Marriage In Mind. Jessica Steele

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      CHAPTER ONE

      ASTRA stared incredulously at her immediate boss. ‘You’re saying he wants us, Yarroll Finance, to work out some sort of financial package for him?’ she questioned disbelievingly.

      ‘It hasn’t got that far,’ Norman Davis cautioned. ‘Mr Baxendale made contact this morning while you were out. Apparently word has reached him of our dynamic financial adviser, and he wants to see you.’

      ‘Me!’ she exclaimed. ‘Mr Baxendale wants to see me?’

      ‘You,’ Norman Davis confirmed.

      Astra was stunned. She knew, without false modesty, that she was good at her job. But that Sayre Baxendale, a board member of Blyth Whitaker International—and a man to be reckoned with, according to a report she had read in some financial paper only last week—should consult them was astounding. That he should approach Yarroll Finance when it came to matters of personal finance was staggering enough—and it had to be personal finance if she was involved, because that was the area in which she excelled. But that he should ask for her, in particular, to talk facts and figures with was astonishing.

      ‘You’re sure it’s me he wants to see?’ she questioned, her habit of double-checking everything to do with her work starting to kick in.

      ‘If you’re Miss Astra Northcott,’ Norman Davis beamed. Yarroll Finance was a highly respected company; to have a director of Blyth Whitaker International on their books was yet another indication of their first-class reputation in the world of finance.

      Astra stared solemnly at him. She was twenty-two and was young, she knew, to hold the position she did in a firm of such superior standing. But she had studied hard for her qualifications. Had worked hard and, given that she seemed to have a natural flair for figures and hard work, this—to be asked for personally by such an esteemed client, and client he would be if she had to work twenty-five hours a day to get him the package he wanted—seemed to her to be the very ultimate of success in the finance world.

      Then she allowed herself a smile. Her lovely lips parted to reveal beautiful white, perfectly even teeth, her happiness showing in the large green depths of her beautiful eyes. ‘I’d better ring him to make an appointment,’ she suggested. ‘Do you have his home number?’

      ‘The appointment’s already made,’ her boss informed her cheerfully. ‘Sayre Baxendale’s a very busy man. He’ll see you at his office at two-thirty tomorrow afternoon.’

      Astra would have liked to have fixed a mutually convenient time—she knew she was scheduled to be busy elsewhere at two-thirty tomorrow, and СКАЧАТЬ