Penny Jordan - Marriage Without Love

As she pushed open the door Doug smiled at her. Doug Simons was in his mid-fifties, a power-house of human energy, who had worked in newspapers since he left school. He and Briony got on very well—or at least she had thought they had until she heard him discussing her so freely. Happily married with a grown up family and a wife on whom he doted, he represented no threat to her defence systems. Neither did he constantly annoy her with unwanted sexually based conversation or false flattery of a type insulting to both her intelligence and her taste. Men thought they only had to smile and wheedle and girls would gladly jump into bed with them. Well, not her!

Doug smiled warmly at her, his expression faintly ingratiating as though he was half afraid of what she might do or how she would react.

She smiled back—a slight widening of warmly curved lips to show even white teeth, the smile not reaching her eyes, which remained as clear and cold as glass.

Doug’s companion had his back to her. He didn’t turn to look up at her, nor did he betray any other awareness of her presence, and she prickled with animosity. His hair was dark and thick, brushing the collar of the expensive suit he was wearing, and she stiffened as warily and antagonistically as a cat faced with a large, threatening dog.

‘Kieron, meet your new secretary, Briony. Briony—Kieron Blake.’

She at least had had the advantage of hearing his name, and thus the precious gift of a few seconds to prepare herself. He had had nothing, and she observed the shocked incredulity of his expression with grim satisfaction. Navy-blue eyes swept slowly and disbelievingly over her; looking for the scars? she asked herself bitterly. He wouldn’t find any. She had concealed them all too well.

‘Briony?’ His eyebrows rose in contemptuous accusation, and although inwardly terrified, Briony refused to be drawn. Let him think what he liked. He hadn’t changed. The long-boned Celtic face was still as physically compelling; the high cheekbones and harsh male features still as disturbing. His skin was tanned, the thick dark hair worn slightly longer than she remembered, and the suit more formal. He had himself under control now, the shock carefully masked, only the faint clenching of his jawbone revealing the control he was having to exert.

‘Kieron’s going to need all the help you can give him until he settles in, Briony,’ Doug told her, sublimely unaware of the undercurrents eddying fiercely around him. ‘I’m going to take him round and introduce him to the other editors and then we’re going out to lunch. Anything urgent, get Phil to deal with it, will you?’

Phil Masters was Doug’s assistant, a tall gangly Scot with a shock of red hair and a temper to match.

Doug and Kieron were standing up, Kieron extending his hand to her, his expression a mingling of contempt and indifference, which changed to anger as she withdrew automatically from him.

With Doug looking on she could hardly make a scene, but the touch of those cool brown fingers against her own skin made her shake with a sickness and fear that left her drained and trembling. And this was only the beginning.

As she walked back into her own office, Kieron murmured something to Doug, and the connecting door was closed. Alarm prickled over her, fears she had thought long submerged suddenly filling her mind and obliterating everything else.

‘How long has Briony worked for you?’ Kieron asked Doug casually as the latter picked up his coat.

‘Umm, about eighteen months. Best secretary I’ve ever had.’ He hadn’t been as unaware of Kieron’s reaction to Briony as he had pretended, and naturally he was curious as to its cause. ‘Am I right in thinking you know her?’

‘I once thought I knew someone who looked like her, but it turned out that I didn’t know her at all.’

His tone of voice warned Doug not to probe.

‘I’m not surprised to hear she’s a man-hater,’ he added sardonically. ‘She’s one of those women who seem to get a thrill out of leading men on and then kicking them in the teeth. Quite a hang-up!’

Doug didn’t argue the point. Whatever relationship had once existed between Briony and Kieron was their business and theirs alone, but he could foresee fireworks between them in the not too far distant future, if they were going to work together.

The two men emerged from the office, and Briony darted a quick look at Kieron’s shuttered face. It told her nothing. When they had gone she stared unseeingly at her typewriter, ignoring the over-flowing ‘in’ tray, her mind racing frantically in circles as she tried to think of a way of ensuring that she need never set eyes on Kieron Blake again.

There wasn’t one, of course. Not unless she gave up her job, and that was impossible. In a more buoyant economic climate she might have done so, even if it meant taking a drop in salary, but to take the risk in the middle of a depression would be extremely foolhardy. She needed her salary. Every penny of it. She closed her eyes, shivering suddenly with cold. The office door opened and she jerked upright, her face paper-white, but it was only Matt Dyson, one of the sub-editors. It was the joke of the Globe that while Briony gave every other male the cold shoulder, Matt Dyson, the original worm who never turned, was her only male escort.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked, eyeing her with mingled uncertainty and embarrassment.

Doug referred unkindly to Matt as her ‘lame dog’, and it was true that his long face often wore an expression of anguished apology. He was nervous and introspective and the other men often made fun of him behind his back. He had once confided to Briony that he had wanted to become a painter, but that his parents had disapproved. He was in his late twenties, with fair, thinning hair, and mild hazel eyes. His wife had left him two weeks after Christmas, and now in April he still hoped every day that she would miraculously return to him. He worshipped the ground she trod, although Briony could not see why. Mary Dyson was a dumpy brunette, narrow-minded and everything that Briony disliked in her own sex. She had often contemplated telling Matt that his wife might treat him a little better if he treated her a little worse, but she had no intention of getting involved in other people’s personal problems.

‘Lunch with me?’ Matt asked hesitantly. ‘Or have you another date?’

She hadn’t, and she didn’t particularly feel like eating, but she knew that she could not remain in her office thinking about Kieron Blake.

To her surprise Matt took her to a fashionable new restaurant which had recently opened, and had become a favourite haunt of Globe staff. It was inclined to be rather pricey, and since she knew that Matt was having problems making ends meet, Briony frowned, wishing he had taken her somewhere more modest. Now she would have to insist on paying for her own meal and he would be hurt and offended.

The restaurant was full apart from one table set for six and one vacant one for two next to it. The waiter removed Briony’s coat with a flourish and a look in his eyes which immediately made her own harden as she directed a freezing stare at him.

Matt dithered over the menu. He always did, and Briony had grown used to it. In contrast she had decided what she was going to eat immediately, and she gave her order coolly, while Matt cast anguished glances, first at the menu and then at the hovering waiter. It took all of five minutes and they still had to endure the fiasco of choosing the wine. Matt hadn’t a clue about wine and normally ended up hot and bothered and very obviously patronised by the wine waiter. Briony sat through it all with detached uninterest, throwing a cool smile at Matt when he eventually managed to make up his mind, which he accepted with the gratitude of a dog being thrown a bone.