Rachel Lindsay.
Brazillian Affair.
Philippa wondered if it were really possible for a heart to break. A few hours ago she would not have believed she could hear Lucas"s words and yet wish them unsaid.
Now there were too many things that made everything Lucas said impossible. To argue with him was useless. Perhaps she could make him believe she didn"t love him.
"You"re making a mistake, Lucas," she said. "Wanting a woman isn"t enough. I don"t want to be just another one of your girlfriends!"
CHAPTER ONE.
A sharp March wind whistled through the streets of Kensington, but inside the steel and concrete block housing the head office of Langland Engineering, diffused lighting, controlled heating and hermetically sealed double glazing made a mockery of the seasons.
In her eyrie on the twentieth floor, Philippa Smith glanced up from her shorthand notebook and, not for the first time, questioned the luck which, six months earlier, had lifted her from the companiable anonymity of the typing pool to her present lonely eminence as personal secretary to Lucas Paget.
The buzzer sounded on her desk and drew her across the carpeted floor and into an elegant office.
At sight of the wide-shouldered figure in the chair behind the executive desk her irritation vanished. How could the companionship of other girls, with their aimless chatter of clothes and boy-friends, compare with the stimulus of working for a man as original and alert as this one?
Lucas Paget glanced at her briefly and lifted up a pile of blueprints that lay in front of him. "Keep these in the safe," he ordered. "They"re highly confidential."
Philippa took the doc.u.ments and in return placed a leather-bound folder in front of him.
"Will you sign your letters now, Mr. Paget?"
"Later. I"m busy."
Sufficiently experienced to know that if he did not sign his letters immediately they would be held over for another day, she remained obstinately where she was, and with an irritated shrug, he opened the folder and scrawled his bold signature above the words: Managing Director.
"Did you manage to finish all the dictation I gave you this morning?" he asked as he signed the last letter.
"Everything except the report on the Brazilian project."
"That"s the one I wanted most urgently."
"I"ll stay behind and do it. I"m afraid the technicalities slowed me up."
"I"m not surprised," he grunted. "It"s a wonder you aren"t slowed up more often."
Although the praise was laconic, Philippa"s cheeks grew warm with pleasure. "How did your Board Meeting go ?" she asked.
"Fine. Two hours" talk and two hours" lunch to reach a couple of decisions that any skilled engineer could have made on his own in five minutes! Sometimes I wish I"d had the sense to stick to research."
She hid a smile. It was a complaint she had heard too many times in the last few months to take seriously. Brilliant engineer he might be, but a man who, in ten years, had transformed Langland Engineering from a small family concern into a public company was not the stuff of which boffins were made.
She closed the wall safe, and as she returned to the desk he looked up from a letter he was scanning. "Did I dictate this?"
"I toned it down a little."
"If I want you to edit my remarks," he said coldly, "I"ll let you know. When a supplier fails to keep a delivery date, that"s the end as far as this company"s concerned."
Philippa"s lips set mutinously, but she picked up the letter. "I"ll retype it for you."
"Why are you so annoyed, Miss Smith? Do you think I"m too inflexible ?"
"I think you"re unjust."
The grey eyes went cold, and Philippa cursed her lack of discretion. Private secretaries were not paid to give opinions.
"The man"s bungling cost us a Government contract," Lucas Paget said curtly. "And that"s something I can"t forgive." He shrugged the subject away and glanced at his message pad. "Who the devil is Miss Green?"
"Blanche Green." Philippa emphasised the first name, wondering for the hundredth time if the famous American star was an ex-girl friend of his. She was not the current one; that was Lola Maxton, who had been high on his list for the past two months - a record for her handsome but fickle employer.
"Blanche," he echoed. "Don"t tell me she"s back in town?"
"You must be the only male in England who doesn"t know. Her name"s been on the front page of every newspaper for days."
"Not the ones I read." He tapped the message with his finger. "Send three dozen red roses to her hotel."
"What shall I say on the card ?"
His lower lip jutted forward as he pondered the problem. "Say I"m on my way to the Far East and don"t know when I"ll be back. And you"d better make it five dozen."
"One day your sins will catch you out," Philippa said darkly, and received a wide grin.
"I"m waiting for the day when they don"t! And send six dozen."
It was an expensive brush-off, Philippa decided as, a little later, she telephoned the order to the florist. What would it be like to be the sort of woman to whom Lucas Paget sent six dozen hot-house roses? Still, it was better to have one rose given in love than so many given without any genuine affection. One rose...
The words took her back to the Norfolk village of Turville where she had lived with her father until three years ago. It had been ten o"clock on a June morning and her father"s surgery had just ended when Roland Marsh strolled in, carrying an apricot-coloured rose plucked from his mother"s garden.
"It reminded me of you," he had said, handing it to her. "Your hair is the same as the outer petals."
Blushing vividly, she had buried her face in the bloom. For as long as she could remember she had been in love with Roland and, for as long as she could remember he had treated her as if she were his sister.
"I love you," he had continued abruptly, "and I want to marry you."
"M - me?" she had stammered. "But you"ve never... you"ve always treated me like a child."
"You"re not a child any longer, and I"ve no intention of letting you slip through my fingers."
It had needed very little more to convince her he had meant what he said and she had rushed in to tell her father the good news.
But a few weeks later it was over; her dreams shattered by an upturned boat bobbing on a grey sea. She sighed. Would her life have been so different if he had lived? Would they have married and lived happily ever after? During her brief engagement she had been sure of it, but after his death - and Jack Busby"s visit - she had thought otherwise.
Never would she forget the day when the black Rolls had drawn up outside her father"s surgery door and a stocky man had climbed out and said the housekeeper at Mrs. Marsh"s house had refused to let him in and had directed him to come here.
Briefly Dr. Smith had explained that Mrs. Marsh was his patient and was too emotionally distressed to see strangers. "But if you would tell me what you wish to see her about," he had added, "I may be able to help you."
The reply had been long and furious. Roland, it seemed, had been in charge of one of Jack Busby"s largest building projects and, when handing out jobs to various contractors, had chosen not the best, but the ones who had offered him the largest bribes. The result had been a shoddily finished office block requiring additional expense and different contractors to make it habitable.
"Roland knew I was on to him," Busby had concluded, "if he hadn"t been drowned I"d have had him put in prison."
It had taken Dr. Smith an hour to convince the man that Mrs. Marsh did not have the financial resources to compensate him for what her son had done, even had she been legally obliged to do so, which was not the case.
"Just to tell her about Roland in order to get it off your chest would be cruel in the extreme," the doctor had said. "Roland was her only child and she"ll never recover from his death At least leave her with an untarnished memory."
Eventually the builder had agreed to return to London, leaving Philippa with the knowledge that the man she had loved was a figment of her imagination, and that the real Roland had been a party- loving young man with his eye on the main chance.
"Why did he get engaged to me?" she had asked her father, dry-eyed and bitter. "I can"t believe he loved me."
"Love"s a funny thing," her father had said. "Maybe you represented something he knew he could never be."
"Or perhaps he thought that as a wife I"d provide him with a safe sort of background," she had retorted.
"There"s no point wondering about it now." Her father had been concerned at the look on her face. "Just remember Roland the way he was to you. Forget everything else."
It had not been easy to do, particularly as Roland"s mother looked on her as a daughter-in-law, and eventually Philippa had realised she would have no chance of making a new life for herself unless she left home. Roland was dead. Worse still, the man she had believed him to be had never existed.
And so she had gone to London and the anonymity of a typing pool, from which she had graduated six months ago to become private secretary to Lucas Paget. The naive girl of three years ago no longer remained; its place taken by a diamond-bright young woman who eschewed all romance and concentrated on her career.
Yet there were odd moments when she still wished she had gone sailing with him that fateful weekend. Perhaps together they would have ridden out the storm; perhaps, when facing danger, he might have been impelled to confide in her. But he had chosen to go alone and, because of it had died alone, his body never recovered...
The buzzer jerked her back to the immediate present and she hastily collated the Brazilian report she had typed and returned with it to her employer"s office.
He was talking on the telephone and motioned her remain. She did so. It was difficult to guess with whom he was speaking, for his words were cryptic, though his tone told her it was someone important.
After a moment he set down the receiver and swung round in his chair to face her. "All I wanted was to build a dam in Brazil; now I find myself involved in international politics." His face was a study in disgust. "j.a.pan, America, Italy - all of them are tendering prices and all of them have delegations on the spot. Only this country expects to land a contract from three thousand miles away. Thank heavens I"ve at last got the Minister"s approval to fly out to Rio."
She half smiled. "To watch out for Britain"s interests?"
"It"s Langland"s interests I"m concerned with." He slapped the folder in front of him. "This contract is the biggest thing we"ve handled. I"m d.a.m.ned if I"ll see it lost through diplomatic bungling."
"Your trip sounds exciting," she commented, not a little surprised that this usually taciturn man should be talking to her so easily.
"I"m glad you think so," came the dry rejoinder, "since I"ll need a secretary out there."
It was a moment before his words registered. "I"m to go with you?"
"I take it you"ve no objection ?"
"Oh no!" Excitement bubbling inside her. "All my life I"ve dreamed of seeing Rio."
He laughed shortly. "It can be as humid as h.e.l.l and parts of it are as squalid as anything in Southern Europe. Anyway, it won"t be a holiday. There"ll be innumerable discussions and you"ll have all the transcribing you can cope with."
Philippa hardly heard him, her thoughts were already racing ahead to the clothes she would need and the vaccinations she must have, as well as her hurried trip home to say good-bye to her father and Mrs. Marsh.
"We won"t be leaving before the weekend, will we ?" she asked.
"Why?" Lucas Paget"s voice was sharp. "When you took on this job you said you had no ties."
The explanation she had been about to give disappeared at his chilling remark. "That still doesn"t mean I live in a vacuum."
He had the grace to redden. "I didn"t mean to be rude." He glanced at the diary on his desk. "You can take tomorrow and Friday off - that should give you a chance to get your visa, buy yourself some clothes and say good-bye to your friends. I"ll also get our accountant to send you a cheque for two hundred and fifty pounds. You"ll need some pretty dresses for the evening. I"m sure to be invited to a few receptions and I"ll want you to accompany me.
She was startled. "That"s very kind of you. I never expected -"
"Pretty women can learn a lot if they keep their eyes and ears open," he interrupted. "There"s method to my so-called kindness."
Despite her chagrin, Philippa could not help smiling. Trust Lucas Paget to deliver a knife-edged compliment!
"Will you leave the choice of clothes to me?" she inquired blandly.
"Of course. I"ve always admired your taste." His eyes slid over her, making her conscious of every bone in her slender body. "Avoid muted shades, though. You"ve a tendency to wallow in beige and merge into your background."
"A good secretary should merge into her background."
He grunted. "Our plane leaves at three on Monday afternoon. One of the office cars will collect you and take you to the airport."
It was mid-morning on Tuesday when Philippa and her employer walked along the tarmac of Galeao Airport. Hot air engulfed her and she found it hard to credit that only yesterday she had been shivering beneath gun metal skies; here the sky was Madonna blue with not a wisp of cloud to be seen.
The beauty of the scenery as they had approached to make their landing was something she would never forget, though Lucas Paget had not even lifted his head from the doc.u.ments he was reading. Even now he seemed impervious to his surroundings: the warmth, the crowds of bronzed men in tropical- weight suits, the sloe-eyed, black-haired women, the sibilant hiss of Portuguese.
Within a few moments their cases were checked through Customs and they were speeding towards the city and their hotel. Even in the car he concentrated on the doc.u.ments in his hand, so indifferent to his surroundings that he might have been travelling through Hyde Park en route to his London office. The pallor of his skin was in severe contrast to the swarthy Latin-Americans she glimpsed through the car window, and it was probably for this reason that she noticed how tired he looked. There were lines at the corner of his eyes and a sprinkle of grey in the thick mahogany brown hair at his temples. Seen in profile, his aquiline nose and firm chin heightened his severity, and his mouth, though unusually well- shaped, was set in such a rigid line that it added to the general impression he gave of ruthless efficiency. Not the sort of man one could imagine sending roses to the gay Blanche Green. There was such an intriguing discrepancy between his appearance and his actions that she could not help being amused, though only when he looked up, his grey eyes narrowed, did she realise she had laughed out loud.
"Just nervous," she said to cover her confusion. "I can"t believe I"m in Rio."
"You will in a moment."
As he spoke the car turned a corner, leaving behind the plate-gla.s.s and glittering shop fronts, and ahead she saw the vast expanse of blue-green sea and the gleaming white curve of a narrow promenade backed by luxury hotels.
"Copacabana beach," he said.
"It"s beautiful."
"Not when you look at it closely. The promenade"s too narrow and needs repaving - you"ll find that out when you try to walk across it in high heels. There"s not a tree to be seen except in a few of the hotel gardens, and the hotels themselves look like concrete prisons when you view them from the beach."