His Virgin Secretary

by Cathy Williams

  ‘He’s doing well, isn’t he?’ Katy said eagerly, her face animated as she thought back to her own visit earlier that afternoon. ‘The doctors and nurses are thrilled with his progress.’

  ‘He seems marginally less thrilled with the food,’ Bruno drawled.

  ‘He’s a devil.’ Katy laughed, a sweet, soft laugh that reached every bit of her face. ‘I hope he wasn’t trying to launch an attack on your susceptibilities because he knows very well that rich food is a no-no. I’ve already made that perfectly clear.’

  Bruno chuckled and shot her a wicked grin. ‘I think that’s precisely what he was trying to do. Bland, healthy food and a swimming pool. I can see Joseph embracing this new-found life philosophy with all the gusto at his disposal.’ Their eyes met in a moment of mutual amusement and then Katy blinked and looked away in sudden, inexplicable confusion.

  He really was, she thought shakily, a stunningly beautiful man with just that edge of danger that would send a thrill through any normal woman’s veins. She endeavoured to think of him as vividly tempting fruit that concealed some deadly poison. It wasn’t really that difficult. Not then, as the moment of shared amusement was lost, and not the following day when, at eight-thirty promptly, she made her way down to Joseph’s office to find him already installed, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, in front of his laptop computer.

  He spared her a fleeting glance and, when she continued to hover by the door, impatiently told her to come inside and to shut the door behind her.

  He was the archetypal employer of her worst imaginings. Having given her ten minutes to settle down in front of Joseph’s computer and be brought up to date with what would be expected, he then proceeded to launch into a high-powered delivery of instructions.

  Report number one was a lengthy and complex letter involving a multimillion-pound deal, which involved words that Katy had never heard before in her entire life, never mind typed.

  When she finally exhaled a sigh of pure despair, Bruno shot around to where she was sitting hunched in front of the computer and proceeded to lean over her, stretching across so that he could guide the arrow down the letter, which was depressingly awash with mistakes.

  ‘I thought you said you could type,’ he said heavily, moving to sit on the edge of the desk and frown down at her.

  ‘I warned you that this was a bad idea,’ Katy muttered, her face burning. ‘I’m really trying but you just dictate too fast. How am I supposed to keep up with you?’

  ‘This is full of spelling mistakes.’

  ‘I know!’ Katy acknowledged miserably, all her dislike rising back up to the surface and making her squirm. ‘I’ve never heard of half these words! It’s all legal speak! Your secretary is probably a whiz when it comes to typing this jargon because she’s accustomed to it, but I’m not! Joseph doesn’t dictate business documents, he dictates normal stuff.’ She could hear a distinct wobble in her voice and had an uncharacteristic urge to fling his laptop at his head.

  ‘You’ll have to correct it. And if it’s any help you can use one of those legal dictionaries on the shelf.’ He pushed himself off the desk, giving her time to gather her senses and fetch the dictionary from the shelf, knowing that she was under frowning scrutiny.

  But at least for the next half an hour he wasn’t breathing down her neck like a tyrant faced with an unsatisfactory serf. He relaxed back in the leather chair, which nicely accommodated Joseph and which he seemed to dwarf with his immensely powerful body, and began a series of phone calls, which Katy half listened to as she began correcting the hateful document.

  If she had been a temp, she had no doubt that by the end of the day she would have had to endure a ‘Your Services are No Longer Required’ speech from him.

  By the time she had finished the wretched thing, she realised that he was still on the phone and was unreasonably surprised to realise that this phone call was not the same as the others. He had swivelled the chair away from her and was speaking in a low, husky voice. A low, husky and very intimate voice.

  She stared hard at the back of his head and was still staring when he swung the chair around to replace the receiver.

  ‘Finished?’ he asked silkily and Katy nodded and looked away.

  ‘If you’d like some privacy to make personal calls, I really don’t mind leaving…’ she burst out and then blushed at the unwitting gaffe.

  ‘What makes you think that I was making a personal call?’ Bruno asked. He tilted his head back and surveyed her broodingly.

  ‘It’s none of my business,’ Katy mumbled, unable to tear her eyes away.

  Bruno didn’t say anything. He just appeared to give her answer some consideration, then he shrugged as though coming to a decision.

  ‘It might be.’ He stood up and strolled over to the window where he proceeded to perch against the window ledge, all the better to observe her. ‘And you were right. I was making a personal call. Nothing for which I need particular privacy, I assure you.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ That in itself was confusing. If she had been making a personal call, to a man, and she assumed his had been to a woman, then she would have wanted as much privacy as she could get. Who liked their little words of endearment being overheard by all and sundry? But then Bruno was not a normal man. Maybe he just didn’t do words of endearment.

  ‘Does Joseph ever talk about my—how shall I phrase this?—my private life?’

  ‘Not really, no,’ Katy said evasively. The sunlight streamed from behind him so that he was starkly silhouetted. He had shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and his feet were crossed at the ankles so that his body looked whipcord lean and his shoulders broad and muscular.

  ‘What does “not really” mean? Does it mean yes or no?’

  ‘He’s mentioned once or twice that you…that you’re very popular with the ladies.’

  The phrasing of that seemed to afford him a great deal of mirth and he raised his eyebrows expressively at her. ‘By which I take it he thinks I sleep around?’

  ‘That’s not what he says!’

  ‘No, but it’s what he thinks. And it’s also something of which he disapproves. No good denying it. But…’ Bruno strung the word out until Katy was almost prompted to ask him to hurry up and finish his sentence ‘…he might be in for a rather pleasant surprise when he comes back. I’ve never brought any of the women I’ve gone out with back to this house before to meet Joseph.’

  ‘I know,’ Katy said involuntarily and then checked herself.

  ‘Even though I know that what Joseph has wanted for a long time now is for me to get serious enough about a woman to invite her back here.’ Bruno thought of the countless times his godfather had asked gently probing questions about his love life, tiptoeing around flatly stating that he wanted his godson to settle down, but giving off all the right vibes for the message to be conveyed nevertheless.

  ‘And I think,’ Bruno mused thoughtfully, ‘that perhaps the time has arrived when I can bring a woman here to meet him.’

  ‘Any in particular?’ Katy couldn’t help asking with a trace of irony because there was something so deeply unromantic about the way he had arrived at voicing his intentions. If he was in love with a woman, wanted her to meet his godfather, shouldn’t he be yelling it out from the rooftops instead of deliberating on it as if it was just something else in his life that made sense at a particular point in time?

  Bruno looked at her sharply, without amusement, and Katy tried to feel duly chastened.

  ‘I’ve been seeing someone for a few months now and it seems to me that the time may well have come for me to settle down.’

  ‘Because Joseph has had a heart attack and you want to make him happy now that he’s recovering?’

  ‘Because I’m not getting any younger and time waits for no man.’ For someone who prided himself on his verbal dexterity, it was a little annoying to hear the clichés coming from his mouth. ‘Anyway, Isobel will make the perfect wife.’ He frowned and looked consideringly at Katy. ‘
He’ll be thrilled.’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ Katy agreed. She surprised herself by the depth of her curiosity. ‘What is she like?’

  ‘Tall. Blonde. An ex-model as a matter of fact. Her father owns one of the largest computer businesses in the country and he’s expanding fast. Why are you wearing that expression?’ Bruno asked irritably.

  ‘She sounds…an ideal match,’ Katy pronounced, for want of anything better to say. ‘When will you invite her to meet Joseph?’

  ‘As soon as he gets out of hospital. Of course, I won’t mention my intentions straight away. I’ll give him time to get to know her first. Too many surprises might have him hurtling back to the hospital for sanctuary. So, now that that’s settled, shall we proceed?’

  Just like that. One minute talking about something that should be the biggest event in his life and the next minute, in precisely the same detached voice, moving back onto work, as though the two were interchangeable.

  And for some reason Katy found it even harder to concentrate for the rest of the day. She found her mind coming back time and again to the tall blonde model who seemed to have sprung up from nowhere and was about to step into the role of Bruno’s wife and Joseph’s daughter-in-law. Would she be quiet? Outgoing? Confident, Katy decided. Because Bruno would never be interested in a ditherer. Confident and chic and well groomed. Joseph would be pleased.

  It was tempting to let something slip during the hospital visits that followed, but thankfully there was sufficient fertile ground for conversation without mentioning Bruno’s private life at all.

  At one point, she would have liked to have confided about her repeated disasters on the computer and her constant defeats when confronted with Bruno’s rapid-fire delivery of letters, but after one week, to her amazement, she discovered that she was settling into his mode of command, for want of a better word.

  She no longer jumped a mile whenever he came across to inspect what she had written and she was rapidly learning to diagnose his mood swings. Even his terseness contained various levels, barely noticeable to the untrained eye but glaringly obvious to the poor unfortunate who happened to be in his company for hours on end.

  Except, a little voice whispered in her head as she prepared to take her leave from the hospital precisely eight days after she had started working for Bruno, she no longer considered herself an unfortunate, did she?

  In fact, she was guiltily aware that the dinners they shared together had become something of a high point in her life. Then, Bruno would discuss deals with her, bouncing ideas off her as though she was a real person and not someone he had been compelled to use as secretarial help for want of anyone better to hand. When he asked her questions about her family, she no longer wanted to shrink inside herself because of her cursed self-consciousness.

  Only the other day he had given her an odd look after she had finished a rambling monologue on some of her more depressing moments of teenage life and had said with a certain bemusement in his voice, ‘You don’t hold back on confiding once you start, do you?’ which she had very nearly translated as a compliment until she’d realised that his face was expressing something close to curiosity in the face of something he thought might have stepped off another planet.

  But at least she no longer cowered. And she actually looked him in the face when he spoke to her now instead of glancing away. He had cured her of that once and for all four days ago when he had very lightly placed one finger under her chin, tilting her head up until their eyes met, and told her that she had to lose the annoying habit of directing her conversation at inanimate bits of furniture.

  And the pool was coming along in leaps and bounds, something from which she derived a lot of pleasure considering the renovations had been left totally under her jurisdiction, the results only being commented on at the end of the day when Bruno came out to have a look.

  Katy found that she was humming along to something on the radio when she pulled up in front of the house to find a low-slung sports car parked at an angle in the courtyard. Against the ageing red brick of the house, it was a red, anachronistic beacon and Katy pulled the Range Rover to a stop with a hundred questions popping in her head.

  They were all answered the minute she opened the front door and heard two voices coming at her from the sitting room. One she recognised and the other she had no trouble in pinpointing because it belonged to a woman and the car in the drive had smacked of glamour and money. Isobel, the mystery woman and soon-to-be wife of Bruno. Two and two, in Katy’s opinion, invariably added up to four. What didn’t add up was the sickening jolt she felt in the pit of her stomach as she slowly made her way towards the voices.

  The door to the sitting room was flung open and she had a few seconds in which to observe the scene. Bruno was lounging against the window, a glass in one hand and smiling down at the woman who was sitting on the sofa with her back to Katy. Even from a distance of several metres apart, their bodies seemed to be leaning in to one another and Bruno was the first to pull back the minute he became aware of the figure hesitantly observing them from the door.

  ‘You’re back. Been to the hospital?’

  Katy took a few steps into the room. ‘Joseph wanted me to take him some library books. He’s been complaining of boredom.’

  ‘Katy, this is Isobel.’

  ‘I…I noticed your sports car parked outside…’ Katy smiled hesitantly and walked forward so that she now had a much better look at the leggy blonde on the sofa. Her pale, silky mini had ridden up her thighs, exposing what looked like impossibly long legs even in a reclining position. Her hair was an interesting blend of various shades of blonde and swung in an impressive chin-length bob around her face.

  ‘My little run-around.’ Her voice was cool and bored. ‘Fab for parking in London and really quite nippy for covering long distances. So you’re the secretary Bruno has working for him.’ Blue eyes did a rapid inventory and were obviously satisfied at what they saw. ‘He’s told me all about you.’

  ‘Oh, has he?’ Katy thought of her fraught stabs at efficiency, which were frequently ambushed by her sheer lack of experience, and decided that whatever Bruno had had to say on the subject of his secretary, not much of it would have been flattering.

  ‘Oh, apparently his godfather absolutely adores you, darling. Now why don’t you come and sit next to me and we can have a nice girlie chat? Bruno, darling, why don’t you fetch Kate—?’

  ‘Katy.’

  ‘Of course. Why don’t you fetch Katy something to drink? We’ve brought some booze up with us. Bruno said that the drinks cabinet was rather depleted. I don’t know how you cope without a glass or two of wine in the evenings! Clever little thing.’

  Katy tentatively sat on the sofa next to the blonde. She felt as though she had suddenly been hurled into some kind of bizarre movie in which she was forced to communicate with an alien being who had mastered a form of English with which she was not familiar, and the sensation persisted for the remainder of what proved to be a very uncomfortable evening.

  At least for her. Isobel was very relaxed and jarringly possessive with Bruno. Lots of casual touching on the arm, on the thigh, lots of little secret glances at him and lots of anecdotes that were intended to reveal what a beautifully suited couple they were. Bruno, uncharacteristically taciturn, seemed to view the proceedings with a mixture of assessment and amusement, which Katy found unnerving.

  Maggie had cooked a splendid meal for the three of them and while Katy scurried around, setting the formal dining table because the kitchen table seemed a little too cordial for someone with such a perfect cut-glass accent, her mind did unsettling somersaults. She wondered what the two of them were doing in the sitting room. Then she laughed at herself for even bothering to think about that. Then she analysed what they had spoken about and arrived at the dismal conclusion that, next to Isobel, she had appeared even more gauche and unsophisticated than she usually was. A little brown moth alongside a sparkling butterfly. Her comfy garb seemed scr
eamingly spinsterish in comparison with Isobel’s rampantly provocative dress.

  By the end of the evening, she gloomily began to understand why Bruno had showed such surprise at her chosen lifestyle. Compared to Isobel, he must have thought of her as something that had stepped out from under a stone.

  The only thing that surprised her was that he insisted on Isobel driving back to London. A little blessing as far as Katy was concerned because she couldn’t imagine drifting down in the morning and having to endure further feelings of inadequacy by the towering beauty.

  Work, he explained, and then softened what was obviously a blow to her by reminding her what a distraction she could be.

  Katy wondered, for the first time in her life, what it would feel like to be described by a man as a distraction. There was something so frivolous and sexy about the noun, especially when Bruno said it, with that brooding glint in his eyes.

  She was dashing the last of the cutlery into the dishwasher when he strode into the kitchen and she looked up, dishevelled, to find him staring down at her.

  ‘You don’t have to do that.’ He frowned. ‘Maggie would have cleared things up in the morning.’ He walked into the kitchen, sat down and relaxed into the chair.

  ‘Oh, it’s no problem,’ Katy said, switching on the machine and standing up. ‘It’s silly to leave all that stuff dirty overnight. Just makes it more difficult to clean in the morning.’ And it would never have occurred to her that Isobel might lift a finger to help because fingers that well manicured did not do dishes.

  She could feel her face reddening as she imagined what he must be seeing when he looked at her now.

  ‘You’re not paid to wash up,’ he said irritably. ‘You’re not a housekeeper.’

  ‘If the job’s there to be done, then I’ll do it.’ Considering he had just finished spending an evening with the woman he wanted to marry, he seemed to be in a very bad mood. ‘Do you still…need me around? I’m quite tired…’

  ‘It’s not yet nine! How on earth can you possibly be tired? Isn’t that taking the quiet life a bit too far?’