His Virgin Secretary

by Cathy Williams

  He would have to come up with some practical solutions, she decided, taking her time with her make-up for fear of ending up looking like an overdone B-list actress on a bad day. Or else she would pull the plug. There would be disappointment on Joseph’s part and on her parents’, but disappointment would fade over time.

  By five-fifteen she was ready and she stood up to inspect herself in the mirror.

  What stared back at her was nothing short of a complete transformation.

  Her modest height had been boosted by a good three inches, thanks to some very delicate cream open toed sandals. Her slimness no longer looked unwomanly, but elegant, with her cream calf-length dress clinging fashionably to her waist and bust and revealing slender shoulders and the hint of a cleavage, which had been cleverly enhanced by her bra. She had swept up her hair, something she rarely did because it was just so much trouble trying to restrain it with clips, and tendrils curled around her face. Her eyes looked enormous.

  Joseph, with a wicked glint in his eyes, further boosted her ego with lavish compliments and veiled remarks about hoping they made it to London because Bruno might just find her too tempting to last the journey.

  ‘Unlikely,’ Katy remarked, ‘with a chauffeur in the front. What would he do with him? Stick him in the boot?’ She worriedly wondered how Joseph would react when he found out that they were no longer an engaged couple.

  She was still sunk in her reverie when she emerged onto the landing at five-thirty and the first she saw of Bruno were his shoes. Handmade, black patent leather. Her eyes travelled slowly upwards, taking in his formal DJ, all black aside from the pristine white shirt, punctuated by a black bow-tie.

  ‘Wow,’ she gasped and he raised his eyebrows in amusement.

  ‘Ditto.’

  He looked fabulous. He always looked fabulous. Now, however, in his supremely formal wear, he made her mouth run dry.

  ‘Yes, you shall go to the ball,’ he drawled, extending his elbow so that she linked her arm through it.

  ‘And what when midnight strikes?’ Katy asked lightly, thinking of the cold wall of reality waiting for them just around the corner. In fact, probably around midnight, when the ball was over and she sat down with Bruno to tell him what she knew she had to.

  ‘Make sure you leave your sandal behind so that I can follow the trail.’

  Nothing had prepared her for the fuss of their arrival at the Royal Albert Hall. The drive down to London had been passed in relative harmony. They had been the perfect example of two people making sure not to tread on any delicate subjects. She, because she was saving up her uncomfortable speech for later, and he, she assumed, because anything too taxing in the back of a car would irritate him and possibly ruin what he anticipated being a public canvas of their united togetherness.

  She had managed to convince herself that it might just be feasible to slink into the hall, unnoticed by too many people.

  She hadn’t banked on the photographers waiting as cars pitched up, disgorging their passengers. She stepped out of the chauffeured car to the glare of cameras flashing and the press of journalists jostling for the best shot from behind a cordon.

  Instinctively she reached out and slipped her hand into Bruno’s, calming down when he responded with a warm squeeze that was just the right gesture to make her feel a bit more at ease, and she was more than willing to let her hand remain there even after they had walked the plank and finally entered the impressive building.

  Bruno Giannella was, she began acknowledging faintly, a bigger deal than she had ever anticipated. He was recognised by countless people, hailed out and spoken to with deference. He was a presence that many, she was fast realising, were inclined to court. And since she came as part of the bargain, they were obsequiously polite to her as well. Katy doubted any of them would have even turned to glance at her under any other circumstances. No wonder he was so keen on maintaining appearances, on not being seen as a cad in any way, shape or form.

  ‘I never realised that you were so…important…’ she whispered, when they were finally seated.

  Bruno, his arm on the rest between them, leaned into her. ‘Would you have behaved differently?’ he asked with some interest, turning to look at her.

  ‘Of course I would have! I would have tried even harder to avoid you whenever you came to visit Joseph!’ Her breath caught in her throat at the smile of pure amusement that lit up his face.

  ‘I wonder why I believe every word of that…’ he murmured, looking away as the lights dimmed and the orchestra began to play.

  Everything about the night was magical and impressive. The crowd thronged with recognisable, celebrity faces. The performance was glorious. It all added up to a spectacle that Katy knew she would do well to commit to memory, as it would never again be repeated.

  She almost felt like a traitor, she sighed to Bruno when the evening had finally come to an end and everyone was trooping out to claim their expensive, chauffeur-driven cars.

  ‘Why do I think that this is about to lead to some nonsense remark about not being good enough to be here?’

  ‘Well…’ Katy glanced around her at the beautiful people in their immaculate designer clothing ‘…because it happens to be true, I suppose.’

  ‘You’re far better than most of the people here,’ he said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘What you’re looking at are expensive trappings.’ He shrugged and cast a scornful glance around him. ‘In the end, they count for nothing.’

  ‘I know you’re just saying that to make me feel better,’ Katy told him, loving him so much that it hurt, ‘but thanks anyway.’ She smiled up at him, barely feeling the coolness of the night air on her arms and hardly aware of the remaining photographers still lurking around for possible last-minute shots.

  She certainly wasn’t aware of a tall blonde woman moving towards them, with a tall fair-haired man glued to her side.

  In fact Katy only noticed Isobel’s presence when the familiar cut-glass voice broke through the blissful moment to offer congratulations to the happy couple.

  Katy blinked to find Isobel staring at her with hard, satisfied eyes but, before she had time to open her mouth, Bruno was responding with unhurried, lethal coolness, accepting the congratulations for all the world as though they were sincerely meant, smiling as he informed the blonde that breaking up with her had been the best thing he had ever done.

  A look of pure rage crossed Isobel’s face and she shrugged off the restraining hand her companion had placed on her. ‘Oh, really. I know you well enough to know that this so-called engagement has been forced on you.’ She laughed. ‘Couldn’t be seen to be a conscience-free womaniser with some little halfwit from the back of nowhere, could you? A man in your position?’

  Katy felt the simmering violence surging through Bruno, although when he spoke his voice was perfectly controlled.

  ‘You couldn’t be more wrong, my dear. This engagement is entirely for real…’

  ‘So you wouldn’t mind setting a date?’

  ‘Not in the slightest.’ He signalled to one of the lurking photographers with a nod and then, while Katy watched with open-mouthed amazement, said with absolute assurance and in a voice that was meant to be heard by anyone interested enough to listen and within earshot, ‘Just to let you boys know that you’ll be cordially invited to cover my wedding to…’ he raised Katy’s hand to his lips and brushed his mouth against it ‘…this exquisite creature within the next month. We’ll be finalising details before the end of the week.’ Several more photographers had shot across for the announcement. The last glimpse Katy had of them was as they took rapid pictures of her before Bruno bent down and covered her mouth with his in a searingly passionate kiss.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHOCK carried Katy through the next five minutes. She had little fleeting snapshots in her head of reporters lapping up the surprise announcement and firing questions at them, which Bruno fielded with his usual grace, of Isobel fading away into the background, of Bruno’s d
arkly handsome face staring down at her before leading her to the car that had been waiting for them.

  She only realised she was trembling when the car door was slammed and the car pulled away from the kerb, then she turned slowly to Bruno, who was watching her intently, his eyes guarded.

  ‘I think I just had a bad dream,’ was all she could find to say.

  ‘No dream.’ The car was equipped with a sliding screen that protected the confidentiality of conversations being carried out in the back seat. ‘Just keep driving, Harry, until I tell you to stop.’

  ‘Where to, sir?’

  ‘Wherever the hell you want. Brighton and back for all I care.’ He slid shut the glass partition and then drew a discreet navy curtain so that they were now ensured total privacy.

  ‘Please tell me that what I think happened didn’t happen at all,’ Katy pleaded, kicking off the super-high sandals and tucking one foot under her as she swivelled in the seat to face him.

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Do you realise what you’ve gone and done?’ He looked so damn calm that she could have hit him. ‘How could you? How could you?’

  Bruno looked at her and seemed to be contemplating something. Right now, though, Katy wasn’t too curious as to what that something might be. She just knew that the man sitting next to her, within touching distance, had committed them both to a course of action from which escape was going to be nigh on impossible.

  ‘Don’t get hysterical,’ he ordered calmly, at which point Katy’s hysteria went up a few more notches.

  ‘Don’t get hysterical? How am I supposed to get, Bruno? Oh, good heavens.’ She buried her head in the palm of her hand and closed her eyes tightly shut for a few seconds. ‘How are we ever going to get out of this one? It was bad enough with the engagement but at least that was something we could call off. But marriage? No, we’re not married yet. We won’t have to actually get out of a marriage. We’ll just have to sort of hope that people somehow forget what you said. Yes, that’s it. In a month’s time, no one will remember anything about a wedding date being set.’ She cast her mind back to the attention he had had focused on him, the sheer number of people he seemed to know, the interest the reporters had taken in him even though there had been dozens of other famous people arriving for the do. She felt her heart sink. Tomorrow the tabloids would gleefully announce his ridiculous remark about them getting married within the month and her parents and Joseph would be the first on the phone to shriek their congratulations. Her parents would be alarmed that she hadn’t spoken with them first about the date, but that would be forgotten in the face of the joy at seeing their little baby tie the knot.

  Katy groaned at the seeming inevitability of it all.

  ‘How could you let that woman goad you into saying what you said, Bruno? How could you?’

  ‘It would be inconceivable that anyone could goad me into doing anything,’ Bruno said quietly, his face flushing, but Katy was miles away with a metaphorical net getting tighter and tighter around her.

  ‘Only this morning we were planning how we could start letting Joseph and my parents down gently and now…’ The enormity of what that ‘now’ consisted of was so mind-boggling that for a few seconds she was lost for words. Her eyes glazed over and she stared past Bruno into an imaginary not-too-distant future in which a heart-broken Joseph and two disillusioned parents played starring roles.

  ‘I suppose you’re waiting for an apology,’ Bruno remarked in a clipped voice and Katy’s attention snapped back into focus. She looked at him with incredulity.

  ‘Apology? Why would I want an apology? I’d much rather have an explanation! We’ve just jumped straight out of a frying-pan into a fire, Bruno!’

  ‘Have we?’

  ‘You know we have!’ She watched as he turned away from her so that he could fold his hands behind his head, his stunning dark eyes firmly fixed on the curtained-off partition in front of him.

  ‘Why?’ he asked in a barely audible voice and Katy strained towards him, wondering whether she had heard correctly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, bewildered. If she hadn’t known better, she would have suspected that Bruno had had too much to drink and was rambling.

  The silence hung between them, heavy with unspoken undertones that she couldn’t quite manage to decipher.

  ‘We’re engaged. Well, why shouldn’t we get married?’

  The suggestion was so absolutely shocking that she sucked in a mouthful of air like someone gasping for oxygen.

  ‘I mean,’ Bruno carried on, still not looking at her, ‘you can’t say that we don’t get along and we’re physically attracted to one another. Sex is a very important aspect of a successful marriage, you know. Good sex and an ability to get along. And, face it, Joseph and your parents would be very happy with the situation.’

  It took a few moments before the penny dropped and she realised where he was going. Without emotional involvement, Bruno might well see marrying her as an acceptable conclusion to the farce they had stupidly instigated. After all, hadn’t he himself told her at one point that he thought it might be a good time to settle down? Isobel had been considered for the position but she hadn’t worked out. Now, here they were, in the perfect situation to move seamlessly from a phoney engagement into a loveless but highly convenient marriage, and one which he knew would fulfil the highly essential criterion of pleasing his godfather. As he said, he was attracted to her and he liked her well enough. Any concept of love wouldn’t have featured in his equation because as far as he was concerned love simply didn’t exist.

  A tide of hot colour surged into her cheeks and she felt the brutal spark of anger stir inside her.

  ‘You used to tell me that I irritated you when I didn’t look at you when addressed,’ she snapped, pushed into a display of behaviour she would never have thought herself capable of, ‘so I’d be really grateful if you could look at me now!’

  He obliged and the shift in his body weight brought them a few inches more dangerously close together.

  ‘Has it occurred to you at all that I might not share your…your wonderfully romantic notions about what constitutes a perfect marriage?’ Katy clenched her hands into two fists. ‘Believe it or not, I don’t want to walk down the aisle to say I do to a man who kind of likes me and at the moment is physically attracted to me! Though, the physical attraction side of things might come to an end at any given moment in time! I don’t want to get married because you happen to think it’s convenient and various relatives might quite like it if we did! How can you be so arrogant and conceited to imagine that I’d fall in with your plans! I’m not Isobel, you know!’

  ‘I know,’ Bruno said softly, which was enough to momentarily throw her off balance, though not for long once she started thinking about it again. ‘You’re nothing like Isobel,’ he continued in the same disconcerting voice. ‘And you’re nothing like any of the women I’ve ever dated in my life before. You’re unique. I never really knew how unique until I started spending time in your company and I got accustomed to the way you thought and spoke and smiled.’

  ‘You can’t butter me up into going along with your idiotic plans,’ Katy whispered, but his words were having a decidedly pleasurable effect on her nervous system.

  ‘I’m not trying to butter you up. I’m just telling you the truth.’ He reached out to brush the back of his hand across her flushed cheek and she had to control the urge to leap straight at him and bury herself against him. ‘I’ve spent all of my adult life dating women who knew the right words and the right clothes for any occasion. When Joseph became ill and I had to go up to the country to stay, I thought that being around someone as nervous as you always seemed to be would drive me round the bend. I was wrong. I kind of started feeling as though I’d been swept off on some magical mystery tour and I liked the feeling.’

  Katy tried not to like the feeling his silvered words were doing to her too much.

  ‘I found myself wondering what you look
ed like…’

  ‘What I looked like?’

  ‘Underneath your camouflage clothes,’ he observed succinctly and she blushed at the candour.

  ‘Part of the reason I imported Isobel was to ward off the wicked thoughts I was beginning to have about you. In a way, it was the best thing I ever did because just seeing her next to you convinced me that she was all wrong for me.’

  Katy drew in a deep, shaky breath. ‘Which isn’t to say that I’m right for you,’ she said. ‘Okay, you like me. I’m not the complete awkward idiot you thought I was going to be.’ She frowned and was distracted by the glaring truth that she was, in fact, really pretty awkward compared to this string of women he’d apparently dated in the past. At least she wasn’t an idiot, which was a consolation. ‘But, for me, marriage is more than liking someone. It’s about loving them. Don’t you see that? What you’re describing might work at creating a marriage that doesn’t hit the rocks, but, on the other hand, it would be a marriage without…that spark. It would be flat.’ Though not for her, she thought, never for her, because she would be bringing to it all the love at her disposal and wouldn’t that make it even harder to tolerate?

  Bruno, for once, looked away and gave his head a little shake as if he was trying to clear it or else making his mind up about something.

  ‘Isn’t that some kind of start, though?’ he asked roughly. ‘I mean…you could learn to feel…to love me, couldn’t you?’

  The hesitation in his voice filled her with sudden, wild confusion. ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘I am trying to tell you that…I don’t see this marriage as one of convenience. It wouldn’t be. At least, not for me.’