A Business Engagement Read online

  Or did she feel so flat because she would not be bumping into Carter that week? Good heavens, how ridiculous! What in creation had put that thought into her head? As if she were missing him—she was missing him like a sore tooth!

  Ashlyn promptly pulled herself together and pushed him from her thoughts, and, as her phone rang again, discovered that she was not as underworked as she had thought.

  In fact, by five on Friday, she realised, with the exception of Monday, she had spent a busy week. The world and his wife seemed to have dropped by for either tea or coffee, and her phone had been earning its keep. She had met Joseph Fulford, and had remembered his face from the board meetings she had attended. He was another charming man, which still made her feel that everyone at Hamilton Holdings was nice—bar one. But she had decided not to think about him!

  Oddly, that weekend seemed to be kind of lacklustre. Indeed, it was a pleasure to get back to her office on Monday—even if her job was only temporary. And she had never felt more alive when, late that afternoon, Carter stopped by her office.

  ‘Anything I should know about?’ he enquired, dark eyes taking in her smartly clad person and resting on her pale, translucent skin.

  ‘Vezio Morini rang,’ she informed him, thinking no man had the right to be as good-looking as Carter, and so self-assured with it. ‘He—’

  ‘Business or pleasure?’

  Halted by his question, Ashlyn stared at him from wide green eyes. ‘It’s always a pleasure to speak with Vezio,’ she stated mildly, wondering what it was about this man that could instantly cause her hackles to rise. ‘But in this instance—’

  ‘Vezio?’

  ‘He asked me to use his first name. But—’

  ‘He tells me you speak Italian like a native.’

  ‘One tries,’ she shrugged, realising that of course the Italian had been in personal contact with Carter since that first call she had taken from him. But she was getting rather fed up with Carter Hamilton. ‘Look—do you want his message or not?’ she snapped.

  ‘If you can deliver it without the flowery bits!’ Carter grunted, seeming to know that, with Vezio getting personal, the call had taken three times as long as it should have.

  Ashlyn handed over the paper with the relevant details. ‘Nice to have you back,’ she murmured pithily—and nearly went into heart failure when, just before he took the paper from her and turned about, she definitely saw the corners of his splendid mouth twitch. Good heavens, her acid had amused him!

  She was still coming to terms with the astonishing fact that Carter Hamilton had a sense of humour the next morning, when she received a very humourless call from someone the company dealt with, who thought he had been treated very shabbily.

  Her information was scant, save knowing that the man’s name was Philip Corbett. Since he had been put through to her straight from the switchboard, she had no clue which board member normally dealt with him.

  ‘It’s not good enough!’ he complained. ‘Anyone would think you don’t want my business, the way I’ve been treated.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s not that at all, Mr Corbett,’ Ashlyn assured him. She had no idea what his business was,.but felt certain that they were going to lose him if she didn’t do something about it. ‘Are you free for lunch?’ she heard herself enquire before she could think about it.

  By lunchtime she had been through a whole welter of should she, shouldn’t shes. And because most people on the top floor were occupied with other business that day, she had not been able to trace who Philip Corbett’s contact at Hamilton’s was.

  She left her office to go and meet him, unable to see what else she could do. Plainly he felt slighted. So in the interests of making him feel better—Dammit, she was a board member, wasn’t she?

  Ashlyn owned that her confidence had grown and grown since that day she had invited Donald Yates to lunch—and that meal had gone excellently. Donald had been a charming man.

  Philip Corbett was not a charming man. He turned out to be the type of man with whom she had nothing in common—and there was definitely something about him which she did not take to.

  But if one did business only with the people one liked then one wouldn’t get very far. So, having invited him to an expensive but different restaurant from the one where she had lunched with Donald Yates—she somehow did not want to risk seeing Carter again—she smiled whenever she could, and did her best to placate Philip Corbett.

  ‘Every company has an overdraft,’ he explained petulantly. ‘And naturally my credit’s as good as the next man’s.’

  ‘Of course,’ she offered gently, not knowing the first thing about it.

  ‘But, with Hamilton Holdings issuing instructions to Dowell Pneumatics—one of your companies, as you know—not to renew my contract, I’m about to go under—lose my firm that I’ve worked so hard to build up.’

  ‘That would be dreadful,’ she agreed, and started to feel extremely sorry for him. He reminded her of her father. Oh, not in manner by any means, but like her father this man had toiled all hours. Despite her father’s hard work, he had lost his firm—even if he had been handsomely compensated—and it seemed a point of honour to her that Philip Corbett should not lose his.

  ‘If you’ll leave it with me, I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out,’ she smiled, still not liking him any better, but sympathising with his predicament.

  ‘Perhaps we can meet again?’ he suggested, his shifty eyes making a meal of her bosom.

  She felt uncomfortable and her sympathy dipped—she dragged it up again. ‘I’ll phone you to let you know what I’ve been able to arrange,’ she smiled.

  ‘I didn’t mean meet to discuss business,’ he leered—and Ashlyn couldn’t pay the bill fast enough.

  Managing to avoid all further innuendo, she was greatly relieved to leave the restaurant. ‘We’ll be in touch as soon as we possibly can,’ she promised, and, hailing a taxi, she saw him into it.

  She summoned another taxi for herself, having half decided that never again was she going to take a client of Hamilton Holdings out to lunch.

  By the time she had reached her office, however, she was already starting to change her mind. So, fair enough, she hadn’t enjoyed this particular lunchtime, but it had never been part of her brief to enjoy herself, had it? Her job was to make clients who were on the boards of other companies feel valued when the people they wanted to speak with weren’t around.

  In actual fact—she caught herself up short—her brief was to do that job for Carter—the other board members at Hamilton Holdings had just sort of crept in. As, she realised, taking her chair behind her desk and thinking about it, Philip Corbett had crept in. Only then did she see that he was not on any board of any company that Hamilton Holdings dealt with per se. But, as the owner of a business, he had decided he wasn’t getting anywhere with Dowell Pneumatics, so had contacted their parent company.

  As her father would have done, Philip Corbett had gone to the top. The fact that he had got her was not going to be his misfortune, she determined, and started to feel angry on his behalf. She wished someone had been there to smooth over things for her father. Picking up her phone, she consulted her list of internal numbers and stabbed out a few digits.

  ‘Yes!’

  Grief, Carter didn’t sound too approachable! ‘Are you busy?’ she asked. Oh, Lord, what a stupid question. He’d just got back from a week away—of course he was busy! She felt inadequate, and that made her even more angry. ‘Can I come and see you?’ she asked shortly.

  ‘You’d better come now before you explode!’

  The line went dead. Swine! So why did she take out her compact and check that she looked all right? Oh, for heaven’s sake. Impatient with herself, impatient with him, Ashlyn was halfway to Carter’s office before she realised that he hadn’t asked who she was. But, as if he already knew, and was certainly aware that she was cross about something, he had said, ‘You’d better come now before you explode!’


  She had never been inside his office before. But not many seconds later she was tapping on his door, and, not waiting to be invited, she entered a very large, airy room. As well as housing office furnishings, it also held several sofas and chairs. She supposed it could be less formal than the boardroom, should Carter want a friendly conference with any of the people he dealt with.

  But she was not there to admire the decor, and noted that Carter had risen to his feet as she went in.

  ‘Take a seat, Ashlyn,’ he invited calmly, his dark eyes seeming to penetrate her very soul.

  ‘This won’t take long,’ she replied, her eyes going to the mound of complicated-looking paperwork on his desk. She took a hard chair; her legs were suddenly feeling a little bit shaky. She was glad that Carter resumed his own seat. But it was without saying a word; his eyes were watchful and he waited for her to continue. ‘I’ve just had lunch with a man called Philip Corbett,’ she began, and knew at once when Carter frowned that he knew of him.

  ‘He’s a friend?’ he enquired shortly.

  ‘I’d never met him before today,’ she answered, a touch snappily. ‘He rang and was put through to me. H—’

  ‘He invited you to lunch?’

  She was telling this, not Carter! ’I invited him,’ she corrected, and could see straight away from the firming of Carter’s mouth that he thought she had overstepped the mark. Well, she didn’t care—something had to be done for the man.

  ‘That’s part of your job, is it?’

  ‘You do it!’ she countered. ‘You entertain people we do business with. I was with you that day—’

  Her argument got lost when, slicing across what she was saying, and as sharp as a tack with his assumptions, he interjected, ‘Did you invite Donald Yates out the other Friday too?’

  ‘Well, yes, I did,’ she owned. And, for Donald’s sake, felt she had to further confess, ‘Only he wouldn’t let me pay.’ And, finding she had been issued with the most diabolical conscience—one she definitely did not want—she then blurted out, ‘I used your name to get a table.’

  He was not impressed. He grunted and then snarled, ‘You know he’s married!’

  ‘Philip C-?’

  ‘Yates—Donald Yates!’ he corrected her sharply.

  My stars, he was the most annoying, difficult . . . ‘And has a daughter my age!’ she snapped.

  ‘How old are you?’

  She’d thought he knew everything! Surprise, surprise! ‘Twenty-two. Look, we’re getting away from the point!’

  ‘The point being that you feel, as a member of my board, that you can take out to lunch anybody you please.’

  ‘You appointed me PR extraordinaire!’ she flashed back, her green eyes sparking.

  Carter stared at her, his eyes taking in the pale pink of anger tinging her cheeks, before his glance steadied on her eyes. ‘You said it,’ he drawled, and she was sure he was mocking her—and that made her madder than ever.

  ‘Why are Dowell Pneumatics refusing to renew his contract?’ she challenged on a splutter of outrage.

  ‘For one—his company’s going bust.’

  ‘Well, of course it is!’ she flew. ‘If we’re not willing to...’ Her voice faded when she saw from the slight narrowing of Carter’s eyes that he wasn’t taking too kindly to having decisions which had been made at top level queried. Her anger started to ebb—perhaps she was being impertinent. Then she thought of her father—even if he had ended up most financially sound. ‘Couldn’t we—couldn’t we reconsider?’ she asked.

  Carter was already shaking his head. ‘We’re talking millions here, Ashlyn,’ he told her evenly. ‘But, that apart, the man’s a crook. We want nothing more to do with him.’

  ‘He’s a crook?’ she queried, her eyes going saucer-wide.

  ‘I’ve had him investigated. Trust me. We’ve made the right decision. Dowell Pneumatics made a grave error of judgement in ever dealing with him.’

  ‘Oh,’ she gasped, more glad than ever of the chair beneath her.

  She thought Carter’s look softened a little, but was mistaken, she knew, because he was hard through to the core. That much was evidenced in his cool, ‘Might I suggest that in future you’re more careful about whom you take to lunch?’ Ashlyn glared at him, realising she had just had her wrist slapped. She didn’t like it, and felt she hated him. She was totally unprepared for the alert intelligence in his eyes and his sharp words when he abruptly challenged, ‘He asked for a date, didn’t he?’

  ‘What if he did?’ she retorted, still smarting from Carter’s rebuke, and finding that she refused to take any more.

  ‘So he did!’ he snarled, and went barking on, ‘I assume he knows we do business from the boardroom, not the bedroom!’

  Instantly Ashlyn was on her feet. She wanted to slit Carter’s throat! He was standing too when, so angry that she didn’t know how she stopped herself from launching herself over the desk at him, ‘For your information, Hamilton,’ she blazed, ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Not on the first date?’ He seemed furious too, and hell-bent on going for her jugular.

  ‘Nor on the tenth!’ she retorted, acting on fury, not brain power.

  She only realised how unthinking she’d been, how goaded by him she had become, and what she had revealed, when, as sharp as ever with his calculations, all fury went from him and Carter exclaimed, ‘Good God! You’re a virgin!’

  He was quick—too quick! She hated him some more. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ she challenged, her chin tilted defiantly.

  Carter surveyed her silently for some moments, but only to remark mildly, ‘No need to be defensive about it.’

  ‘I am not being defensive!’ she flew back, flustered, maddened, and hating the sound of her voice rising.

  He looked deep into her eyes, then his glance moved down to her mouth. ‘Those eyes, that mouth say you’re not frigid, so don’t worry about—’

  He was the limit! ‘I’m not worried about anything!’ she shrieked. His nerve! His... Words failed her. She calmed down an iota—was she really standing here having this conversation? And with him? ‘Oh, stuff it!’ she erupted, and did what she should have done a full minute ago. She spun about and got out of there.

  Ashlyn was still fuming five minutes later. Pig, pig, double pig! Ye gods, what was it about that man? She played back in her mind the conversation she’d had with him and she still didn’t believe the last part of it. His diabolical nerve! ‘Don’t worry about—’ Who the hell did he think he was—some comforting agony uncle? Swine! That’d be the day when she went to him for advice. Though, when it did come to that sort of thing, without a doubt he was an expert!

  Abruptly Ashlyn turned her thoughts away. Thinking of him and his women gave her a peculiar sensation in the pit of her stomach. She concentrated instead on the first part of their conversation.

  By the sound of it, Philip Corbett’s company had been thoroughly investigated, found to be up to no good, and any business dealings had been immediately terminated. Hamilton’s, as she was coming to know, would not touch anything that was not one hundred per cent above board.

  So where did that leave her? She had been reprimanded when Carter had told her to be more careful whom she took to lunch in future. But he hadn’t told her to leave, or thrown her off the board. Was that being fair-minded on his part, or was he waiting for her to make a more concrete kind of mistake before he told her, Oh, dear, what a shame—byee?

  An hour later, Ashlyn had started to worry that, even though Philip Corbett had deliberately misled her by not giving her the full facts concerning his dealings with them, she nevertheless had given him a promise that they would be in touch soon—and that promise would have to be broken.

  She toyed briefly with the idea of sending him a personal note to the effect that her efforts had proved fruitless—but against that she did not know whether anything she wrote might count against her.

  In fact, she realised hopelessly, in spite of her confidence having boomed i
n the two weeks she had been at Hamilton Holdings, she still knew less than nothing—about anything.

  Having been furiously angry, with her adrenalin soaring, Ashlyn was on the edge of hitting the deepest trough of despair when the phone on her desk rang. It was the switchboard. ‘A Mr Todd Pilkington is on the line. He says it’s personal. Will you take the call, Miss Ainsworth?’

  Her spirits lifted. ‘Oh, yes, please,’ she replied. ‘Todd! How are you?’ she smiled down the phone when they were connected.

  ‘Wish I’d got that kind of welcome from the girl I tried to date last night!’ Todd answered, and Ashlyn laughed—and at that precise moment her office door opened and Carter Hamilton came in. Her smile died; Todd was still talking, but she heard not a word. Carter’s expression was as unsmiling as ever—she guessed that either she was in trouble again or Carter had been out and, as he was passing, had looked in to see if she’d taken any calls on his behalf. ‘So Susannah said she wasn’t keen, but that she’d go if you’d go.’ Ashlyn flicked her glance away from Carter and tuned in again to Todd.

  ‘Er—sorry, Todd. Did you mean tonight?’ she queried, realising that some of the group were going somewhere and that Todd was doing the organising.

  ‘Of course tonight! I’ll pick you up at eight. Just say yes, and I’ll get back to Susannah.’

  ‘Eight, tonight,’ she repeated, her wits slightly scattered. ‘Yes, I’d love to.’ She made herself concentrate—difficult with Carter standing there glowering and waiting impatiently for her to finish what was so obviously a personal call. ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ she smiled—and replaced the receiver with no idea about what she had committed herself to.

  ‘Anything for me?’ Carter questioned grimly before she could draw another breath—plainly he was a man disinclined to wait another moment.

  ‘Nothing!’ she answered in kind, and weathered his arctic look. But, just as he turned to the door, she found her conscience getting the better of her. ‘Er...’ He halted, turned, stern-faced, and waited for her to continue. The words wouldn’t come. At least, not until he raised his left hand and deliberately looked at the watch on his wrist. Diabolical swine! One of these days... ‘I promised Philip Corbett we’d be in touch as soon as we possibly could,’ she stated flatly.