First Love, Last Love (2 page)

‘Just for hitting his stupid car?’ she scoffed. ‘He couldn’t get away with that. It would be unfair dismissal.’

‘When you ranted and raved at him like a mad thing?’ His eyebrows rose. ‘I think he would have sufficient reason for getting rid of you.’ He parked the car before helping Lauri out as she slid along the seat. ‘He still could, come to think of it.’

‘He doesn’t know who I am,’ she said smugly. ‘Only that I’m your girl-friend.’ She gave him a scathing look. ‘As if I could fancy
you
!’ she dismissed disgustedly. ‘Why didn’t you tell him I’m your niece? At least then he wouldn’t have reason to question my taste in men.’

‘You’re a cheeky, outspoken little devil, and if you aren’t careful someone is going to take you down a peg or two,’ he ushered her through the double glass doors that were the entrance to Blair Computers.

‘Not you?’ she scorned.

He sighed. ‘Not me. I don’t have the stamina. It’s going to take a strong man to pin you down.’

‘No man will ever do that,’ she vowed vehemently. ‘I intend staying free of those sort of entanglements.’

The lift stopped, the doors opening. Steve pushed her out. ‘Off you go, infant. And try not to fall foul of our provider again.’ He grimaced. ‘I just hope the insurance people will cough up, I certainly can’t pay for the repairs to a Rolls out of my own pocket. You were right about those brakes,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘They aren’t catching properly.’

Lauri frowned. ‘Nevertheless, I was the one who crashed. You can’t take the blame.’

‘It’s my responsibility. And I don’t want anyone probing into this too deeply, don’t forget we didn’t have L-plates up. Thank God Blair didn’t realise you’re still a learner, he would probably have ripped me to pieces.’

Lauri shook her head. ‘I don’t think he’s the physical sort.’

Steve grinned. ‘That isn’t what I heard,’ he said suggestively.

‘You’re disgusting!’ she had time to shout before the lift doors closed. Trust him to take her words the wrong way!

She could imagine that Alexander Blair could be very physical, given a beautiful woman in the right setting. It made her body tingle and her skin colour a delicate pink at the thought of that handsome specimen of a man in such an intimate situation. She had no doubt he would be a good lover, he didn’t keep his
many women just because he was rich.

She had been hearing about Alexander Blair’s life, both business and private, for the last three years, ever since Jane had become his personal secretary, in fact. He was an astute and ruthless businessman, that much she had gathered from the little Jane was prepared to tell, her aunt’s loyalty all to her boss’s privacy, despite Lauri’s interested questioning. His ‘private’ life was a lot easier to hear about; often in the gossip columns, Alexander Blair seemed to change his women at regular intervals, each one seeming to last an average of two to three months. Until he tired of them, no doubt. Her brief meeting with him this morning had shown her that he was a man people rarely said no to.

She wondered what he would look like when he wasn’t furiously angry or being tauntingly sarcastic. Very handsome, with a somehow earthy quality, a hinted-at sensuality in the fullness of his bottom lip and the very deep blue of his eyes. Yes, there was no doubt that if he set out to be charming Alexander Blair could charm anyone.

Except her! She wouldn’t ever be charmed by that insufferable—

‘Hey, sleepyhead!’ a voice broke into her thoughts. ‘I’ve spoken to you twice and you haven’t heard a word I’ve said.’

Lauri looked ruefully at Diane, one of her workmates in the typing pool. They had apparently been sharing the same mirror for the last five minutes or so as they tidied themselves before the start of the day, although Lauri had been unaware of it, her attention being solely on Alexander Blair. Drat the man!

‘Did you ask your aunt about Mr Blair?’ Diane was obviously repeating the question, her tone patient.

Lauri frowned at the mention of the man she had just discovered she disliked intensely. ‘Ask her what?’

Her friend sighed. ‘Whether he’s coming back today. The place has been dead without him this last month.’

As far as Lauri was concerned it could have remained dead, she could certainly have done without this morning’s incident. ‘He’s back,’ she told Diane firmly.

Her blue eyes widened. ‘He is?’

‘Mm. I just—I saw him in the car park just now.’ She didn’t want to tell anyone she had just made a nasty dent in his beautiful car. She would never live down such notoriety. And Jane would be furious.

‘How does he look?’ Diane asked eagerly as they walked down the corridor to their office.

‘Tanned,’ Lauri grimaced.

‘Well, of course he’s tanned, he’s been in America the last four weeks. What I meant is is he still as good-looking as ever, the sexy devil?’

‘I suppose so. And I thought he went to America to work, not to get himself a sun-tan,’ she added bitchily.

Diane gave her a teasing look. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve actually found someone who doesn’t think our boss is the dishiest male ever!’

‘You’ve found her—me,’ Lauri confirmed.

The other girl’s eyes widened. ‘Didn’t you think he was gorgeous?’ she gasped.

‘He was all right,’ Lauri admitted grudgingly.

‘All right!’ Diane sounded scandalised. ‘My God, girls,’ she addressed the other typists in the room, ‘meet someone who’s immune to the sexy Alexander.’

‘You can’t be!’

‘Surely not, Lauri!’

‘I think he’s lovely.’

‘His eyes are just mesmerising,’ someone else sighed.

Lauri let the outraged comments pass over her, unaffected by her colleagues’ obvious disbelief in her disinterest. ‘I suppose his eyes are quite fascinating,’ she
admitted with remembered attraction. Deep blue eyes they had been, fringed by long dark lashes. Yes, they could be called mesmerising, very mesmerising, if they weren’t looking at you as if you were a particularly obnoxious insect that had wandered into his vicinity. How Jane could work in such close contact with him she just couldn’t imagine, although Jane had always maintained that he was a fair man to work for.

‘Big of you to admit it,’ Jeannie teased.

Lauri took the cover off her typewriter. ‘You can’t deny the truth. But looks aren’t everything.’

‘Don’t tell me looks don’t enter into you dating Daryl, because I just won’t believe it.’ Diane sat at the adjoining desk. ‘A big blond, muscular Canadian,’ she teased.

Lauri blushed. ‘He’s intelligent too,’ she defended the boy she had been dating the last couple of weeks, a Canadian of twenty who did temporary work to subsidise his travelling around the world. At the moment he was working in the Accounts Department here.

‘Oh, I’m glad about that,’ her friend laughed. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s really nice, very good-looking, but you must have noticed those looks before you ever found out what a nice person he is.’

‘Mm … I suppose so. But Alexander Blair doesn’t appear to me to be a nice person.’ Far from it!

‘That’s not what his girl-friends think.’

‘Doesn’t the fact that it’s girls, in the plural, tell you anything?’

Diane laughed. ‘Oh yes, it tells me something.’

‘I didn’t mean that!’ Lauri said impatiently.

‘I did,’ Diane laughed again.

‘I’m going to do some work,’ Lauri said crossly. ‘Before Carly starts chucking her weight about,’ she added mischievously.

‘I heard that,’ her supervisor called out, a young girl
of twenty who ruled by friendly teamwork rather than by issuing orders.

Laui grinned before bending over her work, the subject of her not liking Alexander Blair forgotten for the moment. At least, by the other girls it was; she was still seething at his high-handedness.

She met Daryl for lunch as usual, and they went to the local Wimpy bar, where Lauri bit hungrily into her delicious hamburger. ‘Mm, I needed that,’ she sat back with a grin. ‘Is there something wrong with yours?’ she noticed he didn’t appear to be enjoying it.

‘It’s all right.’ His Canadian drawl was very noticeable. ‘I’m just not hungry,’ he pushed his plate away.

Lauri frowned, her green eyes troubled. ‘What is it, Daryl? What’s wrong?’

‘You know what’s wrong,’ he told her moodily. ‘Although you don’t seem to give a damn. I go to Ireland at the end of the week and—’

‘And I’m not going with you,’ she said patiently. ‘I’ve told you before, I don’t want to go.’

‘But if you don’t come with me I won’t see you again.’

‘You don’t have to leave, Daryl,’ she pointed out reasonably. ‘You can always stay here.’

He sighed. ‘My job at Blair’s finishes on Friday. Besides, I’ve already got my fare to Ireland booked, it was booked long before I even met you.’

‘I’m not going with you, Daryl, so you might as well stop sulking and eat your lunch.’

His hand moved to caress hers as it lay on her denim-clad thigh. ‘I can’t think of food when I’m going to be parted from you at the end of the week.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she laughed lightly. ‘I’ve only known you a couple of weeks, we hardly know one another well enough to—to—’

‘I’m not asking for more than a travelling companion,’
he persisted. ‘We would have separate accommodation.’

‘At the beginning,’ she said knowingly. ‘I’m not that naïve, Daryl. How long do you think it would be before you suggested we save the expense of the second room?’

His tanned golden skin coloured a ruddy hue and he looked slightly sheepish. ‘I never thought of you as a prude.’

‘Oh, not that!’ she laughed again. ‘You won’t get round me by issuing that sort of challenge. I’m not a prude, but neither am I a sleep-around. We’ve had a good couple of weeks, had fun together, let’s leave it at that, hmm?’

‘I don’t want to.’ His hand tightened on hers. ‘Come with me, Lauri. Please!’

She sighed. ‘I told you, no.’ She pulled her hand out of his. ‘My aunt would never agree anyway,’ she added, as if that ended the matter. She would never go against Jane, loving and respecting her too much to hurt her.

Daryl scowled. ‘She acts more like your mother than your aunt.’

Daryl and Jane had only met once, one evening when Daryl had returned Lauri home rather late, and her aunt had shown her displeasure with the lateness of the hour. They had taken an instant dislike to each other, and although Jane never tried to influence her in her choice of friends Lauri had been conscious of her aunt’s disapproval of Daryl.

‘In a way she is, she’s brought me up since I was seven,’ Lauri bristled angrily on behalf of her aunt. ‘And we were late that night. She had a right to be cross with us.’

‘It was a Saturday, Lauri. You didn’t have to go to work in the morning. And we’d been to a party.’

‘It was three o’clock in the morning!’

He smiled. ‘Some of the parties I go to back home go on until morning.’

‘They do here too, and I’ve been to a couple of them, but not without telling Jane first.’

‘She isn’t your keeper!’ he said resentfully.

Lauri sighed. ‘I’m not going to argue with you, Daryl, not at this late date in our friendship. We’ll just have to agree to differ about the loyalty and respect I owe my aunt.’

‘We weren’t talking about respect. I was just—’

‘Let’s forget it, Daryl! Please. I’m not going to Ireland or anywhere else with you, and it’s my decision. Now, where are you taking me tonight?’

‘Are you sure you still want to go anywhere with me?’ he said moodily.

‘Don’t be a bad loser,’ she chided, aware that his usual good humour and bland good looks had made him some easy conquests on his travels. She just didn’t intend being one of them. ‘Now eat your food, we have to be back in a few minutes.’

‘I don’t want it.’ He obviously still hadn’t got over his sulk.

‘Moody,’ she teased. ‘Hey, I know, we could go to the cinema this evening. There’s a good film on at the Odeon.’

‘If you want to.’ They moved to pay their bill before going outside.

Lauri looked up at him. ‘Don’t you want to know what the film is?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Now look,’ she snapped, ‘we can finish this right now if you’re going to continue behaving childishly. And it
is
childish to sulk just because you can’t have your own way.’

‘You would like Ireland, I know you would.’

‘I’m sure I would,’ she agreed. ‘But I’m still not going. I have no desire to travel. Maybe one day I will have, but not right now.’

‘I’m going to miss you.’

She grinned. ‘I’ll bet—for the first five minutes. Just think of all those Irish colleens and I’m sure you’ll soon cheer up.’

A reluctant smile lightened his features. ‘Aren’t you ever serious?’

‘Not if I can help it,’ she admitted. ‘Steve is the same. We have some lovely arguments.’

‘But not with Jane.’

‘No one argues with Jane. She’s always cool and calm. Perhaps that’s why she gets on with our bossy Mr Blair,’ she mused. ‘She’d just soothe his temper away.’

‘Bossy? Temper?’ Daryl frowned. ‘You speak like one who knows, and yet I thought your aunt never discussed him with you.’

‘He’s back, you know.’

‘Oh, I know. The whole building has been buzzing with it all morning. But as far as I know he hasn’t set foot outside his office. I wouldn’t recognise him if I saw him.’

Neither had she! ‘He was away when we both started with the firm,’ she evaded.

‘Then how do you know he’s bossy and has a temper?’

Lauri shrugged. ‘It stands to reason.’

‘I don’t see why.’

‘Of course it does. The man’s used to his own way—look at all the women he has, and he’s bound to be bossy being in such a position of authority.’

Daryl shook his head. ‘It doesn’t follow.’

‘All right, so it doesn’t follow,’ she snapped impatiently, feeling as if she had done nothing but talk about Alexander Blair all day. ‘Are we going to the
cinema this evening or not?’ she changed the subject.

‘We are.’ He opened the lift doors for her, waiting until it began moving before turning to her.

Lauri knew of his intention to kiss her as soon as his arm went about her shoulders, and she lifted her head invitingly. She had always found his kisses pleasant, never allowing him to do any more than kiss her, and she found this lengthy caress as pleasurable as usual.