Bittersweet Love - Cathy Williams [47]
‘Please don’t act as though you know everything! You don’t know the first thing about the relationship we had. I wanted him and I could have had him, I know it, but you came along with your new hairstyle and your new body and he saw you as a novelty. Well, I’ll make sure that you pay for that! You’ll know what it’s like to have your man stolen from under your nose!’
There didn’t seem a great deal left to say between them. Natalie felt sorry for the other woman. So much resentment in someone so young.
Kane Marshall, she thought, shutting the door against the cold, you have a lot to answer for. Playing games with other people’s emotions, secure in the knowledge that his lack of commitment makes him invulnerable. It made her angry just thinking about it. Then she wondered what precisely Anna had meant by what she had threatened. Quite likely that passionate reaction would fizzle out by the time she turned the corner.
She went to bed early and lay awake in the dark bedroom, her eyes open, her mind whirring with every-thing that had happened over the past few weeks. Wouldn’t it be nice, she thought, to be able to slide back into the past? But then the past had always been a fool’s paradise.
She finally fell into a fitful sleep filled with disturbing nightmares, images that had her waking up in a sweat, praying for the steadying light of day to come.
Kane was not yet in when she arrived at work the following morning, which should have made things easier, but somehow didn’t. It just seemed as though the in-evitable was being delayed. She took off her summer jacket, and typed her letter quickly on the word processor, then she stuck it in a white envelope and placed it on Kane’s desk. After that she tried to busy herself around the office, scrupulously tidying away odd bits of filing, catching up on letters that had been awaiting re-plies for the past couple of days.
She knew that Kane was coming almost before the office door opened. She didn’t know whether it was some sort of telepathy born out of working so closely with him for so long, or whether his energy simply radiated out, announcing his presence before he had physically entered a room.
Whatever, she felt her nerves begin to jump and her whole body had tensed. He swept into the room like a hurricane, barely nodding in her direction, slamming his office door behind him, and Natalie’s body went limp like rag.
What a pleasant way to start a Monday morning, she thought; what a lovely experience it’s been working for you. She waited by her desk, knowing that sooner or later he would read her letter and confront her and wishing that she had given in to the cowardly urge to leave a message with one of the other secretaries.
He opened the door so silently that she barely heard it.
‘What the hell is this?’ he asked from behind her.
Natalie swivelled around. He was leaning against the door-frame, one hand in his trouser pocket, the other holding up her letter between two fingers, as though it were something deeply unhygienic. She cleared her throat and said in a toneless voice, ‘It’s my letter of resignation.’
‘In my office. Now!’ He swung around and Natalie reluctantly followed him into the room, not shutting the door behind her, subconsciously keeping her escape route open.
‘I find this unacceptable,’ he said shortly. He had sat down at his desk while she had remained standing, but somehow her position of superiority didn’t fill her with confidence at all.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Good. In that case, you can have it back and rip it into a thousand pieces. It belongs in the bin.’
‘I can’t do that,’ Natalie said in a low voice and his eyebrows met in a threatening frown that sent a quiver of alarm down her spine.
‘There’s no such word as can’t,’ he informed her, and she didn’t reply. She didn’t want to argue, she didn’t want to feel the power of his tongue, but on the other hand she had made up her mind to leave and there was nothing he could say