‘Okay. Three months’ probation, then we can take it from there…’
Tessa breathed a sigh of relief. Three months would give her a bit of time to look for something else and the pay was so fabulous that she would be able to put aside a healthy amount of money in that space of time. Because the bottom line was that the man was right. She needed to work for someone organised, someone more grounded, someone less flamboyant who didn’t make her stammer like a schoolgirl every time he fixed those vivid blue eyes on her. And, whatever his mother had said, he needed someone to look good and to slot in. He needed another Fifi.
CHAPTER TWO
‘OKAY! Where the hell have you put that file?’
Curtis stormed out of his office and proceeded to circle her desk until he was standing squarely in front of her, and, as if that weren’t enough, he then leaned forward, planting both hands on her desk until Tessa was reluctantly forced to acknowledge him.
The past two weeks had been a learning curve. Curtis Diaz was brilliant, forceful, outspoken, alarming and utterly unpredictable. He obeyed none of the rules most bosses observed. The first in-house meeting she had gone to had been an experience that had left her feeling dazed for hours afterwards. Ideas had bounced around the room like bullets, voices had been raised and anything suggested that had failed to take into account probable loopholes had been loudly shouted down without any attempt made to soothe nerves or compromise.
Interestingly, none of the staff had seemed disconcerted by their boss’s unconventional approach to company management.
‘Well?’ Curtis roared. ‘Have you gone deaf? Is there life in there?’
‘There’s no need to shout,’ Tessa said quietly, but she was adjusting fast to his displays of temper. Rule one, she had learned, was not to automatically cringe back. To start with, she had wondered how his Fifis had coped with his overpowering personality. Then it occurred to her that he had probably never raised his voice in their presence. They were there for his visual satisfaction and, as she had discovered, most of the intricate work had been done by one of the other secretaries out of loyalty to their charismatic leader. The various strings of Fifis had filed, brought cups of coffee and brightened up his office. She, on the other hand, not having the glamour looks to fall back on, was treated like everyone else.
‘I am not shouting,’ he growled now, thrusting his dark face further forward. ‘I’m asking a perfectly reasonable question.’
‘Oh, right. Well, thanks for pointing that out. My mistake.’ Tessa said that with such understated calm that he made an unintelligible sound under his breath and drew back.
‘I gave the file to Richard yesterday before I left. He wanted to go over some of the costings again.’
‘Well, you’d better go and fetch it.’ He prowled off to stand by the window, hands stuffed into his pockets.
‘Anything else while I’m there?’ Tessa stood up and looked at him. She might be getting used to the way he operated, but she doubted in the three-month target she had set herself that she would ever become used to the way he looked. He was quite simply overwhelming. When he banged around the office or called her in so that he could dictate something to her in that rapid-fire manner of his, she was fine, but every time he focused his attention fully on her, as he was doing now, she could feel every nerve in her body begin to quiver with clammy, restless awareness.
‘No.’ Blue eyes did a frowning, absent-minded inspection of her and returned to her face, which had pinkened. ‘Just get the file and come into my office with it. There are one or two things I want to discuss with you. Oh, you might as well grab us both a cup of coffee while you’re about it, even though you’re not much use on the coffee-making front.’ That little jab seemed to do the trick of snapping him out of his mood because he grinned at her. ‘Now, I bet you’re going to tell me that a highly qualified PA isn’t responsible for making decent coffee for her boss.’
Tessa took a deep breath and counted to ten. He didn’t often tease her and, when he did, it always sent a tingle of unwanted emotion racing through her. The only way she knew how to handle that was to be as bland and literal as possible, so she gave him a perplexed look as though considering his criticism fully at face value.
‘You haven’t complained about my coffee-making skills before.’
‘Too weak. Weak coffee is for weak men.’
This time her finely arched eyebrows flew up in an expression of amused disbelief.
‘Oh, really? I never realised that before.’
‘Didn’t think so. Aren’t you glad that you’re learning such amazing things every day, thanks to me?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ she murmured, looking down and sliding away from her desk. ‘I really don’t know how I survived in my last job before.’
She could almost hear him grinning as she swept out of the room and headed to Richard’s office.
Three days after she had started, his mother had telephoned her at the office to find out how she was enjoying working for her son.
‘It’s a unique experience,’ Tessa had confided truthfully. ‘I’ve never worked for anyone like your son before.’
‘I hope you’re managing to keep him in order,’ Mrs Diaz had said. ‘He can be a little intimidating to the uninitiated. Runs rings around people.’
‘Well, he doesn’t intimidate me,’ she had replied without pausing for breath.
Well, he did, though not in the way his mother had implied. She was confident in her abilities to do her job to the highest standard, thereby giving him no chance to slam into her for inefficiency, but on the personal level it was a different question altogether. He had a certain magnetism that made her quail inside and it was a source of abundant relief to her that she could school her expressions so that that particular weakness was never exposed.
He was waiting for her in his office when she returned ten minutes later with the file and a cup of coffee that was so strong that she could almost have stood the teaspoon upright in it.
He had pushed his chair back and pulled out the bottom drawer of the desk, which he was using as an impromptu footrest.
‘Pull up a chair,’ he said, ‘and close the door behind you.’
‘Close the door?’
‘That’s right. No need to repeat everything I say parrot-style.’
Tessa didn’t say anything. She shut his door, handed him the file and then sat down with her notepad on her lap and her hand poised to take down whatever he was about to dictate.
‘So,’ he began, ‘how are you enjoying it here?’
Tessa looked up at him in surprise. ‘Fine, thank you.’
‘Fine. Hmm.’ What he had intended to discuss, amongst other things, were the costings of extending IT operations somewhere in the Far East. She might not, he had realised, be the eye candy he had previously employed, but she hadn’t been kidding when she had told him that she was good at what she did. Not only were his thoughts channelled into expert documentation, but she could involve herself in more complex debates, which he had discovered was quite a useful talent.
Her persona, though, was a more difficult nut to crack. She greeted everything he said with the same unshakeable composure, which was beginning to prick his curiosity. His method of management was an open-door policy, whereby all his employees were free to voice whatever was on their minds, and they did. Moreover, he had become