Second Best Wife Page 3

  Once again he immersed himself in his work to the point where he became so overtired that his temper was frequently at flashpoint. He knew his staff were finding him impossible, but it was not until Miss Gosford, whom he regarded as the perfect secretary, suddenly flung her notebook on the floor and walked out of his room that he realised he had to take himself in hand.

  'Forgive my outburst,' he apologised, going into her office. 'I know I've been bloody to work for recently, but I promise to go away and relax this weekend—which should, I hope, improve my temper.'

  'I should be used to your temper by now,' Miss Gosford replied, giving him the faintest of smiles. 'It's just that today I—I had some bad news, and things rather got on top of me.'

  'I see. Is there anything I can do to help?'

  'No, there isn't, thank you.' She bent over her typewriter, and realising she did not want to talk about her personal affairs, Adam returned to his room and picked up the papers he was working on. Within a moment all else was forgotten.

  True to his word, he flew to Scotland for a golfing weekend. He played six solitary rounds, tired himself into exhaustion and returned on Monday feeling considerably more relaxed.

  It was an attitude that began to fade when he discovered Miss Gosford was away with a migraine.

  'I didn't know she suffered from that,' he said sharply to Miss Smith, the girl who had temporarily taken her place. 'When will she be back?'

  'She said tomorrow.' Miss Smith hesitated. 'Personally, I think she should stay home a few more days. She really wasn't at all well. Perhaps you could suggest it to her?'

  'Just over a headache?'

  'It's more than that.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Well… she's been jilted.' The girl looked embarrassed. 'But please don't say anything to her until she tells you.'

  'I never intrude into my staffs personal affairs,' Adam said coldly.

  'I know that. But Miss Gosford has been your secretary for three years, and I assumed you knew she was going to be married.'

  'Married? I had no idea.' Adam stared down at his desk, feeling somewhat ashamed. 'Miss Gosford is so efficient I tend to forget she's a person with feelings. I'm saying it as a compliment,' he added quickly, looking up to see the girl's frown. 'But now you've told me what's wrong, I'm quite happy for her to stay away for the rest of the week.' He pointed to the telephone. 'Get her for me, will you?'

  His secretary's voice sounded jerky and indistinct when she came on the line, and Adam suspected she had been crying.

  'Miss Gosford?' he said. 'Adam Lester here.'

  'I'm sorry I wasn't in the office today,' she said quickly. 'I hope Miss Smith is managing? I'll be back tomorrow.'

  'Miss Smith is managing excellently, which is why I'm calling you. I want you to take a few days off. It will do you good.'

  'It's very kind of you to suggest it, Mr Lester, but I'd rather not. I'm sure I'll be well enough to come in tomorrow.'

  Adam hesitated, knowing that work was the best panacea against heartache. 'Very well, then. I'll see you in the morning.' Replacing the receiver, he looked at Miss Smith. 'Miss Gosford's coming in,' he said. 'It's probably better for her than sitting at home moping.'

  Remembering Miss Smith's comments about his secretary, Adam watched Julia Gosford with unaccustomed awareness as she entered the office next day. She was paler than usual, and this made her hair more noticeable. The colour of burgundy wine, he thought. And very striking too.

  He rose with a smile. 'I hope you're feeling better, Miss Gosford?'

  'Yes, thank you, Mr Lester.'

  She sat down in front of him and crossed her legs. They were long and slim and he noticed how slender she appeared in a narrow tailored skirt and blue silk blouse. Julia Gosford was a tall girl who held herself well; her shoulders were straight and her head was erect, though now it was slightly tilted, enabling him to see the smooth line of her creamy neck, where her hair lay coiled in a loose bun. It was an unusual style for a young woman; he vaguely recalled it as belonging to the flapper era. But no one could call Miss Gosford a flapper; she was much too staid.

  'I'm glad you're back,' he said sincerely. 'I would find you extremely difficult to replace.' 'No secretary is indispensable.'

  'You are.'

  She blushed, the colour accentuating the creamy texture of her skin. He was irritated with himself for noticing it—he never had before—and assumed it was because he knew that, like him, she had been let down in love. There was nothing better than fellow suffering to give one a sense of camaraderie.

  'I hope I'll be with you for many years yet, Mr Lester,' she went on.

  'Unless you leave me to marry?' Adam said deliberately, his face devoid of expression.

  'That's very far from my mind.'

  'Selfishly, I'm glad to hear it, though I find it hard to believe no man has yet discovered you.'

  'There was someone,' she murmured, 'but he—he went to settle in Canada and fell in love with someone more suitable.'

  'More suitable? I don't follow you.' Adam was, surprisingly, curious. Perhaps his recent hurt over Erica was making him more sensitive to other people's problems.

  'It's ridiculous really,' she murmured, 'but Roy always said he found me too—too attractive, and he couldn't bear other men to look at me.'

  'You're joking?'

  'Oh no. He said it made him feel insecure.'

  'It sounds as though you're well rid of him, Miss - Gosford.'

  'You're probably right,' she replied. 'Though at the moment I'm too hurt to see it that way.'

  She bent her head to her notebook, indicating that she was ready to take dictation, but Adam was reluctant to start work. What would his secretary say if he told her about Erica and her reasons for not wanting to marry him? Would she agree with Erica or would she feel the world well lost for love? Yet he had no intention of asking her, and was amazed he was even interested in what she might think. It was Miss Smith who had made him suddenly aware of Miss Gosford as a person, instead of an efficient machine in his office, catering to his business needs.

  Frowning, he picked up a document and was about to start dictating when the telephone rang. Miss Gosford lifted the receiver, spoke a few words and then passed it across to him, mouthing the words 'Mr Burglass'.

  'Hello, Jack,' Adam said brightly. 'I was going to call you later.'

  'I'm not calling on business,' Jack Burglass replied. 'I've been given some tickets for Covent Garden for tonight— La Boheme. I know you like opera and I wondered if you and Erica would care to join us?'

  'I'd be delighted, personally speaking, but I'm not sure what Erica's doing.'

  'How come? I thought you always knew what she was doing. Anyway, when's the wedding? Or is that being old-fashioned?'

  'Very old-fashioned,' Adam replied smoothly.

  There was a momentary silence before Jack Burglass spoke again.

  'Sorry if I've got my wires crossed, old chap, but I did have the feeling you were serious about her.'

  'I'm always serious about my current girl-friends,' Adam said coolly. 'Do you mind if I cut the call short, Jack? I have a client waiting.'

  'Oh sure. But what about the opera tonight?'

  'May I bring someone else along if Erica can't make it?'

  'Naturally. We'll meet in the Crush Bar half an hour before the curtain goes up.'

  Adam put down the receiver and frowned. Who the hell would be free to go out at such short notice? He picked up his address book. He had not looked at it since meeting Erica, and he was certain all his previous girlfriends were long since out of circulation. He wondered if he should call Jack and tell him he could not make it tonight after all. Yet to do so smacked of defeat, and he was not one to acknowledge such a thing without putting up a fight. He frowned again, not liking the fact that he was putting his emotional life into business terms. Erica was his love, his only love, and he found it hard to accept that she did not have the same intensity of feeling towards him
.

  'Should I come back later?'

  With a start he realised his secretary was still waiting to take dictation, and he nodded. She rose from the chair and he watched her walk to the door. From the back, she seemed even taller, and he wondered if she found it a handicap. But surely not. What was it she had said to him a moment ago about beauty being a problem? It seemed nonsense to him. As if any man would object to a woman being too beautiful!

  'Miss Gosford,' he called abruptly, 'would you be free to come to the opera with me tonight?'

  Only as she swung round and he saw the surprise on her face did he realise how unexpected she found his invitation. Dammit, he found it unexpected too, and he wished he hadn't asked her. But it was too late now.

  'If you're busy,' he went on, 'then forget it. It was merely a thought.'

  'I'm not busy tonight, Mr Lester,' she said calmly, 'and I'd be delighted to go with you.' She hesitated. 'Are you going for business reasons?'

  'Does there have to be a business reason for everything I do?' he asked testily.

  'No, but—'

  'I'll collect you at six-thirty, then. Please leave me your address.'

  She looked discomfited. 'It's miles from where you live, Mr Lester. It would be much easier for you if we met at the theatre.'

  'But not easier for you,' he replied. 'I'll arrange for Parsons to pick you up and bring you to my home.'

  With a nod, she went out, and Adam leaned back in his chair. His regret at having proffered the invitation was beginning to recede, particularly when he thought how astonished Jack would be at seeing him with someone other than Erica. Though he had told him he might bring someone else, he was pretty sure Jack didn't believe him. All at once, Adam's ill humour vanished. By this time tomorrow, Erica would know he had been out with another woman. Beryl Burglass was the worst possible gossip, and she'd start broadcasting it first thing in the morning.

  Well pleased by the thought, Adam picked up his pen and concentrated on the document in front of him, though it was still several moments before his attention was sufficiently caught for him to stop thinking of pale blonde hair and a tantalisingly passionate mouth.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Julia did not normally have to think what to wear, but that evening she changed her mind twice before deciding on a simple black dress. The dark colour was a perfect foil for her pale skin, and gave her hair the sheen of ruby velvet. On her way home she had called at a chemist and bought some make-up, defiantly choosing items she had never used before: grey-blue shadow to draw attention to the deep blue of her slanting eyes; mascara to darken her long lashes, and flame red lipstick to outline the sensual curve of her mouth.

  Her hair remained her most noticeable feature and, still in a mood of defiance, she loosened it from its coil and let it ripple down to her shoulders. How Roy would have cringed! Adam Lester would be surprised too, but he deserved it; expecting to see the sober, decorously clad young woman he had employed for over three years, he would find himself confronted by a Technicolor beauty. A beauty? She eyed herself in the mirror. Well, she was, and there was no longer any reason to pretend otherwise; not now that Roy had shown her how foolish pretence had been.

  It had started with her father. From the moment she had realised how easy it was for a beautiful woman to attract her father's attentions, Julia had been afraid her own striking looks would draw the same kind of faithless man; hence her determination to play down her appearance to the point where it had almost become a disguise. Even so, quite a few men had sensed her potential—after all, it had not been possible to hide her height nor the graceful proportions of her slender body—but only Roy, with his serious-minded sincerity, had made her drop a little of her guard. And how wrong she had been. Within days of arriving in Canada, he had fallen for a pert little blonde and written a contrite letter asking Julia to release him from their engagement.

  In doing so, Julia had also released herself, though it had taken Adam Lester's invitation to the opera to make her fully aware of it. Come the weekend, she would go shopping for a hew wardrobe to match her new way of thinking. Of course her dislike of men remained as strong as ever, but from now on she would dazzle them all and remain heartwhole, giving away nothing of her innermost self.

  She was waiting on the front steps when George Parsons, Adam Lester's chauffeur, arrived to collect her. He pressed the bell of her flat without realising she was standing beside him, and only as she gave him a smile did he return it with a dazed look of recognition. However, he was too discreet to comment, though he smiled warmly when she opted to take her place beside him in the front.

  'That's what Mr Lester always does,' he said. 'Unless he has work to do. Then he sits in the back.'

  Unwilling -to discuss their mutual employer, Julia smiled and said nothing, though the chauffeur's comment made her wonder what she was expected to call her employer that evening. It would seem odd if she addressed him as Mr Lester, yet she could not call him Adam unless he asked her.

  As they drove past Hyde Park Corner and drew nearer to his home, her thoughts turned to the unexpectedness of tonight's invitation. It was quite clear Mr Lester had stopped seeing Erica Dukes. She had suspected it when the woman's telephone calls had ceased coming through on his private line, and had been positive when he flung himself into his work with even more fury than usual. But was the estrangement permanent or the result of a lovers' quarrel that would soon run its course? Devoutly Julia hoped it was the former, and that Adam Lester would find someone less selfish than the beautiful blonde. It was obvious that his invitation to herself had been the result of pique; of anger that a man in his position should be caught without a girl to escort. It was a rare occurrence for him, and one not likely to happen once he put his mind to finding someone else.

  With these thoughts uppermost, Julia arrived at his elegant Chester Street home. It was the first time she had been there, and she was impressed by the marble entrance hall and the charmingly furnished drawing room into which the butler led her. It was surprisingly informal, due in the main to the preponderance of photographs and flowers that stood on the many small tables dotted around the rug-strewn floor. A log fire beamed in the large grate, though most of the warmth came from the slim radiators half hidden by softly billowing apricot curtains.

  Her employer rose as she entered. His dark dinner jacket made him seem taller and more saturnine, though his smile of welcome was warm. However, he did not come forward to greet her, but stood watching as she moved across the room towards him. The centre light tuned her hair into a blaze of colour which was echoed in the black and wine red shawl she had draped over one arm, the ends of which trailed on to the carpet. Julia knew, from the gleam in Adam Lester's eyes, that he liked what he saw. Faintly irritated by the condescending way he waited for her to approach him, she stopped abruptly.

  'Do I meet with your approval, Mr Lester?'

  'Most certainly, and the name is Adam.' His look was slow and deliberate. 'Were it not for the colour of your hair, Miss Gosford, I'd never have guessed it was you. I should think that every man who sees you tonight, will envy me, and unlike your erstwhile fiancé, I shall be delighted to show you off.'

  'Please don't mention Roy,' Julia said stiffly.

  Why not? Don't you still think of him?'

  'Of course.'

  'Then why be afraid to talk of him? It's the best way to get him out of your system.'

  'If you say so, Mr Lester.'

  Adam's mouth tightened, then relaxed as he smiled. 'You're not as docile as I thought, Julia.'

  'I'm not in the office now.'

  'That's not the only difference. You don't look the same person either—as you're only too well aware. But tell me, which is the real you? The businesslike woman with the bun and colourless demeanour, or the glamorous creature in front of me tonight?'

  'Do I have to be one or the other?' she countered. 'Can't I be both?'

  'I'm not sure if the two are compatible.'

  N
or was Julia, but she was loath to admit it.

  'What happens tomorrow?' he asked. 'Which female will I be seeing in the office?'

  'The same one you're seeing tonight.'

  'Does that mean you've turned over a new leaf?'

  She gave his question some thought. 'It means I've stopped raking over the leaves of someone else's past,' she admitted, burying her mother's unhappiness alongside her own anger against Roy. 'From now on, I am as I am.'

  Adam Lester raised an eyebrow. 'We should drink to that, I think, except that we're pushed for time. We'd better delay it until we get to the theatre.'

  Sitting beside him in the back of the car, Julia realised she had never before been so close to her employer. It increased her perception of him, making her conscious of his height and the breadth of his shoulders. Nor had she noticed until now how thick and silky his hair was, and the compact way it lay against the nape of his neck. Relaxed though he appeared to be, she felt the tension that lay within him: like a coiled spring that might unwind too fast and go snap. He shifted his position slightly, the better to look at her, and a wave of expensive after-shave lotion prickled her nostrils.

  She drew back in her seat, warning herself not to read too much into this evening. Still smarting as she was from the blow Roy had dealt her pride, it would be all too easy to rebound into somebody else's arms; and it would be the height of foolishness for those arms to belong to the man beside her. Adam Lester had invited her out because she had been the most convenient girl to come into his mind when Jack Burglass had invited him to the opera. As a date of his own choosing, she would never have been asked.

  'If anyone wants to know what I do,' she ventured, 'should I tell them I'm your secretary?'

  'I'd object if you said you were anyone else's,' he answered. 'I'm no snob, Julia. You should know that by now.'

  'But you've never taken out any of the girls who work for you.'

  'I never knew I had such beauty right under my nose.'