‘Not in this case, Mr Cabrera,’ Alice told him stiffly.
‘No boyfriend?’
Alice hesitated but, perhaps having misjudged her timing to start with, why not go the whole hog and expand on her conditions? He would probably chuck her out on the spot. She would return to the agency, who wouldn’t be surprised to see her, and they would find her another job—something with a normal boss, working normal hours in a normal environment. It sounded unappetising.
‘I should mention...’ She heard the wooden formality in her voice and cringed because she was twenty-five years old, yet she sounded like someone twice her age. ‘I also do not appreciate talking about my personal life.’
‘Why not? Have you got something to hide?’
Alice’s mouth fell open and, in return, Gabriel raised his eyebrows without bothering to help her out of her awkward silence.
‘I...I do a very good job. I take my work very seriously. If you decide to keep me on, you won’t regret it, Mr Cabrera. I bring one hundred and ten percent to everything I do in the working environment...’
Gabriel didn’t say anything. He watched her flounder and wondered whether she brought one hundred and ten percent to whatever it was she did in the leisure time that she was so stridently protecting.
‘Accountancy courses require weekend time... What would you do about those precious weekends of yours that you can’t possibly sacrifice?’
‘I can do the work in my own time,’ Alice said promptly. ‘I’ve checked it out. And I would pass the exams. I have a good head for figures.’
‘In which case, remind me why you didn’t go into that field of work when you left school...college...university? In fact, now that you seem to be campaigning for a permanent job with me, why don’t you hand over the CV which I am sure is burning a hole in your bag...?’
Alice hesitated fractionally and Gabriel looked at her, his dark eyes cool and assessing.
His mobile phone rang; he glanced down at the caller ID and then he, too, hesitated, fractionally, but this time there was a smile hovering on his lips as he disconnected the call.
‘Here’s the deal, Miss Morgan.’ He sat forward, invading her space, and rested his elbows on her desk.
Alice automatically inched back and her breathing quickened as their eyes clashed. Suddenly, she was aware of every inch of her body in ways she had never been before. She felt hot all over; her breasts felt prickly and sensitive, her skin tight and tingly. She took a deep breath and shakily told herself that she would have to subdue reactions like that if she was to be offered the job of working with this man full-time. She might not like the guy but she couldn’t afford to let that dislike control her responses.
‘Yes,’ she said, grateful that her voice was steady and cool.
‘I’m going to read your CV and, provided I don’t discover any...suggestion of little white lies in it, and provided your references check out, I’m going to offer you a full-time job working with me...’
‘You are?’
‘And I’m going to go the extra mile. After all, don’t preach what you can’t practise. I’m going to open the door for you to do that accountancy course you want to do.’
‘Really?’ A thousand jumbled thoughts were flying through Alice’s head but the one that was winning the race was the one that was telling her that her life might finally start moving forward, that she might finally have enough money to start saving a little bit...
‘And, naturally, you won’t be called upon to sacrifice your weekends unless imperative. In return...’
‘You’ll find that I’m up to anything you can throw at me.’
‘In that case...’ He reached over for the telephone on her desk and dialled a number then, before the line connected, he said with a slow smile, ‘You’ll find that there are times when you do need to involve yourself in my personal life, Miss Morgan.’ He handed her the phone. ‘I won’t be in touch with this particular woman again, so maybe you can set her straight on that score. And let’s see whether you’re really up to anything I can throw at you...’
GABRIEL SAUNTERED INTO his office and closed the door behind him. He felt energised, pleased with his decision to hire the new woman on the spot. Normally, something as trivial as this would be left to his Personnel department but the impulse had felt right.
On the spur of the moment, he telephoned the company where she had last worked and spoke for five minutes to the boss, who gave her a glowing reference.
So, he had had an interminable string of relatively competent secretaries. They had all looked good, and why shouldn’t he have gone for that? Some of them could even have been brought up to the standard he wanted had they not ended up becoming inconvenient. Lingering looks, offers to work as much overtime as he wanted, skirts that seemed to get shorter and tops more plunging as the days went on... All in all, pretty annoying in the end.
He wondered how this new one was dealing with the latest woman to have been dispatched from his life and he half-smiled when he imagined her tight disapproval.
Georgia had been exciting at the beginning. She had been enthusiastic and innovative in bed and, more importantly, had seemed to really take on board the ground rules for any relationship with him—namely, forget about looking for long-term commitment. So why had he got bored with her? She had certainly been eager to please and what man didn’t want a woman willing to bend over backwards for him? He wondered whether there were just too many women willing to bend over backwards for him: gorgeous, sexy, voluptuous women whose vocabulary largely centred on the word ‘yes’. In his high-octane, high-pressured life, the word ‘yes’ had always been a soothing counterpoint. Although of late...
He scrolled through the report in front of him and acknowledged another successful takeover that would allow him to expand certain aspects of one of his technology companies into Europe. In a rare moment of introspection, he grimly congratulated himself on the distance he had travelled from the foster-home kid with zero prospects to a man who ruled the world. He was sure he had felt more pleasure in the past when he had occasionally contemplated his achievements.
He had started on the trading floor, a sixteen-year-old gofer with an uncanny ability to read markets and predict trends. His first real kick had come when he had realised that the guys with the cut-glass accents and the country estates had begun to take him seriously when he spoke. They had started seeking him out and, with the instincts born of someone from the wrong side of the tracks who was hungry and ambitious, he had learnt how to ruthlessly use and eventually channel his talents. He had learnt when to share information and when to withhold it. He had learnt that money was power and power brought immunity from ever having to do what anyone else told him to do.
He became the man who gave the orders and he liked it that way. Thirty-two years old and he was untouchable.
The firm knock on the door snapped him out of his thoughts and he sat back in his chair and summoned her in.
This, Alice was thinking as she walked into his office, was why she could never like this guy. He had dialled a number and then left her to it and, from what she had gleaned during that conversation with Georgia of the husky voice, he was just the sort of inveterate playboy she despised.
But the job was going to be hers and she wasn’t going to let this type of challenge kill her chances. He seemed to have accepted her request for her weekends to remain sacrosanct and had hired her without the usual bank of interviews. She got the feeling that this was a departure for him. So she could bend a little in this area...
Her face, however, was rigid with disapproval