Business Arrangement Bride

Mary closed her eyes. Excellent. Fall over, knock drink over him, insult his design taste and tip her handbag all over the floor…Could she look any more of a fool, and in front of the man with the power to make or break her precious agency, too?

Pink with embarrassment and irritation with herself, she stooped to gather up keys and lipstick and business cards—there were plenty left, it appeared—plus a sundry collection of pens, safety pins, tissues, scraps of paper with scribbled lists, a couple of floppy disks, an emery board and a plastic baby spoon.

A biscuit left in an opened packet ended up at the tip of Tyler’s perfectly polished shoe and Mary scrabbled to retrieve it. That explained all the crumbs in the bottom of her bag anyway. It must have been there for ages, and the wonder was that she hadn’t eaten it.

Tyler bent and picked up a spare nappy, which he handed to Mary with an expressionless face.

‘Thank you,’ she muttered, shoving it into the bag along with the rest of the stuff and straightening.

She was amazed that he was still there, and couldn’t think why he hadn’t walked off in disgust long ago. Why had he come over in the first place, in fact? she thought with a trace of resentment. She had been perfectly all right, minding her own business and not doing anything stupid, and then he had turned up and transformed her into a blithering idiot.

But Tyler showed no sign of walking off. He just stood there, looking daunting, and waited for her to explain what she was doing there.

Tyler was, in fact, bitterly regretting having come over to talk to her. He had moved instinctively to catch her when she’d fallen, not realising how heavy she would be, and he was lucky she hadn’t taken him down with her. As it was, she had managed to knock the champagne he’d had in his free hand all over him. Always fastidious, Tyler was very conscious of the stain on his shirt and, as for his tie, it was probably ruined, he thought crossly.

Not content with that, she had criticised his floor, and he didn’t take kindly to criticism from anyone, let alone someone who wore ridiculously inappropriate shoes and evidently possessed a handbag as messy as the rest of her. Everyone had turned to look as the contents scattered over the floor, and they had probably noticed him there too with a nappy—a nappy, of all things!—in his hand and a spreading stain on his shirt, and no doubt looking a fool.

If there was one thing Tyler hated, it was feeling ridiculous.

Actually, there were lots of things that he hated, but looking stupid had to be way up there at the top of his list.

He wished he had never been sucked into Mary Thomas’s chaotic orbit, but now that he was here he couldn’t think of a way to leave. If they’d been in a meeting, he could just have told her that her thirty seconds were up but, as it was, she was looking pink and flustered and he didn’t feel able to turn on his heel and walk off, no matter how much he might want to.

‘What sort of recruitment?’ he asked after a moment, deciding to pretend that the whole bag incident had never happened.

Mary only just stopped herself from sighing in time. She had been willing him to make an excuse and leave, at which point she could have slunk off home and enjoyed her humiliation in comfort.

This was a fantastic opportunity for her. Half the room would give their eye teeth to be in her position, with Tyler Watts’s apparently undivided attention. She should be making her pitch and sounding gung-ho, but it was hard when your feet were aching, your toes pinched, your jacket was gaping and you had just humiliated yourself three times in as many minutes in front of the man you had to try and impress, and when you would really much rather be stretched out on the sofa in front of the television with a cup of cocoa.

But lying on the sofa wouldn’t get her agency off the ground. It wouldn’t get her a home of her own, or make a new life for Bea.

Lying on the sofa wasn’t an option.

Mary took a deep breath and, mentally squaring her shoulders, handed Tyler a business card and launched into her carefully prepared spiel.

‘I understand you’re expanding your operation in the north now that you’re making York your headquarters, so if you need people with accountancy, clerical, computer or secretarial skills, I hope you’ll think of my agency. I can find you the best,’ she told him with what she hoped was a confident smile.

‘I don’t deal with junior staffing decisions,’ said Tyler, frowning down at her card.

‘I’m aware of that, which is why I was hoping to meet Steven Halliday here.’ Mary kept her voice even and hoped that she didn’t sound as desperate as she felt. ‘I have worked for Watts Holdings in the past myself, so I understand the company ethos and how it operates,’ she went on. ‘That’s a huge advantage when it comes to finding suitable staff, as I’m sure you are aware.’

But Tyler wasn’t listening. ‘You’ve worked for me?’ he said, a very faint light beginning to glimmer.

‘It’s nearly ten years ago now, so you won’t remember me,’ said Mary, a little unnerved by the way the pale, polar-blue eyes were suddenly alert as they rested on her face. ‘I worked in Human Resources here in York. Guy Mann was director then.’

‘Ah…!’ Tyler let out a hiss of satisfaction. He had it now.

Mary Thomas…Of course.

‘I do remember you,’ he said slowly. ‘You were the one who spilt coffee all over the conference table at some meeting.’

Of course, he would remember that. Mary bit her lip and averted her eyes from the stain on his shirt. ‘I’m not usually that clumsy,’ she said.

‘And you stood up to me over that guy…What was his name?’ Tyler clicked his fingers impatiently as if trying to conjure the name out of thin air.

‘Paul Dobson,’ Mary supplied, since there was no point in pretending she didn’t know.

‘Dobson…yes. You told me I was wrong.’ He eyed her with new interest. Very few people dared to tell him he was wrong about anything.

It was all coming back. He could remember the shocked silence around the table as Mary Thomas had spoken out, the scorn in her voice, how taken aback they had all been, as if some gentle kitten had suddenly puffed up to twice its size and lashed out without warning.

‘I hope I put it a bit more diplomatically than that,’ said Mary, her heart sinking. He would never give her work if he associated her with trouble.

‘There was no diplomacy about it,’ said Tyler. ‘You told me flat out that I was wrong and should be ashamed of myself.’

He had been furious at the time, Mary remembered, marvelling now that she had ever had the nerve, but when she risked a glance at him she was sure she detected a gleam of something that might even have been amusement in the chilly blue eyes. It had a startling effect, lightening the grimness of his features and making him seem suddenly much more approachable.

‘You told me I was a bleeding heart,’ she countered, emboldened.

‘So you were,’ he agreed. ‘But a bleeding heart who got her own way, I seem to remember.’

Mary nodded. ‘You were fair,’ she acknowledged.

That was one thing you could say about Tyler Watts. He might be rude and impatient, and the most difficult and demanding of employers most of the time, but he was straight and he didn’t ignore or manipulate facts that didn’t suit him. Irritated he might have been, but he had listened to what she had had to say about Paul Dobson. The upshot had been a special inquiry, and Tyler had been prepared to reconsider his decision when he knew more.

Well, that explained why she had seemed so familiar, anyway. Tyler felt better. He didn’t like being puzzled or uncertain. Having solved the mystery, he could move on, but he was remembering something the HR director had once told him: ‘Mary Thomas may be young, but she’s got an instinctive understanding of human relationships.’

And, if that were still so, maybe Mary Thomas could be of some use to him after all.

‘Why did you leave Watts Holdings?’ he asked her.

Mary, trying to relaunch into her sales pitch, was thrown by the abrupt question. ‘I wanted to work in London,’ she said, puzzled by his interest. ‘I grew up in York and I was really lucky to get a job with you after I graduated, but after three years I was ready to spread my wings.’

‘You could have got a job with us in London.’

He sounded almost peeved that she hadn’t. She hadn’t realised that joining Watts Holdings was supposed to be a lifetime commitment. Mind you, there had been some fanatically loyal members of staff who probably thought of it that way. There tended to be a very high turnover amongst the rest, though, most of whom were terrified of Tyler Watts. Mary had only managed to survive three years by not being important enough to have much to do with him.

Still, better not tell Tyler that. She had been tactless enough for one evening.

‘I wanted to broaden my experience,’ she said instead.

‘Hmm.’ Tyler’s hard eyes studied her with such intentness that Mary began to feel uncomfortable. ‘And now you’re back in York?’ he said.

‘Yes. I’ve been back a few months now,’ she told him, relieved that he seemed to be getting back to the business in hand, which was about winning some work.

‘I’ve recently set up a recruitment agency,’ she went on, ready to launch back into her spiel and wishing that her feet didn’t hurt so much. ‘I offer a complete headhunting service for junior staff. Companies tend to spend a lot of money recruiting senior members of staff and skimp on employees at lower grades, but it’s a false economy in my view.

‘A financial investment in finding exactly the right person, however lowly the job, pays dividends,’ she said. ‘If all your staff, from janitors to chief executives, are doing the job they’re best suited to, your entire company will function more efficiently.’