‘I do.’ He stepped towards her and put his hand on her arm. She looked up, almost drowning in the depths of his eyes. Almost.
‘And it’s over with Jemima?’
‘To me, it is, yes. But she’s, well, she’s a little bit fragile. She doesn’t look it, but underneath she’s very insecure. I’d have to let her down gently. But in the meantime . . .’
‘But in the meantime you want to two-time her with me. Just like you did to me?’
‘No, no, it’s not like that.’ His grip tightened, but she shook him off and stepped away. This time he didn’t move towards her. ‘It’s you I want to be with, not her. But she is the boss’s daughter, so I’m going to have to tread very carefully.’
Anna felt a cold, hard lump settle in her chest as she realised one woman would never be enough for Mark and he didn’t care who he hurt in the process. She wondered if he’d used the same line on Jemima? That Anna was flaky and he’d have to let her down gently. She seethed at the thought of it.
‘I’m sorry if it’s not working out with you and Jemima, but that’s nothing to do with me. Our relationship is in the past and that’s where it’s going to stay.’
‘But, Anna!’
‘No buts, Mark. We have to work together, so I’d like to keep things civil, but that’s all.’ She moved back behind the reception desk and smiled as the door pinged open.
Mark glared at her and said in a low growl, ‘You might just live to regret that.’
Jemima swept into the gallery, her long cream cashmere coat swishing around her calves, knotted tightly at her slim waist. Her dark hair cascaded down her back and, as ever, her beautiful face was exquisitely made up.
‘Darling, hello.’ She put her arm proprietarily around Mark. ‘It’s a lovely morning.’
‘Feels like ages since I’ve seen you.’ He leaned down and gave her a peck on the lips.
She giggled. ‘Even if it is only a short while that you left our warm bed.’
Anna cringed at their canoodling. Honestly, she was better off out of it — she just didn’t see why they had to flaunt it in front of her face. Jemima was like a cat marking her territory. If only she knew the conversation that had taken place moments ago. That would wipe the smile off her face. Although Anna doubted she would believe it.
Jemima turned her attention to Anna. ‘Well, I hope you’re ready for work, Anna, there’s a lot to do following your day off. Gregory, our debut artist, has been in touch and he’s got lots of questions for you, so I suggest you deal with all his queries as soon as possible. We want to make sure he feels like he’s being heard.’
‘Of course.’ Anna anticipated there would also be a backlog of other emails too, emails that no one had bothered to open in her absence on Friday.
‘Mark and I have lots of paperwork to do in our office, so if you could bring us both a coffee and then leave us undisturbed.’
‘My pleasure,’ Anna replied through gritted teeth, guessing there wouldn’t be a piece of paper in sight.
* * *
After taking the coffees into the office and resisting the temptation to accidentally spill the mugs on them both, Anna returned to reception. As she had expected, no one had bothered to open any of the emails since Thursday and there were several from Gregory, growing increasingly annoyed that his previous emails hadn’t been answered. Anna sighed and set to catching up with everything, pacifying Gregory in the process.
In reality, it wasn’t even her job. She was employed as the receptionist, with Mark as manager and Jemima his assistant. When she and Mark had been together, she hadn’t minded the extra work. It had given her a chance to develop her skills, even if she was fully aware it allowed Mark to get away with doingvery little. But then she had been the one coming up with the ideas, and it made her feel important in his eyes. Having orders snapped at her by Jemima was a completely different matter. Jemima had been brought in as Daddy’s little girl to learn the ropes. In theory she was supposed to be learning the job from the bottom up, experiencing all the jobs in the gallery so that, one day, she could take over. Anna had always suspected Jemima was only here to give her something to do, to stop her from lunching with her friends and spending Daddy’s money. There certainly didn’t seem to be much learning going on.
At twelve-thirty Jemima breezed through reception and said, ‘I’m going out to lunch.’
‘You will be back in an hour, won’t you?’ Anna asked, not entirely hopefully. She couldn’t go for her own lunch until Jemima was back — and that was getting later and later these days. In fact, she’d started bringing sandwiches into work. Although she wasn’t supposed to eat in the gallery, quite often it was the only way she got a chance to eat at all.
Mark left the gallery shortly after Jemima, throwing a glare towards Anna as he walked out, and once more she was alone. She sat back in her chair as she watched him go. She really wasn’t sure she could carry on much longer like this.
Predictably it was closer to two hours by the time Jemima arrived back. This time she was arm in arm with Mark and the pair of them were grinning like Cheshire cats. She waltzed through reception towards Anna, waggling her left hand at her.
‘Look what we’ve just bought.’ She thrust her hand towards Anna. Even from a distance Anna couldn’t have failed to notice the huge rock on Jemima’s finger, or the way it glinted in the early afternoon sunshine.
‘You’re engaged.’ Her voice came out in a croak. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Thank you,’ Jemima said. ‘I can’t wait to tell Daddy.’
Anna glanced at Mark and he smiled smugly back at her, as though his words this morning had never been spoken.
