The Silver Bride

'All I've got to say to you I can say now. You owe me my job back!' 'I can find you alternative employment—' 'Look, what's it to you if I'm working on level eight?' Stella raked down the line at him with furious resentment.

Do you think I'm going to gossip about you with the women I work with? You've just got to be joking! Electric shock treatment wouldn't drag a confession from me!' 'We'll talk about it this evening.' 'I'm not seeing you again. I don't want to see you again! You're trying to bully me and I'm not having it. If you don't let me go back to work, I'll go to an employment tribunal with a complaint of unfair dismissal.

I know my rights, Dior.' 'Stella, you just said that electric shock treatment wouldn't drag a confession from you,' Dior reminded her in a maddeningly lazy drawl. 'It wouldn't work to be that s.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e with a tribunal.'

Surely you don't believe I'd tell the whole truth? A convincingly sneaky little liar like me?' Stella hissed in a sizzling undertone. 'Naturally, I'd lie!' The silence is full of static returned. 'If you want to return to work next week, I won't stand in your way.' Dior ground out that concession with audible exasperation. 'I'm going in tonight. Just forget we ever collided, Dior.

I certainly have,' Stella told him, and slammed down the phone. Did he think she was prepared to see him just to hear some explanation about who had blabbed about his confidential plans? Did he think she was interested? Did he fondly imagine an apology was likely to change anything? Were all rich men that arrogant? Fizzing with turbulent emotion, Stella locked up the shop and mounted the stairs to her bedsit behind the storeroom on the first floor.

The very last thing she needed was to see Dior Harlequin again. Who would wish to be faced with the reminder of their lowest moment? Throwing together a sandwich with trembling hands, Stella took two bites of it and then dumped it.

Thirty minutes later, she set out for work at the Harlequin International building. Why couldn't he just leave her alone? Couldn't he appreciate that he was just embarrassing and annoying her? When Stella walked into the building, the big portrait of Dior in the ground-floor foyer offended her.

On canvas, Dior just emanated cool, sophisticated charm. Fresh flowers always adorned the side table below the painting. It looked remarkably like a shrine to her embittered and unimpressed gaze. The supervisor, a thin, sour woman, frowned when Stella signed in. 'You took off on Monday night without a word to anyone,' she censured. 'You didn't even phone in sick. I had to put in a report to Personnel.'

Yes. I expect you did. I'm sorry.' Stella added another pound of flesh to Dior's mounting tally of sins and fumed up to level eight. Midway through her shift, she went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt restroom for her usual cup of coffee. Grace dropped into the vacant seat beside her.

'Where on earth did you go on Monday evening?' she demanded. 'I was so worried when you didn't come down for your break. I was scared there'd been a row because that bloke you told me about—' 'What bloke?' 'You know, the one that was annoying you.' Grace frowned at her. 'Big blond bloke called Clark.

He walked right up to me the minute I began work on your floor and demanded to know where you were.' Stella paled. 'Sorry.' 'I had to tell him, love. Did he come upstairs looking for you?' Stella stilled. 'I don't know...I didn't see him,' she muttered, suddenly wondering if it was Joshua Clark who had overheard Dior's wretched profiteering plans.

The conversation of two other women nearby attracted her attention. 'I bet she's just a secretary or something...' 'Not the way she was done up, with the hat and all,' the other argued vehemently.