The Billionaire Boss's Bride

‘Anna?’

‘My mother did tell you about Anna, didn’t she?’

Tessa thought back. She was certain she would have remembered the name. ‘No,’ she said slowly and thinking hard. ‘Who is she?’

Curtis swore softly under his breath and pulled the car over to the side of the kerb, then he turned to face her. ‘Anna is my daughter.’

‘Your daughter?’

He swore again and shook his head, scowling. ‘I take it my mother forgot to mention that little detail. Or rather chose not to.’

‘But…I don’t get any of this. You have a daughter? Are you married?’ He didn’t act like a married man. He didn’t wear a wedding ring. And did married men have strings of sexy secretaries because they decorated their offices, with practical skills not of prime importance? Would his wife approve of that? Did she even know? Maybe, Tessa thought with a sickening jolt, they had one of those modern open marriages.

In the middle of her freewheeling thoughts, he interrupted with, ‘A daughter, no wife. And I’m surprised this wasn’t mentioned when my mother saw you.’ The cunning fox, he thought indulgently. Had his mother thought that bringing up the question of his daughter and the spot of coverage that might be occasionally needed would have put off the perfect candidate? One of the reasons he had succumbed to her insistence on choosing his next secretary had been the little technicality that Anna was going to be on half-term for two weeks and his mother would be out of the country on a gadabout cruise with her circle of friends. Someone would be needed to help out with coverage should it become necessary and, in his mother’s words, a flighty bit of fluff would not do.

‘Anna is going to be home for a fortnight from her boarding-school tomorrow. Next week she’s going to be coming into the office and I want you to take her under your wing. The following week should be fine. I intend to have the week off, but next week’s a bit trickier with this trip to the Far East to source potential computer bases.’

‘Boarding-school.’

‘Hence the fact that she has to come into the office. None of her friends live locally and my mother left the country a couple of days ago.’

Tessa couldn’t take her eyes off his face. She could picture him as just about anything apart from a father. He had too much personality to be a father! Then she thought what a ridiculous idea that was.

‘Are you following a word I’m saying?’

Tessa blinked. ‘I just find it a bit difficult to comprehend…how old is…Anna?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘Fourteen. But you never talk about her…have pictures…’ Was he ashamed of being a father? Was that why she was at boarding-school? Because she cramped his eligible-bachelor lifestyle?

‘I have pictures in my wallet. Care to see them just to verify that I’m telling the truth and that she looks like a normal kid, no nasty side effects from my being her father?’ He raised his eyebrows and Tessa blushed.

‘No, of course not!’

‘Can I ask you something?’

She nodded, still furiously examining the scenario that had unfolded in front of her.

‘Did my mother know that you had raised a kid sister virtually on your own?’

‘Completely on my own,’ Tessa absent-mindedly amended. ‘Yes. Why?’

“‘A most suitable woman for the job.”’ He quoted his mother with a grin. ‘Not only did you come with a sackful of references, but you were single, with a sensible head on sensible shoulders, and you had firsthand experience of communicating with a teenager. No wonder she failed to mention the little technicality of my daughter. You were so ideal for the job that she probably didn’t want to jeopardise the chances of your accepting the offer.’

‘I feel manipulated.’

‘You’ll have to mention that to my darling mother the next time you see her.’ He pulled out slowly from the kerb, leaving her to her riotous thoughts for a while.

‘But what exactly am I supposed to do with your daughter?’ Tessa eventually ventured. If she had just one drop of his volatile blood in her, then she would be more than a handful cooped up in an office when she would rather be hanging out with teenagers. Tessa shuddered at the prospect lurking ahead of her.

‘Supervise her. Give her little jobs to do. I’ll be around for most of the week. When I’m not…’

‘She can’t possibly stay with me…!’

‘Her old babysitter will take over. Don’t worry. I have every faith in your abilities…’

CHAPTER THREE

ANNA was nothing like Tessa had expected. In her head, she had imagined her own sister at fourteen, but with Curtis’s dark good looks. Gregarious, smilingly wilful and utterly boy crazy. Thrown into this mental picture was the added bonus of being the only child of a millionaire father. The equation was terrifying, not least because she knew from firsthand experience that she would spend the week tearing her hair out just to make sure that her beady eyes never ceased their constant supervision.

She had arrived on the Monday a full hour and a half before she should have just to make sure that she did as much of her own workload as possible. Just in case.

Curtis and Anna had finally come in some time about ten, Curtis flamboyantly explaining that he had made an essential detour to take his daughter out for breakfast, while in his shadow a tall, awkward teenager with her hair pulled back into a pony tail had hovered with her eyes lowered, staring down at her curiously old-fashioned shoes.

That had been three days ago. The boy-crazy handful of hormone-driven teenager had turned out to be a studiously polite and excruciatingly shy girl who seemed to enjoy working in the office more than she did leaving it and who only really smiled when her father was around. Then, she lit up like a Christmas tree.

‘Anna?’ Tessa looked at her now, head bent over the mighty stack of files that she had been allocated to go through, making sure that the paperwork corresponded to what was on the computer. ‘Fancy you and I going out to lunch somewhere?’

Anna looked at her and smiled.

She had the prettiest face, Tessa thought, but the look was ruined by the hairdo and the clothes and the way she walked, slightly hunched as though ashamed of her height. Having gone through the wringer with Lucy, who had never believed in concealing her assets and who had been able to wield an eyeliner pencil at the age of fourteen like any professional make-up artist, Tessa knew that she should be vigorously counting her blessings that this one week was not turning out to be the nightmare she had expected.

However, it just didn’t seem natural that Anna should be fourteen going on middle-aged.

‘I’ve still got quite a few files to get done…’ she said apologetically. ‘I mean, I know it’s only a pretend job but I’d still like to do it as well as I can.’

‘It’s not a pretend job!’

Anna gave her one of those shrewd, mature looks and Tessa laughed. ‘It seriously is not! Those files are in a disastrous state! I don’t think your father’s last secretary was that bothered by something as mundane as filing.’

‘No. I don’t suppose she was.’

‘Anyway, your dad’s not back from the Far East until tomorrow.’ Tessa stood up, switched off her computer and firmly began putting on her thick jacket. ‘We can play truant for an hour or two.’

‘Truant?’ She giggled. ‘Are you sure? I mean, won’t you get into trouble?’ The anxiousness was back. Teenagers shouldn’t be anxious, Tessa thought with a pang, amused to catch herself wondering if she had been the same at that age. No, she hadn’t. Her anxieties had come later. At fourteen, she hadn’t been wild like Lucy, but she had been carefree and unburdened.

‘Oh, I’ll chance it. Now, come on. If we carry on debating this any longer, we’ll talk ourselves out of it.’ She waited as Anna stuck on her coat and quickly neatened her pony tail.

‘How are you finding it?’ Tessa asked as they settled themselves into the back seat of a black cab, heading towards the King’s Road.

Anna shrugged. ‘It’s nice. I mean, I knew Grandma wasn’t going to be around for the half-term and I’d be in the office with Dad, but I’m relieved that…’ She chewed her lip sheepishly and hazarded a smile at Tessa.

‘That what?’

‘Well, I know what some of Dad’s secretaries have been like. I mean, it’s not that I’ve ever come in to the office to actually work or anything. This is the first time, actually. But sometimes I’ve come there to meet him for lunch or something, and well…’

‘Gorgeous women in very short skirts can be a bit daunting,’ Tessa agreed, astutely reading behind the hesitation. ‘I know. I find that as well.’