‘Tell me about it.’ He was in there like a shot, having dispatched the waiter to bring them a glass of wine each. Large. ‘No boyfriends with lavish spending habits—that would be unhealthy and bad for the soul…’
Rose opened her mouth to respond and then shut it. Instead she gave him a wry look. ‘The devil finds work for idle hands, Gabriel. I feel very sorry for those poor girls if you were like this with them.’
‘Like what?’ Gabriel asked piously.
‘Barbing them.’
‘None of them would have been equipped to handle it.’
‘Or maybe you respected them more…’ Rose insinuated quietly.
‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous. Is that what you really think? That I don’t respect you? Or are you just fishing?’ When she didn’t answer, he raked his fingers through his hair and gave her a brooding, frustrated look. ‘They were bloody useless, the lot of them. I meant it when I said that I needed you, Rose. I do.’ His magnificent blue eyes flicked over her and he added, wickedly, ‘Need you and want you…’ He watched slow colour infuse her cheeks.
Rose, accustomed to his brilliance, his impatience and his temper, which was seldom directed at her, was thrown off balance by his flirtatious charm, something which she had always assumed was abundant but reserved for the women he dated. She didn’t like it. It made her feel vulnerable and uneasy and she stoically hung on to her composure and managed to say, without any inflection whatsoever in her voice, ‘You think you do, Gabriel, but no one is indispensable, least of all a secretary.’ She sipped her wine and eyed him over the rim of her glass.
‘Don’t underestimate yourself.’
‘I’m not. But I’m not about to think that your working life will grind to a halt if I’m not around.’
‘Maybe not grind to a halt,’ Gabriel admitted. ‘But run considerably less smoothly. I’ve spent the past three months finding that out.’ He was amused to realise that she had never voiced her opinions to him about the women in his life. He also realised that, without using so many words, she had managed to imply distaste with how he conducted his private life. Belatedly it occurred to him that she had widely overstepped the mark with her smugness and she had got away with it. How did that follow when he prided himself on being a man who knew exactly where to draw his verbal boundaries? Healthy criticism on the work front was fine. In fact, to be encouraged! His personal life was, however, his own business and not up for discussion. He chose to disregard the little voice in his head telling him that he had solicited her opinion. It was not really fair now if he castigated her for having one because he didn’t like it.
She had moved on, though. Was defining the role of secretary and why it was a position relatively easy to fulfil. Sounding like a member of the Personnel department giving advice to a prospective interviewee.
Gabriel grunted non-commitally.
‘Basically,’ she concluded, ‘if I’m to be successful recruiting someone, then you need to tell me exactly what you’re looking for.’
‘Recruiting someone?’
‘For the days when I’m at college.’
‘How many days would that be?’
‘I…I’ll be able to tell you that by the end of the week and I can start recruiting in a few weeks’ time.’
‘Naturally, you will have to continue managing sensitive clients and anything that might be of a confidential nature.’ He signalled for the bill and contemplated the dispiriting prospect of a never-ending train of incompetent girls scuttling around, trying and failing to keep up with him. ‘The key quality I’m looking for is an ability to function without behaving like terrified little rabbits every time I speak.’
‘We’ve been through that,’ Rose said patiently. She glanced at her watch and realised that it was a lot later than she had imagined. And they still hadn’t touched upon all that work which apparently she needed to be filled in on. ‘We haven’t got down to discussing work,’ she pointed out.
‘And now you have to go? Or else you might turn into a pumpkin?’ He frowned and tapped in the pin number for his card. ‘I’ll drop you back to your house.’
‘No need. I live within walking distance.’
‘Nonsense. I would never let a woman walk back to her house at night.’
‘I do it every single day, Gabriel! Do you think I take taxis to and from work? The bus stops just down from here and I walk to my house quite safely, no matter how dark it is.’ She didn’t really know why she was bothering to protest because Gabriel always did what he wanted to do. Right now he wanted to play the gentleman and drop her back to her house.
‘You need a car,’ he said abruptly.
Rose stopped dead in her tracks and looked at him with her mouth open. ‘I need a what?’
‘A car. A company car. The fact that you haven’t got one has been an oversight on my part.’
‘You must be desperate to hang on to me,’ she said wryly, ‘if you’re now offering me a car…’
‘It’s not exactly unusual for a PA to have a company car.’ He held open the car door for her to slide in. ‘Where do you live?’
Rose gave his driver the directions. Today was proving to be a day of firsts for her and she was uneasily aware that a number of them didn’t sit well with her. This was the first time Gabriel had managed to crash through her carefully maintained barriers. No, they hadn’t shared confidences over a bottle of wine but he had seen her professional mask slip and that wasn’t good. It was also the first time he had flirted with her. Or at least spoken to her in that velvety, amused voice that she had only ever heard him use occasionally on the phone to one of his women. It was also the first time they had shared a meal together in a restaurant, just the two of them with no particular work agenda driving the occasion. None of these firsts did anything to soothe her frayed nerves at being back in his company after three months.
It was odd but it almost felt as if a door between them had opened. Over the years she had managed to cope with her feelings for him by being very careful to make sure that their roles were defined. He was her boss, a man she respected, got along well with but ultimately a man who gave her orders which she was obliged to follow. Over time, as they had grown into one another, his orders had stopped resembling orders but she had never deluded herself into thinking that she was anything to him but a very useful tool.
Some of the things she had been requested to do, as far as she was concerned, went beyond the bounds of secretarial duties. Presents for some of his girlfriends, flowers at the end of an affair, bookings for restaurants. She had done them without argument, however. She had never volunteered an opinion and he had never asked her for one. Tonight, some of those barriers had been eroded and Rose felt like a snail suddenly deprived of its protective shell.
Just thinking about it made her skin tingle and she was relieved when, after just a few minutes, the car pulled up outside her house. She pushed open her door, smiling a very hurried thank you, and was only aware that he had followed her up to her front door when he reached down to take the bundle of keys out of her fingers.
‘My mother always told me to see a lady to her front door. You’re trembling.’
‘It’s a little chilly out here.’ Rose watched his long fingers as he turned the key in the lock. ‘I think I must have become accustomed to the milder weather in Australia.’ He handed her back the keys and their fingers brushed. ‘Well—’ Rose planted herself in the doorway and stared at him in a no nonsense manner ‘—goodnight and thank you once more for the dinner. I’m sorry we didn’t get around to discussing work-related issues. Perhaps I could check your diary for the next week or so and slot in a convenient time for us to go through the problem areas…?’
‘I’ll