Gabriel Cabrera paid his employees the earth and in return they handed over their freedom.
That was a bandwagon Alice had no intention of jumping on. Right now, she was nothing more than a lowly temp, so could speak her mind and lay down some boundaries. Because should—and it was a big should—the job be offered to her on a permanent basis, then she would no longer have the freedom to tell him what she was willing to do and what she wasn’t. And working weekends was definitely not on the agenda. Not given her mother’s current situation.
‘I’m not a clock watcher, Mr Cabrera, and I’m more than happy to work overtime if necessary. But, yes, I do value my private life and I would have to know in advance if I’m expected to sacrifice my leisure time.’
Gabriel looked at her narrowly. ‘That’s not how my company operates.’ Indeed, that was not how he operated. Doling out long explanations for what he did was not part of the package. He did as he pleased and the world accepted it. He felt another tug of weary cynicism which he swatted aside. He had earned his place at the head of the table by fighting off the competition. He had started from nothing and now had everything...and that had been the object of the game: to have it all. He was accountable to no one, least of all a secretary who had been with him for two minutes!
‘If I understand correctly, you’re being paid double what you would normally get doing the same job in another company.’
But with a different boss, Alice was tempted to insert. A normal boss.
‘That’s true,’ she admitted.
‘Are you going to tell me that you don’t like the nice, juicy pay packet? Because I can, of course, slash it if you want to start imposing conditions for your working hours. You’ve been here for five minutes and you think that you can start dictating terms?’ He gave a short, incredulous laugh and shook his head. ‘Unbelievable.’
‘The agency implied that there might be a permanent job on offer if I made it through the probation period. I understand you haven’t had a great deal of success with the previous secretaries who were sent to you.’
‘And, because you’ve had a good first day, you somehow think that you have leverage?’ But he had had a bad time of it when it came to his secretaries. Perhaps he should have been hunting down a Plain Jane like the one sitting in front of him, but you should be able to get along with the person in whose company you usually ended up spending most of your day. That seemed a sensible conclusion. He was forced to concede that his theory fell down slightly given the fact that some of the girls he had employed had wanted to get along a little too well with him for his liking.
‘You seem to be getting a little ahead of yourself here,’ he remarked, watching her closely. ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘No.’ Alice took a deep breath, prepared to stand her ground, because she could see very clearly how the land lay with this guy.
Dark eyes clashed with hazel and she felt a tremendous whoosh go through her, as though the air had been sucked out of her body. She found him unnerving, yet today had been the most invigorating she had spent in a long time. She had blossomed under the pressure of her workload, had even seen areas where she might be able to branch out and assume more responsibility.
Was she willing to jeopardise six weeks of a sure thing in favour of laying down ground rules for a permanent job that might not even be hers?
Even as she asked herself that question, she knew the answer. She wasn’t going to let anyone, however much they were paying her, dictate the parameters of her life, and not just her working life. No one in his company seemed to mind. Half the women were probably besotted with him, but not her, and she needed her time out. Life was difficult enough as it was, with her weekends taken up going to Devon to visit her mother. The last thing she needed was to have her precious week-day evenings sucked away, even if it meant forfeiting paid overtime.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Gabriel couldn’t actually recall the last time anyone had ventured an opinion that was obviously unwelcome. Great wealth gave great freedom, and commanded even greater respect, and hadn’t that always been his driving goal in life—to jettison the dark days of growing up in foster homes, where his opinion had counted for nothing and his life had been in the control of other people?
‘I’ve only been here for one day, Mr Cabrera, and on my first day I waited for nearly three hours until you arrived. Yes, that did give me ample time to read your company literature, but I wasn’t aware that that would be how I would spend my morning.’
‘Are you asking me to account for my whereabouts this morning?’ He looked at her with blatant incredulity.