Authors: Vanessa Fox
Surprisingly, her tone didn’t seem to offend the owner of the voice in the least. Alex heard him groan and the distinct shuffling of papers obviously revealing the missing diary.
‘
Christ, is he? God you’re right. Why are you always right? It’s no good you being downstairs, I need you next door to my office. Call that idiot architect back in, will you, and come up now and find the file about that shopping centre. I got caught up in a call with China.’ Totally absorbed in their exchange, Alex suddenly realised the hairs were standing up on the back of her neck; the timbre of the voice, despite the distortion of the phone and the plant, was mature, rich and smooth bringing to mind a fabulous bottle of wine, a Chateau Margaux, a grand cru at least; every sip leaving you wanting another. She snapped rapidly back as Jocelyn Blake replied tersely.
‘
I’ll be along before he arrives. I’m busy now, I’m right in the middle of a meeting with the new designer.’
‘
What designer?’
‘
For the offices. Impromptu Design, they’re doing the new Spanish Cultural Institute. I told you about it. We need to do something with this soulless mausoleum of a building.’
‘
So you did. What’s the chap’s name again?’
‘
It’s a girl, Alex Ryan, Alexandra I think.’ Jocelyn beamed across at Alex like she was suddenly top of the class.
‘
Alex Ryan?’
‘
Exactly.’
There was a long pause.
Alex felt her heart stop for a second as, poised on the edge of her chair, she found herself waiting expectantly to hear his response. But she really didn’t expect his gruff reply.
‘
Bring her up. I’ll speak to her while you find the file.’
Jocelyn raised her eyes to heaven. ‘You really don’t have time to be worrying about decorating. I have the file here; I’ll send it up immediately and…’
‘
Joss, just stop blathering and send her up. Tell the Minister I’m running behind. He’ll wait.’
Rolling her eyes as if he was a spoilt child who needed to be humoured, Jocelyn clicked off the speakerphone and pushed her chair abruptly away from the desk as if she were about to set sail.
Alex felt her stomach hit the floor as she watched Jocelyn roll over to her filing cabinet and heave open a drawer stuffed with files. Meet the MD now? Obviously she had anticipated meeting with the board if Impromptu were offered the Venture Capital contract, but she had expected today to be an exploratory meeting, a chance for Venture Capital to find out about Impromptu and vice versa, not a full-on presentation!
Alex mentally gave herself a sharp kick – normally she prided herself on her research, ensured she knew everything, right down to what the board liked for breakfast before she went into a meeting with a new client, but with the week she’d had, she hadn’t had a second to do her homework. Between the runs to visit her dad and the demands of Senor Marquez, who seemed to be enjoying the creative process and adding more and more work to her brief, Alex hadn’t had a second even to Google Venture Capital Ireland. It went completely against the grain but as she’d fallen exhausted into bed each night in her tiny rented house in Dalkey, knowing she was facing a night of fitful sleep, she’d convinced herself she could do all the research she needed after her meeting with Jocelyn.
Who had she been kidding? What made her good at her job was her attention to detail, her ability to grasp the needs of the client. She should have followed her gut instinct and told them she was too busy. When she had received Jocelyn’s email at the beginning of the week, with everything already on her plate, for a moment Alex had wondered if she should take the job at all. But you just didn’t say no to new business, especially now, and particularly if it came as a result of a recommendation, and, as she’d reasoned while she’d composed her reply, designing offices wasn’t exactly brain surgery. A job like this could lead to more work, which would cement the position of the Irish office. And, for all she knew, they might take months to decide on the colour scheme, by which time her dad would be on the mend, she’d have found someone to run the Dublin office and she’d be back in Spain, back to the sunshine and a trouble-free life.
So here she was. Totally unprepared and about to walk into one of the most difficult meetings of her life.
TWO
It took a moment for the laptop to power up. Another moment for the Google homepage to open.
What first?
Facebook? That seemed like a good place to start. It was unlikely she’d realised the privacy implications; she was the sort to have everything out on show.
A click of the mouse.
Bingo.
It was all there...unbelievable...so much information. Hobbies, activities, favourite books and movies, email, PHONE, ADDRESS , schools – that would make the next bit easy. And so many photographs, with names and locations...good God.
She smiled from every picture, teeth brilliant white like a Colgate ad, more often than not a glass of champagne in her hand.
What next? Cross-reference the names and the faces in the photos with her friends on Facebook, look at their profile pages, get an idea of their names, professions, current locations. Time-consuming but well worth it...
Then Friends Reunited to check out her school friends, to see who was doing what, who she was still in touch with. Easy, when she’d put up all the dates and names of her schools on Facebook.
The fun had already started on Twitter. Following her friends, easily picked out from the lists of people following her, watching their conversations, seeing in real time what they were chatting about – and slipping in a comment or two...about a favourite book, a restaurant, a ‘mutual friend’.
Now wouldn’t that be a coincidence, a ‘mutual’ friend?
Finding common ground was the way to build trust.
And with trust came information.
THREE
Alex was still kicking herself as she buttoned her jacket in the lift on the way up to the fifth floor of Venture Capital Ireland. Jocelyn had been about to accompany her when the telephone rang, had instead mouthed her apologies and, her hand over the receiver, whispered that one of the girls would show her to the lift.
Intrigued by the man whose voice she had heard on the speakerphone, Alex wished she had had a chance to find out more about the company. She was sure she had read in the Sunday Times that Venture Capital Ireland had shares in everything from London City Airport to hotels in Shanghai, but she had never had a chance to finish the article, so quite who was on the board of directors, or who held the controlling interest, remained a mystery. And she hadn’t even had time to quiz the girl at Reception when she had arrived, as Jocelyn Blake had obviously been waiting for her and had swept her into her office the moment she had walked into the building.
As the lift doors slid open effortlessly to a melodious chime, Alex was surprised to find the top floor of the landmark building apparently empty. She stepped into a lofty hall surrounded by closed dark oak doors. The space was dominated by a circular antique table with an ornate central pedestal, the scent of beeswax polish jostling with the perfume from a riot of lilies and roses spilling out of a massive arrangement at its centre. Like the lower floors, the colours were uniform: beige and more beige, broken only by white gloss skirting boards and dado rails. Pausing for a moment to take in her surroundings, Alex wondered who was responsible for the several large paintings dotted between the doors, all Victorian hunting scenes set in heavy gold frames. Recalling the sound of his voice, she found herself creating a mental picture of the man she was about to meet. If he had had any influence over the décor outside his office at all, the managing director must be in his early fifties, was probably greying, and no doubt was a golfer fond of country pursuits who had been brought up by nannies, which would explain his relationship with his PA.
Alex’s instincts were usually good, but this time she couldn’t have been more wrong.
Turning back to take a final glance in the mirrored lift doors, ensuring she looked her best, Alex headed across the hall to the only set of double doors, and knocked gently. Hearing a muffled sound that could have been ‘come in’, she pushed, surprised that the door opened easily. The thick carpet of the hall was replaced inside the office with glistening marble tiles. Dazzled by the space and light of what looked more like a hotel suite than a working office, Alex took in a pair of cream leather sofas to her left, a glass coffee table between them, and what appeared to be a matching glass boardroom table to her right, lit by an enormous twisted copper and crystal chandelier, floor-to-ceiling windows giving an enviable view of the city skyline. The boardroom table was sleek and modern, completely different in taste and style from the hall, and the contrast threw her for a moment. Her surprise must have been obvious.
‘
Not what you expected?’
Startled by a voice from beyond the sofa arrangement, a voice that appeared to emanate from behind a magnificent walnut desk partially obscured by a small forest of potted palms, Alex turned on her professional smile and made her way into the room.
She didn’t get far.
A couple of steps inside the door the desk came into full view, as did the man sitting behind it. But he wasn’t a greying senior executive in his fifties. Far from it. Alex felt her eyes widening in pure shock, and then cold dark horror. Her stomach did a complete back flip as she felt the colour rush to her face, burning, she was sure, like a beacon. Summoning every reserve of self-control to remain where she stood, to resist the urge to turn and run, for a second her knees wobbled alarmingly beneath her. Fighting for control, Alex tried to steady her breathing, suddenly terrified that she might hyperventilate or worse, pass out.
Behind the desk sat a man she knew, a man who had rarely left her thoughts in the past sixteen years, the man who was the very reason she had left Ireland to study in Spain, and the very reason why she had been so reluctant to come home.
Sebastian Wingfield. Sole heir to the infamous Lord Kilfenora. Sole heir to the Wingfield banking fortune, and the rambling Gothic castle ridiculously misnamed Kilfenora House, with its one-thousand-acre County Kildare estate.
Sebastian Wingfield. Her first love. The man she had innocently thought, aged seventeen, that she would spend the rest of her life with, until… and the man who was very obviously now the managing director of Venture Capital Ireland.
The past sixteen years had been kind to him. His shoulders still broad, there were a few more lines around his eyes perhaps, but his hair was still the colour of melting chocolate, cropped short, his jaw just as determined as it had been back then. And just below the dimple in his right cheek, the half-inch scar she had traced with her fingertip was still there, faded with age, but still visible. He wore his yacht club tie knotted loosely at his throat, the top button of his shirt undone, his cuffs rolled back to reveal the strong wrists she remembered so well, a prelude to a pair of strong arms that had once held her as if they would never let her go. And his eyes were just as blue; the blue of a summer sky glimpsed through the thick canopy of trees as they lay laughing on their backs in the long grass of Kilfenora Woods, limbs entwined.
Sitting back, his elbow resting on the arm of his chair, one hand casually supporting his chin, Sebastian Wingfield watched Alex’s reaction, drinking her in, absorbing every detail from her blonde curls to her long slim legs. She had blossomed into a beautiful woman – her hair was shorter, her crazy curls now smoothed into a sophisticated ponytail, her suit unmistakeably European. She was just as alluring as when he’d last seen her – more so now – her sallow skin tanned, caramel brown eyes clearly showing her surprise. And that dark mole just to the left of her full mouth, like a beauty spot, exactly as he remembered it, its twin, he knew, a finger’s width from her navel. Good God, what was he thinking?
Masking the maelstrom of emotions churning inside him with a façade of disinterest, Sebastian felt like he was in some sort of bizarre dream. Could it really be her? After all these years, here she was, just waltzing into his office as if nothing had happened.
Sebastian knew he hadn’t been listening properly when Jocelyn had told him about the fantastic interior design company she had found, had completely forgotten about the meeting. But the moment Jocelyn had said Alex’s name he had felt a surge of emotion second only to the tidal wave of despair he had felt the day he had called to her father’s cottage to discover that she had left. Without a word. Without even a note. Without even sending him a postcard from wherever it was she had gone to. And at that stage, even her father had had no idea what she was doing, had been just as mystified as he was at her abrupt departure.
And, as he looked at her now, a flash of resentment lit the slow burn of anger that had festered inside him over the years. He had concealed it, had got on with his life; had channelled all the negative energy into taking up a position in the family business. At his grandfather’s insistence he had switched from first year architecture to a business degree. But Alex’s departure had changed the course of his life, and he wasn’t about to thank her for it.
It was the not knowing why that had really cut him, and it was a wound that still ached whenever he saw a blonde head bobbing ahead of him in a crowd. Sebastian had lost count of the times he’d raced after strange women on a train, in a theatre, convinced every time that he’d found her, that she would turn and smile and love him again as she had before. But every time he’d been shattered by the truth, the knife twisting deeper into his heart until at last he’d learned to live with the loss, learned to push thoughts of her to the back of his mind. Now here she was. Dear God where did he start?