The Billionaire Boss's Bride

Tessa scrambled to her feet and hurried after him as he headed out of his office. It took quite some running. High-heeled shoes might look the part but when it came to scurrying after someone who walked at a pace that most people ran, they weren’t exactly practical. She nearly careered into him when he finally came to a dead stop by the lift.

‘So,’ he began conversationally, noticing the way she had edged away from him in the confines of the lift, back pressed against the side as though her life depended on it, ‘it must have been a bit of a shock when you came to work this morning and found the offices empty…?’

‘I was a little surprised.’

‘Hmm. A little surprised. Diplomatic choice of words.’

‘George at Reception had warned me that he had witnessed a mass exodus earlier in the morning, but, naturally, I thought that he might have exaggerated a bit. I…well, I wasn’t prepared for…’

‘A scene from a late-night horror movie?’ The lift doors disgorged them back into the expansive waiting area where George was still in attendance. He winked at her and exchanged a large grin with Curtis.

‘So you managed to find one still alive and kicking, then?’

‘Don’t tease her, George. She’s had a very stressful day so far.’

The banter made Tessa feel suddenly foolish and sidelined and the unfortunate butt of some ongoing joke at her expense. ‘I wouldn’t say stressful,’ she retorted, ‘just a little disorienting.’

She felt the warm pressure of his fingers on her elbow as he led her towards the revolving door and heard the deep throb of his laughter, which brought on an attack of un-warranted confusion.

‘Okay. Disorienting. Are you going to be warm enough out here with just a suit? The café’s not far but it’s still a walk…’

‘I’m fine.’ She resisted the temptation to add that she would have brought her coat if she had foreseen a day that involved walking. But, on day one, she had decided to treat herself to a taxi both ways and had not envisaged needing anything heavier than her cream-and-black-flecked woollen suit.

‘I don’t suppose your last job involved too many episodes of disorientation?’

‘Most jobs don’t.’ Their destination was within sight. Literally a good, old-fashioned café with no trimmings. It was heaving, with an eclectic mix of suited businessmen, rough-and-ready workmen, taxi drivers and women who looked as though they had spent the night on the tiles and were on their way home. Most, though, were taking their breakfasts away with them and it was a relief to be out of the cold and in the warmth.

‘Do you come here often?’ Tessa heard herself ask inanely.

‘Does a good breakfast. Now, what will you have?’ He positioned her at one of the tables and narrowed his eyes to read the blackboard with the specials, which was behind her.

‘Coffee.’

‘Right. Wait here.’ Within ten minutes he was back carrying a tray on which were two steaming mugs of coffee and a plate mountainously piled with bacon, egg, black pudding and what looked suspiciously like fried bread.

Oh, your arteries are really going to thank you for that injection of cholesterol, she was tempted to say.

‘Don’t even think of saying what’s going through your head.’

‘I wasn’t thinking anything!’

‘Tell me about your last job,’ was all he replied, leaving her to wonder uncomfortably how he had managed to read her mind.

‘I told your mother…well, it’s all there on my CV.’ Comprehension filtered through. ‘But I guess you didn’t read my CV.’

‘I left the finer details of your employment to my mother. Your last job?’

Tessa sipped her coffee, which was surprisingly aromatic. ‘I worked for a firm of accountants. Not one of the top three, but one of the bigger ones, doing all the usual stuff. I’m fully computer literate and can handle pretty much anything from spreadsheets to invoicing.’ Silence followed that, interrupted only by his eating. ‘I’ve also arranged training courses, overseen meetings, in short done everything a PA is trained to do.’

Curtis washed down the last of his breakfast with a generous mouthful of coffee, then sat back in his chair and looked at her assessingly.

‘And you enjoyed it, did you?’

‘Well, yes, of course. I was there for a number of years—’

‘Why the change of job, in that case?’

Gone was the light-hearted, unconventional man who had confronted her at eight-thirty that morning. In its place was someone shrewd and forthright and very focused.

‘It wasn’t going anywhere.’ Tessa flinched away from that disconcerting blue gaze. ‘I felt that I needed to expand my horizons and, in a company like that, it’s only possible if you’re one of the professionals.’

‘But you liked working there, aside from the obvious limitations, am I right?’ He watched as she nodded and could hear her wondering where this was going. ‘You liked the order, the environment, the routine.’

‘Those things are very important, I think, in the successful running of a company,’ Tessa said defensively.

Order. Routine. Yes, she did like those things. They formed the perimeter of her life and always had. How else would she have been able to cope with bringing up her unruly ten-year-old sister when she had only been going on eighteen herself? In fact, compared to Lucy, or maybe because of her, she, Tessa, had always had her head firmly screwed on. Her parents had always praised her for that. Lucy might be the beauty with the ebullience, but Tessa was the responsible one, the one on whom they relied. The one on whom they had still been relying when their car had swerved into a tree on a rainy night back home. Tessa had mourned and grieved and picked up the pieces the best she could and, yes, had fallen back on order and routine to help her through.

She blinked away the sudden intrusion of her past and, when she looked at him, she found him staring at her, his bright blue eyes narrowed on her face.

‘Don’t you agree with me?’ The way he looked at her made her feel hot and bothered, even though he didn’t seem to be looking at her in a critical way. Perhaps it was the level of containment, at odds with the aggressively confident and outgoing exterior. Here was a man, she suspected, who did precisely as he liked and yet remained a closed book. It was nerve-racking. ‘I mean, you run a successful company. Surely you don’t just jump in a haphazard manner from one day to the next, hoping for the best and keeping your fingers crossed?’

Curtis threw back his head and laughed. ‘No. Not quite. That approach doesn’t often work, although it sounds as though it could be quite a lot of fun.’

Tessa shuddered. Fun? Never knowing from one minute to the next what life was going to throw at you? Not a chance.

‘You don’t agree? Well, never mind. So you’ve worked in your last job for…how many years?’

‘Nine, give or take a few months,’ she said uncomfortably.

Curtis gave a low whistle under his breath.

‘And you are…? Age…?’

‘Twenty-eight.’

‘At work at nineteen and then staying put with the same company…’

‘Which should tell you how experienced I am.’ Why did she have the sinking feeling that this was the interview that should have been conducted from the start? ‘I’m sorry. I thought I had the job. I thought your mother was in a position to offer it to me.’ She could feel herself perspiring under her armpits and she wished she had removed her jacket when she had first sat down, just as he had done with his overcoat. He looked as comfortable as a cat on a feather quilt while she felt rattled, uneasy and hot.

‘Oh, of course she was.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a family firm. I run it completely, take full responsibility for all profits and losses, but my brother and my mother are naturally still interested in what’s going on, and occasionally my mother will offer her input. In the matter of my hiring someone to work for me, she insisted, and I expect she told you why.’

‘She mentioned that some of your secretaries in the past had been a bit…unsuitable.’

‘Except I don’t imagine she was quite so restrained in her description.’

Tessa frowned and tucked her hair neatly behind her ears. She had fine, slippery, very smooth shoulder-length auburn hair that had a tendency to slide forward and brush her face if she wasn’t careful about tying it back. Today, on Lucy’s advice, she had decided to wear it loose so that she wouldn’t look like a schoolmarm on her first day out. Now, she was regretting the impulse because for some reason she felt as though she needed the protection of her normally very restrained look.

‘I’ll bet she referred to them as bimbos,’ Curtis added helpfully as Tessa was struggling to come up with a diplomatic way of paraphrasing what had been said to her.