Heart On Fire Part 2

Claudia could return the compliment. She did not like the other woman much, either.

"She's one of your girls!" Ellis Lefevre drawled indifferently. "My secretary has gone down with flu and I have a ma.s.s of work to get through while I'm here, so I asked your secretariat to send up someone to do the typing." He sounded far from enthusiastic about Claudia, and the other woman began smiling again.

"Oh, dear, I'm afraid quite a few of our own staff have got this vicious type of flu that is going around, so we're short-staffed and can't always provide our best girls for the moment. I hope she's doing the work adequately, though?"

Z~.

Stiff with indignation, Claudia pretended to be engrossed in her work and unaware of what they were saying. She had never once set eyes on this girl--Who on earth could she be? Ellis Lefevre had called her Estelle--but the name meant nothing to Claudia. Could she be the daughter of one of the directors? Or a major shareholder in the hotel company? Claudia was sure she was not the manager's daughter, because she had to be in her mid-twenties and the manager himself was not much more than forty.

She kept talking as if she knew all about the hotel, and how it was run, though--did she work somewhere in the building? This was a very large hotel and there were still many departments of it with which Claudia was not yet acquainted. If she hadn't yet run across this Estelle it didn't mean she didn't work here.

Ellis shrugged.

"She had better do a good job!" he said, turning away, his eyes on his watch. Claudia gave him a look which should have gone right through his shoulder-blades, but of which he seemed blithely unconscious.

Somebody rang the suite doorbell and as if he had been expecting it Ellis Lefevre was already on his way to answer it before Claudia actually heard it.

"Oh, no, who can that I~e?" groaned the dark girl "Darling, don't let anyone start up one of your boring business discussions. My father will be sending out search parties if we aren't downstairs soon!"

Ellis didn't answer; he had disappeared into the hallway of the suite.

"Thanks," his voice said to someone. There was a murmur in reply, and Ellis said crisply, "No, thank you, nothing else." The suite door closed and Ellis walked back into the room, pushing in front of him a table loaded with food.

"What's this?" said the dark girl in surprise. "Darling, you hadn't forgotten we were lunching together?"

"No, it's for her. I don't want her wasting time going out for lunch so I told them to send something up for her."

Claudia's teeth met. He talked about her as if she couldn't hear him; was deaf, dumb and blind--a robot, perhaps! Not human, anyway, and with no feelings or rights. The cool arrogance made her want to hit him.

The dark girl lifted a silver cover and phlled a half-bottle of wine out of an ice bucket, her eyebrows lifting.

"For her? Ellis, you must be heaven to work for! Or didn't you explain that the meal was only for your secretary?"

Claudia shot her a fiery look from under lowered lashes. Now she was doing it! She would love to tell them both what she thought of them, but she didn't, of course. She kept on working, her face carefully blank.

Estelle began walking to the door.

"Come on, darling! I'm starving, looking at all this lovely food!"

Ellis Lefevre looked at Claudia and said, "Eat your meal or it will be ruined." Before she could answer he was on his way out of the suite. She heard their voices, then the outer door closed and she was alone again. It seemed very quiet and she felt oddly depressed, she couldn't think why. Maybe because she had been in a rage a moment ago and had had to bottle it up, so that now she felt flat and bored. She felt lonely too; she felt as if she were on a desert island.

She certainly wasn't hungry, but she got up to investigate the food on the table, lifting the silver cover, as Estelle had done, and finding that Ellis had ordered her a large sole, with prawns in a creamy sauce on the side of the plate. Or had he simply told the kitchen to send up something for her, and had they chosen the dish? She put the cover back, to keep the foot hot, and went to the bathroom to wash, then came back and sat down to eat. It was boring eating alone, but the luxury of the beautifully laundered damask napkin and tablecloth, the white roses in a small, thin gla.s.s vase, the white wine and the elegantly presented food, certainly helped to fight her strange depression.

She loved the avocado and fresh orange, thinly sliced in a fan with a garnish of feathery dill; the sole, served with a trio of nouvelle cuisine vegetables, crisply cooked and sculpted into shapes, with which she drank her one gla.s.s of wine. She did not want to be too sleepy to work, and knew that wine in the middle of the day would make her sleepy. She didn't hurry the meal; she took her time, and finished with a little fresh fruit, followed by hot strong coffee from a vacuum jug.

Afterwards she pushed the table back 'into the hall of the suite, but the outer door was still locked, so she left it there and went back to work.

It was late afternoon before Ellis Lefevre returned, and Claudia had almost fTmished her task. He paused in the doorway of the sitting-room to look at her, and she nerved herself to defy him, to force him to let her go home.

CHAPTER TWO.

"I SEE you enjoyed your lunch--did I choose well?" Ellis Lefevre asked, giving Claudia a mocking little smile, as though knowing she was poised on the edge of an explosion. He didn't wait for her to answer, but went on, "I've put the table outside for room service to take away, I'll just ring them and ask them to bring up some tea. I'm very thirsty. I've been talking business endlessly and my throat is parched. Would you like some?"

"Oh ... yes ... thank you," she said, temporarily disarmed by that light approach.

He picked up the phone and dialled room service's number, one hand in his jacket pocket jingling some keys or money, his long, slim body casually' relaxed. Claudia tried to think of a polite but firm way of telling him she had to go home, but found it hard to concentrate because she was increasingly conscious of him. He might make her angry, but he was a very attractive man, and, even if she disliked what she knew of him so far, she couldn't help an instinctive reaction to the power of that masculinity.

Her eyes wandered over him. No, attractive wasn't quite the word to describe him. He wasn't handsome, or 6yen good-looking. It was the conflict of opposites in the man that made the impact. That firm, cool mouth might be as tough as blazes, but it was sensual, too; no woman would miss the potential for pa.s.sion in that full lower lip, and yet one felt that he was capable of icy control.

HF. ART ON FIRE.

Z /.

From under her lashes she watched him, wondering what might happen if that control ever snapped. She wouldn't like to be around if it did.

"Ah, room service," he said coldly.

"I wondered if you were all dead.

This is the Westmorland Suite. Yes, Mr. Lefevre. I would like tea for two, please, immediately wand will you remove the lunch table which is outside the suite doors? " He hung up and came round behind her chair and she tensed as he bent over her shoulder. to read the screen.

"How's your work coming?" His cheek lightly brushed her hair; she shifted slightly so that they no longer touched and felt his sideways glance, awareness and amus.e.m.e.nt in the look. He made no comment, merely said, "You're doing well. You should finish in half an hour, then?"

"About that," she agreed, a.s.sessing how much she still had to do.

He leaned on her desk with one hand and turned his body gracefully so that he could watch her, his grey eyes gleaming like polished silver.

Their faces were only inches apart. Claudia tried hard not to react to the way he watched her; she knew instinctively that he was taunting her, amusing himself by teasing her--perhaps because he knew she was trying not to be aware of him? His ego probably found that an unforgivable sin. She had only just met him, but one thing she was sure of--Ellis Lefevre had a high opinion of himself, and expected others to have it, too.

She made herself start talking, to break up the disturbing intimacy he had deliberately set up.

"Mr. Lefevre, I really must go home tonight. I'm expected back at six and ' " Who expects you? " he swiftly interrupted, the smile leaving his mouth and his eyes narrowing.

"My sister and brother-in-law--I told you, I live with them..."

"Over a restaurant, yes, I remember. What was it called?"

"Mirron's--it's not far from here, on the other side of Mt. James's Park, it's quite successful now, although it was hard going for a while." Pride glowed in her green eyes, because she felt as involved in the restaurant as Annette and Pierre were; she had worked hard, alongside them, over the past couple of years to help make Mirron's a success.

"Mirron's?" Ellis Lefevre's brows contracted in thought.

"I think I know the place--small, intimate, a bistro type of restaurant?

Parisian-style cooking? Mirron's--that's the name of the patron? Your brother-in-law? " "Yes, Pierre Mirron," she said, surprised and delighted that someone like Ellis Lefevre should have heard of it.

"He's a wonderful chef; he trained in Paris at several of the top hotels before coming over to London."

"Why did he come here? Because of your sister?"

"Oh, no, they only met here. Pierre came over to work for a year, just for the experience, intending to go back to France after that, but when he met Annette and married her he decided to stay in London." "She insisted on it?"

he cynically suggested. "Nothing of the kind!" Claudia said.

"In fact, I think Annette would love to live in France, but Pierre was convinced he would do better with his own restaurant over here. The struggle to get established in Paris is much harder. There's so much fierce compet.i.tion. Also, I think Pierre likes living here." She paused, realising that he had managed to talk her miles off the subject again, and frowned at him.

"Anyway, they're expecting me back to help in the restaurant, you see--I really must go at six."

"Out of the question," he said coolly, standing up and walking away.

"Are you so stupid that you can't understand a simple explanation? It is vital that you should not talk to anybody until I have made my speech, and until then you must stay here in this suite. I'm sorry if it inconveniences you, but, I a.s.sure you, you will be compensated.

Generously compensated. A bonus, I suggest? How much do you normally earn for a day's work? I'll quadruple it. " Her mouth was open to argue, but the offer took her by surprise. She stared, breathless and incredulous, her mouth still open. Ellis Lefevre turned to survey her and laughed shortly.

"I take it that you accept?"

Claudia moistened her lips, thinking hard.

"Well... What exactly...?

I mean, if I did stay up here all night. I wouldn't,. I mean. " He raised sardonic brows.

"I am not buying your body, Miss Thorburn--just your silence."

She went crimson, her eyes hating him. ,I didn't mean that! " "No?" he mocked, and he was right, of course. She had meant that; she had been trying to think of some discreet way 'of making it plain that she was not spending the night with him, only in his suite.

If she spent the night here, that was. Oh, why was she pretending?

She knew she was going to accept. Quadruple her usual payment for one day's work? A bitter little knife stabbed at hertoh, it was so easy for Ellis Lefevre to offer her that money. He wouldn't even miss it in his bank account. It was small change to him. He had no conception of what' it meant to her. He couldn't begin to understand the desperate juggling she had to do to make ends meet.

"There are three bedrooms in the suite," he Said briskly, walking away towards the sitting-room door. "Come and see, you can choose which you prefer."

Claudia followed him uncertainly. He gestured to one door, which stood open, showing an enormous, beautifully furnished bedroom with a four-poster bed in the middle of it.

"That's my room," he casually told her and did not linger but walked on to the next door, which he opened, and then opened a door opposite that. The rooms revealed were not as large as the one Ellis occupied, but they were bigger than the room Claudia had in her sister's flat.

"All the rooms are comfortable," Ellis said.

"Each has its own bathroom. I can't see why you shouldn't have a good time while you're here. I would want you to do some more work, once you've finished with the speech--a few notes, a few letters, nothing arduous, but apart from that you would be free to watch TV, listen to music, readm whatever you choose. It is only one night out of your life, after all."

Claudia stood in the doorway of one of the rooms, deliberately choosing the one which was not next door to the room Ellis occupied.

There was a key in the lock, and a bolt on the door, too.

"This looks nice," she said, liking the pink and cream of the d&or.

"Good, then that's settled," Ellis said coolly.

"Now, could you get the speech finished and printed out so that I can study it and rewrite if necessary And don't look so horrified. I don't intend to make sweeping changes, just correct any mistakes. It won't involve much work for you."

The phone rang and he walked over to answer it. Claudia went back to her keyboard and continued keying in the speech. EHis spoke in a low, quiet voice and she tried not to hear a word he said. She was giving all her attention to her work, but she was getting tired now; her back aching, her eyes weary from staring at the screen for so long.

She was dying to have a bath, slip into a kimono and relax. That was when it dawned on her. She didn't have any night clothes with her! She looked at Ellis as he put the phone down and turned away.

"It just occurred to me! I haven't a nightdress or... or anything... with me. I can't stay."

Ellis ~stared at her, his mouth hard.

"Isn't there a shop in the foyer of the hotel? They probably sell nightgowns."

"Yes, but I'd have to go down to buy one," she triumphantly pointed out, "And if I can go down to do that, I can go home."

"Quite unnecessary," he bit out.

"What size are you I'll ring down and tell them to bring up a selection for you to try on!"

Aghast, Claudia said, "No, you can't! Are you crazy? They know me, and what's more I know the girl who works there, she's the biggest gossip in the place, and she's spiteful, too. She'd be bound to think I was sleeping with you."

He considered that, frowning.

"Yes, very probably. Very well, I'll get her to bring up a selection and leave them for approval, and she need never see you. You can go into your own room and stay there until she has gone."

"Oh, it's absurd," Claudia said, but he walked to the phone and picked it up.

"Put me through to the hotel shop," he told the operator, then asked Claudia again, "What size?"

She reluctantly told him, then forced herself back to work, yet couldn't help hearing Ellis curtly telling the hotel shop manageress to bring up a selection of nightwear and lingerie, in her size, to his suite.

"Colour?" he repeated, turning his head to eye Claudia thoughtfully.

"Oh, white... Maybe pale green... No, not pink, definitely not pink."

Claudia winced. That would make the manageress think hard. What hair colour rarely looked good with pink? A lot of the staff would know that she was working up here. They knew she had red hair. What if they put two and two together, and came up with the wrong answer?

"Oh, and slippers," he said.

"Mules, black or white? You know the sort I mean... Lacy, silky things."

He was staring at Claudia's long, slim legs. She glared until he looked up to meet her angry eyes, but all he did was mouth, "What size shoe?"

She snapped back the answer and looked at her screen. She had made three stupid mistakes in one line. She went back to it, her flushed face irritated, and retyped the sentence. She was coming to the final page now, thank heavens, but she had the uneasy feeling that finishing the speech might only be the beginning of her problems.

She had just completed the entire process and was clipping the pages of each copy of the speech together when somebody rang the front doorbell. Ellis Lefevre was talking on the phone. Claudia stood up, gave him an uncertain look, and he nodded to her, then said into the phone, "Sorry, James, I have to go now, I'll talk to you again later."