The Boss's Inexperienced Secretary

‘Have you any intention of accepting this post should it be offered to you?’

A few minutes ago, perhaps even one minute ago, the honest answer to that question would have been no. Now…she wasn’t sure. Working for someone like Blaise West would undoubtedly be terrifying and exhausting, but did she really want to stagnate in Surrey for the next ten, twenty years? And that was what she had been doing, she thought with a painful dose of self-analysis. She had a degree of independence but she was still in the comfortable cocoon of being close to family with all her friends about her. She had her job down to a fine art, there was no challenge there, and she knew exactly what she was doing from one week to the next. And that had been fine at first, in the initial fallout after David. It had been fine until she had walked into this room, in fact. ‘Yes, Mr. West,’ she said firmly. ‘I’d consider the post, should it be offered.’

He nodded. ‘Good.’ At last his gaze left her and transferred to the papers on the desk. ‘Then let’s get on with it, shall we?’

CHAPTER TWO

BY THE time she got home mid-afternoon, Kim felt like a wet rag. The interview with Blaise West had lasted for well over an hour and it had been gruelling. That was the only word for it. She had all but staggered out of his office, and she must have looked just as she felt because his secretary had quickly pointed out that the firm’s restaurant was already serving early lunch and the food was very nice.

It had been nice, and the two cups of hot, sweet coffee she had swallowed along with roast chicken with all the trimmings had gone some way to reviving her for the journey home. She hadn’t rushed over the meal, watching the other occupants of the sparklingly clean eatery while she tried to make sense of her jumbled recollections of the last hour.

The overall conclusion she came to was that she was stark, staring mad. Mad to think Blaise West might offer her the job. Mad to think she could do it if he did. She was out of her league here; way, way out. Needles of panic were making themselves felt now.

He had finished the meeting by stating he would come to a decision about the applicants within the next twenty-four hours when he had interviewed everyone. By then she had been so frazzled she’d had no idea how she had fared. Certainly hundred-watt smile had only been in with him for ten, fifteen minutes at the most, but there was another person he had to see this afternoon.

When she had finally exited West International the sunshine of early morning had given way to a grey sky that promised rain before nightfall. The train home had been delayed, and when she had eventually boarded it thousands—or so it seemed—of irritable commuters had got on with her. They had only travelled for fifteen minutes when debris on the line had meant another delay.

On reaching her home station, she had seen her little Mini faithfully waiting for her in the car park and had had to bite back tears. That alone told her she was exhausted.

Kim walked into the flat, dropping her handbag on the floor by the sofa as she collapsed into its plump depths. All the excitement and glamour of Blaise West’s fast-moving world was gone. A journey that should have taken less than an hour had taken three times as long. It reminded her of something he’d pointed out during the interview.

‘I’m sure you’re aware of what working as my personal assistant involves, but let me spell it out anyway. I need a PA who thrives on hard work and using their own initiative, Miss Abbott. The more routine secretarial work will be delegated by you to others, but you will be required to take care of the sensitive, confidential side of things. This will involve drafting letters, reports, memos and so on, collecting and collating information for me, taking minutes, greeting and helping to entertain business contacts, organising meetings and conferences, having discussions with other PAs or customers and clients, possibly even supervising other staff on occasion. I expect absolute loyalty as well as discretion. It’s essential you’re capable of adapting to the needs of the job. This will mean late nights and early mornings when necessary. Is this a problem?’

She remembered she had shaken her head, feeling stunned. It was then he had added, ‘I don’t expect my personal assistant to be a yes-man, or -woman. But when you disagree with me you do it in private when it’s just the two of us. Is that clear?’ She’d nodded then, equally stunned.

Kim glanced round her sitting room. Before she had moved in she’d had the flat decorated from top to bottom exactly how she had wanted it. With her savings she had lashed out on ankle-deep carpeting, cream leather sofas and thin, drifty drapes which had been wildly expensive considering there was hardly anything to them. A new bathroom and kitchen had completed her extravagance, and her bedroom was unrepentantly feminine, soft pinks, creams and gentle mauves creating a soothing place which declared quite loudly no man lived here. And she loved it. Every inch of it. Could she continue to live here if—by the remotest chance—Blaise West offered the job to her? If the journey home was a taste of things to come…

Stop it. She was doing the negative thing; she always reacted like this when she was tired. The journey into London had been as smooth as silk, the return was merely bad luck. Besides which, she was getting herself all worked up for nothing. She didn’t even know if she would be offered the job; there must be other applicants far more qualified and experienced than she.

And if she was successful? A curl of something potent stirred in the pit of her stomach. She stood up, walking into the kitchen and switching on the coffee machine. She would cross that bridge in the unlikely event she came to it.

Kim went to bed early and slept badly in spite of having tossed and turned the night before. At six in the morning she abandoned any thought of sleep, padding through into the tiny kitchen and making a mug of coffee which she drank curled up on one of the two sofas in the sitting room. She had opened the windows to the warm summer morning and shafts of sunlight and birdsong filtered into the room.

It was peaceful and cosy…but suddenly not enough. Kim sat up straighter, startled at the way her mind had gone. But it was true. Something had changed yesterday; she wasn’t quite sure what or how, but the interview with Blaise West had brought to the surface a whole host of things she had been avoiding for some time.

She was only twenty-five, for goodness’ sake, twenty-six in October, and she wanted to do something with her life. The last couple of years had been a period of licking her wounds and that was fine, but she didn’t want to carry on as she had been doing. Getting the interview against all the odds had restored a smidgen of the self-confidence that had been so badly knocked when David had left her. And now the whole marriage and kids and roses round the door scenario wasn’t on the agenda, she could concentrate on something she’d never envisaged having—a career.

OK, she acknowledged in the next moment, it wasn’t actually the path she’d have chosen but it would have compensations. She nodded to the thought, her eyes contemplative. Broadening her horizons, travelling, meeting new people.

Like Blaise West? a separate part of her mind asked.

As though someone else had asked the question she spoke out loud, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She hadn’t been thinking of him specifically, she hadn’t.

But he was the most fascinating man she had ever metin her life. This time she didn’t bother to deny it; she couldn’t. It was true. She sprang up and marched into the kitchen for a second mug of coffee.

Once again established on the sofa, she took stock. Yes, Blaise West was something else but it wasn’t only she who thought that. When she had gone for the interview she had already been aware of his reputation and history, both of which spoke for themselves. He was one of those rare men who had something akin to a magnetic field around them to which other people would be irresistibly drawn, whether they liked him or not.

Did she like him?

She considered the question. She wasn’t sure. He would certainly be interesting to work for, she thought wryly. If she survived the first day, that was. But she was unlikely to get the chance. And that didn’t matter, it didn’t, because if nothing else the last twenty-four hours had told her that the next stage of her life was due to begin and it would be one in which she made changes. Changes she controlled. There had been enough of the other kind.

She inhaled the fragrant scent of coffee beans as she let her mind meander back into the past. She had been so gullible when she’d met David, so thrilled that someone like him—handsome, self-assured, popular—had singled her out. Her childhood had been happy enough on the whole, but her teenage years had been made miserable by her height. Or rather her sensitivity about it. She had always been the wallflower at school discos; the girl most boys avoided because she tended to tower over them. Some wit had dubbed her the beanpole when she was thirteen and the nickname had stuck for a long time, even when she had filled out in all the right places.

And then at eighteen she’d met David Stewart. Six feet three in his bare feet, blond and beautiful. An Adonis. They had been together all through university and he had proposed to her on graduation day. Her cup had been full. They’d decided while he continued to study law—his father had his own law firm which one day David would take over—she would get a nine-to-five job with no commitments so she could fit in with him and see him when he had any free time between studying at law college. He had sailed through the solicitors’ final examination at the end of twelve months, and joined his father’s firm to serve articles, at which time they had set the wedding date.

Every weekend she had travelled from her parents’ home in Surrey to Oxford, where David lived in his family’s massive seven-bedroomed house complete with swimming pool and tennis courts. His parents and younger sister adored her, and she them. Everything in the garden was rosy. And then, six weeks before the wedding, he had turned up on her doorstep one night and taken her out for a meal so they could ‘talk’.

She had known even before he told her that something was dreadfully wrong but nothing could have prepared her for what she was about to hear. There was someone else. They’d only known each other a short time but it was the real thing.

Reeling from shock, she had asked who it was. Miranda, the girl next door who had been mad about him for ever, according to what his sister had whispered? Someone at his father’s work? A mutual friend?

No, he’d replied. She didn’t know Francis; neither did his family.

Frances? she’d repeated shakily. Where had he met her?

It was then he had looked at her steadily and told her that the ‘her’ was a ‘him’. It was Francis with an I. And he’d met him at one of the bars they both frequented. He had thought he could do the marriage and children bit to keep his family happy but he couldn’t. He liked her, he assured her. Loved her even, but not in that way.

She had been so dumbfounded she hadn’t been able to speak for some moments. And then she had got up and walked out into the pub car park, where she’d phoned for a taxi. She might have been able to follow through on the dignified and calm bit if he hadn’t made the mistake of following her and trying to justify the lies and deceit of four and a half years, at which point she had shouted and screamed and finally walked across to the sports car his father had bought him for the first he’d got at university and kicked it so hard she’d dented the door. Fortunately the taxi had arrived then.

The next few weeks had been the worst of her life. Both sets of parents had been beside themselves, the bridesmaids had been heartbroken they weren’t going to get to wear the fairy-tale dresses which had cost a small fortune, all the wedding presents had had to be returned and the reception and all the other paraphernalia connected with a huge wedding cancelled.

In the midst of it all she had talked to David several times. Although she felt he was sorry that he had hurt her, she sensed a great feeling of relief and even joy that everything was out in the open. And of course he had his Francis, with whom he had promptly set up a home in the flat they should have been renting together. He had admitted he’d cheated on her numerous times before but they had just been ‘little flings’.

Kim had hardly been able to believe what she was hearing. The man she had thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with, whom she’d known and trusted implicitly for over four years, didn’t exist. She had been absolutely faithful to him, refusing even a Christmas kiss at work because she felt it took something away from David, and all the time…

A hundred and one things suddenly fell into place the more she thought about it, the chief one being the reason David had never tried to get her into bed. He had talked a lot about honouring her, that he wanted his wife and the mother of his children to be different from all the rest, that, although it was terribly hard to stop at just a kiss and a cuddle, it was the right thing to do. And she had believed him! Respected him for it.

The feeling of rejection and betrayal had cut deep, and the humiliation that had gone hand in hand with it all had caused her to lose over a stone in the first few weeks. She would have followed him to the ends of the earth and she had loved him utterly but everything had been a lie. And she hadn’t sensed it, hadn’t known anything was wrong. That had terrified her.

The beanpole of teenage years had reared her head again and every time she looked in the mirror she had cringed at what she saw. She had felt she was nothing, less than nothing. But eventually, with the help of family and friends, she had started to eat properly and sleep soundly and get back on an even keel. She wasn’t the same, she knew she wasn’t the same, and she felt sad about that, mourning the loss of the trusting, happy girl she’d once been, but she was older and wiser and she would never allow herself to love anyone again the way she had loved David.

Kim came back to herself with the realisation that the coffee was quite cold. She went into the kitchen and tipped it away, standing and looking out of the window into the street below.

It was going to be a beautiful day, she thought. And life was for living. She’d done her period of mourning for what might have been if things had been different. Now she had to get on with life.

CHAPTER THREE

KIM felt on tenterhooks all day, so much adrenaline flooding her body that she fairly ate up the work. By five o’clock her desk was clear in spite of the backlog from the day before.

Her boss walked out to the car park with her. He had asked her that morning how she had got on; now he said ruefully, ‘I’d be surprised if you don’t get the job, Kim. Blaise West has a reputation for knowing a diamond when he sees one.’

‘Thank you.’ She smiled at him. Alan Goode was a dyed-in-the-wool family man who was devoted to his wife and three boys and they’d always had an excellent working relationship. ‘But you didn’t see the competition. Anyway, I’m not bothered either way.’ This wasn’t quite true but she’d rather walk barefoot on hot coals than admit it to anyone. She knew Kate and her cronies were taking an avid interest in events.

‘Now, that might be your trump card,’ Alan said musingly. ‘I’ve only met Blaise once or twice but that was enough to know he’s a man who plays by his own rules. He’s never conformed and he doesn’t ask for conformity in others. He’s an…extraordinary individual, isn’t he?’

‘Oh, yes.’

They smiled at each other, linked by the knowledge of what was unsaid rather than what was spoken.