‘Your daughter?’
He swore again and shook his head, scowling. ‘I take it my mother forgot to mention that little detail. Or rather chose not to.’
‘But…I don’t get any of this. You have a daughter? Are you married?’ He didn’t act like a married man. He didn’t wear a wedding ring. And did married men have strings of sexy secretaries because they decorated their offices, with practical skills not of prime importance? Would his wife approve of that? Did she even know? Maybe, Tessa thought with a sickening jolt, they had one of those modern open marriages.
In the middle of her freewheeling thoughts, he interrupted with, ‘A daughter, no wife. And I’m surprised this wasn’t mentioned when my mother saw you.’ The cunning fox, he thought indulgently. Had his mother thought that bringing up the question of his daughter and the spot of coverage that might be occasionally needed would have put off the perfect candidate? One of the reasons he had succumbed to her insistence on choosing his next secretary had been the little technicality that Anna was going to be on half-term for two weeks and his mother would be out of the country on a gadabout cruise with her circle of friends. Someone would be needed to help out with coverage should it become necessary and, in his mother’s words, a flighty bit of fluff would not do.
‘Anna is going to be home for a fortnight from her boarding-school tomorrow. Next week she’s going to be coming into the office and I want you to take her under your wing. The following week should be fine. I intend to have the week off, but next week’s a bit trickier with this trip to the Far East to source potential computer bases.’
‘Boarding-school.’
‘Hence the fact that she has to come into the office. None of her friends live locally and my mother left the country a couple of days ago.’
Tessa couldn’t take her eyes off his face. She could picture him as just about anything apart from a father. He had too much personality to be a father! Then she thought what a ridiculous idea that was.
‘Are you following a word I’m saying?’
Tessa blinked. ‘I just find it a bit difficult to comprehend…how old is…Anna?’
‘Fourteen.’
‘Fourteen. But you never talk about her…have pictures…’ Was he ashamed of being a father? Was that why she was at boarding-school? Because she cramped his eligible-bachelor lifestyle?
‘I have pictures in my wallet. Care to see them just to verify that I’m telling the truth and that she looks like a normal kid, no nasty side effects from my being her father?’ He raised his eyebrows and Tessa blushed.
‘No, of course not!’
‘Can I ask you something?’
She nodded, still furiously examining the scenario that had unfolded in front of her.
‘Did my mother know that you had raised a kid sister virtually on your own?’
‘Completely on my own,’ Tessa absent-mindedly amended. ‘Yes. Why?’
“‘A most suitable woman for the job.”’ He quoted his mother with a grin. ‘Not only did you come with a sackful of references, but you were single, with a sensible head on sensible shoulders, and you had firsthand experience of communicating with a teenager. No wonder she failed to mention the little technicality of my daughter. You were so ideal for the job that she probably didn’t want to jeopardise the chances of your accepting the offer.’
‘I feel manipulated.’
‘You’ll have to mention that to my darling mother the next time you see her.’ He pulled out slowly from the kerb, leaving her to her riotous thoughts for a while.
‘But what exactly am I supposed to do with your daughter?’ Tessa eventually ventured. If she had just one drop of his volatile blood in her, then she would be more than a handful cooped up in an office when she would rather be hanging out with teenagers. Tessa shuddered at the prospect lurking ahead of her.
‘Supervise her. Give her little jobs to do. I’ll be around for most of the week. When I’m not…’
‘She can’t possibly stay with me…!’
‘Her old babysitter will take over. Don’t worry. I have every faith in your abilities…’
CHAPTER THREE
ANNA was nothing like Tessa had expected. In her head, she had imagined her own sister at fourteen, but with Curtis’s dark good looks. Gregarious, smilingly wilful and utterly boy crazy. Thrown into this mental picture was the added bonus of being the only child of a millionaire father. The equation was terrifying, not least because she knew from firsthand experience that she would spend the week tearing her hair out just to make sure that her beady eyes never ceased their constant supervision.