Part 1 (1/2)

PAST Pa.s.sION.

By: PENNY JORDAN

CHAPTER ONE.

As nicola climbed out of her small car, she smoothed down the skirt of her neat suit before glancing anxiously towards the offices.

It was ten to nine, and the car park was almost full; today the new owner of the company would be making his first official appearance.

Nicola had been on holiday when the shockingly unexpected negotiations for the take-over of her employers had taken place, but her work mates had been full of gossip about what had gone on.

It was well known locally that Alan Hardy, the owner of the small building firm, had virtually lost interest in the business following the tragic death of his son, but no one had expected that he would sell out to someone from outside the area, to someone, moreover, to whom apparently the acquisition of their small local company was merely another addition to his growing business empire.

Her own job was safe enough, or so she had been a.s.sured. She had worked for Alan as his secretary-c.u.m-PA ever since she had returned from the city over eight years ago, and very much enjoyed her work, even though lately she had found herself having to double-check almost everything her boss gave her to do.

Some of the staff were angered by the way Alan had kept the take-over a secret from them; she herself had known nothing of what was going on but, instead of anger, she felt sympathy both for Alan and for his wife, Mary.

The death of their son in a car accident had destroyed their lives and their hopes for the future. It was only natural that Alan should have lost heart. lost interest in the business.

She sighed faintly to herself. She had been feeling reasonably confident about her ability to work in harmony with her prospective new boss, whom she had been informed would probably put a manager in charge of the day-to-day running of the firm, only actually visiting them himself once a week, so that in effect she would be working for the manager he appointed; but over the weekend, Gordon,”her boyfriend, had expressed unflattering doubts about her suitability as the right kind of secretary for a high-flying entrepreneur.

His comments had made her angry, but she had suppressed her feelings.

Gordon was the kind of man who had a rather old-fas.h.i.+oned att.i.tude towards women. Nicola blamed his mother for that. She was one of those women who, while appearing to be helpless and clinging, was in fact extremely manipulative and domineering.

Depressingly, she was beginning to be conscious more and more these days that the time she spent with Gordon often left her feeling irritated and at odds with him.

They had known each other almost all their lives, although it was only in the last two years that they had started seeing one another on a regular basis.

At Christmas, Gordon had made noises about them considering getting engaged, but she had avoided the issue.

The trouble was that living in such a small community made it difficult for a single woman to enjoy a varied social life without the addition of a male partner.

Single women over the age of twenty-five and under the age of thirty were looked upon with a certain degree of suspicion by some of the local diehards.

Nicola had her women friends, of course-girls she had been at school with who had since married and produced families--and, if she was honest, she preferred the fun she had in their company to the often dull dates she had with Gordon.

Her mother had already commented rather drily that a lifetime of Gordon might seem a very long time indeed, and Nicola was inclined to agree with her, but Gordon represented respectability and old-fas.h.i.+oned morality, and she had her own reasons for believing that she needed those attributes m her life--that Gordon, no matter how dull and boring he might be, no matter how difficult she might find it to get on with his mother, was someone she was very, very lucky to have in her life.

As she walked towards the office-block, pleasantly acknowledging the 'good mornings' of the men in the yard, while ignoring the way they looked at her legs, she reflected uncomfortably that, like her clothes, her relations.h.i.+p with Gordon was part of her life--not because it gave her pleasure but because it made her feel safe.

She was well past the men now, but just as she was about to open the door to her office-block she heard one of them laughing.

Immediately her face flushed. She had no idea what might have provoked their laughter; it might not even have been her, but the instant she heard it she wanted to run. to hide herself away somewhere.

It was ridiculous, this burden she carried, which she could never allow herself to put down, and all because of one mistake, one silly adolescent error of judgement. It didn't matter how many times she tried to reason with herself that that one mistake did not mean she had to punish herself for the rest of her life; she had never been able to put it out of her mind and ignore it.

In her moments of deepest despair and misery she even wondered if it might not be worthwhile trying to talk to someone about it; but then the old, familiar panic would come back, and she would remember how hard she had worked to make sure that no one, but no one knew what she had done, how hard she had worked to make sure that no one, especially no man who looked at her, could ever, ever possibly think of her as the kind of woman who.

She realised as she hurried towards her office that she was actually physically trembling.

Of all days, why on earth did she have to pick today to start worrying about the past? Today she needed to be at her most alert, her most efficient, her most impressive. The one thing she had heard about the new man was that there was no room in his organisation for the unproductive or uncommitted worker. He had very high standards, apparently, and expected those who worked for him to match them.

Needless to say there had already been a ground swell of mutterings among the work force about the potential havoc he could wreak.

Nicola didn't need anyone to tell her that the firm wasn't very productive, that its profits were very, very small indeed; or that its work force was not efficiently deployed. that the foreman in charge of the men often turned a blind eye to certain malpractices which were expensive to his employers. The only reason they were still in business was really because in this rural area they were the only reasonably large builders around.

Their small market town served a large country area, and until very recently there had simply not been the business potential to attract any compet.i.tion.

Now, though, things were changing; people were moving into the area and buying up old property, empty farms and barns, and Nicola suspected that, if they had not been taken over, a rival firm would soon have set up in business, putting them into liquidation.

Many of the other employees, though, either failed to accept or did not want to accept this, and consequently the fact that the firm had been taken over was a cause of much resentment.

The new man had been described to Nicola as 'full of himself, a real townee, smart as paint'.

Only a couple of her co-employees had had anything good to say for him; one of them was her a.s.sistant, a pretty eighteen-year-old fresh out of college, who had told her enthusiastically that Mr. Hunt was really good-looking for someone so old, and that, if it wasn't for her Danny, she might have quite fancied him.

Nicola had laughed a little at this. She knew from what Alan had told her that Matthew Hunt was, in fact, not yet thirty-five years old.

Not just what one would expect, was how Alan had described him.

”A.

shrewd businessman, but unconventional. ”

He certainly was shrewd. Her own father had confirmed that. He was in banking in the City, preferring to commute to and from his office rather than to live somewhere more urban, and it had been he who had filled Nicola in with all the background details of her new employer's professional life. Not much was known about his private life other than the fact that he wasn't married.

One of her own married friends had teased her about this, remarking, ”Well, he can only be an improvement on Gordon. Heavens, Nicki, love!

He's so boring it just isn't true. I mean, these days we all know that there's more to a good and enduring relations.h.i.+p than world-shattering, exciting s.e.x. Real reliability is one thing, but Gordon is another. And as for his mother. ”

Nicola had been forced to laugh. Anna wasn't known for her tactful ness and tended to say what she thought. Nicola hadn't been offended; she knew that her friend meant well although, as far as she was concerned, the idea of her new boss as a possible source of new romance in her life was completely out of the question.

And anyway, from what she had heard about him, he was the kind of man who no doubt liked the women he dated to be of the high-profile, physically attractive type, which she most certainly was not.

As he hurried into the cloakroom, she gave her reflection a hasty, disapproving glance in the small mirror.

She wasn't very tall, five feet four, with a slender frame, delicate wrist and ankle bones. From her mother she had inherited her fine pale skin and her dark hair, and from her father her surprisingly deep blue eyes.

It was an unusual combination, and one which, together with the delicacy of her facial bone- structure and the soft, feminine fullness of her mouth, earned her second and even third glances from appreciative males.

Those members of the male s.e.x who knew her, though, soon learned that the apparent sensuality of her face and figure were not borne out by her manner.

”Repressed' was how some of the more unkind ones described her, generally after their advances had been rebuffed. Others, less critical and with out a wounded ego to add malice to their comments, said she was rather quiet and withdrawn.

Nicola knew quite well what men thought of her. She didn't mind, though; in fact, she preferred them to think of her as prim and unavailable. Once things had been different. Once she She swallowed hard, s.n.a.t.c.hing up her bag and heading for the door. It was five to nine and she had far more important things to worry about than the past.