The Argentinian's Demand

by Cathy Williams

  He picked up his fountain pen—an expensive present from his mother, who firmly believed that letters were still written and technology and computers were simply a passing phase. He twirled it idly between his fingers and Emily watched, guiltily mesmerised by the movement of his long fingers.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said in a stilted voice, ‘this might go some way to explaining my behaviour. Not that I’ve noticed anything amiss. I’ve done my job as efficiently today as I always have done.’

  Performing seal? Was that how he saw her? As someone who came in, did what she was expected to do to the very highest standard, but lacked in all personality? Dull? Boring? An automaton? She had kept her distance and had kept her opinions to herself. Since when had that been a crime? Her mouth tightened and she swallowed back an intense temptation to tell him just what she thought of him.

  Leandro looked at the white envelope in her hand and then looked at her.

  ‘And that is...?’

  ‘Take it. Read it. We can discuss it in the morning.’

  She made to rise and was told to sit back down.

  ‘If a discussion is warranted, then we’ll have the discussion right here and right now.’

  He reached for the envelope, slit it open and read the brief letter several times.

  Emily schooled her features into a mask of polite detachment, but she had to unclench her hands and her heart was racing—beating so fast that she felt it might burst through her ribcage.

  ‘What the hell is this?’

  He tossed the letter across the desk in her direction and Emily snatched it before it could flutter to the ground. She smoothed it on her lap, staring at the jumble of words. Granted, it was a very brief letter of resignation. It said that she had enjoyed her time working with him but felt that the time had come for her to move in another direction. It could not have been more dry or unemotional.

  ‘You know what it is. It’s self-explanatory. It’s my letter of resignation.’

  ‘You’ve had fun and now it’s time to move on...am I reading it correctly?’

  ‘That’s what it says.’

  ‘Sorry. Not buying it.’

  Leandro was shocked. He hadn’t seen this coming and he was furious at what he saw as inadequate advance warning. Furthermore, he was the one who generally decided when one of his employees was ready to be shown the door. He had had enough experience of simpering young girls batting their eyelashes and getting into an annoying flap every time he looked at them and asked them to do something simple.

  ‘If I remember correctly, you had a substantial pay rise recently, which you very happily accepted, and you informed me at the time that you were perfectly satisfied with the working conditions here.’

  ‘Yes. I...I...hadn’t thought about resigning at that point in time.’

  ‘And yet less than a month later you have? Did you have a sudden revelation? I’m curious. Or have you been looking for a replacement job all along and just biding your time until the right one came your way?’

  The thought of another endless series of airheads was not a pleasant one. Emily Edison had been the perfect secretary. Intelligent, unflappable, always willing to go beyond the call of duty. He was used to her. The thought of getting in to work and not having her there at hand was inconceivable.

  Had he taken advantage of her? Of her quiet efficiency? Her willingness always to go the extra mile? He rejected any such notion before it had had time to take root. He paid for her to be willing to go beyond the call of duty. He was pretty sure that she would be hard pressed to find another job as secretary in the heart of London where the pay equalled what she got.

  ‘Well?’ he prompted. ‘Has someone made you an offer you can’t refuse? Because if that’s the case, consider whatever offer you were tempted by doubled.’

  ‘You would do that?’

  Her mouth fell open. Performing seal she might very well be, but he valued her, and although she knew that through a process of intelligent deduction, it was gratifying to hear it put so starkly into words.

  ‘We work well together,’ Leandro said bluntly. ‘And I expect that I am sometimes not the easiest man in the world to work for...’

  Expecting a standard negative response to that statement, he was disconcerted when it failed to be delivered.

  ‘Is that it?’ he asked, leaning forward with frowning intensity. ‘Have you got a gripe against me...?’

  He couldn’t quite conceal the incredulity in his voice and Emily, for the first time, looked at him with cynical directness. Of course never in a million years would Leandro Perez ever think that any woman wouldn’t be one hundred per cent happy to be in his presence. She might have bucked the trend by not being one in that long line of women who swooned the second those dark, intense eyes settled on them, but even so he would still assume that he had an effect on her because that was just the sort of man he was.

  A player. Someone so inherently aware of his massive pulling power that it would be just inconceivable that it might not work on some women.

  ‘I haven’t got a gripe against you,’ Emily said slowly.

  She felt a thrill of recklessness, because right now, at this very moment in time, she was permitted to speak her mind. By tomorrow afternoon she would have cleared her desk and would have disappeared from here for good, with no need for references from him—although she knew instinctively that they would be very good, because he was, for all his faults, scrupulously fair.

  Leandro tilted his head to one side and kept his eyes firmly fixed on her face. Her colour was up. Was she blushing? He hadn’t associated her with such a girlish reaction. She was always so self-possessed...and yet...

  His dark eyes drifted down to her mouth. She had full, soft lips, and even if they had registered somewhere in his subconscious before now he certainly felt as though he was seeing them for the first time. Perhaps she had shed that ice-cold image, because there were cracks in it now, through which he wanted to pry, find out what lay underneath.

  Emily sensed the shift in his attention—from boss trying to uncover the reasons for her sudden unexpected resignation to boss looking at her with masculine interest.

  Her skin tingled. She felt as though she was in the grip of an acute attack of pins and needles.

  ‘No?’ Leandro drawled. ‘Because your expression is telling a different story.’

  Emily, so accustomed to being the dutiful impeccable secretary in his presence—the secretary who never allowed her personal feelings to tip over into the work arena—stiffened.

  ‘If you must know, I’ve never enjoyed having to do your dirty work for you.’

  ‘Come again?’

  She couldn’t quite believe that she had just said what she had. The blood rushed to her head and she knew that she was as red as a beetroot. Gone was the frozen, aloof façade she had kept up for the past year and a half.

  She looked at him with defiance and took a deep, steadying breath. ‘Presents for those women you no longer had any use for...goodbye gifts you couldn’t even be bothered to choose...arranging opera tickets and theatre tickets...booking expensive restaurants for women I knew I would be sending those goodbye gifts to in a few weeks’ time... That should never have been part of my secretarial duties...’

  ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’

  ‘That’s because you’re not accustomed to anyone telling you anything you don’t want to hear.’

  Leandro released a long, sharp breath and sat back to look at her. Her face was alive with genuine, sincere emotion. She was leaning forward in the chair, and of their own accord his eyes drifted down to the prissy top.

  He wondered what she looked like underneath it—wondered what it would feel like to make love to his icy secretary who was now in the act of revealing the sort of passion that could make any red-blooded
man burn. He wondered what that hair would be like let loose. Hell, he didn’t even know how long her hair was! His intense curiosity extinguished any anger he might have felt at what she had just said. At any rate, it was certainly true that he wasn’t accustomed to being criticised.

  ‘So you didn’t like your involvement in my personal life?’ he murmured.

  ‘Maybe Marjorie was accustomed to doing stuff like that, but I feel you should have established whether I would mind...’

  ‘I guess if you felt so strongly about it you should have said something earlier...’

  Emily blushed, because he was absolutely right. And why hadn’t she? Because she had needed the money and she had been keen not to put a foot wrong.

  ‘There’s nothing more annoying than a martyr who puts up with the unacceptable and only says her piece when she’s handed in her resignation...which brings me back to the why...’

  ‘Well, like I said, I feel it’s time to move on... I realise you will probably want me to leave immediately, so I thought I could just pack my things up and be done in a day...’

  ‘Leave immediately? What gives you that idea?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Emily asked in some consternation. ‘Of course you want me to leave immediately. You don’t see the point of employees hanging around once they’ve handed in their notice. I remember quite clearly you saying that they need to be removed from sensitive information, and also that their demotivation can spread like a virus...’

  In actual fact she had only known of a couple of instances of employees handing in their notice. Pregnancy and emigration being the reasons. Mostly people stayed with the company because the pay was second to none—as were the working conditions.

  ‘Marjorie stayed on for quite a while before she finally left...that seems to fly in the face of your sensitive information theory...’

  ‘Yes, but...’

  She looked at his raised eyebrows, the slight tilt of his head, and for a second she wondered whether he was just toying with her.

  ‘My responsibilities have been far greater.’ She stumbled over her words as she contemplated the prospect of working out her notice having told him in no uncertain terms what she thought of certain aspects of her job...

  ‘True,’ Leandro agreed.

  He allowed the silence to thicken and deepen. Immediate departure? Why?

  ‘And you’re telling me this because...?’

  ‘Why would you want me around if you think I’m an annoying martyr?’

  Emily took a different approach, but Leandro Perez was not a man who could be browbeaten, and even as she tried a different ruse she felt the sinking sensation of knowing that her departure would not be going quite according to schedule. She had been short-sighted, had dropped her mask, and now she would be stuck for at least another month with their boss-secretary relationship not on the safe footing on which it had always rested.

  ‘You have a month’s notice to work out,’ Leandro informed her flatly. ‘You’ve lost your mind if you imagine that you’re going to leave me in the lurch with a string of unsuitable candidates turning my working life upside down.’

  And he was honest enough to admit to himself that it rankled...the fact that she had been happy to jump ship without a backward glance when she must have known that he depended on her! What the hell had ever happened to a sense of responsibility?

  He offered her an expression of thoughtful contemplation and politely waited for her to try and find a few more pointless excuses.

  Emily envisaged one long month of interviewing prospective candidates for a guy who would almost certainly reject all of her choices. She had handed in her notice and he wasn’t going to make life easy for her. And now that she had been foolish enough to actually tell him what she thought about his antics involving the opposite sex...

  No, life was not going to be a walk in the park at all over the next four weeks.

  ‘But of course you do have a point,’ he mused, resuming the light tapping of his fountain pen on his desk. ‘You have assumed far greater responsibilities than Marjorie ever did. She always maintained that she was hanging on to new technology by the skin of her teeth whilst knowing very well that there was no way I would ever get rid of her because of her length of service. She worked for my father in Argentina. Did you know that?’

  ‘She didn’t mention it.’

  ‘She was over there on holiday after university and looking for temporary work so that she could improve her Spanish. She applied for an office job at my father’s company and he liked her. Said she had spirit. He employed her on the spot, and as things turned out she fell in love with a local guy, married him and remained working for my father until eventually she and her husband moved over here years ago so that she could be close to her family.

  ‘Two of her daughters married English guys and now live here as well. When she moved she came as a package deal to me, but in truth her heart was never in the upward climb. She did a damn good job, but you...’ He relaxed back and folded his hands behind his head. ‘You’re quick...you’re professional...you never need to be told anything twice...’

  Emily accepted the flattery with as composed a demeanour as she could muster and reminded herself that it came with the massive downside of being asked to work out her notice. But the pleasure of being complimented so elaborately brought colour to her cheeks.

  ‘Which is why I can’t afford to lose you immediately, and also why you were rewarded with so much responsibility...so much confidential information on clients... For all I know—’ he sat forward suddenly, taking her by surprise ‘—you could be moving on to one of my competitors... Who knows? You’re a closed book, Emily...’

  ‘Moving on to one of our competitors...?’

  Leandro raised his eyebrows at that unconscious slip of the tongue, but he didn’t relax his posture, and nor did he come even close to cracking a smile.

  ‘Are you being serious, Leandro?’

  Somehow she had managed to avoid using his name for the majority of her time working with him and it felt strange on her tongue. She was catapulted back to that odd sensation she’d had earlier, when she had suddenly and inexplicably become aware of him—aware of his startling sexuality, aware of the dragging power of his personality when work was not the issue at hand.

  ‘I’m always serious when it comes to work.’ Leandro, still leaning forward with his elbows splayed on the desk, was looking at her very carefully. ‘As you might have gathered by now, I’m not a man who takes chances when it comes to my companies...’

  ‘I get that—but I would never disclose anything confidential to anyone!’

  ‘Better safe than sorry, though, wouldn’t you say...?’

  Would she even miss him?, he thought, enraged with himself for even thinking it.

  ‘I’ll get in touch with the agency first thing in the morning.’

  Distractedly she thought that a person could get lost in those dark eyes of his, which were resting on her with lazy, brooding speculation, and then she mentally slapped herself on the wrist for letting her imagination get the better of her.

  Not only was it foolish but it was entirely inappropriate, given the current circumstances.

  ‘No need just yet...’

  Whoever said that a good head for business precluded a talent for creative thinking?

  ‘I have a project that’s coming to an end on a small island in the Caribbean. Finishing touches to one of my hotels before the grand opening in six weeks’ time. I need to be there personally to sign off on the details...’

  Not strictly true, but it would certainly serve his purpose at this juncture. No way she was going to just up sticks and disappear into the sunset without a backward glance. Furthermore, she intrigued him—and now, with this peculiar letter of resignation, she was intriguing him even more.
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br />   ‘That’s not a problem. I’m more than capable of covering in your absence, and of course I will communicate daily on email. I can even begin sifting through prospective replacements so when you return you only have to interview the handful I’ve selected...’

  ‘Not precisely what I had in mind. I do have to keep an eye on you—as you have so aptly brought to my attention... So here are my thoughts: you and I will travel to my hotel and test-drive it, so to speak. Make sure the nuts and bolts are all in place, the paperwork is spotless, the teams are ready for when the place opens... And, of course, out there you will be removed from any temptation to get in touch with anyone who might be interested in buying sensitive information and it will give me time to get my people to firewall anything that could be stolen... What do you think? No, scratch that. Just get your passport, pack a suitcase and book two first class tickets for us to leave first thing in the morning. Much more fun than sifting through potential candidates for a job, wouldn’t you agree?’

  Emily blanched. ‘What sort of timescale are we talking about?’ she asked faintly.

  There seemed little point in taking issue with his implication that she might be a common thief. His suspicious nature had helped get him where he was today, and it was as ingrained in his personality as an icy wasteland was in hers.

  ‘Well, you do have to give me a month’s notice... I imagine a fortnight should suffice when it comes to overseeing the final touches of the hotel...’

  ‘Two weeks?’

  ‘You sound shocked. I know you have a passport, so where’s the problem?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be able to do that.’

  ‘And that would be because...?’

  ‘Because I have certain commitments.’

  ‘And would these “commitments” be related to that letter of resignation you produced an hour ago?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Emily drew a deep breath and looked away. She could feel curiosity emanating from him in waves. Leandro Perez had a brilliant and enquiring mind. Was he about to let her go without trying to delve into the precise reasons for her resignation? How naive she had been to imagine that that might have been the case.