LITMIR.BIZ

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similar hours to himself, something that had caused a great deal of friction at home—her mother loudly complaining that she was losing her daughter to the firm too. Which had led Karrie to suggest to her father that she wouldn’t mind leaving work at six most evenings, only to be told by him to go and find another job elsewhere if she didn’t like it.

      So she had, and some stubbornness she hadn’t known she possessed had refused to make her budge and retract her resignation when her father had exploded in fury at her nerve.

      ‘You’d give up your chance to ultimately have a seat on the board!’ he’d ranted.

      Ultimately! She wasn’t falling for that carrot being dangled in front of her. He’d promised her her own department in two years if she joined him from college and learned the business. She’d been there four years and it hadn’t happened yet.

      Leaving her car, she headed for Irving and Small’s main building. ‘Karrie!’ She turned—where had Darren Jackson sprung from?

      ‘Morning, Darren,’ she smiled; she didn’t want to go out with him, but she liked him.

      ‘I still can’t believe your flaxen hair is natural!’

      Flaxen! Yesterday, according to him, it had been ‘delicately pale ripening corn’. Her hair colour was natural, and had never seen a chemical dye, but she had no intention of discussing that with him.

      ‘Looks like being a nice day,’ she commented pleasantly as they entered the building.

      ‘Every day since you joined the firm has been nice,’ he replied.

      She still wasn’t going out with him. ‘Concentrate on your computer,’ she tossed at him, and as they entered the open-plan office they shared with a dozen or so others she parted from him and went to her own desk.

      The work was interesting but not so complicated that it did not leave space for private thought, and in one such moment Karrie fell to thinking of her father, who loved his work more than his home. Countless were the meals that were cooked for him and which, because he didn’t come home, were thrown away. And, thinking back to last night, countless were the times he and her mother had arranged to go out somewhere, only for his secretary to ring and say he would be delayed. Countless were the times Karrie had seen the excited light go from her mother’s eyes.

      Kate knew that her mother had at one time adored her father. She probably still did—or he wouldn’t have the power to hurt her. But, while it upset Karrie when she thought of her mother’s hurt and unhappiness, she knew better now than to try to interfere. She had once tried to talk to her father about his neglect of her mother, and, aside from earning his deep displeasure, had done her mother no favours either when her husband had treated her even more badly than before, the end result being that her mother had become ever more bitter.

      ‘Have you got...?’ Celia, a colleague from across the aisle, interrupted Karrie just as she was mentally writing in indelible ink that, if she knew nothing else, there was no way she was going to have the kind of marriage her parents endured.

      Breaking away from what she was doing, she felt no end of pleasure that, having worked in purchase and supply for so short a time, she was immediately able to answer Celia’s in-depth query.

      It was around mid-morning, when Karrie had just decided to visit the coffee machine—that Tuesday having been marked down as the same as any other, with nothing in any way noteworthy to change it—when something quite out of the ordinary did happen. She stood up, stepped into the aisle—and bumped into a tall, good-looking man who was making his way to a far end door that led to where the higher executives worked.

      Something in the region of her heart actually lurched. She opened her mouth to apologise, but whether or not she did, she couldn’t remember, because as her soft and wide brown eyes met the piercing blue ones of the man in his mid-thirties, so her voice seemed to die on her!

      He nodded Had she spoken? Or was that his way of acknowledging her presence? Feeling suddenly the desperate need to get herself together, as he took a side step Karrie turned and went smartly out from her office.

      Lucy, a girl who sat immediately behind her, was already at the coffee machine. Which was perhaps just as well, because Karrie had forgotten completely to take any coins from her purse to feed the machine.

      ‘I’ve enough change!’ Lucy offered, to save her going back. And just then Heather, the young woman who worked behind Celia, came to join them.

      ‘I’m not stopping!’ she announced to the pair. ‘Farne Maitland’s just arrived to see Mr Lane, I don’t want to miss seeing him when he comes out if this is only a flying visit.’

      ‘Farne Maitland’s here?’ Lucy asked in hushed tones.

      Heather nodded, hurriedly putting coins into the refreshment machine. ‘And Karrie very nearly knocked him over!’

      ‘You didn’t!’ Lucy exclaimed.

      ‘Who is he?’ Karrie asked, realising that Heather must have witnessed her bumping into him.

      ‘You don’t know?’ Lucy cried. But it was Heather who answered her question.

      ‘He’s on the board of the Adams Corporation, our parent company. He likes to keep his finger on every pulse. Though...’

      ‘Though he doesn’t visit Irving and Small anywhere near often enough,’ Lucy put in.

      ‘You’re obviously smitten,’ Karrie teased.

      ‘So are half the women who work here,’ Lucy agreed. ‘Such a waste—all that male, and no wife to go home to!’

      ‘You’re going to have to lower your sights, duckie,’ Heather laughed. ‘You know he’s never likely to look at any of us.’

      ‘A girl can dream!’ Lucy retorted, but didn’t have time to just then. ‘I’d better get back. Jenny isn’t in today.’

      ‘Somebody’s always away—no wonder we always seem to be short-handed. Thank heaven you’ve joined us, Karrie.’

      Karrie smiled. It was nice to be wanted as part of the team. Though because they were busy that day she didn’t linger over her coffee break.

      But back at her desk she found she couldn’t help wondering if the man with the piercing blue eyes, Farne Maitland, was still in with Mr Lane, or had he left the building? He was, indisputably, extremely good-looking, and had a certain kind of air about him. He was a bachelor, apparently, and half the women at Irving and Small were smitten with him. But seemingly he didn’t go in for dating any of them. He should be so lucky...

      Karrie stopped her thoughts right there. Good heavens, what on earth was she thinking? Abruptly she channelled her thoughts away from the man and concentrated on the work in hand. But the present task she was engaged on was not that taxing to her brain, and she glanced up when a door up ahead opened. Two men came out, as if Mr Lane intended to escort his visitor through the banks of computers and out to his car.

      But then Farne put a stop to that by extending his hand to Gordon Lane and making his adieus from there. Karrie, aware that the man from the Adams Corporation would walk by her desk at any moment, suddenly found her computer screen of the most compelling interest.

      Indeed she was glued to it, staring at the screen as if rapt as she waited for Farne Maitland to go by. Her desk was about halfway down the long room—she’d be glad when he passed; what on earth was the matter with her?

      He was close; she knew he was close. She lost track of what she was supposed to be doing, but tried to make out she was absorbed anyway. From the corner of her eye she saw the grey of his expensive, exquisitely tailored suit. Just concentrate, or pretend to for a few more seconds, then he’d be gone. But he drew level with her desk—and—halted.

      Her insides turned to jelly. She stopped what she was doing—it was nonsense anyway—and looked up. Oh, my word, did he have it all! She stared into piercing blue eyes that seemed to be making a thorough scrutiny

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