Kitabı oku: «Dating Her Boss»

CHAPTER ONE

MAXIM FLEMING was irritable. Seriously irritable. And his sister, at the other end of the telephone line, was being left in no doubt of that fact.

‘All I’m asking you to do is find me a temporary secretary, Amanda. I’m not being difficult…’ he ignored the hoot of derision from the other end of the line ‘…I just want a girl who knows what she’s doing.’

‘Max—’

Her attempt to stall his complaint was brushed impatiently aside. ‘Is that such a problem?’

‘Max. Darling—’

He continued to ignore the slight warning beneath the honeyed tone of her voice. ‘Someone who can type accurately, take a little shorthand—’

‘Your idea of a little shorthand does not coincide with mine or any of the perfectly competent secretaries I have already sent you,’ she broke in sharply. Then she gave a little sigh. ‘Not many girls do shorthand seriously these days, Max…’ At least not the kind of girls she had sent to her brother, but then she and Max had entirely different agendas—a fact she suspected he had discovered for himself. But she wasn’t admitting a thing. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to haul yourself into the twentieth century and use a dictaphone?’

‘Is this an admission that the famous Garland Agency isn’t able to provide a competent secretary?’

His tone was rich with irony. He definitely knew. But Amanda refused to rise to her tormenting brother’s jibe. ‘I didn’t say that, Max. But you’ll have to give me time. Your standards are so high—’

‘I haven’t got time and Garland Girls are supposed to be the best,’ he reminded her crisply. ‘I’m quite willing to pay top rates for a secretary who can type accurately and take dictation a fraction faster than the speed she can write in longhand. Surely that’s not too much to ask from London’s pre-eminent secretarial agency?’

‘And your temper is so short,’ she completed, ignoring his question. ‘You’ve been through some of the best secretaries in London in the space of a fortnight.’

‘Best!’ He left unsaid the obvious comment that, if they were the best she could offer, he never wanted to be within shouting distance of the worst.

‘I have had not one word of complaint, nothing in fact but the highest praise for my girls from anyone else.’ Which was true, but then she hadn’t been mixing work with matchmaking for her other clients.

Max Fleming made a distinctly disparaging noise. ‘Your public relations does you credit, I’ll give you that. You’ve got every executive in London panting for one of the fabulous Garland Girls. They’re a status symbol, the “must have” in every chief executive’s penthouse office. They look good, they sound good and they mesmerise the men they pretend to work for into thinking they’re privileged to employ them. Well, I’m not impressed by glamour—give me substance every time. Someone with a bit of grit in her character.’

Good grief—she might have chosen the girls for their looks and charm rather than their skills, but they hadn’t been that bad. ‘Nonsense. Admit it, Max, you’re the problem here. Why should my girls put up with your bad temper and your unreasonable working hours?’

‘For the money, sweet sister? Or have you simply been giving them the opportunity to have a crack at mending my broken heart?’

‘You don’t have a heart.’

‘You know that and I know that, but if you can find a girl who can manage a decent rate of shorthand I might be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice.’ He paused. ‘At least until Laura’s mother has recovered sufficiently for her to come back to work. I don’t care what she looks like and I certainly don’t give a damn who she went to school with—’

‘Max Fleming, you have got to be the most impossible, infuriating—’

‘I know,’ he said, cutting her off in full flow. ‘My faults are legion. If I promise to try and reform will you send me someone competent? Just for a few days while I finish this report for the World Bank?’

‘I should leave you to type it yourself with two fingers, then you wouldn’t be so—’

‘Or are you going to admit defeat?’

‘It’ll take more than you to bring me to that, big brother. I’ll have someone with you tomorrow. But this is your last chance. If this one walks out on you, you’re on your own.’ Amanda Garland frowned as she hung up, then turned to her own secretary. ‘What on earth am I going to do with him, Beth?’

‘Stop playing matchmaker and offer the poor man a competent secretary?’ she said with a grin. ‘Although where you are going to find someone who can take shorthand at the speed of light by tomorrow could be harder than getting him back to the altar. We’re booked solid.’

‘Didn’t we have a CV the other day from a girl in Newcastle? She had some incredible speed.’

‘Mmm. Jilly Prescott. You said that she didn’t have the look to be a Garland Girl, Amanda,’ she said doubtfully, glancing at the photograph as she passed over the girl’s CV.

‘My brother has had his quota of Garland Girls for this year. He’s going to have to take what he can get.’

Beth looked unconvinced. ‘She’s awfully young. He’ll chew her up and spit her out before lunchtime.’

‘Maybe.’ Amanda Garland was thoughtful. ‘Maybe not. He thinks our girls are more concerned with image than effort—’

‘That’s because you will send him all the pretty ones—’

‘Well, he won’t be able to say that about Jilly Prescott.’ She regarded the photograph of a very ordinary-looking young woman with a mop of thick dark hair that would stuff a mattress. ‘He wants someone with grit in her character.’ She glanced at Beth. ‘Northern women are supposed to be gritty, aren’t they?’

‘If you think he’ll come to heel like a puppy, Amanda, you don’t know your brother as well as you think you do.’

‘It’s worth a try.’ And her mouth softened into a smile at the thought of what a little grit might do, cast into the smoothly oiled wheels of her brother’s life. She tossed the photograph back at her secretary. ‘Check out her references. If they hold up, call her and tell her to be here first thing tomorrow morning.’

Jilly Prescott dialled her cousin’s number. It rang three times before an answering machine cut in with, ‘Hi, this is Gemma. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number I’ll call you back.’

‘Bother!’ Jilly pushed back an untidy wedge of dark hair from her forehead.

‘Problems, pet?’ her mother enquired, hovering anxiously in the doorway, making sure Jilly didn’t chatter. She hated anyone making long distance calls.

‘No. I’ve got her answering machine, that’s all,’ she replied, waiting for the familiar beep. ‘Gemma, this is Jilly. If you’re there please pick up the phone, it’s urgent.’ She waited for a moment on the off chance that her cousin might just be at home—willing her to be at home. Why did Gemma have to be out tonight of all nights? She continued, ‘I’m just calling to tell you I’ve got a job in London and I’m catching the early morning train into King’s Cross. I’ll call you when I get to London.’ She hung up and turned to her mother. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said, with more confidence than she was feeling. ‘She said I could stay any time.’

Her mother looked doubtful. ‘I don’t know, Jilly. What if she’s away?’

‘Of course she isn’t away—it’s January, where would she go in January? She’s out shopping, I expect. She’ll call back later and even if she doesn’t I’ve got her office number. It’ll be all right, honestly.’ The Garland Agency was the best in London and it wanted her. It wanted her tomorrow and who knew when she would get another chance like this? ‘I’d better get on with my packing.’

‘I’ll go and run an iron over your best blouse, then,’ Mrs Prescott said. Jilly knew her mother didn’t want her leaving home, certainly not to stay with Gemma, and keeping busy was her way of hiding it, which was why Jilly didn’t point out that she was more than capable of ironing her own blouse. ‘Heaven knows what you’ll look like when you have to take care of yourself.’

‘I’ll manage.’

‘Will you?’

‘I’ve been ironing my own clothes since I was ten, Mum.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’ She paused. ‘Just promise me that if anything goes wrong, if Gemma can’t put you up, you’ll come straight home.’

‘But—’

‘There are always other jobs, Jilly,’ she said, and waited. A promise given to her mother was not something to be undertaken lightly. If she promised to come home, she would have to do just that. But, after all, what could possibly go wrong?

‘I promise, Mum.’

There was an awkward little silence. Then, ‘I suppose you’ll be looking up Richie Blake?’

‘I expect so.’ As if they didn’t both know that it was the one reason she wanted to go to London.

‘Yes, well, he’s a big man now. He might not want to be reminded of home.’

‘We were friends, Mum. Good friends.’ She still remembered the moment she had first set eyes on him, a pathetic new boy, small for his age, with white-blond hair and glasses held together with sticky tape. A bunch of bigger lads had been giving him a hard time and, despite the fact that she was a year or so younger than him, she’d rounded on them, given them a piece of her mind, standing over him like a mother hen with its feathers all ruffled.

After that she’d been stuck with him. Maybe that was why she’d seen more in him than most. Something special.

She’d been the one who had persuaded the PTA to hire him as a DJ for the Christmas dance; she’d sent photos of him to the local papers so he’d get some free publicity; she’d got her brothers to make posters on their computer, made recordings of the crazy patter with which he linked his shows and bombarded the local radio station with them until they’d given him a spot on a youth programme for little more than pocket money.

And she’d loaned him the money for his fare to London when he’d had a phone call offering him a ‘jock’ spot on one of the capital’s commercial stations.

‘You’re a great kid, Jilly,’ he’d said, as she’d stood by the train, waiting for it to pull out of the station, wishing she were going with him. ‘You’re the only one who’s ever believed in me. My best girl. I won’t forget you, I promise.’

‘You are extremely lucky to get a chance like this, Jilly.’ Amanda Garland sounded doubtful.

She wasn’t the only one having doubts, but Jilly’s had nothing to do with her ability to do the job. That wasn’t worrying her at all. What worried her was that Gemma hadn’t been in touch. And although Jilly had called her cousin from the station when she’d arrived in London she’d still only got the answering machine despite the fact that it had been the time of day when a working girl, no matter how late she’d been out the night before, should have been hauling herself out of bed.

And now, as if that wasn’t enough to be going on with, she was faced by a woman who, having brought her post-haste all the way from Newcastle, appeared to be having second thoughts about giving her the promised job. Clearly her beautifully ironed blouse—she’d changed at the station from the jeans and sweatshirt she’d travelled in—was not making the kind of impression her mother had imagined it would. But in this sharp, glossy world anything she was wearing would look shabby.

She had done her best to portray the image of a smart, efficient, well-groomed secretary—as well groomed as a mop of hair that hadn’t really been cut since she was ten years old would allow. She’d screwed it into a French pleat and anchored the loose strands with combs, but she could feel it threatening to burst loose even as she sat there.

It had worked well enough back home—certainly impressed the solicitor she had been working for until he’d retired a few weeks earlier—but in the glamorous world of Knightsbridge she looked exactly what she was: an ordinary girl from an ordinary little town in the industrial north-east. It would take more than a neatly pressed cotton blouse and chain store suit to disguise the fact.

She might have done better to have worn a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt, her hair in a pigtail—that at least was a classic any girl could aspire to. Except the woman who faced her across a vast acreage of immaculately tidy desk, her jet hair glossy, small white hands the perfect setting for the king’s ransom of diamonds she was wearing on her fingers, undoubtedly wore designer jeans—the ones with the label stitched on the outside so you’d know how expensive they were. Jilly’s, on the other hand, came from the sort of shops where, if you wanted to preserve any kind of street cred, you cut out the labels before you wore them.

Nobody was fooled but it avoided catty put-downs such as, ‘I only buy my knickers from that place’ and you just knew the cat in question meant her everyday knickers—not the sort she’d wear on a really hot date. Or, even worse, the teeth-curlingly awful, ‘Good grief, my mother shops there…’

And now Amanda Garland of the Garland Agency was looking down her long, straight nose in a way that suggested she couldn’t quite believe that she had offered Jilly Prescott a job of any kind—no matter how brilliant she might be on paper.

Actually, now she was sitting in a thick-carpeted, soft-focus office opposite the kind of high-powered woman she associated with glossy American soaps, Jilly couldn’t quite believe it either.

She’d checked out the quality dailies at her local public library and made a list of secretarial agencies offering temporary work in London, then sent off her CV in the hope that someone would be impressed enough by her qualifications to give her a chance. After all, her qualifications were pretty impressive.

Now she was here, though, she had a sinking feeling that she was way out of her league. Only her stubborn Geordie pride refused to admit to the possibility that she might be second best in anything, stopped her from walking out right now. That, and Richie. The thought of him, of what he had achieved with nothing to commend him but cheek, a hard push and a following wind was more than enough to stiffen her resolve. Anything he could do…

‘Extremely lucky.’ Amanda Garland was beginning to irritate her. Luck, Jilly thought, mentally squaring her shoulders, had nothing to do with it. It had been sheer hard work.

There was nothing like a Royal Society of Arts Grade Three Typewriting Certificate with ‘Distinction’ to make even the Amanda Garlands of this world sit up and take notice, although Jilly knew that it was the infinitely rarer certificate, the one that promised she could effortlessly take down a hundred and sixty words per minute in faultless shorthand and transcribe it with equal ease, that had got her this far.

Of course Ms Garland had insisted on testing her anyway, just in case those desirable pieces of paper might have been the product of a bit of smart work with a home computer. Actually her brothers could probably have done a pretty convincing job if she had needed them to, so she didn’t blame the woman for that. She just wished she wouldn’t keep saying how lucky she was.

‘Well, I won’t keep you. I’ve told Max that you’ll start this morning. Have you got somewhere to stay, Jilly?’ she asked, glancing at the suitcase Jilly had brought with her.

‘I’m staying with my cousin until I can find somewhere of my own. Actually, I need to call her and let her know I’ve arrived—’ She had been about to ask if she could use the telephone, but she was already being ushered towards the door and she let it go.

Amanda Garland paused in the doorway. ‘I’d better warn you, Jilly, that Max is a very demanding employer and he doesn’t suffer fools gladly.’ So? The question must have been written all over her face because the woman went on, ‘He’s desperate and he needs someone with really good shorthand, or…’ The doubt was there again.

‘Or?’ Jilly repeated.

The other woman’s brows rose a fraction at her directness. ‘Or frankly I wouldn’t have considered you for the position.’

‘Well, that is frank of you,’ Jilly replied, tired of being looked down on. The woman could keep her job. There were hundreds of other agencies in London and it suddenly occurred to her that, if the Garland Agency was prepared to bring her all the way from Newcastle because of her shorthand speed, she might just be in a buyer’s market. ‘Are my clothes that bad?’ she enquired, with that native pertness for which her part of England was famous. ‘Or is it my accent that’s the problem?’

At home everybody thought she talked ‘posh’, but Jilly knew better. Despite the fact that her mother had insisted on elocution lessons with an actress who had been ‘resting’ ever since the war—which war no one had ever dared enquire—she was well aware that her voice still betrayed its origins.

Ms Garland’s eyes widened slightly and her lips twitched in what might have been amusement. ‘You’re very direct, Jilly.’

‘I find it helps if you want people to know what you think. What do you think, Ms Garland?’

‘I think…I think that perhaps you’ll do, Jilly.’ And finally the creases about her eyes and mouth defined a genuine smile. ‘And don’t worry about your accent—Max won’t. He’ll only notice how well you do your job. I’m afraid my brother can be a bit of a monster to work for and to be honest I’d be happier if you were older. I’m rather tossing you in at the deep end.’

Her brother? Jilly felt her cheeks heat up. Amanda Garland was trusting her to work for her brother? ‘Oh,’ she said. Then, ‘I thought—’ Then with a sudden grin, ‘Don’t worry, Ms Garland, I’m a pretty good swimmer. Gold medal. Life-saving certificate.’ Her smile came easily. ‘And as for my age, well, I’m getting older by the minute.’

Amanda Garland laughed. ‘Just keep that sense of humour and take no nonsense from Max. If he shouts at you…well, just be, um, direct.’

‘Don’t worry, I will. And I find that when men get particularly difficult, imagining them naked helps a lot.’ Amanda’s laughter turned into a fit of coughing. ‘How long is he likely to need me?’ Jilly asked when Amanda had recovered sufficiently to answer.

‘His personal assistant is away looking after her sick mother and frankly we have no idea how long that will be.’ Her face became grave. ‘Several weeks at least, I should think, but don’t worry—if you can work for Max you can work for anyone and with your qualifications I won’t have any trouble placing you.’

‘Oh, right. Well, thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me yet. Just remember what I said about standing up for yourself. And take a taxi. I don’t want you getting lost between here and Kensington.’

‘I’ve got an A to Z—’ she began.

‘I said take a taxi, Jilly. I promised Max you’d get there today, not at the convenience of London Transport. I’ll call him and let him know that you’re on the way.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Go!’ As Jilly still hesitated she said, ‘This is an emergency! Get a receipt and give it to Max—he’ll pay.’

Jilly didn’t stop to argue. No one had ever wanted her badly enough to pay for a taxi before—if this was working in London it was no wonder Gemma was having such a good time. She picked up her suitcase and, holding the agency card with Max Fleming’s address on it, she retreated swiftly to the pavement to hail one of the famous black London taxis.

She’d seen it done on the films and on television a thousand times but could hardly believe she was doing it herself as, clutching her suitcase, she stepped out into the street, stuck her hand in the air and yelled ‘Taxi!’

To her astonishment a cruising cab-driver executed a neat U-turn in the centre of the street, pulled up beside her and opened the door from the inside. It worked! She climbed aboard and sat back, grinning broadly. It had been a shaky start, but she was actually beginning to enjoy herself.

The taxi came to halt outside an elegant house tucked away behind a high wall in a discreet garden square in Kensington. ‘Here we are, miss,’ the driver said, opening the door for her. She paid him what he asked and then boldly added a tip. He grinned at her. ‘Thanks. Do you want a receipt?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes. Thanks for reminding me, I’m not used to this.’ She took the slip of paper he handed her and turned to the black-painted gate set into the wall and pressed the bell.

‘Yes?’ A woman’s voice enquired from a small speaker.

‘Jilly Prescott,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m from the Garland Agency.’

‘Thank goodness. Come in.’

A buzzer sounded and she pushed the gate open. She had no time to stare up at the elegant façade of Max Fleming’s home, or take in more than the briefest impression of his elegantly paved garden, the stone urns planted with evergreens, a small bronze statue of a nymph tucked into a wall niche above a semi-circular pool.

The grey-haired woman who had answered the bell was standing in the open doorway beckoning impatiently. ‘Come along, Miss Prescott, Max is waiting for you.’ She led the way through a spacious hall, passed a curving staircase and paused at a wide panelled door. ‘Go straight in,’ she said.

Jilly found herself on the threshold of a small panelled office. Beyond it an inner door was open and she could hear the low growl of a masculine voice apparently speaking on the telephone since she could hear only one person.

She dropped her suitcase beside the desk, slipped off her gloves and jacket and glanced around her. On the desk were two telephones, an intercom, a partly used shorthand notebook and a pot full of sharpened pencils. Behind it on a custom-built workbench were a state-of-the-art PC and printer. She wondered what software package was installed and, retrieving her spectacles from her handbag, propped them on her nose and leaned forward to switch it on.

‘Harriet!’ The disembodied voice had apparently finished with his telephone call and Jilly abandoned the computer, retrieved the notebook from the desk, grabbed a handful of pencils and, swiftly tucking in a slither of hair that was hell-bent on escape from her French pleat, she pushed open the inner door. Max Fleming was standing at the window looking out over the wintry garden and he didn’t look round. ‘Hasn’t that damned girl arrived yet?’ he demanded.

Jilly’s first impression of Max Fleming was that he was too thin; too thin for his height and too thin for the width of his shoulders. It was an impression that seemed to be confirmed by the way his suit jacket hung loosely about him as if he had lost a considerable amount of weight since it had been made for him. But his hair was dark like his sister’s, and, like hers, wonderfully thick and beautifully cut, the darkness only emphasised by a streak of silver at his temple.

That was all she had time to notice before he banged on the floor irritably with a slender ebony cane upon which he had been leaning. Then he half turned and caught sight of her. For a moment he said nothing, simply stared as if he couldn’t believe his own eyes.

‘Who the devil are you?’ he demanded.

It would have been so easy to be intimidated, Jilly thought. His sister had already warned her that he could be a monster and, looking into a pair of eyes that glittered at her darkly out of his thin face, she believed it. And as they swept over her she recognised the moment for what it was. If she showed the slightest hint of nervousness under the challenge in those hard eyes she might as well turn around and walk out right now because he would take advantage of that weakness and run her ragged. What was it his sister had said? If he shouted at her, be direct.

‘I guess I’m your damned girl,’ she said, as directly as she knew how, and stared right back at him. She might be the wrong side of her twenty-first birthday, just, but she had never been scared of playground bullies and she certainly wasn’t going to crumple now. For a moment the room was shockingly silent. Then Jilly, having demonstrated that she wasn’t to be intimidated, pushed her spectacles up her nose and offered a truce. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve kept you waiting, but the traffic was terrible. I wanted to come by underground but Ms Garland said I should take a taxi.’

One arched brow rose a fraction. ‘Did she say anything else?’

Plenty, but she wasn’t about to repeat it. ‘That you would pay the fare?’ she offered.

‘Did she, indeed?’ She’d hoped for a laugh, or at least a softening of that hard mouth into something approaching a smile. She didn’t get it. Nor, she discovered, could she reduce this austere man to a mental laughing stock with a picture of him naked. Imagining Max Fleming naked wouldn’t work at all, she decided as her cheeks, and just about everything else, heated up under the continued intensity of his unsparing gaze. It was as if he were looking right through to her bones, assessing what she was made of, and for just a second or two her determination not to be outfaced wavered.

‘Well, someone will have to because I can’t afford to go gallivanting about in taxis,’ she said, determinedly forcing herself back onto the offensive. And she crossed what seemed like an acre of exquisite oriental carpet to place a small slip of paper on his desk. ‘That’s the receipt. I’ll leave you to sort it out between you.’

Max Fleming’s first thought was that she couldn’t possibly be one of Amanda’s sought-after Garland Girls. She lacked any trace of the style and the exquisite grooming for which they were so justly famous. She wasn’t even pretty. Her eyes were hidden behind the owlish glasses, but her nose was too big and so was her mouth. Wide, full and simply bursting to smile given the slightest encouragement. And as for her hair…milk-chocolate brown, it was beginning to slide untidily from the combs doing an inefficient job of anchoring up the strands which refused to comply with her regulation French pleat. Then there were her clothes…

She was dressed in a neat white blouse and a plain grey skirt of undistinguished origin that stopped demurely just above her knee—an ensemble that suggested a school uniform. Then he realised it didn’t remind him of a school uniform, she was far too tidy for that; what she reminded him of was an old-fashioned secretary, right down to the heavy tortoiseshell spectacle frames…

And suddenly it all became clear.

His sister was having a little joke at his expense, a little pay-back for all the trouble he had caused her. Any minute now this girl would fling off the spectacles, pull out the combs battling to hold her hair in place and reveal herself for what she undoubtedly was: a sexy-secretary kissogram.

Clearly impatient with his thoughtful scrutiny, the girl finally said, ‘Are you ready to begin, Mr Fleming?’ He was certain that whatever he said would set the whole wretched performance in motion, and there had been a time when he would have enjoyed the joke… ‘Your sister said you were desperate—’

Desperate. Desolate. Empty. All of those things.

‘It would appear that my sister has been more than usually garrulous.’ But even if she was, as always, right, he could have told her that this wasn’t going to help. He was beginning to think that nothing would ever help.

He pushed that depressing thought firmly away and concentrated on the girl. Was she an actress, down on her luck? Unlikely. An actress would have taken more trouble to excise any hint of an accent; an actress would have looked just a little more the part. This girl had to be a student of some kind making a little money to see her through her studies.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Jilly Prescott.’