Rival Attractions & Innocent Secretary(10)

When she showed them the photograph the other two women instantly approved.

'It's perfect,' Sheila pronounced, 'and fun too. What is it?'

'It's Kaffe Fassett-style,' Charlotte told her. 'I've read about his  work, and I saw this article mentioning the wallpapers he's designed. I  thought this yellow one, with the pottery motifs.'

'It will be perfect,' Sophy agreed. 'And with some of those lovely old  terracotta floor tiles. You've got to have an Aga, of course.'

Charlotte laughed. 'Well, as a matter of fact I am rather tempted. Vanessa has one, but she doesn't use it for cooking.'

Sheila clucked disapprovingly. 'What a waste. My mother had one years ago. She swore by it.'

'Well, most of the local farms still have them.'

'Have a dark green one,' Sophy suggested temptingly. 'It will look wonderful with your cherrywood.'

She had never realised that redecorating could be such fun, Charlotte  admitted as she firm-mindedly tidied away her brochures and turned her  attention to the post on her desk.

'Fun, yes, but expensive too,' Sheila said shrewdly, and then added,  'Has all this work you're having done mean you've decided to keep the  house rather than sell it?'

Charlotte grimaced. 'I'd like to keep it. I think in the past it's been a  case of the shoemaker's child going unshod as far as home has been  concerned, and I hadn't honestly realised what potential the place had.'  She wrinkled her nose and admitted, 'I think while Dad was alive I was  too busy looking after him and running the business to notice our  surroundings very much. Besides, he'd have had forty fits if I'd ever  suggested changing anything. I thought when he died that the best thing I  could do was to put the place on the market and have a fresh start  somewhere else, somewhere that I felt was completely my own, but now … '  She gave a faint sigh. 'I am tempted to keep it, but it's far too large  for one person, and too expensive to run, especially if we lose a lot of  business to Oliver Tennant.'

'Well, you know the answer to that one,' Sheila told her promptly,  grinning as she exclaimed, 'You'll either have to get married or find  yourself a lodger!'

She ducked as Charlotte threateningly threw a heavy brochure at her.

'Of the two,' Charlotte said loftily, 'I think your second suggestion was the more feasible.'

'Well, I should think seriously about it if I were you,' Sheila advised  her. 'I must admit I wouldn't like living in that huge place all alone.  It is rather remote.'

'It's two hundred yards off the main road,' Charlotte scoffed.

'Yes, down a narrow, rhododendron-lined drive that doesn't have any kind  of lighting. Now that is something you should think about while you're  having all this work done,' Sheila advised her firmly. 'If I were you,  I'd see about getting some good security lights installed outside the  house, and proper illuminations down the drive, plus a burglar alarm.'                       
       
           



       

'Heavens, the place will look like the Blackpool illuminations,' Charlotte complained, but Sophy shook her head.

'I agree with Sheila, you can't be too careful these days,' she said quietly. 'You read such dreadful things in the papers.'

For a moment all of them were quiet, soberly reflecting on the truth of  what Sophy was saying, and then Charlotte said thoughtfully, 'Well,  maybe I should make enquiries about having some kind of lighting on the  drive.'

'And about looking round for a suitable tenant to share the running expenses of the house with you,' Sheila told her firmly.

'I'll think about it,' Charlotte promised, having no intention of doing  any such thing. She liked her privacy too much, for one thing, and for  another …  Well, much as she liked Sheila, she had to acknowledge that the  older woman had a decided tendency towards matchmaking. She was pretty  sure that the kind of tenant Sheila had in mind for her would be male,  and eligible.

'I drove past the new agency's offices this morning,' Sheila informed  her, changing the subject. 'Very glitzy and modern, but I felt that it  was a little too streamlined, if you know what I mean. It might appeal  to the local high-fliers, but I think the older people would find it  rather intimidating. I didn't see the new man there, though.'

'I've seen him,' Sophy told her, before Charlotte could speak. She  grinned enthusiastically. 'He's a real hunk.' She laughed at the  disgusted sound Charlotte made in her throat and insisted, 'Well, he is.  He seemed nice too … as though he knew exactly how women were going to  react to him.'

Charlotte snorted again and muttered under her breath.

'Vain.'

'No, that wasn't what I meant,' Sophy complained. 'It was almost as  though he was asking you to look beyond his looks. I can't explain  properly what I mean. It's just that he made me think that he was  basically nice.'

'Nice?' Charlotte protested. 'Of course he wants you to think he's nice. That's all part of the act he uses to secure business.'

But, even as she spoke, she knew she wasn't being entirely fair. Like  Sophy, she had been struck by an essential lack of vanity and conceit in  Oliver Tennant.

Despite Vanessa's attempts to depict her as some kind of man-hating  anti-male campaigner, he had treated her with the same degree of  politeness he had shown to Sophy. At first glance he had seemed so  essentially male that she had expected him to respond immediately to  Vanessa's derogatory comments about her, by challenging her in some way,  or trying to make her look even more stupid than Vanessa had done, but  instead he had ignored it … had looked at her in a way which had suggested  that he preferred to make his own judgements rather than to rely on  those of other people. A tiny wistful thought crept into her mind … an odd  weakening sensation that made her wonder how he would have reacted to  her had she been sexually desirable.

Immediately she clamped down on the thought, horrified that it should  have formed at all. So powerful was her sense of anger against herself  that her skin lost colour, causing Sheila to frown and ask quietly,  'Charlotte, are you all right? You've gone quite pale.'

Privately Sheila thought that, after the trauma of her father's death,  and the strain of nursing him for so long plus running the business, it  was a wonder that Charlotte hadn't cracked up completely.

If it weren't for the opening of this new agency, she would have been  urging Charlotte to take a proper holiday-something she hadn't done  since she returned home. Much as she herself had liked Henry, there was  no doubt that he had been something of a tyrant, and privately she  considered that he had never valued Charlotte as he ought.

She was well aware of Charlotte's lack of confidence in herself as a  woman, and longed to tell her that, if only she could learn to project  an image of sexual confidence, she would soon discover how very  attractive the opposite sex could find her, but for all her independence  Charlotte had a very vulnerable side to her nature, and Sheila knew she  would hate her mentioning a subject she thought completely hidden from  anyone else.

She was such an attractive young woman, and many many times Sheila had  longed to shake Henry for the damage he had done to his daughter's  personality with his constant put-downs. The trouble with Henry had been  that he was one of the old-fashioned chauvinists who could never accept  a daughter in place of a son.

Over the years Sheila had done her best to introduce Charlotte to a  variety of young men, but invariably she would clam up with them,  holding them so stiffly and determinedly at a distance that Sheila had  shaken her head in despair.                       
       
           



       

Now, as she opened the post alongside Charlotte, she glanced idly out of the window and then whistled softly under her breath.

'What's wrong?' Charlotte asked, without lifting her head, absorbed in the letter she was reading.

'It looks as if we've got our first client of the week … and what a client!'

The awe in Sheila's voice was enough to make Charlotte put down the  letter she was studying and walk across the room, to stand behind Sheila  looking curiously through the window.

She saw him immediately, and, as though by some machiavellian instinct,  he paused and stood still looking directly at her, so that she had no  opportunity to move out of his view.

She felt like a schoolgirl caught ogling him, and her face burned dark red.

'What's wrong?' Sheila asked her.

'That's Oliver Tennant,' she told her friend tensely.

'Ah.'

The short word held a wealth of expression.

'I wonder why he's coming here,' Sophy murmured.

'There's only one way to find out,' Charlotte told them briskly.  'Sheila, you'd better go down and find out. Sophy, perhaps you should go  with Sheila and get some experience of dealing with the public.'

She saw the look her two companions exchanged, but pretended not to.  There was no way she was going to go down to the reception desk and face  him-not after she had seen the slow, almost boyish smile which had  curved his mouth when he'd looked up and found her watching him.