‘Ha, ha.’ If that was meant to sound reassuring then she sincerely hoped that George never decided to go into counselling.
Her face was burning as she waited by the lift, sneaking in when the doors opened and maintaining zero eye contact with anyone else in it, focusing one hundred per cent on the gradual ascent of the lift to the third floor. She wondered whether there would be a roar of laughter behind her when she stepped out onto the third floor, whether they all knew that floor three was vacant.
Roar of laughter, no. Vacant floor, yes. Just as George had predicted. It wasn’t a huge office. Reception desk, empty. Tastefully arranged desks with occasional partitions filled the space behind the reception desk. All empty. And as Tessa made her way along the corridor, her feet making no sound as they sunk into the thick pile coffee-coloured carpet, she could feel her heart sinking. Offices to the left and the right, empty. Spacious offices, some with several plasma-screen computer terminals, offices that emanated financial well being, all deserted. The lighting wasn’t on and the bleak winter sunshine struggled to make its way through the glass and into the uninhabited office.
She felt like an intruder, but she switched the lights on and they buzzed into fluorescent life. Why the outer door hadn’t been locked, she had no idea. Anyone could enter, provided they could get past George. She cleared her throat, meaningfully and noisily, and ventured a tentative, ‘Hello.’
The silence that greeted this was deafening.
‘You’ll find my son a very interesting man to work for,’ Mrs Diaz had assured her, sitting back in her high-backed chair and folding her hands elegantly on her lap.
By interesting Tessa had assumed willing to give her responsibility. That had been one of the downsides of her last job. She’d done a lot and she’d been respected for what she’d done, but the chances to broaden her horizons hadn’t been there. She had heard the adjective interesting and been immediately captivated by the prospects it had promised.
Well, day one was proving to be very interesting indeed, if you could call walking around in a ghost office, wearing a suit, interesting.
‘Poor Curtis hasn’t had much luck with secretaries ever since Nancy quit to live in Australia with her husband.’ Mrs Diaz had shaken her head sorrowfully while Tessa had waited for her to expand. Somehow Mrs Diaz was not the sort of lady to interrupt with a barrage of questions. ‘He’s had a series of doodle heads, little glamour pusses fluttering around and batting their eyelashes. Quite, quite unsuitable for the job of working for my son.’
From the looks of it, anyone would have been quite, quite unsuitable for working for a man who shut up shop at six on a Monday morning, when his new secretary was supposed to arrive that day.
Tessa reluctantly proceeded down the corridor, glancing into the various rooms, increasingly aware that she wasn’t going to find any signs of life. It left her in the awkward position of either leaving and risking not being around if everyone in the office reappeared as mysteriously as they seemed to have vanished, or else sitting around in ghost town central twiddling her thumbs until her official going home time of five-thirty.#p#分页标题#e#
She was frantically trying to rack up the pros and cons afforded by going or staying when she heard it. A sound. Coming from the office at the very end of the corridor. She picked up speed and walked towards the noise, making sure to check all offices en route just in case.
The plaque on the door indicated Curtis Diaz’s office. It was slightly ajar. She pushed it open, stepped through into a smaller outside room, through which was a much bigger office, and this time the winter sun was making no headway because thick cream velvet curtains were resolutely closed across the sprawling bank of windows.
Tessa’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and she immediately saw the reason for the closed curtains.
Stretched out on a sofa against one side of the wall was a man, lying flat on his back, one arm flung behind him, the other resting contentedly on his stomach. The soft noise that had drawn her attention was simply the sound of his intermittent snoring. In the middle of her appalled inspection, the man cleared his throat and turned onto his side, scaring her witless in the process.
He was wearing a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved rugby-style shirt. Tessa tiptoed towards him and the view expanded into a swarthy face with a hint of stubble darkening his chin. Rumpled black hair completed the picture. Tessa stared, heart thumping, calming herself with the knowledge that at least she wasn’t in the building alone. She might have stepped into the twilight zone on the third floor, but all the other floors were teeming with people and good old George was only a phone call away.