His Virgin Secretary

by Cathy Williams

  ‘It’s very hectic in London, Joseph,’ Katy said now, moving to his side. ‘You need to be aggressive.’ Her smile felt forced. ‘And now to bed for a short nap. Shall I read to you?’ She turned towards Bruno and Isobel and noticed that he had detached himself from her side and was pouring himself a glass of wine, leaving his fiancée stranded in the middle of the room. ‘Joseph has solemnly promised me that a bit later he might just put one toe into that swimming pool…’

  ‘And you’re going…where…?’ Bruno asked her.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I take it you’re about to disappear? When Joseph is settled why don’t you come down and join myself and Isobel in the pool?’ Bruno was leaning against the walnut sideboard and staring at her over the rim of his glass, even when he tilted his head back so that he could swallow some of the wine. His eyes didn’t leave her face. Across the width of the room, Katy felt the force of his personality rush towards her like a gust of wind and she even took a slight step backwards in confusion.

  ‘I…thank you, but I think I’ll just…’

  ‘You did buy a swimsuit, didn’t you?’

  The stranded Isobel clearly didn’t care for the tenor of the conversation, because she glided towards Bruno, who didn’t appear to notice her at all.

  ‘Yes, of course I did!’ Katy flushed and looked away. Did he have to treat her like a minor? It was bad enough when they were on their own, but in the presence of his girlfriend it was unforgivable. The problem was that she lacked the necessary turn of phrase to tell him so. She was not adept at being clever with words so she bit back her mortification.

  ‘Don’t bully the poor little thing,’ Isobel chided. ‘And never you mind,’ she addressed Katy with eyes that were as cold as chips of ice, ‘if you didn’t buy a swimsuit. It’s not the end of the world. I’ve brought a couple up myself and I would lend you one but…’ her eyes slid over Katy’s slight frame, enveloped in a loose-fitting dress ‘…it probably wouldn’t fit. We’re entirely different body shapes.’

  Katy was gloomily aware that there was nothing she could possibly say to refute that obvious statement. Isobel was a tall, full-breasted beauty who turned heads and could command attention. She, on the other hand, was a timid little thing with a flat chest and would not have been able to turn heads if she danced naked on a table in a crowded room. Before Joseph, full of all the right intentions, could come to her defence with some glaringly fictitious compliment, she hurriedly exited the room with as much dignity as she could muster under the circumstances.

  ‘Odious woman,’ Joseph said as soon as they were out of earshot.

  ‘But beautiful,’ Katy replied wistfully. ‘Not that I’m implying that she’s odious. It’s just that when you’re as beautiful as that, well…it must be very easy to be dismissive of other people.’ Other plain, dowdy people, she thought on a sigh, like me. She wondered what it must be like to be blessed with such staggering beauty and then decided that she was rather relieved not to know, if staggering beauty came with a vicious tongue. ‘I have to stop running myself down,’ she said, more to herself than to Joseph. ‘According to Bruno, I do that far too much.’

  ‘Don’t know what he sees in her,’ Joseph huffed, taking the stairs slowly. ‘Problem with beautiful people is that they’re always wrapped up in themselves.’

  ‘Bruno’s beautiful,’ Katy pointed out.

  ‘You think so, do you?’

  ‘I mean,’ she stressed, ‘from a purely objective point of view. They’re both beautiful. They make a very attractive couple.’

  ‘How serious is this? Has he told you? Mentioned anything…?’

  ‘If you’re concerned, you ought to ask him yourself,’ Katy suggested evasively.

  ‘Might just do that. Now no need to spend time reading to me. Fancy a little kip anyway. Got to build my strength up if I’m to go anywhere near that pool later this evening.’

  ‘You can sit on the side, Joseph. No one’s asking you to plunge in and start swimming lengths.’

  ‘You’ll come in with me, won’t you? I mean, you did buy that swimsuit, didn’t you?’ He directed a sly little smile at her, which made her laugh.

  ‘Yes, I did!’

  ‘Well, we’ll wait until much later. When the viper’s out of the pool.’

  ‘That’s very unkind, Joseph,’ but she was finding it hard not to giggle at the description, which was remarkably accurate. She wondered, for a few seconds, whether proximity to water mightn’t turn the glamorous Isobel into a reptile of some sort, and then chastised herself for her lack of generosity.

  He did have a point, though. Isobel didn’t strike her as an avid swimmer. She would probably enjoy lounging around the pool in a revealing swimsuit, and when that palled she would be more than happy to go indoors and have some pre-dinner drinks. And Bruno, naturally, would follow her. In that window of vacancy, she and Joseph would be able to have a relaxing half an hour there.

  She waited a decent length of time, plenty long enough for Bruno and Isobel to have changed and headed to the pool, then Katy retreated to the snug with her book. Under normal circumstances, she would have spent the next two hours lost to the world. This was a particularly riveting biography. After half an hour, she realised, with surprise, that she had managed to read a page and a half and then she further realised, with a little stab of guilt, that she had spent most of the time thinking about Bruno and Isobel, wondering what they were doing. Swimming? Cavorting in the water? Doing other things? Surely not! Katy snapped shut the book and leaned back on the chair with her eyes closed and her imagination wide open and horribly alert.

  When she heard the sound of voices and footsteps approaching, she shot out of the chair, clutching her book, as if she had been caught red-handed with her thoughts spread around her on the carpet. Before she had time to compose herself, there they were, the couple from the centre pages of a magazine. Straight from the pool. Bruno had slung on a shirt which, unbuttoned, exposed a slither of bronzed, muscled torso and Isobel was virtually unclothed. Just a wisp of a bright pink bikini top that left very little to the imagination and a light wrap-around thing that was the last word in casual elegance. Below the short hemline, her long legs seemed to go on and on for ever.

  ‘I was just reading!’ Katy blurted out. ‘How was the pool? Did you have a nice swim?’

  ‘You should have come in with us.’ Bruno strolled lazily into the room and proceeded to drop into one of the chairs. ‘Seemed a shame that the pool was christened without you when you were the one responsible for getting it finished.’ He dangled his sunglasses idly from one hand and glanced across to Isobel. ‘Why don’t you go and change? It’s…nearly five. You can join me for drinks in the sitting room around seven-ish. I need to do a bit of work.’

  Isobel pouted. ‘On a Sunday, Bruno?’

  ‘The great money-making machinery never goes to sleep, Isobel. It certainly doesn’t take weekends off.’ He sighed and gave her his full attention. ‘I’ll try and keep it to a minimum.’ Then that smile that could melt ice. ‘In fact, why don’t you go upstairs and wait for me? Hmm? I’ll come up as quickly as I can…’

  Not quite knowing where to look, Katy hovered in embarrassed silence, staring at the ground with her fingers curled around the book, waiting for him to leave. He didn’t and eventually she risked a glance upwards to find him looking at her.

  ‘You’re doing it again,’ Bruno said curtly. ‘And before you ask doing what, you’re looking like a rabbit caught in some headlights. Sit down, why don’t you?’

  ‘I thought you were going off to do some work.’

  ‘I have an email to send. Shouldn’t take longer than a few minutes.’

  Katy sat down, horrendously aware of his presence, and opened the book in front of her. She was confronted by a jumble of print that didn’t make much sense but she continued peering at the page anyway.

  ‘You’re going to read?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I don’t exp
ect you to sit there reading when I’m in the room,’ Bruno informed her with such sweeping arrogance that she almost gasped aloud.

  ‘Shall I go upstairs?’

  ‘He doesn’t like her.’

  Cutting through the preliminaries and getting right down to the gist of the matter. Katy closed the book and met Bruno’s glittering black eyes steadily.

  ‘He doesn’t like her and, furthermore, it was a ludicrous idea to bring her up here. What did he tell you and don’t even bother trying to prevaricate, Katy.’

  Caught on the end of a hook, Katy cleared her throat and tentatively said, ‘I think he thinks that she’s a little…overpowering…’

  ‘You didn’t lead him to think that marriage was on the cards, did you?’

  ‘Of course not!’ she protested stoutly. ‘You told me not to say anything and I didn’t.’ Why? she was desperate to ask. Are you having second thoughts? Then, like a bolt of lightning that came from nowhere, she realised that that was what she was hoping. Hoping that his perfect arrangement would come to nothing because, Lord above, she had only gone and done the unthinkable, had only started seeing him as a man, and a deeply attractive one at that, instead of as a temporary employer with a heart as cold as ice.

  Everything now seemed to slot together magically, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The way she felt on edge, nervous, excited whenever she was in his company, as if he had turned a switch on inside her and brought her to life. The way she followed him with her eyes, was aware of him even when she wasn’t actually looking at him, in fact was aware of him even when he wasn’t in her line of vision! All those uncharitable thoughts about Isobel had their roots in good, old-fashioned jealousy.

  Did she really think that he was going to dump such an ideally suitable mate as Isobel just because Joseph hadn’t immediately warmed to her? He thought things through with his head and not his heart and, just in case he was thinking about asking her to try and engage in some kind of promotional campaign on Isobel’s behalf to his godfather, Katy stood up with a determined expression.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m leaving you to get on with your work and, besides, it’s…’ she made a pointed show of looking at her watch ‘…time for Joseph to start getting ready for his little jaunt in the pool.’ She could feel Bruno’s fulminating silence as he continued to look at her. ‘I think he’s more tempted by the water than he lets on,’ she rattled on, desperate now to get out of the room so that she could start processing her thoughts. ‘He’s made a huge show of saying how much he loathes swimming but…’ she giggled nervously ‘…I think it’s a case of all bark and no bite, don’t you? Or have I used the wrong cliché?’ For a few seconds she remained where she was, hovering, like a candidate at an interview, then she made her legs move in the direction of the door, almost expecting him to summon her back and dreading it because if he started dredging her thoughts, then goodness only knew what might come out.

  He didn’t, though, and Katy half ran up the stairs, only stopping en route to her room to inform Joseph that they could head down to the pool.

  ‘Coast clear?’ he whispered in a wickedly conspiratorial tone, which she ignored. ‘I may be old but I’d rather not show myself up…’

  I know the feeling, Katy thought fifteen minutes later as she shut the door to the swimming-pool area behind her. Luckily the house had been silent when they had come down the stairs. She discarded the towelling robe she had thrown over her swimsuit, a modest black one-piece with some cunning lacing down the front that she had tied firmly at the top.

  It was not what Bruno saw when he quietly entered the room half an hour later. His godfather, apparently through with his stint in the pool, was sitting on one of the chairs looking extremely rested with his eyes shut and his book on his lap, and there she was, emerging from the water, not looking in his direction at all. Her head was lowered as she squeezed her hair with her hands. One foot rested on the side of the pool, the other was still on the step in the water.

  He didn’t know why he had come. Isobel was presumably waiting for him in the room that had been allocated to her, but her attractions had not been enough to get him up those stairs to see her.

  He found that he was holding his breath, looking at Katy, at the body she had always kept well hidden. Long, slender legs, a slightness that bordered on gamine, breasts that pushed provocatively against the wet black Lycra with the lace that was coming undone. He couldn’t drag his eyes away from her and he wasn’t sure how long he would have just continued standing there and watching if she hadn’t then looked up and registered his presence.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A SLOW, curling heat spread through Katy’s body as their eyes locked. Bruno was looking at her, really looking at her and this time his expression wasn’t shuttered. He dragged his eyes away from her face and then slowly appraised her frozen body with shocking intimacy, starting with her shoulders and moving right down to the tips of her toes, then back upwards, lingering on the slightness of her waist and the small roundness of her breasts. He moved forward and that snapped her out of her trance. She immediately folded her arms protectively across her breasts, trying to cover the body she had always considered too boyish to be attractive.

  Her heart was beating like a hammer inside her and she almost yelped in alarm as he walked towards her and said roughly, ‘Don’t.’

  ‘D-don’t what…?’ Katy stammered. Now that she had absorbed the initial shock of looking up and just seeing him there, intense mortification was beginning to set in. She was very modestly covered up in her one-piece swimsuit, but she felt as if she were standing in front of him in full nudity. Even worse was how her body was reacting. Her breasts were tingling and she felt as if she were melting between her legs.

  Instead of answering, he carefully pulled her arms away from their fiercely folded position and dragged them down to her sides.

  ‘Don’t try and cover up your body like that,’ he murmured huskily.

  Katy blushed in wild confusion and glanced over her shoulder desperately.

  ‘He’s dozed off,’ Bruno said, following her glance and reading what was in her head. ‘That small spot of exercise must have exhausted him.’ His brilliant eyes refocused on her.

  ‘Yes, well…he’s done awfully well, actually…’

  ‘Why do you wear the clothes that you wear? Great things that cover you up?’ As if he couldn’t help himself, his gaze lowered to roam over the soft swell of her cleavage and the tantalising glimpse of skin visible underneath the loosely undone lacing. ‘I’d never have guessed that you had a body like this…’

  ‘Like what?’ Katy whispered, then she realised, belatedly, that this was not the kind of conversation that should be taking place between them, even though there was something wonderfully thrilling about it. Bruno might be noticing her, sort of in the way that he might notice something that he had taken for granted only to find that he had inadvertently missed something, something like a table with a concealed drawer underneath, but he would be noticing her dispassionately. She repeated the word in her head, using it to get a grip on herself. If only the feel of his long fingers weren’t scorching her skin and sending her nervous system into crazy overdrive!

  ‘Slender. Smooth, like satin. But with curves in all the right places.’

  ‘No. No, no, no.’ Katy shook her head to block out the velvety sexiness of his voice. ‘Look, I’m beginning to feel cold. I need to get my towel. And Joseph…he really should get up now or he’ll be in a very bad mood when he finally does…’

  ‘You’re cold,’ Bruno murmured. ‘Is that why your nipples are so erect?’

  Even knowing him as she now did, knowing that he was the archetypal dominant male who spoke his mind with a forthrightness that often bordered on arrogance, Katy was still unprepared for the directness of his question. Her mouth fell open in absolute, dumbfounded shock—not that he looked in the least bit repentant.

  ‘You shouldn’t be talking to me like
this,’ she squeaked shakily. ‘You…you have a fiancée…’

  ‘Which is something that’s been under consideration, in point of fact. You still haven’t answered my question. Is your body responding to the cold or to me?’ For a man who had always prided himself on his formidable self-control, Bruno now felt himself to be in the grip of something dangerously unsettling. Without giving a passing thought to the consequences, he brushed his finger lightly over one nipple, and when he felt the bud tighten fractionally in response he almost groaned aloud. Not very cool, he thought unsteadily. Not much like the man he normally was, the one who always led the dance when it came to women and turning them on. He heard her indrawn gasp with a rush of satisfaction. Her appalled face might be frantically telling one story, but her body was busy telling another. And the story her body was telling was mind-blowingly erotic, if only she knew. Which she didn’t. That he could tell by the panicked incredulity on her face.

  ‘Under consideration?’ Katy decided to ignore the second question totally. She also decided to stop craning her neck upwards to look at him because his gleaming, dark-as-night eyes were only dragging her down further and further. She concentrated on his chest instead, which was almost as bad.

  He gave an elegant half-shrug. ‘I have decided that there’s no point rushing into marriage after all. And perhaps Isobel isn’t quite the perfect life mate I had imagined.’

  ‘But I thought…’ Katy began, keen to explore this new development and even keener to get off the subject of her wayward body. ‘I thought that she had all the essential qualities that made her the ideal wife?’

  Bruno released her, giving her time to think, stupidly, that she now missed that sizzling electric current that seemed to flow straight from the palms of his hands through her wrists and into her body.

  ‘Not quite all,’ Bruno drawled with a veiled expression. He stuck his hands into his pockets, slid his eyes over her shoulder to where Joseph was still blissfully dozing, and then back to her bemused face.