Kitabı oku: «Powerful Boss, Prim Miss Jones», sayfa 3

‘I didn’t want to tell Donald, Mr Riggs, anything because I wasn’t sure whether I would need to go back to my old job or not. I had to keep my options open. When I asked him to supply a reference, I guess I didn’t mention details of the job. In fact, I didn’t actually speak to Donald at all. He was in a meeting, and I spoke to Caroline. I don’t know her very well, because she joined a month before I left, so I just told her the basics—that I had found employment down here. I gave the address you gave me and asked her to pass the message on that you needed a reference from Donald.’

‘Why do I get the feeling that there’s something important missing from this narrative?’

‘Because you’re suspicious by nature. Because you’re never, ever willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.’ Her heart was beating so hard that she wanted to put her hand to her chest to steady it. Instead, she clasped her fingers together on her lap and waited for the axe to fall. The prospect of being flung out on her ear without explanation—or the chance to explain everything to James and then being prepared to take the consequences, whatever they might be—was just too much. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and chewed on her lip, willing herself not to be a weakling and cry. Andreas would detest weaklings. He would probably chuck her out just for showing emotion.

Unfortunately, her head was in no mood to listen to reason, and the trickle of tears felt cool against her hot, flushed skin.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled thickly.

Andreas watched this display of emotion with a censorious frown, at a loss as to what to make of it. On the one hand, he was a gut believer in his own instincts, which were positively screaming that something in the picture wasn’t right. On the other hand, he was capable of recognising genuine feeling when he saw it, and there was nothing staged about this bout of waterworks—and he had seen a fair amount of female waterworks in his time. The tap, he had long recognised, could be switched off at the drop of a hat. This tap, however, looked as though it might continue leaking indefinitely. He stood up and circled the desk so that he could hand her his handkerchief, which she took without looking at him, although he thought he heard a muffled, ‘Sorry.’ He perched on the desk, staring at her down-bent head with a perplexed frown, until she had gathered herself.

‘I’m not a monster. I do sometimes give people the benefit of the doubt.’ He tried to think of the last time he had done so and couldn’t.

Elizabeth raised hopeful eyes to his and said, with earnest urgency, ‘I would never do anything to hurt James. I’m not here to take advantage of an old man. I know that’s what’s going through your head.’

‘You have no idea what’s going through my head.’

‘I know it won’t be good.’

‘You’re being ridiculous.’

‘I’m just asking you to trust me when I tell you that I’m not a gold-digger. I don’t care about money.’

‘Even though you’ve never had any?’

‘I know it’s a cliché, but money doesn’t buy happiness.’

‘I have no idea how we managed to get into this conversation.’ Andreas stood up abruptly because those wide, green eyes were threatening to do something to his legendary cool. ‘I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt in this instance because dispatching you might do more damage to my godfather than keeping you on. He’s taken to you, and this is a challenging time in his life. I don’t know what might happen if we have to go through the nuisance of trying to find a substitute, especially if no real explanation’s given for the vanishing act.’

Elizabeth smiled tremulously and reached out to take hold of his hand, releasing it when he glanced down with a look of mingled surprise and displeasure. ‘You won’t regret it.’

‘You bet I won’t, and here’s why.’ He had given this a great deal of thought. Had she confessed to some sinister, ulterior motives, he would have had no option but to sack her on the spot, but he knew that that had been an unlikely possibility. In which case, hustling her through the back door and then trying to fabricate a plausible explanation for his godfather would be nigh on impossible. Which left him no option but to be in a position from which he could seriously keep an eye on her. Emails and phone calls, whilst helpful, could not even be loosely categorised as seriously keeping an eye on her. She could be using her free time to rummage through bankaccount details, for all he knew!

He very firmly neutered the little voice in his head telling him that that was a preposterous suggestion. Since when was he the sort of guy who fell for a woman’s tricks? Or anyone else’s, for that matter? Life at the very summit of the food chain had opened his eyes to the folly of taking people at face value.

He circled her and then paused to look down at her very carefully, taking in the anxious, heart-shaped face, the softly parted lips, the big, innocent eyes still glistening from her crying jag.

‘I’m coming back home.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘COMING back home?’ Elizabeth was utterly bewildered. Didn’t he live in London? ‘Don’t you live in London?’

‘Keep up here, Elizabeth. I’m moving back down to Somerset.’ He had resumed his seat at the desk and was tilting back in it, hands folded behind his head, his dark eyes gleaming with satisfaction. The whole upheaval should have been a major source of dissatisfaction for him. His office was the throbbing soul of his operations, and the thought of being plucked out of it for reasons not of his choosing should have set his teeth on edge, but he felt strangely content with the decision.

‘You’re moving back down to Somerset.’ She could scarcely believe her ears.

‘You seem to be in a state of shock.’

‘You’re moving back down to Somerset so that you can watch my every move. You said that you were going to give me the benefit of the doubt.’

‘And I have. Which is why you’re still in gainful employment!’

Elizabeth looked at him reprovingly and fumbled with the handkerchief which she was still clutching. ‘You would jeopardise your whole working life just because you think that I’m here to do I don’t know what?’

‘I’m not jeopardising anything,’ Andreas refuted smoothly. ‘I worked here perfectly fine when James returned from hospital. It’s a big house and, convenient though it is to be in an office environment where everyone is on hand, keeping in touch is really only the press of a button. The joys of the World Wide Web! Some of my employees actually design their own working hours to incorporate working from home. I’m a very progressive employer.’

Elizabeth was lost in her own tangled thoughts. How on earth was she going to avoid him when he planned on being around all the time, watching her every move? Would he follow her into town when she went to do the shopping? Lurk outside her bedroom with his ear pressed to a glass against the door to find out what she was up to? She imagined bumping into him at unexpected moments, or turning corners to find him lying in wait like a big-game hunter waiting to pounce. She shuddered and realised that he had been saying something.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘That’s going to have to change, for a start.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about your habit of not listening to me when I speak to you.’ Or else responding with the briefest of answers and with the general demeanour of someone who would prefer to be anywhere in the universe except in his company. Both traits irritated the hell out of him.

Elizabeth blinked, but, really, how surprised should she be? Andreas resided in a different hemisphere from most other people. In his rarefied world, he snapped his fingers and everyone saluted and jumped to immediate attention.

‘I do listen,’ she told him. ‘I was just thinking about how awkward it’s going to be if you’re following me around every second of the day…’

‘Why would I be following you around every second of the day?’ Andreas asked, his darkly handsome face incredulous at the suggestion. ‘I may be prepared to transfer operations down here for the foreseeable future, but I don’t intend to abandon work completely so that I can stalk your every movement.’

Foreseeable future?

‘You can’t migrate here for the foreseeable future,’ she said in a staggered voice. ‘Don’t you have to run your empire?’

‘We’re not talking about a pirate ship here,’ Andreas told her drily. ‘There won’t be mutiny if I’m not clocking in on a daily basis.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘Apologies for pointing out the obvious, but that look of horror on your face isn’t doing your “give me the benefit of the doubt” cause any good.’

‘I’m horrified at the thought of you being around all the time!’ Elizabeth blurted out with brutal truthfulness. ‘I don’t like you. You make me nervous. Of course I’m not going to look forward to you moving in.’

Andreas gritted his teeth in the face of this level of blunt honesty. ‘Liking me isn’t a requirement,’ he imparted grimly. ‘In fact, not liking me would work very well for the situation I have in mind. However, reacting like a cat on a hot tin roof every time I talk to you isn’t going to do.’

Elizabeth couldn’t really imagine why someone would not want to be liked; it seemed the most basic and natural of human desires. But then Andreas wasn’t like everyone else, was he? ‘For the situation you have in mind?’ She looked at him blankly and waited for whatever new and disturbing revelation he had to relay.

‘I wondered when you would clock on to what I just said.’ He sighed elaborately, picked up James’s fountain pen which was lying on the desk and twirled it ruminatively between his fingers before transferring his gaze to her expectant face.

‘The wonders of Internet access only really go so far,’ he explained ruefully. ‘Nothing really replaces the good, old-fashioned secretary. Someone to file reports, fend unwanted phone calls, take notes, bring those essential cups of coffee…’ He paused, allowing that lazy observation to sink in and take root. ‘Which is where you come in.’

‘No.’

‘Oh, but yes.’ He dropped the pen and angled her a brooding, speculative look. There was so much that had his antennae on red alert, from that phone call to her ex-boss, to her evident alarm at the thought of him being around. Yet, if she did have something to hide, wouldn’t she be acting a little less distracted? If, as he had gleaned from reading between the lines, she had headed to Somerset with the express intention of meeting James, of edging her foot through the door and then hunting down the family jewels, wouldn’t she be playing it cool?

Gold-diggers came in all shapes and sizes, admittedly, but they were universally manipulative, cunning and opportunistic. They didn’t spend hours browsing through junk shops with a cantankerous seventy-something, as he had gathered she had been doing from the various communications with his godfather over the weeks. They didn’t reject their host’s offers of having every meal catered to the highest standard in favour of trying out home-cooked food from the antiquated recipebooks James had stored in various cupboards in the kitchen. Nor did they spend their leisure time with the head gardener chatting about plants or else sitting in the walled garden with a book. That took cunning to an altogether new level, and one that Andreas had difficulty getting his head around.

Which was not to say that he didn’t feel compelled to oversee the situation. It never paid to take anything in life for granted, and that included the rest of the human race.

‘I can’t work for you. I work for Mr Greystone. I know you insisted that I answer to you, but at the end of the day…’

‘Let’s think out of the box for a minute. Yes, you do work for James, and from what I gather you’re the perfect companion—by which, I take it, you have inordinate reserves of patience. Apparently there was a fracas at the tea shop because the scones advertised had sold out?’

Elizabeth momentarily forgot her stress and gave him one of those radiant, transforming smiles. ‘Oh, did he mention that to you?’

‘Apparently he spent so long arguing with the manager about their policy of leaving the board up when the scones were no longer available that he’s been given a voucher for free teas there for the next fortnight.’

‘He did huff and puff about never darkening their doors again, but of course he will. He says they do the best creamteas in the county—even if he can’t have the cream—and, besides, I think he likes Dot Evans. She told him to stop spluttering because it wasn’t good for his blood pressure, and that if he kicked up a scene in her shop again she would drag him out to the kitchen and force him to do the dishes.’

Andreas was temporarily derailed by the first part of her remark. ‘Likes Dot Evans? Don’t be ridiculous. He’s known the woman for the past ten years! Don’t you think I would have known about it by now?’

‘I guess so,’ Elizabeth backtracked vaguely, shifting her gaze away and waiting in silence for him to return to the thorny subject of her impending doom.

‘Not so fast.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Don’t you think I’ve noticed that tendency you have to fall silent the minute a conversation gets a little awkward?’ Yes, spot on. He had read her correctly, judging from the sudden bloom of colour on her cheeks. Well, at least his ability to read women hadn’t been completely turned on its head in her case.

‘I don’t like talking about things James might have said. Or not said. Okay—said. When he’s not here to…um…say it himself.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What did my godfather say? You’re kidding about Dot Evans, right?’ His ebony brows knitted into a perplexed frown. He knew Dot Evans, of course. She had been a fixture of sorts on the scene for the past ten years, when James had loaned her money to set up the tea shop in the village. In actual fact she and James had been classmates at school a hundred years ago. He couldn’t remember her visiting the house, though. Or had she? Andreas had tried over time to visit his godfather as much as humanly possible, but the frantic pace of work had often waylaid the best thought-out plans. It was easy for things to be left unsaid when visits were snatched.

‘It’s just a feeling I get.’

‘And how is that I’ve been kept in the dark about this? You’re not breaking some secret code by telling me, so you might as well come clean.’

Elizabeth hesitated. Nothing said to her had ever been said in confidence. Although James could be belligerent, forthright and opinionated, he could also be endearingly diplomatic. Diplomacy had prevented him from telling his godson about Dot because when it came to the opposite sex he and Andreas were miles apart. He might have had an affair with her mother, but from what she had gathered about his ex-wife it had been a response to a loveless marriage. Of course, he had never mentioned a word about ever having had a mistress, but the more she knew him the more she realised that he was, essentially, a man of honour.

Would he have ended his marriage for Phyllis? She didn’t think so, but it was a question that could never be answered, because her mother had scarpered the second she had discovered he was married, taking the secret of her pregnancy with her. It was tempting to play with the fantasy of wondering what her life might have been like if James had been a free man, had been able to pursue her mother and marry her.

Lost in her day dreams, she started when Andreas snapped his fingers and delivered her a censorious frown.

‘You’ll be astounded to hear this, but most women don’t drift off into never-never land when I’m trying to have a conversation with them!’

‘Sorry.’

‘He must be ashamed of her,’ Andreas mused. ‘Can’t understand why, unless it’s a money thing, although James has never been a snob.’

‘Of course he’s not ashamed of Dot Evans. She’s a lovely lady. He just doesn’t think that you…’ The words were halfway out of her mouth before she realised that she had uttered them, and she was mortified when Andreas fixed her with his brilliant dark, questioning eyes.

‘Carry on. I’m intrigued to find out where this is leading. Do you know that you have a talent for getting me off-topic?’

‘I’m not sure he has much time for…for some of the women you go out with,’ she said in a rush. ‘So…’

‘So why bother to mention any lady interest in his life when we don’t talk the same language?’ Andreas finished for her and she nodded, chewing her lip nervously. Generally speaking, the opinions of other people had virtually no effect on Andreas. However, his godfather was the exception. Yet, instead of feeling hurt that in this one important area of his life James sincerely felt that he could not confide in him, Andreas was reluctantly forced to concede that he had a point. He thought of Amanda, with whom he had yet to break off, although it was overdue. Amanda, the leggy catwalk-model with not much of a line in intelligent conversation but a killer body and head-turning looks. She was just the latest in a procession of clones and, whilst that worked perfectly for him, it couldn’t be said that his godfather understood.

‘Of course,’ Elizabeth broke in hurriedly, ‘it’s all about live and let live.’

‘Your own personal theory, or another of James’s quotes?’

‘It’s just that he doesn’t understand why you go out with the women you go out with.’ From the frying pan into the fire, she thought.

‘I didn’t come down here to have a heart to heart with you about my private life,’ he bit out grittily, determined to drag the conversation back to the place from which it should never have strayed to start with. ‘We need to sort out the nuts and bolts of you working for me—and there’s no point weeping and wailing and wringing your hands. I’m not going to take you away from your duties to my godfather, but I have gleaned that he’s recovering fast.’

Elizabeth nodded, resigned to her fate.

‘And your afternoons are pretty much your own anyway, when he has his siesta?’

She nodded again, her thoughts now on what working for Andreas might entail. She didn’t think that he could be anything but a cruel taskmaster, whatever his claims about being a progressive employer. He would be far from progressive when it came to dealing with a potential gold-digger, which was what he thought she might be. In fact, being the caveman might be more his approach to the situation.

Belatedly, she realised that her mind had again wandered, and she focused on Andreas. It was an unsettling experience, as it always seemed to be. Sometimes in the past he had arrived by helicopter, descending from the sky like a dark, threatening hawk determined to disrupt the peaceful routine of her life. This time, however, he had come by car. She had spotted his sleek, shiny, testosterone-fuelled sportscar in the courtyard on the way to the office, yet he certainly didn’t look like someone who had spent hours on the road. In fact, he looked as cool as the proverbial cucumber, in his cream trousers and pale-blue shirt that seemed to emphasise the stunning bronzed colour of his skin.

The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, and as she glanced away from the little glimpse of chest her eyes collided with his strong, muscled forearms and became riveted to the way his fine, dark hair curled around the gold band of his watch. His mega-expensive watch. A mega-expensive watch for a mega-wealthy guy—which brought her back to the whole point of his appearance on the scene. The rich protected their own, and it was galling to think that she had been cast in the role of interloper.

‘I try to catch up on my emails when James has his afternoon nap. Sometimes I potter in the garden.’

‘Yes. I know. Recent communications from James have shown you have a touching interest in horticulture. Emails to whom?’

‘Friends. I’ve always made a big effort to keep in touch with people who’ve left London and gone abroad to live. Or maybe just left for the country. Some have.’

‘Boyfriend?’

Elizabeth flushed. ‘No. Is this relevant?’

Andreas didn’t answer, although he was curious to press for more details on the subject of the absence of a man in her life. He figured that her reticence in revealing anything at all about her life must have sparked his curiosity. Only natural. And, even if she insisted on wearing outfits that looked as though they had been rescued from a charity shop, there was a body under there—although what it was like he had no idea, because she was an expert at covering it up. Full breasts; he knew that. Obeying the direction of his thoughts, his eyes drifted down to her breasts, which were more than a generous handful, and shapely. He wondered what they looked like, and slammed the door shut on those inappropriate thoughts.

‘Everything is relevant,’ he said shortly. ‘Remember that and we’ll be working on the same wavelength. I’m happy for you to spend the morning with James, but between the hours of one-thirty and five I will expect you to work for me. Sometimes you may be needed to work overtime, and we can discuss that as and when those occasions occur.’

‘Overtime?’

‘Your ex-boss said that there was never a problem with that until the end, when you obviously needed to spend progressively more time with your mother.’

‘I will need to have time for myself,’ Elizabeth ventured. ‘I enjoy walking into the village sometimes…’

‘Which is what weekends will be for.’ He leaned forward, his arms on the desk, and gave her a reproving look.

‘You’re onto a pretty good deal here, and let’s not forget that. I don’t know exactly why you chose to come here, and for the moment I can’t do anything about that—but you’re here now, and from where I’m sitting you’ve landed yourself a nice, cushy number. You’re being paid roughly twice as much as you were getting in London for a job that’s, probably, roughly half as demanding. Naturally, once you start working for me, you’ll be additionally compensated.’

He named a figure that made her gasp.

‘I—I couldn’t,’ she stammered, and Andreas frowned at her.

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s too much.’

He narrowed his eyes on her flushed face, but when she looked at him it was with total sincerity. ‘You don’t want the money because you think you’ll be overpaid? How crazy is that?’ For some reason, he really didn’t think it was a case of double bluff. It was hard work constantly reminding himself that nothing and no one should ever be taken at face value. James was worth a considerable amount of money, and while Andreas had absolutely no claim to a penny of it, having insisted a long time ago that he be written out of his godfather’s will, he was still intent on making sure that none of it fell into the wrong hands. A less likely candidate for those wrong hands was the woman who had just tried to refuse a pay increase. Did that make sense?

‘I’d stay here with James even if I weren’t being paid,’ Elizabeth told him truthfully. In fact, she was dutifully putting most of the money she earned into a separate account, which she had opened up on one of her days off. She wasn’t sure why, but touching as little of the money as possible alleviated some of her guilt at accepting it in the first place. Maybe when she finally told him who she really was she would make a symbolic gesture and return all the money to him. She didn’t want to think about it. The longer she stayed, the steeper the hill she had to climb seemed. What would her father say? He was getting stronger by the day, yet she continued to postpone the inevitable, telling herself that the time was not quite right. When she hadn’t known him, when curiosity had been her only driving emotion, she had been a lot less scared than she was now.

‘So please don’t give me any more money,’ she finished lamely. ‘What would I do with it, anyway? I mean, it’s not as though I’m into expensive clothes or jewellery or stuff like that.’

Andreas hesitated. There were practical things to discuss. He would have to familiarise her with the systems which he already had in place on his computer. A high-speed desktop was to be delivered and installed by the end of the day. Everything necessary to transform one of the sprawling and unused rooms on the ground floor would be put into place within the next three hours. He would need her there so that she could have first-hand experience of the layout.

‘I find that hard to believe. All women are into clothes and jewellery.’ His dark eyes did a comprehensive once-over of her body. ‘Okay, so maybe not all. Which makes me curious—what did you spend your money on? You weren’t badly paid in that last job of yours. Hell, you must have a tidy little sum stashed away for a rainy day.’

Elizabeth hesitated. She dearly wanted to tell him that her personal finances were no business of his, but politely backing off was not Andreas’s style. Also, now that he was on a self-confessed witch-hunt, determined to prise her open like a walnut and poke around until he found whatever he was looking for, being unnecessarily secretive would only fire him up.

‘I have some savings, but not very much,’ she told him carefully. ‘Mum had to give up her job when she became ill. At first the company was very understanding, but they were a small business and they couldn’t afford to keep on paying her when she began taking so much time off work. And then she became weaker, and even going in between the hospital visits was too much, so there was only my income to rely on.’

‘Isn’t there a benefits system that covers this sort of thing?’ It didn’t take a massive leap of the imagination to work out that, but for fate and the benevolent guiding hand of his godfather, he might well have ended up in the position of being up close and personal with all the services a welfare state could provide. Since her story of penury was just something else to be factored in to a hidden agenda, however, he refused to allow that pull of sympathy to blinker him.

‘Mum was very proud. She would never have taken a penny from the state, which meant that really all my earnings were spent on the essentials. Whatever was left over, I used to buy mum little treats. She enjoyed going to the shops. In fact, I think I might have been a bit of a disappointment to her, because I never did. I can remember her trying hard to get me involved in clothes and fashion, but I was always much more of a bookworm. In fact, I would have liked to go to university, but of course that was impossible, given the circumstances.’

Where the hell had all that come from? ‘So, you see, I don’t have any money stashed away for a rainy day.’ She could have added that she had been so broke by the time the funeral expenses had been paid that there had been no way that she could carry on renting the three-bedroomed house she had shared with her mother. Not that she would have chosen to.

‘Which I guess makes me a potential gold-digger, if not having a lot of money is the only requisite.’

‘Go to university—to do what?’

Elizabeth blinked in confusion. ‘To study law,’ she told him awkwardly. ‘I might not have been clever enough, though,’ she confessed, which reminded Andreas that this was not the conversation he had intended to have when he had driven down to Somerset. In fact, girlish outpourings of confidence were the last thing he needed, and something he strived hard never to encourage in anyone.

‘Running yourself down is counter-productive,’ he asserted briskly. ‘We can all do whatever we set out to do, or we can slouch around moaning and whingeing and blaming the rest of the world for our own lack of get up and go.’

‘I never blame anyone for what happens in my life.’

‘Did I refer to you? I was generalising.’

Elizabeth was tempted to tell him that it was all right for him to sit there in all his arrogant perfection and lecture about other people’s lack of get up and go but then knew that she would sound precisely like the kind of whingeing, blaming person he had just criticised. And, since it looked as though they would be working together for at least part of the day, every day for the foreseeable future, it was probably not such a good idea to get off on an even worse footing than they already had.

But he really was perfect, wasn’t he?

Her eyes surreptitiously crept to the forbidding set of his dark, hard features. Cold and ruthless he might be, but he was drop-dead gorgeous, and just mentally admitting that reality kick-started a reaction in her body that made her tense in dismay. Her nipples tightened in her bra, and there was a hot ache that started in her belly and seemed to explode into every nerve-ending in a horrible starburst-effect.

‘James might object to this arrangement,’ she said suddenly.

Andreas squashed that faint hope before it had time to take root. ‘I’ve already run the idea past him, and you’ll be overjoyed to know that he has no problem with it. In fact, he sounded delighted. Maybe he’s concerned at all those wasted hours during the day when you’re stuck on your own with nothing to do but relax.’

Back to the level playing-field with which she was accustomed, Elizabeth lowered her eyes and stared down at the ground in resentful silence, broken only when Andreas restively rose to his feet and walked towards the door.

‘Right. No time like the present. My people will be in shortly, and I want you to familiarise yourself with your new office. Follow me.’

He talked while he walked, expecting her to keep up with him. This was the interview she had never had, but then getting the job with James had not required detailed knowledge of computer systems and programs, spreadsheets, budget reports, and data bases. She would, he informed her baldly, be barred from access to any confidential information, but she would need to settle in fast so that she could begin the process of sifting through the hundreds of emails that arrived daily for him, making sure that he didn’t waste his valuable time on rubbish.