The Millionaire's Agenda

His eyebrows rose. ‘Name one, then?’ he asked with a grin.

‘I could name loads,’ she retorted swiftly, ‘but, as you’re my boss, I don’t think that would be a very good idea.’

His dark eyes glimmered with amusement. ‘You’re on your best behaviour around me…is that it?’

‘Of course.’

He smiled and turned back to his contemplation of the cupboard. ‘How about a glass of red wine, then?’ He held up a bottle and looked around at her. ‘Come on, help me out—am I sailing anywhere near a weakness here?’

She laughed at the absurdity of the question and then found herself acceding. ‘A glass of red wine would be nice.’

‘Great; I hate to drink alone.’ Steven transferred the drinks and his sandwiches onto a tray. ‘Let’s go and sit in the other room and relax for a moment.’

The lounge was in darkness. Chloe turned on one of the side lamps as Steven put the tray down and went over to stoke up the fire.

She sat in one of the comfortable royal-blue chairs and watched as he encouraged the dying embers in the grate then threw on a few logs. As the blaze sprang to life the flames hissed and spat greedily in the silence of the room.

‘There’s nothing like a real fire,’ she murmured.

‘There’s something romantic about it, isn’t there?’ he agreed. ‘During the day we have to keep the fireguard on because of Beth, but in the evening, when she’s in bed, it’s nice to sit and gaze into the flames.’

By ‘we’ she presumed he was referring to Helen.

He sat on the floor and opened the bottle of red wine before leaving it to warm by the flames for a moment. ‘If this snow keeps up I doubt I’ll be able to go to Manchester tomorrow.’

‘I thought you said a little bit of snow wouldn’t affect the company jet?’ she reminded him light-heartedly.

He glanced up at her and grinned. ‘I was wrong, wasn’t I?’

‘Gosh, Mr Cavendish is admitting to being wrong!’ She turned laughing eyes towards the patio windows. ‘Are there pigs flying around out there in that snow?’

‘Less of the sarcasm, Ms Brown,’ he reprimanded with a glint of humour in his eyes. ‘May I remind you that according to that little speech you made in the kitchen you are supposed to be on your best behaviour around me?’

‘Sorry…don’t know what came over me.’ With a smile she settled herself even more comfortably in her chair. ‘Must be approaching the witching hour or something.’

Steven smiled back and leaned against a chair as he poured the wine. ‘Tell you what, I’m glad it is approaching the witching hour; I’ve seen enough of that office over these last few weeks to last me a lifetime.’

‘It has been very tense in there,’ Chloe agreed. She took off her glasses and put them down next to her on the coffee table.

‘So let’s drink to Friday, then,’ Steven suggested lightly as he passed her wine across to her. ‘And my wonderful PA, of course, without whom my office would disintegrate into chaos.’ He raised his own glass in salute.

Smiling, she took a sip of the wine; it was warm and mellow against her throat.

For a while they sat in companionable silence. The room was in semi-darkness, and she glanced around, admiring the elegance of the decor.

All the rooms were very big in this house, possibly because it had been built in a bygone era, where style and space had been more important than practical considerations such as how much the land cost. She admired the beautifully framed watercolours on the plain cream walls, the Louis XV fireplace and the ornate marble surround, the huge mirror stretching up to the ornate coving around the high ceilings.

‘You have a beautiful home,’ she remarked absently.

He smiled. ‘You sound as if you’ve never been here before.’

‘Well, they have always been flying visits, haven’t they? Usually when we are both so stretched with work that we’ve had to use every available minute to catch up with things by working from your office here.’

‘Yes, I suppose you are right.’ He glanced over at her thoughtfully. ‘I rely on you quite heavily sometimes, don’t I?’

She shrugged. ‘No more than any other boss relies on his PA.’

Steven decided that wasn’t quite true. Thinking that Chloe was leaving today had made him review exactly what he had with her.

He watched the way the firelight played over her face. Her skin had a smooth, creamy quality. She looked very young, and as her eyes lifted to look over at him there was a vulnerable air about her that intrigued him. And what about her engagement ring?

‘I hope I haven’t disrupted your weekend too much,’ he said casually. ‘What were your original plans for tonight?’

‘They were nothing special. I’m glad I was able to step into the breach. Did you find that list for the accounts department, by the way?’

He noted how she swiftly changed the personal question back to business. Now he came to think about it, Chloe did that a lot.

She was a wonderful PA, probably the best he had ever employed. He knew he could trust her implicitly, yet she kept herself to herself more than any other woman he had ever met.

If someone had asked him two years ago, when he’d been having problems with a personal assistant who’d had a crush on him and blushed every time he spoke to her, what his ideal PA would be he would have said someone like Chloe, someone who got on with the job and didn’t have any personal interest in him. Yet perversely, now that he had exactly the right person in the job, he found himself wanting her to talk to him a bit more about something other than work. She had this kind of closed-off look about her, a ‘do not touch’ attitude.

‘Yes, I found the list, thank you.’ He took a sip of his wine before saying slowly, ‘But let’s not talk about work tonight. I’ve had enough of that all week.’

‘As work is our common denominator, there might be a few long silences if we do that.’ She tried to laugh off the request, because in truth it made her feel nervously self-conscious.

Steven noted the sudden colour in her cheeks and knew he had ruffled her a little with the remark. He had no intention of overstepping the boundaries of their working relationship…for one thing, he didn’t believe in mixing business with pleasure. Yet his curiosity was aroused sufficiently to want to push those boundaries aside for just a while, just to quell the sudden need to know what exactly lay behind Chloe’s businesslike façade.

‘Maybe we have a few other things in common that we have yet to discover,’ he said lightly.

‘Like a love of old houses and fine wine?’ She kept her voice equally light.

‘There you are, we’ve found two things we have in common already.’

She smiled at the teasing note in his voice. ‘It does seem a bit strange for us to be relaxing like this,’ she said honestly. ‘I keep expecting a telephone to ring, or someone from one of the other departments to come barging in to ask for something.’

‘We never get a minute’s peace, do we?’ Steven agreed. ‘Naïvely I thought when I floated the company on the stock exchange four years ago that I’d be able to take more of a back seat. But I think I’m putting more hours in now as managing director than I ever did as the sole owner.’

‘Perhaps that’s the heavy price of success.’ She smiled.

‘Perhaps.’ He took a sip of his drink.

She wondered what he was thinking about as she watched the flickering firelight playing over his features. Maybe he was remembering the heady thrill of that business deal. For a man who wasn’t a chef, Steven Cavendish was a remarkably successful restaurateur.

From humble beginnings with one restaurant he had developed a style and a flair for the imaginative, setting in place the correct chef, the right location and something more…a flair for elegant dining that had struck a chord with Londoners, so that within a year the first Cavendish restaurant had been an overwhelming success and more had followed.

‘I suppose I shouldn’t complain. After Stephanie died I was glad to be working so many hours; it helped take my mind off things. In fact, there were points when I felt better in the office than I did at home. I had the peace of mind of knowing my mother was here with Beth…and at least at the office I could pretend everything was normal.’

‘It must have been a dreadful time,’ Chloe said sympathetically.