The Boss's Proposal by Cathy Williams Page B

expensive, but that she would consider it at a later date. Who could be suspicious of sensible economic belt-tightening? If she met with the architect, she would also be able to put her mind at rest and find out for herself exactly what could and couldn’t be done with the house. She loved the location but she had become accustomed to lighter, airier houses in Australia and she found the closed-in rooms claustrophobic and a little depressing. He might make one or two good suggestions which she could put into practice later on down the road. Once she’d left the company and had saved enough money to do it on her own.
    All told, she decided that it was altogether better to go ahead with plans as they stood.
    Her carefree frame of mind, now she had persuaded herself that she would see Andy Griggs, gave in fully to the temptation to mentally redesign the house from the bottom brick upwards. She found that there was no aspect of it she couldn’t, in her head, alter. She was in high spirits when the telephone shrieked just as she was about to leave work for the day.
    The minute she picked up the receiver something told her that Max Forbes would be at the other end. Some inner instinct that sent her pulses racing. It had been peaceful these last two days. Her only communication with her boss had been via e-mail and fax and the work had gone smoothly at this end.
    Now, as she heard the deep velvet voice down the end of the line, she realised that something intangible had been missing from the office. Excitement. A certain thrill ofanticipation. A heightened state of awareness in which her senses were always, in his presence, on full alert.
    â€˜Vicky. Max here. Glad I caught you before you left.’
    Vicky played with the cord of the telephone, wondering what could have warranted a phone call when fax and e-mail could easily provide sufficient communication between them and neither sent her nervous system into overdrive.
    â€˜How is it going in New York?’ she asked politely. ‘I’ve dealt with all your e-mails and sent both of those faxes off to Roger’s and Walnut House, as you requested.’
    â€˜Yes, yes. Fine. Good. Look, the reason I’m calling is that the problem out here is bigger than I had first thought.’ He paused. ‘Quite an unpleasant situation has arisen, as a matter of fact.’ His voice, when he said that, was cold, and she shivered at the prospect of Max Forbes on the trail of whoever had made the situation unpleasant . She had now seen enough of him at work to realise that there was a core of steel running through him that made him a formidable adversary.
    â€˜Is there something you’d like me to do from this end?’ Vicky asked anxiously.
    â€˜For starters, you can cancel my meetings for the next week. Get Anderson to chair the ones that can’t wait, but the rest will have to be rescheduled.’
    Vicky had already flicked out some notepaper, and even while he spoke was rapidly cataloguing in her head which of his meetings would need to be handed over to Ralph Anderson.
    â€˜Anything else?’
    â€˜Yes. I need you over here—and that’s not a question, it’s an order. Heads are going to roll over here and everything will have to be meticulously documented. I’m meeting with lawyers this afternoon to see where we stand, butthere’s a hell of a lot to get down in writing and a lot of it is highly confidential. I can’t trust a temp out here to do the job, provided I can get one to do it well enough, and what’s going on is too sensitive for any of the secretaries in the company to deal with the information. I take it,’ he said, ‘that there won’t be a problem with that?’
    She could hear the hard edge to the question. He was not going to allow her to wriggle out of this, and however much she told herself that she would clear off as soon as possible, she was reluctant to leave under a black cloud.