by Lynne Graham
‘Not,’ he said, reading her mind with unnerving accuracy, ‘that I make a habit of conducting appraisals of my secretaries.’
‘Is that because they usually only last two minutes?’
A tingle of pure pleasure raced through her when he burst out laughing, which subsided eventually for him to cast appreciative eyes over her.
‘Something like that,’ he murmured. ‘Seems a little pointless to give them an appraisal when they’ve already got one foot through the back door and their desk has been cleared.’
‘Well...’ He was blocking her way out and she dithered uncomfortably. Standing by him, it was brought home sharply just how tall he was. She was tall but he positively towered over her.
‘Well, of course, you’re on your way out. Is that what had you smiling?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Your plans for the evening. Is that what put that smile on your face?’
If only you knew... If only you guessed that I was smiling at the notion that you would never look twice at me; smiling for being an idiot even to think about something like that.
His plans had been for the theatre, followed by dinner at one of the most exclusive restaurants in London.
The theatre, followed by dinner out—at a haunt for the paparazzi because the clientele was usually very high-profile—followed by...
Heat flooded her as she contemplated after-dinner sex with the man standing in front of her, still blocking her path. His hands on her body, his mouth exploring her, that dark, sexy voice whispering in her ear...
Her body jack-knifed into instant, crazy reaction. Liquid pooled between her legs and the unfamiliar tug of desire hit her like a ton of bricks, shocking in its intensity and as destabilising as the sudden onslaught of some ferocious disease. She couldn’t move. Her legs were blocks of cement, nailing her to the floor as her imagination took flight in forbidden directions.
And, all the while, she could feel those dark, dark eyes pinned to her face.
‘I have to go,’ she said tightly. She went to push him aside and more heat flared inside her, making a mockery of her attempts to harness her prized composure.
He was a man she might respect but didn’t like! A man whose brilliance she could admire whilst being left cold by his detachment!
Once out of the office, she fled...
CHAPTER THREE
ALICE WOKE WITH a start. In her dream, she had been running down an endlessly long corridor, chasing Gabriel who would occasionally glance over his shoulder, only to turn away and continue running. In the dream, she had no idea what lay at the end of that corridor, or even if there was an end to it, but she was filled with a sense of terrifying foreboding, wanting to stop and yet propelled forward by some power greater than her own.
She was slick with perspiration and completely disoriented and it took her a few seconds to realise that her mobile was ringing. Not the sharp, insistent buzz of her alarm but actually ringing.
‘Good. You’re awake.’
Hard on the heels of her disturbing dream, Gabriel’s voice cut through the fog of her sleepiness as effectively as a bucket of ice-cold water, and she sat up in bed, glancing at the clock on her bedside table which showed that it wasn’t yet six-thirty.
‘Is that you, Gabriel?’
‘How many calls do you get from men at this hour of the morning? No, don’t answer that.’
‘What’s wrong with your voice?’ This was the first time he had ever called her at home on her mobile and she looked around her furtively, as though suspecting that at any second he might materialise from the shadows.
Thankfully, her bedroom was as it always was—small with magnolia walls, some nondescript curtains and two colourful pictures on either side of the dressing table, scenes of Cornwall painted by a local artist whom Alice knew vaguely through her mother. An averagely passable room in a small, uninteresting house whose only selling point was its proximity to the tube.
In the bedroom next to hers, her flat mate, Lucy, would still be sleeping.
‘It seems I’m ill.’
‘You’re ill?’ The thought of Gabriel being ill was almost inconceivable and she felt a sudden grip of panic.
Whatever was wrong with him, it would be serious. He was not the sort of man to succumb to a passing virus. He was just too...strong. She couldn’t imagine that there could be any virus on the planet daring enough to attack him.
‘Ill with what?’ She brought the decibel level of her worried voice down to normal. ‘Have you called the doctor?’
‘Of course not.’
‘What do you mean of course not?’
‘Are you dressed?’
His impatient voice, which she had become accustomed to, sliced through her concern and she glanced in the dressing-table mirror facing her to see her still sleepy face staring back at her.
Her straight hair was all over the place and the baggy tee-shirt, her bedtime attire of choice, was half-slipping off her shoulder, exposing the soft swell of a breast.
Self-consciously, she hoiked it up and then lay back against the pillow.
‘Gabriel, my alarm doesn’t go off for another forty-five minutes...’
‘In that case, switch it off and think about getting up and out of bed.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Sore throat. Headache. High fever. I’ve got flu.’
‘You’ve phoned me at...at six-twenty in the morning to tell me that you’ve got a cold?’
‘I think you’ll find that what I have is considerably more serious than a cold. You need to get up, get into the office and bring the two files I left on my desk. Not all of the information is on my computer and I need to access it in its entirety.’
She had worked with him long enough to know that he dished out orders in the full expectation that they would not be countermanded, but she was still outraged that he had seen fit to yank her out of sleep so that he could...
What, exactly?
‘Bring your files?’
‘Correct. To my house. And bring your computer as well. You’ll have to work from here. It’s not ideal but it’s the best I can come up with. I can’t make it into the office today.’
‘Surely you can just take the day off if you’re not feeling well, Gabriel?’ Like any other normal human being, she was tempted to add. ‘If you tell me what you want me to work on, I can do it in the office and I can scan and email the files over to you, if you really think that you’re up to working.’
‘If I’d wanted you to do that, I would have said so. And I can’t keep talking indefinitely. My throat’s infected. If you head for the office now, you can be with me within an hour and a half. Less, if you get your skates on. Got a pen?
‘A pen?’ Alice parroted in dismay as this new unfolding of her day ahead began to take shape in her head.
‘A pen—instrument for writing. Have you got one to hand? You’ll need to write down my address and postcode. And for God’s sake, take a taxi, Alice. I know you’re fond of the London public transport system, but we might as well get this show on the road as quickly as possible. There’s a lot to get through and I won’t be up to much beyond six... It’s ridiculous. I haven’t been ill in years. I must have caught this from you.’
‘You haven’t caught anything from me! I’m fighting fit!’
‘Good. Because you have a lot to get through today. Now, let me give you my address.’
She got a pen and wrote down his address and then listened as he rattled off a few more orders and then...dial tone.
She had no time for breakfast. She could have grabbed something but for some unaccountable reason she found herself rushing to have a shower, rushing to get dressed, rushing to head for the tube and then, on the spur of the moment, hailing a black cab—because
she could almost feel those dark eyes peering at her from wherever he was.
The man was utterly impossible. He really and truly didn’t care what discomfort he caused for other people. He took it as his God given right to disrupt other people’s plans and then excused himself his own arrogance by giving one of those elegant shrugs and waving aside all objections because, after all, comparatively he paid them the earth. He was brilliant, he did as he pleased, and why on earth would anyone not want to fall in line?
She made it to his house within the hour and only when the taxi had deposited her there did her nervous system kick back into gear.
This was unknown territory. Had anyone in the office ever been to his house? Company entertaining was all done in restaurants, or expensive venues in the City, and he certainly wasn’t the avuncular sort of boss who hosted little parties so that his employees could bond with one another.
She stared at the impressive Georgian facade and hesitated. What had she expected? She didn’t know. Something far less grand—a penthouse apartment, perhaps. There was, after all, only one of him, even if he had all the money in the world to play with. Why did he need a London mansion?
Black brass railings cordoned off the house and matched all the other black brass railings of the mansions alongside it. Standing here, gazing up with her little handbag, her company case full of files and her computer, she felt as though she might be arrested at any moment for the crime of just not quite blending in.
Inhaling deeply, she rang the buzzer and his disconnected voice came on the line.
‘I’ll buzz you in. You’ll find me upstairs.’
‘Where...?’ But the door had popped open; as to his whereabouts...she assumed she would have to locate him through sheer guesswork.
Her heart was beating madly as she stared around her. The hall was absolutely enormous, almost as big as the entire ground floor of her shared house. Victorian tiles were broken by a pale Persian rug and ahead of her a staircase wound its elegant way upwards.
What was he doing upstairs? Was his office there?
She smoothed down her skirt with perspiring hands. She could have worn something more casual— could have worn her jeans and a tee-shirt, considering she wouldn’t actually be in the office—but she hadn’t. She had dressed as she always did, in a neat black skirt, her white short-sleeved blouse and her little black jacket. She was very glad she had gone for the formal option.
It was harder to locate him than she would have thought possible because the house was huge, split into three storeys with myriad rooms to the left and right of the staircase. She peered into two sitting rooms and several bedrooms before she eventually hit the right one at the very end of the wide corridor.
Through the half-open door, she glimpsed rumpled covers on a bed and she hesitantly knocked.
‘About time! How long does it take one person to make her way through a house?’
Gabriel was propped up in bed. The rumpled duvet had been shoved to one side and he was in a black dressing gown, legs bare, sliver of chest exposed, black hair tousled. Next to him was his computer, on which he had clearly been working.
Alice averted her eyes and felt a tightening in her chest, almost as if she was in the grip of an incipient panic attack.
‘Are we going to be...er...working here?’
‘Stop hovering by the door and come inside. And where else do you suggest we hold proceedings?’
‘I passed an office...’
‘I can’t get out of bed. I’m ill.’ This was the first time in living memory that he had been in his bed and the woman standing in his bedroom looked as though the last thing she wanted was to be there. ‘And, as you can see, this isn’t a bedroom. It’s a suite.’ He nodded to the sofa which was by the tall windows and the long coffee table in front of it. ‘Does it make you uncomfortable, Alice?’
‘Of course not.’ But there was a wicked gleam in his eyes which did make her uncomfortable. Gabriel would not be happy with being bed-ridden for whatever reason. He was not the sort of man whose restless energy could be contained without it emerging somewhere else. The Devil worked on idle hands and for him his hands would be idle...
‘I just think that it might be more suitable if we were in an office environment.’
‘Why? Everything I need is right here. Where are the files? And for God’s sake, sit down! How are you going to work if you keep standing by the door?’
He shifted impatiently and Alice gulped as yet more of that hard, bronzed torso was revealed.
He should be in his suit. He should be properly attired. There was an intimacy here that had her nerves all over the place and she was so keen to make sure that he didn’t see that, her movements were stiff and awkward, her mouth more tightly pursed, her hands white as they gripped the case she had brought with her.
She felt horrendously uncomfortable in her knee-length black skirt, and her sheer black tights were itchy against her legs.
‘Have you...taken anything for your cold?’ she asked as she sat gingerly on the sofa and tried not to look at him without actually looking away; tried to mentally blank him out, which was next to impossible. ‘Sorry, I meant flu?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘What good would that do? The thing just has to run its course.’
‘I’ll get you some paracetamol.’
‘You will sit and start going through the Dickson file with me.’
‘Where is your medicine cabinet?’
‘I don’t have one.’
Alice shot him an exasperated look and walked across to stand over him with her arms folded. ‘You look terrible.’
‘Good. You’re waking up to the fact that I’m seriously ill.’
‘And you look terrible because you’re refusing to help yourself. You are not seriously ill, Gabriel. You have a spring cold. You’re just not accustomed to being under the weather.’
‘What do you mean, I’m refusing to help myself?’ Gabriel growled. ‘You’re a woman! Where’s your milk of human kindness? Do you know how many women would kill to be in this position—to be able to prove that they’re domestic goddesses by cooking me something to eat and playing at Florence Nightingale!’
‘In which case...’ She handed him his mobile phone. ‘Please feel free to call any one of them. I’m more than happy to be replaced.’
‘Sit down!’ he roared, before spluttering into a coughing fit which Alice observed without budging, arms still folded, cool as a cucumber and grudgingly amused at seeing her all-powerful boss losing his control because he was in the grip of nothing more serious than a simple passing cold.
He could be vulnerable. In a way least expected, he was showing her that he could be petulant, utterly exasperating in a very human way and...
Stupidly endearing with it.
‘I have some tablets in my handbag. I’ll fetch you a glass of water and you’re going to take them. They might not cure your cold but they’ll relieve your symptoms.’
‘Does that include my roasting fever? I’m burning up. Feel me if you don’t believe me.’
Alice sighed and felt his forehead and, as she did so, she felt a throbbing ache rip through her, scattering her self-composure for a second or two.
‘You have a slight temperature.’ She yanked her hand back and surreptitiously wiped it on her skirt, hoping to rid herself of the spark that had flared between them, dangerously, electrifyingly alive and as threatening as her dream had been to her peace of mind.
Why the sudden awareness of the man? she wondered. She disapproved of him as much now as she had done when she had first met him. So, they worked well together. So, maybe there were different sides to him; he wasn’t the one-dimensional guy she had chosen to categorise him as...
But why was it that the minute
he was within touching distance of her she became as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof?
It was galling to think that she might have fallen into the same pathetic trap as all his other secretaries and she instantly killed that notion by telling herself that she hadn’t. He was fabulously good-looking and she was only human, after all. What reaction he evoked was one she could squash without any difficulty.
Although right now, having to sit in the same room as him when he was, quite frankly, indecently underdressed...
She strode out of the room into the adjacent en suite bathroom, ignoring the slightly damp white towel carelessly slung on the heated towel rail, and emerged with a glass of tap water and the tablets which she had extracted from her bag.
‘Take them.’
‘You’re extremely bossy.’ But he took the tablets from her and swallowed them with a gulp of water. ‘Not a feminine trait.’
Alice blushed, hot, flustered and irritated. ‘I’m not here to be “feminine”,’ she retorted tartly. ‘I’m here to go through some files which couldn’t possibly wait until next week. You have your string of girlfriends to distract you with their feminine wiles.’
‘I’m a girlfriend-free zone at the moment, as it happens. Although I’m sure you’re already aware of that, considering you’re the one who’s responsible for booking the venues I go to with them.’
The unfeminine, drab-but-efficient secretary who answers to your beck and call and books all the exciting places you take your women to...
So far, she had just booked the opera, but he was still fresh out of his relationship with Georgia and perhaps not quite there when it came to diving into a brand new relationship with another woman. The opera for two...
‘What happened to your opera companion?’ She allowed herself to be distracted, swept away on the disagreeable thought that life was passing her by as she stood on the sidelines, somehow waiting for it to happen.
She had never felt this way before. She had been happy to settle into a routine and to accept that, if things hadn’t turned out the way she had planned, then they could be worse. This was her lot and so be it.
