At His Service: His 9-5 Secretary

‘You’re sure you want to go?’ he said after a moment or two had ticked by.

Want to go? She had never wanted anything less. ‘Absolutely,’ she said firmly. To add weight to her words, she looked him straight in the eye, steeling herself to show no emotion as she said, ‘And we had this conversation during dinner.’

He nodded. ‘I wasn’t convinced then either.’

‘I thought I’d made it clear, I need to leave Yorkshire.’

‘Ah, but need isn’t necessarily want.’ There was a significant little silence as he fixed her with a hard, meaningful look. ‘You’ll be miserable in London,’ he declared authoritatively.

‘Thanks a bunch. Some friend you are.’ Sarcasm was a great hiding place.

‘You told me I wasn’t a friend.’ His eyes mocked her. ‘What exactly am I, Gina? How do you see me?’

She didn’t like the way this conversation was going. He was playing games, probably just to kill a few minutes as far as he was concerned.

Fighting for composure, she took a deep breath and lifted her head. She smiled thinly. ‘You’re my boss’s son.’

‘Ex-boss’s son,’ he returned drily. ‘OK, what else?’

‘You’re very good at what you do—accomplished, experienced.’

‘Thank you,’ he said gravely. ‘What else?’

‘Does there have to be more?’

‘I should damn well hope so.’ He paused and studied her face. ‘As a man,’ he said quietly. ‘A person. Do you like me?’

‘You shouldn’t have to ask that, we’ve worked together for just over a year,’ she said weakly.

‘My point exactly. And I would have termed us as friends. You, on the other hand, would not. So I’m beginning to realise I don’t know how your mind works, which means I perhaps don’t know the real Gina at all. In fact, I’m sure I don’t. I didn’t know you had a lover somewhere in the background, for example.’

His eyes were tight on her, questioning. Rallying herself, and aware she was as taut as piano wire, she said coolly, ‘Forgive me, Harry, but I don’t remember you discussing your personal life, either. Any part of it. Whereas you know about my family, friends—’

‘Not all of them, obviously.’

Ignoring that, she continued, ‘My childhood, my youth, my time at university—I’ve discussed all that—whereas you’ve been … guarded.’

There was an awkward silence. He stared at her, all amusement gone. ‘Yes.’ His voice sounded odd. ‘I have. I was. But for what it’s worth I’ve never told anyone the full story about Anna before. Apart from my parents at the time I left the country, that is. Does that count for anything?’

She looked down at the toast in her hand. Her heart was a tight ball of cotton wool in her throat, choking her. ‘I didn’t mean I expected you should have necessarily talked to me, just that you can hardly take me to task for the same thing.’

The silence stretched longer this time. ‘I appreciate that,’ he said at last.

It was still quite dark outside the windows; the rest of the world was fast asleep. It added to the curious sense of unreality which had taken over her. The puppy stirred in her sleep, grunting and snuffling, before becoming quiet as Gina began to stroke her again.

‘So you can’t be persuaded not to go?’

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.’

She had leant against the wall when he’d first spoken, needing its support, and he’d propped one arm over her head, his fingers splayed next to her hair. She was aware of the faint lemony smell of shower gel, the same make as she had found in her ensuite, presumably, but mixed with Harry’s body chemicals it was altogether more spicy, sexier. Summoning brain power from some deep reserve, she murmured, ‘Leaving is more an act of self-survival, Harry.’

He nodded. ‘I’m beginning to understand that. And if you need a friend, any time, any place, call me, OK? I’ll be there.’

He wasn’t a man to offer empty platitudes. Touched and very near to bursting into tears, she didn’t dare to attempt to speak. Instead she leaned forward on tiptoe and kissed him swiftly on his cheek.

She heard his quickly indrawn breath, but he remained quite still as she slipped under his arm and opened her bedroom door. It was only when it was shut that she let out her breath, her heart pounding.

She stood frozen inside the room, her ears straining to hear any sound from the landing, but it was absolutely silent. After some minutes she walked over to her bed, the tears streaming down her face, but her mind too weary to struggle with the reason why. With the robe still intact she pulled the duvet over her, shutting her eyes as the tears continued to seep under the lids.

She fell asleep within a minute, her face damp and salty, and her body and mind utterly spent.

CHAPTER SIX

HARRY stood for some time on the landing, shaken to the core. Which was crazy, he told himself vehemently once his racing heart had begun to steady. It had hardly been a kiss, for crying out loud. And Gina had been quite unmoved, sailing into her room and shutting the door as though she hadn’t just turned his world upside down.

No. No, it hadn’t been.

Yes, it had.

He groaned softly, raking the hair out of his eyes with an unsteady hand and padding to his own room at the far end of the shadowed landing. Once inside he began to pace the floor, his brows drawn together in a ferocious scowl.

What the hell had happened out there? And downstairs; why had he asked her to stay around when he’d promised himself that was the last thing he’d do? What would he have done if she’d agreed to his ridiculous proposal? And it was ridiculous, however you looked at it. She was besotted by some bozo who had messed her around for months, if not years, and she was leaving him because she didn’t want a no-strings-attached relationship.

So what did he do? Harry asked himself grimly. He offered her the same sort of deal. No wonder she’d looked at him as if he was mad.

He walked over to the window, looking down at the sleeping garden where the first blackbird was singing its heart out, and then raised his eyes to the pink-streaked sky. The dawn of a new day. In the aftermath of his breakup with Anna, his mother had told him she viewed each dawn as the start of the rest of her life. The past, with all its regrets and mistakes, was gone and unalterable, the present and the future were virgin territory to make of what you would. He’d appreciated she’d been trying to help, but he’d been so full of anger and bitterness he’d dismissed her ideology as coming from one who had never really had anything to contend with. He had been arrogant then. He was still arrogant, perhaps. Gina would say there was no ‘perhaps’ about it.

Smiling darkly, he turned from the window and looked over the room. When he had bought the house he’d had it redecorated throughout before he had moved in, and his room and en suite were a mixture of dark and light coffee-and-cream. No frills, no fuss, but luxurious, from the huge, soft billowy bed to the massive plasma TV and integrated hi-fi system. Everything just the way he liked it. His life was the way he liked it.

Harry dragged his hand over his face. Or it had been, up until twelve months ago, when he had walked into his father’s office and a blue-eyed, red-haired girl had given him the sweetest smile he’d ever seen. Twelve months. Twelve months of disturbing thoughts and dreams, of dating women he didn’t want to date but who would provide a distraction and give his body some relief.

He shook his head, beginning to pace again. Put like that, it sounded mercenary, even seedy. He’d used those other women, he couldn’t deny it. But they’d been happy enough with his conditions, he reasoned in the next breath.

But with Gina there could be no conditions. He caught his breath, stopping dead and groaning softly. He’d known all along she was a till-death-do-us-part woman. What he hadn’t allowed for was that he would find it so hard to let her slip out of his life, or that she was desperately in love with another man. His arrogance again. He grimaced sourly. He’d taken her completely for granted, he supposed.

No suppose about it. The retort was so loud in his head, it was as though someone else had spoken it.

He hadn’t even considered she was involved with someone. She had always chattered with him so openly he’d felt he knew all about her, from cradle to present day. And all the time there had been another man in the background. Someone she’d laughed and talked and slept with. His stomach muscles clenched.

Was he jealous?

You bet your sweet life he was. And, however he tried to dress it up as anger at this guy who had taken her heart and then carelessly broken it, it was more the picture of them in bed together he couldn’t take.

So if—if—she’d let him provide a shoulder to cry on, what would that mean? Suppose—just suppose—it led to more. It wouldn’t be right to assume she could cope with yet further goodbyes. Would it?

No, he knew damn well it wouldn’t. His stomach muscles unclenched, but only to turn over in a sick somersault. He’d be taking a darn sight more than he was ready to give. He had been young and idealistic when he’d got involved with Anna; that was his only excuse for the gigantic mess that had ensued. He only had to shut his eyes to recall the trapped helplessness he’d felt then, the overwhelming panic and despair.

But Gina wasn’t Anna. In the twelve months he’d known her, she’d been sweet and funny, serious and determined, honest—painfully so at times, at least where he was concerned—and forthright. But never, never manipulative. And ‘cruel’ wasn’t in her vocabulary. She was also as sexy as hell without even knowing it. He’d seen work on the factory floor slow right down when she’d walked through, and some of those guys had had their tongues hanging out.

Using the sort of expletive that would have shocked even the most worldly veteran, Harry thumped his fist into the palm of his hand. He had to get a handle on how he was feeling. Confusion wasn’t an option here. Perhaps that was the answer—feeling like this was turning him into someone he didn’t recognise, so the obvious, the practical thing to do was to let her walk away and then get on with his life. Out of sight, out of mind. It had worked with all the others since Anna.

Something inside twisted, and he answered the feeling with an irritable growl deep in his throat. Enough. He needed some fresh air to clear his head. You couldn’t beat straightforward logic, and it hadn’t let him down in the past. Outside, with no distractions, he could think.

He took a deep breath and tried to relax, glancing at his watch. Another couple of hours before he needed to wake her and get going. He had to get himself sorted and back on track in that time.

He pulled on some clothes without bothering to shower first, leaving the room swiftly and making his way downstairs on silent feet. Once in the garden, he paused. His original intention had been to go for a walk, but sitting out here would do as well.

Breathing in the sharp, scented air, he walked to a wooden bench set at an angle to the dry-stone wall that surrounded the grounds. From there he had a perfect view of the house, which slumbered in the early-morning light. Somewhere close by a wood pigeon was cooing, a little rustle at the base of the wall telling him the tiny harvest mice he’d noticed a few times running up and down the old stone were about. No doubt there were myriad nests deep in the crevices, where generations of the enchantingly pretty creatures had been born. This whole place—the house, the garden, the surrounding countryside—spoke of permanence, he realised suddenly. Subconsciously, had that been one of the reasons which had attracted him to the property when he’d first seen it?

He frowned, not liking the idea. It didn’t fit into how he saw himself. Like everything else that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, it was acutely disturbing, in fact.

Gradually his revolving thoughts began to slow down as the peace of his surroundings took over. The sky lightened still more, garden birds beginning the job of hunting for breakfast, and the flock of sparrows that had residence in the privet hedge separating the swimming pool and tennis court from the rest of the garden squabbled raucously as they went about their business.

It was cold; he could see his breath fanning in a white cloud in front of him when he breathed out. But still he sat on in the burgeoning morning, his mind clearer than it had been for a long, long time.

He loved her. He’d loved her for months, but had been too damn stubborn to admit it to himself because it was the last thing he’d wanted or needed in his life. And now the laugh was on him, because even if he had declared himself she would have told him—gently and kindly, because that was Gina’s way—she was in love with someone else. Height of irony.

It was over an hour later that he rose to his feet, and with measured footsteps went into the house.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN Gina awoke from an extremely decadent and satisfying dream featuring her, Harry and a bowl of whipped-chocolate ice-cream, it was to bright sunlight. She stretched as she opened heavy eyes, and then realised what had woken her as another knock sounded at the bedroom door: Harry’s alarm call.

Her voice husky with a mixture of sleep and remembered passion, she called, ‘It’s OK, I’m awake,’ and then squeaked with surprise with the door opened and Harry strode in carrying a tray.

He seemed unaware that she’d hastily dragged the duvet up to her chin, owing to the fact the robe had worked itself open and under her back, smiling as he said, ‘I didn’t know if you’re a tea or coffee girl, so I brought both.’

Her voice higher-pitched than usual, Gina said, ‘Either, thanks, but you needn’t have bothered.’

‘No bother.’

He placed the tray on the bedside cabinet and gazed at her from the advantage of being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. He was very big and very dark in the pastel-coloured room, and his sheer magnetism detracted from the realisation that he wasn’t dressed in his normal suit and tie for a moment or two. When she could get her breath, Gina said carefully, ‘Are we taking the puppies and then coming back here?’ as she took in his black jeans and casual blue shirt.

He didn’t answer this directly. With a smile that turned the grey eyes smoky-warm, he said, ‘Drink your “either” and then come downstairs when you’re ready. There’s no rush.’