The Secretary's Scandalous Secret

‘Agatha, why don’t you sit down for a few minutes? I should have had a little chat with you sooner, but time’s in scarce supply for me.’

‘I know.’ She hovered indecisively for a few seconds, then reluctantly shuffled back to her desk and sat down, watching as Luc perched on the edge and subjected her to one of those blistering looks that promised unwelcome revelations—probably to do with her lack of computer skills, or at the very least at her lack of enthusiasm for developing what precious few computer skills she did have.

Distracted, Luc frowned. ‘What do you mean, you know?’

‘I mean your mum always goes on about how hard you work and how you’re never at home.’

Luc could scarcely credit what he was hearing. ‘You’re telling me that you sit around like the three witches in Macbeth, yakking about me?’

‘No! Of course not.’

‘Don’t you have any kind of life back there? Anything better to do with your time?’

‘Of course I have a life!’ Or at least she had until she’d been made redundant from the garden centre. Or was he talking about her social life? ‘I have lots of friends. You know, not everyone thinks that it’s a top priority to head down to London at the first chance and make a fortune.’

‘It’s just as well I did, though, isn’t it?’ he inserted silkily. ‘In case you’d forgotten, my mother was languishing in a two-bedroom cottage with peeling wallpaper and threadbare carpets. I think you’ll agree that someone had to take charge and restore the family finances.’

‘Yes.’ She stared down at her fingers and then sneaked a look at him, and for a few heart-stopping seconds their eyes clashed, clear blue against deep, mossy green. That crush, which she had done her utmost to kill off, fluttered just below the surface, reminding her that, however hard she looked, Luc Laughton remained in a league of his own. Even when, like now, he was looking at her with the sort of rampant impatience that was even more insulting than open antagonism.

Her ready capitulation made him scowl. ‘This…’ he spread an expressive hand to encompass the office and beyond ‘…is real life, and thanks to it my mother can enjoy the lifestyle to which she has always been accustomed. My father made a lot of mistakes when it came to money, and fortunately I have learnt from all of them. Lesson number one is that nothing is achieved without putting in the hours.’ He stood up and prowled through the tiny office, which was tucked away from the rest of the offices—and just as well, because he figured that she would have been even more lost had she been positioned in the middle of one of the several buzzing, high-energy floors occupied by his various staff.

‘If you’re not enjoying your job as much as you’d like, then you only have yourself to blame. Try looking at it as more than just biding time until some other gardening job comes available.’

‘I’m not on the look out for another gardening job.’ There were none to be had in London. She had looked.

‘Take one step towards really integrating in this environment, Agatha. I don’t want you to be offended by what I’m about to say…’

‘Then don’t say it!’ She looked at him with big, blue pleading eyes. She knew that he was one of the ‘cruel to be kind’ breed of person with almost zero tolerance for anyone who didn’t take the bull by the horns and wrestle life into subservience like him.

‘He can be a little scary,’ Danielle had confessed just before Agatha had moved to London. Just how scary, Agatha hadn’t realised until she had started working for him. There was little direct contact, because most of her work came via Helen, who always wore a smile and pointed to any inaccuracies in her typing with a kindly shrug. On those occasions when he had descended from his ivory tower and cornered her himself, he had been a lot less forgiving.

‘You can’t be an ostrich, Agatha.’ He paused in his restless, unnerving prowling to stand directly in front of her and waited until he had one-hundred percent of her attention. ‘If you had taken your head out of the sand, you would have predicted your redundancy from that garden centre. They’d been losing money for at least two years; the credit crunch was the final straw. You could have been looking for a replacement job instead of waiting until the axe fell and finding yourself on the scrap heap.’

A rare spark of mutiny swept through her and she tightened her lips.

‘But, no matter. You’re here, and you are being paid a handsome wage, which you earn by taking absolutely no interest in anything at all.’

‘I’ll try harder,’ she muttered, wondering how she could find someone so intensely attractive and yet loathe him at the same time. Were her feelings born out of habit—was that it? A silly, teenaged crush that had developed into some kind of low-lying, semi-permanent virus?

‘Yes, you will, and you can start with your choice of clothes.’

‘I beg your pardon? ‘

‘I’m telling you this for your own good,’ he imparted in the kind of voice that warned her that, whatever he had to say, it definitely wouldn’t feel as though it was being delivered for her own good. ‘Your choice of clothing doesn’t really strike the right note for someone working in these offices. Look around you—do you see anyone one else who dresses in long gypsy skirts and baggy cardigans?’

Agatha was engulfed in a wave of anger and shame. He might be beautiful, but then roses were beautiful until you got to the thorns. How could she have nursed an inappropriate crush on this guy for all these years? she asked herself, not for the first time. From afar, when she’d been a kid, he had appeared all-powerful and so breathtakingly gorgeous. Even when Danielle had moved in with her parents, and she had had a chance to see the three-dimensional Luc when he had visited and stayed, she had still not been put off by the way he had always managed to eliminate her even when she had been right there in his line of vision.

She wasn’t a stunning blonde with legs up to her armpits and big hair; it was as simple as that. She was invisible to him, a nondescript nobody who hovered in the periphery, helping prepare suppers and losing herself in the garden.

But he had always been scrupulously polite, even if he had barely registered her growing from a girl to a woman.

This, however, was beyond the pale.

‘I’m comfortable in these clothes,’ she told him in a shaking voice. ‘And I know you’re doing me a huge favour by employing me, when I obviously have no talent for office work, but I don’t see why I can’t wear what I want. No one important sees me. I don’t attend any meetings. And, if you don’t mind, I really would like to go now. I have a very important date, as it happens, so if you’ll excuse me…?’ She stood up.

‘A date? You have a date?’ Luc was startled enough to find himself temporarily sidetracked.

‘There’s no need to sound so surprised.’ Agatha walked towards the door, conscious of his eyes boring into her back.

‘I’m surprised because you’ve been in London all of five minutes. Does Edith know about this?’

‘Mum doesn’t have to know every single thing I do here!’ But she flushed guiltily. Her mother was a firm believer in the gentle art of courtship. She would have had a seizure had she known that her little girl was about to go out for dinner with a guy she had met casually in a bar whilst out with some of her girlfriends. She wouldn’t understand that that was just how it happened in London, and she definitely wouldn’t understand how important this date was for Agatha. At long last, she had decided to throw herself into the dating scene. Dreamy, fictitious relationships were all well and good for a kid of fifteen; at twenty-two, they were insane. She needed a real relationship with a real man who made real plans for a real future.

‘Wait, wait, wait—not so fast, Agatha.’ He reached out, captured her arm in a vice-like grip and swivelled her to face him.

‘Okay, I’ll come in really early tomorrow morning—even though it’s Saturday—and sort out that stuff…’ Just feeling his long fingers pressing into her coat was bringing her out in nervous perspiration and suddenly, more than ever, she wanted this date. She was sick to death with the way her body reacted to him. ‘But I really, really need to get back to my flat or else I’m going to be late for Stewart.’

‘Stewart? That the name of the man? ‘ He released her, but his curiosity was piqued by this sudden insight into her private life. He really hadn’t thought that she had one. In actual fact, he hadn’t thought about her at all, despite his mother’s pressing questions whenever he had called, asking him whether she was all right. He had given her a job, made sure that she was paid very well indeed, given her lack of experience, and frankly considered his duty done.

‘Yes,’ Agatha conceded reluctantly.

‘And how long has this situation been going on?’

‘I don’t see that that’s any of your business,’ she mumbled with considerable daring. Was she supposed to hang around? Did he still want her to carry on working?

She decided to brave an exit, but she was sickeningly aware of him following her out of her office towards the lift. It was Friday and most of the employees on her floor had already left. She knew that the rest of his dedicated, richly rewarded staff further up the hierarchy would be beavering away, making things happen.

‘None of my business? Did I just hear right?’

‘Yes, you did.’ Frustrated, Agatha swung round to look at him, her hands clenched into tight fists in the spacious pockets of her coat. ‘Of course, it’s your business what I do here between the hours of nine and whatever time I leave, but whatever I do outside working hours isn’t your concern.’

‘I wish I could concur but, like it or not, I have a responsibility towards you.’

‘Because of a favour my parents did for Danielle a hundred years ago? That’s crazy! Dad is—was—a vicar. Looking after the parishioners was what he did, and he enjoyed doing it. So did my mother. Not to mention that your mum was already a friend and had helped out countless times at the church fetes.’ She punched the lift button and stared at it, ignoring the man at her side.

‘Baking a few cakes now and again is a bit different from housing someone for a year.’

‘Not for my parents. And Mum would be appalled if she thought that I was in London being a nuisance.’ She had to cross her fingers behind her back when she said that. Her mother worried daily about her. Her phone calls were punctuated with anxious questions about her diet, rapidly followed up by not-too-subtle reminders that London was a very dangerous place. Sometimes, to back this up, Edith would quote from newspaper clippings, overblown, dramatic stories about knifings, murders or muggings that had occurred somewhere in London. She was unfailingly sceptical about any reassurances that Agatha was well and fine and didn’t live anywhere remotely close to where said knifings or murders or muggings had occurred. Her mother would have loved nothing better than to think that Luc was taking Agatha’s welfare on board.

The lift had finally decided to arrive and she looked at Luc in alarm as he stepped inside it with her.

‘What…What are you doing?’

‘I’m taking the lift down with you.’

‘But you can’t!’

‘How do you work that one out?’