‘I went into liquidation because it was the only avenue open to me,’ Deborah reminded him. ‘You were the one who made the original decision to move here, Mark. I was quite happy in London. I only switched to liquidation and receivership because that was the only job open to me up here—you know that.’
They had, after all, discussed it thoroughly enough before she’d accepted the job, but then Mark had been the one with the promising career and the promotions ahead of him and, as he had explained to her, she might find that she would simply be treading water if she came north to join him, because of the rather old-fashioned attitude the firm had to female professionals.
‘Then I shall have to change that attitude, shan’t I?’ she had said robustly.
Then they had both laughed; then they had ended up in bed, making love, the serious matter of their careers pushed impatiently to one side in the heat of their urgent need for one another.
‘Be careful,’ an older, harder woman colleague had warned her. ‘Otherwise you’re going to fall into the trap of allowing him to believe that his career, his needs have priority over yours.’
‘It isn’t like that,’ Deborah had protested. ‘I want to go, and it is a good career move for me.’
‘This time, maybe,’ the other woman had responded drily.
‘Mark isn’t the kind of man who would ever expect me to put my career on hold; he knows how important it is to me,’ Deborah had told her.
‘Yeah… that’s what they all say at first.’ She was in her late forties with a bad divorce behind her, and sometimes the scars had still showed despite the good camouflage job she had done on them. ‘In my day they used to try to get you into bed with them by telling you that of course they’d still respect you in the morning. That was when we were stupid and brainwashed enough to believe that we needed respect from them. Now they tell you that of course they respect your independence, of course they believe in equality; the only difference is that, while my generation knew fine well they were lying, yours believes them.’
Deborah had laughed, as much at the thought of Mark ever needing to deceive her as at the irony in the other woman’s voice.
‘It might be a hell of a long way from the kitchen to the boardroom and it’s certainly a hell of a hard slog, but what real difference does that journey make when emotionally too many of us are still attached by a piece of elastic to some man who we claim loves us? It hurts like hell when they pull on that elastic, which all of them do… Is that love?’
The bitterness of her divorce had made her overly cynical, Deborah had told herself.
* * *
Irritably Mark opened his office door. He was tired of spending half his day sitting at his desk shuffling paper around pretending to be busy.
As he stepped out into the corridor he saw that the blonde temporary clerk was walking towards him, her arms full of files.
‘Which way?’ he asked her with a grin, his irritation lifting as he watched the deliberately provocative sway of her hips.
Perhaps Deborah was right when she claimed that the girl made deliberate use of her sexuality, but there was something about the sensual sway of those curving hips and the pout of the lipsticked mouth that made a man feel good about his sexuality, Mark acknowledged as he went to open the fire-doors for her.
The fact that both of them knew that she could quite easily have pushed them open herself didn’t matter. What mattered was the way she looked at Mark as she thanked him, pausing deliberately in the doorway where there was the least room for both of them and where his arm still curved behind her, holding open the door.
‘Thanks… I hadn’t realised how heavy these things are.’
As she jiggled them in her arms, the fabric of her blouse pulled taut against her breasts, outlining her nipples. They looked pert and hard, as though…
Hurriedly, Mark withdrew his gaze from her body, offering, ‘Let me give you a hand with them.’
‘I hope it’s the files you mean,’ she responded coquettishly, and then giggled as she moved closer to him so that he could take some of the files from her.
She was being quite deliberately and openly provocative, Mark recognised, flirting with him quite outrageously, in fact…
‘Goodness, aren’t you strong?’ she murmured as he relieved her of all the files. ‘I suppose you spend a lot of time at the gym; you can always tell a man who takes care of his body. Not that I like anyone who’s too muscular…’ She pulled a pouting face while she watched him archly, and Mark, who knew quite well that when it came to male physique he was simply average, albeit with the advantages of being six feet in height and having the shoulders that came from playing rugby as a youth, turned his head to hide his grin from her.
She was trying very hard, he conceded, and it surprised him how much he was actually enjoying what she was doing.
‘Have you made any plans for the Easter holiday weekend?’ she asked him.
Mark shook his head.
‘No, neither have I… What I’d really like is to spend the whole weekend away somewhere romantic with a gorgeous sexy man.’
She looked mock-coyly up at Mark from beneath her mascaraed lashes.
‘Just the two of us… on our own,’ she emphasised purr