Zoe had just come back into the office. Jay caught sight of her. There was no doubt about it. The woman would be trouble on wheels if he gave her half a chance. But she moved like a dancer. He liked that. Pure aesthetic appreciation, he assured himself.
‘What?’ he said absently.
‘Banana Lessiter? Remember? She used to work here until she clearly did something unexpected. We were asking ourselves where you had buried the body. Weren’t we, Zoe?’
Arriving, Zoe stopped dead, startled. Jay gave her a wide, charming smile.
‘Barbara has moved on to follow a new interesting career opportunity,’ he said fluently. He was still smiling at Zoe. ‘How does your first day feel?’
‘Fine,’ she said warily. She did not trust men who smiled straight into your eyes. Especially when that smile could charm birds off the trees and they knew it. And when they had told you that hating them was your unique selling point. Did Jay want to test exactly how immune she was to him? ‘So far I’m doing just fine.’
Oh, yes, she would certainly do fine, thought Jay. He was giving her the full wattage and all she did was stand beside her desk and narrow her eyes at him. At a comparable stage in her employment Barbara Lessiter had started leaving crucial buttons on her shirt undone. And Barbara Lessiter was not alone. Zoe Brown was definitely a find.
So why did he feel annoyed? Even outraged? He did not want her to melt when he looked at her, after all.
He pulled himself together. ‘Have you looked at the file? Do you know what you’re doing yet?’
Abby had guided Zoe through more than the ladies’ rest room and her predecessor’s files. In the last two hours Zoe had read every speech Jay had made to the industry this last year. He seemed to make a lot of speeches.
‘‘‘Advertising stimulates the appetite. Public relations focuses a spotlight’’,’ Zoe chanted.
Jay raised his eyebrows. ‘Quoting me already?’
‘Seems like a good idea,’ said Zoe with composure.
He grinned. ‘They’ve been telling you I’m a despot.’
Molly raised her eyes to the ceiling eloquently.
‘Don’t worry, Moll. I can take it,’ he told her comfortably. And, to Zoe, ‘I prefer to think of myself as an oligarch. An enlightened oligarch, of course. What I say goes. But what I say is reasonable.’ He looked round at the others. ‘Right?’
There was a chorus of ironic agreement. Jay’s grin widened.
‘And to prove how enlightened I am, you can ask Banana Lessiter to the next office party,’ he said generously. ‘And I won’t say a word.’
But he said several words when Tom Skellern cornered him in his office a week later.
‘I’m in love,’ he announced exuberantly.
Jay grinned. Tom was an old fashioned chivalrous knight under his dark glasses and designer suiting. ‘Congratulations.’
‘With Zoe Brown. The new girl.’
Jay stopped grinning. He did not like that at all.
He said warningly. ‘Tom, you know the rule. Just because you’re up for a directorship—’
‘That’s why I’m in love,’ said Tom impatiently. ‘I’ve been doing the Hyder-Schelling tests on her. And she’s perfect.’
‘Why on earth have you been doing recruitment tests on Zoe Brown? We’ve already recruited her.’
‘Yes, but just to do your dogsbodying for Venice.’ Tom sat on the corner of his desk, suddenly serious. ‘If we’re going into this merger, we’ve got to boost our in-house research and response capacity. Otherwise Karlsson will swamp us. I’ve been roughing out a profile—and Zoe Brown fits it to a tee.’
Jay’s eyes narrowed. ‘Does she know you’ve been doing psychological tests on her?’
Tom was hurt. ‘Of course. And not just her. All the girls. They thought it was fun.’
Jay was still not happy. He sighed, and said with palpable reluctance, ‘Okay. Show me what you’ve got.’ He held out his hand for the sheets.
Tom stabbed a finger at the top one.
‘Look. Look at that score. She’s total woman. She nurtures. She plans. She budgets. She takes her time to react. She thinks logic is not wholly reliable. She daydreams. She reads romance. Hell, she even knows how to cook— look…‘‘to make a bread and butter pudding, butter slices of bread on both sides, whisk two whole eggs and a yolk in a pint of full cream milk—’’’