The Italian Boss's Secretary Mistress

Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

COMING NEXT MONTH

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS not yet seven-thirty and Gabriel Gessi was already at his desk. It was his daily routine. Half an hour running on the treadmill at his gym, half an hour scything through the empty pool, a quick shower, a shave and then on to his office, already charged to face the onslaught that constituted his average day. The only interruptions to this brutally physical routine came in the form of his frequent trips overseas, although, even then, he would try his level best to kick-start his working day on a physical high.

The past three months had not seen him deviate from this punishing routine, even though the accustomed high had been marred by a succession of irritations that he really should not have been expected to handle. Even though they concerned him.

Gabriel Gessi inhabited that rarefied world of the supremely wealthy and, as such, was not accustomed to dealing with life’s minor irritations. His adrenalin rush came from the aggressive cut and thrust of deals and acquisitions, not from the more prosaic set-backs that dogged most people’s working lives.

Set-back number one had come in the form of the temp who had sailed through the interview process under the successful camouflage of an efficient working girl but who, after one week, had turned out to be a ditzy emotional wreck who spent the majority of her two weeks sniffing discreetly into a handkerchief and muttering lame excuses about boyfriend problems.

Gabriel had no time for females with boyfriend problems and even less time for females who cried. He had had to get rid of her and thereafter had followed a catalogue of mediocrity which had left him gritting his perfect white teeth in frustration.

He couldn’t imagine how the incompetents who appeared in front of him could ever have been fortunate enough to find gainful employment and yet, by all accounts, they had.

He had seen off the last one the Friday before with an audible sigh of relief. She, at any rate, had lasted longer than the expected fortnight, but he reckoned that that had only been because he had swallowed his irritation and, with laudable patience, tolerated her annoying tendency to cower whenever he spoke and to address him so quietly that he’d constantly had to tell her to speak up. Whenever he’d told her to speak up, she’d invariably jumped and spilled something. Coffee. Water. Her cup of tea. Something of a liquid nature had always seemed to be around waiting to be nudged accidentally over, which, in turn, had rendered her even more incapable.

The whole thing had been extremely trying and Gabriel was overjoyed that his life was now going to return to normal.

For the first time in three long months, he had actually strolled through the smoked glass doors of his very plush four-storied offices without a scowl on his face.

Rose would be back today. Life could return to its normal smooth course, leaving him to get on with the process of running an empire without having to worry about the tiresome nuts and bolts.

Of course it was not yet eight and, even though he half expected her to demonstrate her enthusiasm to be back at the helm, he did not reasonably expect her to appear, like him, at the crack of dawn. She would, after all, probably still be recuperating from jet lag. A flight back from Australia was enough to throw even the most seasoned traveller, and Rose was not a seasoned traveller. Even though a fair percentage of his business was founded on the leisure industry, including a range of exclusive hotels scattered all over the world, her knowledge of foreign shores was limited. In the four years she had worked for him, she had only travelled with him a handful of times and, even then, only to Europe. He hadn’t minded. He needed her back at the office anyway, in his absence, making sure that things were ticking over.

In that quiet time before employees started arriving, time which he usually spent going through the emails which would have been forwarded overnight, Gabriel instead swivelled his leather chair round so that he was facing the huge window, staring out at a skyline that was cluttered with the busyness of the concrete jungle, but still oddly beautiful against the crisply blue May sky.

The past three months had showed him how much he relied on Rose. She was well paid but he contemplated giving her another pay rise. Or maybe a company car, although he couldn’t imagine her driving to work. Who did? He, personally, either took a cab or else was driven in by his chauffeur, sparing him the horrors of the London traffic. But she might be able to use a car if she ever wanted to get out of London.

Briefly, Gabriel wondered whether she ever did. Despite his occasional prodding, he realised that he knew precious little about her personal life. She had a talent for deflecting unwanted questions that would have guaranteed her a career in the diplomatic service.

Did she even have a driving licence? He vaguely assumed that everyone did, but maybe not.

Wrapped up in the lazy perambulations of his thoughts, he was only marginally aware of time passing and not at all aware that it was nine until, reflected in the glass pane through which he was still staring, he saw her standing in the open doorway that separated his office from her working area.

For a few seconds he was aware of an unusual slam of emotion, then he glanced at his watch and swivelled round.

Rose involuntarily drew in a deep breath, releasing it very slowly. It steadied her nerves. Even when she had been coming in every day, seeing him every day, he still had, had he but known it, an oddly destabilising effect on her. Something about his sheer, overpowering physicality.

Three months spent away intensified the effect to the point that she felt faint, even though her face remained as pleasantly unrevealing as always.

‘It’s nine o’clock,’ Gabriel said, scowling. ‘You normally get in by eight-thirty.’

The brusqueness of his tone released her from her immobility and she walked towards the chair positioned in front of his desk and sat down. ‘I see you haven’t changed, Gabriel,’ she commented dryly. ‘Still avoiding all the rules of common politeness. Aren’t you going to ask me about my trip to Australia?’

‘No need. I gathered from your emails that you were having a whale of a time. You’ve changed. You’ve lost weight.’

Rose couldn’t help it. She blushed as his blue eyes gave her the once-over.

She fought to remember what her sister had said about getting out of the rut she was in, tearing herself away from her hopeless infatuation with a man who was a health hazard when it came to members of the opposite sex.

But he was just so sinfully sexy. It was impossible not to feel her toes curl in her sensible flats as she drank in the sensuous curve of his mouth, the powerful beauty of his features, the daunting perfection of his body.

‘Yes, I have,’ she admitted steadily, looking down at the letter on her lap and nervously smoothing her fingers over it. ‘It was hot over there. I lived on salads. I’m sorry you had such a problem with my replacements,’ she said, changing the subject because those amazing eyes of his were boring holes through her. ‘I honestly thought that Claire was going to work out or else I wouldn’t have recruited her. What exactly was the problem?’

Gabriel, however, was still reeling from the transformation, not sure that he liked what he was seeing. Gone was the comfortably plump Rose, last seen in a practical navy-blue suit and white roll-neck sweater. In its place was a very slim Rose, showing off a surprisingly eye-catching figure in a tan and black checked skirt that actually revealed a bit of thigh and a figure-hugging black three-quarter length T-shirt that revealed breasts that would be more than just a good handful. The only sensible thing about her were her flat ballet style shoes.

‘I never knew you had legs,’ he mused aloud.

‘Of course I have legs, Gabriel! How do you think I manage to get from A to B? On wings?’

‘But you’ve always hidden them before…’ He moved swiftly from chair to desk and perched there, staring down at her assessingly. ‘And very attractive they are, too. But you might want to observe a little more decorum in the office.’

Rose’s mouth dropped open in outrage at his openly sexist remark.

‘What have you done to your hair? Have you done something to your hair? It looks different.’

‘I haven’t done anything to my hair, Gabriel, aside from having it trimmed, and shall we leave the subject of me behind just for a moment…?’ She fiddled with the letter, not quite knowing how she was going to give it to him without having to sit through the torturous process of watching him read it.

‘Why? I’m fascinated by the transformation. I thought you were going over to help your sister with her new baby. I had no idea you were going for a complete make-over.’

‘I did go to help Grace!’

‘And in the process decided to go on a crash diet, cut your hair and lounge around in a bikini all day so that you could go brown…?’

Rose counted to ten and wondered what exactly she saw in a man who was as arrogant as they came and saw nothing amiss in barging through every warning red light she was giving off without a second’s thought.

‘Have you ever been in the company of a newborn, Gabriel?’

‘Now that’s something I’ve always tried to avoid…’

‘Thought so, because if you had you would know that screaming newborns and tanning on loungers are two things that don’t go hand in hand.’

‘Surely your sister didn’t expect you to look after the thing the whole time!’

‘It wasn’t a thing. It was a baby. A beautiful little boy. They called him Ben.’ Her voice softened as she remembered the feel of that small, wriggling, plump body in her arms, a sensation that had kick-started her determination to change the rut into which she had comfortably sunk. Grace, two years older than her, had been so blissfully happy. Next to her, Rose had had an ugly vision of her own life and its sad limitations and she hadn’t cared for what she had glimpsed. In two years’ time she would be twenty-eight, the same age as her sister, but would she be cradling a newborn infant with a loving husband by her side if she continued doing what she was doing—working flat out for a man who didn’t have a clue she existed aside from her role as his capable secretary? Or would she be the eternal career girl who spent her life improving her house and bettering her lifestyle with nothing to show for it in the end? Well, nothing worth having, anyway. A certain wistfulness crept into her voice as she told him about her experiences in Australia. Grace’s husband, Tom, was an orthopaedic surgeon and had needed his nights to be free of interruption so that he could get enough sleep to enable him to operate safely. Hence, Rose’s input had been more than just a luxury. She had done her fair share of waking up during the nights, settling the baby back to sleep after his feed, but she had enjoyed every minute of it.

Gabriel was hardly listening to her spiel about the baby. Babies would doubtless eventually come for him—he was, after all, half Italian—but for the moment he couldn’t care less about the antics of some undersized human being on the other side of the world.

He was far too engrossed in the nut-brown creature sitting in front of him. The nut-brown creature with the abundant breasts, to which his eyes were repeatedly drawn.

At the risk of appearing pathetically lecherous and feeling an unwelcome stirring in his loins, Gabriel removed himself back to his chair and tried to focus on what she was saying about baby Ben and the crazy inaccuracy of his baby clock. He had never seen that soft look in her eyes before, and he suddenly frowned.

‘I hope this trip hasn’t put ideas into your head,’ he said, interrupting her in mid-sentence, and Rose blinked.

‘Sorry?’

‘Trip? Ideas? Your head?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rose told him bluntly.

‘I’m talking about my perfect secretary suddenly deciding that the time has come for her to dip her toes into motherhood. All that baby business can prove contagious sometimes. I know that for a fact.’

‘Oh, really, Gabriel…’ Rose felt a cold anger sweep through her and she had to make a big effort to keep her voice level. ‘And how would you know that?’

‘I have two sisters and a brother and both my sisters have children, roughly the same ages. I have it on good authority that other women are often afflicted by maternal feelings the minute they get too close to a newborn baby…’

Rose looked at that dangerously sexy face and was unsurprised at his dismissive tone when referring to babies, parenthood and all that that implied. He was a man to whom settling down would be a notion best left on the back burner for as long as was humanly possible. Why complicate a perfectly satisfactory life, having any woman at the click of a finger, by choosing one woman and then, to compound the error, having a child? A screaming, demanding infant that would put paid to all thoughts of mobility?

‘I don’t intend to be trying motherhood any time soon,’ Rose said coolly. ‘I believe it’s necessary to have a serious partner before a woman takes a step like that.’

In that one sentence Gabriel had more insight into Rose than he had ever had. He had always assumed that there was no man on the scene but only because she had never mentioned one and women generally couldn’t help mentioning the men in their lives. Now it was confirmed and he was quietly pleased.

‘And there’s no man in your life at the moment?’ he risked, pressing on in the face of her obvious reluctance to prolong the subject.

Rose flushed and wanted to kick herself for the revealing crack in her armour. She had managed to keep their relationship on a strictly business level by making sure never to reveal anything about herself. She had instinctively known that the more he knew about her, the more dangerous her silly infatuation with him became. He could charm the birds from the trees and without really trying he could easily have sussed how she felt about him had he known anything about her private thoughts.

Of course it no longer mattered. She was forgetting that in the heat of the moment. The realisation gave her the strength she needed and she smiled nonchalantly.

‘They come and go,’ she said airily. ‘You know how it is. I’m between chaps at the moment.’ The small white lie was worth every penny just to see the incredulity in his eyes and she smiled demurely, daring him to voice his shock that she might actually have a life outside his corporation. ‘Anyway…’ she fingered the letter nervously ‘…now that I’ve told you all about my trip to Australia, there’s something I need to give you…’ She stretched forward and placed the white envelope on his desk and a sudden rush of sickening nerves flooded through her in a tidal sweep.

But she reminded herself that she was absolutely doing the right thing. She had talked it over with Grace and just voicing her thoughts had been sufficient to make her realise what she needed to do, how badly she needed to escape the powerful net Gabriel had spread around her over the years to the point where he was always somewhere in her head, whatever the time of day or night, whoever she might or might not be with. It was dangerous and getting more so with each passing day. In another four years’ time her emotions would be so tethered to him that she might well find herself crippled by her own inability to find a suitable mate without resorting to unfavourable comparisons.

He was looking at the letter warily, but he eventually took it, ripped it open and quickly scanned the contents. Several times. Obviously thinking that he had misread something. Finally, when her nerves were on the point of totally shredding, he said, very softly, ‘What’s going on here, Rose?’ Shock and disbelief flared in his deep blue eyes and Rose automatically cringed back, her normal assertive crispness abandoning her in the face of his concentrated, focused energy.

‘It’s my letter…of…of resignation…’

‘I know what it is! I can read perfectly well! What I don’t understand is why it’s staring me in the face!’ The pleasant anticipation with which his day had optimistically dawned, when he had contemplated the satisfaction of his life being returned to normal, now seemed like a distant thing of the past.

First of all, she had strolled in way later than she normally would have, sporting a changed look that would have had every man’s head reeling in appreciation as she strode through the office and, as if that hadn’t been bad enough, she had flung a resignation note down on his desk with all the preliminaries of someone who could not give a damn.

Gabriel, in addition to feeling rage and bewilderment, was assailed by a sense of bitter betrayal.

‘I just feel…’

‘I mean, no warning!’ he said, interrupting her harshly, waving the sheet of paper about in an accusatory fashion. ‘You stroll in here at God only knows what time…’

‘Eight-forty-five!’ Rose objected. ‘Fifteen minutes before I’m technically due to start the working day!’

Gabriel chose to ignore her input. ‘And suddenly you’re telling me that you’re walking out on me!’

‘I’m not walking out on you.’ Rose cleared her throat and willed herself to meet his eye. ‘You’re being melodramatic…’

‘Don’t you dare accuse me of being melodramatic!’ Gabriel bellowed, leading her to fear that in a minute the rest of the office would come hurtling through the outside door to see what the commotion was all about. He stood up and placed both his hands squarely on his desk, every muscle in his body rigid with threat. He couldn’t have felt more shocked by her resignation than if he had walked into his office only to find a gaping hole waiting for him instead.

‘I let you go to Australia,’ he thundered, ‘at massive inconvenience to myself…’

Rose, unwilling as she was to wave any red flags in front of charging bulls, was not about to let Gabriel get away with implying that she had cleared off for three months and left him in the lurch. In fact, she could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had not been available for him. She had worked late more evenings than she cared to remember, had eaten takeaway food in front of her desk way after the rest of the workforce had departed, had cancelled friends at short notice so as not to let him down.

‘I arranged a perfectly good stand-in for you in my absence,’ she pointed out quietly.

‘You arranged to have an emotional wreck take over! A woman who spent the duration of her appointment to me on the brink of a nervous breakdown! Not my idea of a perfectly good stand-in!’

‘And the rest of them?’ Rose hung on to her temper with difficulty.

‘Useless. Surprised they could find jobs anywhere. Can’t imagine what that agency was thinking, having them on their books.’

‘Maybe you should have looked at the pattern,’ Rose murmured under her breath but not so softly that Gabriel didn’t hear exactly what she said.

‘What are you trying to say?’ he roared and Rose jumped and glanced nervously over her shoulder.

‘Nothing!’ she said placatingly.

Wrong move. If anything, her attempts to soothe had stoked his anger even further and he shot out of his chair and moved round the desk to where she was sitting, pressed back against the soft tan leather, hands clenched on her lap.

‘Well!’ He leaned over the chair until his face was thrust aggressively into her line of vision. Rose flinched.

She had known that her letter of resignation would not meet with a favourable response. She was good at her job and over the years Gabriel had become accustomed to her. They worked together in perfect harmony, often barely needing to verbally communicate in order to understand what the other meant. Unlike the secretaries he had had in the past, Rose had never been afraid of him. She had witnessed his rage at some piece of incompetence or other presented to him by one of his employees and had always managed to deflate it, usually by ignoring it altogether.

Her unflappability, she knew, meant a lot to him. And Gabriel would not appreciate the huge change to his routines which her resignation would engender. His private life might be colourful and ever changing but he liked his working life to be ruthlessly ordered and part of the order, she knew, was her predictable presence.

‘I’m waiting!’

‘I’m not going to say a word until you…stop leaning over me, Gabriel. You’re making me feel…threatened…’

‘What do you think I’m going to do?’ Involuntarily, his eyes raked over her breasts, noticing the hint of cleavage he could see in the deep V of her T-shirt. When she didn’t answer, he pushed himself away from her and raked his fingers through his black hair in frustration.

Rose instantly felt her breathing get back to somewhere near normal. ‘Every one of those temps couldn’t have been hopeless, Gabriel.’ He glanced at her over his shoulder and their eyes met. ‘You intimidate people. You probably intimidated them.’

‘Me? Intimidate people?’ He resumed his position, perched on his desk so that he was staring down at her. ‘Maybe, occasionally,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘But in the world of business, you know that a little intimidation can be a very handy tool. Is that why you’re leaving? Because you just don’t like working for me?’ Gabriel frowned, trying to make sense of the incomprehensible. She had been happy enough with her work when she had departed for Australia. Now, here she was, suddenly keen to head off to greener pastures.

Not that they existed. As far as Gabriel was concerned, she was on to a damn good deal working for him. Salary wise, she would be hard pressed to match it at any other company in London. Probably in the country, for that matter.

He wondered what that sister of hers had said to her about her job in London. Holed up in some rural retreat in the outback, she had probably been keen to encourage Rose into a similar situation, maybe dump the fast pace of city life in favour of something a little more laid back.

‘Has that sister of yours tried to persuade you that leaving London is a good idea…?’ He frowned as the pieces of the puzzle began reforming in his head. ‘Don’t tell me that you’re stupid enough to consider moving to Australia!’ Shock mixed with something else ripped through Gabriel like a jolt of electricity. ‘Just because your only living relative happens to be there! And what if she decides to move somewhere else? What if that husband of hers gets a transfer to somewhere even more unlikely? Do you pull up your roots and follow them?’ He snorted with disbelieving laughter.

‘If I’m that stupid, then why the fuss if I leave?’

‘Stop fishing for compliments, Rose.’ Gabriel began pacing the room and Rose watched his restless progress out of the corner of her eye until he was back behind his desk, reclining back in the leather chair so that he could look at her with accusatory disapproval. ‘You know I value what you do for me. I don’t need to say it. Are you planning on going to Australia?’ For some reason he found that he didn’t care for the thought of that at all. He tried to imagine her forging a life in the outback, stuck in the middle of nowhere. But then, she wouldn’t be forging it on her own, would she? Hooded blue eyes took in the now slim figure in front of him, her skin bronzed and glowing from three months spent in the sun, her brown hair shiny with copper highlights and falling in a thick, blunt bob to her shoulders. No, some Neanderthal outback rancher would be all too happy to play caveman to her. That thought made his teeth snap together and he frowned at her.

‘No,’ Rose informed him wearily. ‘I’m not planning on moving out to Australia and I know you value what I do here.’

‘Then why?’ He gave one brief scathing glance at the offensive letter lying on his desk. ‘One polite paragraph is all I deserve after being an exemplary and generous boss to you over four years?’

‘I didn’t think you would like flowery speeches. And there was nothing more to say, anyway. I really am leaving because I think there are still things out there left to do and I can’t do them while I’m working here, even though, yes, you’ve been a very generous boss.’

‘Things left to do?’ Gabriel frowned.

‘I…yes…’

‘What things?’

‘A business course, as a matter of fact…’ Among other things, she thought, such as developing a life of my own, a life that included finding a suitable mate, settling down, having a family, doing all the things most women dreamed of from a young age.

‘You want to do a business course?’ He made it sound as though she had just revealed a secret yearning to fly to the moon.

‘As a matter of fact, I do!’ Rose tilted her chin up defensively, her normally serene face flushed with sudden annoyance that he found it so incredulous that she should have ambitions outside the ones he so kindly allowed her. ‘I left home at eighteen,’ she snapped, revealing yet more of a life she had previously been keen to keep under wraps, ‘to look after my mother and when she passed on I did a secretarial course, took a series of temporary jobs just so that I could get sufficient funds together to put myself through a really good intensive course…If you recall, I came to you as a temp…and ended up staying here permanently…’

‘You never said…’ Gabriel murmured, reading the dismay on her face as she contemplated her outburst. So his cool, calm, level-headed secretary had fire burning inside. Of course he’d suspected that from the very start. ‘What was your sister up to while you were looking after your mother?’ he asked curiously, sidetracked by that window into her private life.

Rose looked at his devilishly handsome face and tried to wriggle back to her secure guarded territory but he was having none of it. After a few seconds of thick, expectant silence, she shrugged and looked away. ‘Grace was at university and then she met Tom and everything got…very hectic for her. So. Anyway, that’s one of the things I want to do…’

‘And you’ve checked out these business courses?’

‘Well…’

‘No point spending time doing a business course only to find that it qualifies you to bounce right back here…’

‘Thanks for the tip, Gabriel. I’ll make sure I’m very careful what sort of course I sign up to.’

He was looking at her thoughtfully, so thoughtfully that her antennae pricked up, waiting for some passing remark which she suspected she wouldn’t like.

‘Naturally, I’ll work out my notice,’ she ventured into the lengthening silence. No response. She plunged on, wondering whether this silent tactic was designed to make her feel guilty. He certainly wouldn’t be beyond using every trick in the book to get her to stay, if that was his goal, especially now that he had a benchmark for comparison after three months of unsatisfactory stand-ins. ‘I intend to take just a couple of months off after I leave here, enjoy the summer…maybe even go abroad somewhere…and then the course will start in September…’

‘And it never occurred to you that we could discuss this…? Maybe arrive at a conclusion satisfactory to both of us…?’

‘Not really. I mean…’

‘Why not?’ Gabriel was in there like a shot. ‘Because underneath it all, you have a problem with working for me?’

‘Of course not!’ The last thing she needed, not that it mattered, was to leave Gabriel with the ego boosting impression that he had an effect on her.

‘Then why didn’t you come and discuss your dilemma with me?’

‘I really only thought about it when I was in Australia,’ Rose admitted. ‘I had time to think out there and to realise that I needed a change if I was to advance my career…’

Gabriel, struggling with the prospect of a litany of incompetent secretaries cowering and ducking for cover every time he raised his voice, mentally cursed her absent sister once again for introducing strife into his otherwise perfectly uncomplicated working life.

‘And I agree with you,’ he told her suddenly.

‘You do?’

‘Of course I do.’ He leaned back, linking his fingers behind his head, and surveyed her with an expression of sympathetic understanding that she had never seen in evidence before. ‘You’re young. You’re clever…’ He allowed the throwaway compliment to sink in. ‘You want a career beyond taking orders from me. Not,’ he felt compelled to add, ‘that I haven’t given you your fair share of responsibility. In fact, considering your original duties were filing, typing and fending calls, you’ve come a long way. But that’s by the by…’

Rose tried to keep up with this surprising twist. Not that Gabriel wasn’t unpredictable. He was. She just hadn’t anticipated any such reaction to her resignation because, really, how many ways were there to react to a resignation letter? And so he was now accepting it. Why feel disappointed with an outcome she knew was inevitable?

‘I can understand your drive to go further…After all, I am a perfect example of someone who has been there, someone who was driven to better himself…’

‘I don’t plan on dizzy heights…’

‘Did I ever tell you that my parents started with nothing? That my father’s business began with dabbling in the rag trade? Just enough money to raise us without too much hardship but not so much that we didn’t know from very young the importance of an education and the importance of making the most of our talents?’

‘Don’t worry, Gabriel, I won’t be competing with you on your level in two years’ time…!’

Their eyes met in perfect understanding as he appreciated the gentle, teasing irony behind her remark and Rose looked away quickly. He might not have much inside information about her private life but in many ways he knew her better than anyone else ever had and certainly cottoned on to her quirky sense of humour quicker than anyone she had ever known. Even Grace had seemed left behind sometimes.

‘If you had told me sooner I would have happily arranged to fund your course.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Day release. Even two days a week. You keep the salary you’re at and the only condition is that you train up someone to fill in for you when you’re not here. And, when your course is complete, I guarantee you a junior position on the top floor. I was also thinking of rewarding your efforts here with a company car…’

‘I’m not sure…’

‘So we’re back to that invisible reason for quitting and since it’s nothing to do with what I have to offer by way of benefits, then it must have something to do with me…’

‘I told you, of course not!’

‘Then why don’t you give it a go, Rose…?’Gabriel leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk. ‘I don’t want you to go…’ His navy-blue eyes swept over her in a way that felt almost like a caress and Rose shivered with guilty pleasure. I don’t want you to go—lover’s words. ‘I need you,’ he compounded the ambiguous intimacy of his previous plea with a husky murmur. ‘If the arrangement doesn’t suit you, then you can leave me. No hard feelings.’ Then he did something he had never done before. He said please.

CHAPTER TWO

THE following morning found Rose on the phone, frantically trying to do some research into business management courses. When she had vaguely mentioned her desire for a change in career to Gabriel, she had had no idea that she would have been called to account. Yes, somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she had toyed with the idea of gaining a couple more qualifications, but really her decision to leave had been based on more pragmatic grounds. She had just thought it time to disentangle herself from Gabriel’s pervasive influence over her life.

Somehow she had been manoeuvred into the unenviable position of embarking on a course, which she had supposedly checked out in depth. In addition to this technical hiccup, she would now have to set about recruiting someone to fill in for her when she wasn’t around.

When she had discussed her situation with Grace, resignation had seemed the most appropriate solution and thousands of miles away, with a warm Australian sun beating down and the thought of London and her job like a hazy dream, she had imagined a clean cut conclusion. Her letter of resignation, some surprise on Gabriel’s part and a valiant attempt to persuade her out of her decision, but of course in her head she never wavered. Roll on two years and she could easily see herself in a fulfilling relationship with a mystery man, someone kind and thoughtful, with the sound of wedding bells clanging on the horizon.

She hadn’t banked on the reality of actually walking back in to her office, seeing him again for the first time in three months. She hadn’t taken into account how devastating his smile could be and she certainly hadn’t envisaged her big, powerful boss with his killer looks gazing at her in that pleading manner and begging her to stay.

She thanked heaven that he was out of the office for the day, giving her ample opportunity to begin researching courses. So far only two stood out as worth pursuing as they seemed to offer what she thought she wanted and both were within fairly easy commuting distance. By the time lunchtime rolled around she had arranged to see both towards the end of the week.

Keeping her afloat whenever she contemplated the rapid desertion of her cause was the thought that she had only promised Gabriel to give it a go, leaving her the option of walking away after three months if she chose.

She was still at her desk at six-thirty, playing catch-up with all the work she had pushed to one side having spent the morning on the phone to colleges.

She was hardly aware of Gabriel until his shadow on her desk alerted her to his presence, then she glanced up, involuntarily sucking in her breath as their eyes met.

‘I guess you missed this…’ He raised his eyebrows and grinned. ‘Hence the fact that you’re still here slaving away while everyone else has gone…’He dumped an assortment of files on her desk. ‘A few more bits to keep you busy but you can sort them out tomorrow. One or two problems with that new build hotel in the Caribbean. We need to source a more reliable supplier. Roberts in Barbados should be able to help you with that one.’ He moved round to see what she was doing on her computer and Rose breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t found her scrolling down colleges in the London area.

‘This is what I missed,’ he murmured with heartfelt sincerity. ‘Your efficiency. Knowing that I could leave the office and not return to find things in utter chaos and some bloody incompetent woman weeping behind her desk somewhere.’

Rose clicked off her screen and gritted her teeth together. And that was just what she hadn’t missed! His never-ending appreciation of her as his perfect secretary.

‘Which is why I would like to take you out to dinner tonight.’

Her head swung round as she edged out of her chair, taking care to avoid making physical contact with him in the process.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’m inviting you out to dinner,’ Gabriel repeated, taken aback at her patent lack of enthusiasm. ‘You’ve been out of the country for three months…’ He frowned and tried hard to suppress his annoyance at her studiously blank expression. ‘There are work matters to discuss and there is no way we would get the concentrated time to discuss them in the office.’

‘Well…’

‘If I don’t bring you up to speed with things, you’ll find yourself left behind and the last thing I need is to have to set aside yet more time during the working day to sort things out.’

‘Of course,’ Rose said politely. ‘I’ll just fetch my jacket.’ She logged off the computer, aware of his eyes following her every movement, and was self-consciously aware of her body as she stuck on her black linen jacket, a recent purchase that was just right for the fairly warm late spring weather.

Along with her change in shape had come a change in wardrobe. Out had gone the frumpish size fourteen clothes she had once hidden behind and in their place was an array of size tens, clothes with shapes and textures and colours she had never really been able to carry off before.

‘I’d rather we weren’t too late, though,’ she said, bending down to scoop up her handbag which was on the floor by her desk. ‘I still have unpacking to do. And you needn’t worry about me falling behind with my work. I intend to spend the weekend at home with some of the files making sure that I know exactly what’s going on with all our accounts.’

‘Right.’

‘Where are we going to eat?’ Rose glanced down at her working clothes. ‘I’m not really dressed for anywhere too fancy.’ And Gabriel didn’t really do cheap and cheerful. Not because he was a crashing snob but because he never really had any need to. She should know. She had booked enough restaurants for him in the past to realise that gingham tablecloths and bare floorboards were not his style. Something a little wicked stirred inside her.

‘I know a very good Italian,’ she said, pausing to look at him. ‘And it’s close to where I live so I can get home relatively quickly once we’re done…’

‘Fine.’ Gabriel was already regretting his invitation. It had not been meant as a working dinner, despite what he had said, and he now felt as though he had been pushed into a corner, forced to gear everything towards business when really he wanted to unwind and, if he were honest with himself, find out a bit more about the woman who had gone to Australia and returned completely changed.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’

Gabriel shrugged. ‘One restaurant is as good as another when it comes to discussing work.’

He called his driver to collect them from the front of the building and discovered that he was only marginally interested in what Rose had to ask about what had been happening in the office during her absence.

By the time they had reached the restaurant a solid forty minutes later, having waged war with the late evening traffic that had reduced some of the roads to gridlock, he was mightily fed up with discussing mergers and acquisitions. He was even more fed up with the interested but impersonal tone of her chatter. He couldn’t remember ever having had such a pressing urge to get behind the smoothly calm surface and see what lay there.

‘I hope this isn’t too casual for you, Gabriel.’

Gabriel narrowed his eyes and tried to work out whether there was a certain insolence in her voice, although when he looked at her she just seemed politely concerned.

‘Why should it be too casual?’ he asked as they entered the restaurant. It was more of a pub than a restaurant, with after work people milling around by the bar area, while others were seated at wooden tables in small, animated groups. And, to his surprise, Rose seemed to be known at the place. Someone materialised out of thin air, smiling and kissing her on both cheeks before showing them to a table tucked away at the very back.

‘Because I know you tend to like more expensive places.’

‘Oh, do I?’

‘Yep.’ She turned to him and smiled dryly. ‘Don’t forget I book them for you.’ She lowered her eyes and slipped into her seat. ‘Beautiful women like expensive restaurants, you once said. They enjoy the goldfish bowl feeling, hence you go to places where seeing who’s there is half the fun.’

‘I once said that?’

‘You did.’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t accuse me of being shallow.’

Rose shrugged, glanced at him and glanced away. ‘Each to their own. Besides, I work for you.’

‘That’s never stopped you from speaking your mind.’

Rose flushed and remained silent. Yes, she had always spoken her mind, had never been scared to disagree with him and he had allowed her to be as open as she felt. Was that one of the reasons why her emotions had become involved, even though she had tried desperately hard to rein them in? He might be a hard task master, with almost zero tolerance of anything that smacked of laziness or stupidity, but he was also the fairest man she had ever met and willing to listen to anyone’s opinions, provided they could be backed up. It was an immensely persuasive side of his personality and one to which she had been exposed for four long years.

‘Is this your local?’ Gabriel asked, changing the subject. He looked around and, after a few minutes, his gaze finally rested on her. ‘I didn’t imagine that this would be your kind of place.’

‘Why is that?’ Rose answered with asperity.

‘Because…it’s pretty noisy.’

‘And I’m more of a library kind of person?’

‘You’re putting words into my mouth, Rose.’

‘I’m tired.’ She was grateful for the waiter’s interruption, placing her order without bothering to look at the menu. ‘Why don’t you fill me in on what’s been happening? I know a bit from your emails, but if you give me some details it’ll be easier for me to catch up.’

‘That Australia flight’s a long one,’ Gabriel said, avoiding the subject of work, which seemed unutterably boring just at the moment. ‘I can understand why you’re tired. And I expect you miss your sister as well, hmm…?’

‘Yes. Of course I do. Although they’re planning on returning to England to live some time next year. Both of them feel it’s time to come back home now that baby Ben is on the scene.’

Their food arrived and Rose was amused to see surprise register on Gabriel’s face as he noted the quality of the dishes. He looked up, caught her eye before she could look away, and grinned.

‘Now I’m going to get a sermon on the foolishness of people who pay over the odds for a meal they can easily get somewhere else at half the price…’

‘No, of course not.’

‘I would come to places like this if it weren’t for the fact that clients and women expect more elaborate entertaining.’

‘I can understand the clients, but maybe you need to mix with a different kind of woman.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Say what?’

Rose, who had not really been paying much attention to what she had been saying, looked up to find his midnight-blue eyes fixed on her. Weren’t they supposed to be talking about work? Wasn’t that the whole point of them being here?

‘I’ve never really known what you think about my…women…but I guess you must have had opinions on them over the years. After all, you’ve met them all…’

‘Not really…’ Oh, yes, she had opinions on them! Beautiful, empty-headed, utterly unthreatening. For a long time she used to wonder how a man as dynamic and astute as Gabriel could ever be interested in the stereotype of the blonde bimbo. Yes, she could understand his need to have a beautiful woman on his arm. Like attracted like, after all. But wouldn’t he have been more challenged by a woman who had something to say for herself? Then gradually she had realised the simple truth, which was that he didn’t want to be challenged. He got enough challenge with his work. What he wanted was docility. When he eventually decided to settle down, he would doubtless want that same docility from a woman who would be content to serve him, have his children and patiently stand by while he worked all the hours God made. Behind the passion and seduction of his work, he would require a soothing, calming domestic life.

‘Is that why you’re looking at me with such disapproval?’ Gabriel asked and Rose caught herself with a little start. While she grappled with the dilemma of working out how to lead the conversation back into safe waters, Gabriel seized the moment to press her for an answer.

‘Was I?’

‘Oh, yes. Your little mouth was pursed tightly with disapproval!’

Rose glared at him and he grinned back at her, knowing very well that his description would have got under her skin. It wasn’t like him to tease. Up until now she had rebuffed every effort he had ever made to move their relationship on to a more cordial basis and he had obligingly backed off, but something had changed and, although he couldn’t put his finger on it, he knew that he was rather enjoying the change.

He smiled down into the glass of wine he was cradling in his hand. She had stuck to water but, with a driver waiting patiently for him outside, he had decided to have a couple of drinks.

‘What you do in your private life is entirely up to you.’ Rose heard the primness in her voice with mounting irritation. ‘If you choose to go out with women whose IQs are in single figures, then that’s your business!’

‘Ah. I never took you for an intellectual snob,’ Gabriel murmured in an infuriatingly meek voice.

‘I am not an intellectual snob!’ Rose defended hotly.

‘And how,’ Gabriel continued with pseudo-thoughtfulness, ‘can you condemn women who like having money lavished upon them unless you’ve been in that position before?’ He paused. ‘Have you?’

‘No, but…’

‘I mean, how do you know that you wouldn’t enjoy being taken to the finest restaurants? Having pearls and diamonds bought for you? Being flown to Paris or Venice for the weekend?’

‘I don’t recall booking too many flights to Paris or Venice for weekend jaunts,’ Rose said tartly. Gabriel had no problem in spending vast sums of money on gifts for the women who came and went in his life but setting aside time for them was an entirely different thing. He rarely had time off and when he did he invariably went back to Italy to visit family. She should know. She didn’t think he had ever booked a flight himself.

‘You know what I mean,’ Gabriel said irritably.

Torn between abandoning the conversation and standing up for herself, Rose took the plunge and for once set aside her determination to keep her thoughts to herself. ‘I don’t have to have expensive things bought for me to know that it wouldn’t be what I wanted. My parents both instilled in us a healthy awareness that money doesn’t buy happiness.’

‘Oh, I know that money can’t buy happiness,’ Gabriel agreed readily. ‘At least not happiness of the lasting kind, but it can buy fun…’

‘Depends if you think fun is having a six-month fling, dusting yourself down and moving on,’ Rose muttered.

‘I take it you don’t think it is…’

‘This is a ridiculous conversation. Weren’t we supposed to be talking about work? Apparently, I need to be brought up to speed just in case I get left behind.’

Gabriel knew damn well that his comment had been totally unjustified, but hell, he had invited the woman out to dinner only to find that she had no desire to go so apologising wasn’t on his list of priorities. Nor was discussing work. He couldn’t think of anything duller than discussing acquisitions, profit and losses, breakdowns in supply and demand with one of his hotels, not when the alternative was so much more interesting.

‘There’s no chance that you’ll get left behind, Rose,’ he said placatingly. He nodded to the waiter to clear their plates and when another glass of wine was offered he looked enquiringly at her dubious expression.

‘Please don’t tell me that that nasty concept called fun also includes the occasional bit of alcohol…’ That, he was pretty sure, would really get her bristling, and it did.

‘Of course I have a drink now and again! I do have a life outside work, Gabriel.’

‘Tell me about it.’ He was in there like a shot, having dispatched the waiter to bring them a glass of wine each. Large. ‘No boyfriends with lavish spending habits—that would be unhealthy and bad for the soul…’

Rose opened her mouth to respond and then shut it. Instead she gave him a wry look. ‘The devil finds work for idle hands, Gabriel. I feel very sorry for those poor girls if you were like this with them.’

‘Like what?’ Gabriel asked piously.

‘Barbing them.’

‘None of them would have been equipped to handle it.’

‘Or maybe you respected them more…’ Rose insinuated quietly.

‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous. Is that what you really think? That I don’t respect you? Or are you just fishing?’ When she didn’t answer, he raked his fingers through his hair and gave her a brooding, frustrated look. ‘They were bloody useless, the lot of them. I meant it when I said that I needed you, Rose. I do.’ His magnificent blue eyes flicked over her and he added, wickedly, ‘Need you and want you…’ He watched slow colour infuse her cheeks.

Rose, accustomed to his brilliance, his impatience and his temper, which was seldom directed at her, was thrown off balance by his flirtatious charm, something which she had always assumed was abundant but reserved for the women he dated. She didn’t like it. It made her feel vulnerable and uneasy and she stoically hung on to her composure and managed to say, without any inflection whatsoever in her voice, ‘You think you do, Gabriel, but no one is indispensable, least of all a secretary.’ She sipped her wine and eyed him over the rim of her glass.

‘Don’t underestimate yourself.’

‘I’m not. But I’m not about to think that your working life will grind to a halt if I’m not around.’

‘Maybe not grind to a halt,’ Gabriel admitted. ‘But run considerably less smoothly. I’ve spent the past three months finding that out.’ He was amused to realise that she had never voiced her opinions to him about the women in his life. He also realised that, without using so many words, she had managed to imply distaste with how he conducted his private life. Belatedly it occurred to him that she had widely overstepped the mark with her smugness and she had got away with it. How did that follow when he prided himself on being a man who knew exactly where to draw his verbal boundaries? Healthy criticism on the work front was fine. In fact, to be encouraged! His personal life was, however, his own business and not up for discussion. He chose to disregard the little voice in his head telling him that he had solicited her opinion. It was not really fair now if he castigated her for having one because he didn’t like it.

She had moved on, though. Was defining the role of secretary and why it was a position relatively easy to fulfil. Sounding like a member of the Personnel department giving advice to a prospective interviewee.

Gabriel grunted non-commitally.

‘Basically,’ she concluded, ‘if I’m to be successful recruiting someone, then you need to tell me exactly what you’re looking for.’

‘Recruiting someone?’

‘For the days when I’m at college.’

‘How many days would that be?’

‘I…I’ll be able to tell you that by the end of the week and I can start recruiting in a few weeks’ time.’

‘Naturally, you will have to continue managing sensitive clients and anything that might be of a confidential nature.’ He signalled for the bill and contemplated the dispiriting prospect of a never-ending train of incompetent girls scuttling around, trying and failing to keep up with him. ‘The key quality I’m looking for is an ability to function without behaving like terrified little rabbits every time I speak.’

‘We’ve been through that,’ Rose said patiently. She glanced at her watch and realised that it was a lot later than she had imagined. And they still hadn’t touched upon all that work which apparently she needed to be filled in on. ‘We haven’t got down to discussing work,’ she pointed out.

‘And now you have to go? Or else you might turn into a pumpkin?’ He frowned and tapped in the pin number for his card. ‘I’ll drop you back to your house.’

‘No need. I live within walking distance.’

‘Nonsense. I would never let a woman walk back to her house at night.’

‘I do it every single day, Gabriel! Do you think I take taxis to and from work? The bus stops just down from here and I walk to my house quite safely, no matter how dark it is.’ She didn’t really know why she was bothering to protest because Gabriel always did what he wanted to do. Right now he wanted to play the gentleman and drop her back to her house.

‘You need a car,’ he said abruptly.

Rose stopped dead in her tracks and looked at him with her mouth open. ‘I need a what?’

‘A car. A company car. The fact that you haven’t got one has been an oversight on my part.’

‘You must be desperate to hang on to me,’ she said wryly, ‘if you’re now offering me a car…’

‘It’s not exactly unusual for a PA to have a company car.’ He held open the car door for her to slide in. ‘Where do you live?’

Rose gave his driver the directions. Today was proving to be a day of firsts for her and she was uneasily aware that a number of them didn’t sit well with her. This was the first time Gabriel had managed to crash through her carefully maintained barriers. No, they hadn’t shared confidences over a bottle of wine but he had seen her professional mask slip and that wasn’t good. It was also the first time he had flirted with her. Or at least spoken to her in that velvety, amused voice that she had only ever heard him use occasionally on the phone to one of his women. It was also the first time they had shared a meal together in a restaurant, just the two of them with no particular work agenda driving the occasion. None of these firsts did anything to soothe her frayed nerves at being back in his company after three months.

It was odd but it almost felt as if a door between them had opened. Over the years she had managed to cope with her feelings for him by being very careful to make sure that their roles were defined. He was her boss, a man she respected, got along well with but ultimately a man who gave her orders which she was obliged to follow. Over time, as they had grown into one another, his orders had stopped resembling orders but she had never deluded herself into thinking that she was anything to him but a very useful tool.

Some of the things she had been requested to do, as far as she was concerned, went beyond the bounds of secretarial duties. Presents for some of his girlfriends, flowers at the end of an affair, bookings for restaurants. She had done them without argument, however. She had never volunteered an opinion and he had never asked her for one. Tonight, some of those barriers had been eroded and Rose felt like a snail suddenly deprived of its protective shell.

Just thinking about it made her skin tingle and she was relieved when, after just a few minutes, the car pulled up outside her house. She pushed open her door, smiling a very hurried thank you, and was only aware that he had followed her up to her front door when he reached down to take the bundle of keys out of her fingers.

‘My mother always told me to see a lady to her front door. You’re trembling.’

‘It’s a little chilly out here.’ Rose watched his long fingers as he turned the key in the lock. ‘I think I must have become accustomed to the milder weather in Australia.’ He handed her back the keys and their fingers brushed. ‘Well—’ Rose planted herself in the doorway and stared at him in a no nonsense manner ‘—goodnight and thank you once more for the dinner. I’m sorry we didn’t get around to discussing work-related issues. Perhaps I could check your diary for the next week or so and slot in a convenient time for us to go through the problem areas…?’

‘I’ll leave a note about which files you need to check on your desk and you can have a look at them some time during the day, when you get a free moment.’ He placed one foot in the doorway but Rose didn’t notice. She was too busy frowning and trying to work out why he had invited her out if the work issue could have been solved by way of a note on her desk.

‘You could have told me that in the first place, Gabriel!’

‘True,’ he was quick to admit. ‘But I really wanted to discuss the matter of your temporary replacement with you.’

‘I won’t be starting my course until September, in all probability! There’s no urgency for the interviewing process to begin as yet! We’re only in May.’

‘The end of May,’ Gabriel said darkly. ‘Before you blink, we’re in July and you know how normal life stops in summer with people clearing off on holiday. After the fine examples of the possibilities on offer, I would say that the interviewing process needs to begin sooner rather than later.’

Rose released a frustrated sigh.

‘Have you a problem with that?’

‘No. Not at all. You pay my salary. How can I have a problem with that?’ She smiled to make a joke of it, but there was no answering humour in his eyes.

‘In other words, what I pay you buys your compliance even if you don’t agree with what I’m asking you to do.’

His remark was so close to what she had only been thinking herself minutes earlier that she blushed and looked down, to see where his foot was firmly planted.

‘I’m beginning to think that all this talk about wanting to move forward your career and being held back professionally by working for me is just so much nonsense…’He wedged his foot a little more firmly through the doorway and leaned against the door frame, arms folded, his expression one of calculating suspicion. ‘I smell mutiny in the ranks and experience has taught me that mutiny usually arises from personal grounds…’

‘You’re being over-imaginative, Gabriel…’ She licked her lips nervously and wondered where he was going with this one. ‘If I had…any personal problems with working for you, I would have told you…’

‘Would you?’ He pushed himself past her, taking her by surprise. ‘Money can buy loyalty, but loyalty that’s only skin-deep, and that’s no good to me.’ He turned to her and Rose was forced to marvel at the speed with which he had managed to get inside her house and was dwarfing its small confines.

‘Can we discuss this in the morning?’

‘Why? You know, it’s actually only a little before nine. You’ll recover from jet lag quicker if you try and maintain your normal waking times. And anyway, if there’s an underlying problem I want to hear about it.’

‘I told you…’ She hoped that she was the only one who could detect the desperation in her voice.

‘I would never have stopped you from saying what you thought…’ Gabriel said slowly, his eyes raking over her embarrassed face. ‘And I’m insulted that you would think me such an autocrat that you might be scared to voice your opinions in case I sacked you…or cut your salary…’

‘Of course I didn’t think that!’

Gabriel could spot a sincere answer when he heard one. Anyway, he was pretty sure she knew him better than to think that he might really try to control her with her pay cheque, but she had given him pause for thought. Starting with her letter of resignation and ending with remarks which, in a way he couldn’t put his finger on, carried the ghost of criticism in them. Something in the tone of her voice and the lowering of her eyes had pricked his curiosity. Curiosity was an untapped emotion for Gabriel. The frenetic pace of his work life got his adrenalin flowing but he had been in the game long enough for uncertainty and nerves to have disappeared. He ran his empire with the confident hand of a master horseman controlling the reins of his animal. And there was no woman who incited his curiosity. Interest, yes, lust, definitely, but curiosity, not at all.

So he was like a dog with a bone now, especially since he had long ago formed very preconceived notions of his efficient secretary, notions which were in the process of being dismantled.

‘Why don’t you make us both a cup of coffee…?’

‘No!’

‘Because underneath all the yes, sirs and no, sirs and three bags full, sirs you can’t really stand to be cooped up with me for any length of time?’

That was so far from the truth that Rose burst out laughing and after a while Gabriel grudgingly allowed his bunched muscles to relax.

‘Okay. Maybe a quick cup of coffee. I wouldn’t want to keep your driver waiting.’ She headed towards the kitchen, mentally adding another first to the stack already piling up. A first for Gabriel coming inside her house. She knew that he had gone outside to tell his driver that there would be a wait. She intended to make it a short one. By the time he came back, the coffee was made, black, no sugar, as he liked it.

Rose was sitting at her kitchen table and had placed his mug conveniently at the opposite end.

‘So, talk to me,’ Gabriel commanded, sitting down.

‘When do you want me to start interviewing for someone? Would next Monday do? Or sooner?’

‘Explain your remark about obeying me because of the money.’

‘I’m sorry I said that. I didn’t mean it.’

‘How long have you thought that way? Since you started working for me? In the last few months? Only since you got back from seeing your sister? When?’

Rose nearly groaned aloud. ‘It doesn’t matter, Gabriel.’

‘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.’

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