Chapter 10

Phoebe walked into the office the next morning wearing a chic burgundy suede suit and a determinedly bright smile. Keith took one look at her and grinned. "Phoebe, you're gorgeous-but aren't you supposed to be upstairs?"

"Not anymore," she replied, handing him his mail. She had assumed that because their "game" was over, Cole would no longer want her upstairs in the mornings.

She was wrong. Five minutes later, as they were discussing a report Phoebe was working on, the phone on Keith's desk rang. "It's Cole," he said, passing the receiver to her.

Cole's voice was like a whip crack. "Get yourself here now! I said I wanted you here all day and I meant it. Now move!"

He hung up on her, and Phoebe looked at the receiver as if it had just bitten her. She hadn't expected Cole to sound like that. She'd never heard anybody sound like that. "I-I think I'd better go to the next building," she said, hastily standing up.

Keith's face was a study in incredulity. "I wonder what the hell has gotten under his skin?"

"I think I have." she saw the thoughtful smile that slowly spread across Keith's attractive face, but she had no time to ponder it.

Only a few minutes later Phoebe tapped on Cole's door and, with an outward calm she didn't feel, walked into his office. She waited a full two minutes for him to acknowledge her, but after having practically shouted at her to get to the next building, he continued writing, ignoring her presence. With an irritated shrug, she finally went over to his desk to stand in front of him, to let him know she was there. "What was the urgent task you badly wanted me to do?"

"Get out there and ask Curtis yourself. Let yourself out and let me do my work," he replied icily, without looking up.

Fuming, she went out and found Curtis arranging a clean desk. It was so obvious she was trying to listen. "Mr. Turner has ask me to ask you for instructions"

"Not the queen around now, are you?," Curtis sneers. "Sometime during the next few days he's expecting a call from Danner. He wants you to be available to act as translator whenever the man decides to call"

Phoebe turns to leave but couldn't resist sneering back at Curtis. "No wonder you have always been so cold to me, you're jealous because Mr. Turner has been paying a lot of attention to me. You sneer at anyone who are close to Mr. Turner because you know that you will never ever be more than just a secretary to Mr. Turner". Satisfied, she went back to her temporary office to start on her report, leaving Curtis standing there with humiliation written all over her face.

***

During the next five days, Phoebe saw sides of Cole that she had only imagined existed. Hone was the teasing man who had held and kissed and pursued her so relentlessly. In his place was a powerful, dynamic businessman who treated her with a brisk, aloof formality that thoroughly intimidated her. When he wasn't on the phone or in meetings, he was dictating or working at his desk. He arrived before she did in the morning and was still there when she left at night. Acting as his auxiliary secretary, she grew petrified of displeasing him in any way. She had the feeling he was merely waiting for her to make a mistake so that he would have a legitimate reason to fire her.

On Friday, Phoebe made the mistake she'd been dreading; she left an entire paragraph out of a detailed contract Cole had dictated to her. The moment his summons snapped over the intercom she knew her time had come, and she walked into his office with limbs shaking and hands perspiring. But instead of flaying her alive, which she could see was what he wanted to do, he pointed out the error and shoved the contracts toward her. "Do it again," he snapped, "and this time get it right."

She relaxed slightly after that. If Cole hadn't fired her for that blunder, he obviously wasn't looking for an excuse to get rid of her. He must need her at hand for that call from Danner no matter how poorly she performed.

"Hard at work I see?," a breathy voice announced to Phoebe at noon that same day. Phoebe looked up to see the glamorous Patricia standing in front of her. "So, you're the bitchy secretary I spoke to the other day? I should have known it was you"

"Is there something you want?," Phoebe asked as she went back to work.

"Is Cole in? I'm sure he'll be glad to see me when he has to stand seeing your irritating face the whole day. No wonder, he coops up in his office the whole day, poor darling," she coed. "You don't have to buzz me in, I'll just go right in". And breezed in into the office.

A few minutes later, Patricia and Cole strolled out of his office together, heading toward the elevators. Cole's hand was resting familiarly at the small of her back, and he was grinning at whatever she was telling him. If Phoebe had looked closely, she could see how much, his grin was forced.

Phoebe swung back around to her typewriter. She hated Patricia's drawl; she hated the possessive way she looked at Cole; she hated the woman's breathless laugh. In fact, she loathed everything her and she knew exactly why-Phoebe was hopelessly, completely , irrevocably in love with Cole Turner.

She adored everything about him, from the aura of power and authority that surrounded him, to the energetic confidence in his long strides, to the energetic confidence in his long strides, to the way he looked when he was deep in thought. She loved the way he wore his expensive clothes, the way he absently rolled his gold pen in his hand when he was listening to someone on the telephone. He was, she decided with an aching sense of tormented hopelessness, the most forceful, compelling, dynamic man in the world. And he had never seemed further beyond her reach.

"Don't worry too much," Vicky said, the only friend she had in Cole's department. "There have been many Patricia Callahan in his life in his past. They don't last long."

The reassurance only made Phoebe feel worse. She'd suspected that Vicky not only knew everything that had happened between Cole and herself in the past, but that she also knew exactly how Phoebe felt about Cole now. "I don't care what he does!," she said with angry pride.

"Is that right?," Vicky retorted with a smile, and left for lunch.

Cole didn't return until afternoon, and Phoebe wondered furiously whose bed they had gone to-his or Patricia's.

By the time she left the office, she was so overwrought with jealousy and so filled with self-loathing for loving such an unprincipled libertine that she had a splitting headache. At home she wondered aimlessly around the living room.

Being near Cole was hurting her more every day. She had to leave the company-she couldn't bear to be so close to him, to love him as she did have to watch him with other women. To have him look at her as if she was a piece of office equipment whose presence offended him but whom he was obliged out of necessity to have nearby.

Abruptly she stopped pacing, her mind seizing on a solution that should have occurred to her before. There were other large corporations that needed good secretaries and that pad high salaries for them. When she bought the ingredients for Keith's birthday cake that night, for Piper to bake for her, she would also buy a newspaper. Beginning immediately she would start looking for another job.

Despite the dull ache she felt at the prospect of selling it, Phoebe felt peaceful for the first time in weeks.