Promoted: to Wife and Mother

Millie hooted with laughter. ‘I could have told them that!’

‘You don’t think I’d be a good dolphin?’ asked Perdita, a little put out.

‘Nope, you’re definitely a peacock. Your new boss could have saved the company hundreds of pounds if he’d just asked me instead of forking out for a whole course.’

‘Oh, talking of my new boss…he’s here!’ said Perdita, who had had enough of people failing to recognise the easygoing, fun-loving, dolphin aspects of her personality. She had thought Millie at least would have known her better!

‘No!’ Millie was gratifyingly intrigued by the news. ‘What’s he like?’

‘Well, he’s…’ Perdita stopped, realising that she didn’t really know how to describe Ed.

She knew what he looked like, could picture his face with alarming clarity, in fact: the cool eyes, the cool mouth, that unsettling gleam of humour. He had ordinary brown hair, greying at the temples, and that intriguing fan of laughter lines creasing the corner of his eyes. But she couldn’t tell Millie that.

‘He’s not what I was expecting,’ she finished lamely at last.

‘Oh?’ Millie prompted, drawing out the syllables with exaggerated effect. ‘Attractive?’

‘Not really…Well, sort of, I suppose…I don’t know!’ said Perdita, flustered when Millie started laughing.

‘He sounds gorgeous!’

‘He’s not gorgeous,’ snapped Perdita. ‘He’s just a sensible executive with greying hair who thinks I’m a bit silly.’ She told Millie about her faux pas and Millie seemed to think that was funny too.

‘It sounds as if you might have met your match at last, Perdita. Is he available?’

‘He doesn’t wear a wedding ring,’ said Perdita, and then was furious with herself for admitting that she had noticed.

‘Hmm…doesn’t mean anything,’ said Millie. ‘Find out more tomorrow and report back to me!’

CHAPTER TWO

‘THIS morning you’ll all be divided into pairs and given a series of tasks to achieve.’ Perdita slipped into the dining room as the chief facilitator was making his announcement at breakfast the next morning. Her morning routine always seemed to take twice as long in an unfamiliar bathroom and she was running late.

Grabbing a cup of coffee, she stood at the back and found herself scanning the room for Edward Merrick as she pretended to listen to the instructions for the day.

‘You’ve all been allocated a task to complete at first on your own, but over the course of the day you should meet up with other pairs and eventually you’ll form four large groups. It’s important that you check the list in reception for the location of your first task before you go outside.’

Outside? Perdita grimaced. When she had pulled back her curtains that morning, she hadn’t even been able to see the surrounding hills for the heavy grey cloud. Outside, the tree tops were swaying wildly in the wind, and rain streaked the big windows of the dining room.

She had been hoping that the facilitators would change their minds about running part of the course outside when they saw the conditions. Perdita was not a fan of the great outdoors and although wet weather gear had been specified in the joining instructions for the course she really didn’t have anything suitable to wear. The jacket she had brought with her was adequate to protect her against a shower in the city but would be useless in this rain. She was going to get soaked, and it was all Ed Merrick’s fault.

Perdita barely had time to swallow her coffee before everyone was filing out, apparently keen to start the day. They had all had the forethought to bring coats and boots downstairs but, of course, she had to run up to her room for hers. Really, it would be so much easier if they could just do all these stupid tasks indoors.

Wrapping a fuschia-pink pashmina around her throat for warmth, Perdita made her way reluctantly back down to find her partner. There was only person left in reception when she got there and, with a strange sense of inevitability, she saw that it was Edward Merrick.

‘It looks as if we’re meant to be together after all,’ he greeted her.

Meant to be together…He was joking, that much was obvious, but the very idea made Perdita feel a bit odd.

‘What’s the reasoning behind pairing us off?’ she asked, hoping that she sounded curious rather than as if her heart were pitter-pattering in the most absurd way at the prospect of being alone with him.

‘I suspect it’s because they think I’m the only one you might not be able to boss around,’ he said, cocking a glance at the facilitator, who grinned as he nodded. ‘We all saw how you couldn’t help but take over every task you did yesterday. Today’s a chance for the poor old dolphins and owls to develop their own leadership skills.’

‘Oh, that’s ridiculous!’ said Perdita, exasperated, but aware that a tiny part of her was pleased to be prodded out of her self-consciousness. ‘I made a point of not taking over, in fact. I wasn’t chairperson once.’

‘No, but who decided that a chairperson was needed in the first place?’ asked Ed. ‘Who put forward a candidate every time and got everyone to agree?’

‘Well…that’s only because they were wasting time,’ she said defensively. ‘I just wanted the team to succeed. That’s not the same as bossing everyone around!’

‘Perhaps not, but you’ve got to admit that you’re a hard woman to resist,’ he said, and, although he didn’t actually smile, the corners of his eyes creased and, as her gaze met his, Perdita felt her heart jerk alarmingly.

She pulled her pashmina tighter around her throat. ‘You don’t seem to have any problem resisting me,’ she said crisply to disguise her sudden, embarrassing, breathlessness. ‘Maybe I won’t be able to resist you,’ she added, and then wished that she hadn’t. There were too many double meanings to all this talk of resistance and it unnerved her. ‘Nobody seems to think that would be a problem, do they?’

Ed’s gaze rested on her. The vividly coloured scarf was the perfect foil for her dark colouring. With her glossy hair, expressive face and those bright, dark eyes, she reminded him of a rather cross robin. At forty, she was far from the youngest woman on the course, and she was by no means the prettiest either, but there was a vivacity to her that made it hard to look at anyone else when she was there.

Perdita wasn’t at all what he had been expecting. He had heard glowing reports of her efficiency, and her CV was undeniably impressive, but neither had done anything to prepare him for the reality of her. He had imagined an intensely professional, rather serious woman, dedicated to a career rather than to a family—and yes, maybe he had assumed that because he knew that she was single, Ed thought, rather ashamed of his own prejudices—but Perdita was nothing like that.

Nothing like that, in fact. She was sharp and funny instead of serious, extrovert rather than intense. Given her CV, it was obvious that she was perfectly capable of being professional, but Ed would never have guessed it from his covert observation of her so far. She evidently spent nearly as long grooming herself as his teenage daughter, which was saying something, and she was always perfectly made-up and stylishly dressed. All in all, she seemed far too frivolous for a forty-year-old operations manager.

And, while she might well be single and childless, as stated on her CV, he imagined there would be some man around. She was too attractive to be on her own, but even if she was, there was no sign whatsoever that she was unhappy with her lot. Indeed, she seemed to be having a better time than anyone else, judging by the laughter that surrounded her wherever she was. There was nothing wrong with enjoying yourself, Ed had found himself thinking irritably in the bar the previous night, but there was no need to do it quite so loudly. She was just a bit too…much.

Ed badly wanted to disapprove of Perdita, in fact, but was uneasily aware that he was intrigued by her too. He had more of a problem resisting her than Perdita knew, although he decided to keep that fact to himself.

‘I think the idea is that we learn to work together without the need to resist each other at all,’ he said in a carefully dry voice that earned him a sharp look from those dark eyes. Perdita might act as if she were silly and superficial sometimes, but she was no fool.

‘What exactly is it that we have do?’ she asked briskly, and Ed unfolded a map, relieved at the change of subject.

‘We’ve got to get ourselves to here,’ he said, pointing.

‘And where are we now?’ asked Perdita, peering at the map and wishing that she hadn’t noticed what strong, capable-looking hands he had.

‘Here.’

Her eyes followed one long, square-tipped finger. ‘But that’s miles!’ she exclaimed, horrified.

‘I don’t think it’ll be as bad as it looks, but we’d better get going.’ Ed looked dubiously down at her feet. ‘Are those the only boots you’ve got?’

‘I didn’t realise that the course involved trekking across the countryside in the pouring rain,’ she said, regarding her boots mournfully. They were the most comfortable pair that she owned, but they were designed for city pavements, not windswept hillsides. ‘They’re going to be ruined.’

‘They are,’ Ed agreed without any noticeable sympathy. ‘Didn’t you read the instructions about bringing outdoor gear?’

Of course, he was practically dressed in a waterproof jacket, boots and wet weather trousers. Perdita eyed him with dislike. ‘This is my outdoor gear,’ she said. ‘I don’t do the outdoors.’

‘You do now,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

Perdita pulled up the hood of her jacket as she followed him out through the doors.

‘Ugh, it’s horrible out here!’ she said, reminding Ed forcibly of a cat, shaking its wet paws fastidiously. ‘I don’t know why I bothered to wash and dry my hair this morning,’ she grumbled on. ‘I’m going to get soaked!’