Move with the Times
By Catherine
Disclaimer: I own nothing and am making no money out of writing this fanfiction.
Rating: M just to be on the safe side, could probably get away with a T.
Beta: Betaed by the wonderful CeeChelle Lisa Gisborne-Hardy from . Any remaining errors are entirely my own.
Set in: Modern day Britain
Chapter Eight
Guy glared at his computer screen, as he reread the message that had just popped up: "We are a little concerned that the transfer has not yet been made. You had better not be attempting to ditch us. Remember your price." Damn it, he had enough to deal with today without having to deal with his other associates getting restless.
He rubbed the back of his neck pondering his response, he had to be careful. If they suspected that he was no longer as sure of his loyalties as he had once been then he would lose everything. He had to give them something, but he was not yet ready to make the transfer.
"Think man, think", he muttered to himself. Now rubbing his temples he computed the time that it would take him to get the information, deeds and money and what else he had to offer. Finally he worked out exactly how to reply, his fingers began to fly across the keys and then … "Bugger", Guy heard a knock at the door.
He minimised the window quickly and slammed the lid of his laptop down, before barking "Come in".
"This had better be bloody important", Guy thought to himself. He knew that it could not be Vaisey, who never walked anywhere if he could help it, but it he might well have sent one of his minions with some pointless paper work, just because he thought that he had been too nice to Guy that morning and wanted to make up for it now.
Marian waited a little nervously on the other side of the door, still hoping that inspiration would hit when it came time to actually talk to Guy. Luckily for her, the manner in which Guy called for her to enter rather than frightening her with his displeasure as he had intended; merely raised her ire. It was with her head held high, that Marian waltzed into Guy's office, closing the door behind her.
Guy drummed his fingers on the desk, where his now closed laptop lay. He did not even look up at first, waiting for the underling to tell him his business and then leave; he was already starting to forget the perfect wording for his email.
"Well?" He finally ground out.
"Mr. Gisborne", Marian began in an icy tone.
Guy's head shot up. "Marian", he exclaimed torn between the annoyance he had felt before and the interest he always felt when he saw her.
"What are you doing here? Did you need something?" He wondered, only then noting her use of his title. "Mr. Gisborne?" He raised an eyebrow.
"Yes, Mr. Gisborne", Marian started again, "my father felt that I should apologise to you for the use of your Christian name in a business meeting.
A small smile played at the corner of his lips, but Guy did his best to control it. Although he was frustrated with the interruption, angry at the memory of her foolishness at the meeting – she had risked: making him look weak in front of Vaisey, getting herself and her father in trouble, and almost destroying his plan -, he was unable to stop himself thinking that she is cute when she is in a miff. Still, adorableness was no reason to undermine the apparently powerful image she now had of him.
"Is that all?" Guy enquired evenly.
Marian found his smile patronising and so continued, "Yes. Forgive me, for a moment in that meeting I forgot your station as Vaisey's right hand man. I remembered the man that I knew!" With that she turned on her heel and made to walk out. She doubted that this was what her father had had in mind when he had instructed her to apologise but it was the best that she could do. She was just about to yank the door open when she heard him state: "You thought that you could manipulate me".
"No", she said vehemently. Her grip tightened on the door handle, she knew that she could not turn around to him and say the things that she wanted to. He was apparently a dangerous man now and she would not put her father's position in anymore danger than it already was.
Guy's eyes narrowed and he strode over to stand right behind her. It was not just that her little speech had angered him, he could not help the sneaking suspicion that she was trying to use him: trying to use their past connection to soften his heart. Had Saturday evening been all part of the same plot?
He did not want it to be true, he wanted to trust Marian, yearned to open his heart to her but before he knew what he was saying, he sneered "you thought that knowing me as a child would mean that I would side with you. You think that you can get your own way with me as you did as a girl".
Now Marian span around, her eyes blazing: She paid no heed to his proximity or the heat that was radiating off him, "No", she spat, forgetting any thought of diplomacy, "I thought that you would side with what is right".
Marian's hand itched to slap his smug face. She had hoped to see some sort of remorse there, some hint that he knew that what he was doing was wrong, instead there was that irksome eyebrow raise again.
The words meant to sting him had found their mark. Given another few moments he may have confessed the whole to her … although probably not. However, at that moment a pinging noise came from his desk and his attention was recalled to the email he still had to answer. Marian looked over at his desk and her raised her hand, as though to indicate the noise that he was pretending not to notice. It must have been something important, she had surmised, a man as busy as Guy could not have sound notifications for every email he received.
The slight movement of her hand was not lost on Guy and he knew that he had to get rid of her as fast as possible, and that the best way of doing so was to make her storm out. So, he grasped her right hand lightly "I did not get where I am today by giving in to a pretty face", and used his to stroke her cheek gently, "even if yours is by far the most beautiful I have ever seen".
She ignored the tingles that these actions sent across, and pulled away from him, inadvertently causing herself to be pressed against the door. She knew that she had to leave now or risk doing something stupid. "I know that you are a good man. I had just hoped that you would do the right thing", Marian spat as she pushed Guy back and beat a hasty retreat.
Once she was gone, Guy closed the door and leant back against it sighing deeply. Why was it that things always seemed to get in the way when he was around Marian? He had not wanted to hurt her, or even to doubt her. His heart told him that he could trust her whatever happened, yet he was not accustomed to listening to that organ. Indeed, until last week he would have said that that part of his anatomy had been firmly squashed. Unfortunately the same could not be said for another part, which had been uncomfortably away of her proximity.
The sound from his laptop recalled him from his thoughts of Marian. Whether or not he could trust her would not matter once his mission was complete, he just had to keep her safe until then. He would oversee her projects and keep Vaisey off her back, but that was it. Until this was all over he would simply avoid her.
It was with this cheering resolution that he returned to his desk and tried to remember how he was going to word his email. After this he had quite a productive day and still firm in his resolve walked out of his office that evening. As he strode towards the stairs, he saw Marian getting into the lift. That was not a problem, he always took the stairs and so avoiding her would be no problem. He headed towards the stairs but his feet had other ideas and he found himself in the lift standing beside her, waiting for the door to close.
"Oh no", Marian wanted to groan when she saw him getting in, but she controlled herself. For a moment she considered getting out, but she was not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she cared about him at all. She had managed not to think of him since their encounter that morning. She had not thought about him when she had written a terse note to some errant clients, she had not thought of him when he had re-mashed her mash potatoes with her fork at lunchtime, and she had certainly not thought about him when she had imagined drawing glasses and devil horns on his smugly handsome portrait, which now hung in the entrance along with the rest of the senior executives.
"I do not wish to be your enemy Marian", the words came despite himself.
"Good", Marian said, staring straight ahead at the now closed doors.
He had already broken his avoidance policy; apparently he was a moth to her flame. He might as well say what he wanted, "Look, Vaisey will not brook disobedience and nor will I. If my interests are against yours then you may be sure that I will look to myself first. I have come to far not too. But at the moment there is no reason why they should be".
The only answer he received was a quizzical look. Clearly Marian was not in the mood to converse.
"My job is to ensure the security of this company and that we stay afloat. If that requires hard decisions, laying people off, pissing people off then I will do it and not think twice about it. But if there is a simpler way, then I see no reason to intentionally harm people". There it was, he had said it.
He was not going to ask for her forgiveness, nor was he not going to mention the fact that he had his reservations about some of these policies or that he had lost many nights' sleep over them. He certainly, was not going to mention the fact that he had made sure to only act against the interests of those who spoke against his parents in the court.
As Guy looked at her, he knew that he had to protect her come what may, and the best way to do that, he reasoned, was to make sure that she knew what kind of man she was dealing with. "Vaisey on the other hand likes to hurt people. And he will hurt you too if you give the opportunity. However, he does not really care too much about how the results are achieved".
"What do you mean?" Marian finally looked at him.
Guy ran his fingers through his hair, "He had already decided to vote against anything you put forwards today. Your ideas were good but he would rather declare bankruptcy than listen to them".
He debated for a second whether or not he could trust her, a struggle between head and heart, and then plunged in. "The trick is to have two plans. One which you show him which is ridiculous, and has a complete disregard for the facts and humans. He will homilies for a while, you agree and then go ahead with the second plan, - the one that you wanted originally." With a shrug Guy continued, "As long as the figures tally at the end of the month he will not ask questions. If you need a signature, get it after lunch, he is always rather drunk by then and will sign anything you give him."
There it was. In less than five minutes Guy had gone from avoiding her, to telling her enough to destroy him. As the enormity of what he had just done sank in, Guy was oddly calm. It wasn't because he might have redeemed himself a little in her eyes, nor because he still thought that he had come off strong – but because when she was there in front of him, no outside distractions, he trusted her. He knew, somehow, deep down that she would not use the information against him.
Marian looked astonished at him, not sure why he had chosen to confide so much in her, but not doubting him. "You mean that I can go ahead with my plan?"
"Well, unfortunately no, not now. You gave away all of the details so he will be watching you closely to insure that you carry out his orders to the letter. But I can carry them out, they are very close to what I was planning anyway, although the tax break that you got us is slightly better. However, if you had continued you would have given away too much and even I would not have been able to help", they had now reached the ground floor and the doors were about to open, but Marian leant across and hit the "close door" button.
"So you are doing all of this to help others?" She asked, hope filling her eyes.
"Don't go getting any ideas", Guy told her quickly. He did not want her getting her hopes up or coming too close to the real truth of the matter, and so he did his best impression of the man of iron, "It is the best business strategy. That is all". With that he removed her finger from the button and gestured for her leave the lift first.
Slowly Marian left, her gaze lingering on his face a little longer than strictly necessary. As she bid him goodnight and made her way home she could not banish him from her thoughts. She could not help but soften to him, maybe all of this had a logical explanation after all.
Over the next few days they kept on bumping into each other, it was almost as if Guy had planned it. Whenever she got into the lift he was there also, they entered and left the office at the same time, their lunch breaks even fell at the same time and, although Marian was ashamed to admit it, his kind smiles and gallantry at each of these meetings began softened her heart to him even more.
In fact, her thoughts were so full of Guy that on the Friday of that week Marian did not noticed that she was still waiting in an empty conference room of a prestigious hotel, with which they did business, until it was quarter of an hour after the meeting was meant to have started.
She grumbled a little as she realised that the meeting must have cancelled for one reason or another. She had worked like fury in order to make sure that her lunch time and afternoon were free that day, and now she found that it was all for nothing and she was rather hungry.
As she left the room, she checked her messages to see if someone had called to inform her of the apparent cancellation and she had just missed it, but no.
"Marian", someone called her.
"Guy", she replied a little shocked.
"The meeting is not already over is it? I did not think that I was so late", he sounded a little breathless, as if he had just run from another appointment.
"No, it never got started. No one else turned up", Marian explained.
"Oh, typical Vaisey. Decides to summon a meeting, tells you that you have to be there whatever the cost and then half of the time decides against it but doesn't mention it", Guy groused. "I cleared my schedule for all of this afternoon just for this meeting".
"Yes, so did I", Marian joined in, happy to have someone to complain about her mistreatment to. She was much happier now that she was quite sure that Guy might work for Vaisey but certainly was not his friend.
"And it is inhuman to make us miss lunch", Guy played his trump card, and was pleased to see Marian nod her head in agreement.
"You know, I have an idea. As we have both apparently almost broken our backs making sure that we are free for this afternoon and have had no lunch, maybe we should take advantage of this opportunity for a leisurely afternoon – they come around so rarely with Vasiey in charge", they were walking slowly towards the entrance now with him steering her gently towards the left where the restaurant was situated.
"They do an excellent lunch here. I don't suppose that you are hungry?" He asked, positioning them so that the smell of delicious food wafted across them.
As tempted as Marian was – partly by Guy, but mostly by the food – she knew that she should demure, saying that she had little appetite, that was the ladylike thing to do. Her tummy, however, knew no such thing and took that opportunity to rumble.
Instead of ignoring it as a gentleman would have, Guy merely smiled and said, "I will take that as a yes".
Their lunch was very pleasant and by some stroke of good fortune all of Marian's childhood favourites were on the specials menu that day and somehow, although they did not speak once of business, family or the past, there was never a lag in the conversation. They discussed music, films, literature, art and even their favourite colours – Guy's was still black, although as Marian pointed out that was the absence of colour and so demanded that he choose again, leading him pretend to rack his brain before looking at her face as if in search of inspiration and declare "blue".
Everything was perfect until the stepped out onto the pavement and Marian was about to take her leave of him and a thoughtless driver sped through a nearby puddle soaking them both to the skin.
"Oh bugger", Marian fumed, her good mood suddenly ruined. "I cannot go back to the office like this. Oh well, at least I don't have any more work to do today. I will have to go straight home." She was about to ask if Guy would be okay, when he cut her off.
"No, you cannot drive back like that. You will freeze to death. My place is only three minutes away, you can dry off there", Guy offered, taking her arm in his.
Marian was conscious that this was not quite normal conduct but supposed that there was no harm in it. If she were not so stirred by him, she would not have noticed anything unusual in his offer. Besides, neither of them could stand outside in this weather any longer if they did not wish to risk catching something.
"Thank-you", Marian said, as their hurried to his apartment.
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