Penny Jordan - Power Games

‘I hardly think that providing you with transport can logically be considered a threat,’ he returned as he pulled out a chair for her and waved her into it.

‘That all depends on what viewpoint you look at it from,’ Taylor told him angrily. ‘Sending your driver to collect me could be seen almost as a form of coercion, of kidnap….’

‘Kidnap?’ Bram stared at her, his frown changing to an amused smile. ‘In broad daylight, on a busy London street?’

‘It has been known to happen,’ Taylor informed him, her face flushing as her eyes darkened with resentment at his amusement and the shadow of memories she still had to fight to suppress.

‘I see. Well, please enlighten me then. Having kidnapped you and had you brought here against your will, what is it exactly I’m supposed to do with you? As you can see, this office is hardly the place one would choose for a passionate seduction and—’

Taylor stood, her eyes flashing, her normal control exploded by the force of her fury. How dare he make fun of her like this! He knew quite well that she had not been talking about sex.

‘I will not be manipulated by you,’ she told him stormily. ‘I will not be forced into pandering to your ego or, just because it doesn’t suit your opinion of yourself, for you to be the one to come to me, you—’

Bram stared at her. He pushed his hand wearily into his hair.

‘Look. You’ve got this all wrong,’ he told her quietly. ‘I changed the venue of our appointment simply because my secretary has had a personal emergency—her husband has been admitted to hospital. Naturally she wanted to be with him, which meant that it would have been difficult for me to leave the office.’

Now it was Taylor’s turn to stare at him, the angry colour staining her fair skin slowly burning into a deeper flush of embarrassment.

It had disturbed her to be told that Bram Soames had sent a car to collect her; it had reminded her of… Defensively she switched her thoughts away from the past and back to the present, gnawing worriedly at her bottom lip as she acknowledged that she seemed to have made an error of judgement.

‘Look, why don’t we start again,’ Bram suggested firmly. ‘I promise you that I had no ulterior motive whatsoever in sending Richard to drive you. I simply thought it would save time—yours as well as mine. It never occurred to me that you’d think I was trying to coerce or bully you, and I apologise for that oversight.’

But not for his sexist remarks following her outburst against his actions, Taylor noted silently.

She looked calmer now, Bram observed, watching Taylor as she digested his comments, calmer and very alert. He suspected that her outburst had shocked her in much the same way that his own sexually verbal response to it had shocked him.

The strain of the latest tussle of wills with Jay coupled with the intensity of his desire to succeed in his mission to write this special program must be affecting him more than he realised.

‘Working together isn’t going to be easy—for either of us,’ he told Taylor quietly, abandoning his initial urge to cravenly ignore the hostility they seemed to generate towards each other in favour of a more responsible approach to the problem.

‘But I think I’m right in saying that ultimately we both want the same thing, which is a successful outcome to this project.’

‘If there can be one,’ Taylor agreed grimly.

‘You don’t believe there can?’

‘It’s been tried before without success.’

‘Which doesn’t mean that we can’t succeed.’

Against her better judgment Taylor found herself unexpectedly warming to that unanticipated ‘we.’ But then he was obviously the kind of man who was good at generating team spirit, at making others feel they were important, she warned herself.

‘Still, it’s a view you aren’t alone in taking,’ Bram continued. ‘My son, for one, certainly shares it.’ He gave her a wry look. ‘I shall just have to do my best to prove you both wrong, shan’t I. Can I get you a drink, by the way, tea…coffee…? It will have to be from the machine, I’m afraid.’

Taylor stared at him. Sir Anthony, for all his paternalism, would certainly never have suggested fetching a more junior member of his staff a drink from the office dispensing machines; nor indeed, Taylor suspected, would he have drunk one himself. Although she searched his face thoroughly, there was no trace of self-consciousness or mockery in Bram’s expression as he waited for her response.

Perhaps she had been wrong about him, Taylor acknowledged hesitantly…guilty of overreacting, of al-lowing her own prejudice to overshadow logic and reality.

‘I…coffee, please,’ she requested.

Taylor moved self-consciously in her chair, pressing a quelling hand to her rumbling stomach, as it gurgled protest at its lack of food.

It was almost seven o’clock but the time had passed so quickly she was astonished that it was so late.

Once she had managed to distance herself from her own fears and preconceptions, she had discovered that Bram was unexpectedly well informed about the problems he was likely to face in writing his program. Even more surprisingly, he was genuinely concerned for the plight of the people he was trying to help.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to keep you so long,’ he was apologising now, as her stomach protested even more volubly. ‘I hadn’t realised it was getting so late. There’s a very good Italian restaurant just round the corner where I frequently eat when I’m working late. Look, why don’t you join me for dinner there, and please don’t tell me that you’re not hungry.’

Taylor grimaced, suppressing the small spurt of panic that his suggestion reactivated. She really had nothing to fear from this man, she told herself. He was not remotely interested in her as a woman;

he was merely being polite. If she started to protest, to object, she was bound to arouse his suspicions and make herself look a complete idiot into the bargain. That comment he had made to her earlier when she had complained about him sending a car for her still rankled slightly.

It would be much easier—much safer—to fight down her instinctive reaction to his suggestion and accept.

Common sense, logic, told her that there was no way she would be in danger. He was quite obviously not a sexual predator, and most certainly not one who was so desperate for a woman…for sex, that he needed to waste his time attempting to seduce her , when no doubt there were countless women more than willing to fall into bed with him.

‘We’ll have to walk, though, I’m afraid,’ he added teasingly, when she thanked him and accepted. ‘Richard will have gone home by now.’

Despite her mounting colour Taylor still managed to look him in the eye.

He was just about to open the office door for her when it was thrust inwards, narrowly missing banging into Taylor. A whirlwind of a girl erupted into the room, apparently oblivious to Taylor’s presence as she flung herself headlong into Bram’s arms and demanded breathlessly, ‘Oh, you are still here…good…Bram, be a darling, will you, and take me out to dinner tonight. I haven’t seen you in simply ages, and it would be yummy going out with you. Even more yummy if we forgot about dinner altogether and went to bed instead…’ she added suggestively, her voice dropping to a throaty purr that made the fine hairs on Taylor’s nape rise in sharp reaction.

Bram, Taylor could see, instead of wrapping his arms around the girl as she so plainly wanted and Taylor had plainly expected—after all, she was everything a man could possibly want, startlingly pretty, young, coaxing and extremely sexy—Bram was, in fact, holding her firmly at arm’s length, his face registering not pleasure but rather an almost paternal sternness.