped into bed.
Other women, more worldly, experienced women, might be able to handle a man like Hawk and enjoy the challenge, but he frightened her half to death. She shut her eyes tightly in the warm darkness, her toes curling into the linen covers.
Not that he had behaved as anything but the perfect gentleman on their ride home, seeing her to her door with a polite handshake and almost distant smile that would have sat well on a maiden aunt. In fact from the moment he had explained about the job one could almost have called his attitude cool, certainly formal… She refused to recognise even a shred of pique at his lack of interest. It suited her-the fact that he was concerned only with her ability to do the job he had in mind. It did. She knew only too well how the man-woman relationship, with all its complications, could prove a time bomb that ruined the lives of everyone within a mile radius.
As though it were yesterday her mother's face was there, pretty, irritated, as she had handed her over to the social worker at the home. 'It will only be for a little while, Joanne.' Her mother had clearly wished she were anywhere but in the neat, orderly office with officialdom present. 'Just until Mummy gets a nice house to live in.'
The 'nice house' had taken three years to achieve, three years in which she was moved from foster home to foster home, until, at the age of seven, her mother had married. Not again-she had never been married to Joanne's father who had deserted his pregnant girlfriend once the good news was imparted-but for the first time. That marriage had lasted nine months, and by the time she was eight she was back in a foster home again, with the knowledge that her mother could barely wait to see the back of her.
When she was nine her mother had married Bob, and it had been at his insistence that she was once again placed in her mother's care.
She had never wanted to be alone with Bob; she hadn't been able to put it into words at the time-the strange feeling she experienced when his pale, almost opaque eyes slid over her slim, childish body-but when the marriage had been two months old, and the police had arrived on the doorstep one morning, she had known then, young as she was, that she had been right to withstand his overtures of friendship. He had been convicted of several cases of child abuse, a paedophile of the worst kind, and strangely her mother had seemed to blame her for the break-up of her second marriage, screaming at her that she should never have had her back to stay, that if B
ob hadn't known about Joanne he wouldn't have asked her to marry him and she would have been spared all the resulting humiliation.
She had been dispatched to the children's home the day after the court case, and had known then that she would never live with her mother again. Her mother had visited her now and again over the next few years, usually with a different 'uncle' in tow each time, some jovial and loud some not so jolly, but had always managed to make her feel the visit was on sufferance.
The caustic memories of a thousand little rejections which added up to a gigantic whole had burnt so painfully deep within her psyche that even now they made her screw up her eyes and curl into a tight little embryonic ball under the covers.
Commitment, marriage, men-it all meant disappointment and betrayal; she had learnt the fact first-hand, watching her mother's desperate search for love. And children-the biological fruit of that sexual urge which drove men into pretending they were what they weren't, and foolish women into believing it-were the innocent casualties that suffered the most.
She had vowed many times during her tear-filled adolescence that she would never allow herself to be subjugated like her mother; she didn't want or need a man in her life-they meant trouble and pain and ultimately disappointment. Her mother had grown bitter in time- in the last conversation they had had before she died, she had told Joanne over and over again that it wasn't in a man's nature to be monogamous, that marriage and fidelity were the world's biggest lie.