Pamela Morgan had never seemed to have the strength to stand up to her bullying, philandering husband, so she had turned to Alice for moral support. By the time Rex Morgan had died, in a car accident, his wife had become a shadow of the girl who had married him in the false expectation of living happily ever after.
Alice’s dreams had been put on hold and, when she looked back, she could see that she had spent her teenage years laying down the foundations for the person she would later become: reserved, cautious, lacking in the carefree gaiety that might have been her due, given a different set of circumstances.
Her one experience with the opposite sex had merely served to drive home to her that it never paid to think that anything good was a foregone conclusion.
‘Is there anything else you’d like me to do now, and what time might I expect you to be in tomorrow morning? I don’t know what your diary is.’ The diary he never used.
‘I keep my diary on my phone. I’ll email you the contents. And tomorrow? I expect I’ll be in...at my usual time. Then I’m away for the next three days. Think you can handle being on your own?’
‘As I said, Mr Cabrera, I will do my utmost to deal with anything you can throw at me...’
* * *
Disgorged from the jumble of people on the tube three weeks later, it occurred to Alice that whatever had been thrown at her had obviously been full of all the right vitamins and proteins because she was enjoying her job. No, more than enjoying it. She got up early with a spring in her step, looking forward to the workload ahead of her and the slow creeping of responsibilities that were landing on her plate.
Her brain was being challenged in all sorts of ways. She was personally responsible for three large accounts. She had enrolled for her accountancy studies. And, by her standards, she was being paid a small fortune.
It was amazing, given the fact that she disapproved of much of what Gabriel stood for. She disapproved of his blatant womanising; she disapproved of the way he picked up lovers and then discarded them. He made no secret of the fact that he was as ruthless in his private life as he was in his working one. She disapproved of his supreme certainty that whatever he wanted would be his. She disapproved of the way every female employee, almost without exception, practically went down on bended knee whenever he deigned to address them. She disapproved of his ego.
On a daily basis, she fielded calls from women who wanted to talk to him and she could gauge from their hopeful, breathless voices that talking was not the only thing they wanted.
She disapproved of all of that.
The guy clearly didn’t have to try when it came to the opposite sex, so he didn’t. He was pursued and presumably, when he felt like it, he took one of his pursuers up on her offer and established something that couldn’t even really be called a relationship.
He was lazy.
But so beautiful, a little voice in her head absently pointed out, and Alice halted for a second so that the crowds parted around her, some of them muttering impatiently under their breath.
She wouldn’t deny that he had looks. The strong, aggressive lines of his lean, dark face were imprinted in her head with the force of a branding iron. She thought about him in passing more than she liked, then justified her lapses by telling herself that of course she would think of him—he was an exciting person to work for and she was only new to the job, hadn’t had time to get used to him yet.
Which was why she knew just how long his dark lashes were and the way they could conceal the expression in his eyes... Which was how she knew that the second he entered the office, bringing all that force and vitality behind him, he would roll up the sleeves of his shirt, walk past her and immediately ask for his coffee.
She doubted that he even really noticed her. She was his über-efficient secretary who did as she was told faster than the speed of light. For long periods of time, he barely glanced in her direction at all.
She picked up speed, suddenly irritated for allowing her thoughts to stray down forbidden paths. He didn’t notice her because she wasn’t his type.
His type was...
No, she wasn’t going to let her mind start speculating.
By now familiar with the impressive entrance foyer and well used to the hordes of workers and, later in the day, the tourists who were always milling about, Alice blanked everyone out as she strode purposefully towards the lift.
It was not yet eight. The three floors occupied by his company would only be partly peopled. She liked the relative quiet as she was transported upwards...and upwards and upwards...
She felt a curl of excitement as she exited the lift. She barely recognised the emotion. Her head was full of what she had to do that day. The last thing she was expecting was to enter her office to the sight of two figures having an argument in Gabriel’s office.