The Secretary's Scandalous Secret (16 page)

Upstairs, Agatha noted that she had been put in the bedroom furthest away from his and she had to stifle a flash of disappointment. Pinning a bright smile on her face, she wandered back downstairs to find him fiddling in the kitchen, and for a few seconds she quietly watched from the doorway. Kitchens perplexed him. He could work every technological gadget on the face of the earth with the exception of those located in a kitchen.

‘You really don’t need to stay here with me, Luc,’ she said from the doorway, and he turned round slowly to look at her with hooded eyes.

In her leggings and oversized shirt, her fair hair tumbling over her shoulders, she looked vulnerable and feminine.

‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

‘You never take time off work. I don’t want you feeling that you’ve got to stay cooped up here because I’m incapable. I’m not. I know this is your house and you must have enjoyed
coming here in the past but I bet you never stayed longer than a couple of nights.’

‘If I don’t look after you, who will? You still haven’t told your mother, so she won’t be rushing here any time soon.’ He knew why she still hadn’t said a word to Edith. To break the news would put her in the position of revealing the father’s identity. It would also compel her to find reasons to explain why she intended to remain as a single mother. For the moment, he was willing to go along with her silence, but he needed to start manoeuvring things in the direction he wanted them to take.

He abandoned his attempt to work the coffee maker and strolled lazily towards her until he was standing right in front of her.

He moved, she noted absentmindedly, with the sinewy grace of a panther, all dark, dangerous intent. Except she had no idea what he intended. Which didn’t stop her heart from pounding like a frenzied drum inside her. Her nipples tightened and she broke out in a fine film of nervous perspiration. How was it that she had never felt so
alone
with him in London, even when she had been bed-bound in his apartment, which was really much smaller? The silence seemed to press against the walls, enclosing them in a little space of their own.

‘The time isn’t right to tell her,’ Agatha mumbled uncertainly, driven to look up at him, even though it was doing dangerous things to her nervous system.

‘She’s going to wonder where the hell you are when that phone in the flat keeps ringing off the hook and no one answers.’

‘I didn’t give her the number,’ Agatha confessed guiltily, sneaking a glance at him. ‘She gets me on my mobile.’

Luc decided to let the matter drop. As he had discovered
to his cost, that soft mouth and innocent face belied a stubborn streak that was a match for his own. Nearly.

‘I won’t be here all of the time, so there’s no need to get in a panic. I’ve employed someone to be here between nine and six, so you’ll have company. She’ll cook, clean and do whatever else around the house that you want her to. It should give you lots of time to stretch your legs in the garden. Also, she can drive you into town whenever you want, although I won’t expect you to go in more than is strictly necessary. In fact, scratch that—if you want to venture into town, I will make myself available to take you there.’

If he was intent on making himself indispensable, then he was going about it the right way, Agatha thought.

‘How will you do that?’ she asked carefully. ‘I thought you said you’d be in London.’

‘Some of the time. But it’s perfectly possible to conduct business from here. You haven’t been to the back of the kitchen, but there’s a very passable office space there, and I’ve kitted it out with everything I need to keep going.’

‘You’ll go nuts being cooped up here in the middle of nowhere.’

‘Then maybe you could distract me,’ he dropped into the silence, wondering what she would do with his provocative remark. He hadn’t laid a finger on her for weeks. Just at the moment, making love was out of the question, but he could do so many other erotic things with her body…

Could too many cold showers lead to some kind of health risk in a guy? If so, then he was slap bang in the firing line. After his abortive date over a week ago, he had been reluctantly forced to concede that, at least at the moment, he only desired Agatha. It was infuriating but it was undeniable. And even more infuriating was how much he missed her warm, willing body. However much he put his back out to penetrate her friendly but polite façade, he was still uneasily
aware that a lot of that façade was there because she just didn’t have much of a choice. She wasn’t going to bite the hand to which she was temporarily indebted. It was all far from ideal.

Agatha was feverishly wondering what he had meant by it. Was he flirting with her? Trying to ensure that she didn’t forget how meaningful he was to her? Laying all her cards on the table had made her vulnerable, and Luc, knowing as much as he did about women, would know precisely the extent of power he wielded over a vulnerable ex-lover. Maybe he thought that the odd word here and there, the occasional look that lingered a little too long, would keep her ensnared so that even without the bonds of marriage there would still be the bonds of emotions left intact.

No way!

‘If you want distracting, then my suggestion is that you get out into that beautiful garden,’ she said lightly, stepping around any contentious issues and adopting the firm, detached stand she was intent on pursuing. ‘I find that always works for me.’ She folded her arms and yanked her rebellious imagination back from unsteady images of her distracting him in all sorts of ways that were now one-hundred percent forbidden. ‘Especially at this time of year, when it’s such lovely weather to really explore what’s growing out there. And I noticed an adorable wooden bench under a tree. Maybe you could take your computer out there if you happen to be around. You’ll find it very relaxing. And, if it’s distraction that you’re looking for, then the sounds of the birds in the trees can do the job.’

Eyes narrowing, Luc abruptly turned away. ‘Sounds idyllic,’ he drawled, recognising the polite dismissal. ‘Should I keep a watch out for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in case they decide to pop into this slice of paradise? I have
some work to catch up on. Is there anything you want to know about the house?’

Agatha shook her head, glumly fascinated at how every changing nuance of his moods had such an ability to alter her own. When he was relaxed, she relaxed, even though she knew she should always be on guard. When he was tense, she tensed. When he was attentive, she blossomed inside like a flower opening up to the first rays of the sun. And when like now he withdrew from her, with that cool, shuttered expression on his face, she just wanted to burst into tears and launch into the sort of open-ended, heart-on-sleeve speech that had sent him heading for the hills the first time.

‘I’ll just have a look around the garden. Then, shall I get something cooked for us to eat later?’

‘No need. The freezer has a hundred and one home-cooked meals. I arranged for my chef in London to handle that. And there’s ample food in the fridge as well.’

‘Do you do that every time you come here?’ Agatha asked, driven to hold him in conversation. ‘Get your chef to prepare food for you? I guess it saves you having to go out and find somewhere to eat. What’s the nearest town like?’

Since Luc had never seen it, he had to think quickly on his feet, coming up with something so stupendously vague that she was left more in the dark after his reply than she had been before it: post office. A few shops—and why would he know what ones, because he had no interest in exploring them. A pub or two. The usual. Weren’t all these small, rural towns and villages much the same? he decided on the spot.

‘So if you don’t go into the town very often, and you really aren’t into gardens, what was the appeal?’

‘This is beginning to sound like the Spanish Inquisition.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean it to. I was just curious. I mean…’ She continued awkwardly as she tried to backpedal
rapidly away from giving the impression that she was over-interested—or else, worse, clinging to conversation because when he wasn’t around something inside her went out, like a light switch being dimmed. ‘If we’re going to be cooped up here together off and on, then it would be nice for us to keep the conversation light.’

Several things in that one sentence annoyed the hell out of Luc: ‘cooped up’, ‘off and on’, and ‘light conversation’, to be precise.

‘As you may have noticed,’ Luc said through gritted teeth, ‘It’s peaceful here. It makes a change.’ He had purchased this quaint little house with a plan in sight. Now his subterfuge was beginning to cause him some disquiet. He hadn’t banked on being quizzed over something as innocuous as owning a place in the country. He owned several apartments—one in New York, another in Paris and three in London which he used, occasionally, for visiting clients. What was the big deal?

‘I think it’s really great that you get away from work sometimes,’ Agatha confided. ‘Working too hard is bad for a person.’

‘I think we part company on that one, Agatha.’ Luc remembered just why he had been forced to break off their relationship in the first place. He reminded himself of the folly of a man like him—driven and entirely focused on his work and on the rigorous demands of having to run a multi-billion-pound empire—ever contemplating a relationship with any woman who saw the need to rein him back. Applying his intellect brought him back down to earth: he was here for a reason. She was carrying his baby, and when that baby was born he fully intended to be the sole father figure in its life. No sideline job. No visiting rights. And a ring on her finger so that there would be no temptation for her to imagine that there was a single life out there beckoning.

‘Right. Yes. We do.’ His coolly delivered words had the same effect as a bucket of cold water being thrown over her, and Agatha blushed and turned away. ‘I’ll go explore the garden,’ she said in a stilted voice. Then, before he could remind her that she was a fragile piece of spun glass that needed careful handling because
his baby
depended on it, she added, irritably, ‘And there’s no need for you to worry. You won’t have to rescue me because I’ve over-exerted myself by having a five-second stroll!’

But it was hardly the peaceful stroll she would have wanted. Everything around her was sumptuous, but her head was a whirlwind of tangled thoughts, and the more she picked away at them, the more tangled they became.

After half an hour, and with the temperature beginning to drop, she returned to the house, only glancing across at the kitchen on her way to the stairs. Once Luc was ensconced in front of his computer, wild horses wouldn’t be able to drag him away, and she needed some time to herself.

In the corner of the room, her emptied suitcase had been tucked away under a pretty trestle table which housed an ornate, flowered jug in its matching bowl. Wandering into the adjoining bathroom, she saw the immaculate towels and an array of bath products that would have been worthy of the most expensive hotel in the world. All brand new. But, then again, why shouldn’t they be? Luc hadn’t said how often he visited this place, but she suspected not very, and he wouldn’t want to find himself using products that had been hardened over time from lack of use.

She began running the bath, and it was only when it was run and the air was fragrant with the rose-petal smell from the bubble bath that she noticed the glaring absence of any lock on the door.

And on the bedroom door.

Old house,
she thought, dismayed. Fantastically modern in all aspects except for this one.

But her room was far from his. He was currently lost in some intricacy to do with business. And she wasn’t going to be long.

The weight of the anxiety she had tried to bury seeped out of her as she settled her now slightly more ungainly body into the bath, relaxing with a sigh into the foam and closing her eyes.

On the plus side it was undeniably good to be out of London, even taking into account the efforts she had made to relocate herself to somewhere a little less cramped. It was, however, the only plus that sprang to mind. Hot on its heels were a series of towering minuses; starting with the fact that she was now hopelessly dependent on a man who had only weeks previously turned his back on her, and ending with the miserable suspicion that there was more to his grand displays of attentiveness than he was letting on.

She had the trapped feeling of something very small and vulnerable slowly being circled by a much bigger, much cleverer predator.

And how was she going to deal with it? She could be entirely wrong about everything, and Luc might, just might, have turned into Mr Nice Guy, but even in her wildest dreams she found that difficult to get her head around.

Had she dozed off just for a few seconds? Had she been having a dream that involved her clutching a posy of flowers, just like the ones in the rambling garden outside, watching as Luc smiled down at some other woman in front of an altar before slipping a ring on her finger?

The clarity of the dream jerked her awake. Or was it the sound of the door being pushed open?

In the first few confused seconds of disorientation, the figure of Luc by the bathroom door was like the manifestation
of her dream. Except this manifestation wasn’t smiling. His mouth was drawn into a tight, grim line and his eyes glittered in the subdued lighting in the bathroom.

Agatha gave a little squeak of horror when the manifestation spoke, and she struggled into a sitting position, dazed, flushed and staring wide-eyed like a rabbit suddenly caught in the headlights of a speeding car.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

Agatha’s mouth fell open and she heard herself stammer something about a stroll and the garden and then a bath. In spreading dismay, she realised that the bath water was now tepid and the bubbles had disappeared, leaving her exposed to Luc’s raking green eyes.

With his blood pressure back to normal now that he had managed to locate her, Luc took in the scene that confronted him. And what a glorious picture it was. A now slightly more rounded Agatha was frantically trying to hide herself, but there was only so much two hands could do, and his eyes feasted on the smooth swell of her belly, the fullness of her breasts. He had dreamt of this and his body reacted as though a thousand volts of electricity had suddenly been shot through it. He almost lost his cool completely and groaned out loud. Instead, he moved swiftly towards her.