Because it’s only when I’m with you that I’m affected so drastically!
‘Would you let me take you to see him?’ he pressed, taking her last comment as a further obstruction to what he was suggesting. ‘I’ve already checked and he has a free appointment late this afternoon.’
‘If it makes you happy.’ She conceded defeated. ‘And only if it’s a condition of my employment.’
The trace of a smile touched his lips. ‘It is.’
So that was that, Magenta thought. Decision made.
* * *
‘I told you it wasn’t necessary,’ she said, when they were walking down the tree-lined drive of the doctor’s clinic much later that afternoon. Naturally it had been a private consultation, which had probably cost Andreas the earth.
‘If you call being diagnosed with a clean bill of health—apart from a bit of expert advice on looking after yourself—unnecessary,’ Andreas answered, his mouth pulling in a grimace as he handed her into the car, ‘then I have to disagree with you.’
‘Because now you know I’m fit enough to work for you, and you don’t have to worry too much about curbing your need to have a go at me for my past misdemeanours whenever you feel like it. Is that it?’
‘Right on both counts,’ he agreed with a twitching of his mouth, before the passenger door clicked softly closed, securing her in his car’s silent bubble of tasteful opulence.
Watching him moving around the gleaming bonnet, his commanding and superbly clad physique marking him as a man who was as rich and successful as the car he drove suggested, Magenta had the strongest suspicion that he wasn’t talking about either of those things at all.
* * *
The next couple of days passed in a sort of fragile, unacknowledged truce.
Despite what he had said Andreas seemed to be going easy on her now that he had found out exactly what she had been through, and Magenta didn’t feel the need to oppose or contradict him at the least opportunity.
On the other hand he wasn’t actually doing anything to try and boost her memory either. Perhaps, she considered, he was doing as his doctor and all the other doctors she had seen since her collapse had advised, and allowing things to return naturally. Or perhaps he just wanted to dismiss that whole period of his life as too insignificant to waste any more time on, as he had been more than ready to assure her it was on more than one occasion.
She berated herself for the little twinge of pain she experienced just from thinking that might be the case, and forced herself to concentrate on her work.
Working alongside him, however, revealed just how dynamic a businessman he was as he plunged into his punishing work schedule with a driving energy that left Magenta breathless.
In turn she was kept busy herself—on the telephone, typing letters and conference notes, and generally being his right hand when he took her with him to his various meetings. It was harder and more challenging than any job she had done in her life, but she was delighted when she found herself rising to the challenge. She was even more delighted when he praised her ability.
She was convinced, though, that he was only going easy on her because of what he had learned about her. For all her speculation about him wanting to forget the past she didn’t doubt that her sexual capitulation was still on his mind, even if his need to verbally flay her had been tempered by what he now knew. He was still a healthy, virile man, who had made no qualms about wanting a woman who had once been unable to stop herself from showing just how much she wanted him. She only hoped that she could finish this assignment and leave with her pride intact before he called her bluff. Before he showed her that she couldn’t resist his particular brand of persuasion, as she had so adamantly and stupidly dared to claim to be able to in the garden the other day, and she wound up exactly where he wanted her to be. Back in his bed.
And, because of the way her insides turned to mush every time he walked into a room where she happened to be, it wasn’t just a case of if any more, but when.
* * *
‘How are you getting on working in your rich man’s mansion?’ Aunt Josie asked matter-of-factly the following afternoon. ‘Andreas, isn’t it?’
Andreas had popped out for an hour, and Magenta had seen Mrs Cox leaving in her car for town with one of the maids at lunchtime. Consequently Magenta hadn’t been able to resist telephoning her aunt to see how Theo was.
‘He’s rich, but he isn’t mine,’ she corrected, with an attempted little laugh.
‘But you’d like him to be, wouldn’t you?’
‘What makes you say that?’ Magenta asked, taken aback by the directness of the woman’s question.