The Boss's Proposal

by Cathy Williams

  Standing next to him was an exercise in nerve-tingling embarrassment. He dwarfed her. Shaun had somehow never seemed that tall. Maybe he’d just been a little shorter, just as he’d been a little thinner, his features a little more blurred. Perhaps the mould, having been used once, had not quite managed to replicate itself the second time around.

  ‘Familiar with this program?’

  Vicky nodded.

  ‘Good, then you’ll have no problem finding your way around. You’ll have to go through those files and update the computer, and there are one or two problems on a couple of them—discrepancies with the fees, order problems. I’m afraid you’re being thrown in at the deep end but you’ll have to find your way around the best you can, because the position requires a fair amount of initiative and responsibility. Tell me about your job with James?’

  He strolled over to the coffee machine, and while he waited for it to kick into action he turned to face her with his arms folded.

  Vicky groped her way for an adequate and truthful account of what she had done as far as work went without implying socialising of any nature. In fact, she had socialised a fair amount with James and his wife Carol, and had even babysat for them on a few occasions. ‘I started off as his secretary, but I’m a pretty quick learner and, quite soon, I was being given a fair amount of responsibility. Looking after some of the smaller, more problematic customers, liaising with the service people as well as doing the usual administrative and typing stuff.’

  ‘So you should have no problem coming to grips with all this…’ He nodded vaguely at the files. ‘I knew it. I took one look at you and knew that you’d be able to do the job with your eyes closed.’

  ‘I haven’t even started, as yet,’ Vicky informed him warily. Heaping praise on her before she even got going was not so good, considering her long-range plan to quit the job as soon as was possible, without arousing needless suspicion.

  ‘I think the first thing we need to sort out is my diary for the next month…’ He went into his office and returned several seconds later with an electronic diary and a conventional leatherbound one, which he handed to her. ‘Right. Now, let’s start with tomorrow…’ He pulled across one of the spare chairs from in front of the desk and strategically positioned it next to her so that, while he was no longer towering over her, he was now so close to her that with the flick of his pen on the keypad, his forearm casually but insistently brushed hers. She kept flicking side-long, uncomfortable glances at the fine dark hairs sprinkling his powerful arms. He seemed so much more real than his twin, so much more substantial.

  He began listing, very rapidly, his plans for the day, which she checked against the entries in the black diary. Some of the handwriting was poor enough to require several long seconds of tortuous interpretation and, after one particularly puzzling entry, she glanced up to find him looking at her.

  ‘I’m beginning to understand what you meant by problems with temps,’ she said with the ghost of a smile. ‘If the filing system bears any resemblance to the handwriting in here, then I shall have several hours sorting out some basic stuff before I can even start to do my job.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Up close, as he was, he noticed that her skin was as flawlessly smooth as it appeared to be from a distance, and her hair, severely tied back, still managed to break free around her ears so that the tiny tendrils gave her the look of a saint whose halo had slipped to one side. Feeling his arm brush against hers, a passing touch that he could have avoided but chose not to, filled him with an almost sinful sense of excitement. He’d never known how powerful female modesty could be. Here she was, dressed in three times as much clothing as the woman he had last dated—Lord, three months ago—and yet the effect of all those clothes on him was positively suffocating. She had removed her jacket, but her blouse was buttoned up prudishly to the neck with small pearl buttons of the type worn by grannies. He could indistinctly make out the outline of her bra underneath. He wondered, and this sent a little electric shock to his groin, what it would feel like to undo those prim buttons, fingers touching skin underneath the shirt, anticipation building to a frenzy. He imagined her hands loosely tied to the bedstead with silk scarves while he undressed her, taking his time and exploring each exposed bit of skin with his tongue. He would drive her wild, enjoying her uncontrolled writhing. Naturally she would plead with him not to stop, to rip aside her bra and relieve her aching breasts with his mouth.

  When he glanced her way, it was to find her looking at him as though she could read every salaciously impure thought in his head, and he flushed darkly. Good heavens! The woman was his secretary!

  ‘Believe me now?’ he asked roughly, sounding, he thought, the Big Bad Wolf when confronted with Little Red Riding Hood. He grinned to himself at the unconscious parallel, because right now he would have liked nothing better than to eat her up, every inch of her defensive little body, starting with her pale, slender neck and moving all the way down to the patch of hair between her thighs that would naturally be daintily shielded behind granny-style underwear.

  He cleared his throat and dragged his thoughts back to meetings, calendars and business appointments. She was asking him something and he made a huge effort to concentrate and reply in a normal voice.

  ‘I see you’re in London twice this week,’ she was saying, gazing down with satisfaction at the diary entries. Two business meetings in Temple, another in Uxbridge.

  ‘So I am. Perhaps—’ he frowned ‘—I ought to cancel those and spend a bit more time here, until you get accustomed to the running of the office.’

  Vicky was quick to sit on any such suggestion. ‘There’s no need for that.’ She realised that his recumbent arm was too close for comfort, and she discreetly but firmly edged hers away. ‘In fact, having a couple of days on my own will be perfect for me to fill myself in on the files and the customers and also catch up with some of that backlog of typing.’

  He could see her trying very hard to look regretful and felt a sulky and childish tug on his masculine pride that the thought of spending time along with him in the office was obviously a fate only slightly better than death, as far as she was concerned. What appealing work experience lay in store for both of them at this rate!

  ‘Well, you can’t miraculously work your way through everything on your own. I’m going to have to answer a few questions, presumably.’ Now, he sounded piqued. The cool, self-confident, self-assured, mature and winningly charming adult seemed to have been replaced by a sulking thirteen-year-old. Where that emotion had come from he had no idea as it had never been in evidence before.

  ‘I realise that,’ Vicky said, briefly looking at him and then resuming her perusal of the file in front of her. ‘Whenever I need you to help, I shall ask. I think finding my way around the business and what you do here is going to take the longest. I’ll read up all the company literature, but Mrs Hogg—’

  ‘Ms Hogg.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Ms Hogg. Geraldine prefers good, healthy outdoor pursuits with her formidable sister to the company of men any day of the week.’ He grinned and she reluctantly grinned back.

  ‘Well, as I was saying…’ What had she been saying? ‘Ms Hogg didn’t get much of a chance to fill me in on this particular branch of your company. She mentioned that it’s a fairly new concern—’

  ‘But growing at an almost unprecedented rate,’ he carried on for her, ‘hence my involvement. Virtually all of our customers are new to us and have to be treated with kid gloves, aside from one or two whose mother company is based in London and whose subsidiaries coincidentally operate in this general area. I’m pretty busy for the rest of the day, but I can always pop over to your house some time after wor—’

  ‘No!’ Vicky heard the panic in her voice with alarm. The important thing was to lull any suspicions he might have of her to sleep, not stoke them into a frenzy by overreacting to obvious situations. ‘I mean, I have very…very definite views on business and pleasure.�
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  ‘Does that mean that you shed your working personality the minute you walk out of the office building?’ He stared at her narrowly, head cocked insolently to one side, as though conjuring up a mental picture. ‘Intriguing. As the office doors swing shut behind you, do you wrench the clips out of your hair and hitch up your neat, little tailored skirt?’

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ Vicky said coolly. ‘I just think that it’s important to separate leisure time from work time, or else the two begin flowing into one another and somewhere down the road you realise that there’s no part of your life that isn’t free from work.’ Neat, little tailored skirt? How could four small words be invested with such a derogatory meaning? He made her sound like an old age pensioner and, without thinking, she let her fingers flutter to the top button of her shirt, firmly done up, protecting her from unwanted attention. She had never been like this. There had been a time, not that long ago, when she’d used to wear short skirts and pretty, attractive tops, but that had been before she had learnt that prudery was the only defence against Shaun’s lecherous hands. The sight of her primly buttoned up had sometimes been enough to deter him from invading her body and she had grown accustomed to the way of dressing until now, she realised with a start, most of her clothes conformed to the prissy, unadventurous image she had meticulously cultivated over time.

  ‘But is it such a good idea to compartmentalise your life? Don’t you find that a little unhealthy?’ He’d pushed his chair a little way away from hers to enable him to scrutinise her face, which was now going a deep shade of pink. It occurred to her that they had successfully managed to veer away from the point of their conversation, which was namely to brief her on office business, and she struggled to find a way of bringing it back to the matter in hand. While she was busy grappling with the problem, he filled the brief silence with his sudden interest in her private life.

  ‘Reminds me of a split personality,’ he said thoughtfully, and she felt her hackles rise at the insinuation.

  ‘I assure you I’m perfectly normal,’ Vicky informed him in a voice that suggested closure of the topic. She meaningfully peered at the file in front of her, even fetching out a piece of paper to stare at it with frowning concentration, though her eyes weren’t registering much of what was written there.

  ‘I never implied that you weren’t!’ he protested in an offended voice. ‘I just think that it’s perfectly natural for work to spill over sometimes into leisure.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you’re right,’ Vicky said with a shrug. ‘Are you contactable when you’re in London or would you rather problems waited until you returned here?’

  ‘You can e-mail me any time, or telephone, of course, although I’m not often in the office.’ He allowed an acceptable period of silence to stretch between them, then he said in a considering tone, ‘Do you know, it’s been my experience that women who are fanatically guarded about their private life usually have something to hide…?’

  He had unknowingly hit jackpot. He could sense it in the stillness of her body, which only lasted a matter of seconds but was enough to tell an entire story of its own.

  ‘I have nothing to hide,’ she informed him icily, ‘and at the risk of sounding impertinent on my first day here, I should just like to say that I resent your prying into my private life…’

  ‘I didn’t realise that I was prying into your private life, I thought that I was making a general statement…’ Her tone of voice didn’t appear to have put him off his stride and she saw, with dismay, the gleam lurking seductively in his eyes. ‘Of course—’ he dropped his eyes and inspected his nails briefly ‘—you’re entitled to your privacy, and if you have something that you’re ashamed of…’

  ‘I am not ashamed of anything!’

  ‘Okay! Okay!’ It was the oldest trick in the book and she knew it. He was making a show of backing away from confrontation while simultaneously appearing doubtful of her protestations of innocence.

  ‘What could I have to be ashamed of?’ she couldn’t help demanding indignantly, and this was met by a theatrical shrug of his broad shoulders.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Vicky made the inarticulate sound of someone whose feathers have been severely ruffled.

  ‘Unless,’ he said as an afterthought, ‘it’s something to do with a man.’ He flicked a quick look at her to see how this one registered but her normal serenity was well and truly back in place. ‘You know, you’re entitled to have whatever relationships you want, be they with married men…’

  Vicky, recognising that he was fishing for information, maintained her studious silence, chewing her lip as she peered down at sheaths of paper in a business like manner.

  This was what she had feared most, this willingness on his part to cheerfully overstep the mark. He had no respect for anyone’s limits. If he got it into his head that jumping over them was what he wanted to do, then jump over them he would, and with a grin on his face.

  ‘Or even married women…’ He didn’t seriously believe that that was a possibility but he decided to voice his thoughts anyway, if only to keep this enticing conversation on the go. As expected, she shot him a dry look and didn’t bother to say anything.

  ‘Or perhaps it’s a toy boy? These things do happen…’

  ‘I’m not old enough for a toy boy,’ Vicky pointed out with a sigh of resignation. ‘No married men, or women, for that matter, no toy boy, no geriatric in his seventies, no skeletons, in fact…’ She sounded pleasingly truthful and couldn’t resist a smug smile in his direction.

  ‘Everyone has a skeleton or two,’ he said quickly, and she raised her eyebrows at him.

  He wasn’t going to get anywhere with this one. She was now looking at him with crisp efficiency, raring to get going with whatever folder she’d been fingering for the past fifteen minutes. He admitted defeat, and for the next two hours they worked alongside one another. Instead of wasting time going through files individually, he dictated letters, briefly giving her a lowdown on each account as he covered them.

  She picked things up fast. He’d spent so many months battling with various levels of incompetence that it was sheer bliss to work with someone who was capable of following his pace. Her questions were clipped and relevant, she grasped what she needed to do without requiring a lengthy process of repetition, and by the time Maria on Switchboard began putting through his calls once again he felt confident enough to leave her on her own to get on with things.

  Through the office partition, he could see a sliver of her at her desk, one hand holding a pen, which she lightly tapped as she inspected whatever she had just typed onto the computer. She had shoved her hair into a bun, and ever so often she would absent-mindedly reposition her rebellious curls.

  Max rolled his chair a few vital inches to the left, without altering the tenor of his conversation on the telephone, and guiltily watched her as she worked. It made him feel a bit like a lecher so, after a few minutes, he rolled himself back in front of his desk and made an effort to swivel towards the window behind him so that he no longer felt like a voyeur.

  He only realised how keyed-up he was to her presence when she politely peeped into his office forty minutes later with a question.

  ‘I’ve been going through the filing cabinets,’ she began, and he indicated the chair for her to sit.

  ‘And…?’

  ‘It appears that two files have been made of this account, and filed under separate names.’ Vicky handed him the files, which boasted two different sets of handwriting. ‘Problem is that the information in both doesn’t correspond, even though it’s all to do with the same thing. It looks as though one of your secretaries dealt with something three months ago and then misfiled the folder. When the problem recurred, her replacement started a new file and basically told the client the complete opposite of what had been said to him previously.’ She stood up and leaned forward, flicking open both the files and then carefully indicating what she meant. One long strand of wayward hair escaped and
skirted her neck, coiling in a perfect red-gold corkscrew curl.

  ‘Leave it with me. I’ll deal with it.’

  ‘I don’t mind…’ She glanced and met his eyes, then quickly lowered hers. ‘Sorry. Overstepping my brief. I suppose I was so accustomed to dealing with these types of customer problems at my last job in Australia that I could find it easy to slip back into my old ways.’ She reminded herself that that would be impossible, since her time allotment for this particular job was a matter of weeks rather than years. Any slipping she would be doing would be out of the office door and into the nearest employment agency.

  ‘I have an idea,’ he said slowly, pushing himself back from his desk and tilting a bit on the chair. ‘Why don’t we pay a few visits to some of the more critical clients? If you meet them, then you can put a face to the voice at the end of the telephone and so can they. Have a look at my diary and fill me in on what I’m up to on…let’s see…next Tuesday. We can spend a couple of hours with each and have a break for lunch at one of the better country pubs around here.’

  Vicky began calculating in her head whether Brenda, her childminder, would be able to cover for her next Tuesday. Chloe would have to miss her after-school swimming lesson, but that was fine. She hated them anyway. If they managed to clear everything up no later than six in the evening, then there should be no problem at all.

  She looked at him to find him staring at her with hooded interest.

  ‘I’ll get your diary,’ she said hurriedly, fleeing the office before he could begin quizzing her on further evidence of her mysterious secret life. As she fished for the diary from the drawer of her desk, she wondered whether she shouldn’t just head him off by fabricating something that might satisfy his masculine curiosity. It would have to be something worth secreting away, yet nowhere near the truth. Perhaps, she thought, she could invent a double life as a stripper. That would shut him up, she was sure.