Oh-So-Sensible Secretary / Housekeeper's Happy-Ever-After: Oh-So-Sensible Secretary

‘We’ll take the stairs,’ he muttered. ‘Isn’t your meeting about PR, anyway?’ he went on once safely out of Jewel’s sight. ‘I should know what’s going on.’

‘I’ll fill you in on the details afterwards,’ I tried.

‘No, I’d better come. I wouldn’t put it past Jewel to come back and surprise me,’ said Phin, with an exaggerated grimace of fear. ‘And where would I be without you to rescue me?’

If I resisted any more, Phin would start wondering why I was so keen to be on my own with Jonathan, and that was the last thing I wanted. I could hardly refuse to take my own boss to a meeting, after all, but I was rigid with disappointment as we made our way up to Jonathan’s office on the floor above.

Not that Phin seemed to notice. He was in high good humour, having escaped Jewel’s clutches, and he breezed into Jonathan’s office and completely took over the meeting. I had no need to bring out my line about grabbing a sandwich.

‘Let’s talk over lunch,’ said Phin, and bore us off to a wine bar tucked away in a side street between Covent Garden and the Strand.

So much for my date with Jonathan. I walked glumly beside Phin, listening to him setting out to charm Jonathan, who was obviously delighted at Phin’s unexpected appearance. I was feeling pretty miserable, if you want the truth. I couldn’t fool myself that there had been even a flash of disappointment from Jonathan because he wouldn’t be meeting me alone.

Still, I found myself grabbing onto pathetic crumbs of comfort—like the way he arranged for me to sit next to him at the table. Later, of course, I realised it was so that he could sit face to face with Phin, on the other side, but at the time it was all I had to hang on to.

Not that it did me much good. I wanted to concentrate on Jonathan, but somehow I couldn’t with Phin sitting across the table exuding such vitality that even after what had obviously been a heavy night with Jewel everyone else seemed to fade in comparison to him. Whenever I tried to slide a glance at Jonathan my eyes would snag instead on Phin’s smile, or Phin’s solid forearms, or his hands that fiddled maddeningly with the cutlery as he talked and gesticulated.

The two men couldn’t have been more of a contrast. Jonathan was in a beautifully cut grey suit, which he wore with a blue shirt and dotted silk tie. Anne would have looked at him and said conventional and boring, but to me he was mature and professional. Unlike Phin, whose hair could have done with a cut and who was wearing a casual shirt and chinos in neutral colours and yet still managed to look six times as colourful as anyone else in the room.

‘Glitz are planning a major spread,’ Jonathan was explaining to Phin. ‘It’s a great opportunity for us to promote a more accessible image. Market research shows that Gibson & Grieve are still seen as elitist, so for the new stores we need to present ourselves as ordinary and family-friendly. Your image as a celebrity will be very valuable to us, but up to now you’ve been associated with the wild. What we want is to associate you with the home, and we’d like Glitz to interview you at your house, so that their readers get an idea of you in a domestic setting.’

Jonathan paused delicately. ‘If you have a girlfriend, it would be very good to get her involved as well—perhaps even give the impression that you’re thinking of settling down. I did hear that you’re going out with Jewel Stevens…?’ He trailed off, more than a touch of envy in his tone.

Phin’s eyes met mine. ‘I’m not involving Jewel,’ he said with a grin. ‘It might give her all the wrong ideas—and besides, I wouldn’t have any crockery left by the time Glitz turned up. I’m reduced to eating off paper plates as it is!’

‘She sounds very feisty,’ said Jonathan. I don’t know if he was aiming for a man-about-town air or humour, but either way it didn’t quite work.

I glanced at Phin and away again.

‘Feisty is one way of putting it,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Jonathan, but I’m going to have to do this as single guy.’

Jonathan looked disappointed. I got the feeling that he would have liked to have talked more about Jewel. ‘Well, perhaps you could give the impression that you’re thinking of settling down without mentioning any names,’ he suggested.

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘What about your house? Do we need to redecorate for you?’

‘Redecorate? I thought the article was supposed to be showing me as I am at home?’

‘No, it’s to show you at the kind of home we want readers to associate with Gibson & Grieve,’ Jonathan corrected him. He turned to me. ‘Summer, you’d better check it out. You’ll know what needs to be done.’

‘She’ll just tidy me up,’ Phin protested.

‘Summer’s very competent,’ said Jonathan.

Competent. You know, when you dream of what the man of your dreams will say about you, you think about words like beautiful, amazing, sexy, passionate, incredible. You never long for him to tell you’re competent, do you?

‘No redecorating,’ said Phin firmly. ‘If you make it all stylish it’ll look and seem false, and that would do our image more harm than good. Summer can come and keep me on the straight and narrow in the interview, but I’m not changing the house. If you want readers to see what my home is like, we can show them. It’s not as if I live in squalor.’

My only hope was that Phin might leave us after lunch, but, no, he insisted on walking back with us. So I never had one moment alone with Jonathan. I had to say goodbye to him in the lift as Phin and I got out on the floor below.

And that was my big date that I’d looked forward to so much. A complete waste of make-up. Jonathan hadn’t even commented on my cardigan.

Phin looked nervously around the office when we got back. ‘She’s gone—phew!’ He wiped his brow in mock relief. ‘Thanks again for earlier, Summer. It’s good to know you can lie when you need to! If Jewel comes in again, I’m not here, OK?’

I was too cross about Jonathan to be tactful. I was even beginning to feel some sympathy for Jewel. At least she had the gumption to go for what she wanted. Jonathan evidently found her feistiness appealing. Perhaps I should have tried smashing a few plates.

‘If you don’t want to see her again, you should tell her yourself…tiger,’ I said sharply, and Phin winced.

‘I’ll try,’ he said. ‘But Jewel isn’t someone who listens to what she doesn’t want to hear. Still, I’m going away in a few days,’ he remembered cheerfully. ‘She’ll soon lose interest if I’m not around.’

Chapter Four

HE LEFT for Peru a week later. ‘How long will you be away?’ I asked him.

‘We should be able to wrap it up in twelve days.’ Phin looked up from the computer screen with a grin. ‘Why? Do you think you’ll miss me after all?’

‘No,’ I said crushingly. ‘I just need to know when to arrange a date with Glitz.’

But the funny thing was that I did miss him a bit. I realised I’d got used to him being in the office, managing to seem both lazy and energetic at the same time, and without him everything seemed strangely flat.

I told myself that I enjoyed the peace and quiet, and that it was a relief to be able to get on with some work without being teased or constantly interrupted by frivolous questions or made to stop and eat doughnuts—OK, I didn’t mind that bit so much. I had a whole week without Phin juggling with my stapler and my sticky note dispenser, or messing around with the layout of my desk, which I know quite well he only did to annoy.

He was always picking things up and then putting them down in the wrong place, or at an odd angle, and he seemed to derive endless amusement from watching me straighten them. Sometimes I’d try and ignore it, but it was like trying to ignore an itch. After a while my hand would creep out to rearrange whatever it was he had dislodged, at which point Phin would shout, ‘Aha! I knew you couldn’t do it!’

I mean, what kind of boss carries on like that? It was deeply unprofessional, as I was always pointing out, but that only made Phin laugh harder.

So all in all I was looking forward to having the office to myself for a few days, but the moment he’d gone I didn’t quite know what to do with myself.

That first morning on my own I went down to the kitchen to make myself some coffee. I’d got out of the habit of buying myself a doughnut, I realised. Phin always bought them now, and I’d forgotten that I wouldn’t have anything to have with my coffee. It wouldn’t kill me, but the lack of sugar just added to my grouchiness as I carried my mug back to my desk.

Khalid from the postroom was just on his way out of my office. ‘I’ve left the mail on your desk,’ he told me. ‘You’ve got a Special Delivery, too.’

I’d ordered a scanner the day before. The supplies department must have moved quickly for once, I thought, but as I set down my mug I saw a small confectionery box sitting in front of my keyboard. ‘Summer Curtis, Monday’ was scribbled on the top. Not a scanner, then.

Puzzled, I opened it up. Inside, sitting on a paper napkin, was a doughnut.

There was a business card, too. I pulled it out. It had Phin’s name and contact details on one side. On the other he had scrawled, ‘I didn’t want to think of you without your sugar fix. P x’

My throat felt ridiculously tight. Nobody had ever done anything as thoughtful for me before.

Of course it didn’t mean anything, I was quick to remind myself. It was just part of Phin’s pathological need to make everyone like him. His charm was relentless.

But still I found myself—annoyingly—thinking about him, about where he was and what he was doing, and when I picked up the phone and heard his voice my heart gave the most ridiculous lurch.

‘Just thought I’d check in,’ said Phin. ‘I hardly know what to do with myself. I’m so used to you telling me what to do and where to be all day. I’ve got used to being organised. Are you missing me yet?’

‘No,’ I lied, because I knew he’d be disappointed if I didn’t. ‘But thank you for the doughnut. How on earth did you organise it?’