she might be in bed, when they were not in bed the other side of her nature was repulsed by the kind of man who had to make constant sexual comments and innuendo.
She laughed herself at the odd marriage within her of sensualist and prude, but no one else other than Mark was allowed to laugh about it with her. While she was quite happy not to be married, she believed totally in a monogamous relationship and in fidelity within that relationship. She would never dream of being unfaithful to Mark, and if she ever did it would mean that their relationship was over. And if he was unfaithful to her? Her fingers ceased their erotic journey as she stared into the darkness.
Mark would never do that to her; he knew how much he meant to her. He knew how much she needed and depended on him, even if others did not. It wasn’t just love and desire that kept them together, it was trust as well, trust and respect; shared goals and ambitions and a shared belief in one another; a shared support for one another.
As a child she had been teased for being too much of an idealist, and so she had learned to conceal that vulnerability within her, but Mark knew it was there.
‘How do I look?’ she asked him a short while later when they had torn themselves out of bed.
‘Fine,’ Mark replied absently without turning round.
‘Oh, Mark,’ she protested.
‘What is it?’ He put down his razor and turned round.
‘You can’t have forgotten,’ Deborah protested.
‘Forgotten what?’
‘That Ryan’s taking me out to lunch.’
Mark grunted. ‘Oh, that—probably wants to proposition you—again.’
‘No, it isn’t that … he’s been dropping hints all week about how pleased he’s been with my work and how much the department is expanding. I think this is it, Mark … I think he’s actually going to put me in charge of my own section … give me something to really get my teeth into …’
‘Some poor bankrupt to savage, you mean … wow, won’t that be great?’
Deborah gave him a startled look. There was a thread of acid bitterness in his voice that she had never heard before. ‘Look, I know you don’t like that side of things …’
‘Save it until tonight, will you, Deborah? I’ve got a hell of a lot on my mind right now. Somehow I don’t think your department’s the only one in for a reshuffle, only we’re on the down side of the seesaw.’
Deborah frowned. ‘What do you mean, Mark—what’s … ?’
‘Forget it,’ he told her. ‘I’m just a bit on edge, that’s all. Good luck at lunchtime, and a fiver on it that he will proposition you.’
Deborah laughed. ‘The way you did the first time we went to bed. Remember?’
‘As I remember it, you were the one who did the propositioning on that occasion.’
‘I was drunk … It was Dutch courage …’
‘Not the next day when you rang up to ask me if it was still on for dinner, it wasn’t,’ he reminded her with a grin.
‘All right, so I finally got tired of waiting for you to do the asking, but I don’t recall ever hearing you say no.’
They were both laughing as he leaned over to kiss her. Last night had been good between them, Deborah reflected happily as she finished getting dressed. Very good! She loved it that their sexual relationship was so harmonious; it made her feel complete, wholly, fully alive and fully a woman. She would hate to have the kind of lover who bullied or domineered her … the kind of lover that a man like Ryan would be, or the kind Emma complained that Toby had become.
‘So … you’re looking very pleased with yourself today … good night last night?’
Deborah smiled vaguely, tucking a strand of her sleekly bobbed chestnut hair behind her ear. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact it was; we had dinner with some old friends.’
She knew what Ryan was trying to do, but she wasn’t going to be tricked into playing that game.
He had brought her to one of the area’s most exclusive and expensive restaurants for lunch and it hadn’t escaped her notice that the majority of the other lunchers there were very obviously couples.
‘Nice place, this, isn’t it?’ he asked her. ‘You should see the bedrooms, all four-poster beds and the fabrics all silk and velvet … very sensual … very tactile … very romantic.’
Deborah refused to respond. She knew from experience that sooner rather than later he would lose interest and stop baiting her. And halfway through their main course he did.
‘I like you, Deborah,’ he told her, ‘and I like the way you work. You’re intelligent and ambitious and you know how to get the best out of people … how to handle them, and that’s something that’s very important in our line of work. We’re dealing with people at their most vulnerable and volatile and therefore at their most dangerous … It’s just as well Andrew Ryecart committed suicide before we were appointed and not after. It wouldn’t do the firm’s reputation a lot of good to have that kind of thing splashed all over the papers. You’ll know that we’ve been appointed to handle the liquidation?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s going to be a tricky one; there are no assets to speak of, and there is some suggestion of misuse of company funds before he killed himself. The bank are reasonably securely covered; there’s a fairly large equity in the house, plus the value of the site—we’ll never be able to find a buyer for the business as a going concern, of course, and the trade creditors won’t get much.’
‘And the workforce?’
‘Preferred creditors.’ He gave a small shrug. ‘That will be the first thing you’ll have to do, of course: issue them all with redundancy notices. Then it will be a matter of going through the books and …’
Deborah’s heart had started to thump heavily with excitement but she fought to control it, asking carefully, ‘Does that mean that you’re putting me in charge of the liquidation?’
Ryan put down his cutlery. ‘Is that what you want?’ he asked her quizzically. Deborah laughed. Even now he still could not resist flirting with her.
‘It’s certainly a step in the right direction,’ she agreed demurely.
‘Mmm …’ he agreed softly. ‘I thought it might be.’
Careful, Deb, Deborah warned herself as she caught the undertone in his voice, but before she could make any comment he had started outlining what he planned to do, the staff he intended to put under her authority.
‘This one might seem easy, but that doesn’t mean it will be,’ he warned her. ‘There’s going to be a lot of bad feeling stirred up locally; the widow doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on or the fact that she’s virtually going to be out on the street. Luckily there’s family money there.’
They discussed the procedures involved over the rest of their lunch and when they finally got up to leave Deborah’s heart was singing with excitement. She couldn’t wait to get home and tell Mark her good news. They had made a rule not to have any contact with one another at work of a personal nature, and she knew what he would say if she broke it, even for something as important as this. Unlike Ryan’s, Mark’s ethics were fixed and wholly reliable.
‘There will be an increase in salary, of course,’ Ryan told her as they left the restaurant. ‘Oh, and a new company car. What’s Mark got?’ he asked casually. Absently Deborah told him, cars were not something that interested her very much.
‘Ah, well, yours will be the more upmarket model, but I’m sure you’ll be able to find a way of soothing any hurt male pride.’
Deborah looked at him.