‘I could,’ he said. He strolled back to his chair and crossed his legs, then he slowly looked around him, as though taking in his surroundings for the first time. ‘You know, I can’t remember whether I mentioned this at the interview, but I could arrange to have building work done on this cottage at a nominal cost. The roof looks as though it could do with an overhaul and your fireplace is going.’
‘But I don’t work for you.’ She paused and looked at him, while her hand idly rubbed her ankle tucked up on the chair. ‘I don’t understand why you’re so keen to hire me.’ There was genuine curiosity behind the question. She knew why she couldn’t accept his offer of a job, but she had no idea why he’d continued to try and persuade her, even when it was patently obvious that she wasn’t interested.
Max sighed a long, resigned sigh and watched her from under his lashes. He could still feel the softness of her skin under his. ‘I’m desperate. That’s the bottom line. I’ve been here for seven months during which time I’ve had a series of temps, none of whom seemed capable of thinking on their feet, and none of the applicants for the job on a permanent basis were suitable.’
‘None of them?’
‘That’s right,’ he said a little irritably, because there was an element of incredulous accusation in her voice that implied some kind of fault on his part.
‘What was wrong with all of them?’
‘Pretty much a combination of everything, actually.’
‘Perhaps you’re a bit too demanding,’ Vicky volunteered helpfully, and her suggestion was met with a frown of instant and instinctive denial.
‘I’m the least demanding boss I know. All I ask is a certain amount of initiative and common sense, along with the ability to do the usual things.’
‘And how do you know I would have possessed the right qualities?’ For the very briefest of moments, she put aside her fears of the man sitting opposite her and she could feel his personality working on her. In a minute, she told herself, she would put her defences back in place, but right now a rush of simple gratitude towards him had mellowed her. She found herself watching him intently, noticing, as she did so, how huge the differences were between him and Shaun, even though, at first glance, she’d been bowled over by their similarities. His face, she realised, was stronger, and stamped with lines of humour that had been missing from his brother’s. His mouth was fuller, or perhaps that was just an optical illusion born of the fact that he just seemed more in command and more quietly self-assured than his brother. He lacked the ready smile that spoke of self-obsession and the carefully groomed look of someone to whom appearances were everything. In fact, the harder she stared at him, the less he seemed to resemble Shaun.
‘Because you worked successfully for a man I have long respected,’ he said simply. ‘Aside from that, my first impression was favourable and I’m rarely wrong when it comes to first impressions.’
‘Well, you should be,’ Vicky heard herself say, her voice laced with creeping bitterness. She looked away and began toying with the end of her braid, flicking it back and forth, aware that two spots of burning colour had appeared on her cheeks.
Now, he thought, was not the time to probe deeper into that enigmatic little remark. She wasn’t looking at him, in itself significant, but he could tell by the sudden flare of colour into her pale face that her reply had been instinctive and spontaneous, and that it had been prompted by something, some past and probably dark experience. He felt another spurt of intense curiosity, all the more destabilising because it was unaccustomed, and he had to resist the urge to barge in and whittle an explanation out of her. Women had always been an open book for him. To suddenly find himself stumped by one whose pages appeared to be firmly glued together was more than a novelty. He was discovering, to his amazement, the power of a challenge.
‘Perhaps I should be,’ he agreed. ‘Maybe I’m more naïve than I think.’
The thought of the man sitting opposite her ever being naïve was almost enough to make her burst out laughing.
‘Look,’ he said quickly, ‘I’ll lay all my cards on the table. I have a gut feeling that you and I could work well together. I’ve suffered everything over the past few months, from misfiling to complete incomprehension when it comes to transcribing the gist of some of my more technical letters…’ Something of an exaggeration, he thought to himself, but what the heck? ‘Not to mention girls who can hardly think straight when they’re around me…’ He watched her surreptitiously to see what the impact of that comment would be, whether he might read some tacit agreement in her expression, and huffily saw that if anything her eyebrows had flickered upwards in contempt and incredulity.
‘I don’t think I could bear working for a man who considered himself God’s gift to the female sex,’ Vicky informed him coldly.
‘I don’t believe that’s quite what I—’
‘Someone who assumes that every woman in the room is eager and panting to climb into bed with him, someone who can’t exist without a comb in his jacket pocket and a sporty car to prop up his self-image—’
‘You seem to have totally misunders—’
‘Swanning around, giving orders in between gazing at himself in the nearest mirror and then when all’s said and done assuming that it’s his right to do as he likes with whomever he wants, because he happened to be born with a passably good-looking face—’
‘Hold on!’
Just at that very instant the telephone rang, and Vicky leapt up out of her chair and hurried into the hall to answer it. She was still trembling from her tirade because his passing remark had brought back a flood of memories, memories of Shaun and his serial infidelity, his addiction to proving his power over women, his swaggering, arrogant assumption that it was his right to break any female’s heart if he so wanted. Her brain was still whirring around in angry circles when she heard Pat Down’s voice down the line and it took her a few seconds to register that Chloe would be dropped back earlier than planned.
‘I’m ever so sorry, Vicky, but my mum’s been rushed to hospital with a heart attack so I shall drop her off in about ten minutes, if that’s all right with you.’ The voice down the line was just managing to bear up.
‘Ten minutes…’ Vicky repeated on a sharply indrawn breath.
‘Sorry.’
‘No, no, that’s absolutely fine. Do you need me to hang on to Jess for you?’ But no, she would take Jess with her to see her mother and she’d be by in a little under ten minutes.
Vicky hung up and flew into the sitting room like a whirlwind.
‘It’s time for you to go!’ she ordered him frantically. ‘I…I…I’ve suddenly remembered a very important appointment. In fact, that was the person in charge…calling to see whether I was still interested…in the job…’
‘On a Saturday?’ Max asked, not moving.
With a groan of desperation, Vicky grabbed his arm and began pulling him to his feet. Bad move. It appeared to make him even less inclined to vacate the sofa.
‘Get up!’ she finally shouted. ‘Can’t you see I’m in a rush?’
‘And I’m trying to figure out why. No respectable company drags interviewees in on a weekend. Have you applied for something shady, perhaps? Some seedy stripping job in a nightclub somewhere?’
‘Do I look like the sort of girl who’s willing to strip in a nightclub?’ she virtually screeched, hustling him to the sitting room door and attempting to shoo him out in the style of a chicken trying to get rid of a wolf from its parlour.
‘Give me a minute to think about that one,’ he said slowly, stopping in his tracks to her intense frustration. She glared at him and he grinned back at her.
It was the first time he had really smiled and the effect was breathtaking. Literally, it made her gasp. It changed the hard contours of his face and gave him a boyish, sexy look that was as far removed from the plastic smiles of his brother as chalk was from cheese.
‘Not funny,’ she said sharply.
‘Take the job?’
In under five minutes there would be the sound of a car stopping outside the house, the ring of the doorbell and her daughter would come bouncing through the front door, bringing her infectious smile, her rosy cheeks and a seething nest of potential catastrophes.
She had to get rid of him.
‘All right! Now will you please leave my house so that I can get on with…with…with my life?’
He straightened up and looked at her with a shadow of surprise. ‘Starting Monday?’
‘Starting Monday,’ she agreed, hopping in frustration from one leg to another.
She managed to propel him to the front door, which she swiftly pulled open, breathing a sigh of relief that a small blue car wasn’t hurtling down the lane in the direction of her cottage.
‘Report to Personnel,’ he told her, ‘then come to my office and we’ll take it from there.’
‘Goodbye!’
‘And perhaps you could do something about your eccentric line in conversation?’
‘I shall see you on Monday!’ She urged him out of the door and watched as he headed down the short path to the road, making sure that his car was safely out of sight before she closed it back. When it was, she slammed shut the door and leaned heavily against it, wondering what the hell she had just done.
It had been imperative that he left the premises before Chloe returned, she argued silently to herself, and what better method of shifting him than to agree to his proposals? Even though the logical, rational side of her brain freely accepted this as a worthwhile argument, the rest of her was appalled at the hole she had dug and into which she had recklessly jumped.
She told herself that she would turn up on Monday and work for a few weeks, then apologetically make her excuses and leave. She mentally listed some of the plus points that could be gained from her manoeuvre. This required more thought, but in the end she decided that, aside from the financial windfall to be had, she would also be able to keep an eye on him and allay his suspicious interest in her which she had sensed from the very beginning. Wasn’t it a good idea for her to be in place so that she could make sure that he didn’t start telephoning Australia and asking his friend about her? For starters he would learn about the pregnancy. Her connection with his brother might take longer, because she had been adamant about keeping her work life distinct from her private life and had discouraged Shaun from ever showing up at her workplace once they had started dating. But he could find out if he persevered. At least she would be on the spot to laughingly fend off any questions and deter him from snooping. She’d seen the curiosity her odd behaviour had aroused in him and she suspected that he was the sort of man to whom any intrigue was simply something to be unravelled. He could probably do The Times crossword in a matter of seconds.
Less palatable was the unpleasant suspicion that something about him had got under her skin. She’d learned so many lessons from Shaun, enough to put her off men for a lifetime. She would rather shoot herself than admit any kind of attraction to his brother.
In the end, though, she now had a problematic situation which she would have to deal with in whatever manner was at her disposal.
CHAPTER THREE
VICKY spent the remainder of the weekend repenting for her reckless agreement to work for Max Forbes. The reason why she had rushed into her hasty decision was rapidly forgotten under the onslaught of serious drawbacks. By the time Monday morning rolled around, she found herself slipping on her customary secretarial garb with a leaden heart which was only partially alleviated when, once at the office, she was informed by the personnel officer that Max only worked part-time at this particular office. When the young girl mentioned his name, her eyelids fluttered and her cheeks turned bright red. Vicky wondered sceptically whether all the female employees of the company responded in the same way to the mere mention of their boss. If that was the case, then she would have more to contend with than the dangerous fragility of her situation—namely overriding nausea at being surrounded by mesmerised females from nine in the morning to five-thirty at night.
No wonder he rated himself as such a potent sex symbol. She almost clicked her tongue in annoyance.
‘I don’t suppose he’s in London now, is he?’ she asked the personnel officer, whose name was Mandy and whose fashion statement included disconcertingly long and brightly painted blue fingernails.
‘Actually, I believe he’s set aside his morning to show you the ropes.’
‘Oh, grand!’ Vicky exclaimed with dismay, which she hid under a scarily bright smile. The smile remained plastered to her face as she was shown the now familiar route up to his office, only slipping when Mandy deserted her and she found herself pushing back the door to his sanctuary.
After a break of a day and a half, during which the image of him had not left her head for longer than five minutes at a stretch, the sight of him now, in the flesh, was even more alarming than she remembered.
Had he been so big and muscular when she had seen him on Saturday or had he somehow grown in the interim? Even sitting behind the desk, reclining in his leather chair, his size seemed to spring out at her and reduce her to nervous, powerless pulp. He had discarded his jacket; his blue and white pin-striped shirt was cuffed to the elbows.
‘Ah,’ was his first word, which smacked of satisfaction, ‘I wasn’t too sure that you’d make it here. Good trip in? I gather you’ve already been through the nitty-gritty with Mandy. I’ve set aside a couple of hours to fill you in on some of the more straightforward bits of the job, then I’m afraid I’ve got to leave you to get on with it. So sit down and I’ll begin briefing you on your duties.’ He paused to recline comfortably in his chair. ‘First of all, the coffee machine—it’s in the corner of your office outside…’
Vicky, who had primly fished out a notepad and pen from her voluminous handbag, fixed him with a long, beady stare and he grinned at her.
‘Just a joke.’
‘I do realise that tea-and coffee-making is included in my job specification, but I hope it only plays a minor role.’ She heard herself with a small, inner groan of disgust. The more addled he made her feel, the more unnatural her patterns of speech seemed to become, and right now she was feeling very, very addled.
‘Very minor,’ he agreed gravely. ‘In fact, I do frequently make myself a cup of coffee and it’s been known for me to make one for my secretary as well.’ He rested his elbows on his desk and brought the tips of his fingers together so that he could survey her over them. It made her feel like a specimen in a laboratory.
‘Have you maintained an office in London?’ she asked politely. ‘I ask because Mandy in Personnel mentioned that you split your time between here and London.’
‘And New York, Madrid and Glasgow…I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to read any of the company literature…’ He got up and strode towards a glass-fronted sleekly black bookcase that adorned one wall of the office and extracted a handful of glossy brochures, which he proceeded to hand over to her; then, instead of returning to his swivel chair, he perched on his desk, so that she had an uncomfortably close-up view of his muscular thighs, stretching taut against the fine wool fabric of his trousers.
‘No, I haven’t.’ She idly flicked through one and her hand stopped as she saw a picture of Shaun standing next to Max and between them a man who could only have been their father. The blood in her veins started to curdle.
‘My brother,’ Max said shortly, following her gaze.
‘The three of you founded the business?’ Her voice was devoid of expression, even though she discovered that she was surprisingly curious about what his version of past events would be, because there always were the two sides to every story, but a shutter had dropped over his eyes.
‘Not quite. You can look at that stuff later, perhaps take it home with you. For now, I’ll fill you in on some of the projects we’re working on.’ He nodded at the door, inviting her to precede him out of his office and into hers which lay just through the door and which h
oused the filing cabinets. Like all the rest of the furniture in both the offices, the cabinets were all in black wood with chrome handles.
‘Normally, my last secretary would have been responsible for taking you through this, but in this case, there’s been no last secretary and the last temp didn’t seem to grasp the meaning of the words “filing system”, so she would have been of no use whatsoever. Anyway—’ he gesticulated towards three cabinets ‘—the files are kept in there and should be in alphabetical order, although I’d advise you to go through the lot of them yourself. Louise found the alphabet a little exhausting. Those files over there are in the process of being looked at for whatever reason and those need updating. Your computer is over there and I’m afraid there’s a stack of work for you to get your teeth into.’
‘What kind of work?’ Vicky idly went to the large U-shaped desk and flicked through the top file, which seemed comprised of lengthy technical documents and detailed price quotations.
‘You’ll naturally also be expected to handle all my business engagements and update my diary at least twice a day. Oh, yes, and meetings—I’ll expect you to come along to some of the more important ones to take notes. Occasionally, there may be a social function I’ll want you to attend.’
‘That won’t be possible,’ Vicky said quickly, without thinking.
‘All things in life are possible,’ he told her softly, moving across to her. ‘How else can anyone ever achieve anything in life, if they automatically assume that some things are not possible? Why will the occasional social function be out of the question? Is there any particular reason?’
‘No. I just thought…that…social functions might require a more glamorous escort than your secretary…’
‘Mmm. I see.’ He left it there, neither pressing the point nor, she noticed, denying her claim to plainness. ‘Now, files.’ He moved smoothly round the desk so that he was facing the computer, switched it on and then beckoned her across to join him.
The Boss's Proposal Page 4
