His Virgin Secretary

by Cathy Williams

  ‘There’s no need to lose your temper with me,’ Katy told him as a little stream of anger began to swell and grow bigger inside her. ‘If you’re upset because Isobel went back to London, then that’s not my fault! She could have stayed here overnight. It’s not as though Joseph is around to be offended. In fact, I’m sure that Joseph wouldn’t have been offended anyway.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’m not upset because Isobel is on her way back to London. Why on earth should I be? In case you’d forgotten, I was the one who suggested she leave! Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day. No point having her up here, getting bored and expecting to be entertained.’

  Katy’s appalled reaction to this must have shown on her face because Bruno gave her a dark frown and his mouth tightened.

  ‘You appear to be struggling with something. What is it? Get if off your chest instead of just standing there and gaping.’

  ‘Well…that’s not a very nice thing to say, is it? About the woman you love and intend to marry?’ Katy wondered whether her lack of experience had made her impossibly romantic and out of step with what was going on in the real world. ‘I mean, shouldn’t you want to spend time with your fiancée? I’m sure you could afford to take a day off…’

  ‘She’s not my fiancée.’

  ‘But I thought you said…’

  ‘I said that it was maybe time I settled down and got married. I’m thirty-four years old and playing the field becomes sad after a certain age. Isobel would make an ideal wife for me, which isn’t to say that I’ve spoken to her about it.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Right at this moment, the expressiveness of her face was getting on his nerves because he could read exactly what she was thinking and he didn’t like it. What was so wrong about being objective about the institution of marriage? He had endured his mother’s headlong rush into wedlock with his two stepfathers, both of which had ended in tears. It made perfect sense to him that a lifelong union should be controlled, should be grounded in reality, should make sense on paper at least, and Isobel made sense on paper, that was for sure. She fulfilled all the necessary criteria and he had opened his mouth to coolly explain the logic when Katy said with an irksome trace of pity in her voice, ‘But what about love? Romance? Magic?’

  ‘We’re not talking about someone I haven’t seen, for God’s sake! I won’t be lifting the veil to discover that I’ve tied the knot with Medusa! Perhaps you’re adopting this viewpoint because you didn’t like her…’

  Katy was uncomfortably aware that his remark had caught her by surprise and she flushed. ‘That’s not true!’ The silence that greeted this stretched on until she stammered, ‘She seemed very…very…’

  ‘Yes? I can’t wait to hear what comes next…’

  ‘Very elegant,’ Katy stressed positively. ‘Very sophisticated. And, of course, she’s very beautiful and very, very polished.’ Katy realised that she had managed to make her sound like a piece of expensive display china.

  ‘Elegant, sophisticated, beautiful, polished.’ Bruno enumerated the virtues on his fingers. ‘Yet somehow not quite the right qualities for a wife?’

  ‘I never said that and, anyway, what I think doesn’t count.’

  Bruno stood up and glanced at his watch. The conversation was over because her opinion didn’t count. She could read that clearly in the dismissive expression on his face.

  ‘I have an important conference call at nine tomorrow. I’ll want you to transcribe a lot of letters for me and you’ll have to speed up a bit if we’re to clear the lot by five. In fact, we might have to return to work after we’ve been to see Joseph. You hadn’t anything planned, had you?’

  ‘No.’ Katy wished she had. Isobel might be a mannequin but she would bet her life that the blonde didn’t sit at home reading books and watching television six nights out of seven. This quiet life was beginning to spring a lot of leaks. She couldn’t wait for Joseph to be back home and for Bruno to be gone and for life to get back to what it had been.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘NOT bad.’ Bruno pushed himself away from the desk and shot her a look that Katy could only interpret as one of mild surprise. ‘Not a single spelling error. Didn’t I tell you that you could do it?’

  ‘It’s nearly quarter to eight.’ Katy tried not to yawn. Or move, for that matter. Her body felt as though it had been welded to the chair. Any sudden movement might result in severe physical pain. ‘I’ve had a lot of time to correct my spelling mistakes.’

  ‘That’s the wrong attitude. You’re improving. And don’t run yourself down—you’re a quick learner!’

  Katy bit back the retort rising to her lips. They had worked until after seven-thirty for the past four days, breaking only to go and visit Joseph. Her relaxed days when she and Joseph would take their walks and amble through his memoirs now seemed like a distant memory. This cosy den, once a blissful retreat with its shelves of books and comfortable chairs, was now a high-tech office where any loitering on a comfy chair was out of the question and even breaking off to go to the bathroom was seen as an unwelcome intrusion into Bruno’s ferociously high-powered routine.

  ‘Are we finished for the evening?’ She looked wistfully beyond Bruno through the window, which offered a tantalising glimpse of late spring sunshine pouring down on green trees and casting shadows across the lawns.

  Bruno greeted this remark with a slight frown. ‘You’re not tired, are you?’ he demanded, looking at her narrowly so that the possibility of actually complaining went into immediate retreat. ‘As I explained to you, this is a particularly important deal here and we’re a little behind because of my going to London yesterday morning. Maybe next time I travel down to London, you should come with me,’ he mused to himself. ‘Sit in on the meeting and take notes first hand so that I don’t have to transcribe them for you myself afterwards.’

  ‘No! No, no, no.’ Katy looked at him with alarm. ‘I’m not your secretary…’

  ‘You’re in here working with me, you’re downloading information, taking dictation, fielding calls and typing up my documents…excuse me if I got a little carried away thinking that those did in fact constitute secretarial duties…’

  ‘Acting secretary,’ Katy stressed, testing one foot, which seemed to be okay, no serious cramping, and then the other, ‘temporarily helping you out. Because of extraordinary circumstances. I couldn’t possibly go to London with you and sit in on any meetings and I’m not going to!’

  Bruno was highly amused to see that her normally shy countenance had tightened into determined stubbornness. Amused, but not as surprised as he might have been a fortnight ago, because working with her had shown him one thing very clearly. The painfully cowering girl who had always managed to irritate the hell out of him in the past was not quite as painfully cowering as he had expected. In fact, lurking beneath that transparent face was a streak of mulish stubbornness that was impossible to dislodge once in place. Like now. He held his hands up in mock surrender and shot her a crooked smile.

  ‘Whoa! It was just a thought…’

  ‘A rotten thought.’ Her head filled with the nightmarish vision of sitting in on meetings with Bruno. High-powered meetings between high-powered people while she frantically tried to amass her improved but still below-par skills in an effort to take notes. She shuddered in horror at the thought. Bruno might have been accommodating to some extent in the little vacuum of Joseph’s office where he was stuck with her, but she doubted he would show the slightest sympathy when in his own territory. She might have learned to cope with his presence without becoming a nervous wreck in the process but she wasn’t stupid. He was still a fairly terrifying individual. She had listened in on sufficient telephone conversations to know that. When he spoke in that clipped, icily dismissive manner to someone at the other end of the line, it was all she could do not to offer up an immediate prayer of thanks that she wasn’t the person being addressed.

  ‘That’s what you said two weeks ago at the prospect of wor
king with me. It’s also what you thought when I gave you the go-ahead to sort out the swimming pool area.’ His dark eyes rested thoughtfully on her but there was a slight smile on his lips, the smile of someone who had proven a point. ‘Anyway—’ Bruno stood up, raked his fingers through his hair and moved towards the bay window where he perched on the sill and looked at her ‘—enough of this. It’s late. I think we can call it a day for the time being.’

  ‘I can finish those last few letters, if you like,’ Katy said, guiltily aware that he could carry on for hours and was now being forced to halt in mid-stream because she was tired and hungry and her eyes were aching from staring at a computer screen.

  ‘No. I’m nothing if not a fair employer!’

  Katy shot him a sceptical look that prompted one of exaggerated mock hurt right back from him.

  ‘Think about it, we did break off for a couple of hours to go and visit Joseph, so you really haven’t worked overtime at all. And besides, haven’t I spared you the boredom of wandering around this house with nothing to do?’

  ‘I do have stuff to do, actually.’

  ‘What?’

  The stubborn expression was back on her face and her eyes slid downwards. She gave a little shrug. This, Bruno had discovered, was one of her more annoying habits. Whenever he asked her a question, usually of a personal nature, to which she did not want to reply, she gave one of those little shrugs and then looked away with a distant expression on her face that encouraged a niggle of curiosity that really got on his nerves.

  Now, he ignored that and announced, ‘Are you hungry? You must be. Your stomach’s been making “Feed Me” noises for the past half an hour.’

  Katy raised her eyes to his in mortification and automatically pressed her hand to her growling stomach. ‘That…that’s a very ungentlemanly thing of you to say!’

  ‘It’s the truth. Run along and get dressed. I’m going to take you out to dinner.’

  ’I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You heard me. Dinner. Out. Me. You. Now hurry up. You probably want to have a bath and get into your finery.’

  ‘We can’t go out! Maggie’s cooked something.’

  ‘It’ll keep. Joseph’s back day after tomorrow and we need to have a little chat about what happens when he returns.’

  ‘A little chat?’ Katy had half risen from her chair and her eyes were as wide as saucers as she looked at the darkly handsome man staring back at her with thinly veiled impatience.

  Yes, she had got used to working with him. In a manner of speaking. Yes, she had become accustomed to their daily drive into the town centre to visit Joseph. She could just about manage both without her nervous system going into knots. In the office, here, she kept her head down, obeyed instructions and discussed work-related matters, as she did over the dinners they occasionally shared in the kitchen. And on the drive to the hospital, they always talked about Joseph because their minds were already geared at the thought of seeing him. But dinner out? In a restaurant? She dredged her mind to think of a possible way out.

  ‘That’s right. Now, I’m going to finish off here and I’ll see you back downstairs at…let’s say…eight-fifteen? Long enough for you to get ready?’ He strolled over to the desk and began leafing through some of the documents on his desk while Katy backed towards the door, finally clearing her throat to commandeer his attention.

  ‘Yes?’ Black eyes focused reluctantly on her face. ‘Something else?’

  ‘No. Oh, no. I just thought that it would be just as handy for us to eat here and discuss…well, whatever it is you want to discuss…’

  Bruno frowned and gave her his full attention. ‘Are you telling me that you don’t want to accept my dinner invitation?’ he asked flatly.

  ‘Of course not! I just don’t want you to feel…to feel that…you have to…’

  ‘Why would I feel that?’

  ‘Sort of a duty gesture, so to speak, because I’ve worked for you here…?’

  ‘You’re beginning to try my patience, Katy. I hadn’t really thought about it along those lines, but, as gestures go, what’s wrong with this one? The arrangement has worked much better than I anticipated and, believe it or not, it is in my nature to reward good work.’

  ‘Right! That’s just…fine. Just wanted to make sure.’ She flashed him a brilliant smile. ‘Eight-fifteen?’

  ‘If you press any harder against that door, you might just go through it.’

  The gleam of his amused smile followed her while she had her bath and got dressed. She looked helplessly at her reflection in the mirror, towel wrapped tightly around her body, and then even more helplessly at the array of clothes hanging in her wardrobe. Whenever she thought of that little patronising smile in the face of her gaucheness, she had a pressing urge to startle him out of it by doing something wildly out of character. She might very well have dressed in something daring, if she possessed any such item, but a quick scan of the clothes hanging in her closet was enough to tell her that that particular shock tactic was not going to be possible.

  And anyway, she reflected, once she was safely established in her flowing, calf-length dress and neat blue cardigan, which would be all she would need because it was still very mild outside despite the hour, skimpy, eye-catching clothes might seem great in her head, but in reality she would never be able to carry off the look.

  The few times she had dressed in little numbers she had felt horribly uncomfortable, and her last boyfriend had kindly advised her to stay away from the vampish clothes. She had an angelic face, he had told her, and there was no point spoiling the look by trying to dress like someone from a red-light district. Katy had been pleased with the angelic look bit, though she personally couldn’t see that, but vaguely annoyed at the implication that sexy was never going to be within her reach. Since when were angels interesting? The image of Isobel rose up in her head and she nearly stumbled as she made her way down the stairs.

  Of course, Bruno was nowhere in evidence, and she finally unearthed him in the swimming-pool room where he was making a last-minute inspection. He barely glanced at her when she coughed to let him know that she was ready, and when he did turn to face her, inspection completed, there were no flattering phrases at the ready, not even those of the false variety.

  But he had changed and for a split second Katy almost felt as though the breath had been knocked out of her. He was wearing black. Black jeans, black long-sleeved jumper that hung over the waistband of his trousers, black jacket casually slung over one shoulder. He looked like a dangerously well-bred highwayman and as he walked towards her she could almost feel her heart begin to crash against her ribcage.

  What was wrong with her? Appalled at her own frightening regression into adolescence, she leapt into nervous chatter and the swimming pool was the easiest topic at hand. It took her through the next twenty minutes while she got herself together, although, in the car, she didn’t dare let her eyes slip to the man driving.

  ‘So what would you like to eat?’ he asked, when that particular topic had been exhausted.

  ‘Anything. I’m not fussy.’

  ‘Makes a change to find a woman who is not fussy when it comes to food.’ Bruno smiled and continued concentrating on the road. ‘I have had a look at Joseph’s Where to Eat guide and there is a good Italian a few blocks down from the hospital. That do?’

  ‘Yummy. I love Italian food.’

  ‘Of course, you may have been there already,’ Bruno said casually and Katy glanced at him.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ She couldn’t actually remember having any conversations with him along the lines of restaurants she had been to.

  ‘Well, you mentioned that you went out for meals occasionally and there aren’t exactly a riot of eating places in the town…’

  ‘Oh, I’ve just really been to the pizza places. It’s the quickest thing to grab if we go to the cinema. Goodness, is that the restaurant? I never even knew there was such a place around here.’ They had pulled up in front o
f an ivy-clad house fronted by a very small courtyard, which was already almost full. Aside from the discreet sign outside announcing its purpose, it looked for all the world like someone’s very tasteful private residence. Katy immediately felt self-conscious about what she was wearing and glanced down worriedly at the floral dress.

  ‘The dress code is casual,’ he said gently and Katy flushed. ‘I’m not exactly dressed to kill, am I?’

  ‘I know, but you still manage to look magnificent,’ she blurted out and then wished desperately, in the growing silence, that the bottom of the car would open and swallow her up. ‘I mean striking,’ she amended hastily, finishing, ever more lamely, with, ‘It’s your colouring. I guess you could wear anything and look…well…’

  ‘Magnificent?’ He gave a low laugh that sent her blood rushing wildly through her and their eyes met, tangled and then he was opening his door and stepping out, leaving her to wallow in the embarrassment of having said precisely what she was thinking without bothering to consider the after-effects. Which appeared to be him laughing at her. Highly amused. Yet again. She miserably contemplated the status of mascot as opposed to seductress, which really was the crushing difference between her and his fiancée to be, wasn’t it?

  The restaurant was small and intimate and full. They were invited to wait for a table in the small snug off the dining area where coffee was taken and, once seated, Katy was subjected to one of those contemplative stares that Bruno seemed to specialise in.

  ‘What?’ she asked, going red. ‘What is it? Why are you staring at me like that? It’s rude.’

  ‘Rude for a man to stare at a woman? Interesting take on things. Why is it rude?’

  ‘Because…’ Katy floundered.

  ‘Surely you must have been stared at before? By your boyfriends? Caught up in the throes of lust?’

  She sought refuge in the menu in front of her and breathed a sigh of relief when the unnerving line of conversation was dropped and he began chatting about the renovations to the pool. Not that there was much left to chat about on the subject, but she was grateful for the reprieve.