Secretary on Demand (11 page)

T
HE
following few days saw a feverish and panicky assault on all the reasonably priced clothes shops in Central London. Shannon couldn't help but marvel at how the cost of clothes, in particular clothes that required the least yardage of fabric, had sneakily crept up almost when she'd had her back turned. One minute she could afford one or two things in Ireland, nothing designer but nothing shabby either, the next minute she was to be found gaping incredulously at price tags that would have brought her bank manager out in a sweat.

What had possessed her to lie? Didn't she know that lying was nothing more than the laying of foundations for future regrets? If she hadn't, then she knew now because she spent most of her waking time regretting her reckless blunder.

It helped on the one hand that Kane was abroad and so couldn't witness her frantic lunchtime forays into increasingly unsuitable shops. On the other hand, his absence gave her ample opportunity to build up feelings of nervous apprehension. When she thought of him carrying her back to her bedsit, his arms engulfing her body, she felt a sick flutter of dismayed panic but then she couldn't understand why because he hadn't touched her, at least not in any way that could have been construed as suggestive.

‘Dad phoned last night,' Eleanor said casually, as they were washing dishes on the Friday evening.

‘Oh, did he?' Shannon trilled, before clearing her
throat and trying to assume a less sinister tone. ‘How is he? Is he having a good time in New York?'

She communicated daily with him by e-mail, but the subjects covered didn't stray from the work arena.

‘He's back tomorrow morning,' Eleanor told her brightly. ‘He says he's bought me something but he won't say what.'

‘Mmm.' Shannon thoughtfully finished washing up and squeezed the sponge of soapy water. In ten minutes Carrie would be coming to take over. ‘And have you got anything planned for tomorrow night? Perhaps a special father-daughter bonding thing? Over some chicken nuggets and chips?'

Eleanor gave her one of those looks that implied wisdom beyond her years.
‘Father-daughter bonding?'

‘It
does
happen, you know.'

‘But Daddy's too…' She spent a few seconds rooting around for an adequate description of her father. ‘Too absent-minded when it comes to stuff like that.'

‘You two could share a meal,' Shannon persisted, taken with the idea of wriggling out of her unwelcome dinner date, about which she had been reminded only that very morning by e-mail, due to circumstances over which she had no apparent control. ‘Carrie will be here with you in the morning. You two could go and do a shop, buy whatever food he likes most, prepare something special…' Her voice trailed off at the wry look being shot at her from the diminutive creature at her side.

‘He's taking me to tea,' Eleanor said, ‘and, besides, aren't you supposed to be going out with him in the night?'

‘Ah, yes!' Shannon forced herself to give a hundred-watt smile. ‘Forgot!'

‘How could you forget?'

‘I just did.' She shrugged as if forgetting dinner dates was an affliction from which she routinely suffered.

‘Have you got your little black dress?'

‘And how,' Shannon asked curiously, ‘did you know that I was wearing a little black dress?' She faced her eight-year-old sparring partner with hands on hips. ‘Spill the beans, miss,' she said, waggling one finger at her. ‘Or else your pudding days are over!'

Eleanor giggled and looked unthreatened at the prospect.

‘Oh, Daddy mentioned it on the phone yesterday. He said that he hoped you hadn't forgotten about your date and that he was dying to see your little black dress. I can't imagine you in a little black dress,' she tacked on undiplomatically, and Shannon only just managed to refrain from agreeing. ‘Nor can Dad,' Eleanor continued with ruthless frankness. ‘You're always wearing those funny, boring suits.'

‘My suits are not funny!' She laughed. ‘If they were, they wouldn't be so boring. But you wait until you get into the big, bad world of work. You, too, will find that your wardrobe is limited!'

‘What's your dress like?'

‘Very small and…well, small is about all there is to say about it.' In fact, it was the smallest dress she had ever owned in her life, but the shop assistant had said it looked great, and on the fifth day of fruitless shopping, with desperation yapping at her ankles, Shannon had cheerfully believed her.

‘Is this a work thing, then?' Eleanor asked, dropping her eyes, and so fortunately missing the colour that flooded into Shannon's face.

‘That's right! Work-related,' she confirmed. If only.
It was unlikely, however, that an eight-year-old child would understand an invitation that had stemmed from a combination of pity for the poor woman whose knowledge of London was obviously lacking, curiosity to see what she looked like in the small black number which she had somehow made sound wildly exciting and sexy, and sheer devilry at the tacit challenge behind Shannon's inebriated teasing.

‘So…not a date…'

‘So…not really…'

‘Because,' Eleanor said in a rush, ‘I wouldn't mind. I mean, it's not as if you're like the last woman Dad brought home for me to meet. She was awful.'

‘Hideous, do you mean?' Shannon asked, briefly tussling with her conscience which was telling her not to try and get information out of a child, particularly information that was none of her business, and losing. ‘Unappealing? Perhaps spots?'

‘Oh, no, Claudia was beautiful, but…you know…'

‘Dull?'

‘Too clever and full of herself.'

Beautiful, clever and self-confident, Shannon thought with a stab of emotion that felt suspiciously like jealousy. Only a child could have read disadvantages into such a description.

Beautiful, clever and self-confident was not how she felt on Saturday evening at seven-thirty, with fifteen minutes to go. Having decided that she wouldn't get overwhelmed and stupidly dress in her finery with hours to spare, she now found herself frantically putting on her make-up in front of her mirror and anxiously looking at her watch in a race to get herself ready and presentable before Kane rang the doorbell and she had to hurry down to meet him.

The dress, which she had been told made her look sexy, felt like cling film and left so little to the imagination that she couldn't fathom why she'd been persuaded to buy the thing in the first place. Ten minutes of temporary insanity and here she was, stuffed into sausage skin with far too much leg showing for comfort. The neckline was modest enough but, then, Shannon thought, inspecting herself in the small mirror on the wardrobe door, it would have to be if only to compensate for the plunging back that made wearing a bra out of the question.

Thank goodness it was winter and she could hide behind her thick coat at least for the duration of the drive to the club.

The red hair at least didn't seem too overpowering. She'd had it trimmed into a bob a few days earlier and it swung nicely around her face, if with somewhat glaring intensity. There was nothing that could be done about that. She experimentally swung her head from side to side and was quite pleased with how it looked. Better than tied back into something puerile and unattractive which was how she normally wore it.

It will be a subdued evening during which I shall try very hard not to gabble. I will refuse all drink on some pretext or other and will act like a mature and sophisticated woman instead of an eccentric, unpredictable one.

By the time her bell buzzed from the downstairs front door, Shannon was ready to face Kane. She took her time slipping on her coat and gloves and greeted him five minutes later with a controlled smile.

‘You've done something with your hair' were his opening words, which sent a little rush of pleasure through her. He was lounging against the doorway in his
black coat, with a cream silk scarf draped casually around his neck.

‘I've had it trimmed.' She tossed her head back in the manner of a film star. ‘Do you like it?'

‘It's very nice,' he said. ‘Very chic.'

In the darkness, Shannon looked at him narrowly, wondering whether there was some hidden meaning in his remark to which she should take immediate offence, but the contours of his face were bland, and there was nothing remotely smug in his voice as he began talking about his trip to New York.

‘Have you ever been to New York?' he asked, as he manipulated the car smoothly along back roads she wouldn't have recognised in a thousand years.

It crossed her mind that it would have been glorious to have swapped notes on life in the Big Apple. Unfortunately some lies just couldn't be countenanced.

‘You could rephrase that,' Shannon said tartly, ‘to “Have you ever been anywhere except London and Ireland?”'

‘You've
never
been anywhere else?'

‘I know. Shocking, isn't it? I've never even been on a plane! Just one of the many things I never seemed to get around to doing!'

‘Now you sound very brittle and you're not a brittle person, are you? How have you managed to live your life without setting foot on a plane in this day and age of cheap air travel?'

Shannon chewed her lip, wondering whether she should counter his kind curiosity with something trivial and vague, but in the end she said thoughtfully, ‘I guess that, growing up, there was never the money to go around. Don't forget how many of us there were, and Mum would never have taken a few on holiday and left
the rest behind. So we went on holidays to the beach, camping, to the countryside. And by the time I started working, well, I never seemed to have any lump sums of money around that I could use for a holiday somewhere hot.'

‘You must have saved something from working,' he persisted wryly, ‘if you lived at home with your family and had no astronomical rent to pay. Or did you spend it all on clothes? Warn me now so that I have an idea of what to expect when Eleanor gets older and insists on augmenting her pocket money with a weekend job! Tell me she won't blow the lot on shopping!' He flicked an amused sideways glance at her then looked back ahead of him, his mouth curved into a slight smile.

Why did he group her and his daughter together? It was ridiculous. Shannon suddenly felt perversely pleased that she'd worn the skin-tight number after all.

‘Actually, I usually ended up buying stuff for my younger brothers,' Shannon said reluctantly. Of course she had bought clothes for herself and gone out with her friends, but she had also paid rent to her mother and it was true that pay days had always been a source of treats for the kids. It had always seemed natural to share.

‘That's great,' Kane said warmly, and she grimaced.

‘I don't suppose Eleanor will run into that particular problem,' she pointed out. She'd just succeeded, she thought wryly, in making herself sound like a prosaic goody two-shoes! ‘She'll probably blow all her money on clothes and shoes and holidays and will leave poor old Dad picking up the tab!'

‘Maybe.' Kane turned around in his seat to manoeuvre the car into a parking space, his arm splayed along the back of her seat behind the headrest. ‘But then again, maybe,' he said, facing her but with his arm still behind
her seat, ‘she'll grow up with other siblings and shed out all her money on treats for them. Who knows?'

‘You mean you want another family?' For some reason, the thought was shocking. It also made her wonder, uncomfortably, whether there was another woman on the scene somewhere. A prospective Ms Right, discreetly lurking in the background. Very discreetly, since she had seen nothing of her, but, then, Kane Lindley was a very discreet man, wasn't he? If he wanted to hide something, he would do it with the utmost tact.

‘Not,' she added hastily, ‘that it's any of my business.'

‘You sound astounded. Isn't the desire to procreate as natural as breathing?'

They walked into the jazz club which was small, intimate and reassuringly dark so that he couldn't see the flush that had spread across her cheekbones.

‘Your coat?' He reached to help her out of it and Shannon resisted the urge to cling tightly to the comforting barrier of wool concealing her scantily clad body.

‘I might be cold.'

‘I doubt it. It's pretty warm in here and after a couple of dances you'll be hot.'

‘A couple of dances?'

‘If you can slow your tempo to accommodate an old man.'

‘I wish you'd stop referring to yourself as an old man,' she grumbled, relinquishing her coat with reluctance and refusing to wilt under his thorough inspection. ‘You certainly didn't seem old when…when you…'

‘Swept you off your feet? Well, thank you very kindly. I trust that was a compliment?' He glanced down at her, very slowly.

‘The little black dress,' he murmured. ‘It
is
little, isn't
it? I hope the men here can stand the strain on their blood pressure.'

Her own blood pressure appeared to be soaring through the roof as he continued to gaze at her with her coat draped elegantly over his arm.

‘Do you know,' he said with a low laugh, ‘I didn't quite believe you when you told me that you possessed a little black number?'

Shannon gave a tinkling laugh. Tinkling and, she hoped, mildly amused at the suggestion herself. ‘Didn't you? I have a wardrobe of them back in Ireland!'

‘Have you now?' They handed their coats to the girl at the counter and were given a disc which Kane slipped into the pocket of his jacket.

‘Oh, yes. Of course, I couldn't bring them all down here to London. I knew I wouldn't have the space to hang them.'

‘What a complex little creature you are, reds,' he said, as they were shown to their table which was tucked away at the side. Very cosy, very intimate, very nerve-racking. ‘How to equate the girl who spent her hard-earned money buying presents for her siblings with a provocative woman with a wardrobe of daring numbers?' He called a waitress over and ordered a bottle of champagne and then resumed his inspection of her. ‘Perhaps I'm a typical man who naturally puts women into categories, and the category of someone who's obviously so good with children doesn't seem to slip into the category of a woman who willingly flaunts her charms by night.'