Best of Bosses 2008(99)

Rose spun around, but her heated accusation of sexism died on her lips when she saw the grin plastered across his face. Without thinking she flung the tea towel at him and he caught it and tut-tutted under his breath.

‘I should punish you for that,’ he drawled. ‘Trying to cause grievous bodily harm to your employer…’

Rose felt her mouth go dry. This was the lazy, flirty voice he sometimes pulled out of the bag, with the dexterity of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and, it didn’t seem to matter how many times she told herself that he was just one of those born charmers, that voice still got to her every time.

‘With a tea cloth?’ she said lightly. ‘You must be a lot more delicate than you look if a tea cloth can inflict serious injury.’ A brief, electric silence greeted this remark and Rose clenched her hands into fists behind her back. She didn’t know what had possessed her to say that.

‘Should I take it as a compliment that you consider me big and strong?’ Nick murmured provocatively. He could tell that she would have liked the ground to open and swallow her up and for the first time since she had started working for him, he felt suddenly enraged. Enraged that he had given this woman an opportunity many would have killed for. Enraged that she continued to treat him with the studied politeness of a stranger. Enraged that every single time he had tried to get under that armour of hers, he had found himself gently but firmly repelled. Enraged now that she was back to looking at him with something like horror, as usual turning a perfectly innocent, teasing remark into something diabolical.

‘Forget I said that.’ Nick’s voice was cool and dismissive. He even turned away.

Rose was stricken. How was he supposed to know that she shrank away from him because she was just so damn scared that if she didn’t her treacherous legs would have her pelting towards him and her even more treacherous arms would wind themselves around his neck and cling?

What must he think of her? That she was ungrateful? Churlish? Buttoned up? The sort of woman who had suffered a sense-of-humour bypass somewhere along the line?

Rose wondered whether maybe she had.

‘I’m sorry,’ she faltered.

‘What about?’ Nick enquired politely.

‘I’m really excited about going to Borneo…’ Humourless. Buttoned up. An efficient little worker bee who actually thought that what she had to say mattered to Nick Papaeliou. He was courteous, even teasing and flirtatious sometimes, and yet here she was, lips tightly pursed, as if her maidenly honour were under threat. Clutching her precious, uninteresting private life as if one single lapse would send him into a sexual, predatory frenzy. The idea was so nonsensical that Rose inwardly cringed.

‘But I guess I’m a little scared as well…’

‘Oh, yes?’ Nick reluctantly felt himself drawn to that simple, hesitant admission. ‘Why?’

Rose sighed and went to sit at the kitchen table. She rested her chin thoughtfully in the palm of her hand and stared back down the years. She had agreed with him, initially, because he had conveniently supplied her with an excuse for her own disturbing train of thoughts, but now she thought that maybe he was right. Maybe she was scared of the unknown.

‘Tony and Flora always thought that traipsing around the country would make me brave and adventurous. I think they kind of figured that some of their let’s-change-the-goalposts lifestyle would rub off on me, but it never did. When you move from school to school, you end up dreading each upheaval even more than the last one. At least, that’s what it did for me. It’s why I like working for Fedco.’

‘You can hide behind the size?’ he guessed shrewdly, now fully ensnared by her dreamy, distant voice.

‘I can be safe. Borneo…’ Rose laughed and blinked so that he was back in her line of vision. ‘Well, Borneo is just something else altogether.’

‘All that heat…’

‘And insects…’

Anything could happen. He nearly said it out loud and caught himself in the nick of time. ‘But Tony and Flora would be pleased…’

Rose gave him a dazzling grin. ‘More than pleased. They’d be overjoyed. You want to hear them on the subject of Lily. They’re thrilled to bits that she’s now on the other side of the world making her fortune. I think they feel that they’ve somehow contributed to that.’

‘And what about you?’

‘I would never contemplate living across the Atlantic.’

‘I mean, are you thrilled that your sister is making her fortune on the other side of the world?’

‘I’ve got accustomed to it,’ Rose told him. ‘I miss her terribly, but it helps knowing that she’s happy and fulfilled.’