The Italian Boss's Secretary Mistress

by Cathy Williams

‘Don’t you dare accuse me of being melodramatic!’ Gabriel bellowed, leading her to fear that in a minute the rest of the office would come hurtling through the outside door to see what the commotion was all about. He stood up and placed both his hands squarely on his desk, every muscle in his body rigid with threat. He couldn’t have felt more shocked by her resignation than if he had walked into his office only to find a gaping hole waiting for him instead.

  ‘I let you go to Australia,’ he thundered, ‘at massive inconvenience to myself…’

  Rose, unwilling as she was to wave any red flags in front of charging bulls, was not about to let Gabriel get away with implying that she had cleared off for three months and left him in the lurch. In fact, she could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had not been available for him. She had worked late more evenings than she cared to remember, had eaten takeaway food in front of her desk way after the rest of the workforce had departed, had cancelled friends at short notice so as not to let him down.

  ‘I arranged a perfectly good stand-in for you in my absence,’ she pointed out quietly.

  ‘You arranged to have an emotional wreck take over! A woman who spent the duration of her appointment to me on the brink of a nervous breakdown! Not my idea of a perfectly good stand-in!’

  ‘And the rest of them?’ Rose hung on to her temper with difficulty.

  ‘Useless. Surprised they could find jobs anywhere. Can’t imagine what that agency was thinking, having them on their books.’

  ‘Maybe you should have looked at the pattern,’ Rose murmured under her breath but not so softly that Gabriel didn’t hear exactly what she said.

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ he roared and Rose jumped and glanced nervously over her shoulder.

  ‘Nothing!’ she said placatingly.

  Wrong move. If anything, her attempts to soothe had stoked his anger even further and he shot out of his chair and moved round the desk to where she was sitting, pressed back against the soft tan leather, hands clenched on her lap.

  ‘Well!’ He leaned over the chair until his face was thrust aggressively into her line of vision. Rose flinched.

  She had known that her letter of resignation would not meet with a favourable response. She was good at her job and over the years Gabriel had become accustomed to her. They worked together in perfect harmony, often barely needing to verbally communicate in order to understand what the other meant. Unlike the secretaries he had had in the past, Rose had never been afraid of him. She had witnessed his rage at some piece of incompetence or other presented to him by one of his employees and had always managed to deflate it, usually by ignoring it altogether.

  Her unflappability, she knew, meant a lot to him. And Gabriel would not appreciate the huge change to his routines which her resignation would engender. His private life might be colourful and ever changing but he liked his working life to be ruthlessly ordered and part of the order, she knew, was her predictable presence.

  ‘I’m waiting!’

  ‘I’m not going to say a word until you…stop leaning over me, Gabriel. You’re making me feel…threatened…’

  ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’ Involuntarily, his eyes raked over her breasts, noticing the hint of cleavage he could see in the deep V of her T-shirt. When she didn’t answer, he pushed himself away from her and raked his fingers through his black hair in frustration.

  Rose instantly felt her breathing get back to somewhere near normal. ‘Every one of those temps couldn’t have been hopeless, Gabriel.’ He glanced at her over his shoulder and their eyes met. ‘You intimidate people. You probably intimidated them.’

  ‘Me? Intimidate people?’ He resumed his position, perched on his desk so that he was staring down at her. ‘Maybe, occasionally,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘But in the world of business, you know that a little intimidation can be a very handy tool. Is that why you’re leaving? Because you just don’t like working for me?’ Gabriel frowned, trying to make sense of the incomprehensible. She had been happy enough with her work when she had departed for Australia. Now, here she was, suddenly keen to head off to greener pastures.

  Not that they existed. As far as Gabriel was concerned, she was on to a damn good deal working for him. Salary wise, she would be hard pressed to match it at any other company in London. Probably in the country, for that matter.

  He wondered what that sister of hers had said to her about her job in London. Holed up in some rural retreat in the outback, she had probably been keen to encourage Rose into a similar situation, maybe dump the fast pace of city life in favour of something a little more laid back.

  ‘Has that sister of yours tried to persuade you that leaving London is a good idea…?’ He frowned as the pieces of the puzzle began reforming in his head. ‘Don’t tell me that you’re stupid enough to consider moving to Australia!’ Shock mixed with something else ripped through Gabriel like a jolt of electricity. ‘Just because your only living relative happens to be there! And what if she decides to move somewhere else? What if that husband of hers gets a transfer to somewhere even more unlikely? Do you pull up your roots and follow them?’ He snorted with disbelieving laughter.

  ‘If I’m that stupid, then why the fuss if I leave?’

  ‘Stop fishing for compliments, Rose.’ Gabriel began pacing the room and Rose watched his restless progress out of the corner of her eye until he was back behind his desk, reclining back in the leather chair so that he could look at her with accusatory disapproval. ‘You know I value what you do for me. I don’t need to say it. Are you planning on going to Australia?’ For some reason he found that he didn’t care for the thought of that at all. He tried to imagine her forging a life in the outback, stuck in the middle of nowhere. But then, she wouldn’t be forging it on her own, would she? Hooded blue eyes took in the now slim figure in front of him, her skin bronzed and glowing from three months spent in the sun, her brown hair shiny with copper highlights and falling in a thick, blunt bob to her shoulders. No, some Neanderthal outback rancher would be all too happy to play caveman to her. That thought made his teeth snap together and he frowned at her.

  ‘No,’ Rose informed him wearily. ‘I’m not planning on moving out to Australia and I know you value what I do here.’

  ‘Then why?’ He gave one brief scathing glance at the offensive letter lying on his desk. ‘One polite paragraph is all I deserve after being an exemplary and generous boss to you over four years?’

  ‘I didn’t think you would like flowery speeches. And there was nothing more to say, anyway. I really am leaving because I think there are still things out there left to do and I can’t do them while I’m working here, even though, yes, you’ve been a very generous boss.’

  ‘Things left to do?’ Gabriel frowned.

  ‘I…yes…’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘A business course, as a matter of fact…’ Among other things, she thought, such as developing a life of my own, a life that included finding a suitable mate, settling down, having a family, doing all the things most women dreamed of from a young age.

  ‘You want to do a business course?’ He made it sound as though she had just revealed a secret yearning to fly to the moon.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I do!’ Rose tilted her chin up defensively, her normally serene face flushed with sudden annoyance that he found it so incredulous that she should have ambitions outside the ones he so kindly allowed her. ‘I left home at eighteen,’ she snapped, revealing yet more of a life she had previously been keen to keep under wraps, ‘to look after my mother and when she passed on I did a secretarial course, took a series of temporary jobs just so that I could get sufficient funds together to put myself through a really good intensive course…If you recall, I came to you as a temp…and ended up staying here permanently…’

  ‘You never said…’ Gabriel murmured, reading the dismay on her face as she contemplated her outburst. So his cool, calm, level-headed secretary had fire burning inside. Of co
urse he’d suspected that from the very start. ‘What was your sister up to while you were looking after your mother?’ he asked curiously, sidetracked by that window into her private life.

  Rose looked at his devilishly handsome face and tried to wriggle back to her secure guarded territory but he was having none of it. After a few seconds of thick, expectant silence, she shrugged and looked away. ‘Grace was at university and then she met Tom and everything got…very hectic for her. So. Anyway, that’s one of the things I want to do…’

  ‘And you’ve checked out these business courses?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘No point spending time doing a business course only to find that it qualifies you to bounce right back here…’

  ‘Thanks for the tip, Gabriel. I’ll make sure I’m very careful what sort of course I sign up to.’

  He was looking at her thoughtfully, so thoughtfully that her antennae pricked up, waiting for some passing remark which she suspected she wouldn’t like.

  ‘Naturally, I’ll work out my notice,’ she ventured into the lengthening silence. No response. She plunged on, wondering whether this silent tactic was designed to make her feel guilty. He certainly wouldn’t be beyond using every trick in the book to get her to stay, if that was his goal, especially now that he had a benchmark for comparison after three months of unsatisfactory stand-ins. ‘I intend to take just a couple of months off after I leave here, enjoy the summer…maybe even go abroad somewhere…and then the course will start in September…’

  ‘And it never occurred to you that we could discuss this…? Maybe arrive at a conclusion satisfactory to both of us…?’

  ‘Not really. I mean…’

  ‘Why not?’ Gabriel was in there like a shot. ‘Because underneath it all, you have a problem with working for me?’

  ‘Of course not!’ The last thing she needed, not that it mattered, was to leave Gabriel with the ego boosting impression that he had an effect on her.

  ‘Then why didn’t you come and discuss your dilemma with me?’

  ‘I really only thought about it when I was in Australia,’ Rose admitted. ‘I had time to think out there and to realise that I needed a change if I was to advance my career…’

  Gabriel, struggling with the prospect of a litany of incompetent secretaries cowering and ducking for cover every time he raised his voice, mentally cursed her absent sister once again for introducing strife into his otherwise perfectly uncomplicated working life.

  ‘And I agree with you,’ he told her suddenly.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ He leaned back, linking his fingers behind his head, and surveyed her with an expression of sympathetic understanding that she had never seen in evidence before. ‘You’re young. You’re clever…’ He allowed the throwaway compliment to sink in. ‘You want a career beyond taking orders from me. Not,’ he felt compelled to add, ‘that I haven’t given you your fair share of responsibility. In fact, considering your original duties were filing, typing and fending calls, you’ve come a long way. But that’s by the by…’

  Rose tried to keep up with this surprising twist. Not that Gabriel wasn’t unpredictable. He was. She just hadn’t anticipated any such reaction to her resignation because, really, how many ways were there to react to a resignation letter? And so he was now accepting it. Why feel disappointed with an outcome she knew was inevitable?

  ‘I can understand your drive to go further…After all, I am a perfect example of someone who has been there, someone who was driven to better himself…’

  ‘I don’t plan on dizzy heights…’

  ‘Did I ever tell you that my parents started with nothing? That my father’s business began with dabbling in the rag trade? Just enough money to raise us without too much hardship but not so much that we didn’t know from very young the importance of an education and the importance of making the most of our talents?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Gabriel, I won’t be competing with you on your level in two years’ time…!’

  Their eyes met in perfect understanding as he appreciated the gentle, teasing irony behind her remark and Rose looked away quickly. He might not have much inside information about her private life but in many ways he knew her better than anyone else ever had and certainly cottoned on to her quirky sense of humour quicker than anyone she had ever known. Even Grace had seemed left behind sometimes.

  ‘If you had told me sooner I would have happily arranged to fund your course.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Day release. Even two days a week. You keep the salary you’re at and the only condition is that you train up someone to fill in for you when you’re not here. And, when your course is complete, I guarantee you a junior position on the top floor. I was also thinking of rewarding your efforts here with a company car…’

  ‘I’m not sure…’

  ‘So we’re back to that invisible reason for quitting and since it’s nothing to do with what I have to offer by way of benefits, then it must have something to do with me…’

  ‘I told you, of course not!’

  ‘Then why don’t you give it a go, Rose…?’Gabriel leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk. ‘I don’t want you to go…’ His navy-blue eyes swept over her in a way that felt almost like a caress and Rose shivered with guilty pleasure. I don’t want you to go—lover’s words. ‘I need you,’ he compounded the ambiguous intimacy of his previous plea with a husky murmur. ‘If the arrangement doesn’t suit you, then you can leave me. No hard feelings.’ Then he did something he had never done before. He said please.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE following morning found Rose on the phone, frantically trying to do some research into business management courses. When she had vaguely mentioned her desire for a change in career to Gabriel, she had had no idea that she would have been called to account. Yes, somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she had toyed with the idea of gaining a couple more qualifications, but really her decision to leave had been based on more pragmatic grounds. She had just thought it time to disentangle herself from Gabriel’s pervasive influence over her life.

  Somehow she had been manoeuvred into the unenviable position of embarking on a course, which she had supposedly checked out in depth. In addition to this technical hiccup, she would now have to set about recruiting someone to fill in for her when she wasn’t around.

  When she had discussed her situation with Grace, resignation had seemed the most appropriate solution and thousands of miles away, with a warm Australian sun beating down and the thought of London and her job like a hazy dream, she had imagined a clean cut conclusion. Her letter of resignation, some surprise on Gabriel’s part and a valiant attempt to persuade her out of her decision, but of course in her head she never wavered. Roll on two years and she could easily see herself in a fulfilling relationship with a mystery man, someone kind and thoughtful, with the sound of wedding bells clanging on the horizon.

  She hadn’t banked on the reality of actually walking back in to her office, seeing him again for the first time in three months. She hadn’t taken into account how devastating his smile could be and she certainly hadn’t envisaged her big, powerful boss with his killer looks gazing at her in that pleading manner and begging her to stay.

  She thanked heaven that he was out of the office for the day, giving her ample opportunity to begin researching courses. So far only two stood out as worth pursuing as they seemed to offer what she thought she wanted and both were within fairly easy commuting distance. By the time lunchtime rolled around she had arranged to see both towards the end of the week.

  Keeping her afloat whenever she contemplated the rapid desertion of her cause was the thought that she had only promised Gabriel to give it a go, leaving her the option of walking away after three months if she chose.

  She was still at her desk at six-thirty, playing catch-up with all the work she had pushed to one side having spent the morning on the phone to colleges.

  She was hardl
y aware of Gabriel until his shadow on her desk alerted her to his presence, then she glanced up, involuntarily sucking in her breath as their eyes met.

  ‘I guess you missed this…’ He raised his eyebrows and grinned. ‘Hence the fact that you’re still here slaving away while everyone else has gone…’He dumped an assortment of files on her desk. ‘A few more bits to keep you busy but you can sort them out tomorrow. One or two problems with that new build hotel in the Caribbean. We need to source a more reliable supplier. Roberts in Barbados should be able to help you with that one.’ He moved round to see what she was doing on her computer and Rose breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t found her scrolling down colleges in the London area.

  ‘This is what I missed,’ he murmured with heartfelt sincerity. ‘Your efficiency. Knowing that I could leave the office and not return to find things in utter chaos and some bloody incompetent woman weeping behind her desk somewhere.’

  Rose clicked off her screen and gritted her teeth together. And that was just what she hadn’t missed! His never-ending appreciation of her as his perfect secretary.

  ‘Which is why I would like to take you out to dinner tonight.’

  Her head swung round as she edged out of her chair, taking care to avoid making physical contact with him in the process.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I’m inviting you out to dinner,’ Gabriel repeated, taken aback at her patent lack of enthusiasm. ‘You’ve been out of the country for three months…’ He frowned and tried hard to suppress his annoyance at her studiously blank expression. ‘There are work matters to discuss and there is no way we would get the concentrated time to discuss them in the office.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘If I don’t bring you up to speed with things, you’ll find yourself left behind and the last thing I need is to have to set aside yet more time during the working day to sort things out.’

  ‘Of course,’ Rose said politely. ‘I’ll just fetch my jacket.’ She logged off the computer, aware of his eyes following her every movement, and was self-consciously aware of her body as she stuck on her black linen jacket, a recent purchase that was just right for the fairly warm late spring weather.