As the water forced its painful way down her throat, she remembered that Logan didn’t love her. She remembered everything—his five-year plan, her anger and embarrassment, taking off the dress and flinging it at him and slamming the door. Fiery tears seeped beneath her eyelids and burned down her cheeks. She buried her head in the pillow and told herself to forget about her boss or she might never recover.
She needed to sleep. Needed to sleep for a week.
The next time Sally woke, the telephone was ringing downstairs. There were long shadows in the room, so she decided that it must be late afternoon. Chloe had never had the phone connected upstairs and Sally’s automatic response was to try to get out of bed to answer it, but she was hit by a wave of dizziness and sank back on to the pillows again.
Who could be calling? She had no choice but to lie helplessly and listen to the shrill bell below, ringing on and on.
It was dark the next time the phone woke her. She didn’t make it downstairs in time, but she went on shaky legs to the bathroom, found some aspirin and replenished her glass of water, crawled back into bed again.
She had only just settled when her mobile phone on the bedside table rang. Blindly, she groped for it. ‘Hello.’
‘Sally, it’s Anna.’
‘Oh, Anna. Hi.’
‘What’s the matter with you? You sound awful.’
‘I’m sick. I think I must have the flu.’
‘Ooh, that’s terrible.’ There was a pause. ‘I was ringing to see if you’d like to come for lunch tomorrow.’
‘Sorry. Too sick.’
‘You poor thing. Do you need anything? How are you off for food?’
‘I don’t need anything. I’m not hungry.’
‘You sound as if you need looking after.’
‘No.’ Sally shook her head and winced when it hurt. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’d hate you to catch this.’
‘I must admit I wouldn’t want to give the flu to Oliver.’
‘No, I’ll be all right. I just need to sleep.’
‘Make sure you take plenty of fluids.’
‘Yup.’
‘What a waste of a weekend, though,’ Anna said before she rang off.
There was one distinct advantage to sleeping all weekend, Sally decided as she drifted off again. She couldn’t think too much about Logan.
The weekend was the most frustrating Logan had ever known. As far as he could tell, Sally had gone away for the entire two days, leaving him to endure hours and hours and hours in gloomy solitude.
But if he thought the weekend was bad, Monday morning was worse. It began with Sally’s conspicuous absence from the front desk and went rapidly downhill from there.
Everyone at Blackcorp had either seen him dancing with Diana Devenish on television, or had heard about it, and he was showered with congratulations and questions, especially about Sally’s involvement. Logan did his best to defend Sally and his choice of her as his dancing instructor, but it was all rather embarrassing and difficult.
Coming on top of Maria Paige’s departure, the possibility that he and Sally might be in a relationship would send the gossips at the water-cooler into a total frenzy.
Of course, everyone expected him to know why Sally wasn’t at work today. He had no idea, but her absence worried him. Really worried him.
He was in Janet Keaton’s office, where he was firming up strategies for securing Maria’s replacement, when he learned that Sally had phoned in sick.
‘Sick?’ The possibility had never occurred to Logan. He needed to loosen his shirt collar, which was suddenly way too tight. Sweat broke out on his brow. Was Sally honestly sick? Or was she avoiding him?
‘When did this happen?’ he asked Janet.
‘Sally’s been sick all weekend, apparently. With the flu.’
He couldn’t bear to think that was true. He’d spent hours over the weekend staring at the drawn curtains over Sally’s windows. Surely she hadn’t been lying inside the house all that time?
‘I thought you must have known,’ Janet said. ‘Sally spent Friday night at the Hospital Ball with you, didn’t she?’
‘She did.’ Logan frowned. ‘And she was perfectly well then.’
‘I’ve heard on the grapevine that she taught you to waltz.’
Logan’s response was a distracted nod. He was picturing Sally, lying helpless and alone in that house, behind those drawn curtains, all weekend, too ill to answer the door or come to the phone. The poor girl.
He charged out of the office.
‘Logan,’ Janet called after him, ‘don’t run off just yet. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.’
An annoyed sigh escaped him and he hovered in the doorway, one impatient hand on the frame, ready to launch out of there. ‘What is it?’