Secret Daddy(55)

I typed as I walked. “Just because I don’t have an entire rugby team’s uniform in my washing machine every weekend.”

“What’s your point?”

“Not sure. I’m nearly here. Will let you know how it goes.”

“Dare you to say cock while you’re in there.”

“See you in a bit.”

I slipped my phone away as I looked up at the building. Nineteen Hopper Avenue. A monument to glass and steel in a street full of the same. The receptionist inside looked like she was one white coat and a pair of glasses away from being the nuclear physicist in a Bond movie. “Can I help you?” she asked, flashing far too many white teeth for comfort. Nobody should be that happy about being a receptionist.

“I’m here because someone sent for me. I’m from Temps Ahoy.”

“Ah, you must be Natalie. Is that right?”

I nodded. “That’s me, Natalie Brook.”

“I was told to keep an eye out for you. Take the lift on the right and get out on the seventh. I’ll buzz up and tell them you’re on your way.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re very welcome. You have a great day now.”

I managed half a smile in response but she wasn’t going to get much more out of me. How anyone could be that perky was beyond all reason. The lift opened as soon as I pressed the call button and I stepped into a mirrored world that gave me far more angles of my windswept hair than I cared for. I was still trying to sort it out when the doors slid open again on the seventh.

I stepped out to find myself facing a set of glass double doors, marked with the initials W & M. On the other side of the glass, another receptionist was waving at me, beckoning me through. When I reached her, she smiled even more broadly than the one downstairs, perhaps it was something they pumped in through the air conditioning. If she’d burst into a song and dance routine, I wouldn’t have been that surprised.

“Miss Brook?” she asked, not giving me a chance to answer. “It’s just super to meet you. Mr Mitchell is expecting you. I’ll just let him know you’re here.”

I stood there as she pressed the buzzer on her desk, thinking to myself that if this was a book, this should be where I meet Mr Grey, not Mr Mitchell. Or was this my version? Instead of a helicopter, would he take me for a ride in his Mini Metro? The thought brought a smile to my lips.

“Miss Brook is here for you, Damien,” the receptionist said into her intercom.

He’d drive me to his pleasure palace, a third floor bedsit. Instead of a room filled with devices designed to bring me to the pinnacles of delight, there’d be a tickling stick and a Hammond organ. Maybe portraits of his mother on the wall.

“Send her through,” a man’s voice said back in the real world.

If he was my Mr Grey, he was hiding it behind a very squeaky high pitched voice.

“Straight through there,” the receptionist said, pointing through an open plan office to the door at the far end.

I thanked her and weaved my way through several office drones, wondering if I’d be joining them after I was finished with college. Was that my future life? Glued to a computer screen with a “You don’t have to be mad to work here,” sticker on the wall next to me?

Nobody looked up as I passed. They were all too busy. The far door had a plaque screwed into it with ‘CEO,’ carved into the brass. So I was meeting the big boss of this place. Shouldn’t I be interviewing him because my room mate was sick? It would be a chance encounter that would lead to a whirlwind romance of him stalking me, refusing to take no for an answer and being generally everything you don’t want from a partner. But fifty shades of rich, that’s what counts, right?

I knocked on the door and for some reason I felt nervous as I did so. What if he was handsome? It was a stupid thought, an immature one that I shook off as he called out, “Come in.”

If he was my romantic hero, he was hiding it well. He was the wrong side of sixty, his belly pressing against the desk, his face one shade of red away from a heart attack. “You must be Miss Brook,” he squeaked, coughing loudly as he waved me into the chair opposite him. “Please, sit down. I won’t be a moment.”

He turned back to his computer, squinting as he typed, one finger at a time, making me worry that he was about to ask me to be his P.A. I doubted I was fit enough to do the chest compressions he probably needed at least once a week. I know it’s a bit cruel but I couldn’t stop myself from wondering how he was alive, he just looked so ill from either stress or too much rich food. Or both.

“There,” he said, leaning back. “All done. Now, you are everything they said you were, aren’t you?”