Glass Slippers And Unicorns

Reed seemed to stiffen even more as he saw that squint. ‘Did you forget to put your contacts in again?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘No, I didn’t forget!’ she snapped, the guilty flush that coloured her cheeks giving the instant lie to that statement. ‘I just haven’t had time to put them in yet! I was late getting up, and then as soon as I arrived you told me I had to go and meet your mother, and——’

‘Great,’ he ground out fiercely. ‘This is just great! I can see it all now.’ He raised his head to look at the ceiling, taking deep controlling breaths. ‘It probably wasn’t even my mother you met. The poor woman probably realised that after a while and made her escape at the first opportunity.’

Darcy stood up indignantly, too angered by his scornful tone to want to admit to the vanity of wearing her rarely used glasses to go to the airport to meet his mother, but of having taken them off only seconds ago before she entered the office, not wanting Reed to see her wearing the heavy dark frames. ‘You’re being very unfair, Reed.’

‘Am I?’ he scorned, shaking his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘As it’s obvious you have so little confidence in my ability to do anything right, I don’t know why you ever sent me to meet your mother,’ she accused emotionally.

‘I was unavoidably tied up here; there was no one else but you to send!’

She gave a shaky gasp. ‘Then maybe you should never have employed me!’

‘I wouldn’t have done, but I thought the rest of the business world needed saving from itself!’ he rasped disgustedly.

Tears instantly made her vision more blurred. ‘My qualifications are good——’

‘But anyone who turns up for an interview as a secretary at nine o’clock at night——’

‘That was the time your letter said!’ she protested agitatedly.

Reed gave a disgusted snort. ‘It was because my temporary secretary was so incompetent that I needed another permanent secretary! No woman turns up for an interview for a secretary’s position at nine o’clock at night unless the prospective employer has more than just secretarial duties in mind and she’s decided she’s agreeable to that—or she’s just plain stupid!’ he finished contemptuously.

It was so obvious which one he thought she was! ‘I’d only been in London a couple of months; this was only my fourth interview!’

‘No woman in her right mind turns up for an interview in a deserted office building at nine o’clock at night!’ Reed maintained forcefully. ‘Not even a woman from the provinces! I can still remember the look on the night security man’s face when I came in answer to his call that you were here demanding to see me, saying that you had an appointment!’

Darcy was sure the colour in her cheeks was going to remain a permanent fixture as Reed seemed intent on recalling all the stupid things she had done since the moment they had met so awkwardly. Of course she had thought it strange that Reed Hunter wanted to interview her at nine o’clock at night, but it had been her first time in London after living the last twenty-two and a half years with her parents in a village that was so small even the locals said it could be missed if you blinked as you were approaching it! The only two jobs she had had since leaving school six years earlier had been in the small town three miles away; she had just assumed things were done differently in the capital. How was she supposed to know Reed’s temporary secretary had made a typing error and it should have read a.m. in the letter and not p.m.? Reed must have read the letter through before signing it; he should have spotted the mistake, too. Although once again she didn’t think he would appreciate her pointing that out to him just now!

‘I still got the job, didn’t I?’ she reminded him resentfully.

‘As I said——’

‘You thought the business world needed saving from itself,’ she finished emotionally.

He nodded. ‘And I was intrigued by your name,’ he admitted reluctantly.

Bewildered eyes the colour of cornflowers opened wider than ever. ‘My name?’ she repeated incredulously.

Reed nodded again, impatiently this time. ‘That was why you were the first person scheduled for interview that morning.’ He gave a pointed sigh at his mention of the time of day she should have been here. ‘Your qualifications were also a little better than the other applicants’, but it was your name that intrigued me. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if Darcy Faversham was a man or a woman!’

‘You employed me because of my name?’ Darcy said again, incredulously.

‘It gave you the edge,’ he confirmed irritably. ‘As I said, the other three applicants were almost as well qualified.’

‘I can’t believe this,’ she said dazedly.

‘Oh, believe it,’ he rasped. ‘Once I’d met you I should have known better!’

‘You make a living by gambling on hunches,’ she reminded him dully, stunned by what he had just told her. To think that if her name had been plain Susan Smith she wouldn’t have got the job! ‘And this time it let you down.’ She straightened her shoulders defensively. ‘I’ll leave——’

‘Not until we’ve found my mother you won’t,’ he cut in fiercely. ‘Forget about your damned pride for a moment and try and help me think where she could be!’

Pride. Yes, her pride was hurt. But so was she. She knew she had a habit of losing things, but she only lost them because she forgot what she had done with them. But her work had always been unquestionably competent, and Reed could never accuse her of ever losing anything of his.

Except his mother, she realised with a wince.

But you couldn’t lose people, not really; they had a habit, adults at least, of always turning up again. She felt sure Maud Hunter would be no exception.

She chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip. ‘She took her handbag with her——’

‘She did?’ Reed pounced, narrow-eyed.

Darcy nodded. ‘Yes——’

‘Then at least she isn’t wandering about London completely penniless too!’

She wasn’t a violent woman, believing that passivity often achieved the same results, but if Reed continued to act as if she had thrust the equivalent of a new-born chick into a pack of wolves she knew she wasn’t going to be able to stop the urge her hand had to slap him across one lean cheek.

He wasn’t a handsome man by any standards, but that he was attractive couldn’t be doubted, with his hair thick and dark, almost black in some lights, brows the same colour jutting out over eyes of luminous green, a slight bump to the straightness of his nose where it had been broken playing American football during his teens, his mouth often snapping words too cutting for the sensuousness of his bottom lip to be noticed. Although, from the amount of women who telephoned him at the office, it was noticeable enough! He was well over six feet tall, and still had the physique that could have taken him into pro-football if the challenge of speculation hadn’t been the stronger of the two.

He towered at least a foot over Darcy as she faced him, his stance threatening even if she knew he would never physically hurt her. He was a hawk, why should he bother himself with the little mouse? Even if the mouse did occasionally, very occasionally, roar!

‘Reed, she’ll turn up——’

‘Will she?’ he scorned. ‘It’s been almost two hours, and she hasn’t “turned up” yet!’

That guilty blush returned to her cheeks. ‘The police——’

‘Will not look for a woman who’s only been missing two hours!’ he snapped disgustedly.

She chewed on her inner lip, oblivious to the soreness she was inflicting, not knowing what else to say. Because she didn’t think Maud Hunter was missing, was sure the other woman would make her way here or to Reed’s apartment when she was good and ready. But until she did, Reed wasn’t going to calm down.

And in the meantime she had given him her notice. She was regretting that pride-saving impulse already. He was an interesting man to work for, no two days the same, the heavy workload keeping her occupied long outside the nine until five she was supposed to work. And that suited her. But she knew Reed would never forgive her for this, that he obviously adored his mother.

The day had begun so nicely, too; birthday cards from her family and friends pushed through her letter box by the postman, a couple of parcels left on her doorstep. She was twenty-three today, felt as if she were finally putting the past behind her. And now this. It wouldn’t just be the work she would miss.

‘Darcy, are you listening to me!’

She gave a surprised start as Reed shouted at her. Concentrate on one thing at a time, they had told her. And she had. And it had worked. But now, more than two years later, she still had difficulty giving her attention to more than one thing at any given moment. Whatever Reed had been saying to her, she hadn’t heard him. And she could see by the angry glitter in his fierce eyes that he knew that.

‘I said,’ he ground out between clenched teeth, ‘I think the best thing to do is drive back to where you parked your car and look around there for her. Can you remember where that was?’

Her mouth tightened at his obvious scorn. ‘Of course I can. There’s nothing wrong with my memory——’

‘Because you don’t have one!’