‘You’re not?’ Her eyes shone in the reflected brightness thrown up by the white tablecloth and he looked away while she blinked back threatening tears.
‘Of course not.’ He shifted forward in his seat, closer to her. ‘You well and truly proved your worth to the business last week.’ He waited till she looked at him again. ‘I have to admit, I’m hurt that you thought I’d fire you for admitting to being bullied.’ He leaned back in his chair with a sigh. ‘God, you must think I’m a real tool if you seriously believed I’d do something like that.’
‘It’s just—you can be a bit...fierce...sometimes. And I didn’t want to show any weakness.’ She visibly cringed as she said it, and his insides plummeted.
‘Tell me more about what happened at your last job,’ he said quietly, wanting to get things completely straight between them, but not wanting to spook her further in the process.
Her gaze slid away. ‘It’s not a happy tale, or something I’m particularly proud of.’
‘No. I got that impression.’
‘Okay, I’ll tell you, but please don’t judge me too harshly. Things like this always look so simple and manageable from a distance, but when you’re in the thick of it, it’s incredibly difficult to think straight without letting your emotions get in the way.’
He held up his hands, palms forward, and affected a non-judgemental expression.
She nodded and sat up straighter. ‘I thought I’d hit the jackpot when I was offered that position. Ugh! What an idiot,’ she said, her self-conscious grimace making him want to move closer to her, to draw her towards him and smooth out the kinks of her pain. But he couldn’t do that. It wasn’t his place.
So he just nodded and waited for her to continue.
‘When I started as Executive Assistant to the CEO of LED Software I had no idea about the office politics that were going on there. But it didn’t take me long to find out. Apparently one of the other PAs had expected to be a shoo-in for my job and was very unimpressed when they gave it to me. She made it her mission from my first day to make my life miserable. As one of the longest-standing members of staff—and a very, er, strong personality—she had the allegiance of all the other PAs and a lot of the other members of staff and they ganged up on me. At first I thought I was going mad. I’d make diary appointments for my boss with other high-ranking members of staff in the company, which their PAs would claim to have no knowledge of by the time I sent him along for the meeting. Or the notes I’d print out for an important phone call with the Executive Board would go missing from his desk right before it took place and he’d have to take it unbriefed.’ She tapped her fingers on the table. ‘That did not go down well. My boss was a very proud guy and he expected things to be perfect.’
‘I can relate to that,’ Max said, forcing compassion into his smile despite the tug of disquiet in his gut. He was just as guilty when it came to perfectionism.
But, instead of admonishing him, she smiled back.
‘Lots of other little things like that happened,’ she continued, rubbing a hand across her forehead, ‘which made me look incompetent, but I couldn’t prove that someone was interfering with my work and when I mentioned it to my boss he’d wave away my concerns and suggest I was slipping up on the job and blaming others to cover my back. I let the stress of it get to me and started making real mistakes, things I never would have let slip at the last place I worked. It rattled me, to the point where I started believing I wasn’t cut out for the job. I wasn’t sleeping properly with the stress of it and I ended up breaking down one day in front of my boss. And that—’ she clicked her fingers ‘—was the end of our working relationship. He seemed to lose all respect for me after that and started giving the other PAs things that were my job to do.’
Max snorted in frustration. ‘The guy sounds like an idiot.’
She gave him a wan smile. ‘I was the idiot. I only found out what was really going on when I overheard a couple of the PAs laughing about it in the ladies’ bathroom.’
Her eyes were dark with an expression he couldn’t quite read now. Was it anger? Resentment? It certainly didn’t look like self-pity.
‘So you left,’ he prompted.
She took a sip of her drink and he did the same, grimacing at the claggy sweetness of the cocktail.
‘I had to,’ she said. ‘My professional reputation was at stake, not to mention my sanity. I couldn’t afford to be fired; it would have looked awful on my CV. Not to mention how upset my parents would have been. They’re desperate for me to have a successful career. They never had the opportunity to get a good education or well-paid job themselves so they scrimped and saved for years to put me through private school. It’s a point of pride for my dad in particular. Apparently he never shuts up to his friends about me working with “the movers and shakers in the Big Smoke”.’ She shot him an embarrassed grimace.
He smiled. ‘You’re lucky—my mother couldn’t give two hoots whether I’m successful or not. She’s not what you’d call an engaged parent.’
Her brow furrowed in sympathy. ‘And your father?’
‘I never met him.’ He leant back with a sigh. ‘My mother fell pregnant with me when she was sixteen and still maintains that she doesn’t know who he was. She was pretty wild in her youth and constantly moved us around the country. Barely a term at school would go by before she had us packing up and moving on. She couldn’t bear to stay in the same place for long. Not that she’s exactly settled now.’
Her gaze was sympathetic. ‘That must have been tough when you were young.’
He shrugged. ‘It was a bit. I never got to keep the friends I made for very long.’
He thought about how his unsettled youth had impacted on the way he liked to live now. He still didn’t like change, even all these years later; it made him tetchy and short-tempered. Which was something Cara had got to know all about recently.
Keen to pull his mind away from his own shortcomings, he leaned forward in his seat and recaptured eye contact with her. ‘So what happened when you handed in your notice?’
She started at the sudden flip in subject back to her and twisted the stem of her glass in her fingers, looking away from his gaze and focusing on the garish liquid as it swirled up towards the rim. ‘My boss didn’t even bat an eyelid, just tossed my letter of resignation onto his desk and went back to the email he was typing, which confirmed just how insignificant I was to him. I took a couple of weeks to get my head straight after that, but I needed another job. I’ve never earned enough to build up any savings and my landlord chose that moment to hoick my rent up. I sent my CV out everywhere and got a few interviews, but every one I attended was a washout. It was as if they could sense the cloud of failure that hung around me like a bad smell.’
‘And that’s when Poppy sent you to me.’
Wrinkling her nose, she gave him a rueful smile. ‘I told her a bit about what had happened before she went off to shoot her latest project and she must have thought the two of us could help each other out because she emailed me to suggest I try you for a job. She made it sound as if you were desperate for help and it seemed like fate that I should work for you.’
‘Desperate, huh?’ He leant back in his seat and raised an eyebrow, feeling amusement tug at his mouth. That was textbook Poppy. ‘Well, I have to admit it’s been good for me, having you around. It’s certainly kept me on my toes.’
‘Yeah, there’s never a dull moment when I’m around, huh?’
The air seemed to grow thick between them as their eyes met and he watched in arrested fascination as her cheeks flamed with colour.
Sliding her gaze away, she stared down at the table, clutching her glass, her chewed nails in plain view. He’d known it the whole time, of course, that she was fighting against some inner trauma, as her nerve and buoyancy deteriorated in the face of his brittle moods. Her increasin
gly ragged nails had been the indicator he’d been determined to ignore.
But not any more.
A string quartet suddenly started up on the terrace behind them and he winced as the sound assaulted his ears. He’d never liked the sound of violins and an instrument such as that should never be used to play soft rock covers. It was a crime against humanity.
‘Come on, let’s take a walk around the grounds and clear our heads,’ he said, standing up and holding out his hand to help her up from the chair.
She looked at it with that little frown that always made something twist in his chest, before giving a firm nod and putting her hand in his.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A WALK WAS exactly what Cara needed to clear her head.
She couldn’t quite believe she’d just spilled her guts to Max like that, but it was a massive relief to have it all out in the open, even if she did still feel shaky with the effort of holding herself together.
Of course, seeing the concern on his handsome face had only made her ridiculous crush on him deepen, and she was beginning to worry about how she was going to cope with seeing him every day, knowing that they’d never be anything more than colleagues or, at the very most, friends.
A twinkling light in the distance danced in her peripheral vision and she stopped and turned to see what it was, feeling her heels sink into the soft earth beneath her feet. Pulling her shoes off, she hooked her fingers into the straps before running to catch up with Max, who was now a few paces ahead of her, seemingly caught up in his own world, his head dipped as a frown played across his brow.
‘Hey, do you fancy walking to that lake over there?’ she asked him.
‘Hmm?’ His eyes looked unfocused, as if his thoughts were miles away. ‘Yes, okay.’
The sudden detachment worried her. ‘Is everything okay?’ Perhaps, now he’d had more time to reflect on what she’d told him, he was starting to regret getting involved in her messed up life.
She took a breath. ‘Do you want to head back to London? I wouldn’t blame you if you did.’
Turning to look her in the eye again, he blinked, as though casting away whatever was bothering him. ‘No, no. I’m fine.’ His gaze flicked towards the lake, then back to her again and he gave her a tense smile. ‘Yeah, let’s walk that way.’
It only took them a couple of minutes to get there, now that she was in bare feet, and they stopped at the lakeshore and looked out across the water to the dark, impenetrable-looking forest on the other side.
‘It’s a beautiful setting they’ve chosen,’ Cara said, to fill the heavy silence that had fallen between them.
‘Yes, it’s lovely.’ Max bent down and picked up a smooth flat stone, running his fingertips across its surface. ‘This looks like a good skimmer.’ He shrugged off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing his muscular forearms.
Cara stared at them, her mouth drying at the sight. There was something so real, so virile about the image of his tanned skin, with its smattering of dark hair, in stark contrast to the crisp white cotton of his formal shirt. As if he was revealing the man inside the businessman.
Supressing a powerful desire to reach out and trace her fingers across the dips and swells of his muscles, she took a step away to give him plenty of room as he drew his elbow back and bent low, then flung the stone hard across the water.
A deep, satisfied chuckle rumbled from his chest as the stone bounced three times across the still surface, spinning out rings of gentle ripples in its wake, before sinking without a trace into the middle of the lake.
He turned to face her with a grin, his eyes alive with glee, and she couldn’t help but smile back.
‘Impressive.’
He blew on his fingers and pretended to polish them on his shirt. ‘I’m a natural. What can I say?’
Seeing his delight at the achievement, she had a strong desire to get in on the fun. Perhaps it would help distract her from thinking about how alone they were out here on the edge of the lake. ‘Does your natural talent stretch to teaching me how to do that?’
‘You’ve never skimmed a stone?’ He looked so over-the-top incredulous she couldn’t help but laugh.
‘Never.’
‘Didn’t you say your parents live in Cornwall? Surely there’s plenty of opportunities to be near water there.’
She snorted and took a step backwards, staring down at the muddy grass at their feet. ‘Yeah, if you live near the coast, which they don’t. I never learnt to drive when I was living there and my parents didn’t take me to the beach that much when I was young. My dad’s always suffered with a bad back from the heavy lifting he has to do at work, so he never got involved in anything of a physical nature. And my mum’s a real homebody. She’s suffered with agoraphobia for years.’
She heard him let out a low exhalation of breath and glanced up to find an expression of real sympathy in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. That must have been hard for you as a kid,’ he said softly.
Shrugging one shoulder, she gave a nod to acknowledge his concern, remembering the feeling of being trapped inside four small walls when she was living at home, with nowhere to escape to. Going to school every day had actually been a welcome escape from it and as soon as she’d finished her studies she’d hightailed it to London.
‘Yeah, it was a bit. My parents are good people, though. They threw all their energy into raising me. And they made sure to let me know how loved I was.’ Which was the absolute truth, she realised with a sting of shame, because she’d distanced herself from them since leaving home in an attempt to leave her stultifying life there behind her. But she’d left them behind, too. They didn’t deserve that. A visit was well overdue and she made a pact with herself to call them and arrange a date to see them as soon as she got back to London.
Max nodded, seemingly satisfied that she didn’t need any more consoling, and broke eye contact to lean down and pick up another flat pebble.
She watched him weigh it in his palm, as if checking it was worth the effort of throwing it. Everything he did was measured and thorough like that, which was probably why he was such a successful businessman.
‘Here, this looks like a good one. It’s nice and flat with a decent weight to it so it’ll fly and not sink immediately.’ He turned it over in his hand. ‘You need to get it to ride the air for a while before it comes down and maintain enough lift to jump.’
He held it out to her and she took it and looked at it with a frown. ‘Is there a proper way to hold it?’
‘I find the best way is to pinch it between my first finger and thumb. Like this.’ He picked up another stone and demonstrated.
She copied the positioning in her own hand then gave him a confident nod, drew back her arm and threw it as hard as she could.
It landed in the lake with a plop and sank immediately.
‘Darn it! What did I do wrong?’ she asked, annoyed with herself for failing so badly.
‘Don’t worry; it can take a bit of practice to get your technique right. You need to get lower to the ground and swing your arm in a horizontal arc. When it feels like the stone could fly straight forward and parallel with the water, loosen the grip with your thumb and let it roll, snapping your finger forwards hard.’
‘Huh. You make it sound so easy.’
He grinned and raised his eyebrows. ‘Try again.’
Picking up a good-looking candidate, she positioned the stone between her finger and thumb and was just about to throw it when Max said, ‘Stop!’
Glancing round at him with a grimace of frustration, she saw he was frowning and shaking his head.
‘You need to swing your arm at a lower angle. Like this.’
Before she could react, he’d moved to stand directly behind her, putting his left hand on her hip and wrapping his right
hand around the hand she was holding the stone in. Her heart nearly leapt out of her chest at the firmness of his touch and started hammering away, forcing the blood through her body at a much higher rate than was reasonable for such low-level exercise.
As he drew their arms backwards the movement made her shoulder press against the hard wall of his chest and she was mightily glad that he couldn’t see her face at that precise moment. She was pretty sure it must look a real picture.
‘Okay, on three we’ll throw it together.’ His mouth was so close to her ear she felt his breath tickle the downy little hairs on the outer whorl.
‘One...two...three!’
They moved their linked hands in a sweeping arc, Cara feeling the power of Max’s body push against her as the momentum of the move forced them forwards. She was so distracted by being engulfed in his arms she nearly didn’t see the stone bounce a couple of times before it sank beneath the water.
‘Woo-hoo!’ Max shouted, releasing her to take a step back and raise his hand, waiting for her to give him a high five.
The sudden loss of his touch left her feeling strangely light and disorientated—but now was not the time to go to pieces. Mentally pulling herself together, she swung her hand up to meet his, their palms slapping loudly as they connected, then bent down straight away, pretending to search the ground for another missile.
‘Who taught you to skim stones? A brother?’ she asked casually, grimacing at the quaver in her voice, before grabbing another good-looking pebble and righting herself.
He’d stooped to pick up his own stone and glanced round at her as he straightened up. ‘No. I’m an only child. I think once my mother realised how much hard work it was raising me she was determined not to have any more kids.’ He raised a disparaging eyebrow then turned away to fling the stone across the lake, managing five bounces this time. He nodded with satisfaction. ‘I used to mountain bike over to a nearby reservoir with a friend from boarding school at the weekends and we’d have competitions to see who could get their stone the furthest,’ he said, already searching the ground for another likely skimmer, his movements surprisingly lithe considering the size of his powerful body.
Unlocking Her Boss's Heart Page 10
