Flirting with the Forbidden. Joss Wood

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      TWO

      Morgan watched as her glamorous, sophisticated mother stepped out of her office in a lemon suit, nude heels and with a perfectly straight platinum chin-length bob.

      ‘I need a decision about the jewellery for the auction,’ Morgan announced as Hannah approached them. ‘Do you have any gemstones in stock that you want me to use? What do you want me to design? Diamonds? Emeralds? Rubies? Classic or contemporary? Is that why you want me at this meeting?’

      ‘Hello to you too, darling,’ Hannah said in her driest tone. ‘How are you?’

      Morgan waved an elegant hand in the air. ‘Mum, we had coffee together this morning; you didn’t say anything then about me having to come downstairs.’

      ‘It’s a conference room, not a torture chamber, Morgan,’ Hannah replied, her tone as dry as the martinis she loved to drink. ‘Nice photo of you in the Post, by the way.’

      Since she hadn’t been out recently, Morgan wasn’t sure where she’d been photographed. ‘Uh...where was I?’

      ‘At the opening night of that new gallery in Soho.’

      Her friend Kendall’s new gallery; she’d popped in for five minutes, literally, and it couldn’t go undocumented? Sheez! But she was, very reluctantly, a part of the NYC social scene, and because she was a Moreau whenever she made an appearance she was photographed extensively. Many of those photographs ended up in the social columns and online.

      Hannah folded her arms and tapped her foot. Good grief, she recognised that look.

      ‘Morgan, it’s time we talked about you joining Moreau International in an official position.’

      Morgan sighed. ‘Has six months passed so quickly?’

      They had an agreement: Hannah was allowed to nag her about joining the company every six months. For the last twelve years they’d had the same conversation over and over again.

      ‘I’ve decided that I want you to be MI’s Public Relations and Brand Director.’

      Run me over with a bus, Morgan thought. PR and Brand Director? That was a new title. ‘Mum, I’m happy doing what I’m doing—designing jewellery. You and James are doing a fabulous job with MI. You don’t need me.’

      And she was damned if she was going to take a job away from a loyal MI employee who was way more qualified for the position than she’d ever be. And—funny, this—she actually wanted to get paid for what she did, not who she was.

      But she had to give Hannah points for being persistent. She’d been trying to get her to work for MI since she was sixteen—shortly after they’d received the happy news that Morgan was just chronically dyslexic and not selectively stupid.

      It had only taken her mother and a slew of medics, educational psychologists and shrinks to work that out. Everyone had been so pleased that they’d found the root cause of her failing marks at school, her frustration and her anger.

      The years of sheer hell she’d lived through between the time she’d started school and her diagnosis had been conveniently forgotten by everybody except herself.

      Water under the bridge, Morgan reminded herself. And she knew her mum felt guilty for the part she’d played in the disaster that had been her education.

      Morgan knew that it hadn’t been easy for her either. She’d been thrust into running MI in her mid-thirties, when her adventure-seeking husband had decided that he didn’t like the corporate life and wanted to be MI’s chief geologist, discovering new mines. Hannah, with her MBA in business and economics, had taken over the role of MI’s CEO, juggling its huge responsibilities with two children, one of whom had made her life a great deal more difficult by her inability to meet her mother’s and teachers’ expectations.

      How often had she heard variations on the theme of, ‘She’s such a bright child; if only she would try harder.’

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