Cathy Williams - To Tame a Proud Heart

“No, I don’t.” Oliver’s words were blunt. “I don’t approve of women like you, who were raised in the lap of luxury and swan through life thinking that hard work is something best left alone.”

That stung, but Francesca didn’t say anything.

“But so long as you do your job competently we’ll get along just fine. Abuse your position and you’ll soon discover the limits to my tolerance….”

CATHY WILLIAMS is Trinidadian and was brought up on the twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago. She was awarded a scholarship to study in Britain, and went to Exeter University in 1975 to continue her studies into the great loves of her life: languages and literature. It was there that Cathy met her husband, Richard. Since they married, Cathy has lived in England, originally in the Thames Valley but now in the Midlands. Cathy and Richard have three small daughters.

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

FRANCESCA WADE was not a person given to nerves. She had the resilient self-confidence which came naturally to those who were good-looking or wealthy. In her case, both.

Right now, though, with her eyes dutifully glued to Kemp International’s promotional magazine on her lap, she was feeling decidedly tense. She might have impulsively made the decision to come here, but she was discovering fast that this was the last place she wanted to be, and the temptation to take flight was enormous.

She kept reading, glancing covertly at her watch every so often, wondering where the hell The Man was. She had been shown into his outside office forty minutes previously, had smilingly been informed that Mr Kemp would be with her shortly, and here had she sat since. Waiting.

When the door opened she glanced up hopefully, and tried to wipe the growing resentment off her face.

‘Mr Kemp will see you now.’ It was the same smiling face that had ushered her into the office—neat grey little bun caught at the nape of her neck, navy blue suit, plumpish figure. She stood aside and Francesca made an effort to smile pleasantly back as she was led along the corridor to an intimidating mahogany door.

Suddenly the nerves gave way to something else—something more like alarm—and Francesca’s mouth was dry as the door was pushed open.

The stylish designer suit which she had plucked from the wardrobe and donned because she thought that it conveyed the right image of businesslike efficiency now felt starched and uncomfortable. She was not accustomed to being so carefully dressed. She preferred casual clothes. She nervously smoothed down the skirt and looked around her, her eyes settling on the figure in the chair, his back towards her.

Behind her the door closed deferentially, and the figure in the chair swung around.

What had she expected? She realised that she had no idea—vague impressions, yes. She had spent weeks listening to her father’s well-placed insinuations that it was time she found herself a job, that she couldn’t sit back and indulge in useless creature comforts for ever, to him telling her that he knew someone—the son of a friend of his, a charming fellow.

It had been a quiet game of gradual persuasion, aimed at eroding her objections—the age-old water-dripping-on-a-stone technique—so that now, standing here, she found that she could hardly recall any recent conversation with her father which hadn’t been vaguely permeated with descriptions of the wretched Oliver Kemp.

‘He’s a self-made man,’ her father had told her in his early, enthusiastic phase, before her constant, stubborn refusals to have her life sorted out for her had obliged him to take a more subtle stance. ‘Grabbed the proverbial boot-laces and hauled himself up, inch by inch, until now he’s worth millions.’

That had conjured up images of a sour-faced young man grappling up the face of a cliff, growing ever fatter on the way as he made money and did all those wonderful things which had clearly awed her father.

The man facing her was not fat. Nor was he sour-faced. He had a disturbing brand of good looks—the sort of good looks which she had never before encountered among her young rich set. Every feature was strong and aggressive and his light blue eyes were mesmerising, hypnotic.

He stared at her openly, not blinking, until she lowered her eyes. ‘Sit,’ he commanded—a coldly uttered monosyllable that made her flinch.

He gave no apologies for having kept her waiting, but then he didn’t strike her as the sort of man who went in much for apologising. Probably, she thought, he didn’t even know how to spell the word.

She sat down opposite him, across the gleaming boardroom table, at one end of which was a word processor and several sheets of paper.

‘How did you hear of this job?’ he asked bluntly. ‘It wasn’t nationally advertised.’

‘From my father,’ Francesca confessed reluctantly, already on the defensive for reasons which she couldn’t even identify.

‘Ah, yes.’ He stared at her, and she thought irritably, What does that mean?

‘He mentioned that you were a friend of his and that you were looking for a secretary.’ She was even more irritated to find herself rushing into a little explanatory speech. ‘He thought that I might be interested.’

‘I had lunch with your father weeks ago,’ Oliver informed her coolly. ‘How is it, if you’re that interested in finding work, that you’ve only now decided to come here for an interview?’

Interview? she wanted to ask. What interview? This was more like a cross-examination. What exactly was she guilty of? she wondered.

‘Unless, of course, you’ve been busy going to other interviews?’

He let the question hang in the air challengingly, while he continued to look at her with coolly polite indifference.

‘Not as such,’ Francesca admitted, disliking him more with each passing minute.

‘Not as such? What does “not as such” mean? Either you’ve been going to interviews or you haven’t.’

‘This is the first,’ she muttered, trying to comfort herself with the thought that she didn’t really want this job anyway, that she had been goaded into it by her father.

‘And how long is it since you left college?’ He appeared smilingly vague. Did he, she wondered, think that she had been born yesterday? He would know exactly how long it was since she had left college because her father would have told him.

‘Several months.’

‘So, if you haven’t been working or even, as you tell me, looking for a job, what were you doing for “several months”? Resting?’

‘Look, Mr Kemp,’ she said, through gritted teeth, ‘I came here for an interview. All these questions you’re asking me aren’t relevant to whether or not I’m capable of doing the job, are they?’