In Bed with the Boss

CHAPTER FIVE

THE next morning Kalera went to work with a headache that no aspirin could cure.

Needless to say they hadn’t lingered over liqueurs and on the uncomfortable journey home Kalera had learned more than she wanted to know about the extended death-throes of Stephen’s seven-year marriage. She had listened to his bitter tale with a sinking heart, hearing the death-knell to any hopes she might have had of casually confessing her one-night stand with Duncan. Stephen would be incapable of viewing it objectively. Any other man he could have dismissed as no threat, but not Duncan. He would take Duncan as a personal insult, a twist of the knife that had already severed a large chunk of his masculine pride. How could he be expected to live comfortably with the knowledge that his hated rival had slept with both his wives?

In the darkness of the car Kalera’s responses had been stilted, but fortunately Stephen had been too wrapped up in his own festering anger to notice her discomfiture.

He had admitted that relations with his wife had been rocky for some time leading up to the final, violent row, but he had hoped that his burgeoning suspicions about her mood swings, growing physical coldness and evasive behaviour would prove unfounded. To ease his mind he had hired a private detective and when he’d found out that his trust had been misplaced his bitterness had been intensified by the fact that, even when confronted with the detective’s evidence of her persistent unfaithfulness, Terri had defiantly refused to explain or express any remorse over her actions. To his fury she had blamed him for wrecking the marriage with his mistrust, and had vowed that she was not going to allow him to also wreck her relationship with Duncan.

Stephen had said that he could have understood, if not forgiven, Terri’s falling in love with someone else, but the cruel fact was that her affair with Duncan had been going on not just for weeks or for months, but for years—dating back to the time that they were in business together…

Although he’d railed fiercely against Terri for her treachery, Kalera had noticed that it was Duncan who was targeted with the worst of the blame.

‘He hates my guts because I exposed him for what he is—a moral bankrupt. There’s a dark, twisted side of him, the flip side to his brilliance, that’s totally without conscience. He never wanted to marry Terri himself—he just couldn’t stand the fact that I took her away from him and pulled the plug on our partnership, so he had to corrupt her, seduce her into playing his sick games, knowing that sooner or later I’d find out. Do you know what he did when I finally confronted him with the truth? He laughed!’ Stephen spat out the word with choked loathing. ‘He thought he’d won—that he’d proved his superiority over me yet again.

‘But he was laughing on the other side of his face when I told him that I wasn’t going to play the complacent husband.’ The flash of a passing streetlight illuminated a smile of grim remembered satisfaction. ‘That’s what the two of them had counted on, you see—that I’d rather preserve the fiction of a happy family than hold myself up to public ridicule and contempt as the gullible poor sod who’d been cuckolded by his former best friend. They misjudged me then—as they do now. Why should I be upset that he flaunts Terri as his mistress? She’s probably no more faithful to him than he is to her—they deserve each other as far as I’m concerned!’

But he was upset, if not by the sight of his ex-wife with Duncan, then certainly by the necessity of raking over the painful memories for Kalera’s sake. There was a white-hot edge to his anger which made her uneasy, but perhaps it was the continuing friction with Terri over the custody of young Michael that was constantly reigniting his burning sense of injustice.

Kalera’s own devastating experience of loss enabled her to understand why Stephen had kept his personal connection with Duncan secret. The greater the pain, the deeper one tried to bury it. What an awful irony it must have seemed when the one woman who had interested him since his divorce turned out to be working for his nemesis. No wonder he had seemed so appealingly vulnerable and cautious on those first few dates. He must have hesitated to commit himself to further involvement until he was sure that her relationship with Duncan was purely businesslike, the power of his attraction ultimately proving stronger than his fear of history repeating itself.

‘I’m sorry. I should have told you all this before,’ he said remorsefully as they kissed goodnight on her threshold. The leafy jasmine vine which grew over the porch trellis whispered above their heads, spilling its delicate fragrance into the warm night breeze. ‘It wasn’t very fair of me to keep you in the dark and still expect you to make an informed choice. I suppose you feel this puts you in an even more impossible position at work…?’

Kalera’s first impulse was to agree, but her innate stubbornness made her baulk at the hint of manipulation. Stephen was a strong man with very firm opinions and she sometimes got the impression he would like to do the thinking for both of them.

‘Awkward, perhaps, but not impossible,’ she replied, feeling a throb of stress at her temples when his lips tightened. ‘Maybe this is a good way of showing that we’re not going to let the past taint our future. It’s only for a few weeks. I’m not afraid of Duncan and you needn’t be either. He has no power over our feelings for each other—’

‘I’m not afraid, it’s just—’ He frowned down at her in the feeble glow of the jasmine-smothered porch light. ‘I don’t trust him…’

She almost smiled at the growled understatement. ‘But you do trust me?’

His hesitation was barely noticeable. ‘Of course I do.’

Her impulse to smile vanished. ‘I’m not Terri,’ she told him quietly. ‘I would never, ever be unfaithful to my husband.’

‘I know.’ He knew he had hurt her and tried to gloss over his error. ‘So…is this some kind of test of my faith?’ he asked wryly.

She had instantly denied it, but this morning as she drove to the hotel where the breakfast meeting was being held she couldn’t help wondering whether there wasn’t a tiny element of truth in his joking remark. She could never marry where there was a lack of mutual trust. She pushed the fleeting doubt away. Nothing that she had learned in the last few hours challenged her fundamental understanding of Stephen as a sensitive, caring man who held steadfast to his ideals. It was her perspective of Duncan which had suddenly acquired a new and puzzling slant.

Stephen had made it sound almost as if Duncan had cold-bloodedly set out to seduce Terri from sheer masculine competitiveness but, while he thrived on challenge, Duncan was the least cold-blooded man that Kalera had ever met. The true source of his genius lay in the fierce passion with which he ignited his ideas in the minds of others. No goal was ever pursued halfheartedly, but always with reckless amounts of unbridled enthusiasm…whether it was creating a new piece of software or making love to a woman.

Kalera shivered as she pulled into the hotel car park, her nerves spiking at the vivid mental image of Duncan, his moon-burnished torso arched into a shuddering bow, his fists digging into the mattress, head flung back, sweat glistening on his straining throat, his mouth open on a hoarse cry of violent ecstasy as he spilled himself into her hand. Heat prickled over her breasts as she remembered how quickly his body had veered out of his control, his intellect completely submerged in a rapturous celebration of the senses.

She braked just before she hit the car-park wall, only her seat belt saving her from slamming her head against the steering wheel, and turned the ignition off with trembling fingers. No, a cold-blooded vendetta wasn’t Duncan’s style but she would well believe he might take any number of risks in the grip of hot-blooded passion!

To do what he had done he must have been deeply in love—it was the only motive that jelled with his character. Whether he had been in love with Terri before her marriage to Stephen, or not realised the overwhelming force of his emotions until later, the only thing that could have precipitated him into such a tortured affair would have been the discovery that his feelings were reciprocated. Add an innocent child to the volatile equation and the situation would have been even more fraught. Living a double life seemed so alien to Duncan’s extroverted nature that it must have been Terri who had insisted on secrecy. Perhaps she had felt unable to choose between hurting her family and giving up the man she loved, until in the end the choice was made for her…

But if that was the case, why hadn’t Duncan and Terri married each other as soon as she was free? Stephen spoke as though the affair was common knowledge but if so it wasn’t considered sufficiently interesting to post on Labyrinth’s bulletin board along with all the other gossip about Duncan’s conquests…

Kalera was so distracted by her rampant speculations that she walked straight past Duncan in the hotel lobby and when he followed to tap her on the shoulder she almost leapt out of her skin.

‘Nervous?’ he asked smoothly as she spun on her trembling legs.

‘Of what?’ To her disgust her instant defensiveness made him chuckle. No wonder she hadn’t noticed him; he was wearing camouflage—a dark grey pin-striped three-piece suit with a pale shirt and subdued tie that made her feel almost frivolous in her navy and white spotted spring dress.

She held her practical navy clutch bag to her fluttering stomach. ‘All I have to do is take notes—nothing I haven’t done hundreds of times before!’

‘If not thousands,’ he agreed blandly, shifting his laptop to his other hand and turning her in the direction of the restaurant. Her eyes flickered as she registered the pearl stud in his left ear, a twin to the discreet tie-pin that adorned his chest. Trust Duncan to find a way to express his individuality even in the midst of choking conformity.

He caught her peeking, his gaze lowering to her own earlobe. ‘We make a good match, don’t we? We were obviously attuned when we got dressed this morning.’

She immediately wanted to snatch the pearls that Harry had given her for their third anniversary out of her ears. ‘It’s hardly a matter of being attuned, since you must know I wear these to work most days of the week—’

‘Must I? Do you think that the average boss notices every tiny feature of his secretary’s appearance, every single day?’ When she flushed he commented slyly, ‘But you evidently think that I do. Does that mean that you notice everything about me?’

‘You’re not an average boss,’ she rapped back, unconsciously increasing her pace as she evaded his question.

He stopped at the restaurant door, barring her way. ‘Thank you; I’m glad you’re willing to admit that we have a special relationship—’

‘I mean…you’re unusually observant and have a photographic memory for visual details.’ She cut him off hastily, and then realised that it was not something that she wanted to dwell on—the fact that he could probably summon up a crease-by-freckle mental picture of her naked body!

‘True, and this morning I observe there are little blue shadows under your eyes.’ He dipped his head, a strand of blue-black hair falling across his brow as he lifted her chin with one finger to examine her more closely.

‘Rough night?’ His tone was sympathetic but his eyes were uncomfortably sharp.

‘Not at all. I slept like a baby,’ she lied haughtily.

‘I didn’t mean in bed,’ he said, to her intense mortification. ‘Steve gave me a filthy look as you guys left last night. He looked to be in a pretty mean temper…’

‘I hope you’re not suggesting he’d be physically abusive.’ She jerked her face away from his disturbing touch, her grey eyes frosting over. ‘Stephen is a gentleman; I know he’d never hurt me! Of course he was angry—what did you expect after the way you carried on? And then for him to see you were there with his wife—’

‘His ex-wife.’

‘That’s what I said—’

‘No, you said his wife. As if they were still irrevocably attached.’

‘Yes, well, I meant his ex-wife.’ She was flustered by her slip of the tongue, determined not to allow him to invest her mistake with any deep Freudian meanings. ‘Anyway, she was still his wife when you, when you—’ Her tongue got tangled up in her reluctance to continue and she moved aside as a group of businessmen brushed past them to push through the glass doors.

God, how had she wandered into this dangerous debate? It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. She had told herself when she knocked back her aspirins in front of the bathroom mirror that she would greet him with a quiet ultimatum that he was to stop meddling in her private life or she would walk.

Now here she was delving into his private life!

‘When I? What?’ He had no right to sound so curious. He knew very well what!

She composed herself and fixed him with a firm stare, her husky voice taut with determination. ‘It doesn’t matter. Look, Duncan, perhaps now isn’t the time to tell you this—’

The set of his shoulders tensed beneath the designer suit, his attention abruptly sliding past her to the interior of the restaurant and back again as he interrupted curtly, ‘You’re right, this isn’t the time—our new clients are waiting—but I want you to know that I was way out of line last night. I should never have embarrassed you like that…’

She was sure she had misheard. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply. He spread his hands, palm up, the grave penitent. ‘If you hadn’t turned up this morning it would have served me right. I behaved like an arrogant thug and you have every right to be mad. It was wretched of me, unforgivable…well, not quite, I hope. But I put you in a horrible spot and that was wrong of me.’ He shook his head. ‘Harry would have been disgusted at my performance—he always claimed I was too much of a drama queen—he said that’s why I could never beat him on the golf course…I threw too many of my clubs into the lake!’

As always, the mention of Harry made her feel soft inside and she had practically turned to mush by the time Duncan had finished grovelling his remorse. His cheerful self-abasement cut the ground neatly from under Kalera’s feet, so that she found herself accepting his apology feeling as if she might have been the one who had overreacted!

‘You should have been a lawyer,’ she grumbled as he pushed open the door to the restaurant with far too white a grin for a man who had just covered himself with sackcloth and ashes.

‘Like dear old Dad? No, thanks; too many boring precedents to follow. I tried law, you know, after I dropped out of Med School, but it definitely wasn’t my scene.’ His smile mocked his own youthful fickleness. ‘Nothing really clicked for me until I took time off from university to work for Terri’s father’s America’s Cup yachting syndicate and discovered computers. Up to that point my parents were convinced I was going to end up as an over-educated bum.’

She hadn’t known, but it didn’t surprise her to learn that he hadn’t followed a straight and narrow academic path like his father, an eminent QC. Since Duncan now possessed a doctorate along with his fame and fortune, the hell-raising at high school and undergraduate level to which Stephen had disparagingly referred had obviously been the restlessness of a brilliant mind as yet unfocussed.

The deal discussed over smoked salmon and scrambled eggs secured Duncan a small corporate contract for a security and access management program which Labyrinth was launching the following month. But Duncan had shrewdly picked the small corporation as being at the leading edge of a growth industry, and was confident that getting in on the ground floor would ensure big future profits for its network software developer.

Watching him translate his dazzling techno-vision of the future into language the CEO could understand without condescending to the man’s fresh-faced, gee-whiz-kid information systems manager reminded Kalera all over again of how much she loved her job and what a wrench it would be to leave all this vicarious excitement behind.

Later, watching Duncan high-five around the office sharing the good news, she felt for the first time immune from the infectious air of celebration, realising that she wouldn’t be around to see the contract honoured. In fact, she wasn’t quite certain where she’d be in a month’s time, and the thought sent a brief flutter of panic jumping along her nerves. She had moved too many times in her childhood, lived among too many strangers, to view the prospect of radical change with anything but apprehension, and the sudden, traumatic loss of her husband had merely reinforced her fear of emotional displacement.

But she had Stephen now, she consoled herself. He, too, was seeking emotional security, and their needs seemed to dovetail so perfectly that it was natural that their mutual desire for companionship had so swiftly turned to romance. But they were both too cautious to allow themselves to be swept away by its momentum. Getting engaged had been a big step—just how big Kalera hadn’t realised until she had stumbled up against Duncan’s furious opposition!

And Duncan wasn’t the only one. The news of her controversial engagement spread through the Labyrinth network like wildfire and over the next few days Kalera found herself inundated with friendly advice. A few people, mostly women, offered their congratulations unencumbered, but the rest of the responses ranged from mild dismay to rowdy disapproval.

‘I suppose he is pretty spunky-looking,’ conceded Anna Ihaka as they were both touching up their make-up in the women’s restroom. Kalera followed her gaze to the picture of Stephen, scanned from the Financial Star by some anonymous joker and reprinted with the famous red circle-and-slash ‘No’ graphic adorning his smiling face, which was tacked to the wall beside the mirror. The posters had begun appearing all over the office after Duncan had confirmed her impending defection, and Kalera had given up trying to track down the mysterious perpetrator. Whenever she took one down, two popped up in its place.

‘Thanks,’ she said, powdering the sheen off her nose. ‘But I’m not marrying him for his looks…’

‘Sure—but no one wants to fall for a complete gargoyle, right?’ said Anna, who fell in and out of love with monotonous regularity and consequently considered herself something of an expert on romance. ‘I mean, let’s face it, a guy with a gorgeous bod has a natural advantage over a homely little creep with personality. Who would you rather be seen out with? And when your eyes go zing with a stranger across a crowded room it’s because you’re thinking, Wow, that guy looks hot! Not, Gee, what an attractive personality!’ She whisked some blusher over her cheekbones and started applying another layer of brilliant gloss to her lips.

‘Yes, well, fortunately Stephen has both,’ said Kalera, snapping her compact closed and taking out her lipstick. She had to admit that there had been an element of vanity in her acceptance of that first date—she had been flattered that such an elegant, urbane man was interested in her rather ordinary company.

Anna blotted her lips with a paper towel. ‘Someone said you met at a wild party?’

No doubt that ‘someone’ had relayed the facts with his usual flair for subjective embellishment. Duncan had employed Anna five years ago straight from school on the strength of a few meetings on the Internet, and despite her cheeky irreverence she was still inclined to accept his every word as gospel.

‘It was a very sedate sit-down dinner. We got talking and liked each other so we ended up talking some more—’

‘Doesn’t sound very exciting,’ Anna said dubiously.

Kalera outlined the bow of her upper lip. ‘Neither of us was looking for excitement,’ she said, blocking in the rest of the colour. ‘But I guess it found us anyway,’ she added wryly, thinking of the furore their engagement had created.

Anna shovelled her make-up back into her shiny black bag. ‘Yeah, well…I think it’s too weird,’ she sighed. ‘I mean, I always thought that, if you got it on with anyone, for sure it would be the chief.’

Kalera’s lipstick clattered into the ceramic basin and she scrabbled to pick it up, screening the panic in her eyes with her lowered lashes. ‘Why on earth would you think that?’ she croaked.

Anna shrugged, her cropped top revealing a flash of brown skin above her wildly patterned leggings as she leaned forward to check the disposition of her beaded locks. ‘’Cos he’s been crazy about you for years, I suppose.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ muttered Kalera, stunned into stammering confusion. ‘He—I—he—Harry…’

Amazingly Anna seemed to understand her incoherent fumblings. ‘Oh, I know he was happy to, you know, like—worship you from afar with his respect and all that while he thought you were still hung up about losing Harry, but jeez, you must have noticed he behaves differently around you…He doesn’t flirt the way he does with other women, and he’s always sort of gentle—you know, as if he’s trying to slow himself down to your speed…’

‘No, I don’t know!’ choked Kalera. As far as she was concerned Duncan had only one speed and that was a hundred kilometres per hour! ‘For goodness’ sake, Anna, it’s too absurd for words.’ She went hot and cold with alarm. ‘Oh, God, don’t tell me everyone else thinks that too?’

Anna sniffed. ‘Of course not! As Duncan’s assistant I’m around you two a lot more than most people and guess I pick up on the little things that nobody else notices—’

‘Good, because the idea is totally off the wall,’ Kalera interrupted. ‘Duncan and I are absolute polar opposites; we have practically nothing in common…’

But Anna’s fertile romantic imagination was immune to logic. ‘Right—and everyone knows that opposites attract!’

Kalera reeled from the restroom, shell-shocked, and ran slap-bang into Duncan striding down the hall.

He gripped her by the arms as she rebounded off his chest, his eyebrows rising at the sight of her unusually flushed face.

‘What’s up? Not coming down with summer flu, are you?’ He let go of one of her arms and applied his cool knuckles to her hot cheek.

‘I’m fine,’ fibbed Kalera, shying away from the casual intimacy of his touch, acutely conscious that at any moment Anna was going to come bouncing through the door behind her, and would no doubt see the little tableau as proof of her wild speculations.

Duncan’s gaze moved thoughtfully to the closed door and back to Kalera’s deepening blush.

‘Are they still giving you a hard time?’ he murmured. ‘Would you like me to pass the word around to lay off?’

In her hypersensitive state Kalera detected the hint of smugness in his proffered sympathy. Duncan was pleased by his staff’s partisan display.

Her chin rose. ‘I can handle it. After all, it’s only for a few more weeks,’ she pointed out, shrugging off his concern along with his staying hand.

Just in time. As Duncan’s eyes darkened in annoyance at the tart reminder Anna barrelled out into the hallway and stopped dead, looking hopefully from one to the other.

‘Sorry, am I interrupting something?’

‘Definitely not!’ said Kalera, with what she instantly realised was a shade too much emphasis.

Duncan immediately scooped up the initiative. ‘In the hall?’ He returned his assistant’s mischievous grin. ‘You’ve got to be kidding! You know me—I’m the soul of discretion.’

‘It’s facetious comments like that that fuel the stupid rumours,’ Kalera chastised him severely as he followed her into her office. ‘Everyone knows what a flagrant exhibitionist you are!’

‘Being uninhibited isn’t the same as being loose-tongued,’ he murmured, ‘but it certainly provides protective camouflage. I built my business on being able to guard my secrets, remember? I can be as close as the grave when it really matters.’ He bent down and planted his palms on her desk as she pretended to busy herself with a shuffling of paper. ‘Is there one stupid rumour in particular that’s upset you?’

Heat swarmed over her body and the teasing glint of amusement in Duncan’s eyes sharpened into curiosity as Kalera mumbled something evasive. She wasn’t going to embarrass herself further by repeating Anna’s absurd opinions out loud.

‘You do know you can talk to me about anything, Kalera,’ he said, lowering his voice persuasively. ‘I’m very open-minded and pretty well unembarrassable.’

She flashed him an exceedingly dry look.

It was her own precious peace of mind she was concerned about, not his. Even the mere thought of telling him that he was supposedly crazy about her sent hot shivers skittering along her nerves.

Any woman who was loved by Duncan Royal was headed for a life of constant turmoil!

Unfortunately, instead of sinking into the deep, dark recesses of memory the mad idea persisted in hanging around on the fringes of her consciousness, a burden of dangerous knowledge that made her feel unfairly guilty, and which fired her determination to preserve a prudent professional distance between herself and Duncan.

If only he had been equally committed to her graceful withdrawal from Labyrinth Technology it might have worked, but Duncan was proving annoyingly uncooperative. A case in point was the employment of her replacement, which should have been a straightforward matter of picking the best person for the job.

‘Duncan, she can’t even spell!’ Kalera cried in exasperation as they discussed the latest candidate on the third morning of interviews.

‘That’s why word-processing programs have spellchecking utilities,’ he replied airily.

‘Look here—she even got the word Labyrinth wrong…twice!’

Duncan didn’t even glance down at the document that Kalera had shoved across his desk. He shrugged, rocking his black leather swivel chair back and forth. ‘Nerves. She was probably put off by you sitting there glowering at her while she was trying to concentrate.’

Kalera’s smooth brow ruffled with distaste. ‘I was not glowering.’

‘Well, you weren’t very friendly.’

She set her teeth. ‘It was a job interview, not an invitation to join a social club!’

‘Yes, well…you know how I feel about formality. I thought Lara was fun.’

Kalera controlled a sudden desire to scream. He was being deliberately obtuse. In the last few days he had become infuriatingly slippery when she’d tried to pin him down to making a serious decision.