The Boss's Proposal

‘What was wrong with all of them?’

‘Pretty much a combination of everything, actually.’

‘Perhaps you’re a bit too demanding,’ Vicky volunteered helpfully, and her suggestion was met with a frown of instant and instinctive denial.

‘I’m the least demanding boss I know. All I ask is a certain amount of initiative and common sense, along with the ability to do the usual things.’

‘And how do you know I would have possessed the right qualities?’ For the very briefest of moments, she put aside her fears of the man sitting opposite her and she could feel his personality working on her. In a minute, she told herself, she would put her defences back in place, but right now a rush of simple gratitude towards him had mellowed her. She found herself watching him intently, noticing, as she did so, how huge the differences were between him and Shaun, even though, at first glance, she’d been bowled over by their similarities. His face, she realised, was stronger, and stamped with lines of humour that had been missing from his brother’s. His mouth was fuller, or perhaps that was just an optical illusion born of the fact that he just seemed more in command and more quietly self-assured than his brother. He lacked the ready smile that spoke of self-obsession and the carefully groomed look of someone to whom appearances were everything. In fact, the harder she stared at him, the less he seemed to resemble Shaun.

‘Because you worked successfully for a man I have long respected,’ he said simply. ‘Aside from that, my first impression was favourable and I’m rarely wrong when it comes to first impressions.’

‘Well, you should be,’ Vicky heard herself say, her voice laced with creeping bitterness. She looked away and began toying with the end of her braid, flicking it back and forth, aware that two spots of burning colour had appeared on her cheeks.

Now, he thought, was not the time to probe deeper into that enigmatic little remark. She wasn’t looking at him, in itself significant, but he could tell by the sudden flare of colour into her pale face that her reply had been instinctive and spontaneous, and that it had been prompted by something, some past and probably dark experience. He felt another spurt of intense curiosity, all the more destabilising because it was unaccustomed, and he had to resist the urge to barge in and whittle an explanation out of her. Women had always been an open book for him. To suddenly find himself stumped by one whose pages appeared to be firmly glued together was more than a novelty. He was discovering, to his amazement, the power of a challenge.

‘Perhaps I should be,’ he agreed. ‘Maybe I’m more na?ve than I think.’

The thought of the man sitting opposite her ever being na?ve was almost enough to make her burst out laughing.

‘Look,’ he said quickly, ‘I’ll lay all my cards on the table. I have a gut feeling that you and I could work well together. I’ve suffered everything over the past few months, from misfiling to complete incomprehension when it comes to transcribing the gist of some of my more technical letters…’ Something of an exaggeration, he thought to himself, but what the heck? ‘Not to mention girls who can hardly think straight when they’re around me…’ He watched her surreptitiously to see what the impact of that comment would be, whether he might read some tacit agreement in her expression, and huffily saw that if anything her eyebrows had flickered upwards in contempt and incredulity.

‘I don’t think I could bear working for a man who considered himself God’s gift to the female sex,’ Vicky informed him coldly.

‘I don’t believe that’s quite what I—’

‘Someone who assumes that every woman in the room is eager and panting to climb into bed with him, someone who can’t exist without a comb in his jacket pocket and a sporty car to prop up his self-image—’

‘You seem to have totally misunders—’

‘Swanning around, giving orders in between gazing at himself in the nearest mirror and then when all’s said and done assuming that it’s his right to do as he likes with whomever he wants, because he happened to be born with a passably good-looking face—’

‘Hold on!’

Just at that very instant the telephone rang, and Vicky leapt up out of her chair and hurried into the hall to answer it. She was still trembling from her tirade because his passing remark had brought back a flood of memories, memories of Shaun and his serial infidelity, his addiction to proving his power over women, his swaggering, arrogant assumption that it was his right to break any female’s heart if he so wanted. Her brain was still whirring around in angry circles when she heard Pat Down’s voice down the line and it took her a few seconds to register that Chloe would be dropped back earlier than planned.

‘I’m ever so sorry, Vicky, but my mum’s been rushed to hospital with a heart attack so I shall drop her off in about ten minutes, if that’s all right with you.’ The voice down the line was just managing to bear up.

‘Ten minutes…’ Vicky repeated on a sharply indrawn breath.

‘Sorry.’

‘No, no, that’s absolutely fine. Do you need me to hang on to Jess for you?’ But no, she would take Jess with her to see her mother and she’d be by in a little under ten minutes.

Vicky hung up and flew into the sitting room like a whirlwind.

‘It’s time for you to go!’ she ordered him frantically. ‘I…I…I’ve suddenly remembered a very important appointment. In fact, that was the person in charge…calling to see whether I was still interested…in the job…’

‘On a Saturday?’ Max asked, not moving.

With a groan of desperation, Vicky grabbed his arm and began pulling him to his feet. Bad move. It appeared to make him even less inclined to vacate the sofa.

‘Get up!’ she finally shouted. ‘Can’t you see I’m in a rush?’

‘And I’m trying to figure out why. No respectable company drags interviewees in on a weekend. Have you applied for something shady, perhaps? Some seedy stripping job in a nightclub somewhere?’

‘Do I look like the sort of girl who’s willing to strip in a nightclub?’ she virtually screeched, hustling him to the sitting room door and attempting to shoo him out in the style of a chicken trying to get rid of a wolf from its parlour.

‘Give me a minute to think about that one,’ he said slowly, stopping in his tracks to her intense frustration. She glared at him and he grinned back at her.

It was the first time he had really smiled and the effect was breathtaking. Literally, it made her gasp. It changed the hard contours of his face and gave him a boyish, sexy look that was as far removed from the plastic smiles of his brother as chalk was from cheese.

‘Not funny,’ she said sharply.

‘Take the job?’

In under five minutes there would be the sound of a car stopping outside the house, the ring of the doorbell and her daughter would come bouncing through the front door, bringing her infectious smile, her rosy cheeks and a seething nest of potential catastrophes.

She had to get rid of him.

‘All right! Now will you please leave my house so that I can get on with…with…with my life?’

He straightened up and looked at her with a shadow of surprise. ‘Starting Monday?’

‘Starting Monday,’ she agreed, hopping in frustration from one leg to another.

She managed to propel him to the front door, which she swiftly pulled open, breathing a sigh of relief that a small blue car wasn’t hurtling down the lane in the direction of her cottage.

‘Report to Personnel,’ he told her, ‘then come to my office and we’ll take it from there.’

‘Goodbye!’

‘And perhaps you could do something about your eccentric line in conversation?’

‘I shall see you on Monday!’ She urged him out of the door and watched as he headed down the short path to the road, making sure that his car was safely out of sight before she closed it back. When it was, she slammed shut the door and leaned heavily against it, wondering what the hell she had just done.

It had been imperative that he left the premises before Chloe returned, she argued silently to herself, and what better method of shifting him than to agree to his proposals? Even though the logical, rational side of her brain freely accepted this as a worthwhile argument, the rest of her was appalled at the hole she had dug and into which she had recklessly jumped.

She told herself that she would turn up on Monday and work for a few weeks, then apologetically make her excuses and leave. She mentally listed some of the plus points that could be gained from her manoeuvre. This required more thought, but in the end she decided that, aside from the financial windfall to be had, she would also be able to keep an eye on him and allay his suspicious interest in her which she had sensed from the very beginning. Wasn’t it a good idea for her to be in place so that she could make sure that he didn’t start telephoning Australia and asking his friend about her? For starters he would learn about the pregnancy. Her connection with his brother might take longer, because she had been adamant about keeping her work life distinct from her private life and had discouraged Shaun from ever showing up at her workplace once they had started dating. But he could find out if he persevered. At least she would be on the spot to laughingly fend off any questions and deter him from snooping. She’d seen the curiosity her odd behaviour had aroused in him and she suspected that he was the sort of man to whom any intrigue was simply something to be unravelled. He could probably do The Times crossword in a matter of seconds.

Less palatable was the unpleasant suspicion that something about him had got under her skin. She’d learned so many lessons from Shaun, enough to put her off men for a lifetime. She would rather shoot herself than admit any kind of attraction to his brother.

In the end, though, she now had a problematic situation which she would have to deal with in whatever manner was at her disposal.

CHAPTER THREE

VICKY spent the remainder of the weekend repenting for her reckless agreement to work for Max Forbes. The reason why she had rushed into her hasty decision was rapidly forgotten under the onslaught of serious drawbacks. By the time Monday morning rolled around, she found herself slipping on her customary secretarial garb with a leaden heart which was only partially alleviated when, once at the office, she was informed by the personnel officer that Max only worked part-time at this particular office. When the young girl mentioned his name, her eyelids fluttered and her cheeks turned bright red. Vicky wondered sceptically whether all the female employees of the company responded in the same way to the mere mention of their boss. If that was the case, then she would have more to contend with than the dangerous fragility of her situation—namely overriding nausea at being surrounded by mesmerised females from nine in the morning to five-thirty at night.

No wonder he rated himself as such a potent sex symbol. She almost clicked her tongue in annoyance.