No Escaping Love

She felt on slightly shaky ground, but it was too late to back off now. Assert yourself, some inner voice urged her. Don’t let yourself be intimidated by your surroundings. ‘I’m afraid that I’m just not interested in escort work,’ she managed. ‘Or—massage.’

‘Massage?’ he enquired faintly. ‘Massage? Pray tell me, Miss Wilde—has the front of my building changed dramatically within the last few hours? Am I the victim of a practical joke? Is there now some lurid neon flashing “Girls! Girls! Girls!” outside?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Then why on earth should you think that I’d be running some kind of cheap racket like that?’ The green eyes glinted ominously.

‘Because—because of the other applicants,’ she burst out. ‘They just didn’t look like the type of women who’d be applying for secretarial jobs.’

‘Perhaps you could be a little more specific—what exactly was wrong with them?’

She squirmed a little under his scrutiny. ‘They looked far too glamorous for that kind of work.’

His mouth turned down at the corners. ‘Not glamorous, Miss Wilde. I don’t consider glamour to be the over-application of perfume, coupled with a wholly inappropriate use of make-up. Tacky is the adjective which springs to mind. Whereas you…’

She didn’t know what description he might have considered suitable for her, because he broke off in mid-sentence to study her even more closely than he had done before.

She was glad that the Mediterranean sun had tanned her skin—at least it camouflaged the slight rise in colour which his perusal brought to her cheeks. She knew that she looked clean, and fairly neat, but that was about all that could be said. The black ringlety curls which fell almost to her waist had been pulled back into a french plait, the neatest way of wearing it, but already another corkscrew-like strand had escaped and kept streaking across her face in a dizzy spiral. Her face was completely free of make-up. The legacy of her background had given her naturally long black lashes which fringed the unusual grey eyes.

She wore a navy linen suit, plain and simple. Perhaps not the best colour choice for her, but eminently the most practical. Unfortunately she had had it for several years, so the skirt was the wrong length—it brushed to just below her knee instead of this season’s style which was several inches above. Her navy leather shoes were completely flat—when you were as tall as she was you didn’t wear heels!

She met his eyes mutinously, her chin lifting fractionally, peeved at such a leisurely appraisal.

His next words, however, were completely unexpected. ‘Gostaria de se sentar, agora?’

‘Obrigada,’ she said automatically, pulling out a chair from one side of the desk and sitting down, her legs tucked neatly together.

His eyebrows shot up somewhere into the dark hair, as he walked round to the other side of the desk and sat facing her. ‘I don’t believe it!’ he exclaimed. ‘You actually speak Portuguese?’

‘Of course I do—the advert specified it.’

‘It may have specified it, Miss Wilde—but I’ve been interviewing for three days now, and you’re only the second person who has understood and responded to the simplest statement in that language.’

Shauna’s eyes widened. ‘You mean none of the others today …?’

The tone of his voice bordered on contemptuousness. ‘There’s one thing, and one thing only, that the assorted bunch I saw today had in common, and that was their avid interest in that ridiculous article—as opposed to the job I’m offering.’

‘What article?’ asked Shauna in bewilderment. ‘I’m not with you.’

The green eyes viewed her with suspicion. ‘Then you must be the only woman in the country who hasn’t read it.’

‘But I haven’t been in the country,’ she pointed out.

He mentioned the name of a well-known women’s magazine. ‘They decided to do a piece on the fifty most eligible men in Britain,’ he growled. ‘And since then, it has caused nearly every female coming into contact with me to display even more of the ripe-plum syndrome than usual.’

Shauna had had enough. True, she hadn’t exactly warmed to any of her fellow interviewees, but his words were a slur on women in general. She began to rise from her seat. ‘What a disgustingly arrogant thing to say—’

‘Oh, do sit down, Miss Wilde—you’re not in the running for an Oscar, you know. You object to the truth, do you—however unpalatable?’

‘I object to your colossal ego,’ she said primly. This rejoinder actually brought a wry half-smile to his lips, the first since the ‘interview’ had commenced, and Shauna was taken aback—his whole face had softened for a moment. The thawing of the glacial green eyes was a definite improvement, she decided.

‘My ego may be colossal,’ he stated. ‘But facts are facts. I’m rich and I’m powerful, and I’ve known enough women to recognise a blatant invitation when I see it,’ he told her arrogantly.

I’ll bet you have, she thought fiercely. This man was so big-headed that she was surprised he could walk through the door! ‘Well, you needn’t fear any “blatant invitation” from me,’ she said crossly.

He leaned right back in his chair, his head resting in the palm of his hands, with the careless grace of some jungle feline just before it pounced. ‘In that case, Miss Wilde—you could be just what I’m looking for.’

She sat upright in the soft leather chair, meeting the bright green gaze with a candid stare of her own. ‘Just what are you looking for, Mr Ryder? Your advertisement didn’t make it very clear, I must say.’

The green eyes had narrowed to alarming slits. ‘Oh, must you? And how would you have worded it?’

‘I would have thought it was fairly obvious—if you wanted only fluent Portuguese speakers, then the advert should have been written in Portuguese.’

There was a pause. The look he gave her was very measured. She half thought that she saw the merest hint of humour twitch at the corner of his mouth, but then decided that it must have been a trick of the light.

‘You are, of course, absolutely right, Miss Wilde. If only the young woman from the specialist staffing agency who came here to take “details” of what I required had been credited with your common sense.’

She ignored his sardonic tone. ‘Didn’t you tell her what you wanted?’

‘Of course I told her!’ he barked back. ‘But she wasn’t listening. She spent the whole time wittering on about “what a beautiful house you have, Mr Ryder” and “your photograph didn’t do you justice at all, Mr Ryder”,’ he mimicked.

Shauna gave an almost imperceptible click of disapproval. How could she have done? she wondered. Women like that gave women in business a bad name. Quite apart from the fact that you wouldn’t need a degree in psychology to recognise that a man like Max Ryder would be completely turned off by such an obvious approach. A man like him would have women in their hundreds, if not thousands running after him.

He was still looking at her. ‘Am I to understand that you don’t approve of women using sex appeal at work?’

Her grey eyes were cold. ‘Certainly not. I hope you complained to the agency?’

He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘I just shan’t use them again. Let’s hope I don’t have to.’ He stared at her consideringly. ‘You seem very interested in this staffing agency, Miss Wilde—perhaps you have an affinity for that kind of work?’

‘But I’m being interviewed for this job, Mr Ryder,’ she answered sweetly. She knew that ploy of old. People in power wanted nothing less than one hundred per cent commitment—give them any indication that some other job might suit you more, and you’d be out on your ear. And besides, this job offered her a roof over her head. ‘Would you like to tell me a little about it?’

A spark of humour glimmered in the green eyes. ‘How about “Tyrant requires PA. Hours long, pay lousy”?’ He began to chuckle quietly.

‘And is that the truth?’ Shauna asked.

A tanned hand moved forward to tap a pencil on the surface of the black ash desk. ‘No, I lied about the pay—that’s good! The tyrant bit you’d have to make up your own mind about—but I don’t suffer fools gladly. I’ve been called some rather unflattering names in my time,’ he said softly. He leaned over to push the bonsai tree a fraction to the right, and then, as if satisfied, settled back in his chair again.

‘I buy and sell,’ he explained. ‘And I deal mainly in property. Since the market has flattened out in this country I’ve diversified a little, and I’m doing several deals in Europe. At the moment I’m in the process of buying a plot of land in the Algarve which I intend turning into a golf and holiday complex. The project is estimated to take two years minimum, hence the need for an assistant who can speak Portuguese.’

‘But you speak it yourself!’ she protested.

He shook his head. ‘Enough to get by—and I’m very good at ordering in restaurants—but the subtle nuances of the language all go over my head, and I need to understand what is being said. I certainly can’t get to grips with legal jargon. Which reminds me—just how good is your Portuguese?’

She needed no second bidding. This bit was easy. She wanted to make it clear to him that she, at least, was not here on false pretences. That unlike the others she was—as she had stated in her application—perfectly fluent in Portuguese. She spoke rapidly, deliberately making her speech both formal and colloquial—impossible for anyone but the seasoned linguist to understand. When she had finished, she saw that another wry smile had appeared. ‘How much did you understand?’ she queried.

‘Very little,’ he admitted. ‘You speak very quickly, and your pronunciation is superb.’

She inclined her head, relishing what she accurately assessed was a rare compliment. ‘Thank you.’