At His Service: His 9-5 Secretary: The Billionaire Boss's Secretary Bride / The Secretary's Secret / Memo: Marry Me?

His voice had been husky, and as Gina raised her head she saw his face was dark, brooding. ‘Of course not,’ she said bleakly. ‘It’s not feasible. Everything’s been arranged. I’ve got to move out of my flat Saturday morning; I wouldn’t even have anywhere to live.’

‘You could use my spare room till you find something else.’

There was something in his eyes that made her feel suddenly light-headed and treacherously weak. Painfully, she said, ‘I’ve got a job in London, a flat. I couldn’t let people down. Anyway, the reason I wanted to leave in the first place is unchanged.’ It was. It was. This sudden interest on his part was all about sex, plain and simple. But it wouldn’t be simple where she was concerned. It would be horribly complicated.

‘I hadn’t been to sleep when I heard you come downstairs,’ he said suddenly.

Her throat felt dry. She took a sip of the tea before she could say, ‘I was worried I’d woken you.’ She was prevaricating; she knew it.

It appeared Harry knew it too. ‘Don’t you want to know why?’

She couldn’t answer, and it was a moment before he said softly, ‘It was the thought of you just a couple of doors away.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Inane, but the best she could do.

‘I like you, Gina.’

The atmosphere in the room had changed several times in the last minutes, now it was thick with an electricity that quivered in the air.

She couldn’t speak, her only movement her hand on the puppy’s silky fur as she continued to stroke it, her eyes fixed on the little body.

‘I realised tonight I don’t want you to leave Yorkshire.’

Taking all her courage into her hands, she raised her face and looked straight at him. She had to kill this stone-dead, right now. The agonies of mind she’d endured over this man had brought her to the inevitable conclusion that she had to walk away from him, and that had not changed. Sooner or later she’d be old news. The only difference was, if she went sooner rather than later, she would still have her self-respect. ‘I don’t do one-night stands, Harry,’ she said flatly, her pain making her stiff.

‘I wasn’t talking about a one-night stand.’

‘Yes, you were.’ She moistened dry lips. ‘Perhaps a series of them, but essentially that’s all an affair would be to you. You told me yourself, that’s all you can offer a woman.’

She saw anger flare in the beautiful grey eyes. ‘I don’t want the full domestic-scene, admittedly, but that doesn’t mean I’m quite the heartless so-and-so you’re painting. I’d like to show you that you can find fun and happiness after this guy, if nothing else.’

‘How noble.’ Suddenly she, too, was furiously angry. ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’

‘You’re not listening to me.’

‘Oh, I am.’ If the puppy hadn’t been in her lap, she would have liked to empty her mug of tea straight over his unfeeling head. ‘Believe me, I am. Out of the goodness of your heart, you’ll take pity on me long enough to take me to bed a few times. About right?’

His face a picture, Harry said, ‘I don’t know what’s got into you.’

‘Into me?’ He took the biscuit, he really did. ‘Harry, if all I was looking for was sex, I could get that anywhere. I’m not quite so desperate, OK? I have to engage my heart and my mind as well as my body.’

‘I know that.’ He glared at her. ‘I know that about you. But we get on, we get on really well in my opinion, and I don’t think you find me totally repulsive. Do you?’ he added a trifle uncertainly.

It was nearly her undoing. Her fingers holding onto the puppy hard enough for it to raise its head and squeak protestingly, Gina said tightly, ‘Harry, I’m sure ninety nine out of a hundred women would take you up on your offer, but I’m the hundredth. Can we leave it at that?’

‘You’re determined to let this man ruin your life? Force you away from your home and friends, everything you’re used to? And don’t tell me you want to go, because we both know it isn’t like that. You’re running away, taking the coward’s way out.’

‘What about you?’ she demanded, her blue eyes flashing. ‘Isn’t this slightly hypocritical? You’ve let Anna turn you into someone else, someone you were never meant to be. Oh, you can prattle on about life changing and shaping us and all that waffle when it applies to you; that sounds quite lofty. But, where I am concerned, it’s ruining my life. Well, let me tell you, Harry, I don’t intend to let my life be ruined, but I think yours has been. You’ve become selfish and shallow, without anything of substance to offer a woman beyond the pleasure of your company in bed. And that wouldn’t be enough for me, not by a long chalk.’

She stopped, aware she’d said far more than she had intended. The silence seemed to stretch for ever until Harry finally spoke. ‘I take it that’s a no, then,’ he said acidly.

Her eyes snapped up to his, but she could read nothing in his expressionless gaze. His face had become the bland, smooth mask he adopted at times, a mask she hated. It spoke of withdrawal and control, and it was forged in steel. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have expressed myself quite that way, but you shouldn’t have pushed me.’ Her voice was calm now, but a part of her was dying inside. For it to end like this—it couldn’t be worse.

‘I see. It’s all my fault.’ He nodded. ‘I had no idea your opinion of me was so low.’

She watched him stretch out a hand for another piece of toast, as though the opinion he’d spoken of mattered not a jot. Slowly she took a sip of her tea. It was cold. Like his heart, she thought, a little hysterically. ‘It’s an opinion formed from the image you project,’ she countered shakily.

He seemed to consider this for a moment, his features in shadow as he leant back in his chair. Gina was glad she could tilt her head and let her hair fall in a curtain as she concentrated on the puppy; the angle of her chair cause the light to fall directly on her, and she needed some help in hiding her turbulent emotions.

After a while, when he remained silent, she sighed inwardly. This was awful. So much was going on in this room that the air was crackling. She’d offended and annoyed him, and she couldn’t take this deafening silence one more moment.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he was there a second before her. ‘The image isn’t all of me,’ he said gruffly.

She knew that. The man she loved was a hugely complicated human being. Enigmatic and cold, funny and warm. The sort of man who could slaughter an opponent on the telephone with a few well chosen, crisp words, and yet who would stop to rescue four little breathing pieces of flotsam and jetsam the world had abandoned.

The first time she’d accepted her heart was irrevocably his was when she’d discovered he’d delved into his own pocket to pay the rent arrears of a house one of their ex-employees lived in. The man had a drug problem, and had worked one day in five in the couple of months before Harry had sacked him. When the man’s wife had come to the works hoping to find him—and it had transpired he’d been even less at home that he’d been at work and she hadn’t seen him for weeks—Harry had taken her home to find three young children were also in the equation. He’d paid the rent arrears, found the woman a job at the works, and arranged for nursery care for the children.

She bit her lip and tried to control the tears that were threatening. ‘I didn’t think it was,’ she said. ‘But you have to understand where I’m coming from, Harry. In the matter of love, relationships, togetherness—call it what you will—we’re aeons apart. I—I don’t want to waste any more time on hopeless liaisons.’ That was the truth at least. ‘I—I want my heart to be my own again, and I’m the sort of woman who couldn’t sleep with anyone, even once, without being involved. It … well it wouldn’t be a fun thing for me. At least, it being fun wouldn’t be enough without love as well.’

She saw him nod. ‘I’d like to know his name, just to be able to tell him what a damn fool he is,’ he said so softly she could barely hear him.

Gina gulped. ‘I’m a fool as well. I knew what I was getting into but I couldn’t find the brake. I don’t think I ever will. That’s why I need to move away. I don’t want to become someone I don’t like.’

‘You love him very much.’

It was a statement, not a question, but Gina answered anyway. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Life’s not all it’s cut out to be at times, is it?’

It was fine until he’d come along. The puppy had never really settled since she’d half-strangled it, and now it began to squirm with definite intent. ‘I’ll put her back with her sisters.’ She stood up, aware of him following her as she walked through to the utility room.

Outside the window, the first pink streaks of dawn were beginning to creep into a charcoal sky, and the dawn chorus was in full song. It was going to be another beautiful spring day.

After depositing her charge with the other sleeping puppies, Gina left the utility room and walked through to the kitchen where Harry was waiting for her. ‘We might get in an hour’s kip before the alarm goes,’ he said, half-smiling. ‘Or they wake up.’

She tried to match his easy manner. ‘I don’t have an alarm.’

‘I’ll bang on your door, don’t worry.’

When they reached the landing, he paused with her outside her room, his voice soft as he said, ‘I didn’t want to hurt you, Gina.’

‘What?’ For an awful minute she thought he had guessed.

‘By rubbing salt in the wound about this guy.’

Her limbs turning fluid, she managed to say fairly coherently, ‘You didn’t,’ as relief flooded her.

‘And you’re not a coward. Far from it.’