by Lynne Graham
‘I’m Alice Morgan...your new secretary? The agency your company uses got in touch with me. I have my CV...’
‘No need.’ He stood back and looked at her intently, head tilted to one side. Arms folded, he circled her, and she gritted her teeth in receipt of this insolent, arrogant appraisal.
Was this how he treated his female staff? She had got the message loud and clear that he did what he wanted, irrespective of what anyone had to say on the matter, but this was too much.
She could leave. Walk out. She had already been kept waiting for over two hours. The agency would understand. But she was being paid over the odds for this job, way over the odds, and it had been hinted that the package, should she be made permanent, would be breath-taking. The man paid well, whatever his undesirable traits, and she could do with the money. She had been renting for the past three years, ever since she had moved to London from Devon, where her mother lived. There was no way she could afford to leave rented accommodation but she would love to have the option of not sharing a house. And then there were all those other expenses that ate into her monthly income, leaving her with barely enough to survive comfortably.
Practicality won over impulse and she stayed put.
‘So...’ Gabriel drawled, eyebrows raised. ‘My new secretary. Now that you mention it, I was expecting you.’
‘I’ve been here since eight-forty-five.’
‘Then you should have had ample opportunity to read and digest all the information on my various companies.’ He nodded to the low ash sideboard which was home to various legal books and, yes, an abundance of financial reports on his companies. She had read them all cover to cover.
Alice felt her hackles rise. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, keeping her voice level, ‘you could give me a run-down of my duties? Normally there’s a handover from the old secretary to the new one but...’ But the last one obviously ran for cover without looking back...
‘I don’t actually have time to run through every detail of what you’re expected to do. You’ll just have to pick it up as you go along. I’m assuming the agency will have sent me someone competent who doesn’t need too much hand-holding.’ He watched as delicate colour invaded her cheeks. Her eyes were very firmly averted from him and she was as stiff as a piece of board.
All told, it was not the reaction Gabriel usually expected or received from the opposite sex, but perhaps the agency had been right to send him someone who wouldn’t end up with an inappropriate crush on him. Miss Alice Morgan—and she looked every bit a ‘Miss’ even if he hadn’t known she was—clearly had her head very firmly screwed on.
‘Item number one on the agenda is...a cup of coffee. You’ll find that that’s an essential duty. I like mine strong and black with two sugars. If you unbend slightly and turn to the left, you’ll notice a sliding door. All coffee making facilities are there.’
So far, everything the man was saying was getting on her nerves, and she hadn’t missed the amusement in his voice when he had told her that she could ‘unbend’.
‘Of course.’
‘Then you can grab your computer and come into my office. Fire it up and we can get going. I have some big deals on the go. You might find that you’re being thrown in at the deep end. And you can relax, Miss Morgan. I don’t eat secretaries for breakfast.’
Her legs finally started moving as he disappeared into his office. Duty number one : coffee making. She had not made coffee for her boss in her last job. There, everyone had chipped in. Quite frequently, Tom Davis had been the one bringing her a cup of coffee. It was clear that Gabriel Cabrera did not operate on such civilised lines.
By nature, Alice was not confrontational. There was, however, a streak of fierce independence in her that railed against his dictatorial attitude. She simmered and seethed as she made the coffee for him.
His image still swam in her head with pressing insistence: that ridiculously sexy face; the casual assumption that he was the big boss and so could do precisely as he pleased, even if his behaviour bordered on rude. He was rich, he was drop-dead good-looking and he knew the full extent of the power he wielded. When he had stood in front of her, she had felt as vulnerable as a minnow in the presence of a shark. Something about him was suffocating, larger than life. He was dressed in a suit, charcoal-grey, but even that had not been able to conceal the breadth of his shoulders or the lean muscularity of his physique.
He was a man who was far, far too good-looking, far too overpowering.
‘Sit,’ was his first word as she entered the hallowed walls of his office.
It was a vast space. Floor-to-ceiling panes of glass flooded the room with natural light which was kept at bay by pale-grey shutters. Beyond the immediate vicinity of his working area was a sectioned-off space in which low chairs circled a table and tall plants created a semi-private meeting space.
‘You’d better brief me very quickly on what computer systems you’re familiar with.’ He drummed a fountain pen on his desk, which was chrome and glass, and gave her his undivided attention.
A sparrow. Neat as a pin, legs primly pressed together, eyes tactfully managing to avoid eye contact. Gabriel wondered whether he should send her back in exchange for something a little more decorative. He liked decorative, even though he knew the drawbacks always outweighed the advantages. But, hell, he was a man who could have anything he wanted at the click of a finger and that included interchangeable secretaries. Ever since Gladys—his sixty-year-old assistant of seven years—had inconsiderately emigrated to Australia to be with her daughter, he had run through temps like water. He knew that any agency worth its salt would have scratched him from their books if he’d been anyone else, just as he knew that they never would with him. He paid so well that they would be saying farewell to far too much commission and, in the end, wasn’t greed at the bottom of everything?
His lips curled in derision. Was there nothing he couldn’t have? There were definite upsides to being able to get whatever he wanted... Women flocked to him; heads of business fell silent when he spoke; the press followed him with bated breath, waiting for a hint of the next financial scoop or for a glimpse of his very active private life. He was at the very peak of his game, the undisputed leader of the pack, and there were no signs that he would be relinquishing the position any time soon. So why did life sometimes feel so damned unsatisfying?
He sometimes wondered whether he had used up his capacity for any genuine emotion in his tenacious climb to the top. Perhaps battling against the odds had actually been the great adventure. Now that the game had been played and he had emerged the winner, was the adventure over? Not even the brutal, frenetic push and shove of work could provide him with the adrenaline it once did. What was the point of trying when you could have it all without effort? Was trying just something else that had once mattered but now no longer did in the same way?
The sparrow was in full flow, telling him about her last job and giving him a long list of her responsibilities there. He held up one imperious hand, stopping her mid-sentence.
‘You can only be an improvement on the last girl,’ he drawled. ‘I think somewhere along the line the agency lost track of the fact that I actually wanted someone who knew how to type using more than one finger.’
Alice smiled politely and thought that maybe the agency was in the dark as to whether he cared one way or another, given that his priorities seemed to lie with how good-looking the candidates were.
Gabriel frowned at that smile; it seemed at odds with the meek and mild exterior projected. ‘You’ll find the file on the Hammonds deal on your computer,’ he said, focusing now. ‘Call it up and I’ll tell you what you need to do.’
Alice didn’t surface for the next four hours. Gabriel kept her pinned to her computer. There was no lunch break, because it had been practically lunchtime when he had eventually strolled into the office, and he clearly assumed that
she would not be hungry. He wasn’t, after all, so why should she be?
At four-thirty, she looked up to find him standing in front of her.
‘You seem to be keeping up. New broom sweeping clean, or can I expect this show of efficiency to be ongoing?’
Under the full impact of his rapid-fire instructions, Alice had forgotten how objectionable she found him. If that was his way of telling her that she had done a good job on day one, then surely there had to be more polite ways of delivering the message?
‘I’m a hard worker, Mr Cabrera,’ she told him evenly. ‘I can usually handle what’s thrown at me.’
Gabriel sat down in the chair facing her desk and extended his long legs to one side.
Every inch of him breathed self-assurance and command. Okay, so she had to admit that the man was clever. He had the astute brain of a lawyer and an ability to pick through the finer details until he found the essential make or break one that was the difference between success and failure. On the telephone, he was confident and authoritative. From every pore of his body, he radiated the self-assurance that what he wanted, he would get.
‘Highly commendable,’ he said drily.
‘Thank you. Perhaps you could tell me what time I shall be expected to work until today?’ Considering he had kept her waiting for hours for reasons he had not bothered to share.
‘Until I’m satisfied that your job for the day is done,’ Gabriel said coolly. ‘I don’t believe in clock watching, Miss Morgan. Unless, of course, you have some pressing need to go by five? Have you?’
Alice smoothed her skirt with nervous hands. She had read all the promotional literature on offer during the three-hour wait in her office, and within a few seconds had known that the man was beyond influential. He was a billionaire with killer looks and she had seen from the way he had dealt with various interruptions by staff members during the day that, as the little Barbie had informed her, he did exactly as he pleased. One poor woman, the head of his legal department, had been told very firmly that she would be required to work the following weekend without a break because they were closing an important deal and would therefore be required to miss her best friend’s wedding. He hadn’t even bothered to pay lip service to an apology.
Gabriel Cabrera paid his employees the earth and in return they handed over their freedom.
That was a bandwagon Alice had no intention of jumping on. Right now, she was nothing more than a lowly temp, so could speak her mind and lay down some boundaries. Because should—and it was a big should—the job be offered to her on a permanent basis, then she would no longer have the freedom to tell him what she was willing to do and what she wasn’t. And working weekends was definitely not on the agenda. Not given her mother’s current situation.
‘I’m not a clock watcher, Mr Cabrera, and I’m more than happy to work overtime if necessary. But, yes, I do value my private life and I would have to know in advance if I’m expected to sacrifice my leisure time.’
Gabriel looked at her narrowly. ‘That’s not how my company operates.’ Indeed, that was not how he operated. Doling out long explanations for what he did was not part of the package. He did as he pleased and the world accepted it. He felt another tug of weary cynicism which he swatted aside. He had earned his place at the head of the table by fighting off the competition. He had started from nothing and now had everything...and that had been the object of the game: to have it all. He was accountable to no one, least of all a secretary who had been with him for two minutes!
‘If I understand correctly, you’re being paid double what you would normally get doing the same job in another company.’
But with a different boss, Alice was tempted to insert. A normal boss.
‘That’s true,’ she admitted.
‘Are you going to tell me that you don’t like the nice, juicy pay packet? Because I can, of course, slash it if you want to start imposing conditions for your working hours. You’ve been here for five minutes and you think that you can start dictating terms?’ He gave a short, incredulous laugh and shook his head. ‘Unbelievable.’
‘The agency implied that there might be a permanent job on offer if I made it through the probation period. I understand you haven’t had a great deal of success with the previous secretaries who were sent to you.’
‘And, because you’ve had a good first day, you somehow think that you have leverage?’ But he had had a bad time of it when it came to his secretaries. Perhaps he should have been hunting down a Plain Jane like the one sitting in front of him, but you should be able to get along with the person in whose company you usually ended up spending most of your day. That seemed a sensible conclusion. He was forced to concede that his theory fell down slightly given the fact that some of the girls he had employed had wanted to get along a little too well with him for his liking.
‘You seem to be getting a little ahead of yourself here,’ he remarked, watching her closely. ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘No.’ Alice took a deep breath, prepared to stand her ground, because she could see very clearly how the land lay with this guy.
Dark eyes clashed with hazel and she felt a tremendous whoosh go through her, as though the air had been sucked out of her body. She found him unnerving, yet today had been the most invigorating she had spent in a long time. She had blossomed under the pressure of her workload, had even seen areas where she might be able to branch out and assume more responsibility.
Was she willing to jeopardise six weeks of a sure thing in favour of laying down ground rules for a permanent job that might not even be hers?
Even as she asked herself that question, she knew the answer. She wasn’t going to let anyone, however much they were paying her, dictate the parameters of her life, and not just her working life. No one in his company seemed to mind. Half the women were probably besotted with him, but not her, and she needed her time out. Life was difficult enough as it was, with her weekends taken up going to Devon to visit her mother. The last thing she needed was to have her precious week-day evenings sucked away, even if it meant forfeiting paid overtime.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Gabriel couldn’t actually recall the last time anyone had ventured an opinion that was obviously unwelcome. Great wealth gave great freedom, and commanded even greater respect, and hadn’t that always been his driving goal in life—to jettison the dark days of growing up in foster homes, where his opinion had counted for nothing and his life had been in the control of other people?
‘I’ve only been here for one day, Mr Cabrera, and on my first day I waited for nearly three hours until you arrived. Yes, that did give me ample time to read your company literature, but I wasn’t aware that that would be how I would spend my morning.’
‘Are you asking me to account for my whereabouts this morning?’ He looked at her with blatant incredulity.
At this juncture ordinarily, she would have ambushed all her chances of having another day in his company, much less the permanent position she seemed to think might be hers. But he was galled to discover that the thought of another line of inept secretaries inconveniently fancying him was not appealing, even if he did enjoy the pleasant view from his office they provided.
He was also weirdly fascinated by her nerve.
‘Of course I’m not! And I do realise that it’s not my place to start laying down any terms and conditions...’
‘But you’re going to anyway?’ Blazing anger was only just kept in check by the fact that she had done damn well on the work front, too well to dismiss without a back-up waiting in the wings.
‘I’m afraid I can’t sacrifice my weekends working for you, Mr Cabrera.’
‘I don’t believe I asked you to.’
‘No, but I saw you cancel that poor girl’s weekend. Her best friend’s wedding, and you told her that she had no choice but to work solidly here on both days.’
‘Claire Kirk makes a very big deal about being one of the youngest in the company to head a department. She’s good at what she does, and it would be a mistake to encourage her into thinking that she’ll go places in this company if she isn’t prepared to go the extra mile.’
Alice didn’t say anything but she wondered whether he knew that there was ‘going the extra mile’ and then there was sacrificing your life for the sake of a job.
‘I wouldn’t have made a big deal about any of this,’ she said quietly, ‘But I thought you ought to know how I feel about my working conditions from day one rather than not say anything and then find myself expected to work hours I’m not willing to work. I’m not saying that I won’t do overtime now and again, but I’m a firm believer in separating my personal life from my working life.’
‘Tell me something, did you lay down similar boundary lines for your last boss?’
‘I didn’t have to,’ she replied.
‘Because he was a nine-to-five-thirty kind of guy? Thought so. Well, I’m not a nine-to-five-thirty kind of guy and I don’t expect my employees to be nine-to-five-thirty kind of people.’ It would be a shame to lose someone who showed potential but he had humoured her for long enough. ‘Employees like Claire, who want to aggressively climb career ladders, work weekends when they don’t want to because they understand the rules of the game. The prize never goes to the person who doesn’t realise that a little sacrifice is necessary now and again if something important arises. Granted, you’re not the head of a department, and you may not want any kind of career to speak of—’
‘I do want to have a career!’ Bright patches of colour appeared on her cheeks.
‘Really? I’m all ears, because you’re not selling it...’
Alice licked her lips nervously and stared at him. There was a brooding stillness to him that was unsettling. Nerves did their best to launch her into mindless chatter but a deeply ingrained habit of keeping her private life to herself held her back and she composed herself sufficiently to flash him another of her polite smiles.
