Harriet gasped. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, of course not.’

‘Well, something must be going on,’ he said moodily. He threw his arms in the air. ‘My God, when you were talking about that development site in the Midlands, you actually said “beachside” instead of “canalside”. What was that about?’

‘I was probably thinking of the canal’s leisure and holiday opportunities,’ was the only lame excuse Harriet could come up with on the spur of the moment. ‘It was a slip of the tongue,’ she added, cursing under her breath.

A Freudian slip, more like, she admitted silently. It had been hot in the boardroom, and that damned picture from the restaurant had kept coming back into her mind. For a moment there she’d imagined she actually felt the relentless beat of the sun, and the burn of the sand under her bare feet. But that wasn’t all.

For some unfathomable reason, the man Roan’s dark face had suddenly intruded into her consciousness too, the shadowed eyes glinting as if in mockery. Or even, she thought, scorn.

And that was the moment she’d found herself floundering…

Which was, she told herself, totally absurd.

‘Well, you can’t afford any more of these slips.’ Tony shook his head. ‘Now we have a three-month delay while we prepare yet another report. The whole scheme has lost whatever priority status it had. Unbelievable.’

Harriet bit her lip. ‘Tony, I’m really sorry. Naturally, I realised it wasn’t going to be a walkover, but it isn’t a total defeat either.’

‘We were let off the hook, sweetheart,’ he reminded her grimly. ‘I only hope that next time you’ll have got your beans in a row as efficiently as Jonathan marshalled the opposition today.’

Well, she couldn’t argue about that, Harriet thought, mortified. She’d been well and truly ambushed. She’d expected the usual clash of horns, and encountered instead a ‘more in sorrow than in anger’ routine from Jonathan, which accused her elliptically of trying to split the company and establish her own independent business empire.

Caught on the back foot, she’d rallied and offered a vehement denial, but not quickly enough, and she could tell that the seed had been sown in the minds around the table, and that alarm bells were ringing.

And while Flint Audley commanded her total loyalty, she had to admit the chance of escaping from the hothouse politicking of the London office for a while had seemed deeply attractive.

‘It would also be a good thing,’ Tony said, pausing with a frown in the doorway of his office, ‘if you’d resolve this ridiculous feud with Jon Audley. It’s doing no good at all.’

Harriet gasped. ‘You’re blaming me for it?’

‘Not blaming,’ he said. ‘Just noting that he seems to command more support round here than you do at the moment. And today he sounded like the voice of sweet reason, not you.’ He paused. ‘Maybe you should bear that in mind when you’re preparing your analysis of what went wrong earlier. I’d like it on my desk tomorrow.’

Going into her own room, Harriet managed to resist the temptation to slam the door hard.

Tony’s last comments might be unfair, she thought furiously, but there was little she could say in her own defence about the way things had gone. She had not given the job in hand her usual unflinching concentration, and she knew it. What she could not explain to herself was—why?

Because it wasn’t just the commercial project that was slipping away from her, but her entire life. And somehow she had to get it back. All of it.

She took a step towards her desk, then stopped. Oh, to hell with it, she thought impatiently, glancing at her watch. Pointless to imagine I can achieve anything useful for the rest of the afternoon, when my mind’s flying off in all directions like this. Besides, I was in before eight this morning. I’m going home.

It occurred to her that, apart from anything else, she was hungry. A shower and a meal might make her feel more inclined to reprise the events of the meeting, and pinpoint what positive aspects there’d been.

At the moment, she couldn’t think of any, but she would never admit as much. This is just a glitch, she told herself firmly. I’ll bounce back. If only I didn’t have so much else on my plate.

She squared her shoulders, then picked up her bag, and the shoulder case with her laptop, and headed for the door.

She was halfway down the corridor when she heard a burst of laughter coming from the office she was approaching, and recognised Jonathan’s voice.

‘I suppose I should feel guilty for knocking Flinty’s baby on the head,’ he was saying. ‘Especially as it’s the only time hell’s spinster is ever likely to give birth—to anything. Not even all Grandpa’s money would be enough to tempt a sane man to take her on. But, try as I may, I can’t manage one single regret. I truly feel she’d be happier in a back office, working the photocopier.’

‘You mean you’d be happier if that’s where she was,’ Anthea, his assistant, said over another sycophantic ripple of amusement. It sounded as if quite a crowd had gathered.

‘Infinitely,’ Jonathan drawled. ‘Maybe we should try it. Offer her a title—vice-president in charge of paperclips—and see what happens. After all, she’s only playing at a career. Old Gregory made that clear from the first,’ he added with a snap. ‘I bet he can’t believe she’s still here. And I can tell you that Tony’s well and truly sick of being saddled with her.’

Harriet stood where she was, lips parted in shock. This was more than the idle malice of the nicknames, she realised numbly. There was genuine entrenched resentment here. Jonathan Audley wanted her out, and it seemed he was not alone in that.

So, today wasn’t just a skirmish. It was the opening salvo in a war she hadn’t realised had been declared. And it had clearly hit the target.

Her hand tightened on the handle of her briefcase. She lifted her chin, then walked forward, halting at the half-open door. Standing there as the amusement faded into embarrassed silence. Glancing round as if she was taking note of who was there—collating names and faces—before walking on down the corridor, her head high.

But her hand was shaking as she pressed the button to summon the lift. Behind her, she heard a burst of nervous giggling, and Jon Audley’s voice saying, ‘Oops.’ A sixth sense told her that someone had come out into the corridor and was watching her, waiting, probably, for some other reaction, so she made herself lean a casual shoulder against the wall, glancing idly at her watch while she waited.

Thankfully, the lift was empty, and as the door closed she sank down on to her haunches, trying to steady her uneven breathing, fighting off the astonishing threat of tears, because she never cried.

By the time the ground floor was reached, she’d got herself back under control, and she’d at least be able to leave the building in good order.

Home, she thought longingly. My own space. My own things. A chance to regroup.

As she crossed the reception area, Les called to her. ‘That artist bloke has gone, Miss Flint, like you wanted.’

She swung round, confronting him almost dazedly, wondering what he was talking about. When she finally remembered, it was as if the incident had occurred in another lifetime.

She said curtly, ‘Good. I hope he didn’t give you any trouble.’

‘Not a bit, miss.’ He hesitated. ‘In fact he seemed a bit amused when I approached him. As if he’d been expecting it.’ He paused again. ‘And later, when I went out to check that he’d gone, I found this, fastened to the railings outside.’

He reached into a drawer, and with clear embarrassment handed her a sheet of cartridge paper, folded in half.

Harriet opened it out, and found herself looking at what seemed to be a mass of black shading. For a brief instant, she thought it must be a drawing of a bat—or a bird of prey. A carrion crow, perhaps, with wings spread wide, about to swoop.