‘Right. Well, I wish you had telephoned me to explain that my services wouldn’t be required today…’
‘Never occurred to me,’ Curtis informed her truthfully. He idly switched on one of the two computer terminals on his desk and it buzzed into life with a faint humming sound.
Poor woman, he thought, glancing across at the rigid pink-faced figure sitting opposite him. He really should have stood firm and recruited his own secretary, but he loved his mother dearly and giving in had eventually seemed preferable to staging a protracted war. Mothers liked to think they knew best and his mother was no exception to the rule. She had stared at him gimlet-eyed and told him in no uncertain terms that hiring floozies, as she had called them, was a waste of company money.
‘But they look good,’ he had protested, thinking back to the last one, a red-haired, buxom wench who had worn delightful handkerchiefs, which she had loosely claimed were miniskirts.
‘Which is hardly a satisfactory recommendation when it comes to being a secretary.’
The tirade had gone on and on until he had thrown up his hands in resignation and left it to her to sort out.
Unfortunately, looking at the Tessa character now, he could immediately see the downsides of his mother’s well-intentioned but misguided rationale.
The poor girl looked as though she had suddenly found herself wandering in the vicinity of hell without any map giving her the quickest route back to normality. He sighed under his breath and raked his fingers through his hair.
‘Look, Miss Wilson…now that you’re here, maybe we should go and grab some breakfast, have a bit of a chat…’
‘Some breakfast…?’
‘That’s right,’ Curtis said, curbing his irritation, ‘I haven’t eaten since yesterday…some time…’ He stood up and stretched, eyeing her out of the corner of his eye, which only confirmed his opinion that she was not going to be suitable for the job.
‘I’m hungry,’ he told her bluntly, throwing on his overcoat. ‘I need something to eat and dried-up slices of pizza in the bin just isn’t going to do it for me. And we need to have a little talk.’
Tessa scrambled to her feet and hurried after him as he headed out of his office. It took quite some running. High-heeled shoes might look the part but when it came to scurrying after someone who walked at a pace that most people ran, they weren’t exactly practical. She nearly careered into him when he finally came to a dead stop by the lift.
‘So,’ he began conversationally, noticing the way she had edged away from him in the confines of the lift, back pressed against the side as though her life depended on it, ‘it must have been a bit of a shock when you came to work this morning and found the offices empty…?’
‘I was a little surprised.’
‘Hmm. A little surprised. Diplomatic choice of words.’
‘George at Reception had warned me that he had witnessed a mass exodus earlier in the morning, but, naturally, I thought that he might have exaggerated a bit. I…well, I wasn’t prepared for…’
‘A scene from a late-night horror movie?’ The lift doors disgorged them back into the expansive waiting area where George was still in attendance. He winked at her and exchanged a large grin with Curtis.
‘So you managed to find one still alive and kicking, then?’
‘Don’t tease her, George. She’s had a very stressful day so far.’
The banter made Tessa feel suddenly foolish and sidelined and the unfortunate butt of some ongoing joke at her expense. ‘I wouldn’t say stressful,’ she retorted, ‘just a little disorienting.’
She felt the warm pressure of his fingers on her elbow as he led her towards the revolving door and heard the deep throb of his laughter, which brought on an attack of un-warranted confusion.
‘Okay. Disorienting. Are you going to be warm enough out here with just a suit? The café’s not far but it’s still a walk…’
‘I’m fine.’ She resisted the temptation to add that she would have brought her coat if she had foreseen a day that involved walking. But, on day one, she had decided to treat herself to a taxi both ways and had not envisaged needing anything heavier than her cream-and-black-flecked woollen suit.
‘I don’t suppose your last job involved too many episodes of disorientation?’
‘Most jobs don’t.’ Their destination was within sight. Literally a good, old-fashioned café with no trimmings. It was heaving, with an eclectic mix of suited businessmen, rough-and-ready workmen, taxi drivers and women who looked as though they had spent the night on the tiles and were on their way home. Most, though, were taking their breakfasts away with them and it was a relief to be out of the cold and in the warmth.
‘Do you come here often?’ Tessa heard herself ask inanely.
‘Does a good breakfast. Now, what will you have?’ He positioned her at one of the tables and narrowed his eyes to read the blackboard with the specials, which was behind her.
‘Coffee.’
‘Right. Wait here.’ Within ten minutes he was back carrying a tray on which were two steaming mugs of coffee and a plate mountainously piled with bacon, egg, black pudding and what looked suspiciously like fried bread.
Oh, your arteries are really going to thank you for that injection of cholesterol, she was tempted to say.
‘Don’t even think of saying what’s going through your head.’
‘I wasn’t thinking anything!’
‘Tell me about your last job,’ was all he replied, leaving her to wonder uncomfortably how he had managed to read her mind.
‘I told your mother…well, it’s all there on my CV.’ Comprehension filtered through. ‘But I guess you didn’t read my CV.’
‘I left the finer details of your employment to my mother. Your last job?’
Tessa sipped her coffee, which was surprisingly aromatic. ‘I worked for a firm of accountants. Not one of the top three, but one of the bigger ones, doing all the usual stuff. I’m fully computer literate and can handle pretty much anything from spreadsheets to invoicing.’ Silence followed that, interrupted only by his eating. ‘I’ve also arranged training courses, overseen meetings, in short done everything a PA is trained to do.’
Curtis washed down the last of his breakfast with a generous mouthful of coffee, then sat back in his chair and looked at her assessingly.
‘And you enjoyed it, did you?’
‘Well, yes, of course. I was there for a number of years—’
‘Why the change of job, in that case?’
Gone was the light-hearted, unconventional man who had confronted her at eight-thirty that morning. In its place was someone shrewd and forthright and very focused.
‘It wasn’t going anywhere.’ Tessa flinched away from that disconcerting blue gaze. ‘I felt that I needed to expand my horizons and, in a company like that, it’s only possible if you’re one of the professionals.’
‘But you liked working there, aside from the obvious limitations, am I right?’ He watched as she nodded and could hear her wondering where this was going. ‘You liked the order, the environment, the routine.’
‘Those things are very important, I think, in the successful running of a company,’ Tessa said defensively.
Order. Routine. Yes, she did like those things. They formed the perimeter of her life and always had. How else would she have been able to cope with bringing up her unruly ten-year-old sister when she had only been going on eighteen herself? In fact, compared to Lucy, or maybe because of her, she, Tessa, had always had her head firmly screwed on. Her parents had always praised her for that. Lucy might be the beauty with the ebullience, but Tessa was the responsible one, the one on whom they relied. The one on whom they had still been relying when their car had swerved into a tree on a rainy night back home. Tessa had mourned and grieved and picked up the pieces the best she could and, yes, had fallen back on order and routine to help her through.
She blinked away the sudden intrusion of her past and, when she looked at him, she found him
staring at her, his bright blue eyes narrowed on her face.
‘Don’t you agree with me?’ The way he looked at her made her feel hot and bothered, even though he didn’t seem to be looking at her in a critical way. Perhaps it was the level of containment, at odds with the aggressively confident and outgoing exterior. Here was a man, she suspected, who did precisely as he liked and yet remained a closed book. It was nerve-racking. ‘I mean, you run a successful company. Surely you don’t just jump in a haphazard manner from one day to the next, hoping for the best and keeping your fingers crossed?’
Curtis threw back his head and laughed. ‘No. Not quite. That approach doesn’t often work, although it sounds as though it could be quite a lot of fun.’
Tessa shuddered. Fun? Never knowing from one minute to the next what life was going to throw at you? Not a chance.
‘You don’t agree? Well, never mind. So you’ve worked in your last job for…how many years?’
‘Nine, give or take a few months,’ she said uncomfortably.
Curtis gave a low whistle under his breath.
‘And you are…? Age…?’
‘Twenty-eight.’
‘At work at nineteen and then staying put with the same company…’
‘Which should tell you how experienced I am.’ Why did she have the sinking feeling that this was the interview that should have been conducted from the start? ‘I’m sorry. I thought I had the job. I thought your mother was in a position to offer it to me.’ She could feel herself perspiring under her armpits and she wished she had removed her jacket when she had first sat down, just as he had done with his overcoat. He looked as comfortable as a cat on a feather quilt while she felt rattled, uneasy and hot.
‘Oh, of course she was.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a family firm. I run it completely, take full responsibility for all profits and losses, but my brother and my mother are naturally still interested in what’s going on, and occasionally my mother will offer her input. In the matter of my hiring someone to work for me, she insisted, and I expect she told you why.’
‘She mentioned that some of your secretaries in the past had been a bit…unsuitable.’
‘Except I don’t imagine she was quite so restrained in her description.’
Tessa frowned and tucked her hair neatly behind her ears. She had fine, slippery, very smooth shoulder-length auburn hair that had a tendency to slide forward and brush her face if she wasn’t careful about tying it back. Today, on Lucy’s advice, she had decided to wear it loose so that she wouldn’t look like a schoolmarm on her first day out. Now, she was regretting the impulse because for some reason she felt as though she needed the protection of her normally very restrained look.
‘I’ll bet she referred to them as bimbos,’ Curtis added helpfully as Tessa was struggling to come up with a diplomatic way of paraphrasing what had been said to her.
‘The thing is…’ He leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. He had pushed up the sleeves of his jumper and she noticed that he had very strong forearms, dusted with black hair. He, too, wore a simple watch although his looked crashingly expensive, unlike hers. ‘Bimbos suited me. How can I explain this?’
Tessa’s heart went into freefall at that rhetorical question.
‘I don’t work in an environment that’s anything like the one you have spent the last nine years, give or take a month or so, enjoying. The world of computers and computer software is far more about creativity and vibrancy and foresight than the world of accountants. The bimbos might have been a little lax when it came to typing and shorthand but they knew how to work around me.’
‘Your mother said the last one was only there for a matter of six weeks.’
‘Ah. Fifi did have a spot of bother now and again with some of the basics…’
‘Fifi?’ Two spots of angry colour blazed on her cheeks and she leaned forward into him, clutching the mug with both her hands. ‘Are you telling me that I’m too dull to work for you because I’m good at what I do and don’t fill all the physical attributes you think are necessary to a good secretary?’
‘I’m telling you that what I don’t want is someone addicted to schedules who is incapable of going with the flow. That would be unfair on me and even more unfair on you. Obviously, I would give you healthy compensation for the inconvenience caused.’
‘Inconvenience?’ Calm and control flew out of the window at the speed of light. Tessa inhaled deeply in an attempt to retrieve some of it. ‘I have thrown in a perfectly good job in order to take up this one. I simply cannot afford to be tossed out onto the streets like a…a beggar gatecrashing a private party to scour the employment agencies looking for something else!’
‘A beggar gatecrashing a private party…?’ Curtis sat back and gave her his full attention. The peak breakfast-hour rush was over and the café was now relatively quiet, with only one other table occupied and stragglers coming in for their daily tea and bacon butties.
‘This isn’t funny!’
‘No, it’s not. And, like I said, you won’t walk away empty-handed. A highly qualified girl like you should have no difficulty finding another position in a company that would suit your talents a lot more.’
‘And how do you know what would suit my talents when you aren’t even prepared to give me a chance?’ The horrendous unfairness of it sent a streak of molten fire racing through her. ‘I have bills to settle, Mr Diaz! Food to buy, rent to pay and a sister to finish supporting!’
‘You support your sister?’
‘At art college. She has one more year there.’
Curtis sighed and made his mind up. Three months’ probation. He owed it to his mother, after all, and if the girl didn’t work out, then at least he had given it a go. He would give her vital but background jobs to do and would just have to make sure that she didn’t compromise the vibrancy of his company, which had gone some way to catapulting it from obscure newcomer to innovative front runner.
‘Okay. Three months’ probation, then we can take it from there…’
Tessa breathed a sigh of relief. Three months would give her a bit of time to look for something else and the pay was so fabulous that she would be able to put aside a healthy amount of money in that space of time. Because the bottom line was that the man was right. She needed to work for someone organised, someone more grounded, someone less flamboyant who didn’t make her stammer like a schoolgirl every time he fixed those vivid blue eyes on her. And, whatever his mother had said, he needed someone to look good and to slot in. He needed another Fifi.
CHAPTER TWO
‘OKAY! Where the hell have you put that file?’
Curtis stormed out of his office and proceeded to circle her desk until he was standing squarely in front of her, and, as if that weren’t enough, he then leaned forward, planting both hands on her desk until Tessa was reluctantly forced to acknowledge him.
The past two weeks had been a learning curve. Curtis Diaz was brilliant, forceful, outspoken, alarming and utterly unpredictable. He obeyed none of the rules most bosses observed. The first in-house meeting she had gone to had been an experience that had left her feeling dazed for hours afterwards. Ideas had bounced around the room like bullets, voices had been raised and anything suggested that had failed to take into account probable loopholes had been loudly shouted down without any attempt made to soothe nerves or compromise.
Interestingly, none of the staff had seemed disconcerted by their boss’s unconventional approach to company management.
‘Well?’ Curtis roared. ‘Have you gone deaf? Is there life in there?’
‘There’s no need to shout,’ Tessa said quietly, but she was adjusting fast to his displays of temper. Rule one, she had learned, was not to automatically cringe back. To start with, she had wondered how his Fifis had coped with his overpowering personality. Then it occurred to her that he had probably never raised his voice in their presence. They were there for his visual satisfaction and, as she had discovered, most of the intricate work
had been done by one of the other secretaries out of loyalty to their charismatic leader. The various strings of Fifis had filed, brought cups of coffee and brightened up his office. She, on the other hand, not having the glamour looks to fall back on, was treated like everyone else.
‘I am not shouting,’ he growled now, thrusting his dark face further forward. ‘I’m asking a perfectly reasonable question.’
‘Oh, right. Well, thanks for pointing that out. My mistake.’ Tessa said that with such understated calm that he made an unintelligible sound under his breath and drew back.
‘I gave the file to Richard yesterday before I left. He wanted to go over some of the costings again.’
‘Well, you’d better go and fetch it.’ He prowled off to stand by the window, hands stuffed into his pockets.
‘Anything else while I’m there?’ Tessa stood up and looked at him. She might be getting used to the way he operated, but she doubted in the three-month target she had set herself that she would ever become used to the way he looked. He was quite simply overwhelming. When he banged around the office or called her in so that he could dictate something to her in that rapid-fire manner of his, she was fine, but every time he focused his attention fully on her, as he was doing now, she could feel every nerve in her body begin to quiver with clammy, restless awareness.
‘No.’ Blue eyes did a frowning, absent-minded inspection of her and returned to her face, which had pinkened. ‘Just get the file and come into my office with it. There are one or two things I want to discuss with you. Oh, you might as well grab us both a cup of coffee while you’re about it, even though you’re not much use on the coffee-making front.’ That little jab seemed to do the trick of snapping him out of his mood because he grinned at her. ‘Now, I bet you’re going to tell me that a highly qualified PA isn’t responsible for making decent coffee for her boss.’
The Billionaire Boss's Bride Page 2
