She blinked, her fingers easing their death grip on the takeout cup. “Do you want me to help HR screen applicants?” The faintest hint of a relieved smile. “I have a good idea of what Anya’s job entailed.”
“No,” he said, taking a seat since he could tell his size intimidated her. Not that he was much smaller sitting down. “There won’t be any applicants. You are going to be my new PA.”
She just stared at him, her soft pink lips parted in a silent gasp. Bitable lips. That, he told himself, was a highly inappropriate thought, but for some reason, he couldn’t wipe it from his brain. When she wasn’t quivering in terror, Ms. Baird with her agile mind and her sparkling eyes was very, very intriguing. As for the rest of her—her shapeless clothes couldn’t hide the fact she was built like a pocket Venus. Undo her ponytail, take off the glasses—or maybe he’d leave them on—and she’d be a petite, curvy, bitable package.
Of course, his attraction to this pretty mouse wouldn’t have saved her position if she’d been incompetent. Though had the latter been true, he wouldn’t have found her anywhere near as intriguing. Smart women were his catnip.
Too bad he was her boss. “You’ll take over Anya’s role, effective immediately.”
Eyes going wide, she squeaked out a protest. “I can’t do Anya’s job!”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Really? Strange, since it appears you have been doing it for the past three years.” There was nothing he hated more in the business world than people who took credit for the hard work of others. “Anya couldn’t answer the majority of the questions I posed to you yesterday.”
Worse, unlike Charlotte, the other woman hadn’t known where to go or which files to access to get the information. She’d just smiled serenely and said she’d have the research on his desk first thing in the morning, then had no doubt gone out and e-mailed Charlotte the work requests.
Gabriel’s suspicions had been roused Monday—by the fact his PA was always available and smiling and put together in spite of the fact he’d thrown an avalanche of work at her. Any other man or woman in her position would’ve snapped at him at least once, and never, never would she have been able to leave the office at a reasonable hour. It had taken him less than five minutes to access the file records of the memos hitting his desk.
The last access code was always Anya’s—when she’d printed out the document. Everything below that linked back to Charlotte’s workstation. It was to make dead certain of his suspicions that he’d put both women through the same interview yesterday. He didn’t need a polished liar by his side; he needed Charlotte with her intelligence and her deep knowledge of the staff and their skills. Without her, it might’ve taken him weeks to discover Sinclair.
Anya hadn’t known the Sinclair proposal even existed.
“But,” Charlotte began on a rush of breath, as if she’d built herself up to get it all out, “I don’t know how to deal with suppliers and management and—”
“You’ll learn.” Gabriel couldn’t figure out why a woman so damn good at her job was so diffident about her abilities. “There’s really no choice. You accept this position or you pack up and go,” he said, testing how far he could push her. “You’ve done too good a job in your current role—there’s no longer any need for a full-time employee there.” An absolute truth. “It’s be my PA or hand in your access card to the building.”
She put her coffee on the desk he’d moved in on Sunday, her fingers curling into fists and hot spots of color on her cheeks. So, there was a temper there. Good. She’d need it to deal with him—Gabriel knew full well that he wasn’t the easiest of bosses. When she swallowed without unleashing the temper however, he wanted to growl at her.
Throttling back an impulse that would only terrify her, he said, “Yes or no?”
A long, indrawn breath. “Yes,” she said on the exhale.
CHARLOTTE DECIDED SHE MUST’VE lost her mind as she set herself up at Anya’s former desk, T-Rex having given her fifteen minutes to get herself sorted. A gleeful Tuck helped her move her things.
“I knew the Bishop was the man,” he said, unadulterated hero worship in his tone as he used T-Rex’s famous on-field moniker.
The Bishop, Charlotte thought mutinously, was a bully. One who kept her on her toes the entire day. Five o’clock came and went with no sign of stopping. At six, unsure of the protocol of being a PA, she looked through his door—which he tended to keep open except when in private meetings—and saw him scowling at the screen of the sleek laptop he preferred over a desktop.