Guilty Love. CHARLOTTE LAMB

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘Love you.’

      ‘I don’t deserve you, but I do love you,’ he said, his voice raw with feeling, then he hung up.

      Linzi put the phone down and put her head down on her desk, shaking. That had been a bad moment. For a minute she had thought she wasn’t going to be able to stop him going over the edge.

      She would have given notice and left this job if she had thought it would make any difference, but by the time she started to work here she’d already known the score. Barty was seeing various specialists, who had all told Linzi the same thing—nothing she did was really triggering Barty’s abnormal reactions. It wouldn’t help if she stopped working here, except for a day or two. Then he would find something else to blame her for. His dangerous swings of mood were all the result of what had happened to him during the accident, and afterwards. No matter how she tried to please and placate him those mood swings would occur, and during the bad times he would blame her and resent her.

      The most she could do to help him was be patient, deal with each moment as it hit her, and if Barty did become violent try to persuade him to take the medication his doctors provided, before he lost control altogether.

      So far she had always been able to do that. She hoped to God they never reached that stage. His doctors didn’t seem too sure whether he would improve or deteriorate. Sometimes Linzi felt so tired that she no longer cared, but she had to care. Barty needed her to care. Once he had been the strong one, taking care of her. Now it was her turn to take care of Barty.

      She lifted her head and sniffed, fumbled for a tissue from the box she kept in one of the desk drawers, wiped her face, her wet eyes, blew her nose.

      The door leading into Ritchie Calhoun’s office opened suddenly, and he strode in, stopping dead as he saw her face before she could avert it and hide the tearstains.

      He frowned across the room at her. ‘What’s wrong?’

      ‘Nothing, I’m fine. I think I’m starting a cold!’ she evaded, tossing the used tissue into her waste-paper basket.

      He stood there watching her, unconvinced; his black brows drawn together over those piercing grey eyes of his which saw too clearly.

      ‘What did your husband say when you told him you were working late?’ he asked, his tone making it obvious that he had put two and two together very accurately and didn’t like the answer. She wished he would mind his own business—he always had, until now. He had never asked so many questions before. Why was he doing it now?

      ‘He’s going to get himself a sandwich.’

      His mouth twisted. ‘Sure he can manage that?’

      ‘Don’t be sarcastic!’

      He gave her a surprised look and Linzi looked back, bristling, yet surprised by herself. She couldn’t remember ever snapping at him before.

      Drily Ritchie Calhoun said, ‘My mother brought me up to take care of myself, and anyone else who happens to come along! She used to say to me that one day my wife would thank her, but as it turned out I never got around to matrimony before she died, so she never got her thank-you. But I suppose that’s why men who expect their wives to wait on them hand and foot annoy me.’

      ‘Was your mother anything like you?’ Linzi asked curiously, and he gave her a sudden blindingly vivid smile, which astonished her. This really was a day for firsts! He had never given her a smile like that, any more than he had ever asked so many questions about her private life before.

      ‘I’d like to be able to say yes,’ he murmured with wry amusement. ‘But to be honest I don’t think so. I gather I take after my father’s side of the family. My mother was a small woman, with very straight, fine fair hair and...’ His voice breaking off, he stared at Linzi fixedly for a moment while she stared back, her blue eyes wide in puzzlement.

      ‘Yes?’ she prompted.

      ‘She looked something like you,’ Ritchie said slowly. ‘It didn’t dawn on me until just now, but it’s true. She had your build and colouring.’

      Maybe that was why had had decided on impulse to pick Linzi for his secretary although his common sense had told him that she was too young and too attractive? he thought. She had fitted some subterranean blueprint in his mind.

      Linzi was startled. ‘Really?’ Rather flattered, she smiled, her small face lighting up, and Ritchie blinked.

      ‘When you smile you look quite different,’ he said and she looked up at him, her blue eyes wide open.

      He smiled down at her, the hardness of his features softening into charm, and she said slowly, ‘So do you.’ And then an icy shiver ran down her back.

      Ritchie immediately picked up on her abrupt change of mood. ‘What is it now?’ he asked with a touch of his usual impatience.

      ‘Nothing,’ she said huskily. ‘Just a ghost walking over my grave.’

      CHAPTER TWO

      AS THE next weeks passed and summer deepened into richness, the gardens full of roses, lavender and the hum of bees, trees in full, green leaf, Linzi’s sense of uneasiness deepened, too.

      Since the afternoon when Ritchie Calhoun seemed to become curious about her and asked all those questions, their relationship had changed in an indefinable way. He began calling her Linzi, instead of Mrs York, and told her offhandedly, ‘You might as well call me Ritchie, by the way.’

      That had shaken her. When she first began working for him he’d taken care to let her know that he liked a formal boss-secretary relationship, and that had suited her, as well. It still did.

      Working every day with a man was an intimate business; you spent hours together, often alone; you couldn’t help getting to know each other well, and there were obvious risks in that, especially if your marriage was unstable and you were lonely or unhappy. She had been relieved that Ritchie Calhoun was so distant.

      It seemed to her unwise to drop that formality, but she didn’t quite like to argue over it. That might make it seem too important. So she let him call her Linzi, but when she spoke to him she usually still called him Mr Calhoun, pretending not to notice the dry look he gave her every time she did so.

      He was very busy with a project on which he’d been working for weeks. A new road was to be built to bypass a small town half an hour’s drive from Leeds. There were other construction companies competing for the contract but Ritchie felt sure he had the edge on them because it was the sort of job his firm had often handled in the past and he already had a lot of the machinery required, and a very good workforce, so he could keep his estimate low without taking the risk of cutting dangerous corners on the price of materials. If his firm was awarded the contract it would fit in very usefully with other work they had to complete during that period. It would mean, in fact, that he wouldn’t have to lay off any of the casual workers he hired for specific jobs, and Ritchie Calhoun was the sort of employer who liked to be able to offer his employees job stability.

      He might be a tough boss who insisted things were done his way, but he was popular with his men. He got his hands dirty, too; he thought nothing of working side by side with them, drinking in the pub with them, and knew all their first names. He could do any job on site and had forgotten more about building than most of them СКАЧАТЬ