The Marriage Gamble Read online

  For the second time that morning, a sense that he’d lost control of his business threatened to overwhelm him and for a fraction of a second, fearing more self-revelation might be in store, he considered ignoring the clinic altogether. But he’d said he’d visit and visit he would. He’d also find out who’d approved the lease of the ground-floor shop—he made a mental note of it—so it couldn’t happen in any other premises he owned.

  Having made his way cautiously down the steps, aware that the slightest mis-step might send him crashing to the bottom, he was inserting the key into the lock when he heard voices.

  Medical clinics had long been targets for drug addicts and why would desperate people take any notice of a small sign stating no drugs or money were kept on the premises?

  All senses on full alert, he turned the key in the lock. In his mind, he pictured the place. The door led straight into a waiting room, made narrow by the reception area and treatment room he’d built against the right-hand wall. At the end of the room, three doors opened into three consulting rooms, while a fourth door, in the left-hand wall, opened into a passage that led to washrooms and eventually, because the land sloped away, gave access to a paved area out the back with parking for cars and a separate area for the collection of dustbins.

  Whoever was in there must have come that way, for there was no sign of this lock being forced or the hinges jimmied.

  Mike inched the door open, remembering the security company’s instructions. Back and front doors were alarmed separately, so when you opened the front door you had to neutralise the alarm within thirty seconds of going in, then if you decided to open the back door, you had to disarm that alarm as well.

  If he took his time opening the door, the alarm would go off, the intruder would flee, presumably through the back door, the way he’d come in, and Mike wouldn’t have to face a crazy with a knife or gun.

  When the door had been partially open at least a minute and no alarm had gone off, he made another mental note to speak to someone. The list, starting with ‘Who is Karen?’ and ‘Why an adult bookshop?’ was growing.

  He could no longer hear voices, but perhaps the music was drowning them out. Wasn’t there a requirement for thieves to be as quiet as they could manage—not go around blasting pop music while they robbed and plundered?

  With the music making extreme caution less urgent, he pushed the door fully open, though he’d seen enough cop shows on television to keep back against the passage wall in case whoever was in there had a gun.

  Not a gun, but a paint-roller.

  Peeling himself from the wall, grateful the roller-wielder, a youthful apprentice from the look of him and the amount of spilled paint, had his back to him so hadn’t witnessed his cowardice, Mike stepped gingerly into the waiting room.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, glad his heartbeats had returned to somewhere near normal so his voice didn’t come out as a feeble mutter. If it had, it wouldn’t have been heard above the music issuing from a bright purple radio on the floor behind the painter. ‘I’m Michael Trent, the owner of this building. I didn’t realise the painting had been scheduled for this weekend.’

  The painter let out a squeal—perhaps it was more a scream—at the same time spinning around and flinging the paint-roller in his direction, not connecting but splashing him with bright yellow paint nonetheless.

  Not a youthful apprentice at all, but his virago from the previous evening! A knitted cap hid her hair, and that, with the jeans and checked shirt, had made him think the figure had been that of a male.

  She’d done a classic double-take when she’d realised who she’d been flinging paint-rollers at, but if he’d thought she was going to apologise for her instinctive reaction, he was mistaken.

  She snapped off the radio and headed towards him.

  ‘That bloody alarm didn’t go off again. I’ve told Carmel the darned things are no good. I’m sorry about the paint, but you shouldn’t creep up on people and frighten the wits out of them.’

  She scrabbled around, retrieving the paint-roller and dabbing an equally paint-soaked rag over the nearby furniture.

  ‘Not that these seats don’t look better with a bit of daffodil yellow spotted over them,’ she muttered to herself, advancing towards Mike with both the roller and the cloth—no doubt ready to do more damage.

  ‘Put them both down,’ he ordered, backing out of the way. ‘What kind of paint is it? It’s only on my shirt and if it’s water-based, I can get it out if I wash it straight away.’

  Jacinta retreated, but Michael Trent passed her in two strides, pulling up beside the paint supplies she’d stacked by the wall. Apparently satisfied the paint was indeed water-based, he was now stripping off his shirt.

  To reveal a surprisingly well-sculpted upper body.

  She stared at it, fascinated by the contours and too terrified by the consequences of hurling a paint-roller at her boss to raise her eyes to his face.

  ‘I assume the washroom’s still out this way?’ he said, then walked off before she could gasp out a reply—leaving her with a view of an equally impressive back.

  You wanted him to come, to take a look at the place, she reminded herself. Then she saw the room through his eyes. She’d started her efforts with the paint-roller on the long left-hand wall and, apart from the fact she hadn’t yet got up to do the fiddly edge bit near the ceiling, it looked quite good. But where she’d been working when he’d sneaked in was around the doors leading into the consulting rooms and, because she’d thought she’d finish all the roller bits first, she had broad sweeps of paint above and between the doors, with the remnants of the old dark green colour awaiting the brushwork around the edges.

  It looked terrible!

  ‘Did I actually say yes? Or have you jumped the gun?’

  He’d crept up on her again and the questions made her start—a sure sign of guilt—but as he was asking, maybe he wouldn’t remember.

  She’d once read that looking into someone’s eyes gave you the appearance of being truthful. She looked into his eyes—a pale colour she couldn’t distinguish in the waiting room’s appalling lighting, but last night she’d thought them grey—and prepared to lie.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ he said, as if reading her mind. ‘The questions were purely rhetorical. I said I’d call in, not that you could go ahead and paint the place.’

  His supercilious tone infuriated Jacinta.

  ‘And why should I have believed you?’ she stormed. ‘The way you spoke last night, it was more likely you’d have sent an underling, who’d have talked to Carmel, who’d have told whoever it was that the clinic was doing so badly it wasn’t worth wasting money on it. Look at it! Do you wonder it’s doing badly? People walk in here and imagine they’re going to catch something far worse than they’ve already got just by sitting down in one of the chairs. In fact, most of the patients prefer to stand.’

  ‘And is painting the walls going to reassure them?’ He glanced towards the paint-spattered chair. ‘Unless you’re going to paint the chairs as well.’

  For a moment Jacinta regretted putting down the paint-roller. She could have hit him with it. But antagonising the man would make things worse, not better.

  ‘I’m going to replace the chairs,’ she said, mustering what dignity she could. ‘That was one of the things I wanted to speak to you about.’

  ‘But isn’t Carmel right? If the clinic’s doing badly, why waste money on it?’

  He made the question sound so reasonable that Jacinta forgot the antagonising thing.

  ‘The clinic’s doing badly because no one will spend money on it. It’s probably one of the most needed services in the inner city, but people are staying away in droves because it’s dank and gloomy and so depressing they must begin to wonder if it’s not a waiting room to hell. Patients don’t even have names, just numbers, and a disembodied voice calls out “Number twenty-seven to Room Three” and everyone checks their numbers, and because the numbers aren’t given out in sequence
, the person with seventy-five, who might be next, thinks he’s going to be here for three hours so he decides he’s not that sick, drops his number on the floor and sneaks out.’

  She glared up at the man she saw as the cause of all these problems, and was surprised to see not anger but disbelief in his eyes.

  ‘Patients have numbers?’

  Disbelief in his voice as well, but Jacinta wasn’t going to fall for that act.

  ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know!’ she snorted. ‘According to Carmel, it’s the practice now in all your clinics—in the interests of efficiency, she says, but presumably it’s all to do with money. I suppose it takes less time to call out “number fourteen” than “Mrs Welby-Sims”, though you’d think “Mr Smith” would be easier to say than “number one hundred and forty-eight”.’

  Mike stared at the virago. Not that she was being so viragoish now. She was simply yabbering on and making no sense whatsoever.

  ‘You’re saying all the patients are called by number?’ He was aware he was repeating himself but it seemed so unbelievable he had to make sure he had it right before he sacked someone.

  But who? His office manager? Barry, his managerial head? Himself, for being so immersed in the new projects he’d lost track of what was happening in the old ones?

  ‘It’s supposedly cost-effective,’ the woman said, her voice less forceful now. Maybe some of his disbelief was filtering through to her.

  He slumped down into the nearest chair, realised it was paint-spattered and unless the paint had dried really quickly he would now have paint on his trousers. It would just have to stay there. He could hardly take them off and wash them.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said, waving Jacinta to a cleaner chair. ‘For a start, who are you and what business is it of yours whether the place works or not?’

  She frowned at him, flopped into a chair, then immediately shot out of it.

  ‘It’s not that grubby,’ he protested, and she flashed a grin at him.

  ‘It’s not the chair, it’s the paint. I need to finish what’s in the tray or it will get a skin on it and the roller will dry out. Can we talk while I work?’

  Mike nodded, still caught up in how the grin had illuminated her face, bringing the neat features alive. But as she pushed the roller through the paint tray then lifted it to the wall he took in the patched appearance of the wall, and the extent of the job she’d undertaken.

  ‘Were you planning on getting all this done today?’ he asked, ‘or did you feel having it half-done would encourage more customers?’

  The look she flashed him this time was totally lacking in amusement.

  ‘I’ll get it done today,’ she said grimly, and he fancied he heard a silent ‘if it kills me’ following the words.

  ‘Have you got a brush? I can take the can and start working around the edges.’

  The suggestion must have startled her almost as much as it startled himself, for the roller shot off across the wall at a tangent, leaving a vivid stripe of yellow on the dull and dirty green.

  ‘You can’t paint!’ she protested, but whether she meant he was unable to do something so basic, or that he was too superior to dirty his hands with manual labour, he couldn’t guess.

  ‘Not only can but will,’ he told her. ‘In fact, I painted these walls before the clinic first opened, although I’m sure it was a more pleasant green back then. I seem to remember reading a psychological report that green was soothing, and that’s why I chose it.’

  He crossed the room to where he’d checked the label on the paint cans. There’d been other painting paraphernalia near them. She’d spread newspaper on the carpet, though now he looked more closely at the floor covering he realised paint splatter would probably improve it. There were two brushes, a stick for stirring, a couple of spare cloths and a small empty beetroot tin, obviously brought along so she could fill it with paint and carry it with her as she did the brushwork. He stirred the paint in the can, filled the tin and, after resealing the can, picked up the brush.

  ‘Where’s the ladder?’ he asked, looking around in case he’d missed seeing it.

  Jacinta turned from where she’d been determinedly rolling paint across the wall and just as determinedly ignoring him.

  ‘I haven’t got one.’

  ‘So how were you going to do those top bits near the ceiling?’

  He’d caught her out and she knew it, but she still retained considerable aplomb.

  ‘I was going to put a chair on that small table and manage on that, but you’re probably tall enough to reach just standing on a chair. I’ve more newspaper out the back if you want to cover the chair.’

  It was at that stage Mike realised just how ridiculous this situation was. He was standing in his own waiting room, in his own clinic, being ordered around by a little snip of a woman who, as far as he was aware, had no right whatsoever to be on the premises.

  But he went out the back, found the newspaper and dutifully spread it, not only on the chair but over the carpet where it abutted the wall, in case he’d lost the art of wall painting and dripped more than he should.

  Tin of paint in one hand, and brush in the other, he climbed cautiously onto the chair and began to stroke the bright colour along the top of the wall. He hadn’t forgotten how to do it!

  ‘So, Jacinta who doesn’t like being called Jazzy, why is the wall colour of this clinic or, for that matter, the clinic’s well-being, or lack of it, your concern?’

  She didn’t answer immediately, and he turned to find her bent over the paint cans, refilling the tray she was using. But when she straightened she looked at him, shaking her head as if either his presence, or his personality, was beyond her understanding.

  ‘You’ve no idea, have you? How many people work for you? Do you know that?’

  He shrugged, thought about hazarding a guess, considered telling an outright lie and in the end shook his head, which seemed somehow better than a feeble ‘no’.

  ‘I didn’t think you did,’ she said, bending down to retrieve the tray, then carrying it back to the wall where she was working. ‘Well, for your information, I’m one of your employees. I’ve even got a number to prove it—staff member four hundred and seventy-two, that’s me.’

  ‘Four hundred and seventy-two—you can’t possibly be!’ If he hadn’t known himself better, he’d have thought he was spluttering! ‘I might not know to the last digit exactly how many employees I have, but I’m damned certain it’s nowhere near four hundred.’

  Number four hundred and seventy-two continued to spread paint across the wall.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve got four hundred and seventy-two employees either.’ She spoke in a kindly voice that set his teeth on edge, but she didn’t falter in her task. ‘I guess it’s like the numbering system here, not in order.’

  Mike thought back. Paul had certainly said something about a new simplified system of accounting for wages and salaries, but numbering the staff?

  ‘That’s not the point anyway,’ he said, pleased to note the spluttering had lessened. ‘Whatever your number, you had no right to paint the walls without permission.’

  That made her turn, but only, it appeared, to smile mockingly up at him.

  ‘Considering you’re now helping me…’ Mike clenched his teeth and concentrated on getting the paint to the top of the wall without smudging the cornice.

  ‘Only because you’d never have finished it today and I don’t want either staff or patients turning up tomorrow to find the place like some graffiti artist’s nightmare.’

  ‘I’d have finished it!’ Jacinta told him, although she knew she’d probably have had to work all night to do it. ‘And you’re not going to be much help if you stop each time you want to say something and wave the paintbrush at me like a school principal flourishing the cane!’

  She sluiced the roller through the paint again, and slid it across the wall. Silence from the other side of the room told her he hadn’t liked her comment, but he was probabl
y going to fire her anyway, so it was a good time to tell him some home truths. She was marshalling her thoughts—or trying to get them off the appealing contours of his bare chest—when he beat her into speech.

  ‘That’s a ridiculously fanciful metaphor. I was merely using the brush for emphasis. Besides, school principals no longer use canes—they went out with the ark.’

  Mike was aware this wasn’t the conversation he should be having. He needed to know exactly who she was and what right she had to be painting his clinic, but every time he glanced her way she seemed to be reaching up to get paint to the highest possible point, an action which tightened her jeans against extremely neat buttocks and lifted her shirt so a bit of bare midriff was revealed.

  Hardly the sexiest sight in the world, but distracting, nonetheless.

  He tried harder.

  ‘Can we get back to what your role is here? And just what right you have to be painting these walls?’

  Skin flashed into view again, but Jacinta remained stubbornly focused on the wall as she answered him.

  ‘I thought you said yes when I asked about painting,’ Jacinta said, though she knew he hadn’t, not exactly, and he probably knew he hadn’t also—not exactly!

  She wanted to turn around because if she could see his face, she might be able to gauge his mood, but his face was just above that bare chest…

  Mike remembered that paint had been mentioned—he’d connected it with artwork, which wasn’t so surprising, given where they’d been. Maybe he had said yes, but that didn’t explain why she was doing it.

  He watched faded, paint-splashed denim tighten over the pert buttocks as she again bent to scoop paint onto the roller, then, shamed by his interest, asked her why.

  ‘I’m doing it because I work in this clinic and I happen to think the work I do is worthwhile. I think the clinic is worthwhile, too, but it’s being allowed to die—or maybe it’s being killed off.’

  She turned towards him now, dark eyes scanning his face, perhaps to see if she could read a murderous guilt in it. But far from arousing ire in him, her words had shocked him—no, more than that, rocked him. How long ago had he lost track of what was going on in his own business? About what was happening at this most basic yet ultimately most important level? Since the internet project started? Or before that, when he’d begun to diversify into other fields, looking for new challenges in an effort to recapture the excitement he’d felt when he’d first set up Abbott Road?