‘And would that be in writing?’ Gabriel asked sarcastically.
‘I’m not being unreasonable…’
‘No? You mean it’s common practice for someone in a responsible job, earning, might I point out, vastly more than the national average, to work to rule unless given notice?’
Rose had seen Gabriel in action before. He was physically intimidating and was not above bullying his opponents into submission.
‘I wasn’t implying that I would work to rule, Gabriel, just saying that, whilst I don’t object to working late now and again, you’ve frequently asked me to stay on at the office, sometimes until midnight, working on documents that have a deadline.’
‘Frequently is a bit of an overstatement,’ Gabriel muttered.
‘Whatever. I’m going to be occupied studying and I think it only fair that you respect that.’
‘What would you classify these unusually late hours you refer to?’
‘Anything beyond six-thirty would not be acceptable.’ Rose waited for the fallout but nothing came. Instead, he looked at her assessingly and, after a few seconds pause, he shrugged.
‘Fine.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Well, naturally, it’ll be inconvenient, but you’re right. You’re going to be studying. The last thing I would want to do is distract you from that…’ He lowered his eyes. ‘You will have to make sure that whoever replaces you is not going to be a clock-watcher.’
‘You might find it difficult to locate a temp who doesn’t mind staying on until whatever time you decide at the snap of a finger.’ Whoever replaces you? There was a permanent ring to that statement and it sent a chill down her spine even though it was, of course, precisely what she had wanted in the first place.
‘Not if I dangle enough money in front of her…and of course the promise of knowing that the job might very well be hers permanently, with all the perks that go along with it.’
‘You mean you’re writing me off already?’ Rose said lightly. ‘I thought I was indispensable.’
‘So did I.’
But somewhere along the line he had changed his mind. Probably when she made it clear that agreeing to stay in the job brought one or two conditions that he found unpalatable. He wanted someone who blindly obeyed, never mind the baloney about encouraging free speech with his employees. He wanted to be able to tell her, somewhere around five-thirty in the evening, that two lawyers would be coming in at six and she would have to stay on until all the nuts and bolts of some deal or other had been ironed out. He didn’t want to hear anything about outside commitments and he certainly wouldn’t want to give her any notice for inconvenience.
As long as she was quietly and competently invisible, all would be right in his world. Money would flow for her, company cars would be forthcoming. He neither wanted nor needed the hassle of a secretary who insisted on having a mind of her own. And Rose had passed four years obliging him on that count, keeping her thoughts firmly to herself.
‘There’s more,’ she said, going with the motto that in for a penny in for a pound.
‘Since when did you decide that being prickly was a helpful asset in your career?’ The mildness of his tone was marred by a faintly disgruntled edge.
‘I thought you welcomed your employees’ opinions?’ Rose said innocently.
‘Of course I welcome hearing what my employees think,’ Gabriel said irritably. ‘And please do me a favour and don’t launch into any long, boring speeches about my little world being so removed from reality that I wouldn’t recognise free speech if it hit me in the face.’ He looked at her, at her wry expression, and grunted. ‘Well, you might as well get on with it. What more complaints have you been nurturing?’
Trust Gabriel to turn the tables, Rose thought, and translate her very valid points as below the belt stabs.
‘These women of yours…’
‘What women…?’ It took Gabriel a few seconds to realise what she was talking about, then he narrowed his eyes cautiously. ‘Don’t go there, Rose.’
Rose could understand why she was in danger of becoming the Secretary from Hell. She felt a few fleeting seconds of sympathy for him. On top of her sudden demands for a change in her working hours, she was now about to inform him that taking care of his women was not part of her job specification and she would no longer be doing it. If he wanted to order flowers at the demise of a relationship, then he could phone the florist and order them himself. If he urgently needed an expensive token to compensate for cancelled dates, then he could set forth and purchase it himself.
‘I need to have my say, Gabriel…’
‘Which doesn’t include preaching to me about the way I conduct my life outside work. That, I warn you, is way beyond your brief.’ The flat, hard expression made Rose suddenly bristle. It was fine for him to ask her questions about her private life, to try and eke out information and then voice his opinions on the little he had managed to unearth, but he wasn’t about to allow her the same freedom! Three months ago it wouldn’t have occurred to her to speak her mind. In fact, the decent part of her knew that she should set him straight and tell him that she wouldn’t dream of saying anything about how he conducted his private life, that the changes she had in mind were of a more practical nature, but she wasn’t feeling particularly decent at the moment.
‘What do you think I’m going to say, Gabriel?’ She met his dark, brooding gaze evenly. ‘Since you seem to be a mind-reader on top of everything else.’
‘It doesn’t take a genius to work out what’s on your mind,’ Gabriel rasped. He was beginning to regret his instinct to hang on to his wonderfully reliable secretary come hell or high water. His wonderfully reliable secretary appeared to have gone to Australia and stayed there. In her place was this forthright bordering on aggressive creature with an axe to grind and himself firmly in her sights as the grinding block.
‘Oh, yes?’ Rose’s voice dropped by a couple of notches.
‘You’ve made it plain that you disapprove of my behaviour towards the opposite sex. You’ve already said so. Of course, it hasn’t crossed your mind that the women I date might actually enjoy going out with me, even if we do eventually break up.’
Rose raised her eyebrows, as if questioning his sanity in even thinking such a thing, and Gabriel glowered at her.
‘I show them a good time,’ he heard himself say. He wondered how it was that suddenly he was reduced to defending himself to someone whose business it most definitely was not. Or where, for that matter, that feisty look on her face had come from. ‘I wine and dine them…amongst other things…’ He took some satisfaction that her cool, superior expression was undermined by a slow flush. ‘And believe me, Rose, when it comes to those other things I give a great deal of pleasure…’
‘Lucky old them,’ she said, recovering quickly. ‘Wined, dined and bedded before being relegated to the history books.’
Gabriel was shocked. So was Rose. Where had that come from? She reddened and looked away but she still refused to retreat and apologise. Her sister had given her long speeches about the foolishness of falling for a man who wouldn’t notice her if she stood naked on a table and danced till dawn. To him, Grace had warned darkly, Rose was a one-dimensional cut-out and always would be. Her only chance of rescuing her sense of self-worth would be to take the pay cut and leave the job.
Well, she hadn’t left the job yet but she was still going to be a woman of substance who was not afraid to speak her mind.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Gabriel said in a shell-shocked voice, which would have been funny if she could feel anything under the rising tide of mortification.
‘You heard me, Gabriel.’
‘Where did you get language like that from?’
‘Language like what? I don’t believe I said anything obscene? Did I?’
‘No, but…’
‘That’s fine, then!’ Her sister’s diagnosis of her had been brutally to the point. Rose could out-perform anyone when it came t
o hard work and skill. Whatever she wanted to do, Grace had said, she would achieve because she was clever and ambitious. Unlike yours truly, she had added ruefully. But underneath the brisk, capable exterior lurked a heart longing for romance. Hence her feelings for her boss, which she had allowed to run unchecked for four years. Like a complete idiot. Grace, so impractical when it came to anything involving office work, computers, money and all things electronic, was utterly practical in affairs of the heart. She had never wasted time mooning over unattainable boys at school and Rose was inclined to follow her advice. After all, comparing situations, who was in the better one?
‘But actually I don’t care what you do with the women who come in and out of your life. What I care about is how it impacts on mine.’
‘And how does it do that?’ Gabriel asked with sudden interest.
‘Here’s how. You meet a woman. You shower her with presents. I buy the presents, usually in my lunch hour or at the weekend. Always in my leisure time, at any rate. Then there are the restaurants that need to be booked. The flowers that have to be sent with the right messages to the right people. Sometimes I have to fend off sobbing women who haven’t quite seen your point of view that it was a privilege to have gone out with you and now it’s time for them to find the nearest exit door. Sometimes they seem to have been under the deluded impression that you actually cared about them.’ Her voice implied poor fools.
The surprises were piling on by the minute. Gabriel had never sensed any resentment in her when it came to doing what was, as far as he had always been concerned, part and parcel of a good PA’s job, namely taking care of the incidentals that he had no time to do himself. Or inclination, if he was to be perfectly truthful. So what was wrong with ordering a few flowers down the phone now and again? Or taking a trip to the jewellers to buy a bracelet? Didn’t all women like buying jewellery?
‘Are you jealous?’ Gabriel’s voice was silky-smooth and speculative and, in response, Rose could feel her heartbeat quicken, because, and this was a truth she only admitted to herself late at night, when she was alone with her thoughts, she was. Whenever she had been in those exclusive shops buying exclusive things, holding up a glittering ruby ring for inspection or twirling a cashmere scarf between her fingers, she had thought, imagined, that it was for her.
‘Of course I’m not jealous,’ she said coldly. ‘Do you really think…’ She caught herself in the nick of time.
‘Really think…what?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No. Tell me. After all, today seems to be a day of revelations.’
Rose looked at him and wondered how he would react if she told him the truth on this day of revelations. If he was stunned by the revelations he had had thrown at him today, then he would go into a state of cataclysmic shock if she really decided to reveal all!
‘All right. As you asked, do you really think that I would ever, could ever, be jealous of all those women you choose to date?’ Rose laughed humourlessly. ‘For a start, they’re not the sharpest knives in the block…’
‘Who ever said I wanted sharp?’ Actually, Gabriel thought, whoever said I wanted to be discussing this? But it was such an unusual ride that he was driven to go along with it. The woman whose thoughts he had never seen was handing them to him now and he was strangely fascinated. In fact, he couldn’t take his eyes away from her face, although he reluctantly admitted to himself that that might have had something to do with her physical transformation. ‘An intelligent woman is an overrated species,’ he said, flexing his arms and then strolling to inspect the books ranging the central fireplace on either side. Though not before glancing at her face to see how she had reacted to his incendiary remark. With gratifying outrage. He decided to continue, curious to see where the road would lead. ‘I mean, an intelligent woman will usually end up getting on a man’s nerves.’ He idly slipped a book out of its nesting place, surprised to discover that it was a first edition and wouldn’t have come cheap. An intelligent woman with taste. He shoved the book back in its spot and turned to look at her. ‘The endless discussions…the earnestness…the sheer tedium of someone with a point of view…’ He mimicked a yawn and was amused to see her eyes glitter dangerously. ‘Have you noticed how an intelligent woman will always have a point of view and will always bang on about it, even when everyone else has nodded off with boredom?’
‘Have you noticed—’ Rose was drawn into the argument even though common sense told her that it was ridiculous ‘—how a bimbo will spout such rubbish that you can end up losing the will to live…?’
Gabriel shot her one of those slow, devastating smiles that made her curl her fists on her lap. Then he laughed out loud. When he had sobered up his blue eyes swept over her and he murmured, with wicked amusement, ‘I won’t deny they can sometimes spout rubbish but I assure you that when I’m in bed with one of them I never end up losing the will to live…’
Rose drew in a sharp intake of breath. He had pushed himself away from his inspection of her books and for a few heart-stopping seconds she could have sworn that he was moving in her direction, but then he sat down, his eyes lazy and satisfied as he contemplated past conquests. Stupid, stupid jealousy made her feel temporarily faint.
‘And then…’ she carried on, her voice glacial-cold even though something was raging inside her, ‘I suppose I feel sorry for them. You might think that you treat them well, and you do, but what a woman wants goes beyond the things that money can buy.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Oh, really. The bracelets and earrings are nice enough but a walk in the park is even better, as is a home-cooked meal and then chatting in front of an open fire or a trip to the seaside on a sunny day…’
‘Possibly for you…’
‘I’ve had enough conversations with the women you’ve discarded to know that they’re always more heartbroken than you think they are!’ Rose said defensively, aware that she had given away too much in her careless musings. ‘Have you any idea how difficult it is to placate someone who’s in tears and wondering what they did wrong?’
The conversation, which had been pleasantly challenging, appeared to have taken an ugly turn and Gabriel frowned at her discouragingly. ‘I don’t know where we’re going with this one…’
‘You pressed me for an opinion…’
‘Which is different from blanket criticism.’ He shook his head and tried to get a handle on his self control.
‘Only because you don’t happen to agree with it,’ Rose felt constrained to point out.
‘How is it that I never spotted you for the stubborn, opinionated, bloody maddening woman you obviously are?’ Gabriel grated.
Then you shouldn’t mind getting rid of me when I’ve trained up a replacement, Rose thought, but she kept that to herself. For reasons best known to her, she wanted to be the one to leave. That way, she would prove to herself that she was in control, proactive as far as her emotional state was concerned.
She looked down to where her fingers were fiddling uselessly with her jumper and stilled them. But she didn’t look at him and she remained mutinously silent, not trusting herself to be discreet when she next spoke. Opinionated, stubborn and maddening were not easy insults to gloss over with a polite smile and a change of subject.
More annoying than her sudden outburst of frank and open honesty was the prolonged silence that greeted his remark. Gabriel, however much he brought his passion to his work, was formidably controlled in his dealings with women. They never, but never, got under his skin. Rose’s calm face lent his annoyance an edge of grinding frustration.
‘I have no idea why any of the women I have ever gone out with would have wondered what they did wrong,’ he heard himself saying just as he recognised the weakness in saying it. ‘It’s not as though they don’t know from the very start that commitment isn’t on the agenda. No one can criticise me for not being fair. The walks in the park, the home-cooked meal and the log-burning fire…Well, I don’t do little domestic scenes like t
hat because that would just give them the wrong impression. Actually, I don’t think I would ever do little domestic scenes like that anyway.’
‘Why not?’ Rose reluctantly dragged her gaze away from her hands and met his eyes curiously.
‘Not me,’ Gabriel said abruptly. ‘So, getting back to your complaints. No long hours without notice and no additional tasks beyond the call of duty.’
Rose nodded. ‘Well, no additional tasks that don’t…well, don’t have anything to do with work. I’m sorry,’ she felt obliged to add because she knew that laying down rules and regulations after four years was a bit of a nerve.
‘Anything else?’
‘No. That’s all. And Gabriel, it’s only because I shall need to prioritise my time if I’m to do a course…’
‘Let’s hope it’s worth it.’ He stood up and shoved his hands into his pockets and watched as she got to her feet, straightening her clothes. At least that reassuringly prim habit hadn’t changed!
‘It will be,’ Rose assured him, walking out towards the front door. ‘It’ll be hard work but, at the end of it, I’ll be able to really start building up a satisfying career for myself. Not,’ she hastened to add, ‘that I haven’t been wonderfully happy working for you.’
‘With me. And you could have fooled me after everything you’ve laid at my door this evening.’
They both paused by the front door at the same time. Their eyes tangled, brown eyes clashing with deep blue ones, and Rose had to steady herself by placing her hand flat on the closed door.
‘So you intend to have it all, do you?’ Gabriel drawled. ‘The fast job, the fast car, the kids and the house husband who will stay at home and take care of everything…’ He leaned against the door and looked down at her. She was sharp enough to have it all, that much was sure, but until now he would never have thought it interested her. With wry honesty, he acknowledged that he had always thought that he was enough for her.
‘I don’t know about that.’ Now that he was on the point of imminent departure, she felt as if she could finally relax. ‘I’m too old-fashioned to be happy with the house husband scenario.’
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