The Secretary's Scandalous Secret (9 page)

How tedious he must have found it, when he would be used to women who knew what they were doing in bed.

‘I know I have physical needs,’ Agatha whispered. At least, she did now, and the power and urgency of them terrified her.

‘Now we’re getting somewhere,’ Luc’s voice was laced with thick sarcasm.

‘And it’s wonderful!’ she said with a bright, defensive
smile. ‘And you’re right, it’s silly to hide behind excuses. I made love to you because I wanted to.’

Luc had lost count of the number of women who had been eager to tell him how much they wanted him. When Agatha had said it, in the heat of the moment, with the roar of passion in her ears, he had liked it. It had turned him on. He liked this even more, hearing her say it again but in the cool aftermath of sex.

There was just something so incredibly sexy about her tousled innocence and the knowledge that she had lost her virginity to him. He could hardly believe how much he wanted to savour the thought of that. It was like she had managed to dig deep inside him and pull out a primal instinct he was hardly aware of possessing.

Let her confront her own mixed-up responses, he thought. He might just wait for her to say what he knew she would—that there had never been any question of her throwing herself at him because he had just happened to be there, right time, right place.

He wasn’t given to waiting for women. But, yes, he might make an exception in this case, because when he thought of those big, rosy nipples and the voluptuous, silky-smooth curves of her body, his body went into overdrive.

‘See?’ he drawled lazily, watching her through shuttered eyes. ‘How hard was that? Ten out of ten for facing up to reality.’

Agatha fought a tide of burning resentment.

‘If I can feel this way with you,’ she told him fiercely, ‘then how much more wonderful will it be when I make love to a man who means something to me? So you’ve won. I’m not sorry we made love and I’m not ashamed either. I know my virginity would have been a turn-off for you. Men like
you want experienced women who don’t go into meltdown after they’ve made love. But there’s a man out there for me, and I feel so much more confident now that I’ll find him.’

A
GATHA
had not been foolish enough to put any faith in the remainder of the evening to somehow miraculously put things into perspective and to fill her with a bracing optimism to face the next day, back at work after the shattering events of Sunday.

However, she was dismayed to find that no amount of stern lecturing of herself or level-headed reasoning could take away the sickening knot in her stomach as she stood in front of the gleaming lift doors, waiting for it to carry her up to her cubby hole.

She had given an awful lot of house room to the idea of hibernating in her room until her notice was up, but then that would have allowed the one-off episode with Luc to dictate her behaviour, and she didn’t want that. She had spent way too long with a bunch of silly, girlhood fantasies for company and, now that those fantasies had become a very unlikely reality, she wasn’t about to let them take over the role of running her emotional life.

She also wasn’t going to dress like a refugee from a charity shop. She had reluctantly admitted to herself that one very good thing seemed to have come of her recklessness with Luc: she no longer felt self-conscious of her body. She had seen genuine, hot appreciation in his eyes when he had looked at her, and for the first time in her life her curves
had not been a source of embarrassment. She had wantonly revelled in the attention they had provoked, and miraculously the feeling had stayed with her.

So instead of her grey, woollen skirt and blouse, and the all-encompassing cardigan which was as unflattering as it was comfortable, she pulled out the few items of clothing she possessed that were relatively fitted and suitable for work: a slim-fitting black skirt and a plain but figure-hugging cream, long-sleeved jumper. The paisley-patterned scarf, given to her by her mother as a ‘you’re starting work in a proper job in an office’ gift, was pulled out of hibernation from a box at the bottom of her wardrobe and added vibrant colour to the outfit.

As she walked to her little office, she knew that she was getting quite a bit of attention. In fact, with a spontaneity she didn’t know she possessed, she actually grinned and turned around to blow her colleague Adrian an air kiss when he wolf whistled as she passed his desk.

More than anything, she wished that she was working in the central hub of the office, where the buzz of telephones and light-hearted banter between phone calls and computer work might have distracted her from her thoughts.

Her own desk, tucked away along the corridor, could be seen as either a haven of solitude or a miserable and isolated cage. She wondered whether Personnel had stuck her out of the way because, with her limited experience, she would have been a disadvantage to all the bright young things with their degrees and top-notch computer skills. At the time, she had been told that, because she would be working more or less directly with Luc, she might occasionally be passed something of a reasonably confidential nature and so a private space would be more acceptable. Belatedly she realised that indeed she did handle some confidential stuff, if you could call dealing with his girlfriends confidential.

She pushed open the door to her little office, turned automatically to the coat hook hanging on the wall by the side of the door and was only aware of the presence of someone else in the room when she was ready to head towards her desk. Only to find Luc perched on it, his hands lightly clasped on his lap.

Agatha couldn’t have received a bigger shock if she had discovered an alien at her computer terminal. Of course, she had expected to bump into him at some point in time, but not just yet. Not when she had barely had time to recover her lost equilibrium.

She stood in awkward, gaping silence for a few seconds, then stammered, ‘Wh-what are you doing here?’ It was an uphill struggle to remember that she was turning over a new leaf, valiantly jettisoning all the shackles that had held her down.

‘I own the company. Remember? I have a right to be anywhere I want to be.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘But life would have been more comfortable for you if I’d been polite enough to keep out of sight until your notice was up and you could slink away unobserved?’

Agatha didn’t say anything, because he had hit the nail on the head, although the prickly, heightened feeling running riot inside her now made her wonder whether her addiction to him wouldn’t find her seeking him out on some pretext or other. Bad habits were difficult to stamp out.

Luc looked at her with a shuttered expression but his sharp eyes were taking everything in. He had had the rest of the evening to think about her parting shot, and the sexy little outfit she was wearing now proclaimed a sexually awakened woman on the move. A woman
he
had wakened. On the move for another man.

He wasn’t ready for that yet. He also wasn’t prepared to let
his work suffer because his mind kept straying to one night of white-hot passion, but suffer it had. Yesterday evening, he had done the unthinkable and jeopardised a deal, albeit a small one, because he hadn’t been able to focus on the finer details of the company accounts on his computer. He had only been able to salvage the mess by the skin of his teeth.

Agatha was unfinished business and that was a situation that wasn’t going to work.

Every situation had its solution. In this case, the solution lay in getting her back to bed—warm, willing and of her own volition. Whether she knew it or not, it would work for both of them because, if she was his unfinished business, then he was hers. Until this was sorted, she would interrupt his work and he would interrupt her head. And, yes, it went against everything inside him to pursue this situation but the need to pursue was overpowering. He was going to throw the rule book through the window. He could only think that it was because he still wanted her and getting what he wanted was too ingrained in him to be ignored.

‘Unfortunately for you, I’ve done a bit of thinking,’ he continued, standing up and strolling to the single window that overlooked the busy pavements below. He turned back around to look at her. ‘You might just get it into your head that you can slack off because you intend to leave.’

‘I wouldn’t do that!’ Agatha protested vehemently.

‘Really? Then explain the outfit. Not what I would call suitable, would you?’

‘I’m only wearing what every other female under forty in this building wears!’ Agatha defended herself stoutly, while making small movements to tug down the skirt which was a hefty couple of inches above the knee. ‘And you told me to change my wardrobe,’ she carried on, emboldened.

Privately, Luc had to concede that she had a point, but
for some reason it annoyed the hell out of him to see her flaunting herself in clothes that would bring most men to a grinding halt. Did she really expect to go unnoticed every time she left her office to run some errand that would take her past the boys working in the outer offices? Of course not. But then that was probably the intention.

‘The fact is that I find myself in an unusual position,’ he informed her, walking towards her, then circling like a shark sizing up edible prey. ‘Having made it a rule never to sleep with an employee, I now discover that breaking the rule carries consequences. I’ve opened a door that you could enter to do any number of things if you decided to take revenge for being a one-night stand. Even if you
were
the one to instigate the situation.’ He scowled, grimly disappointed with himself for breaking his own iron-clad code of conduct.

‘I’m not into revenge! Why do you always suspect the worst of people?’

‘Call it dealing with the daily reality of being wealthy. I’ve had more than one threat of a kiss-and-tell story. Personally, I’m indifferent to that, but my mother gets upset.’

‘Do you really think that I’m the sort of girl who would do that?’

‘I don’t know.’ He gave an elegant shrug. ‘I never thought that you were the sort of girl to jump in the sack for a session of hot sex and then decide to use it as a springboard.’

Agatha flushed to the roots of her hair. She bitterly regretted those last words. They had made her sound cheap and shallow and she couldn’t blame him now for thinking the worst of her.

‘Because I’ve decided to wear normal clothes to work, doesn’t mean that I’m going to put my feet up on the desk and slack off.’

He noticed that she had said nothing to defend herself
against his accusation. A lethal fury swept through him, unlike anything he had ever felt before, but none of that was reflected in his face.

‘Other things come into play here,’ he informed her in a grim undertone while she looked up at him in utter bemusement.

‘What other things?’

‘I don’t care for the thought of you shooting your mouth off and discussing what took place between us.’

‘You can trust me when I tell you that that’s the last thing I would ever think of doing and, just in case you don’t believe me, I’ll happily make a deal with you. I don’t say a word to anyone, and you don’t.’ Thoughts of her mother’s disappointed face made her shudder.

‘I don’t do deals.’ That little shudder of hers hadn’t escaped his notice. ‘On the other hand, I
can
make sure that I keep an eye on you.’

‘Keep an eye on me?’ Agatha parroted, trying to make some kind of connection in her head that would give her some insight into what he was trying to tell her.

‘Your time in this little box is at an end. For the remainder of your employment here, you’ll be on my floor, sitting outside my office, where I’ll have ample opportunity to make sure that you’re not putting your feet up. I’ll also be able to make sure that you’re not whiling away your time gossiping.’

Agatha’s mouth dropped open and her brain braked and then slowed to a standstill before cranking back into gear. Very slowly.

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Never been more serious in my life. I have a reputation to protect and I intend to make sure that you don’t damage it.’

‘It’s not as though everyone doesn’t know that…’

‘I don’t care who knows that I play the field.’ Luc helped her out, his tone dismissive. ‘I do, however, care that they don’t know I’ve been crazy enough to play the field right in my own back yard.’ Only he was capable of recognising the subtle but important distinction, which was that for the first time he was willing to play the field in his own back yard.

Agatha’s mind latched on to that single word ‘crazy’. She wanted to tell him that she had been the crazy one ever to have allowed herself the folly of falling into his arms as if her entire life had been building up to that very moment. Instead, she resolved there and then to do everything within her power to wipe him out of her head.

She took a few shaky steps away from him towards her desk and then turned to him with a sullen shrug.

‘You already have a secretary.’

‘Helen’s daughter has just had her second child. She would welcome a break of a few weeks. I had planned on asking my agency to send a temp over, but in all events this is a far more satisfactory solution.’ And one that had occurred to him on the spur of the moment. He could only sardonically admire his talent for creativity when it came to breaking his own rules so that he could invent a couple of new ones.

‘I’m not really qualified to do Helen’s job.’ With ever-vanishing hope, Agatha clung to that observation with the tenacity of a drowning swimmer clinging to a life belt, but in her heart she knew that it was a pretty futile hope. He was a deeply suspicious man in a situation over which he fancied he lacked total control. How wrong he was!

‘She’ll spend the next couple of days filling you in and I’ll handle anything sensitive.’

‘Will that include buying presents for your lovers?’ She pressed her hand to her mouth as if she could somehow stuff the words back in and swallow them down.

Luc looked at her narrowly, eyes gleaming. When he took
one step towards her, Agatha instinctively fell back. ‘Would that bother you? Would you be jealous?’

‘No!’

A slow smile curved his sexy mouth and he dropped his eyes, which actually didn’t do very much to release her from her semi-frozen, trance-like state. ‘Well,’ he drawled. ‘You’ll be thrilled to hear that I won’t be calling on you to do that.’

Did that mean that he would recommence his high-octane love life, just omitting her from the responsibility of buying gifts, reserving restaurants and seats at operas? she wondered feverishly, and then was ashamed of letting her thoughts go down that pointless road.

‘And look on the bright side. There’s another reason why you should applaud my decision to bring you to the director’s floor. If you decide to go into another office job after this, you’ll want a good reference. Work for me and come up to scratch, and you’ll be in demand the second you leave this building. All told, you can see that I’m doing you a favour.’

‘Your favours never feel like favours,’ Agatha breathed on a rebellious sigh.

Mutual attraction, the brief game of pursuit and capture then gratification. That was the course of events he had always followed with women, and after the gratification came the gratitude. He was cynical enough to know that he was a catch, maybe one of the biggest in the sea.

Agatha had turned that normal course of events on its head. Was that why he was driven to get her back in his bed at all costs and even at the expense of his fabled self-control?

At any rate, he sucked in his breath sharply and said with curt self-restraint, ‘Come up to the director’s floor when

you’ve cleared your desk. I’ll be out for the remainder of the day, but Helen will show you the ropes.’
Which, Agatha supposed as she trudged with her possessions up the lift to the plush glass-house occupied by the high and mighty at the top of the building, was something.

And at least she would be doing some real work; there was always a positive spin to be put on everything, she told herself. Also, Luc had been right: he would be able to dispatch her with reasonable references if she left with more experience, and that would mean something to him. It would reduce any residue of guilt that the job he had been forced to provide for her hadn’t worked out.