They were where they were. She would just have to deal with it. She hadn’t committed a crime in being a little less of a closed book.
‘Shopping, I take it?’
Lost in her thoughts, Ellie looked at him in puzzlement for a few seconds.
‘Clothes,’ he elaborated. ‘You’ll need one or two reasonably dressy things to wear in hot weather. I’ll be wining and dining my soon-to-be clients in style, so you’ll have to dress the part. Shop to your heart’s content and put it on expenses.’
‘I wasn’t going to take a couple of days off to go shopping,’ Ellie retorted vigorously, without giving it much thought, and he burst out laughing.
‘No need to sound so affronted. It was a simple assumption.’
‘I...’
‘I’m sure Romeo won’t mind letting you go for a few days. In this day and age, please don’t tell me that you have to take time off so that you can stock up the freezer for him.’
Ellie stared at him with such an appalled expression that he burst out laughing again.
‘I would never be one of those women who felt they had to stock up the freezer for some guy because he was too helpless to look after himself for a few days!’
‘Didn’t think so. All men should know how to look after themselves.’
‘And do you do much cooking when it comes to looking after yourself?’ she heard herself ask, sweetly sarcastic.
‘Don’t have to,’ he responded without batting an eye. ‘I have a top chef on speed dial. Whatever he rustles up will always be so much better than any of my attempts. Why do you need time off, in that case? We really won’t be away for very long. If you’re worried about your place, I can always get someone to swing by every day and make sure no pipes have burst and the milk bottles aren’t collecting outside...’
Ellie sighed. ‘It’s not that.’ Was he going to let it go? Not a chance. Letting things go wasn’t in his nature. ‘It’s just that I was planning on going to see my mother at the weekend.’
She saw the confusion on his face and understood where it was coming from. She was a woman in her twenties, surely the business of a family visit wouldn’t be sufficient for her to dig in her heels at taking a few days to work abroad? A visit to a mother wasn’t in the same league as a visit to hospital to see someone on their last legs, was it?
‘She lives in Dorset. I... She’s on her own, you see, ever since my father... Ever since Dad died.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Ellie. You should have said something.’ He frowned. ‘I don’t recall you taking time off for a funeral.’
‘My dad died before I joined the company. It’s a long story but what it comes down to is that my mother didn’t deal with the death very well. In fact, she went to pieces. I’ve had to...well... I’ve had to look after her to some extent because she’s...had a few problems.’
‘What sort of problems?’
‘This is very boring for you.’ She shot him a self-deprecating smile and he shook his head.
‘I don’t want to ever hear you say anything like that again. Talk to me. What sort of problems?’
This is what he did, Ellie thought. It was all part of his huge personal magnetism. His charm wasn’t just superficial, it was bone-deep, because it was rooted in genuine interest. When he asked a question and looked you in the eye, he sincerely wanted to hear the answer.
‘She couldn’t cope.’ Ellie tried to inject some crispness into her voice but there was a tell-tale wobble there that she couldn’t control. ‘She started drinking and the drinking got a little out of hand. It took some time for that to be ironed out, and I’m happy that she’s no longer dependent on alcohol, but she’s very much prone to depression. She felt like my dad’s death took away her reason to live. Since he died, she’s had a couple of minor strokes, enough for me to worry about what might happen if another occurred. Right now, she seems to be down again. I could hear it in her voice when I spoke to her at the weekend.
‘So there. That’s the story. I’d planned on visiting so that I could check the situation for myself—cheer her up, maybe arrange for her to come to London.’ She laughed, but it sounded more like a croak, and she ended up clearing her throat.
‘Don’t you have any other family members who could help you, Ellie?’
‘I’m an only child. My parents were only children. There’s just me.’ She looked down quickly so that he couldn’t detect the glimmer of tears in her eyes.
‘You must have been...just a kid when your father died.’
‘I was sixteen. Old enough to look after Mum.’
‘Like I said. Just a kid.’
* * *
James looked at her, at the defensive set of her mouth. She was trying so hard to be brave and he imagined she’d spent all those years trying hard to be brave. He knew what it felt like to lose a parent when you were still a teenager. He’d lost both of his. Sometimes in the dead of night thoughts of what that had felt like would surface like eels crawling out of hiding places...dark thoughts about the loss and confusion he had felt all those many years ago.
The truth was that, while Max had taken on the role of caretaker, and while his sister had been swamped with attention from everyone, he had floundered. There had been no one there for him. Not really. No one who could understand the void left. So he had filled the void with friends, activity and a dazzling social life. He had used the tactics of distraction to build a wall around his loss and to seal himself off from dealing with the hurt and sense of helplessness.
James rarely dwelled on a past he couldn’t change, but thoughts came at him from nowhere. He remembered that feeling of exclusion, of standing on the outside looking in. He’d been about to go to university, and of course he had, but he had been vulnerable—neither wrapped up in protective cotton wool, as his younger sister Izzy had been, nor fuelled with the necessity to hold things together, which had been his older brother Max’s role.
From out of the blue, like a clap of thunder on a cloudless day, he remembered how he had fallen for a ridiculously glamorous older woman who had worked at an art gallery in the centre of Cambridge. She had been bowled over by his accent, by the designer clothes and the fast car—possessions he had always taken for granted. He had been the youthful idiot mistakenly seeking to fill that aching, empty space with the love of a good woman. When he’d told her that he had no idea if he would be able to afford his next meal now that his parents were gone, she’d begun backing away.
He’d been joking, even though he really hadn’t known the state of the family finances, only that Max had intimated they weren’t as healthy as they should have been. She’d taken him seriously, and even now he wasn’t sure just how shocked he’d really been when he’d caught her in bed with his much richer friend. Short, bespectacled, plump Rupert had been over the moon with his conquest.
James had learnt lessons then that had stayed with him for ever. He was very happy to shower money on the women he dated but his heart was something he had no intention of ever giving away. He had rashly given it away once and he wasn’t going to make that mistake again. Never again would he allow himself to get emotionally wrapped up with any woman to the extent that he could end up being hurt. No way. Build your walls, he had concluded, and make sure they’re impregnable.
Impatient with his trip down an unpleasant memory lane, he shook his head and focused.
‘A lot of responsibility for you at that age,’ he mused quietly. ‘Especially if you had no one to share the burden with you.’
‘I coped.’
‘Coping isn’t exactly a great way to wile away your teenage years.’
‘Some of us don’t get given a choice.’
‘No truer word has ever been spoken. Yes, of course you can have a couple of days to visit your mother.’ He paused and their eyes met. ‘If there’s anything I can do, I want you to promise me that you�
�ll let me know.’
‘Sure.’ She stood up and looked at him. ‘I’ll start sorting out the details now, if you don’t mind, and I’ll make sure that there’s good cover for me when I’m out of the country.’
‘Of course you will.’
Letting his guard slip was all well and good in an office in Shoreditch, but no way was it going to happen on a tropical island in the Caribbean...
CHAPTER THREE
ELLIE WAS HIGHLY efficient when it came to James’s travel arrangements. She’d had plenty of practice, given his frenetic, country-hopping schedule, and she could book a five-star hotel, in just the right place for whatever meetings he had lined up, with her eyes closed. She knew the kind of thing he wanted wherever he happened to stay. A luxury penthouse, because he liked a lot of space, and nothing near the ground floor because he enjoyed the peace of looking down on a city at night. And wherever in the world he happened to be, he had to have instant access to the double espressos he lived on when he was working flat out.
She didn’t know how she knew that. She just did. Which meant he must have told her at some point, or perhaps it was just information that had filtered through by osmosis after so long working together.
Barbados was an anomaly, being a business trip as well as a mini-holiday, so the requirements had been rather different. Her job had been made easier because Naomi had chosen the hotel, simply leaving Ellie with the task of securing just the right suite of rooms for them in the eye-wateringly expensive boutique five-star.
Her passport hadn’t left the top drawer in years, so looking at images of sand and sea had been a vicarious taste of a paradise she’d thought she’d never get to see with her own eyes.
But now there was no Naomi on the scene. Instead, she would be the one staying at the fancy hotel in the tropical paradise, and it felt unnatural to be booking a room for herself in a hotel his ex-girlfriend had picked out. Her needs were infinitesimally less complex than his but that made no difference because the price of even the cheapest room was astronomical. When the booking had been confirmed, she’d actually closed her eyes, breathed in deeply and felt giddy at the thought of staying at a luxury hotel in Barbados.
She’d thought that a couple of days with her mother would bring her back down to earth with a healthy reality check. In fact, she’d expected Angie Thompson to be aghast at the thought of her going away when she was grappling with depression and might have wanted her to be around. But, to Ellie’s astonishment, her mother had perked up at the news that her daughter would be heading off to paradise.
‘It’ll do you good to get some time away,’ she’d sighed, before wistfully recalling happy days when she and Robert had had fun saving their pennies and travelling as much as they could. ‘You’ve done nothing but look after me for years. You’re a good girl, Ellie, but you need to spread your wings and enjoy yourself, and a little break would do you a power of good. Believe me, I know how much you’ve sacrificed for me and I’m really happy you’re going to have some time out. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.’
Bewildered, Ellie had wondered whether her mother had been listening to a word she’d said and, if she had, whether something had been lost in translation.
‘It’s going to be about work, Mum,’ she’d said firmly.
‘But in such a glorious place. Your dad and I always wanted to go to that part of the world. He’ll be smiling down right now to see you getting there...’
‘Getting there to work. You have no idea what a hard taskmaster James is. My nose will be pressed to the grindstone every minute I’m there.’
Could it be that her mother no longer needed her quite like she used to? For a moment Ellie had felt a little disoriented...had wondered whether looking after her mum had become part of her comfort zone. And were that to be ripped away...well, how would she deal with it? She would have to engage emotionally with the outside world for the first time since her father’s death. It had felt scary, and a thought best put on ice for the moment.
‘How are you going to be able to work when the sun’s shining outside and there’s a beach a stone’s throw away?’
It was a very good question, but Ellie knew better than to give it too much mental air-time. Instead, with all the arrangements in place, she had ducked any uncomfortable speculation and convinced herself that there was no reason why anything should be different simply because of a change of scenery. She’d worked for James every summer for the last three years, hadn’t she, when the sun had been shining down? Since when had a little hot weather got in the way of doing a job?
She wasn’t going to be marooned with him on a desert island, was she? The hotel would be full of tourists milling about, and when they weren’t working she would be able to happily lose herself in that throng, or escape to her room, where she would be able to catch up on her reading. She had a backlog of books to get through. There was also a state-of-the-art gym at the hotel, and she intended to make full use of the lavish facilities.
She suspected that, with work out of the way, she would be left to her own devices while her charming and determined boss wined and dined the young businessmen he intended to add to his stable. Pursuit, when it came to getting what he wanted, was an art form to him. He had perfected it, and he would happily leave her behind once the nitty-gritty had been dealt with. She was his PA, after all, not Naomi, whom he had probably banked on helping him with the client entertaining. Tall, blonde and stunning would have been a definite asset.
Still, her stomach was clenched with nerves as she paused outside the airport terminal for a few seconds to gather herself. She’d seen precious little of James over the past few days, having returned from visiting her mother. On the one hand, that was good, because it put distance between her and the uneasy inroads he had made into her private life, leaving her unsettled and desperate to re-establish the status quo. On the other hand, it was less good, because now her nerves were racing through her like quicksilver as she briskly made her way to the first-class desk where they had arranged to meet.
For all her inner pep talks, Ellie knew that her forbidden attraction was a dangerous weakness. She needed the physical strictures of their working office environment to protect her from...herself and her foolish imagination. It was one thing to begin nurturing thoughts of cutting the apron strings that attached her to her maybe no longer quite so dependent parent, but another to engage emotionally with a guy and finding her feet in a world that had passed her by. It was quite another again to nurture any thoughts about a guy who was utterly inappropriate.
Even from a distance, James Stowe effortlessly stood out. So impossibly good-looking but, more than that, so much in control of his audience. Right now, this consisted of several young, attractive women behind the check-in counter and a pilot, all of whom appeared to be absorbed in whatever he was saying. Lounging against the counter, legs lightly crossed at the ankles, hands shoved into the pockets of his pale, linen trousers, James was talking, half smiling, his head inclined, which gave the appearance of rapt attention.
Which didn’t mean that he failed to notice her slow approach, because she could see him straighten fractionally, eyes narrowing as he took in her outfit, which, now that she was in the airport and surrounded by the buzz of excited holiday-goers, felt stiffly uncomfortable.
‘What are you wearing?’ was the first thing he asked as they headed towards the first-class lounge, having checked in.
‘My usual,’ Ellie countered. This was the first time she’d been to an airport in for ever, and she had never stepped foot into a first-class lounge before.
She did her best to stop her jaw from dropping to the ground at a world fashioned exclusively for the rich and famous. Uniformed staff were there to await their every command. Would they like something light to eat in the restaurant? Perhaps a late breakfast before taking off? Champagne? Cocktails? They were shown to a buffet sideboard where every type o
f pastry was there for the choosing. Businessmen sat frowning in front of their computers and, here and there, partners and kids lounged around with plates of half-eaten delicacies in front of them.
James barely seemed to notice their surroundings. ‘Ellie, we’re going to a hot and humid island. You might find your usual a little restricting when we get there.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Breakfast?’
‘I grabbed a coffee before I left home...’ She glanced at him to find him gazing back at her with amusement. ‘But maybe a pastry would be nice. What would you like?’ How did it work here? she wondered, glancing around. Did she summon a waiter across? Head to the breakfast station herself and hope the espresso machine wasn’t as terrifying to operate as it looked from where she was? Or, did she do as she was doing now and stare back at him in a welter of indecision, wondering where her work hat had gone?
‘I’d like to find somewhere to sit.’ He looked around and then nodded towards the window. ‘And,’ he continued, leading the way, ‘you don’t have to fetch and carry for me, Ellie. Yes, you’re here in a professional capacity, but I’d like you to relax and not stand to attention because you feel you have to.’
‘Of course.’
* * *
James frowned but resisted the urge to carry the conversation further.
Why on earth was she wearing a knee-length navy-blue skirt and a white top that was destined to crease within five seconds of take off? And were those tights?
Of course, he knew exactly what was going on. The second he had seen her he had known exactly what was going on. With one hand guiding a wayward wheelie suitcase, the other struggling with her pull-along, and wearing her neat navy and white work-ready ensemble, she looked very similar to the three women behind the counter who had been flirting with him.
Except she wasn’t, was she? She wasn’t just smart. She wasn’t just his valued secretary who was quick enough to actually follow what he was saying and sometimes even pre-empt him. No, she was much more than that, as he had discovered a few days earlier.
Claiming His Cinderella Secretary Page 4
