Ambition Read Online Free PDF Page B

year, and which never were.
    It really was empty, for the first time in the three years since it had opened. He really had booked all the tables; it must have cost him thousands of pounds sterling. Just a tip in the ocean,
she guessed.
    ‘Really, Mr Pope, a Big Mac would have done nicely.’
    ‘A cheap date, too!’ He laughed. ‘Oh, that’s a good one. I like that. I like
you
, Susan. I like you so much I’ll level with you.’
    He leaned across the table, close. She could smell his aftershave, something very old and expensive that made her think of the time when New York phone numbers had been preceded by codes like
‘Rhinelander’ and ‘Plaza’. She couldn’t place it, and not being able to place a man’s aftershave for once – and thus not being able to write him off with
one pertinent put-down – made her feel oddly disorientated and powerless.
    ‘I can get a lot of women,’ he said. ‘Too many, in fact. There is such a thing, believe me. In some countries, though I shan’t say which, I can literally get any woman I
want, from the strutting little generalissimo’s wife down to the last sad
muchacha
in shanty town. Here in your fine country, where the women are fair, the policemen are wonderful
and the guys like nothing more than to dress up in frocks and play football, I can get up to – let’s see, arriviste minor royalty. Easily.
    ‘But they’re just blue-blooded bimbos, basically, and once you’ve had them they’re as much fun as some dumb wetback wench who can’t speak a word of American.
They’re worse, because you can’t pretend you don’t speak their language. And I’m so sick of bimbo talk, and bimbos. Do you know why, Susan?’
    ‘Because you want an old-fashioned girl?’ She gulped at her vodka martini.
    He laughed again. ‘Well caught. But no. It’s because I’m bored with breaking bimbos. It’s no fun, no challenge, no sport – it’s like putting Sugar Ray in the
ring with a crippled midget. No. Strong, hard career girls – they’re the new
filet mignon
of females. They’re the new frontier for a man. Girls like you. Oh, I’d
have fun breaking you, Susan.’ He frowned at her plate. ‘Eat your dinner, you’re too thin.’ His tone was grotesquely paternal.
    She poked at her sautéed chicken in bourbon. Her throat was so tight she couldn’t have swallowed a peanut. She wondered if it would be bad form to ask for her next martini
intravenously.
    He was mad. He wanted to hurt her.
    She wanted to hear more. She must be mad, too.
    She looked at him. ‘I don’t think I understand you.’
    ‘Oh, I think you do.’ He took a pecan from her plate. ‘I’ll tell you how I see the schedule. You’ve read about the twelve labours of Hercules, I suppose?’ He
laughed. ‘I take it you can read?’
    ‘Oh yes. Especially between the lines.’
    ‘Good girl.’ Bourbon from the pilfered pecan ran down his chain. He looked even more like the king of the concrete jungle at feeding time. How do you like your blood sacrifice, sir?
Rare, please. ‘Well, let’s think about this proposition in a classical vein. Let’s call it the six labours of Susan. See how modest my demands are? And believe me, my imagination
runs well into telephone numbers. International calls at that. But you have only six tasks to complete. Of course, there is no logical reason at all why I should give you your job back, let alone
your victim’s. Your conduct was disgraceful, unprofessional and indefensible.’ He sighed ‘Yet you have a dream and I have a whim.’
    She laid down her knife and stared him straight in the eye. ‘What is it?’
    ‘You do what I want, and you get what you want.’ He snapped a breadstick neatly in two. ‘Or you break.’
    He had his driver take her home. He didn’t touch her. He didn’t need to. He told her to report for work on time the next morning. And he told her to sleep on it.
    She thought that it might be marginally less difficult sleeping on a bed of