Okay. The first thing she was going to do was make them both a hot drink, then she’d make a start on the mountain of paperwork to be digitally backed up and filed.
Not wanting to speak up and disturb him with questions at this point, she decided to do a bit of investigative work. Placing the laptop carefully onto the sofa, she stood up and made for the door, intent on searching out the kitchen.
He didn’t stir from his computer screen as she walked past him.
Well, if nothing else, at least this was going to be a very different experience to her last job. By the end of her time there she could barely move without feeling a set of judging eyes burning into her.
The kitchen was in the room directly opposite and she stood for a moment to survey the lie of it. There was a big glass-topped table in the middle with six chairs pushed in around it and an expanse of cream-coloured marble work surface, which ran the length of two sides of the room. The whole place was sleek and new-looking, with not a thing out of place.
Opening up the dishwasher, she peered inside and saw one mug and one cereal bowl sitting in the rack. Hmm. So it was just Max living here? Unless his partner was away at the moment. Glancing round, she scanned the place for photographs, but there weren’t any, not even one stuck to the enormous American fridge. In fact, this place was so devoid of personalised knick-knacks it could have been a kitchen in a show home.
Lifting the mug out of the dishwasher, she checked it for remnants of his last drink, noting from the smell that it was coffee, no sugar, and from the colour that he took it without milk. There was a technical-looking coffee maker on the counter which flummoxed her for a moment or two, but she soon figured out how to set it up and went about finding coffee grounds in the sparsely filled fridge and making them both a drink, adding plenty of milk to hers.
Walking back into the room, she saw that Max hadn’t budged a centimetre since she’d left and was still busy tapping away on the keyboard.
After placing his drink carefully onto the desk, which he acknowledged with a grunt, she took a look through the filing cabinet till she figured out which system he was using, then squared up to the mountain of paperwork on the sideboard, took a breath and dived in.
* * *
Well, she was certainly the most determined woman he’d met in a long time.
Max Firebrace watched Cara out of the corner of his eye as she manhandled the pile of documents over to the sofa and heard her put them down with a thump on the floor.
Glancing at the drink she’d brought him, he noticed she’d made him a black coffee without even asking what he wanted.
Huh. He wasn’t expecting that. The PAs he’d had in the past had asked a lot of questions when they’d first started working with him, but Cara seemed content to use her initiative and just get on with things.
Perhaps this wasn’t going to be as much of a trial as he’d assumed when he’d agreed to their bargain on the doorstep.
It was typical of Poppy to send someone over here without letting him know. His friend was a shrewd operator all right. She’d known he was blowing her off when he promised to get someone in to help him and had clearly taken it upon herself to make it happen anyway.
Irritation made his skin prickle.
He was busy, sure, but, as he’d told Poppy at the time, it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. He’d allow Cara to work her one-month trial period to placate his friend, but then he’d let her go. He wasn’t ready to hire someone else full-time yet; there wasn’t enough for her to do day-to-day, and he didn’t need someone hanging around, distracting him.
Leaning back into the leather swivel chair that had practically become his home in the past few months, he rubbed the heels of his hands across his eyes before picking up the drink and taking a sip.
He’d been working more and more at the weekends now that his management consultancy was starting to grow some roots, and he was beginning to feel it. It had been a slog since he’d set up on his own, but he’d been glad of the distraction and it was finally starting to pay dividends. If things carried on in the same vein, at some point in the future he’d be in a position to rent an office, hire some employees and start expanding. Then he could relax a little and things would get back to a more even keel.
The thought buoyed him. After working for other people since graduating from university, he was enjoying having full control over who he worked for and when; it seemed to bring about a modicum of peace—something that had eluded him for the past eighteen months. Ever since Jemima had gone.
No, died.
He really needed to allow the word into his interior monologue now. No one else had wanted to say it at the time, so he’d become used to employing all the gentler euphemisms himself, but there was no point pretending it was anything else. She’d died, so suddenly and unexpectedly it had left him reeling for months, and he still wasn’t used to living in this great big empty house without her. The house Jemima had inherited from her great-aunt. The home she’d wanted to fill with children—which he’d asked her to wait for—until he felt ready.
Pain twisted in his stomach as he thought about all that he’d lost—his beautiful, compassionate wife and their future family. Recently he’d been waking up at night in a cold sweat, reaching out to try and save a phantom child with Jemima’s eyes from a fall, or a fire—the shock and anguish of it often staying with him for the rest of the following day.
No wonder he was tired.
A movement in the corner of his eye broke his train of thought and he turned to watch Cara as she opened up the filing cabinet to the right of him and began to deftly slide documents into the manila folders inside.
Now that he looked at her properly, he could see the family resemblance to Poppy. She had the same shiny coal-black hair as his friend, which cascaded over her slim shoulders, and a very short blunt-cut fringe above bright blue almond-shaped eyes.
She was pretty. Very pretty, in fact.
Not that he had any interest in her romantically. It was purely an observation.
Cara looked round and caught him watching her, her cheeks flushing in response to his scrutiny.
Feeling uncomfortable with the atmosphere he’d created by staring at her, he sat up straighter, crossing his arms and adopting a more businesslike posture. ‘So, Cara, tell me about the last place you worked. Why did you leave?’
Her rosy cheeks seemed to pale under his direct gaze. Rocking back on her heels, she cleared her throat, her gaze skittering away from his to stare down at the papers in her hands, as if she was priming herself to give him an answer she thought he’d want to hear.
What was that about? The incongruity made him frown.
‘Or were you fired?’
Her gaze snapped back to his. ‘No, no, I left. At least, I opted for voluntary redundancy. The business I was working for took a big financial hit last year and, because I was the last in, it felt only right that I should be the first out. There were lots of people who worked there with families to support, whereas I’m only me—I mean I don’t have anyone depending on me.’
Her voice had risen throughout that little monologue and the colour had returned to her cheeks to the point where she looked uncomfortably flushed. There was something not quite right about the way she’d delivered her answer, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
Perhaps she was just nervous? He knew he could come across as fierce sometimes, though usually only when someone did something to displease him.
He didn’t suffer fools gladly.
But she’d been fine whilst persuading him to give her a shot at the PA job.
‘That’s it? You took voluntary redundancy?’
She nodded and gave him a smile that didn’t quite reach