The Shock Engagement. Ally Blake

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СКАЧАТЬ in the monitor. With her newly chopped blonde bob with its blunt fringe and shimmering highlights, she seemed so pale compared with Harry’s healthy complexion, and where unrestrained sexual energy sizzled in Harry’s eyes she was so obviously a wide-eyed innocent.

      She looked closer. Ick! That day she was more red-eyed than wide-eyed. Unable to sleep from excitement the night before, she had searched her astounding collection of DVDs for an antidote. Staying up until one in the morning watching Love Story had probably not been the best choice as no amount of white eyeliner had been able to hide the evidence.

      Determined to snap back into the real world and forget about Harry until he actually arrived, she closed the offending page and opened up her Blondie file. Blondie was the skinny little cartoon girl with a cute blonde ponytail and big blue eyes she had created to host the competition on the Flirt website and who would make an appearance on the awards night. Blondie simpered and giggled and pointed and fainted like a master in the bottom corner of the screen every time a new hunky bachelor was revealed.

      Happy that Blondie was as endearing as she would ever be, Emma ran off a print copy of the animated girl’s various stunts and expressions, stuffed it into a pink folder and hot-footed towards the stationery room to make copies for the demonstration they would give Flirt’s people the next day. Of course a quick stop in the kitchenette for a fortifying coffee and cookie could not be avoided.

      Pouring herself an oversized double Espresso, she hummed the theme to Love Story under her breath as she waited. Damn it! Now she would be humming it all day!

      Suddenly her boss, a prickly, sharp-minded woman known affectionately as Rabid Raquel, stormed into the room.

      ‘You can’t pull that crap with me!’ Raquel screeched at some hapless guy down the mobile phone clamped to her ear. She opened the fridge and stared into it as though looking for the answers to her problems within. Emma tucked herself back into the corner of the room, quietly sipping on her coffee, doing her dandiest not to get caught in the indiscriminate spray of her boss’s wrath.

      ‘Fix it. Now! Or it’ll be your head!’ Raquel snapped the phone shut, slammed the fridge door and only then seemed to notice Emma was there.

      ‘Ms Radfield. I assume your little cartoon is ready for the final Flirt magazine meeting tomorrow.’

      Emma flapped the pink folder at her boss. ‘All ready. No worries.’

      ‘Because this has to be perfect,’ Raquel insisted. ‘Nothing can go wrong. Nothing.’

      Emma noticed a light sheen of sweat had taken up residence on Raquel’s brow. Raquel did mean for a living, but this was different. She was worried.

      ‘Raquel, it’s perfect,’ Emma promised, her voice soft, calming, sure. ‘Everyone has done a great job on this campaign. Flirt will love it to bits.’

      Raquel’s steely glare meant she didn’t believe a word of it, but Emma knew better than to push her luck. She would have the presentation ready in time as she promised and that would have to be enough.

      ‘Would you like to see a copy?’ Emma asked.

      Raquel fluffed a hand in front of her face as though swatting away a persistent fly. ‘No! Too, too busy. Just consider it a priority. You never know, you might need Flirt magazine for a reference. Some day…’ Raquel disappeared out the door, marched down the hallway and was lost within the crowd before Emma could even blink.

      What was that all about? A reference? Some day?

      Before she had time to absorb Raquel’s odd threat, Emma’s mobile beeped and she flinched.

      She clicked the right buttons to bring up the message. It was from Tahlia, her best mate and WWW’s sales guru.

      em, is australia’s hunkiest bloke there yet?

      Emma’s mouth kicked up at one corner. A right twenty-first century girl, she managed to type a message with one hand, sip her coffee with the other and walk the crowded office hallway towards the stationery room without making one typo or spilling a drop.

      not yet T & don’t mention it to him or he’ll get an even bigger head

      Within seconds her phone buzzed and beeped.

      didn’t know you liked guys with big heads…

      Emma shot back a final text message.

      watch yourself or i’ll come down there and bop you on the head with that industrial sized stapler you are so in love with

      Now, having given in and progressed to whistling the theme to Love Story loud and proud, Emma skipped into the stationery room to find Raquel’s assistant, Penelope, head down, hunched over a photocopier in the far corner.

      ‘Morning, Penny!’ Emma called out.

      Penelope spun around, her hand to her heart, her eyes large and bright. She then grabbed her bunch of papers and ran from the room like a startled rabbit. Emma shook her head. Poor duffer. Working so closely with Raquel would be enough to turn any sane woman into one big raw nerve.

      Emma headed for the photocopier Penelope had been using, figuring it would save her time trying to find one that was working and stocked with A4 paper. She lifted the lid to find a sheet face down in place already. She turned back to the door, but Penelope was long gone.

      Checking to see if it was anything important or whether she should just toss it away, Emma read the first few lines of the letter in her hand. That was all it took for her to realise just how important the document was.

      ‘Oh, my.’ Emma’s hand covered her mouth as she devoured the gist of the letter. It was from Raquel’s lawyers. WWW Designs was being sued. For a lot of money. Gossip about trouble had been whispered up and down the corridors for weeks, and now Emma knew why.

      Raquel was dedicated and driven but excessively so. She had a thing for ‘special assignments’. She encouraged her worker bees to go out of their way to know all there was to know about prospective clients in order to land said clients. She called it PR, her worker bees called it slave-driving. But it worked. For the most part, it worked. Keely, the other musketeer in Emma’s trio of workmates and the web design genius of the crew, had in fact met her darling fiancé Lachlan, on such a ‘special assignment’.

      But since then there had been one infamous time it hadn’t worked. Raquel had lobbied hard for the privilege to design and manage the personal website of a media magnate. She had sent one of her lapdogs to follow the guy around and in the process the lapdog had delved deep enough to discover that the magnate had a mistress. His wife had found out, had filed for divorce and now the magnate was suing, for big bucks, and Raquel was caught in the thick of it.

      ‘Oh, my, oh, my, oh, my,’ Emma whispered aloud.

      The rumours, Raquel’s throwaway line about needing a reference, the niggling bad feeling Tahlia’d had for some time, were all true. No wonder poor Penelope had looked fit to explode on the spot. She knew how bad it all was.

      Needing to sit and think, Emma gave up on the idea of photocopying anything. She slipped the offending letter into her pink folder and rushed back towards her office. She threw her half-empty coffee cup into a nearby rubbish bin, tucked her phone back on to her belt, popped a mint into her mouth and rounded the corner towards her office.

      ‘Emma, СКАЧАТЬ