To Sin with the Tycoon

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored wall that occupied one section of her office and frowned at the image reflected back: her neat outfit and unremarkable looks did not seem to gel with the glossy, snappy image of the other employees she had seen as she had been channelled onto the directors’ floor. She could have landed on a film set. The guys all wore snappy, expensive suits and the women were largely blonde and achingly good-looking in a polished, well-groomed way. Young, thrusting, career graduates who all had the full package of looks, ambition and brains. Even the secretaries and clerks who kept the wheels of the machinery oiled and running were just as glamorous. These were people who dressed for their surroundings.

She, on the other hand...

Brown eyes, brown hair falling straight to her shoulders, and she was far too tall, even in her flat, black pumps. Something about her grey suit and white blouse screamed lack of flair, although when she had stuck it on that morning she had been quietly pleased at the professional image she projected. It had certainly made a change from the more casual gear she had become accustomed to wearing at her last job. Now, here, she just looked vaguely...drab.

For the first time she wondered whether the gleaming CV in her handbag and her confidence in her abilities were going to be enough. An eccentric and insane employer who surrounded himself with glamour models might just find her a little on the boring side.

She swept aside the nudge of insecurity trying to push itself to the forefront. This wasn’t a fashion parade and she wasn’t competing with anyone in the looks stakes. This was a job, and she was good at what she did. She picked things up easily; she had an agile brain. When it came to work, those were the things that mattered.

She hunkered down for the long haul.

It was nearly midday, and she was bracing herself for an awkward conversation with one of his employees about his whereabouts, when the door to her office was pushed open.

And in he came. Her new boss, Gabriel Cabrera. And nothing had prepared her for him. Tall, well over six foot, he was the most sinfully good-looking man she had ever set eyes on. His hair was slightly too long, which lent him a rakish air, and the perfection of his dark, chiselled features was indecent. He emanated power and a sort of restless energy that left her temporarily lost for words. Then she gathered herself and held out her hand in greeting.

‘Who are you?’ Gabriel stopped abruptly and frowned at her. ‘And why are you here?’

Alice dropped her hand and bared her teeth in a polite smile. This was the man she would be working for and she didn’t want to kick things off on the wrong foot—but, in her head, she added to the list of pejorative descriptions which had been growing steadily ‘rude and fancies himself’.

‘I’m Alice Morgan...your new secretary? The agency your company uses got in touch with me. I have my CV...’

‘No need.’ He stood back and looked at her intently, head tilted to one side. Arms folded, he circled her, and she gritted her teeth in receipt of this insolent, arrogant appraisal.

Was this how he treated his female staff? She had got the message loud and clear that he did what he wanted, irrespective of what anyone had to say on the matter, but this was too much.

She could leave. Walk out. She had already been kept waiting for over two hours. The agency would understand. But she was being paid over the odds for this job, way over the odds, and it had been hinted that the package, should she be made permanent, would be breath-taking. The man paid well, whatever his undesirable traits, and she could do with the money. She had been renting for the past three years, ever since she had moved to London from Devon, where her mother lived. There was no way she could afford to leave rented accommodation but she would love to have the option of not sharing a house. And then there were all those other expenses that ate into her monthly income, leaving her with barely enough to survive comfortably.

Practicality won over impulse and she stayed put.

‘So...’ Gabriel drawled, eyebrows raised. ‘My new secretary. Now that you mention it, I was expecting you.’

‘I’ve been here since eight-forty-five.’

‘Then you should have had ample opportunity to read and digest all the information on my various companies.’ He nodded to the low ash sideboard which was home to various legal books and, yes, an abundance of financial reports on his companies. She had read them all cover to cover.

Alice felt her hackles rise. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, keeping her voice level, ‘you could give me a run-down of my duties? Normally there’s a handover from the old secretary to the new one but...’ But the last one obviously ran for cover without looking back...

‘I don’t actually have time to run through every detail of what you’re expected to do. You’ll just have to pick it up as you go along. I’m assuming the agency will have sent me someone competent who doesn’t need too much hand-holding.’ He watched as delicate colour invaded her cheeks. Her eyes were very firmly averted from him and she was as stiff as a piece of board.

All told, it was not the reaction Gabriel usually expected or received from the opposite sex, but perhaps the agency had been right to send him someone who wouldn’t end up with an inappropriate crush on him. Miss Alice Morgan—and she looked every bit a ‘Miss’ even if he hadn’t known she was—clearly had her head very firmly screwed on.

‘Item number one on the agenda is...a cup of coffee. You’ll find that that’s an essential duty. I like mine strong and black with two sugars. If you unbend slightly and turn to the left, you’ll notice a sliding door. All coffee making facilities are there.’

So far, everything the man was saying was getting on her nerves, and she hadn’t missed the amusement in his voice when he had told her that she could ‘unbend’.

‘Of course.’

‘Then you can grab your computer and come into my office. Fire it up and we can get going. I have some big deals on the go. You might find that you’re being thrown in at the deep end. And you can relax, Miss Morgan. I don’t eat secretaries for breakfast.’

Her legs finally started moving as he disappeared into his office. Duty number one : coffee making. She had not made coffee for her boss in her last job. There, everyone had chipped in. Quite frequently, Tom Davis had been the one bringing her a cup of coffee. It was clear that Gabriel Cabrera did not operate on such civilised lines.

By nature, Alice was not confrontational. There was, however, a streak of fierce independence in her that railed against his dictatorial attitude. She simmered and seethed as she made the coffee for him.

His image still swam in her head with pressing insistence: that ridiculously sexy face; the casual assumption that he was the big boss and so could do precisely as he pleased, even if his behaviour bordered on rude. He was rich, he was drop-dead good-looking and he knew the full extent of the power he wielded. When he had stood in front of her, she had felt as vulnerable as a minnow in the presence of a shark. Something about him was suffocating, larger than life. He was dressed in a suit, charcoal-grey, but even that had not been able to conceal the breadth of his shoulders or the lean muscularity of his physique.

He was a man who was far, far too good-looking, far too overpowering.

‘Sit,’ was his first word as she entered the hallowed walls of his office.

It was a vast space. Floor-to-ceiling panes of glass flooded the room with natural light which was kept at bay by pale-grey shutters. Beyond the immediate vicinity of his working area was a sectioned-off space in which low chairs circled a table and tall plants created a semi-private meeting space.

‘You’d better brief me very quickly on what computer systems you’re familiar with.’ He drummed a fountain pen on his desk, which was chrome and glass, and gave her his undivided attention.

A sparrow. Neat as a pin, legs primly pressed together, eyes tactfully managing to avoid eye contact. Gabriel wondered whether he should send her back in exchange for something a little more decorative. He liked decorative, even though he knew the drawbacks always outweighed the advantages. But, hell, he was a man who could have anything he wanted at the click of a finger and that included interchangeable secretaries. Ever since Gladys—his sixty-year-old assistant of seven years—had inconsiderately emigrated to Australia to be with her daughter, he had run through temps like water. He knew that any agency worth its salt would have scratched him from their books if he’d been anyone else, just as he knew that they never would with him. He paid so well that they would be saying farewell to far too much commission and, in the end, wasn’t greed at the bottom of everything?

His lips curled in derision. Was there nothing he couldn’t have? There were definite upsides to being able to get whatever he wanted... Women flocked to him; heads of business fell silent when he spoke; the press followed him with bated breath, waiting for a hint of the next financial scoop or for a glimpse of his very active private life. He was at the very peak of his game, the undisputed leader of the pack, and there were no signs that he would be relinquishing the position any time soon. So why did life sometimes feel so damned unsatisfying?

He sometimes wondered whether he had used up his capacity for any genuine emotion in his tenacious climb to the top. Perhaps battling against the odds had actually been the great adventure. Now that the game had been played and he had emerged the winner, was the adventure over? Not even the brutal, frenetic push and shove of work could provide him with the adrenaline it once did. What was the point of trying when you could have it all without effort? Was trying just something else that had once mattered but now no longer did in the same way?

The sparrow was in full flow, telling him about her last job and giving him a long list of her responsibilities there. He held up one imperious hand, stopping her mid-sentence.

‘You can only be an improvement on the last girl,’ he drawled. ‘I think somewhere along the line the agency lost track of the fact that I actually wanted someone who knew how to type using more than one finger.’

Alice smiled politely and thought that maybe the agency was in the dark as to whether he cared one way or another, given that his priorities seemed to lie with how good-looking the candidates were.

Gabriel frowned at that smile; it seemed at odds with the meek and mild exterior projected. ‘You’ll find the file on the Hammonds deal on your computer,’ he said, focusing now. ‘Call it up and I’ll tell you what you need to do.’

Alice didn’t surface for the next four hours. Gabriel kept her pinned to her computer. There was no lunch break, because it had been practically lunchtime when he had eventually strolled into the office, and he clearly assumed that she would not be hungry. He wasn’t, after all, so why should she be?

At four-thirty, she looked up to find him standing in front of her.

‘You seem to be keeping up. New broom sweeping clean, or can I expect this show of efficiency to be ongoing?’

Under the full impact of his rapid-fire instructions, Alice had forgotten how objectionable she found him. If that was his way of telling her that she had done a good job on day one, then surely there had to be more polite ways of delivering the message?

‘I’m a hard worker, Mr Cabrera,’ she told him evenly. ‘I can usually handle what’s thrown at me.’

Gabriel sat down in the chair facing her desk and extended his long legs to one side.

Every inch of him breathed self-assurance and command. Okay, so she had to admit that the man was clever. He had the astute brain of a lawyer and an ability to pick through the finer details until he found the essential make or break one that was the difference between success and failure. On the telephone, he was confident and authoritative. From every pore of his body, he radiated the self-assurance that what he wanted, he would get.

‘Highly commendable,’ he said drily.

‘Thank you. Perhaps you could tell me what time I shall be expected to work until today?’ Considering he had kept her waiting for hours for reasons he had not bothered to share.

‘Until I’m satisfied that your job for the day is done,’ Gabriel said coolly. ‘I don’t believe in clock watching, Miss Morgan. Unless, of course, you have some pressing need to go by five? Have you?’

Alice smoothed her skirt with nervous hands. She had read all the promotional literature on offer during the three-hour wait in her office, and within a few seconds had known that the man was beyond influential. He was a billionaire with killer looks and she had seen from the way he had dealt with various interruptions by staff members during the day that, as the little Barbie had informed her, he did exactly as he pleased. One poor woman, the head of his legal department, had been told very firmly that she would be required to work the following weekend without a break because they were closing an important deal and would therefore be required to miss her best friend’s wedding. He hadn’t even bothered to pay lip service to an apology.