Out of Hours...Cinderella Secretary: The Italian Billionaire's Secretary Mistress / The Secretary's Scandalous Secret / The Boss's Inexperienced Secretary

Yet her Christmas probably looked picture-perfect from the outside—with snow tumbling prettily down over the houses in the village where her mother lived and every shiny front door decked with a bright wreath of holly. You could have painted the scene and stuck it on the front of a Christmas card and people would have cooed over it.

There had been a traditional service in the tiny church, chatting to people she’d known since she’d been a little girl and then trudging back through the silent white lanes to open their presents. But her mother always found this particular holiday difficult and Angie had been aware of a terrible dull ache which had nothing to do with it being the anniversary of her father’s death. Her sister’s current marital woes weren’t helping matters any either.

Phone calls had been arriving with scary regularity from Australia. Angie had worried how on earth her sister was going to pay for them all with a costly divorce pending—and she wasn’t even sure how useful they were, since they consisted mainly of Sally sobbing and saying how unhappy she was with the ‘Aussie idiot’.

‘Believe me, Angie,’ she had sniffed. ‘There’s a lot to be said for the single life!’

Not from where Angie was sitting. Today, she felt like the loneliest person on the planet—an uncomfortable feeling only sharpened by her regret at having so recklessly gone to bed with Riccardo.

Riccardo. Angie swallowed down the last of the sprout and tried not to feel sick. It didn’t matter what she did or said—nor how much she tried to fill her waking hours with mundane tasks which would occupy her mind—her thoughts stubbornly kept coming back to the arrogant Italian.

The glow of physical pleasure had faded quickly—helped by the knowledge that he regretted the sex had ever happened. His hasty retreat from her apartment had left her feeling abandoned and foolish. And she had quickly realised that her long-cherished dream of ending up in the arms of her boss hadn’t turned out as she’d expected.

Because Riccardo didn’t want her. Not in any way which didn’t involve fielding his phone-calls or typing his letters. He didn’t even desire her enough to want to repeat the sex on a different occasion—why, he’d left so fast that morning that she hadn’t seen him for dust. And if she’d been harbouring some small hope that he might have had second thoughts—that he might have rung her up to apologise for his abruptness and to ask to see her again outside work—well, that hope too had been crushed. There had been nothing but a deafening kind of silence from Signor Castellari.

And then, of course, there was the bigger picture. Like, what the hell was she going to do when she got back to work after the holiday was over? Act as if it had never happened? Primly place his coffee on the desk in front of him while trying not to remember the way that he had pushed her hair back from her face and then lowered his head to kiss her? Or remember the way that his tongue had trickled its way over an extremely intimate part of her anatomy? Her cheeks flushing with remorse, Angie bit her lip. There was no way she was going to be able to remain there, that much was certain. Before Christmas she had been aware that she couldn’t stay working for Riccardo for ever—but that vague wish had now become an absolute necessity.

As soon as she got back to London, she would start applying for a new job.

‘Are you all right, dear?’

Her mother’s voice broke into her silent deliberations and Angie quickly put her fork down.

‘Yes, Mum—I’m fine.’

‘You’ve been distracted since you arrived. Nothing’s wrong, is it, Angelina?’

Angie managed a weak smile. ‘No, of course not. Nothing’s wrong.’ Because what woman in the world could confide to her mother that she had broken the cardinal rules of advancement in the workplace? Never mix business with pleasure. Never fall for a man who is light years out of your league. And never end up in bed with the boss after the Christmas party.

‘And how’s that nice boss of yours?’

Could mothers mind-read? ‘Oh, he’s…he’s fine. Successful as ever.’

‘So I keep reading in the newspapers,’ murmured her mother approvingly. ‘You were so lucky the way he plucked you out of the typing pool like that!’

Angie only just stopped herself from cringing at her mother’s choice of words—but, come to think of it, didn’t she used to feel exactly the same way about her rapid promotion? As if Riccardo were some kind of knight in shining armour, galloping into the office and carrying her away on his white charger. Back then, in her eyes, her boss could do no wrong—no matter how irascible he could be. In a way, she had been stuck in a groove of adoring him—her mind still fixed in the same mode it had been when he’d ‘rescued’ her.

Except he hadn’t done anything of the sort. All he had done was recognise that he’d found a woman who would completely submerge her life in his. Who would put up with just about anything he cared to throw at her. Long, thankless hours spent helping him meet some deadline or other—just for the occasional heart-fluttering smile or glinty-eyed look he threw across the office.

And just because he’d done the unthinkable—events had taken an unexpected turn. If he hadn’t bought her the kind of dress she would never normally have looked at, then she would never have been transformed into someone else. Someone who had taken a night off from being Angie—so that Riccardo hadn’t treated her like Angie at all. He’d treated her like a woman he’d just been tantalised by. He’d taken her to bed and made her discover just how wonderful a man could make you feel. And just because she had woken up the next morning in a smitten state and wondering if perhaps they had some kind of future together didn’t mean that he felt the same way.

On the contrary. He wanted to erase the woman in the red dress from his mind and replace her with the old, familiar version of herself—the dull one that he scarcely noticed. Angie didn’t know whether that was possible—and, more importantly, she had to ask herself whether she wanted it, even if it was. Could you possibly go back to the life you’d been living after an event like that?

‘So what’s he doing for Christmas?’ asked her mother brightly.

Angie shrugged. ‘Same as he always does. Spending it with his family in Tuscany.’

‘In the castle?’

‘Yes, Mum—in the castle. They’re all getting ready for a wedding—his sister’s getting married to a Duke in the new year.’

‘A Duke?’

‘Well, they call him a Duca but it means the same thing.’

‘Oh, Angelina,’ sighed her mother. ‘It sounds just like a fairy tale.’

Yes, it did, thought Angie grimly. But it was as illusionary as any other fairy tale—with all those dark undercurrents swirling around beneath the supposedly perfect surface.

Angie felt a new restlessness as she mentally psyched herself up to going back to work, staring at her bland image in the mirror and trying hard not to remember how different she’d looked in the bright party dress. For the first time in her life she had seen how clothes could make you blossom. Could make a man—even a man as gorgeous as Riccardo—look at you with naked desire in his eyes.

She might have hung the scarlet dress at the back of her wardrobe, vowing never to wear it again—but she realised that everything else she owned made her look and feel like a piece of wallpaper. She blended in so that nobody noticed her; she always had. But suddenly the prospect of continuing down that road terrified her.

She was scared that she would become completely invisible—inside and out. That if she wasn’t careful, she would let the destruction of her dreams slide her into a dark place from which she might not emerge. And she wasn’t going to live like that. Not any more.

Her clothes were expensive and she could never afford to replace her wardrobe overnight—especially not with the cheap kind of clothes which didn’t really suit her—but surely she could brighten things up with a few carefully chosen accessories bought in the post-Christmas sales?

She found herself in a huge department store on Oxford Street, drifting her fingertips through a filmy selection of shawls. Holding a vivid red one next to her face and deciding that perhaps vibrant colours brought out her colouring in a way that her usual camel or taupe didn’t.

She bought a wide brown leather belt which cinched in her waist and made it look impossibly small—and another in glossy black patent. And a rich, emerald velvet scarf which emphasised the green flecks in her hazel eyes. New, squashy brown leather boots too—and a pair of high black court shoes. Brightly coloured beads cost very little, but gave a dress an entirely new appearance—or so the helpful girl on the jewellery stand told her. And when she went to her new job she wouldn’t be classified by her fellow workers as a bland, boring person whom nobody noticed. They would think of her as bright, bouncy Angie who wore a clutch of plastic bangles which clanked as she moved.

But the most daring thing of all she saved until last—walking into the hairdresser’s with a defiant expression on her face and letting her sand-coloured hair spill all over her shoulders.

‘Can you just cut it off?’ she asked.

‘Anything particular in mind?’ asked the assistant.

‘Something really flattering,’ said Angie, colouring slightly. ‘But nothing too wild.’

It seemed to Angie that her new haircut and her new boots and belt became more about trying to update her image without losing her essential personality—but they also felt like a shield she could hide behind. And if she felt brittle on the inside as she travelled into work after the Christmas break—she knew that from the outside she looked newly bright and breezy.

The snow had melted into a thick grey slush but the man who owned the coffee shop next door lifted her spirits, telling her she was the best thing he’d seen all year.

‘Ah, but that’s because it’s only the second of January!’ She smiled, though if she’d been paying more attention she might have noticed the dark figure who had paused momentarily outside the plate-glass window.

But despite her determination not to slink into work as if she were ashamed of herself, Angie’s heart was still beating quickly as she walked into the office carrying her blueberry muffin. With a nervous repetition which bordered on hysteria, she silently told herself that since Riccardo didn’t have a meeting until lunch-time, he probably wouldn’t be in the office until later.

But he was.

Sitting at his desk, his chair pushed back and his long legs stretched out in front of him, he was flicking through a sheaf of papers and he glanced up as she walked in.

And frowned.

Angie hung her coat up as she met his gaze, praying that her own face held just the right amount of friendly interest which you might direct at your boss if the last time you’d seen him he had just been putting his clothes back on. But his face was looking distinctly stony and her heart sank.

‘Happy new year!’ she said, nervous words tumbling out of her mouth. ‘How was Tuscany? Busy, I expect. Not long now until the wedding.’

He completely ignored her question and her babbled statements, the black eyes flicking over her with an incredulous light in their ebony depths. And when he spoke, his voice was silky—a tone she’d never heard before and didn’t quite recognise. ‘Well, well, well. And what, pray, is this?’