She pushed open the door to her little office, turned automatically to the coat hook hanging on the wall by the side of the door and was only aware of the presence of someone else in the room when she was ready to head towards her desk. Only to find Luc perched on it, his hands lightly clasped on his lap.
Agatha couldn’t have received a bigger shock if she had discovered an alien at her computer terminal. Of course, she had expected to bump into him at some point in time, but not just yet. Not when she had barely had time to recover her lost equilibrium.
She stood in awkward, gaping silence for a few seconds, then stammered, ‘Wh-what are you doing here? ‘ It was an uphill struggle to remember that she was turning over a new leaf, valiantly jettisoning all the shackles that had held her down.
‘I own the company. Remember? I have a right to be anywhere I want to be.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘But life would have been more comfortable for you if I’d been polite enough to keep out of sight until your notice was up and you could slink away unobserved?’
Agatha didn’t say anything, because he had hit the nail on the head, although the prickly, heightened feeling running riot inside her now made her wonder whether her addiction to him wouldn’t find her seeking him out on some pretext or other. Bad habits were difficult to stamp out.
Luc looked at her with a shuttered expression but his sharp eyes were taking everything in. He had had the rest of the evening to think about her parting shot, and the sexy little outfit she was wearing now proclaimed a sexually awakened woman on the move. A woman he had wakened. On the move for another man.
He wasn’t ready for that yet. He also wasn’t prepared to let his work suffer because his mind kept straying to one night of white-hot passion, but suffer it had. Yesterday evening, he had done the unthinkable and jeopardised a deal, albeit a small one, because he hadn’t been able to focus on the finer details of the company accounts on his computer. He had only been able to salvage the mess by the skin of his teeth.
Agatha was unfinished business and that was a situation that wasn’t going to work.
Every situation had its solution. In this case, the solution lay in getting her back to bed—warm, willing and of her own volition. Whether she knew it or not, it would work for both of them because, if she was his unfinished business, then he was hers. Until this was sorted, she would interrupt his work and he would interrupt her head. And, yes, it went against everything inside him to pursue this situation but the need to pursue was overpowering. He was going to throw the rule book through the window. He could only think that it was because he still wanted her and getting what he wanted was too ingrained in him to be ignored.
‘Unfortunately for you, I’ve done a bit of thinking,’ he continued, standing up and strolling to the single window that overlooked the busy pavements below. He turned back around to look at her. ‘You might just get it into your head that you can slack off because you intend to leave.’
‘I wouldn’t do that!’ Agatha protested vehemently.
‘Really? Then explain the outfit. Not what I would call suitable, would you?’
‘I’m only wearing what every other female under forty in this building wears!’ Agatha defended herself stoutly, while making small movements to tug down the skirt which was a hefty couple of inches above the knee. ‘And you told me to change my wardrobe,’ she carried on, emboldened.
Privately, Luc had to concede that she had a point, but for some reason it annoyed the hell out of him to see her flaunting herself in clothes that would bring most men to a grinding halt. Did she really expect to go unnoticed every time she left her office to run some errand that would take her past the boys working in the outer offices? Of course not. But then that was probably the intention.
‘The fact is that I find myself in an unusual position,’ he informed her, walking towards her, then circling like a shark sizing up edible prey. ‘Having made it a rule never to sleep with an employee, I now discover that breaking the rule carries consequences. I’ve opened a door that you could enter to do any number of things if you decided to take revenge for being a one-night stand. Even if you were the one to instigate the situation.’ He scowled, grimly disappointed with himself for breaking his own iron-clad code of conduct.
‘I’m not into revenge! Why do you always suspect the worst of people? ‘
‘Call it dealing with the daily reality of being wealthy. I’ve had more than one threat of a kiss-and-tell story. Personally, I’m indifferent to that, but my mother gets upset.’
‘Do you really think that I’m the sort of girl who would do that?’
‘I don’t know.’ He gave an elegant shrug. ‘I never thought that you were the sort of girl to jump in the sack for a session of hot sex and then decide to use it as a springboard.’
Agatha flushed to the roots of her hair. She bitterly regretted those last words. They had made her sound cheap and shallow and she couldn’t blame him now for thinking the worst of her.
‘Because I’ve decided to wear normal clothes to work, doesn’t mean that I’m going to put my feet up on the desk and slack off.’
He noticed that she had said nothing to defend herself against his accusation. A lethal fury swept through him, unlike anything he had ever felt before, but none of that was reflected in his face.
‘Other things come into play here,’ he informed her in a grim undertone while she looked up at him in utter bemusement.
‘What other things?’
‘I don’t care for the thought of you shooting your mouth off and discussing what took place between us.’
‘You can trust me when I tell you that that’s the last thing I would ever think of doing and, just in case you don’t believe me, I’ll happily make a deal with you. I don’t say a word to anyone, and you don’t.’ Thoughts of her mother’s disappointed face made her shudder.
‘I don’t do deals.’ That little shudder of hers hadn’t escaped his notice. ‘On the other hand, I can make sure that I keep an eye on you.’
‘Keep an eye on me?’ Agatha parroted, trying to make some kind of connection in her head that would give her some insight into what he was trying to tell her.
‘Your time in this little box is at an end. For the remainder of your employment here, you’ll be on my floor, sitting outside my office, where I’ll have ample opportunity to make sure that you’re not putting your feet up. I’ll also be able to make sure that you’re not whiling away your time gossiping.’
Agatha’s mouth dropped open and her brain braked and then slowed to a standstill before cranking back into gear. Very slowly.
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Never been more serious in my life. I have a reputation to protect and I intend to make sure that you don’t damage it.’
‘It’s not as though everyone doesn’t know that…’
‘I don’t care who knows that I play the field.’ Luc helped her out, his tone dismissive. ‘I do, however, care that they don’t know I’ve been crazy enough to play the field right in my own back yard.’ Only he was capable of recognising the subtle but important distinction, which was that for the first time he was willing to play the field in his own back yard.
Agatha’s mind latched on to that single word ‘crazy’. She wanted to tell him that she had been the crazy one ever to have allowed herself the folly of falling into his arms as if her entire life had been building up to that very moment. Instead, she resolved there and then to do everything within her power to wipe him out of her head.
She took a few shaky steps away from him towards her desk and then turned to him with a sullen shrug.
‘You already have a secretary.’
‘Helen’s daughter has just had her second child. She would welcome a break of a few weeks. I had planned on asking my agency to send a temp over, but in all events this is a far more satisfactory solution.’ And one that had occurred to him on the spur of the moment. He could only sardonically admire his talent fo
r creativity when it came to breaking his own rules so that he could invent a couple of new ones.
‘I’m not really qualified to do Helen’s job.’ With ever-vanishing hope, Agatha clung to that observation with the tenacity of a drowning swimmer clinging to a life belt, but in her heart she knew that it was a pretty futile hope. He was a deeply suspicious man in a situation over which he fancied he lacked total control. How wrong he was!
‘She’ll spend the next couple of days filling you in and I’ll handle anything sensitive.’
‘Will that include buying presents for your lovers?’ She pressed her hand to her mouth as if she could somehow stuff the words back in and swallow them down.
Luc looked at her narrowly, eyes gleaming. When he took one step towards her, Agatha instinctively fell back. ‘Would that bother you? Would you be jealous? ‘
‘No!’
A slow smile curved his sexy mouth and he dropped his eyes, which actually didn’t do very much to release her from her semi-frozen, trance-like state. ‘Well,’ he drawled. ‘You’ll be thrilled to hear that I won’t be calling on you to do that.’
Did that mean that he would recommence his high-octane love life, just omitting her from the responsibility of buying gifts, reserving restaurants and seats at operas? she wondered feverishly, and then was ashamed of letting her thoughts go down that pointless road.
‘And look on the bright side. There’s another reason why you should applaud my decision to bring you to the director’s floor. If you decide to go into another office job after this, you’ll want a good reference. Work for me and come up to scratch, and you’ll be in demand the second you leave this building. All told, you can see that I’m doing you a favour.’
‘Your favours never feel like favours,’ Agatha breathed on a rebellious sigh.
Mutual attraction, the brief game of pursuit and capture then gratification. That was the course of events he had always followed with women, and after the gratification came the gratitude. He was cynical enough to know that he was a catch, maybe one of the biggest in the sea.
Agatha had turned that normal course of events on its head. Was that why he was driven to get her back in his bed at all costs and even at the expense of his fabled self-control?
At any rate, he sucked in his breath sharply and said with curt self-restraint, ‘Come up to the director’s floor when
you’ve cleared your desk. I’ll be out for the remainder of the day, but Helen will show you the ropes.’ Which, Agatha supposed as she trudged with her possessions up the lift to the plush glass-house occupied by the high and mighty at the top of the building, was something.
And at least she would be doing some real work; there was always a positive spin to be put on everything, she told herself. Also, Luc had been right: he would be able to dispatch her with reasonable references if she left with more experience, and that would mean something to him. It would reduce any residue of guilt that the job he had been forced to provide for her hadn’t worked out.
As she might have expected, he had taken a pragmatic view of what had happened. Whilst she had spent the weekend unable to function, he had worked out how to make sure she was dispatched in a way that would protect his privacy and preserve his conscience.
Helen’s office was private and luxurious, glass and chrome, with an adjoining door to Luc’s bigger, even more luxurious office. In between being shown the systems, she played with the thought that maybe seeing Luc on a daily basis would go somewhere to getting him out of her system. Didn’t familiarity breed contempt? There was never a person who longed for that as much as she did.
For the next week and a half, it really seemed to be working—in a manner of speaking. Because Luc, in full throttle, had to be seen to be believed. However early she made it to the office, he was always there before her. She brought him in a cup of coffee, and then life immediately went into the fast lane.
Even with his feet up on his desk, his tie askew, his mind was still working at such a rapid speed that she was barely able to take time out to breathe, never mind pander to the temptation to sit back and just look at him.
‘Got that?’
With an efficiency Agatha would never have believed possible after the computer course she just scraped through months ago, she nodded and stood up, smoothing down her skirt in the process. When her eyes flicked to him, it was to find him staring at her with that speculative intensity that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Over the past week and a half, he had treated her with the scrupulous detachment of the boss towards his secretary. Now, as the clock ticked towards lunch time, he was finally looking at her, and all the nervousness that had been resting happily on the back burner bubbled up to the surface with ferocious speed.
‘You’ve certainly been hiding your light under a bushel,’ he drawled, pushing back his chair and then folding his hands behind his head. ‘For someone in love with the outdoor life, who hated anything to do with the office, you seem to be keeping up.’
Agatha could feel his cool, inscrutable eyes resting on her, and her heart did that hammering thing that always seemed to turn her brain to mush. Had she really kidded herself that she was somehow over him because she had been able to handle working alongside him without falling apart from nerves?
The prospect of being back at square one hit her like a punch in the stomach. Despite all her good intentions, she had done nothing to move on with her love life. She could see the possibility of becoming ensconced in this new, temporary position, which was doing nothing to promote the contempt she had been waiting for—the opposite, in fact—and then feeling the separation when she finally did leave even more than she would have bargained for.
The small shoots of a plan began to form in her head and she glumly gave it room while the man who still spiked her dreams continued to look at her with that mild, dispassionate interest.
‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’ She held his stare and tried not to fiddle with her fingers. ‘Anyway, I am kind of enjoying the work,’ she admitted truthfully. ‘It’s much more interesting than the stuff I was doing downstairs.’
‘Not my fault. You came to me without much going for you by way of experience in even the most lowly of office skills, and you never showed any interest in furthering your knowledge. How was I to know that you were such a quick study?’
Agatha flushed with pleasure at the compliment.
‘I’ve had a number of temps over the years,’ Luc said, musing. ‘And none of them have matched you for efficiency. In fact, a number of them fell to pieces the minute the going got a little tough.’
Agatha had no trouble believing that. She, at least, had known the nature of the beast and had adapted accordingly. Luc was brilliant, relentless, impatient with mistakes and never expected to explain anything more than once. Glimpses of his character over the years had stood her in good stead.
‘Poor things,’ she said sympathetically, visualising a procession of weeping, broken young girls.
‘Poor things? ‘ Luc laughed, folded his hands behind his head. ‘I am the most considerate employer anyone could wish for.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Really. You seem to have managed perfectly.’ He paused significantly. ‘Do you think that might have something to do with our special relationship?’ He trained his sharp, green eyes on her, enjoying the sight: pink cheeks, that full mouth and curly blond hair half-escaping the loose bun at the nape of her neck. Working with her was a constant challenge to suppress his rampant libido. Moreover, and to his surprise, he had quickly discovered that he had acquired a top-rate worker who was much brighter and cleverer than she gave herself credit for. He considered her wasted talking to plants in some tin-pot garden centre, but he would approach his offer to keep her on in a brand-new position later.
For the moment, he was frustrated by cravings over which he seemed to have little control. Even when he was safely out of her radius and in meetings, he had still found his concentration lapsi
ng.
Playing the waiting game was not in his nature and he knew, more positively with each passing hour, that he needed to get a conclusion going.
‘We don’t have a special relationship,’ Agatha said crisply.
‘We had sex. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. Some might say that qualifies us as having a special relationship.’ He sat forward, resting both elbows on his highly polished desk and afforded her a penitent look. ‘My apologies. Talking about sex in a working environment is inappropriate. What is appropriate,’ he continued, ‘Is I take you out to lunch. You deserve it; point taken that I may not always be the easiest person to work with.’
‘That’s very nice, thank you, but I’ve got some stuff I need to do at lunch time.’
Luc frowned. ‘What sort of stuff? I’m the boss. I’m giving you full permission to ignore work for an hour and a half.’
‘Actually, I wasn’t going to work.’
‘What exactly are you planning on doing? You have to eat.’
‘I’ve brought some sandwiches in. I…I have some things to do on the computer. Emails to write, if that’s okay. Keeping in touch! I told mum that I would probably be handing in my notice and she’s worried.’
‘Right. Maybe another day.’
‘Maybe…’ Agatha looked away. ‘So…is that all?’
Luc had never felt so instantly dispatched. For someone who gave the impression of being a pushover, she was as tough as nails, he thought with ill humour. What email could be so pressing that she would give up lunch with him?
‘I won’t be here this afternoon.’ Frustration ratcheted through him as he walked over to the cupboard in which his jacket was hanging. ‘Wall-to-wall meetings until six. I’ll expect that due-diligence report to be completed by the time I return to the office. If it’s not, you’ll have to work overtime. The lawyers need it first thing in the morning.’
‘Of course.’ She sprang to her feet. ‘Anything else? ‘
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