The Italian Boss's Secretary Mistress

‘It does to me. Now tell me what it is that you have disagreed with? You can talk to me. You’ll find that I can be very sympathetic. I don’t want to lose you and if you’ve been harbouring any grudges about the way I run things, then now is the time to get it off your chest.’

CHAPTER THREE

THE restaurant in the glass office building, like everything else, was fairly spectacular. It was one of the invisible but very handy perks that came with working for Gabriel. It was open all day, served a staggering choice of first class food and was so heavily subsidised that loose change could buy a hefty enough breakfast to last the day.

Every so often Gabriel, when he wasn’t entertaining clients or being entertained by them, would emerge from his glorified sanctum and stroll down for lunch. He did it to touch base with his employees. Rose always smiled at that because touching base with his employees was a pretty ridiculous notion when it came to Gabriel Gessi. He chatted to them, invited their ideas, and they chatted back. But scratch the surface and it was easy to see the awe that controlled their replies. He wasn’t just rich and powerful but he looked the part and that in itself was enough to make most of his employees break out in a light nervous perspiration.

Right now, at two-thirty in the afternoon, the lunch time stampede had come and gone. Over by the windows were two small groups of people—three girls from the kitchens, who were having cups of coffee and doughnuts, and a couple of men who were talking animatedly over sheets with graphs and figures.

Aside from that, it was empty. Perfect conditions for Rose to sip from her mug of coffee and morosely mull over events of the night before.

He had asked her for her opinions and to start with she had had no trouble resisting the invitation. Four years of habit had come to her rescue, saving her from succumbing to the novelty of their situation and behaving in a way that would have been out of character. She had looked at him quizzically, lowered her eyes and paid a lot of attention to her cup of coffee.

He, on the other hand, had stared at her over the rim of his cup, in no particular hurry to go. Then, changing the subject, he had quizzed her about what sort of course she was interested in doing, what qualification would she achieve at the end of it, would she want a job supervising other people or working primarily on her own? Harmless questions that were just what an interested boss would ask, nothing to set her antennae quivering.

When he had asked her about her parents, what her father had done for a living, she had not flinched because the questions had been wrapped up in an intelligent observation about the influences of parents on their children.

‘Based on my own parents,’ he said, standing up and taking his cup to the sink, ‘I should have married years ago. In fact, I’m long overdue for the two point two kids and family dog.’ He grinned at her, a self-deprecatory grin that invited her to enter into light-hearted criticism of his rakish lifestyle.

‘I can’t picture you with two point two kids.’ Rose cupped her chin in her hands and stared up at him, noting the way his big, muscular frame dominated her small kitchen. Not in her wildest flights of imagination had she once thought that her letter of resignation, her bid for a life without him, would see her sitting in her kitchen joining him in a cup of coffee as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Talk about plans being derailed! ‘I can just about get my head around the dog.’

‘What kind of dog?’

‘A very big one.’

‘Because I’m six foot two?’

Well, of course, that comment invited her to look at him and for a few seconds her heart seemed to stop beating. Six foot two of pure blue-eyed, black-haired alpha male.

‘You’d better go,’ she said abruptly, standing up.

‘I will, in about fifteen minutes. I told Harry to go and fill the car up instead of just waiting and he won’t be back yet.’

‘Why did you do that?’ Rose said in dismay. Now that she was on her feet, she couldn’t decide whether to go across to the sink and risk an awkward situation with them both there, squashed side by side into an impossibly small space, or else ignominiously sit back down. In the end she clicked her tongue and turned on her heel, out to the sitting room cum room where everything was done, from television watching to out of hours work to reading the newspaper on a Sunday morning before she walked down to the bakery to buy her weekly treat of croissants.

‘Because,’ his voice came from behind her, ‘it beat the hell out of sitting in the car waiting for me in the dark.’

‘He could have turned the light on and read!’

‘Provided he remembered to come equipped with a book.’

Rose shot him a long-suffering look, which was water off a duck’s back, and sat down. ‘Harry always travels with a book.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I once asked him how he tolerated having to drive you places and then wait, sometimes for hours, until you finished whatever meeting you might have been in.’

‘You’ve been having long conversations with my chauffeur?’ His tone of voice implied that she had been hiding some dirty secret from him, something which he had only just unmasked, much to his horror.

‘Occasionally we walk to the bus stop together if we happen to be leaving at the same time. And there’s no need to look so staggered, Gabriel. People do have lives outside your corporation.’

‘I know that!’

‘Well, stop acting as though whatever happens outside your little world doesn’t exist.’

‘I don’t live in a little world,’ Gabriel grated.

‘Of course you do.’ She tidied up the criticism by tossing in a generality. ‘You’re bound to, really. Anyone in your position would. Running a corporation as huge as yours, having to dictate to other people most of the time, snapping your fingers and knowing that you’ll be obeyed. It’s not the real world.’

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed on her. ‘I’m a petty dictator?’

‘No, of course not! That’s not what I said at all!’

‘I give orders, I snap my fingers and expect obedience. I suppose the next step is to issue the royal command that all my subjects kneel when I walk by!’

‘I’m sorry if I offended you.’

‘You haven’t offended me,’ Gabriel said coolly. ‘You work for me and as my employee you are entitled to an opinion and I appreciate your opinion. I only wish you had had the guts to tell me a little sooner instead of scuttling around like a mouse, smiling and obeying and harbouring unpleasant resentments.’

Rose’s mouth fell open and she stared at him in horror. ‘I wasn’t harbouring resentments,’ she denied, her face turning a deeper shade of red.

‘No?’ Gabriel felt as though he had been struck a blow beneath the belt and he didn’t like the feeling. Underneath the guise of the man who worked hard and played hard, was a man of exceptional self-control. Right now he could feel his iron control shifting and it was a very unpleasant sensation. Especially considering that the woman was no more than his secretary. A valued member of his team, yes, but still a member of his team and nothing of any worth personally to him.

‘No…if I had any problems working for you…well, I would have told you…I wouldn’t have scuttled around like a mouse…’ That description hurt because she could see how he would have arrived at it. She came in, she did her job, she went home. Her own confusing emotional vulnerability as far as he was concerned had made her a more silent person than she was by nature, but how was he to know that? What he knew was a quiet, efficient woman who did her job but never said anything that might have expressed any feelings that were unrelated to work. A highly competent scuttling mouse. And, three months ago, a plump little mouse.

Not for the first time, Rose was besieged by images of all the women he had dated. In her head, they marched past in a long, beautiful procession. She had met them all, or at least most of them because he would often arrange for them to meet him at the office when he had finished work, only he rarely finished when he promised and so they would sit in her office, long legs crossed, their perfect faces blank with boredom as they stared around them or tried to make small talk. Blonde, brunette, red-haired—Gabriel showed no favouritism. His only criteria was that they were gorgeous and intellectually undemanding.

Sometimes Rose would spot an item of jewellery she had bought on his behalf. A diamond bracelet, a necklace, maybe a Hermes scarf, which always went down a treat because it was somehow a little more personal than an item of jewellery, or so they imagined, unaware that Gabriel would have had nothing to do with the choosing.

She looked at him now and saw herself through his eyes. The plump mouse scuttling quietly around, doing his bidding. Little wonder she had become his perfect secretary! And even less surprising that he had been staggered when she had returned from Australia clutching her letter of resignation and sporting a whole new image. He had turned on the charm and pulled out all the financial stops, but her decision to stay had nothing to do with either of those things.

She was a different woman now. She looked different and inside she had changed. She wasn’t going to scuttle any more because she had nothing to lose. She had made her mind up that her life was going down a different path and, if she happened to still be working for him, she was merely biding her time.

She liked the sound of that. Biding her time. It gave her a heady rush of courage.

‘I have no problem working for you, Gabriel, because I’m not afraid of you. I’ve worked alongside you long enough to know…’

‘How to handle me…?’