Deceptive Love Read online

  She stepped out of the elevator when it reached her floor and stopped dead in shock.

  "Hello, Miss Prim. Long time no see." The lounging man raked an appraising eye up and down her length and smiled slightly. "I'm glad to see that the transformation is only skin deep and not meant to be permanent."

  "Schyler!" she gasped. "How ... how did you find me? What are you doing here? Oh, go away!" It was practically

  "Did you think I wouldn't recognize you, Keri?" Schyler asked with simulated surprise. "I know every line of that lovely body of yours and I'd recognize you draped in a grain sack with a paper bag over your head. You'd do well to change your walk as well, my dear, when you try to disguise yourself," he advised helpfully. "Any man with a normal hormone level could spot you by your walk alone, not to mention those lovely legs."

  She looked at him with dislike. He was still the same cocksure gallant, convinced no woman could resist him in the end. Was it all to start again? Well, this time she would not run. He had no hold, no lever to use. She put her key into the door of her apartment, opened it, and stepped inside. She started to close the door, but Schyler put his foot in the way. Keri glanced down at the shining shoe firmly planted over her threshold and then back up to his face, her own face expressionless, patient.

  "Aren't you going to ask me in, Keri darling?" he smiled engagingly.

  "No," she stated positively. "We have nothing to say to each other, Schyler. I won't marry you. I won't have an affair with you, and I won't go out with you." She tried to close the door again.

  "Comprehensive.'' He seemed unmoved by her vehemence. "Let me in, Keri, just for a drink. I promise I'll go when you tell me, but I'd like to talk to you. I haven't seen you for six months." He grinned with wheedling good humor. "I don't count that little meeting in the halls of RanCo. That wasn't the real you. I nearly burst out laughing, you know, when you passed by us. Lord, what a sight! Halloween came early this year."

  In spite of her annoyance, Keri couldn't resist a small grin. He had a slick charm when he chose to use it. "But very effective," she assured him. "I haven't had any distractions while I'm trying to get my work done. It makes for a most restful atmosphere. I wish I'd thought of it sooner."

  His foot hadn't retreated an inch. She sighed resignedly and gave in with marked lack of enthusiasm, saying ungraciously, "All right, Schyler. Come in. Just one drink though, and then out you go. I have a date for dinner and a party."

  He scowled. "I told you any man could see through that ridiculous masquerade. Who is he?"

  He trailed her into the living room as he spoke and she glared back over her shoulder at him. "None of your business, Schyler," she emphasized tightly. "I'll tell you this, though. He doesn’t have any connection with RanCo. I'll never again make the mistake of going out with someone I work with or for. You cured me of that quite thoroughly and lost me an excellent job in the process. Now I keep my business and personal lives entirely separate and it works very nicely, thank you."

  She tossed the suit jacket and her purse onto a nearby armchair and walked into a small kitchen, hidden behind slatted wooden doors. He heard ice cubes clink into a glass, followed almost immediately by the gurgle of a liquid. She came back into the living room and thrust a glass at him. "Scotch."

  "You remembered, darling. A sign of affection at last." He was still standing in the middle of her living room and he looked around with interest. "Very nice. May I sit, Keri, or must I gulp my scotch down while you stand glaring at me?"

  Once again that whimsical note disarmed her and she gestured, exasperated, toward the dark-blue tweed couch. He promptly sat in the middle of the couch and patted the cushion beside him invitingly.

  She snorted and shook her head emphatically. "No, Schyler. No, no, and no again! Isn't that word in your vocabulary at all? Go find yourself another girl and leave me to get on with my life in my own way."

  "There are plenty of girls, women too, for that matter," he admitted. "They're easy to find." His mouth had an odd twist to it "I know that all too well, Keri, my love, but there's only one Keri Dalton of the glorious hair and green eyes. I thought I could be content with less, but now that I've found you once more, I know I won't let you go again."

  It was only with the greatest exercise of will that Keri kept from pounding her head against the nearest wall. "What does it take to convince you, Schyler? I don't love you, I don't want to marry you! I can't make it any plainer than that."

  "Are you in love with someone else, Keri? Tell me honestly that you are and I might believe you." He watched her closely.

  She tried to evade his questions. "What difference does it make, if I'm not in love with you? Schyler, please believe me, there's no future in this . . . this pursuit."

  "If you don't love someone else, you might as well love me," he said outrageously. "I'm young, not bad looking, rich, and I've been told I make love rather nicely. Take me on approval, Keri. I wear well."

  "Incorrigible, impossible, and insane. Finish your drink, Schyler, and go away. I want to get ready for my date." When he showed no immediate signs of leaving, she reminded him, "You promised you'd go when I told you to."

  To her unexpressed but pleased surprise he rose obediently and prepared to leave. She hadn't decided on a course of action should he refuse, except perhaps to call David. David lived in an apartment two floors above her.

  They had met several months ago at the elevator, she going to the laundry area and he coming from it, balancing an untidy pile of freshly dried clothes. He promptly followed her, to make conversation and fold his clothes while hers washed and dried.

  David was an amiable bear of a man and big enough to shift Schyler, but she shrank from that expedient unless absolutely necessary. It wasn't to her taste to have men fighting over her, and it might also give David ideas about his proprietary rights which she would prefer not to have raised. She and David had a most pleasant relationship and she had no desire to pass beyond the casual goodnight-kiss stage with him for the nonce. He was one of several men she dated companionably. It wouldn't suit her to single him out, except in desperation.

  "All right, Keri. I did promise. Your wish is my command, with the exception, of course, of your wish for me to go out of your life. You might as well get used to the fact that I'm not going to do that." There was a note of grim determination in his voice, a warning she would do well not to disregard.

  When he had gone she carried his glass, with its melting ice cubes and residue of diluted scotch, to the kitchen and dumped the remains down the kitchen sink. She really didn't understand Schyler at all. He had been a lighthearted playboy, happily flitting from feminine blossom to feminine blossom, to the despair of Van Metre, Sr., who had a strong dynastic sense. Schyler was the last of the Van Metre males, although he had several sisters, and it would be unthinkable to break the chain of direct descent from the founding Van Metre who had set up the family fortunes in the mid-eighteenth century by means better not enquired into too closely.

  The Schyler of merely a year ago had blithely resisted all his father's persuasions and strictures on marriage, hence a partial explanation of Van Metre, Sr.'s initial delight and then astounded dismay at the course of his son's courtship of Keri.

  Schyler had played at love too often and too long, Keri judged. She didn't want a man who was, at heart, every woman's man. He wanted her, would even marry her, because she was unattainable, but once he had her, another flower would eventually beckon and away he'd flit. She was of no mind to share her man once she had accepted him as hers, and as yet she'd met no man she had had the slightest desire to claim. One thing was certain, however. It wouldn't be Schyler!

  She saw neither hide nor hair of Schyler for the rest of the weekend, although a charming nosegay of flowers arrived early Saturday morning. There was a card bearing a single, flamboyant S attached and she shook her head dolefully. She didn't dump them in the wastebasket because she didn't believe in wasted gestures. It wasn't the flowers' fault, but
had Schyler been present to witness the action, she would have consigned them to the trash with emphatic force.

  Monday morning was typical of such days. She snagged two pairs of non-runnable panty hose and broke a fingernail before the day had fairly begun. When she finally reached the office, she was as close to being late as she'd ever been in her working life and she hoped it didn't foretell a day spent accomplishing things by the skin of her teeth.

  Her weekend had not been the relaxed one she had planned. She had been eternally tensed for Schyler's appearance, making it impossible for her to fully enjoy the party or the play the following evening. Sunday she had spent with Charles and Mary, lounging by their pool, but even Charles had little solace to offer when she told him of Schyler's reappearance in her life. Mary, who was a dear, thought it romantic. Keri assured her that it came closer to being a grade-one nuisance, but made little impression on Mary's opinion.

  Keri managed to open and sort Mr. Simonds's mail before he came in, prepared to carry out her portion of their daily routine, but still with that sense of having to run just to keep in place. Mr. Simonds swept into the office with an unusual air of fluster himself, and before she could open her mouth to respond to his invariable greeting, he snapped out, "Come into my office, please, Miss Dalton," and bustled right past her into his own office.

  "Well, well!" Keri's eyebrows rose in astonishment. "Someone's really been upsetting his routine." Mr. Simonds was a nice man, but he did tend to be persnickity. He did not like change. Keri gathered up her dictation pad, ready to take down a blistering letter or memo to the offender, and followed him into the office.

  He swept his morning mail aside with a petulant gesture quite foreign to his usual manner. Keri sat in her customary chair, pencil poised, expression attentive.

  "Mr. Randolph's back." The words were abrupt. Keri eyed her boss with some speculation, but responded with a noncommittal murmur. "He wasn't due back for another month," Mr. Simonds added plaintively. Keri main- rained her attentive expression, but inwardly her eyebrows were raised to her hairline!

  She knew nothing of Mr. Randolph save his scrawled initials, D.R., which adorned countless memos, letters, and figure-packed papers which she filed, routed, and duplicated as required. He was RanCo, and he had been in Geneva, Paris, London, Rome, and various other major cities ever since she had come to work for Mr. Simonds, and through him, RanCo. Mr. Simonds was a vice-president (as specified to Charles). D. Randolph was the major stockholder in the family-held corporation and the power on the throne. Judging from his output, he was also a workoholic.

  Had she felt so inclined, she could have found out everything about him from his shoe size to the name of his first-grade teacher. An office grapevine is thorough, if not always accurate. But Keri hadn't been inclined. She knew the D stood for Dain. She wouldn't recognize him if she passed him in the hall.

  If she had thought about the matter, cared enough to try to visualize the man, she would have pictured him as dynamic, bull-necked, and cigar-chomping, held together by Maalox and high-blood pressure pills. His wife would be occupied with suitable charities and the Opera Committee and his children would be stashed away in various Ivy League schools. But she hadn't cared enough to even speculate.

  "Do you really speak all the languages Charles told me?" Mr. Simonds sounded hopeful that it had been sheer fabrication on Charles's part.

  Keri looked at her boss in surprise. "Of course, sir," she answered stiffly. "Mr. Lawson wouldn't have said so if I could not. I do not, however, read Japanese, but I believe he made that clear, did he not?"

  "Hmm, yes, yes," Mr. Simonds admitted abstractedly, "but you won't need the Japanese. The German and

  French are the necessary ones, although the Italian could be useful as well"

  "Useful, sir?" Keri was by now thoroughly bewildered. She had known this was going to be a strange day, but she hadn't realized it was going to affect everyone around her as well.

  "Of course. I told you. Mr. Randolph is back." He leaned back in his chair, drumming his fingers impatiently on his disarranged mail. He sighed heavily. "I hate to lose you, Miss Dalton. You're an even better secretary than Miss Mason was."

  Praise indeed, thought Keri wryly. She breathed deeply once, for control, and said carefully, "Mr. Simonds, if you could just be a little more specific. I... I gather that I am no longer to be your secretary and that it is in some way connected with Mr. Randolph's return and my linguistic abilities, but. . ." she gestured her bewilderment expressively.

  "He's already got two secretaries," Mr. Simonds exported in aggrieved tones. "Why does he have to have mine as well? There must be other secretaries who speak ah those languages. I don't like all these changes!" He raffled through the once carefully sorted piles of mail, totally disordering them. Keri gritted her teeth.

  "Who, Mr. Simonds? Who has two secretaries? Mr. Randolph?" Keri strove to maintain a calm, rational tone. So someone had to!"

  "Of course. That's just what I said. He's back and he's commandeered you because you speak all of those languages." Mr. Simonds glared at her as though she had committed some despicable crime.

  "But I'm your secretary," Keri said helplessly. What a Monday!

  "Not anymore," Mr. Simonds informed her glumly. "A typist from the secretarial pool is coming up to do the routine work and Personnel has been notified to replace you as soon as they possibly can."

  "You mean that this is a permanent change?" Behind the clear-glass lenses Keri's green eyes began to emit dangerous sparks. She had hand-picked this boss. He was just what she had ordered, and it didn't suit her plans at all to be shunted around to some other, possibly less congenial (from her point of view) situation.

  "Why, of course." Mr. Simonds stared at her in surprise. She didn't sound happy about it at all! Every secretary who worked for the company would give her eye teeth to be one of Dain Randolph's secretaries, and not just for the higher salary the position carried either. For the first time since she had come to work for him, he really looked at Keri. There was something about this woman ... a proud lift to the jaw line, the smooth clean line of her throat . . . which he had never noticed before. Her hair now . . . he shook his head. Fanciful, that's what he was. All this change was upsetting.

  There was a soft tap at the inner door. Keri rose from her chair, walked over, and opened it. One of the secretaries from the typing pool stood uncertainly waiting. Keri knew her slightly and decided she was competent for an interim period, though not up to the sustained pressure of the job. She smiled reassuringly at the girl, and then turned back to Mr. Simonds.

  "All right, sir. I understand you had no choice." She walked over to his desk and picked up the disarranged stack of mail, saying dryly, "I'll resort these and explain the procedure to Miss Gossard at the same time. I'll also brief her on the more urgent items and the general office routine. When I feel that she is ready to take over, I will report to Mr. Randolph's secretary.

  "You had two calls which are fairly urgent. The memo is on your desk and if you would return them while Miss Gossard and I go over your mail, we'll be done by the time you're ready to deal with it."

  Keri carried the mail out briskly, majestically sweeping an awed Miss Gossard before her. Mr. Simonds considered her exit in a somewhat bemused fashion and said, just as she reached the door, "But Miss Dalton, Mr. Randolph expects you at once. His Miss Barth was most specific."

  Keri paused and responded in repressive accents. "Mr. Simonds, if I were to leave before I made sure everything was running as smoothly as possible under the circumstances, I would be a most inefficient secretary. Presumably Mr. Randolph desires my services because I am efficient. I shall leave your office in good order. Was there anything else, sir?"

  "No, no. Carry on, Miss Dalton." He subsided. When she had shut the door quietly between the two offices, he pursed his lips in a silent whistle. Miss Dalton was definitely displeased. It made him feel somewhat better. His own day was not the only one to suffer un
pleasant disruptions and inconvenience. Miss Dalton was on her high horse and he'd just found out how quelling she could be, seated upon such a lofty mount.

  Keri dealt efficiently with the mail (for the second time) and answered Miss Gossard's questions, but her mind was busy on other things. Of all the rotten luck! Schyler back and now a new boss to impress with her colorless efficiency, well, there was no help for it, she sighed. She'd just nave to come down heavy as a dedicated and desiccated secretary until she sized up her new boss. He'd be more of a challenge to work for—any man who could keep three secretaries busy had to be—but she wasn't worried about her ability to cope with any job. She just sent up a fervent prayer that this boss was devoted to his own wife as well.

  Miss Gossard was watching Keri with wide eyes. The lucky girl, to be going to work for Dain Randolph! Not that she looked capable of utilizing her chances in that direction, though. A very icy customer, Miss Dalton, although if she did something about her clothes and hair, and maybe got contact lenses . . . why, she might even be passable.

  Keri was blissfully unaware of Miss Gossard's speculations. She explained the filing system, briefed Miss Gossard on the current active contracts, told her how and when Mr. Simonds preferred his coffee, and generally tried to prepare her to assume a burden beyond her capabilities.

  When she had done all she felt was possible in the short time at her disposal, Keri tapped on Mr. Simonds's door and took her leave. She assured the slightly apprehensive Miss Gossard that she would be available if serious difficulties should arise. There was nothing personal to clear from her desk, so Keri gathered up her purse, nodded to Miss Gossard, and left.

  Before she sought out her new office, Keri made a quick foray to the rest room. She wanted to be sure her prim exterior was as flawless as makeup and expression could make it. She recaptured several stray wisps of hair, renewed her lipstick and powder, assumed a formal, austere expression, and sailed forth to present herself to Mr. Randolph's Miss Barth.