‘I don’t understand,’ she said huskily, as realisation slowly dawned. This man, this virile, sexy man, was Alexander Morrell. He was definitely not the middle-aged, balding lawyer she had imagined her new boss to be.
‘Out of interest,’ Alex drawled, ‘we parted company over half an hour ago, and it took me less than five minutes to reach the office. Where did you go for a new pair of tights? Scotland?’
Jenna felt the first stirrings of temper at his sarcasm, the shock of the attack, coupled with her surprise at the identity of her new boss, making her feel sick and shaky. ‘I was mugged,’ she said slowly. ‘At least I wasn’t—a woman on the pavement in front of me had her handbag snatched by a cyclist. He was wearing a balaclava,’ she added, as if the information would explain everything. ‘I couldn’t see his face.’
‘Perhaps he was working undercover?’ Alex suggested dryly, his tone plainly skeptical, and Jenna felt hot colour flood her cheeks.
‘You don’t believe me?’ Suddenly she was at boiling point. The cyclist had been the lowest of the low, but this man, with his sardonic smile and barely concealed cynicism, was the bitter end. The fact that he looked utterly gorgeous and made her feel like a self-conscious teenager only added fuel to her anger. ‘I’m not in the habit of lying, Mr Morrell, but obviously I’m wasting my time here. I’ll inform the employment agency that you decided I was unsuitable.’
‘I may well decide that you’re unsuitable, but I’ll do it in my own time—which, I might add, is extremely valuable.’
Gone was the urbane charmer from the coffee shop, in his place a hard-faced criminal lawyer whose ruthlessness in the courts was legendary. His arrogance set her teeth on edge.
‘I’ve already wasted an hour this morning, and I don’t have time to run through the niceties of office politics with you now. There’s a notepad on the desk. I assume you can take notes in shorthand?’
Jenna bit back a retort and seethed silently. She needed this job, she reminded herself. This was her way out of the mountain of debts that had hung over her since Lee had left; her chance to forge a better life. Before she had known his true identity, she had told Alex Morrell that she would work for the devil for the right price; it seemed as though her flippant remark was about to come true.
‘Were you injured by this mystery mugger?’ Alex could not quite hide his incredulity.
In all honesty he didn’t know what to believe, but a career spent weeding out the truth from a web of lies had taught him that people were prepared to invent the most fantastic stories to defend themselves. He would have respected Jenna Deane more if she had simply explained that she had got lost, which was a far more likely reason for her lateness; she had admitted that she had a terrible sense of direction. He was fortunate enough not to need the services of public transport, but he was a fair man, and he could sympathise with anyone who was dependent on the notoriously unreliable train network. Miss Deane appeared windswept, but had no injuries as far as he could see, and her tale of having witnessed a mugging seemed fantastical to say the least. However, the law decreed that everyone was presumed innocent until found guilty, and he glanced at her enquiringly, prepared to be convinced.
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Jenna snapped, throwing him a look of acute dislike. And to think she had thought this man fanciable! In all honesty that air of raw sexiness seemed even more intense in the confines of the office, but there was no way she would let him see that he captivated her.
‘Take five minutes to tidy yourself up,’ Alex advised coolly, unfazed by the storm he could see brewing in her grey eyes.
She suddenly looked very fragile, a small, forlorn figure in her rumpled suit, her red-gold hair falling in a tangle around her face. He had been unable to banish her from his mind, could hardly credit that he had been prepared to throw his tight schedule into disarray simply so that he could buy her coffee, and he could not shake off the faint disappointment that she had refused his offer.
So this was Margaret’s choice, he mused. Jenna Deane would be his secretarial assistant while Pippa took six months’ maternity leave. And as he flipped open the case notes on his desk he could not dispel a frisson of anticipation.
Jenna felt like a recalcitrant child, sent to the cloakroom to tidy herself up, as Alex had so tactfully put it, but one glance in the mirror brought a gasp of dismay as she discovered just what a mess she looked. Her skirt and jacket were inexpensive, and looked decidedly limp after a soaking in the rain, but at least she was able to change out of her laddered tights.