She hesitated to wipe it off, frowning a little and then deciding she was being over-critical, not seeing in her reflection what a man would notice straight away-and that was that the subtle gleam of the lipstick drew attention to the unexpectedly vulnerable fullness of her mouth, throwing it into challenging contrast with her businesslike appearance.

Just a mere brush of matt dark green eyeshadow to shape her eyes, and blusher to highlight her cheekbones, and then she was ready.

She hadn't varnished her nails, which she kept short and well-buffed, and a small, fine gold ring which had belonged to a maternal great-aunt was her only piece of jewellery apart from her watch and earrings.

Before leaving, she stood on her balcony and took several calming deep breaths, concentrating all her mental energies within herself, gathering herself up for the ordeal ahead. And then she was ready.

She wasn't driving her car, not having wanted to risk being unable to find a parking spot. The taxi she had ordered arrived on time, and she saw the driver give her an appreciative male look as she stepped into it. She ignored the look and crisply gave him his directions.

The Jeffreys Group had its offices, not in one of the high modern office blocks, but in a Georgian house in an elegant terrace of such houses set round one of London's smaller squares.

The garden in the middle was lushly green, the trees throwing welcome shadows on to the footpath. The railings that guarded the square were painted black and tipped with gold; and as the taxi stopped alongside them to allow her to alight Hannah noticed a small gothic gazebo, almost hidden by the foilage, its walls painted green, only the pewter shimmer of its bell-shaped roof betraying its presence.

The garden had a padlocked gate, and inside someone was working, tirelessly weeding.

Although there was really no similarity between them whatsoever, for some reason the small garden made Hannah think of her home, and her mother, who loved the vicarage's rambling, overgrown garden almost as much as though it was an extra child.

The square was full of parked cars: expensive, gleaming cars with German pedigrees, almost uniformly dark in colour, apart from the occasional thrusting scarlet of a new Porsche or Ferrari.

The car parked outside the Group's front door was a Daimler, the same colour as the one she had noticed in the car park at home, Hannah recognised in pa.s.sing.

The Georgian door was painted black and decorated with traditional bra.s.s knocker and handle. Above it, the delicacy of the Adam fanlight caught Hannah's eye, and she hesitated, uncertain as to whether to knock or simply walk in. As she waited, the door opened and she realised that someone must be watching her. The thought made her feel slightly uncomfortable. She stepped into the cool darkness of the tiled hallway and found a smiling receptionist waiting to greet her.

'Hannah Maitland?' she questioned, and when Hannah nodded, she said pleasantly, 'If you would just like to wait in the library. It's down the corridor, first door on your right. You're a few minutes early for your appointment. Would you like a cup of tea or coffee while you're waiting?'

Hannah shook her head. She was too nervous to need any added stimulation.

Thanking the receptionist, she followed her directions and found that the library was exactly that: a welcoming, faintly musty room with leather chairs and mahogany bookshelves, stacked with leather-bound volumes. The carpet on the floor was Persian and beautifully faded. The original Adam fireplace had been retained, and, even though Hannah suspected that the discreetly mellowed panelling along one wall probably concealed all manner of up- to-date computer and visual study equipment, it did not detract from the ambience of the room at all.

It was a room that spoke of comfort and mellow- ness ... of a need to respect the proper order of things . . . of tradition and timelessness. It was a room that relaxed and rea.s.sured, she recognised sensitively.

She wasn't being interviewed by Silas Jeffreys himself, but by his deputy, which led her to suspect that this was just a weeding-out series of interviews.

She glanced surrept.i.tiously at her watch. Three minutes to go. Her heart leapt as the door opened and then it leapt again, as she recognised the man who walked in, although for a far different reason..

To say that she was staggered to come face to face with the senior of the two tax officials from her county town, here of all places, was to grossly underestimate her feelings.

Her mouth dropped open as she stared at him in disbelief; her shock heightened by an odd feeling of fear and resentment. What was he doing here?

And then she knew. He was another contender for the job and a formidable opponent to her own chances, so her instincts told her.

He smiled at her as though coming face to face with her was an everyday occurrence, and once again she felt off balance and unnerved by his own very evident lack of reaction.

'What do you think?' he asked her pleasantly, and it took her several seconds to realise he was asking hef opinion of their surroundings.

'It's . . . it's very cleverly designed,' she managed snappishly when she had recovered her composure. 'Relaxing and rea.s.suring. Clients coming in here would immediately feel rea.s.sured about the probity of the Group.'

He shot her a thoughtful look. Hannah would almost have described it as an a.s.sessing look, were it not for the fact that the mere thought of him daring to a.s.sess her made her stiffen with rejection and irritation.

'You'll be going in for your interview in a moment.' He made the comment a statement rather than a question, and that added fuel to the fire of her resentment. 'What is it that appeals most to you about this position?' he questioned.

Hannah only just managed to stifle her gasp of fury.

'I think that's for the interviewer to ask and not you,' she told him pointedly, and then couldn't resist adding with a small grimace, 'I suppose there's no need to ask what you're doing here? Although surely,' she added with what she knew to be a touch of malice, 'it's rather dangerous for a man of your age to make such a major career move.'

She saw him start slightly, as if she had surprised him, and felt a fierce stab of pleasure, as though somehow the thought of having got the better of him, in however small a way, boosted her own self-confidence.

'What makes you think I'm contemplating a Career move?' he asked her smoothly, eyebrows lifting in an interrogative manner.

'The mere fact that you're here,' she responded crisply. 'It's obvious, isn't it? What other purpose could there be in you, a tax official, appearing here in the offices of a private company? Unless, of course,' she added nastily, 'you've come to interview Mr Jeffreys about his personal tax affairs.'

He gave her a calm smile, which added to her growing irritation with him. His eyes crinkled a little at the corners, as though he was suppressing a desire to laugh. His whole manner towards her was so reminiscent of the lordly att.i.tude adopted by her older brothers that she longed to react to his male arrogance in the same way as she had reacted to theirs as a little girl. Hadn't she learnt then, though, the uselessness of pitting her own much frailer strength against that of her much bigger and stronger brothers?

This man would have as little difficulty in fending off flaying fists and angry words as they had done. As she realised what she thinking, Hannah was furious with herself, just as furious as she had originally been with him.

What on earth was she doing, allowing this man to trick her into losing her temper and her self-control? Undermining the confidence of the other applicants for a position was surely one of the oldest tricks in the book, and she should have had more sense than to fall for it.

The door to the library opened and the receptionist from the front entrance came in, starting a little as she realised that Hannah wasn't the only occupant in the room. She looked uncertainly from Hannah to her companion, as though not quite certain which one of them she should address.

The problem was solved for her when he turned his back and walked over to the bookshelves, studying their contents.

'If you'd like to come this way, please,' she said a little breathlessly to Hannah, more than half her attention still focused on the relaxed back of the other occupant of the room. Irritated by the way the girl couldn't take her attention off him and focus it on her, Hannah gave her a cool smile and swept towards the door, only just restraining herself from making some acid remark to her opponent.

The receptionist escorted her to a lift, discreetly hidden in the rear of the hallway.

'It will take you directly to the executive suite,' she told Hannah, 'and when you get there Mr Giles' secretary will be waiting for you.'

Gordon Giles was Silas Jeffreys' second-in- command, a man whose reputation was almost as formidable as that of Silas Jeffreys himself.

Hannah felt a tremor of nervousness start in the tip of her stomach as she got into the lift. It was silly to let herself be unnerved by that wholly unexpected and wholly unwanted second encounter with the tax official.

How had he heard about this job? she wondered acidly, as the lift slowed smoothly to a halt and the door opened automatically.

Gordon Giles' secretary was about her own age, a pleasant, intelligent-looking brunette, who smiled warmly at her as she escorted her to Gordon Giles' office.

Gordon Giles himself was not as intimidating as Hannah had expected. A tall, thin, slightly stooping man in his early fifties, he greeted her with a warm smile and a firm handshake, offering her a seat with a faintly old-world air of courtesy that had nothing s.e.xist in it and was merely an expression of what her mother would term 'good manners'.

He started the interview without any preamble, remarking, as Hannah herself already knew, that her qualifications were excellent.

'Your work experience is a little more limited than that of most of the other applicants,' he told her quite freely, 'but that needn't necessarily count against you.'

He went on to discuss various aspects of the job, should Hannah actually get it, making the odd note as she answered his questions.

'Now,' he said firmly, pushing aside his papers and studying her thoughtfully, 'please don't take this amiss, but your personal life ...

just how free are you to travel? Silas wants an a.s.sistant whose personal life and responsibilities are fluid enough to enable him or her to travel with him. He has recently bought a house in the country and he spends two, sometimes three days a week working from there. As his personal a.s.sistant you would be required to stay overnight there and so be available to work with him. Would that cause you any problems?' he asked her directly.

Hannah shook her head, knowing from the tone of his voice that she had nothing to fear or resent in telling him the truth, and that it was not prurient curiosity or any s.e.xist att.i.tude that motivated his questions.

'I live alone,' she told him calmly, 'and I'm completely free to adapt to whatever arrangements Mr Jeffreys wishes to make.'

'And the thought of spending two, possibly three, out of every five working days out of London doesn't worry you?' he persisted.

'Not at all,' Hannah told him honestly. 'I was brought up in the country and miss it. To work in London and in the country would be like having the best of both worlds.'

'Good. There is one other point I feel I should mention, and that is something you may or may not know.'

Hannah waited, not quite sure of what was to come, a little perturbed by the faint frown that touched his forehead, his almost fatherly note of concern in his voice, when he told her, 'Silas isn't married, and while of course I can totally and completely vouch for him both as an employer and as a man, you might feel that I had been less than honest with you, if at a future date we were to offer you the job. I'm simply saying this now to avoid wasting both your time and ours.'

He glanced down at the files that lay on his desk and said simply, 'I see from your CV that your father is a vicar.' Hannah immediately caught on. She suppressed the tiny flash of irritation that burned through her. How many times in the past had people on discovering her father's career made incorrect judgements about her-and yet, to be fair, she had to admit that Gordon Giles had said nothing that was either offensive or unrealistic.

'I'm not someone who is given to over-imaginative flights of fancy,'

she told him swiftly. 'The knowledge that Mr Jeffreys isn't married and that I should be spending a couple of nights a week under his roof causes me no concern whatsoever. In fact,' she added in a slightly more wry tone, 'I should imagine the apprehension, if there is any, would be all on his side.'

Her remark drew an appreciative laugh from Gordon Giles.

'I'm glad you have a sense of humour,' lie told her. 'Silas will appreciate that.'

Will-Hannah pounced mentally on the small slip and then wondered if it was perhaps deliberate. She was taking nothing for granted. The interview seemed to have gone well, but she had no way of judging Gordon Giles' interview technique, since she had no knowledge of what had been said to the other interviewees.

She thought about the man downstairs and wondered how he would interview. He had an arrogance about him that made her think that he would not adjust well to working so directly under someone else.

He had that air about him that suggested that he would want to be top dog.

There were several more questions, including the ones she had dreaded, about her reasons for leaving her existing employment.

Hannah told him only that she had felt it was time for a career move and that hearing about this job on the grapevine had prompted her into applying for it.

He seemed quite satisfied with her response, asking her a few more general questions before standing up and indicating that the interview was over.

'We'll be in touch just as soon as we can,' he told her, shaking her hand firmly, and then using the intercom to summon his secretary.

Outside again in the sunlight, Hannah couldn't resist glancing back at the window to the library. Was he sitting in the chair she had just vacated now, answering the same questions she had answered? It was annoying how dangerously easily he seemed to have slipped into her thoughts, disturbing the calm serenity of them.

Since she had no car, she walked until she was able to hail a taxi. It was lunchtime, but she had no appet.i.te either for food or for company, and so instead she went straight home. Once there, she had an odd impulse to pick up the telephone and ring her parents so that she could tell them all about her interview and seek their caring parental rea.s.surance, but she quelled the impulse, deciding to wait until it was safer to talk to them about it, if and when she was called for a second interview. Safe. There it was again; that word appeared so frequently in her life, dictating her patterns of behaviour. Was that why she was so determined never to fall in love, because she knew deep down inside herself how very dangerous it would be for her, how very vulnerable she would be, if she ever gave her heart completely to someone?

She shivered a little and thought about him, grimacing as she realised whenever she thought of THE SENIOR TAX INSPECTOR, it was always somehow in capital letters. She suspected that safety was not something that figured very largely in his life plan, and that he would scorn people like her for their timidity. It annoyed her that she should be thinking about him again. She wondered how his interview had gone, and then acknowledged a little bleakly that he probably had far more chance of being called to a second interview than she did.

He had seemed almost amused by her reference to the fact that they were rivals for the same job, and that in itself was surely rather odd?

If anything, she would have expected him to be resentful, or maybe even bitterly sceptical of her ability to fill such a post, but he had simply smiled, a. genuine smile at that, and that rankled, making her wonder what he had found in her that she herself couldn't see that had caused him so much amus.e.m.e.nt.

Well, at least, whether she got the job or not, she was hardly likely to see him again, and as she headed for her room she wondered why that knowledge should cause a small pang of loneliness inside her.

CHAPTER THREE.

To HANNAH'S relief, she didn't have to wait long before hearing from Gordon Giles. A letter arrived in Wednesday morning's post, bearing the distinctive Jeffreys Group logo.

Hannah opened it with nervous fingers, almost holding her breath in trepidation as she did so.

The letter inside the envelope was written on expensive, thick cream vellum paper. It looked brief, and her heartbeat almost doubled. A polite note of regret, or a summons to another interview ... which was it?

She unfolded it and read it, stunned to discover that it was neither, and then she read the brief, concise sentences again in case she had misinterpreted them the first time, but no, she hadn't. She was being offered the job as vice-president and personal a.s.sistant to Silas Jeffreys, at a salary that made her goggle, and with an impressive list of fringe benefits that included a company car.

She would give her Volvo to her parents, she decided headily. Her father complained in a good- natured way about the frailty and age of his old Ford, and would make good use of her st.u.r.dy, solid Volvo.

The final sentence of the letter contained the information that an appointment had been made for her to meet Silas Jeffreys on Friday at ten o'clock, and if she found she wasn't interested in accepting the job she was to telephone his secretary and advise her.

Hannah could hardly believe it. Dizzy with excitement, she wandered out on to her balcony, clutching the letter and her morning mug of coffee- her one indulgence in an otherwise exemplary healthy life-style.

She had got the job! She wanted to shout the news from her balcony, but as she stood there she realised bleakly that, even if she did, no one would care. None of her large circle of friends was close enough for her to have confided her plans to them. She had no lover to share her joy and excitement. Her parents would be thrilled for her, but their pleasure would be diminished by the distance that separated them.

Frowning slightly, Hannah wandered disconsolately back into her living-room. What was the matter with her? She had just got the job she yearned for, and instead of feeling a glowing sense of achievement her pleasure was tinged with loneliness and an awareness of that loneliness. Her aloneness had never bothered her before. In fact, she had cherished it. Why was she so aware of it now? It had nothing to do with a certain six foot odd, grey-eyed, predatory- looking male, did it?

Angry with herself for the direction of her thoughts, Hannah drank her coffee quickly, wondering a little grimly how he was feeling this morning. Disappointed because he hadn't got the job? Would he guess that she had got it? She felt a tiny savage kick of triumph, wishing that he could know. She had .not missed the almost indulgent way he had looked at her, first in the tax offices and then in the library at the Jeffreys Group offices: indulgently and humorously, as though there was something about her that greatly amused him. Well, she wondered how amusing he would find it to discover that she had s.n.a.t.c.hed the job from under his nose.

Telling herself sternly that her reactions were almost childish, she hurried to get ready for work. If she wasn't careful, she was going to be late; something so unprofessional as not to be even thought of.

All the way to her office her mind was busy with plans. She would give in her formal notice on Friday, after her interview with Silas Jeffreys. She would write to his secretary in her lunch hour today, confirming that she was accepting the job and would keep the appointment. She would ring her parents tonight to tell them the good news ...

Friday came round very, very quickly indeed. Hannah had told her boss that she was taking the whole day off, as part of her holiday allocation.

He hadn't been pleased, but since Hannah had already forfeited one week's holiday at almost a moment's notice he had very little option but to agree, although he made it plain to her how much he disapproved.

Thanking her lucky stars that she wouldn't have to put up with him for much longer, Hannah got ready for her interview.

Some impulse she couldn't quite understand, but which had something to do with the rich, warm colours of the library where she had waited to be summoned for her interview, and, if she was honest.

something to do with the way 'his' mouth had twitched a little as he surveyed her business suit with unhidden amus.e.m.e.nt, made her choose a dress from her wardrobe that she had bought on impulse and never worn.

It was made of soft red cashmere, the shade of red that went well with tawny hair, and shaped in cla.s.sical lines that looked nothing on the hanger, but which fitted Hannah's body with a fluid elegance that made it worth every penny of the exorbitant price she had paid for it.

She had never worn it, simply because she considered it too feminine, too womanly, and thus not suitable for office wear. If she was honest, she had to admit that her decision had been influenced by the behaviour of her boss, who she had known would not have been able to resist making a s.e.xist remark on seeing her in it.

It infuriated Hannah that, simply because she was not flat-chested, she should be forced to endure the kind of gratuitous and insulting remarks that men like him felt free to make if she wore anything that did not almost completely disguise the fullness of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Deep down somewhere inside herself, she acknowledged that wearing the dress was probably some kind of test, as much for Silas Jeffreys as for herself.

Over it she wore a three-quarter-length black wool jacket, warm enough to withstand the slightly chill breeze that heralded the end of summer. It was only just September, but already Hannah, country born and bred, could smell the scents that preceded autumn.