Читать книгу Secretary On Demand - Кэтти Уильямс, Cathy Williams - Страница 7

‘YOU want me to work for you?’ Shannon asked incredulously. ‘But you don’t know me! Not really! You don’t even have any references! You’ve seen me wait tables at Alfredo’s for a few months, and we’ve chatted off and now, and now you’re offering me a job as your secretary because you feel obligated?’ Her eyes dropped from Kane’s face to his big hands, cradling the sides of his mug. Somehow the thought of working for this man frankly terrified her.

‘And are you qualified to throw job offers around willy-nilly?’ she pressed on, frowning. ‘What will your boss say?’

‘I am the boss. I own the company, lock, stock and barrel. I told you that already. Everyone in the company reports to me, reds.’

‘I told you to stop calling me by that name,’ Shannon said absent-mindedly. ‘Anyway, aren’t there more suitable candidates lining up for the job? And how come you’ve coincidentally got a position vacant?’ She chewed her lip, mulling over this wildly improbable development and trying to read between the lines to the hidden agenda. Because there must be a hidden agenda. Job offers involved interviews and references and procedures. They didn’t land like ripe plums into your lap without there being one or two glaring catches.

‘I mean, top executives are never without a secretary. Someone is always available to handle things like that, to make sure that vacant positions get filled.’ If he owned the company, he need only snap fingers and there would be someone on the scene, saluting and racing off to make sure that a suitable secretary was located pronto. He wouldn’t be lounging around, making do on the offchance that someone might show up at some point in time.

‘Oh, dear. In that case, perhaps I’m lying. Perhaps I don’t own Lindley publications after all.’ He laughed with genuine amusement and gave her a long, leisurely and far too all-encompassing a look for her liking. ‘Don’t worry, reds, you’re asking all the right questions. The job exists because my old secretary retired to live in Dorset with her widowed sister two months ago and since then I’ve been using a selection of secretaries, none of whom has been particularly suitable. My only alternative at the moment is to usurp one of my director’s personal assistants who would be able to cope with the workload, but it’s not an ideal choice because it would entail leaving someone else facing the same problem. Aside from that obvious problem, there are one or two other considerations that need to be met, and I assure you, not that I need to, that the lady in question would be unable to meet them.’

As far as Shannon was concerned, the situation was getting more and more bizarre by the moment. ‘What other considerations?’ she asked slowly. She nibbled one of the pastries and looked at him steadily as she did so.

‘Before we get to those, just tell me whether or not you’re interested in the job.’

‘Naturally, I’m interested in getting a job. Having just been forced into early retirement from the last one.’

‘Well, shall we skip the arguments for the moment so that I can try and establish what sort of secretarial experience you possess? Obviously, if your experience is insufficient, you can be slotted in somewhere a bit lower down the scale, although working for me is more than a matter of relevant secretarial experience. I’m looking for an attitude and I think you’ve got it.’

‘Because I’ve been so successful as a waitress? Except for today when I flung a plate of hot food over a customer?’

‘I particularly liked the way you pointed out the stray mange-tout he had missed on his shoe.’ He gave her a crooked smile, then before she could respond he leaned forward and casually brushed the side of her mouth with his finger. ‘Pastry crumbs,’ he murmured. ‘So, run your background by me.’

‘All right. What do you want to know?’ She had to clasp her hands very tightly together to stop herself from touching the spot where his finger had been.

‘A brief job history would be nice. Details of what your actual jobs involved.’

‘School, secretarial college, several temporary positions and then, for the past three years, a permanent job working for a radio station just outside Dublin. A local radio station that focused on good music and gossip. Generally speaking, I did all the office work and also updated their computer programs to accommodate their growth. They were in a bit of an administrative mess when I arrived, actually, so it was a challenge to get things straight. It was a fantastic job,’ she added wistfully. ‘Never a dull moment and the people there were great fun.’

‘So, bored with the personal satisfaction of it all, you decided to leave…’

‘Not quite.’

‘Then why did you leave?’ He looked at her evenly. ‘I’m not asking out of morbid curiosity, but as your potential employer I have to establish whether your abrupt departure might influence my decision. I mean, did you leave for the pay?’

‘I left…for personal reasons,’ she said, flushing. Passing conversations with him had not prepared her for his tenacity.

‘Which might be…what?’

‘I don’t see that that’s relevant.’

‘Of course it’s relevant.’ He drained his cup of coffee. ‘What if you left for the personal reason of, let’s say, theft?’

‘Theft!’

‘Or…flamboyant insubordination. Or immoral conduct…’

Shannon burst out laughing. ‘Immoral conduct? Oh, please! What kind of immoral conduct?’

‘Stripping at the office party? Smoking on the premises? Sex in the boss’s office when there was no one around?’ His voice was mild, so why did she suddenly feel her skin begin to prickle? She imagined herself lying on a desk in his office, with those long fingers touching every part of her body, and she shrank back in shaken horror from the image. It had been as forceful as it had been unexpected.

‘I have all my references back at my bedsit,’ she told him primly.

‘At your bedsit?’

‘Correct.’

‘You live in a bedsit?’

‘It’s all I could afford. Anyway…’ she paused and reluctantly flashed him a wry smile ‘…a bedsit is the height of luxury after you’ve grown up in a house with seven siblings.’

‘You have…’ He looked green at the thought of it. Hates children, she thought smugly, perversely pleased that she had managed to shake some of that formidable self-control. Probably an only child. She and Sandy had never actually speculated on his family background but she would have bet money that he was the cosseted son of doting parents who had given in to his every whim, hence his unspoken assumption that he could get whatever he wanted at the click of a finger.

‘I know. That’s how most English people react when I tell them that. My mother maintains that she wanted each and every one of us, but I think she just got a bit carried away after she was married. I suppose you’re an only child? Only children are particularly appalled at the thought of sharing a house with lots of other brothers and sisters.’

‘I’m…well, we’re not really here to discuss my background, Miss McKee…’

It didn’t escape her notice that he had reverted to a formal appellation now that he was no longer manipulating their conversation. ‘Oh, it was merely a question. Are you an only child?’

‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I am.’

‘I thought so. Poor you. My mum always said that an only child is a lonely child. Were you lonely as a child?’

‘This is a ridiculous digression,’ Kane muttered darkly. ‘We were talking about your living arrangements.’

‘So we were,’ Shannon agreed readily. She took a small sip from her coffee, enjoying the sensation of sitting and having someone else do the waiting for a change. Their cups had been refilled without her even noticing the intrusion.

‘And your decision to leave Ireland and come down here?’

‘I thought we’d already talked about that. I told you that I had references and that you could see them. My last company was very pleased with my performance, actually,’ she continued.

‘Did you leave because of Eric Gallway?’

The luminous green eyes cooled and she said steadily, ‘That really is none of your business, Mr Lindley.’

‘No, it isn’t, is it?’ he said softly, but his eyes implied otherwise. ‘Now, there are one or two other minor considerations that come with this job,’ he said slowly, resting both his elbows on the table and leaning towards her. He had rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt so that she had an ample view of strong forearms, liberally sprinkled with fine, dark hair.

‘Minor considerations?’ Shannon met his thoughtful, speculative look with a stirring of unease. What minor considerations? She didn’t care for the word ‘minor’. Somehow it brought to mind the word ‘major’.

‘There are a few duties connected with this job that will require some overtime…’

She breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn’t afraid of hard work and clock-watching had never been one of her problems. If anything, she’d often found herself staying on to work when she could have been going home.

‘I’m fine with overtime, Mr Lindley,’ she said quickly. ‘Alfredo will vouch for that.’

‘Good, good.’ He paused and his dark eyes flitted across her face. ‘These duties, however, are possibly not quite what you have in mind.’

‘What do they involve, Mr Lindley?’ Shannon asked faintly, for once lost for words in the face of the myriad possibilities filling her imaginative mind. She hoped that he wasn’t about to spring some illegal suggestion on her because she’d just become accustomed to thinking that gainful employment was within her reach and to have it summarily snatched away would be almost more of a blow than the original loss of her job.

‘I have a child, Miss McKee…’

‘You have a child?’

‘These things do happen as an outcome of sexual intercourse when no contraception has been used,’ Kane said with overdone patience. ‘As,’ he added mildly, ‘you are probably aware.’

Shannon failed to take offence at his tone. ‘I—simply never associated you with a child,’ she stammered, realising belatedly that her admission might give him the idea that she had been speculating wildly about him behind his back.

‘And may I ask why?’

‘You just don’t look…the fatherly sort…’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘I mean,’ she said hurriedly, as his eyebrows slanted upwards, ‘you were always at the restaurant so early… I just assumed that you weren’t much of a family man… How old is your child?’

‘Eight and it’s a she. Her name’s Eleanor.’

‘Oh, right.’ Shannon paused long enough to digest this piece of information. ‘And if you don’t mind me asking, what does all this have to do with me?’

‘At the moment I have a nanny in place to—’

‘You have a nanny in place?’ She gave a snort of derisory laughter.

‘Would you do me the favour of not interrupting me every five seconds?’

‘Sorry. It’s just the expression you used.’

‘I have a nanny in place who takes Eleanor to school in the mornings and brings her back home. Under normal circumstances, I would have a live-in nanny but Carrie has always insisted on having the evenings to herself and I’ve been loath to replace her because she’s been there since Eleanor was a baby.’

‘What about your wife? Does she work long hours as well?’ Shannon’s voice was laced with curiosity.

‘My wife is dead.’ He glanced down and she felt a rush of compassion for him and for his child. She tried to imagine a life with no siblings, no mother, an absent father and a nanny—and failed.

‘I’m sorry.’ She paused and then asked curiously, ‘When did she die?’

‘When Eleanor was born, actually.’ There was a dead flatness in his voice which she recognised. She’d heard her mother use that tone whenever someone asked her about her husband. She’d used detachment to forestall questions she didn’t want to answer. ‘The pregnancy was fraught, although the birth was relatively simple. Three hours after Eleanor was born, my wife haemorrhaged to death.’

‘I’m so very sorry, Mr Lindley.’

‘So occasionally I might need you to act as babysitter, for want of a better word. My old secretary was very obliging in that respect but, as I said, she now lives in Dorset. Naturally, you would be paid handsomely for the inconvenience.’

Shannon cradled the cup in between her hands, rubbing the rim with her thumbs. ‘Looking after a child could never be an inconvenience,’ she said quietly.

‘So.’ He signalled for the bill and she could sense his eagerness to be off the subject of his child and back into the arena of discussing work. ‘When would you be able to report for work?’

‘Whenever you want.’

‘What about next Monday morning? Eight-thirty sharp. And, naturally, I needn’t tell you that your first month will be a probationary one.’

‘On both sides, Mr Lindley,’ Shannon told him, just in case he got it into his head that she would somehow feel obliged to work for him even if she hated the job, simply because he had offered it to her out of duty.

‘I wouldn’t—’ he graced her with such a powerful smile that her heart seemed to stop for a few seconds ‘—dream of expecting otherwise.’ He stood up and politely offered her a lift to wherever she was going. When she declined, he nodded briefly in her direction before ushering her out of the coffee-bar.

The fresh, cold air whipped around her and for a few seconds, she had the unreal sensation that it had all been a vivid dream. She had always been particularly good at dreaming up improbable scenarios. Perhaps this was just another one. But, of course, it wasn’t. She had quit one job and then Fate had smiled on her and decreed that she land another within hours of losing the first. Wasn’t that just like life? Things, she had always thought, were never quite as black as they seemed. All you ever needed to do was leap over the first sticky patch and, sure enough, things would right themselves. There was always room for healthy optimism.

The healthy optimism stayed with Shannon for the remainder of the week and right into the weekend, which was spent with Sandy who seemed agog at the turn of events. She kept referring to ‘the luck of the devil’ and the way that Irish blarney could get a girl what she wanted until Shannon was forced to point out that the man was obviously impressed by all the secretarial potential he had spotted in her while she had waited tables.

‘Ha! Perhaps he spotted other potential,’ Sandy whispered darkly over their celebratory pizza.

But even that failed to quench her optimism.

She dressed very carefully on the Monday morning, making sure that everything matched and that there were no unknowing eccentric touches which had always been permissible at the radio station and at Alfredo’s but most certainly would not be in most normal working environments. She looked regretfully at her floppy hat as she left the bedsit, and at her flat black lace-up shoes which were her faithful companions whether accompanied by skirt or trousers. Neither would do. Blue skirt, white blouse, blue and black checked jacket, which unfortunately was the only one she possessed and as a hand-me-down from one of her sisters didn’t fit quite right, and, of course, her coat, one of her more expensive purchases from her working life at the radio station.

Her hair had presented a bit of a problem. Braids didn’t seem right for a secretarial job in a normal office environment, but wearing it loose wasn’t an option because as far as she was concerned, it was just too red, too beacon-like, so she tied it into a low ponytail which she held in place with a large, tortoiseshell barrette.

Shannon decided, as she caught the underground to the address Kane Lindley had written down for her, that her mother would have loved her outfit but her brothers and sisters would have fallen over laughing. Although she wasn’t the youngest in the family, she was the last girl and so her elder sisters had mothered her. She was the only one in the family with red hair and somehow the red hair had always made her look much younger than her years. Thank heavens she had tied it back. Severely. She was about to embark on a severe career path, she decided, working for a man who would certainly not tolerate too much gaiety within the four walls of his office.

Her first taste of exactly how different her job would be compared to the last two was when she arrived at the office which turned out to be in a building all smoked glass and, as she entered, marble floors and plants in the foyer. Mr Lindley, she was told by the receptionist who was separated from the public by a large, smooth circular desk, was waiting for her and that if she took the lift to the fourth floor, she would be directed to his office.

By the time Shannon was standing outside his door, she was fast losing faith in her office skills. They had certainly done nicely in her previous two jobs, but did radio stations and restaurants really lend themselves to the sort of top-class working skills needed in a place like this? Somewhere with thick carpets and enclosed offices and people hurrying like ants from computer terminals to fax machines and photocopiers? Her carefully thought-out clothes seemed hideously informal next to the smartly dressed women she had spied, who seemed to be in a uniform of grey suits and black pumps.

She tentatively knocked at the door, which was opened by a middle-aged woman with iron grey hair and sharp eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ Shannon stammered. ‘Actually, I’m looking for Mr Lindley’s office. The girl at Reception—’

‘Should have called me to come and fetch you,’ the woman said, interrupting her nervous explanation. ‘I shall have to have a word with her. Step inside, Miss McKee. Allow me first of all to introduce myself. I’m Sheila Goddard. I don’t normally work for Mr Lindley, although it has to be said that he hasn’t found a suitable replacement for his previous secretary for…well, frankly, months, and I’ve spent quite a bit of my time covering. Most inconvenient.’ She gave Shannon a look that seemed to imply that this inconvenience was somehow her fault.

‘This will be your office. As you can see, Mr Lindley’s office is just beyond the inner door. Now, my dear, I must confess that we were all a little surprised when Mr Lindley informed us that he had found himself a permanent secretary…’

Not as surprised as I was to be offered the job, she thought. ‘I’m on one month’s probation,’ Shannon pointed out quickly, as she looked around the large outer office with its walnut desk and swivel chair and discreet company advertising pictures framed on the walls. Her optimism was fading fast in the face of all this sterile, hygienic space. No one around, no one to occasionally chat to. She might very well go mad within the month.

‘Naturally,’ Sheila said. ‘You may join the line of unsuitable candidates, which is why I did suggest to Mr Lindley that it might have been a bit rash to take you on full time rather than as a temporary.’

‘If you don’t mind me asking, why exactly has there been a long line of unsuitable candidates?’

‘Mr Lindley,’ Sheila said ominously, ‘is a demanding boss. Anything less than first rate never satisfies him.’ She knocked respectfully at the imposing door separating the two offices, giving Shannon ample time to accommodate the prospect of trying to work for a monster who would attack at the first sign of a typing error.

The monster, waiting for her behind his desk, was on the telephone when she entered and he carried on talking, his voice clipped, while Shannon looked all around her, taking in the even more sterile surroundings of his office, unbroken by any hint of personality. Not even a picture or two of his daughter in sight. When there was nothing else to look at without doing damage to her neck muscles, she finally rested her green eyes on him. As he spoke, he leaned back in the leather chair, nodding at whatever was being said, answering solely in monosyllables.

‘Right,’ he said, as soon as he had replaced the receiver. ‘You’re here.’

‘With my references,’ Shannon agreed. ‘But I must be honest, Mr Lindley, you were very kind to employ me but I don’t think this arrangement is going to work out.’ She pushed the references over to him and he began scanning them, then he sat back and looked at her.

‘Why not?’

‘Because this isn’t the sort of working environment I’m used to at all. I really don’t think I’ll be suitable for the position.’

‘Why don’t you let me be the one to decide? Would you like some coffee? Tea? While I explain what your specific duties will involve?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘You’re nervous.’ He sat back and looked at her with his hands loosely folded on his lap. ‘I’d never thought it of you, reds.’

‘I’m not nervous.’ Pointless, she thought, trying to tell him to use her full surname. ‘It’s just that…this is all a bit too formal for me… I wouldn’t want to waste your time.’

‘Very considerate of you,’ he said drily. ‘Your references are excellent. You’re computer literate, you’re willing to accept responsibilities… What makes you think you’d be wasting my time?’

‘Apparently you’ve run through quite a number of unsatisfactory secretaries. Well, either the recruitment agencies have all been failing to do their jobs, or else you’re a difficult man to work for.’

‘I set high standards, if that’s what you mean. Now, stop wittering about letting me down and let’s start getting down to business. When I’m finished going through one or two clients with you and explaining what we do here, you can trot off to Personnel and sign your contract of employment.’ He stood up, and glanced down at his watch, flicking back the cuff of his sleeve to expose dark hair gently curling at the strap.

‘I have meetings this afternoon, but I shall leave you to do the basics. Some letters, faxes, e-mails. You can fence incoming calls by taking messages and I’ll get back to them later. Sheila’s always down the corridor if you run into difficulties.’ He could see doubt stamped in her wary green eyes and he wondered, in passing, whether she realised exactly how appealing it made her.

‘Look, if you really don’t want to work for the company, I won’t force you to stay. I can’t force you to stay. The door’s there and you’re more than welcome to walk right through it and keep on walking until you get to an agency that has vacancies for interesting jobs in exciting, informal environments. Clearly you think that all this is just a little too stuffy for you. Perhaps you think that bosses should just lounge around all day in garish clothes with their feet on the desk, making as few demands as possible on their staff so as not to interrupt the enjoyment of it all. But,’ he said, ‘I can guarantee that your pay will be more than double what you were earning at that restaurant. And that’s excluding what you’ll personally be paid by me for anything you do involving my daughter.’

Shannon gave him a wry look to match his own. ‘I’ll give it a go. I’m as open to bribery as the next person.’ Their eyes tangled in perfect mutual and amused understanding before she looked away.

She preceded her new boss into her office and sat down at the desk. He watched as her skirt rode a few centimetres higher, exposing slim, pale thighs through her tights. She’d disposed of the coat and the peculiar jacket, revealing a blouse that fitted snugly over her small breasts.

‘Clients.’ Kane Lindley cleared his throat and frowned in concentration as she flicked on the computer and waited for him to pick up the sentence. ‘Accounts. Yes. Well, you’ll be expected to update accounts and everything has to be filed in alphabetical order.’ He leaned forward so that his forearm rested on the desk, almost brushing her bare skin.

‘A lot of business is conducted overseas, so it would be helpful if you knew the money markets. Not in any great detail, but it would give you some idea of what is likely to be profitable and what is not. Now the media group I’ve just taken over…’ He leant past her to flick back to the main menu so that he could begin running through details of the finances of the various companies under the one umbrella and as he did so she felt him brush against her breast. She drew away, a little shaken at the fleeting contact.

‘Generally speaking, you won’t be needed to accompany me to meetings.’ He moved away from the desk and chose instead to pull up a chair so that his eyes could remain safely fixed on the same level as hers. ‘However, you will need to check every e-mail I get when I’m not in the office and I get quite a number. In time, you should be able to deal with a good proportion of those.’

Shannon, turning to look at him, was a little disconcerted to find him quite so close to her. Close enough for her to distinguish the various shades of dark brown and black in his eyes and to breathe in the musky scent of male body, unimpeded by any colognes.

‘Now,’ he said finally, sitting back and pushing himself away from the desk, ‘any questions?’

Shannon swivelled her chair to face him. ‘About work?’

He looked at her wryly. ‘No. I thought we might just have a general discussion about world affairs.’

‘Don’t you get a little lonely stuck out in this office on your own?’

‘Lonely? Don’t I get a little lonely?’

‘Yes. You know…surely you don’t spend the entire day focused on work. You must need to chat now and again…’

‘Chat?’

‘To people? Maybe when you break off to have a cup of coffee?’

‘When I break off to have a cup of coffee, reds, I actually normally remain at my desk and more often than not I devote my attention to paperwork while I’m having it,’ he said crushingly, and she nodded.

‘Then how do you know what’s going on in your company? You know, if you don’t get around and hear the gossip on the ground floor?’

‘Hear the gossip?’

‘Well, you did ask me whether I had any questions,’ Shannon trailed off, when he continued to stare at her as though she were crazy. ‘As far as the actual work goes, I think I can handle it. I might be a bit slow to start with, of course. Until I find my feet.’

‘I shouldn’t think it’ll take you very long,’ he said. ‘I’ve told Linda in Personnel to expect you some time before lunch.’ With a swift, graceful movement, he stood up and eyed her blandly. ‘Right now I shall be busy with meetings, so I probably won’t see you until tomorrow. Linda will fill you in on all of this, but if you’re interested, there’s an office restaurant on the ground floor. I suspect that’s where all the chat and gossip occurs.’

‘Perhaps you should eat there more often in that case,’ Shannon said with a slow grin.

‘Actually,’ he threw at her over his shoulder, as he slipped on his jacket and adjusted his tie, ‘I do. Whenever I get the chance.’

He walked towards the door, then paused before turning to look at her. ‘I think it might be a good idea if you met Eleanor. Carrie’s been staying on late to accommodate me over the past two months, but now that you’re here we can work something out so that she can get back to her social life.’

‘I thought the babysitting arrangement was more on an…occasional basis,’ Shannon faltered. ‘And what about my social life?’

‘Oh.’ He walked slowly towards her, rubbing his chin with his hand as though startled at the concept of her having a social life. ‘I thought you had come to London to nurse a broken heart. Don’t you spend all your free time pining?’

Shannon flushed at his blatant and cheerful disregard for boundaries. ‘Actually, if you read any self-help book, you’ll discover that women with broken hearts immediately rush off to cultivate new and exciting social lives,’ she replied tartly. She wondered whether dinner dates with Sandy constituted a new and exciting social life. Having come to London, she had quickly realised that the novel taste of freedom from her brothers and sisters and extended family members also carried a downside. Namely, that there was no handy cushion to protect her from her nights spent on her own. She went out with Sandy and with some of the other staff who worked at Alfredo’s and was gradually building up a social life of sorts, but it was hardly humming.

‘Well,’ Kane conceded, ‘I normally return home by eight, so your exciting social life shouldn’t suffer too much.’

‘By eight? When do you ever get to see your daughter?’

‘I usually try and keep weekends free,’ he muttered, turning away as a dark flush spread up his neck. ‘Do you know your way around London?’ He bent over and scribbled his address on a piece of paper. ‘No, forget that. I’ll get my driver to come and collect you, say, Friday evening? Around seven-thirty? Eleanor usually stays up late on a Friday as there’s no school on a Saturday.’

‘I’m sure I can find my way to your house, Mr Lindley.’ She looked at the address and wondered how far it would be from an underground station. She wasn’t averse to walking but walking at night, freezing cold and potentially without any real clue as to where she was heading, wasn’t her idea of fun.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ He smiled briefly. ‘After all, you’re the one who will be doing me the service.’

‘What is she like?’ Shannon asked curiously, folding the piece of paper and stuffing it into her bag.

‘Small, blonde hair, blue eyes.’

‘Actually, I meant her personality.’

‘Oh, Eleanor is…very quiet.’ He frowned and seemed to be thinking of some other way he could find of describing her. ‘Doesn’t give any trouble at all.’

To Shannon, that hardly sounded like a great description of an eight-year-old child. I mean, she thought, if you can’t get into a spot of trouble when you’re eight, then when on earth can you? She had spent most of her formative years getting into trouble! When she’d left school at sixteen, she could remember the headmistress telling her mother that never in the history of the school had one parent paid so many visits.

‘Right,’ Shannon said in a subdued, reflective voice.

‘Don’t forget, if you run into anything you can’t handle, and I’m not around, Sheila will help you out. She knows as much about this business as I do, probably.’ He moved towards the door and stopped to say with a gravity in his voice that was only belied by the glint in his eye, ‘And don’t forget the office canteen. It’s a hotbed of gossip and intrigue. Let me know if you hear about any insurrections I should beware of.’

She could have sworn she heard a chuckle as Kane shut the door behind him and she was left with the computer, a stack of letters to type and the prospect of dinner en famille in four days’ time with a man who was reluctantly beginning to intrigue her even more than he had when she’d been serving him his coffee and bagels.