Читать книгу The Secretary's Scandalous Secret - Кэтти Уильямс, CATHY WILLIAMS, Cathy Williams - Страница 5

‘I CALLED. Five minutes ago. You failed to pick up.’ Luc Laughton flicked back the cuff of his shirt to look pointedly at his watch. ‘I don’t appreciate clock-watching in my employees. People who work for me are well paid for a reason.’

Cool green eyes swept over the small blonde huddled in a thick coat of indeterminate colour that looked as though it had been rescued from the local charity shop. There was, he was forced to concede, a pretty good chance that it had been, knowing her as he did.

Bright patches of colour had appeared on Agatha’s cheeks. Of course she had heard the telephone ring. Of course she had known that she really should have picked it up—but she had been in a rush, and it wasn’t as though she didn’t put in her fair share of overtime when it was necessary. In fact, it was already five-forty-five, so it was hardly as though she had raced to join the five o’clock Friday-evening exodus!

‘Because you’re here as a favour to my mother,’ Luc continued with that implacable edge of steel in his voice that made him so feared in the cut-throat world of high finance, ‘doesn’t mean that you can slope off on the dot of five whenever it suits you.’

‘It’s after five-thirty, and I wasn’t sloping off.’ Agatha stared down at the ground with ferocious concentration because it was a lot less traumatic than actually having to look at Luc Laughton. Looking at Luc Laughton always resulted in a thumping heart, a racing pulse and an inconvenient, prickly feeling all over her body. It had been that way since she had been a kid of thirteen and he had been eighteen—on the verge of manhood, fabulously good-looking and with the sort of dangerous, dark looks that made women stop and stare and then do a double-take every time he walked by.

How could she have failed to have a crush? All the girls in the village had had a crush on him, not that he had ever paid any of them a blind bit of notice. He was the rich kid who lived in the mansion on the hill. He had attended a top boarding school which had honed his razor-sharp intellect and invested him with the kind of cool self-assurance that Agatha had found both scary and weirdly compelling.

‘If it’s important, I guess I could stay on a bit longer…’ she mumbled to the carpet.

Luc gave an elaborate sigh and leaned against the door frame. He had known from the very beginning that this was where the favour to his mother would end up, but what choice had he been given?

Six years ago his father had died unexpectedly, leaving behind him a financial train-wreck brought about by gross mismanagement of his company by the person he had most trusted. While Luc had been living it up at university, on the verge of leaving for Harvard to begin a Masters in economics and history, the wealth that had supported a lifestyle way beyond most people’s wildest dreams had been unravelling faster than the speed of light. His charming father had played golf and entertained clients, and his unscrupulous finance director had played with the books and embezzled vast sums of money.

Luc had been summoned home to face a grief-stricken mother and a house about to go under the hammer to pay off the creditors who had been baying like wolves at the door.

Distraught at having nowhere to live, Danielle had been taken in by the vicar and his wife. They had looked after her and seen her through some tough times for the better part of a year, until the misery of her non-existent finances had been sorted. Sufficient money had been scraped together to rent a small cottage outside the village, which had provided her with a roof over her head while Luc had abandoned his postgrad plans and begun the process of savagely, ruthlessly and single-mindedly reclaiming what had been lost.

So when, eight months ago, his mother had told him that little Agatha Havers had been made redundant a few months ago and needed a job he had had no option but to provide one. Her parents had been an invaluable rock to his mother when she had most needed one, and thanks to them he had had the freedom to instigate the meteoric rise which, less than four years later, would see his mother restored to the house that was rightfully hers.

In the high-tech glass building with its high-achieving staff, however, Agatha stood out like a sore thumb. The daughter of the local vicar of a small parish in a small village in the middle of nowhere, trained in the vital skills of gardening and potting plants, was perilously out of step in his world of mergers, acquisitions and making money.

‘Has Helen gone?’ Helen was Luc’s personal assistant. Agatha felt sorry for her. She might get bits and pieces of his eagle-eyed attention, but Helen received the full brunt of it, because Luc was nothing if not an exacting task-master. Agatha could only shudder at the thought of having to be under Luc’s radar all day, only to return home to all the peace and quiet of four children and a husband.

‘She has. Not that that’s relevant. I need you to collate the information on the Garsi deal and then make sure that all the legal documents are in order. The schedule is tight on this one, so it’s all hands to the deck.’

‘Wouldn’t you be better off…um…getting someone a little more experienced to deal with something like that? ‘ Agatha ventured hesitantly.

Unable to continue staring at the carpet any longer, she reluctantly looked up at him and instantly she felt as though the oxygen levels had plummeted as she feverishly absorbed the refined, beautiful angles of his face. He had inherited the olive skin and black hair from his French mother, and the green eyes of his very English, very aristocratic father, and they worked together to give him drop-dead, killer looks.

‘I’m not asking you to seal the deal, Agatha.’

‘I realise that, but I’m not as fast on the computer as, well…’

‘Most people in the building?’ Luc inserted helpfully, fighting to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. ‘You’ve had nearly eight months to get to grips with the work and you apparently did a one-month crash course in IT.’

Agatha tried not to shudder at the memory of that particular course. Having been made redundant from the garden centre, she had spent three months at home with her mother and, sweet-natured though her mother was, she knew that her patience had been tried to the limit.

‘You can’t spend the rest of your days drifting through the house and tinkering in the garden, darling,’ she had said gently. ‘I love having you here, especially since your dad passed on two years ago, but you need a job. If you don’t think that there are any jobs around here, well, why don’t you perhaps think of working further afield? Maybe even London? I’ve had a little word with Danielle, Luc’s mother, and she suggested that Luc might be able to find a spot for you in his company. He’s very successful, you know—does something important in the City. All you’d need to do would be a short little computer course…’

Agatha privately thought that most ten-year-old kids had more computer savvy than her, but then computers had not been much in evidence in the vicarage. By the time she’d emerged into a world reliant on them, she had found herself wildly at sea and woefully ignorant. Computers, for her, were not friends to be played with. They were potential enemies out to get the better of her the second she pressed a wrong key.

‘Yes, I did,’ she said glumly. ‘But I really wasn’t brilliant at it.’

‘You’ll never get anywhere in life if you droop around convinced that failure lies just around the corner. I’m giving you a golden opportunity to take a step up from filing.’

‘I don’t mind filing,’ Agatha said quickly. ‘I mean, I know it’s dull, but I never expected to…’

‘To find working here exciting?’ Luc held on to his patience with difficulty. Agatha, as timid as a mouse, and as background as canned elevator-music, irritated him. He could remember her as a teenager, skulking in corners, too tongue-tied to hold even the most basic of conversations with him. Apparently she was absolutely fine with everyone else, or so his mother had assured him. He had his doubts. Right now, she was trying hard to disappear into the folds of her oversized coat.

‘Well? ‘ he demanded impatiently.

‘I don’t think I’m really cut out for office work,’ honesty compelled her to admit. ‘Not that I’m not incredibly grateful for the opportunity to work here.’ Or at least, she thought realistically, the opportunity to occupy a broom cupboard on the third floor from where she typed the occasional letter and received orders to file the occasional file. Mostly she was at his beck and call to do such things as sort out his dry cleaning, ensure his fridge was well stocked for those fleeting occasions when he was going to be in his apartment in Belgravia and see off his discarded women with appropriate tokens of fond farewell, ranging from lots of flowers to diamonds—a job delegated to her by Helen. In the space of eight months, five exotic supermodels had been given the red card.

‘I realise you probably didn’t have much of a choice.’

‘None at all,’ Luc agreed deflatingly. Nervous though she was, it would have been terrific if he had contradicted her statement, perhaps told her that she was, in her own way, a valued member of staff.

‘Yes, Danielle and Mum can be quite forceful when they put their minds to it.’

‘Agatha, why don’t you sit down for a few minutes? I should have had a little chat with you sooner, but time’s in scarce supply for me.’

‘I know.’ She hovered indecisively for a few seconds, then reluctantly shuffled back to her desk and sat down, watching as Luc perched on the edge and subjected her to one of those blistering looks that promised unwelcome revelations—probably to do with her lack of computer skills, or at the very least at her lack of enthusiasm for developing what precious few computer skills she did have.

Distracted, Luc frowned. ‘What do you mean, you know?’

‘I mean your mum always goes on about how hard you work and how you’re never at home.’

Luc could scarcely credit what he was hearing. ‘You’re telling me that you sit around like the three witches in Macbeth, yakking about me?’

‘No! Of course not.’

‘Don’t you have any kind of life back there? Anything better to do with your time?’

‘Of course I have a life!’ Or at least she had until she’d been made redundant from the garden centre. Or was he talking about her social life? ‘I have lots of friends. You know, not everyone thinks that it’s a top priority to head down to London at the first chance and make a fortune.’

‘It’s just as well I did, though, isn’t it?’ he inserted silkily. ‘In case you’d forgotten, my mother was languishing in a two-bedroom cottage with peeling wallpaper and threadbare carpets. I think you’ll agree that someone had to take charge and restore the family finances.’

‘Yes.’ She stared down at her fingers and then sneaked a look at him, and for a few heart-stopping seconds their eyes clashed, clear blue against deep, mossy green. That crush, which she had done her utmost to kill off, fluttered just below the surface, reminding her that, however hard she looked, Luc Laughton remained in a league of his own. Even when, like now, he was looking at her with the sort of rampant impatience that was even more insulting than open antagonism.

Her ready capitulation made him scowl. ‘This…’ he spread an expressive hand to encompass the office and beyond ‘…is real life, and thanks to it my mother can enjoy the lifestyle to which she has always been accustomed. My father made a lot of mistakes when it came to money, and fortunately I have learnt from all of them. Lesson number one is that nothing is achieved without putting in the hours.’ He stood up and prowled through the tiny office, which was tucked away from the rest of the offices—and just as well, because he figured that she would have been even more lost had she been positioned in the middle of one of the several buzzing, high-energy floors occupied by his various staff.

‘If you’re not enjoying your job as much as you’d like, then you only have yourself to blame. Try looking at it as more than just biding time until some other gardening job comes available.’

‘I’m not on the look out for another gardening job.’ There were none to be had in London. She had looked.

‘Take one step towards really integrating in this environment, Agatha. I don’t want you to be offended by what I’m about to say…’

‘Then don’t say it!’ She looked at him with big, blue pleading eyes. She knew that he was one of the ‘cruel to be kind’ breed of person with almost zero tolerance for anyone who didn’t take the bull by the horns and wrestle life into subservience like him.

‘He can be a little scary,’ Danielle had confessed just before Agatha had moved to London. Just how scary, Agatha hadn’t realised until she had started working for him. There was little direct contact, because most of her work came via Helen, who always wore a smile and pointed to any inaccuracies in her typing with a kindly shrug. On those occasions when he had descended from his ivory tower and cornered her himself, he had been a lot less forgiving.

‘You can’t be an ostrich, Agatha.’ He paused in his restless, unnerving prowling to stand directly in front of her and waited until he had one-hundred percent of her attention. ‘If you had taken your head out of the sand, you would have predicted your redundancy from that garden centre. They’d been losing money for at least two years; the credit crunch was the final straw. You could have been looking for a replacement job instead of waiting until the axe fell and finding yourself on the scrap heap.’

A rare spark of mutiny swept through her and she tightened her lips.

‘But, no matter. You’re here, and you are being paid a handsome wage, which you earn by taking absolutely no interest in anything at all.’

‘I’ll try harder,’ she muttered, wondering how she could find someone so intensely attractive and yet loathe him at the same time. Were her feelings born out of habit—was that it? A silly, teenaged crush that had developed into some kind of low-lying, semi-permanent virus?

‘Yes, you will, and you can start with your choice of clothes.’

‘I beg your pardon? ‘

‘I’m telling you this for your own good,’ he imparted in the kind of voice that warned her that, whatever he had to say, it definitely wouldn’t feel as though it was being delivered for her own good. ‘Your choice of clothing doesn’t really strike the right note for someone working in these offices. Look around you—do you see anyone one else who dresses in long gypsy skirts and baggy cardigans?’

Agatha was engulfed in a wave of anger and shame. He might be beautiful, but then roses were beautiful until you got to the thorns. How could she have nursed an inappropriate crush on this guy for all these years? she asked herself, not for the first time. From afar, when she’d been a kid, he had appeared all-powerful and so breathtakingly gorgeous. Even when Danielle had moved in with her parents, and she had had a chance to see the three-dimensional Luc when he had visited and stayed, she had still not been put off by the way he had always managed to eliminate her even when she had been right there in his line of vision.

She wasn’t a stunning blonde with legs up to her armpits and big hair; it was as simple as that. She was invisible to him, a nondescript nobody who hovered in the periphery, helping prepare suppers and losing herself in the garden.

But he had always been scrupulously polite, even if he had barely registered her growing from a girl to a woman.

This, however, was beyond the pale.

‘I’m comfortable in these clothes,’ she told him in a shaking voice. ‘And I know you’re doing me a huge favour by employing me, when I obviously have no talent for office work, but I don’t see why I can’t wear what I want. No one important sees me. I don’t attend any meetings. And, if you don’t mind, I really would like to go now. I have a very important date, as it happens, so if you’ll excuse me…?’ She stood up.

‘A date? You have a date?’ Luc was startled enough to find himself temporarily sidetracked.

‘There’s no need to sound so surprised.’ Agatha walked towards the door, conscious of his eyes boring into her back.

‘I’m surprised because you’ve been in London all of five minutes. Does Edith know about this?’

‘Mum doesn’t have to know every single thing I do here!’ But she flushed guiltily. Her mother was a firm believer in the gentle art of courtship. She would have had a seizure had she known that her little girl was about to go out for dinner with a guy she had met casually in a bar whilst out with some of her girlfriends. She wouldn’t understand that that was just how it happened in London, and she definitely wouldn’t understand how important this date was for Agatha. At long last, she had decided to throw herself into the dating scene. Dreamy, fictitious relationships were all well and good for a kid of fifteen; at twenty-two, they were insane. She needed a real relationship with a real man who made real plans for a real future.

‘Wait, wait, wait—not so fast, Agatha.’ He reached out, captured her arm in a vice-like grip and swivelled her to face him.

‘Okay, I’ll come in really early tomorrow morning—even though it’s Saturday—and sort out that stuff…’ Just feeling his long fingers pressing into her coat was bringing her out in nervous perspiration and suddenly, more than ever, she wanted this date. She was sick to death with the way her body reacted to him. ‘But I really, really need to get back to my flat or else I’m going to be late for Stewart.’

‘Stewart? That the name of the man? ‘ He released her, but his curiosity was piqued by this sudden insight into her private life. He really hadn’t thought that she had one. In actual fact, he hadn’t thought about her at all, despite his mother’s pressing questions whenever he had called, asking him whether she was all right. He had given her a job, made sure that she was paid very well indeed, given her lack of experience, and frankly considered his duty done.

‘Yes,’ Agatha conceded reluctantly.

‘And how long has this situation been going on?’

‘I don’t see that that’s any of your business,’ she mumbled with considerable daring. Was she supposed to hang around? Did he still want her to carry on working?

She decided to brave an exit, but she was sickeningly aware of him following her out of her office towards the lift. It was Friday and most of the employees on her floor had already left. She knew that the rest of his dedicated, richly rewarded staff further up the hierarchy would be beavering away, making things happen.

‘None of my business? Did I just hear right?’

‘Yes, you did.’ Frustrated, Agatha swung round to look at him, her hands clenched into tight fists in the spacious pockets of her coat. ‘Of course, it’s your business what I do here between the hours of nine and whatever time I leave, but whatever I do outside working hours isn’t your concern.’

‘I wish I could concur but, like it or not, I have a responsibility towards you.’

‘Because of a favour my parents did for Danielle a hundred years ago? That’s crazy! Dad is—was—a vicar. Looking after the parishioners was what he did, and he enjoyed doing it. So did my mother. Not to mention that your mum was already a friend and had helped out countless times at the church fetes.’ She punched the lift button and stared at it, ignoring the man at her side.

‘Baking a few cakes now and again is a bit different from housing someone for a year.’

‘Not for my parents. And Mum would be appalled if she thought that I was in London being a nuisance.’ She had to cross her fingers behind her back when she said that. Her mother worried daily about her. Her phone calls were punctuated with anxious questions about her diet, rapidly followed up by not-too-subtle reminders that London was a very dangerous place. Sometimes, to back this up, Edith would quote from newspaper clippings, overblown, dramatic stories about knifings, murders or muggings that had occurred somewhere in London. She was unfailingly sceptical about any reassurances that Agatha was well and fine and didn’t live anywhere remotely close to where said knifings or murders or muggings had occurred. Her mother would have loved nothing better than to think that Luc was taking Agatha’s welfare on board.

The lift had finally decided to arrive and she looked at Luc in alarm as he stepped inside it with her.

‘What…What are you doing?’

‘I’m taking the lift down with you.’

‘But you can’t!’

‘How do you work that one out?’

‘You’ve just told me that you have this deal to complete—remember? All hands on deck? ‘ She was about to press the ‘ground’ button, but Luc got there before her, and she spun round to face him in angry disbelief,

‘Why are we going down to the basement?’

‘Because my car is there, and I’m giving you a lift to your house.’

‘Are you mad?’

‘Look, do you want the truth?’

Agatha, in receipt of various home truths from him already, was heartily against hearing any more, but her mouth refused to work.

‘I had my mother on the telephone yesterday,’ Luc imparted bluntly. ‘It would seem that I haven’t shown sufficient interest in what you’ve been up to since you’ve come here.’

This was turning out to be a favour that carried a very high price. Normally indifferent to the opinions of other people, Luc dearly loved his mother, and so had gritted his teeth and listened in silence as she’d gently quizzed him about Agatha. She’d registered concern when told that he hadn’t the faintest idea how she was doing. Nor had she bought in to the logic that he had fulfilled his part of the bargain and so what was the problem if he washed his hands of the problem?

Agatha gaped at him, mortified, barely noticing when the lift doors pinged open and he guided her out of the lift towards a gleaming, silver Aston Martin.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said in a tight, breathless voice.

‘Well, you’d better start. Edith is worried. You don’t sound happy; you’re vague when she asks you about the job. You tell her that it’s all right, by which she takes it to mean that it’s making you miserable. The last time she saw you, you seemed to be losing weight.’ As far as Luc could make out, under the shapeless coat she looked perfectly healthy to him.

Agatha groaned and buried her head in her hands.

‘Strap up and tell me where you live.’

While he fiddled with his sat nav, giving it instructions to go to the address she could barely impart through gritted teeth, Agatha had time to conduct a quick mental review of the last hour, starting with his sudden interest in producing more challenging work for her to do.

‘This is awful.’ She placed cool hands on her burning cheeks.

‘You’re telling me.’

‘Is that why you hunted me down to give me all that stuff to do?’

‘Try getting one-hundred percent involved and you might have less time to spend crying down the line to your mother and complaining that you’re bored and unhappy. I have no idea how I managed to get roped into a caretaker role, but roped in I’ve been.’

‘But I don’t want you taking an interest in me!’ she all but wailed. Luc, in passing, thought that was interesting because women usually wanted just the opposite out of him.

‘I’m not taking an interest in you,’ he disputed flatly. ‘I’m broadening your work parameters: more interesting projects. Less back-room stuff. So you can start thinking about the wardrobe issue. Front-of-house demands a more stringent dress code than sacks and old shoes.’

‘Okay, I will.’ Just to bring the horrifying conversation to an end.

‘And call me a mug, but I’m giving you a lift back to your house because I want to find out about this date of yours, satisfy myself that you’re not about to put your life at risk with some low-life drifter. The last thing I need is my mother showing up at my office like an avenging angel because you’ve managed to get yourself into trouble.’

If she could have burrowed a hole in the soft, cream leather of the car seat and escaped to another county, Agatha would have done so. Never had she felt so humiliated in her life before. In all the scenarios that had played in her head over the years, not one had involved Luc taking an interest in her because he had no option. Nor had she ever envisaged being told that she looked like a bag lady, which was what he had implied.

She should never have accepted this job. No good ever came of accepting hand outs, although she knew that if she voiced that opinion he would have the perfect come back. Hadn’t his own mother accepted a hand out of sorts when she had moved in with her parents in their rambling vicarage? That, to her way of thinking, was different, as was the dispenser of the hand out. Luc Laughton was hardly a kindly, middle-aged man charmed at the thought of doing a favour for a neighbour in need. He was a predatory shark who would have no qualms about eating the recipient of his charity if he felt like it.

‘I can take care of myself,’ she opined, staring straight ahead. ‘I’m not going to get myself into any trouble.’

‘You obviously haven’t breathed a word of this so-called date to your mother,’ Luc guessed shrewdly. ‘Which leads me to think that you might be ashamed of him. Am I right?’

‘I haven’t said anything to Mum because I’ve only just met him! ‘

He noticed that she hadn’t tackled the issue of whether she was ashamed of the man. Was he married? If he were to guess the kind of guy she would go for, it wouldn’t be a married man. Her life had been nothing if not sheltered. His distant memory was of a girl with almost no sense of style, certainly not the sort of style favoured by her peer group: short, tight skirts, skinny, tight jeans, dangly jewellery. No, if he had to take a stab in the dark, he would bet his last few bucks on a fellow garden-lover, someone who got worked up about eco issues and saving the planet.

But if that were the case wouldn’t she have been on the phone in a heartbeat to tell all to Edith? Even if, as she said, he had only recently landed on the scene.

‘Is he married? You can tell me, although don’t expect me to give you my blessing, because I strongly disapprove of anyone getting entangled with someone who’s married.’

Agatha’s head jerked round at the cool contempt in his voice. Who did he think he was, she wondered? A shining example of morality? Normally reduced to quaking jelly in his presence, she took a deep breath and said very quickly in a very high, tremulous voice, ‘I don’t think you have a right to disapprove of anything.’

For a few seconds she actually wondered if he had heard her because he didn’t say a word. She found that she was holding her breath, which she expelled slowly when he finally answered, his voice icy cold. ‘Come again?’

‘I’ve been given the job of buying all your discards their parting presents,’ Agatha admitted tightly. ‘Flowers, jewellery, expensive holidays—what’s so great about having a string of pointless relationships? How can you preach about married men when you think it’s all right to string some poor woman along knowing that you have no intention of getting involved with her?

Luc cursed fluently under his breath, outraged that she dared bring her opinions to bear on his private life. Not that he was about to justify his behaviour.

‘Since when is pleasure pointless?’ was all he said, clamping down on the rising tide of his temper because for Agatha fun without commitment would be anathema. When he had launched himself into the City, climbing that first rung of the ladder which he knew would lead him to the top, he had had the misfortune to fancy himself in love with a woman who had turned from a softly spoken angel to a harpy the second the demands of work had begun to interfere with her daily need to be stroked. She had complained solidly and noisily about meetings that over ran, had dug her heels in and lashed out at trips abroad and had eventually started look- ing elsewhere for someone who could give her undivided attention.

It had been a salutary lesson. So leading women up a garden path was definitely not a route he was interested in taking. From the very start, they knew that commitment wasn’t going to be on the agenda. He was honest to a fault which, he personally thought, was a virtue to be praised, for it was in short supply in most men.

Which brought him back to the issue of this mysterious guy about whom she was being so secretive.

‘But perhaps you don’t agree with me,’ he drawled, flicking a sidelong glance in her direction. ‘Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’ve been bitten by the big-city bug and come to the conclusion that there’s nothing pointless in having fun. Is that it? I notice you still haven’t mentioned Stewart’s marital status.’

‘Of course he’s not married! He happens to be a very nice person. In fact, he’s taking me out to a very expensive restaurant in Knightsbridge—San Giovanni. Stewart says that it’s famous. In fact, you’ve probably heard of it.’

At which point, Luc’s ears pricked up. This was definitely not the kind of man he’d pictured and, yes, he certainly had heard of the restaurant in question. It was the frequent haunt of the rich and famous.

So what did Agatha have that would attract someone who could afford to take her there? He shot her a sidelong glance and frowned; it struck him that she did have something about her, a certain innocence that a wide-boy Londoner might find suitably challenging. He didn’t like to entertain the notion but sweet, prim Agatha might just be seen as ripe for corruption.

Not an eco-warrior, not a married man…so just someone out to use her? Or was he reading the situation all wrong?

Curiosity, lamentably in short supply in his life, shifted somewhere inside him. He had acted on the spur of the moment in offering her a lift home, and really he should be heading back to his office to put the finishing touches to reports that needed emailing sooner than yesterday. But, hell, work could wait for a little while. Hadn’t he been entrusted with a mission, in a manner of speaking?

In the space of seconds, plans for the remainder of his evening were put on hold.

‘I’ll drive you to Knightsbridge. And before you say anything…’ his sensuous mouth curved into a half smile ‘… there’s no need to thank me.’