Read On wings of song for Free Online

to me as though I'd stolen the petty cash? I had every right to arrange an audition with Oscar Warrender for my cousin if I chose to do so. It was out of office hours and had absolutely nothing to do with you!'
    'Aren't you over-simplifying the issue?' he suggested with dangerous calm. 'It certainly had something to do with me. You were a member of my staff. A trusted member of my staff until yesterday,' he added, which made her wince. 'I'd taken you into my confidence about the necessity for tact and diplomacy over the handling of the recent merger and the important clients involved. Of those clients I suppose Warrender and his wife were about the most important. When this silly business about Anthea's ring happened '
    'It was not silly,' Caroline interrupted coldly. 'What you mean is that you were peeved because you had no part in it.'
    There was another moment of surprised silence, and then he said, 'I don't think I know you in this mood.'
    'I don't think I know myself,' she responded imhappily, and passed her hands over her face in a singularly expressive gesture of bewilderment and distress.

    *Sit down,' he growled, and she dropped into her usual chair beside his desk, still clutching the notebook he had told her she would no longer require.
    'Now ' he leant forward, his hands clasped
    in front of him on the desk, those frighteningly penetrating grey eyes fully upon her'—are you going to tell me you feel totally guiltless about the way you've behaved in this business?'
    Caroline looked back at him, and then her glance fell.
    'No,' she said in a much smaller voice. 'I would much rather have told you what I was going to do—but then you wouldn't have let me do it, would you?' Then, as he didn't answer that, she went on, 'I hadn't really worked it all out at first. It was you yourself who gave me the idea.'
    '/ did?'
    She nodded. 'When you knew I was going to return the ring in person, you observed in a nasty, snide sort of way, "Don't try to foist that cousin of yours on Warrender, of all people." '
    There was a short silence, then he said, as though he were making a not altogether welcome discovery, 'You don't much like me, do you?'
    She looked away from him, but then felt compelled to look back again.
    'As a matter of fact I do—^usually,' she replied reluctantly. And at that he laughed suddenly, and she thought how much it changed him and how until that moment it had never occurred to her that his laugh and his smile showed more in his eyes than in any other feature.
    'Even though I'm a mean bully?' he enquired.

    Caroline hesitated again and then said. 'Do you want me to take that back?'
    'I think I do rather.'
    *Then you must also take back the terms of my dismissal,' she told him firmly.
    It was he who hesitated then until, prompted by something she could not quite define, she held out her hand to him across the desk, and he took it—reluctantly at first and then in an almost painful grip.
    'Did you want to dictate anything?' she asked, withdrawing her hand after a moment and turning the pages of her notebook as though anxious to retvim to normality.
    'No. Tell me instead how the audition went,' he replied. 'Did Warrender hail your cousin as the tenor we've all been waiting for?'
    'Not exactly. But why don't you ask him yourself? You might not feel you could trust me to report accurately.'
    He gave her a quizzical glance at that, reached for the telephone and then, indicating the other one, said, 'Do you want to listen in on the extension?'
    Caroline shook her head, much though she would have liked to hear what passed, and replied, 'No, thank you. If Sir Oscar speaks confidentially to you it wouldn't be right for me to overhear, would it?'
    'I see you have your scruples—even if they don't always apply in my case,' he retorted. But he added, 'Stay where you are,' when she made a move to go.
    So she stayed, and watched his face as he dialled, greeted Sir Oscar, who evidently replied

    in person, and then said,