Maybe, he mused idly, he should take a break from the high-maintenance woman with all her tiresome needs, and demands which always ended up surfacing sooner or later. Maybe he should opt for soothing. He worked all the hours God made and his life was high octane, high stress and high risk. Maybe soothing would work for him. Were there any soothing women in his proverbial little black book? None that he could think of.
Disgruntled mood disappearing with every step closer to the Catamaran, James was in high spirits as he boarded the waiting yacht. No one was on deck, which meant that work was probably under way in the cool, below-deck room which he had specified had to multi-function as a conference area.
He heard voices as he nimbly hopped onto one of the hulls, steadying himself on the railing.
Voices and laughter.
He had no idea what he’d been expecting, but whatever it had been certainly wasn’t what greeted him when he ducked down into the spacious living area, with its in-built cherry-wood seating and the matching sideboard groaning under the weight of food and drink, courtesy of the very capable catering staff at the hotel.
The businessmen were there but business didn’t appear to be under discussion. Bottles of beer nestled in hands and used plates told a tale of lunch already having been taken. Unless the business in question involved the uproarious telling of jokes, this was a social gathering, not the work situation he had envisaged.
And Ellie...
He wasn’t sure what shocked him more—the fact that she was wearing a colourful sarong and a vest top that advertised a body that had largely been invisible in all the time she’d worked for him, or the fact that she was drinking a bottle of beer.
What the hell was going on here?
Why was she drinking? Of course he’d seen her drink before. But always wine. A civilised glass of premium Sancerre at one of the company get-togethers. He’d never had her down as a beer girl!
And where was the tidy skirt? The neat blouse, top two buttons daringly undone because of the searing heat? Where were the sensible shoes?
And she was laughing!
James was taken aback by the depth of his shock when, taken individually, none of the things were in themselves shocking. People wore small clothes in hot weather. People drank beer. People laughed. What was the big deal?
Furthermore, hadn’t he encouraged her to dress for the weather? Hadn’t he been guilty of gently teasing her about her prim outfits, his tone of voice encouraging her to dare to break the mould?
Well, she had broken the mould, and then some. This was a different Ellie. This Ellie was confident and assured, and her covert sexuality was out in the open big time. This Ellie was a woman he had not glimpsed before. She was positively modest in her dress compared to the women he dated and yet she still had the irresistible appeal of a siren. He had to drag his eyes away from her and kill a jealous suspicion that he was probably not the only one appreciating the assets on view. He didn’t do jealousy—never had, never would!
* * *
From where she was sitting, relaxed but still fully in charge of the three high-spirited young men who were so much like the guys at the office, Ellie was aware of her boss before he even appeared at the door.
Maybe, Ellie thought, she’d been waiting for him, her attention riveted to that door, her body laced with tension underneath the chat and the laughter.
Yes, this was work, but not as she had ever known it. She had ditched the uniform with a surge of confidence, spurred on by the fact that all her boss’s remarks had somehow made her feel dull and unexciting.
She had felt a thrill of pleasure earlier when she had stood in front of the hotel mirror and inspected the reflection staring back at her. Indeed, she had had trouble recognising herself. Had all those years of heavy responsibility really made her forget how young she still was? She had had to grow up fast to deal with the fallout from her father’s premature death. Had she somehow gone from teenager to middle-aged woman, skipping all the fun bits in between?
The brightly coloured sarong and the small turquoise top were hardly risqué, but she’d felt risqué in front of that mirror. She’d felt what she was—a twenty-something girl with every right to have fun.
Now, as James’s eyes swept over her, she refused to be cowed into thinking that she should have dressed as he’d no doubt expected.
Antony, Victor and Sol raised their beer bottles in welcome as Ellie gracefully rose to her feet, bottle in her own hand, and made the introductions.
She moved towards James as he moved towards her, tentatively, to accommodate the faint rocking of the boat as it bobbed on the water.
‘Not quite what I was expecting to find,’ he murmured truthfully, just low enough for her to hear, but his words spoken in passing because he was already beginning to engage with the young men.
Ellie felt a spurt of unaccustomed anger. Had he expected her to be seated with her notebook and pencil? Slapping down anyone who spoke out of turn? Maybe banishing them to the naughty corner?
Yes, he had! Because she was the efficient PA, never flustered, never out of her depth, always available.
She was swamped with a mixture of simmering rebellion and uncharacteristic recklessness brought on by her slinky clothes and the complimentary looks from the young lads. They were looking at her with the sort of male appreciation of which she had been starved for longer than she cared to remember, and she refused to fade into the background as usual.
She chatted and laughed and helped herself to another bottle of the local lager when it was offered. She knew her stuff and she knew exactly when to focus the minute the conversation turned to work. All the information she had meticulously filed in her head was at her fingertips, and she could deal with facts and figures even after her two beers.
For the first time in ages, Ellie threw herself into having fun. They had hired a skipper for the day, and she felt a burst of freedom as the Catamaran took on the wide blue sea.
A little while later up on deck, with conversation swirling around her, she sat with her knees drawn up and gazed at the limitless horizon. The yacht was moving at a rate of knots and the wind blew her hair around her face. The sky was the purest of dazzling blues and, as the boat left shallow water for deeper ocean, the sea was a dark navy, broken by the white froth of ripples from the wind and the ocean currents.
Victor perched next to her, bare-backed and with no thought whatsoever about sun block, and chatted to her about the turtles you could swim with, and the sting rays you could spot shimmering like pancakes in the sand, if you decided to go snorkelling. He gave her more information about the ins and outs of cricket than her brain could hold, and told her that she had to try Mount Gay rum, which was the best in the world.
At some point, when she had moved on from beer to bottled water, the skipper dropped anchor and everyone except her took the plunge into the bottomless sea.
Antony... Victor... Sol...and James.
Sitting and watching from the deck, hiding behind the sunglasses she had thankfully brought with her, Ellie looked at her boss, so much taller and so much more muscular than the other three. His body was a work of art. Solid packed muscle and a six-pack that was testament to power sessions at the gym. The sun would lighten his hair. It was already deepening his colour.
His trunks, black and halfway down his thighs, were hardly the stuff to fire the imagination, yet she felt weak at the sight of them and the heavy bulge of what was underneath.
The sun was setting by the time the skipper lifted anchor and they began heading back to the marina. Darkness was settling fast. One minute the glare of the sun had mellowed and then the orange orb began to sink on the horizon, turning the skies first indigo, then velvet-black.
High spirits had given way to mellow, serious conversation, and she had taken a lot of notes by the time the yacht drew up to its mooring, working on her iPad and stori
ng up an equal amount to transcribe later.
‘I’ll take it from here,’ James told the skipper. When Ellie made to follow the guys off the yacht, he stretched out one arm, a signal for her to stay put.
‘What...what’s going on?’ she asked as the last of the guys hopped ashore and James, to her consternation, kicked the yacht back into life, nudging it expertly into open water.
Of course he could skipper a yacht, she thought, compulsively looking at his strong, veined forearms as he guided it with one hand. If it came to it, he could probably fly a plane through the eye of a hurricane.
‘We need to talk.’
‘Perhaps it could wait until tomorrow morning?’ She glanced over her shoulder to where the twinkling lights and safety of crowds on the promenade were being left behind.
The pleasant effect of beer was beginning to wear off, and as the yacht picked up speed, heading in the same direction along the west coast as earlier, she felt a shiver of forbidden excitement.
She didn’t want this! Hadn’t she already made it clear that her time would not be consumed with work-related issues simply because they weren’t in an office?
And yet...
There was a sense of simmering danger in the air that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. They were so far away from normal. Now, cruising along the shoreline, the panorama was quite different, everything plunged into inky shadows and distant, looming shapes. Yet it was barely any cooler than it had been during the day, with just the faintest of cooling breezes as he slowed the yacht to a soft stop, where it bobbed lazily on the calm water.
When he turned to her, she could only make out his shadowy outline. The angles of his beautiful face were hidden and she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes.
‘This is a bit dramatic, isn’t it?’ She laughed a little nervously because it was hard to get a grip on his mood. ‘I mean, if you want to talk about what was said about the prospective deal, then we could have...um...caught up in the morning. I may have had a couple of beers, but I remember every word that was said.’
‘I would expect nothing less.’
‘Then...what’s the problem? Why are we out here?’
* * *
James thought that that was an excellent question. Unfortunately, he couldn’t quite find as excellent an answer, because the hell he knew why he was out here. He just knew that the past few hours on this Catamaran had been a hellish ordeal mentally, trying to channel her back into the predictable box from which she had unexpectedly sprung. Astonishment at what she’d been wearing, at her drinking and at her easy, sexy confidence with those guys had kick-started all sorts of shocking, taboo urges inside him. He had to get it out of his system, and that was frustrating, because he wasn’t sure what exactly it was he had to get out of his system.
‘You... I wasn’t expecting to find you dressed in a sarong and a tiny top,’ he opened, and was immediately appalled at the censorious tone of his voice. Since when had he become a feudal overlord?
‘Sorry?’
He raked his fingers through his hair and looked uncomfortably at the slight figure in front of him.
The small top curved over her perfectly small, rounded breasts, the sarong dipping just enough to expose her slim, flat stomach and a glimpse of slender leg every damn time that sarong flared open a little.
Since when had she become the sexiest woman on the planet? Had he registered that before and somehow managed to sublimate it? He had been the victim of a raging libido for the entire time they had spent on the yacht. It had been a mammoth effort not to look at her, and even a long swim in the ocean hadn’t been able to douse the sudden fire that had ignited inside him. For once, his formidable will power had not been able to rescue him from feeling like a horny teenager.
‘I’m not saying you can’t wear whatever you want to wear,’ he said in a roughened undertone. ‘I’m just saying you caught me by surprise...’
Ellie’s mouth fell open. ‘You’ve driven this boat out here so you can tell me that?’ She glared at him. ‘And should I be grateful that you haven’t objected to my dress code?’
‘Of course...’ James tried to rescue the farcical situation with some semblance of rationality. ‘It would be an opportune time to consolidate what...has been said...’
‘You told me to wear appropriate clothes. I’m wearing appropriate clothes! And, when it comes to work, we could easily discuss that tomorrow! You just don’t approve of what I’ve chosen to wear! Which, incidentally, is a whole lot less dramatic than what most girls my age would be wearing on a boat in the tropics!’
‘Did I say that I didn’t approve of what you’re wearing?’ James retorted with a hint of defensiveness. Where was this coming from? He had no idea, and that lack of control was messing with his head. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d actually cared about what clothes any woman chose to wear. Unconvincingly, he tried to tell himself that he was being perfectly reasonable in this instance because she wasn’t just any woman, she was his PA. She was paid to look the part! Her role wasn’t to turn him on until he found it impossible to think straight...
‘You don’t have to,’ Ellie said coldly. ‘You’re accustomed to seeing me one way and one way only.’
‘You’ve hit the nail on the head,’ he muttered. He spun round to stare at the dark sky and the even darker sea. He felt hot and uncomfortable in his skin. He felt...aroused at the sight of her. He wanted to touch her, and he didn’t know what to do with the feeling, so he ground his teeth together and glared at her.
‘As of tomorrow, I will return to my normal dress code,’ Ellie managed to bite out with such stiff politeness that he knew she was fighting hard not to shout at him. ‘And I’ll make sure to bring out the appropriate stuff when you’re not around to disapprove.’
‘Don’t,’ he said brusquely. ‘You think I disapprove. Maybe I approve too much.’
His words hung in the air between them, as dangerous as a match being tossed onto dried leaves.
‘I don’t understand,’ Ellie said confusedly.
‘Don’t you? I couldn’t take my eyes off you. Okay, so maybe you’re right. Maybe I have been accustomed to seeing you in one way and one way only. Maybe I like this break with tradition a little too much for both our good.’
James had never envisaged himself in this position. Had he ever thought about her that way? Maybe. He didn’t know. She’d always got under his skin in a strange kind of way. Had it been a simmering attraction he had always refused to acknowledge? At any rate, the words were out and he was unrepentant. In fact, he felt oddly calm.
‘I don’t know what you’re saying,’ Ellie whispered.
‘Don’t you? Then allow me to spell it out. You sat there on this boat, sexy as hell, and I wanted you. It wasn’t just the clothes. I saw a different woman and I wanted her. I want her right now. I can’t get any clearer than that, can I, Ellie? I want to kiss you. I want to make love to you. Right here, right now, on this boat in the middle of the sea...’
CHAPTER FIVE
ELLIE GASPED HER shock, but through the shock dark excitement coursed with mercurial speed through her veins. She took a couple of steps back, her breathing shallow and rapid, her eyes pinned to the dark shadows of his face.
This wasn’t what she’d been expecting. When he’d dispatched everyone and announced that he wanted to take the Catamaran back out to talk to her, she’d put two and two together and come to the vague conclusion that he was keen to discuss what had been agreed during the course of the afternoon on the yacht. That he’d opted to take the boat back out because that was the type of guy he was—he just wanted to have a go sailing it. She suspected that the only reason he’d hired a skipper in the first place was because he hadn’t wanted the distraction of being behind the wheel when there was business to get through.
But this...! No! She couldn’t possibly! She
wasn’t built for something like this...she needed stability and boundaries. Lose those and what next? It would be as perilous as diving head-first into a whirlpool! She needed control, yet...
Every bone in her body was melting and she was grateful for the cover of darkness so that he couldn’t see the tell-tale trembling of her body. Shameful arousal was a heat pouring through her, and she felt the tingling pool of dampness between her thighs, which made her want to rub them together.
She hugged herself and stared at him.
He was her boss! This shouldn’t be happening! Why was it happening? Was he even being serious? She was hardly in the league of all his ex-girlfriends, with their ridiculously long legs and supermodel figures.
A thousand fevered questions raced through her head, but her tongue seemed to be glued to the roof of her mouth and all she could do was stare at him, dumbfounded.
‘Tell me about it,’ he grated.
‘Is this some kind of joke, James?’
‘Do I sound as though I’m kidding?’
‘But... I work for you! And it’s not even as though I’m your type!’
‘Think I’m not grappling with the same mystery?’ He shifted, for once lacking his usual poise. He looked at her, looked away, looked again and then kept looking. ‘I’m not a believer in mixing business with pleasure...’
‘I know,’ Ellie said faintly. Was this conversation really happening? Yes, it was, because there had to be a reason she was finding it hard to breathe. ‘You don’t like your girlfriends invading your work space, never mind occupying a permanent space in it.’
‘All true,’ he growled, unconsciously taking a small step towards her, closing the distance. ‘and, as an aside, don’t think that because I date tall blondes that you’re not sexy...’
‘We need to stop talking like this,’ Ellie whispered shakily. ‘We’ll head back to shore and pretend this conversation never happened.’
Claiming His Cinderella Secretary Page 7