PART SIX
Midway through the following week, Stella told Watson that she had finally made an appointment at the bank. 'Why?' Stella smiled, thinking that her elderly employer was becoming very absentminded. 'So that I can apply for a loan to buy this business,' she reminded him gently. Ashton Watson looked dismayed.
'Leave that for a while yet, Stella,' he urged. Bewildered by that reaction, Stella whispered reluctantly, 'I suppose I could cancel the appointment—' 'Yes… yes, much the best thing for now,' he cut in to agree with a pronounced air of relief. With a muttered reference to some books that required sorting, the older man then took himself off without offering any further explanation.
Stella frowned. Wasn't he quite as eager to retire as he had always said he was? What else could it be? Keen to save on estate agency fees, Ashton Watson had given her to understand that if she was able to offer a fan-price by the end of the year, the shop was hers.
Stella told herself not to make mountains out of molehills. It wouldn't hurt her to wait, but she was disappointed. Just then, the challenge of taking on her own business would have been very welcome. Another two weeks passed by on leaden feet for Stella.
Watson was a quiet man, but he had become exceptionally quiet. Almost evasive with her. Troubled and distracted by that suspicion, Stella had to glance at the calendar in her room one evening before she belatedly noticed the absence of a certain telling pen mark. All of a sudden Stella saw that she had something far more immediate to worry about.
Stress and sleepless nights had probably disrupted her monthly cycle, she told herself in dismay. She was only about a week late. But the more she worried about the possibility of being pregnant, the more likely a development it seemed. She might well have conceived. She was young and healthy and, according to her calculations, the timing of that contraceptive failure could not have been worse.
As Stella entered the Harlequin International building for work that same evening, she saw Dior for the first time in almost three weeks. Tall, blue-black hair gleaming under the lights, his bold, bronzed profile commanding, he was striding towards the executive lift, three other men in his wake. The shock made Stella's stomach flip right over.
She came to an involuntary halt on legs that felt distinctly wobbly. Her head swam and she gulped in oxygen, feeling perspiration break out on her skin. 'How are you, Stella?' a deep, dark drawl enquired with leaden casualness. Blinking furiously, Stella focused on a pair of polished hand-stitched leather shoes and slowly lifted her head. Her wide, incredulous gaze centered on Dior and stayed there, locked onto him like a guided missile, her heart pounding like insane. Black fathomless eyes stared down into hers.
'You look like a ghost facing an exorcist,' Dior whispered in flat continuation, looking her over with unashamed and even more inappropriate thoroughness. Noticing his three former companions holding the lift for his benefit while watching the encounter with the equivalent of dropped jaws, Stella forced her brain to spring back into gear.
'Go away, For Lord sake!' she urged, her color high. 'You're not supposed to know me!' 'Damned if I do and damned if I don't,' Dior rhymed with sardonic amusement. 'Why are women so irrational?' 'Why are men so unbelievably thick?' Stella breathed, sidestepping him to hurry on past with a downbent head. Before she had completed that escape, however, she noticed a couple of the other cleaners nearby.
Their attention was welded to her with speculative heat. Stella's heart sank. When she went down for her break later, she was intensely uncomfortable. If one of her co-workers had challenged her openly about her encounter with Dior, she would have known that nothing suspicious had been detected. But the sudden silence which greeted her appearance, the covert glances and the buzz that broke out when she left again told her otherwise.
And what other reaction could she have expected? she asked herself sickly. Dior hadn't just given her a fleeting nod or a passing word.