‘In which case...’ She handed him his mobile phone. ‘Please feel free to call any one of them. I’m more than happy to be replaced.’
‘Sit down!’ he roared, before spluttering into a coughing fit which Alice observed without budging, arms still folded, cool as a cucumber and grudgingly amused at seeing her all-powerful boss losing his control because he was in the grip of nothing more serious than a simple passing cold.
He could be vulnerable. In a way least expected, he was showing her that he could be petulant, utterly exasperating in a very human way and...
Stupidly endearing with it.
‘I have some tablets in my handbag. I’ll fetch you a glass of water and you’re going to take them. They might not cure your cold but they’ll relieve your symptoms.’
‘Does that include my roasting fever? I’m burning up. Feel me if you don’t believe me.’
Alice sighed and felt his forehead and, as she did so, she felt a throbbing ache rip through her, scattering her self-composure for a second or two.
‘You have a slight temperature.’ She yanked her hand back and surreptitiously wiped it on her skirt, hoping to rid herself of the spark that had flared between them, dangerously, electrifyingly alive and as threatening as her dream had been to her peace of mind.
Why the sudden awareness of the man? she wondered. She disapproved of him as much now as she had done when she had first met him. So, they worked well together. So, maybe there were different sides to him; he wasn’t the one-dimensional guy she had chosen to categorise him as...
But why was it that the minute he was within touching distance of her she became as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof?
It was galling to think that she might have fallen into the same pathetic trap as all his other secretaries and she instantly killed that notion by telling herself that she hadn’t. He was fabulously good-looking and she was only human, after all. What reaction he evoked was one she could squash without any difficulty.
Although right now, having to sit in the same room as him when he was, quite frankly, indecently underdressed...
She strode out of the room into the adjacent en suite bathroom, ignoring the slightly damp white towel carelessly slung on the heated towel rail, and emerged with a glass of tap water and the tablets which she had extracted from her bag.
‘Take them.’
‘You’re extremely bossy.’ But he took the tablets from her and swallowed them with a gulp of water. ‘Not a feminine trait.’
Alice blushed, hot, flustered and irritated. ‘I’m not here to be “feminine”,’ she retorted tartly. ‘I’m here to go through some files which couldn’t possibly wait until next week. You have your string of girlfriends to distract you with their feminine wiles.’
‘I’m a girlfriend-free zone at the moment, as it happens. Although I’m sure you’re already aware of that, considering you’re the one who’s responsible for booking the venues I go to with them.’
The unfeminine, drab-but-efficient secretary who answers to your beck and call and books all the exciting places you take your women to...
So far, she had just booked the opera, but he was still fresh out of his relationship with Georgia and perhaps not quite there when it came to diving into a brand new relationship with another woman. The opera for two...
‘What happened to your opera companion?’ She allowed herself to be distracted, swept away on the disagreeable thought that life was passing her by as she stood on the sidelines, somehow waiting for it to happen.
She had never felt this way before. She had been happy to settle into a routine and to accept that, if things hadn’t turned out the way she had planned, then they could be worse. This was her lot and so be it.
Was it Gabriel’s overwhelming vitality that made her feel slow and sluggish in comparison? Was it the fact that she was the dullard behind the computer who booked the exciting events for exciting women?
‘Turns out she didn’t have what it takes. Admittedly, she was sexy as hell,’ he mused lazily. ‘But sadly the legs, the curves, the winning pout...weren’t enough to save her from being interminably boring.’
Alice’s rictus smile felt strained at the edges. Another one bites the dust, she thought with simmering resentment. Time to move on to another model and, fingers crossed, the legs, the curves and yet another winning pout might be combined with half a personality. While other normal people stuck things out because life was just not one long array of delectable dishes to be sampled and discarded, the Man Who Had It All just couldn’t be bothered with little niceties like that.
‘Maybe,’ he continued in the same musing, sexy voice, ‘I should incorporate that into your job description... Maybe I should delegate you to finding me someone who won’t prove tiresome after five seconds. Think you can handle it?’