Oh-So-Sensible Secretary

by Jessica Hart

  The bell rang again, more stridently this time. ‘Ready?’ asked Phin, and without waiting for me to answer strolled to open the door.

  I could hear him exchanging chit-chat with Imelda and the photographer in the narrow hallway as I desperately tried to compose myself. I was horrified when I looked in the mirror to see that my hair was all over the place, my eyes huge and my lips swollen. I hardly recognised myself. I looked wild. I looked wanton.

  I looked sexy.

  I looked the part, just like Phin had said.

  The next moment Phin was ushering Imelda into the room. She stopped when she saw me. ‘Hello,’ she said, obviously surprised.

  ‘Hello,’ I said weakly, and then remembered-far too late, I know-that I was the one who had set up this interview. I cleared my throat and stepped forward to shake her hand. ‘We’ve spoken on the phone,’ I said. ‘I’m Summer Curtis-Phin’s PA.’

  ‘Ah.’ Imelda looked amused, and when I followed her gaze I saw that she was looking at my shirt, which I had managed to button up all wrong in my haste.

  Flushing, I made to fix the top button, and then realised that I was just going to get into an awful muddle unless I undid them all and started again. As Phin had no doubt intended.

  ‘Not just my PA,’ said Phin, coming to put his arm round my waist and pulling me into his side.

  ‘So I see,’ said Imelda dryly.

  Her elegant brows lifted in surprise. I didn’t blame her. She must have known as well as I did that I wasn’t exactly Phin’s usual type, and I lost confidence abruptly. We’d never be able to carry this off. Not in front of someone as sharp as Imelda.

  ‘Shall I make coffee?’ I asked quickly, desperate to get out of the room. My heart was still crashing clumsily around in my chest, and I was having a lot of trouble breathing. I felt trembly and jittery, and I kept going hot and cold as if I had a fever.

  Perhaps I did have a fever? I latched onto the thought as I filled the kettle with shaking hands. That would explain the giddiness, the way I had melted into Phin with barely a moment’s hesitation. My cheeks burned at the memory.

  Not just my cheeks, to be honest.

  When I came back in with a tray, having taken the opportunity to refasten my shirt and tuck myself in properly, Phin was leaning back on the sofa, looking completely relaxed. He pulled me down onto the sofa beside him. ‘Thanks, babe,’ he said, and rested a hand possessively on my thigh.

  Babe? Ugh. I was torn between disgust and an agonising awareness of his hand touching my leg. It felt as if it were burning a hole through my trousers, and I was sure that when I took them off I would find an imprint of his palm scorched onto my skin.

  ‘So, Phin,’ said Imelda, when we had got the whole business of passing around the milk and sugar out of the way. ‘It sounds as if you’re making a lot of changes in your life right now. Does your new role at Gibson & Grieve mean you’re ready to stop travelling?’

  ‘I won’t stop completely,’ he said. ‘I’ve still got various programme commitments, and besides, I’m endlessly curious about the world. There are still so many wonderful places to see, and so many exciting things to do. I’m never going to turn my back on all that completely. Having said that, my father’s stroke did make me reassess my priorities. Gibson & Grieve is part of my life, and it feels good to be involved in the day to day running of it. It’s time for me to do my part, instead of leaving it all to my brother.

  ‘And then, of course, there’s Summer.’ He lifted my hand and pressed a kiss it. His lips were warm and sure, and a shiver travelled down my spine. I did my best to disguise it by shifting on the sofa, but I saw Imelda look at me. ‘She’s changed everything for me.’

  ‘You’re thinking of settling down?’ She made a moue of exaggerated disappointment. ‘That’s another of the most eligible bachelors off the available list!’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Phin, entwining his fingers with mine. ‘I was always afraid of the idea of settling down, but since I’ve met Summer it doesn’t seem so much like giving up my freedom as finding what I’ve been looking for all these years.’

  You’ve got to admit he was good. No one could have guessed he’d been ranting about cushions and commitment only a few minutes earlier.

  Imelda was lapping it all up, while I sat with a stupid smile on my face, not knowing what to do with my expression. Should I look besotted? Shy? Smug?

  ‘You’re a lucky woman.’ Imelda turned to me. ‘What’s it like knowing that half the women in the country would like to be in your place?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘To be honest, it hasn’t sunk in yet. It’s still very new.’

  ‘But it feels absolutely right, doesn’t it?’ Phin put in.

  He was doing so much better than me that I felt I should make an effort. ‘Yes,’ I said slowly, ‘funnily enough, it does.’

  And then, bizarrely, it didn’t seem so difficult. I smiled at him, and he smiled back, and for a long moment we just looked at each other and there was nothing but the blueness of his eyes and the thud of my heart and the air shortening around us.

  It took a pointed cough from Imelda to jerk me back to reality. With an effort, I dragged my eyes from Phin’s and tried to remember what I was supposed to be talking about. Phin, that was it. Phin and me and our supposed passion for each other.

  ‘We’re so different in lots of ways,’ I told Imelda, and the words seemed to come unbidden. ‘Phin isn’t at all the kind of guy I thought I would fall in love with, but it turns out that he’s exactly right for me.’

  ‘So it wasn’t love at first sight for you?’

  ‘No, he was just…my boss.’

  ‘And what made the difference for you?’

  Images rushed through my head like the flickering pages of a book. Phin smiling. Phin wiping cream from my cheek. Phin pulling the clip from my hair. Phin’s mouth and Phin’s hands and the hard excitement of Phin’s body.

  ‘I…I don’t know,’ I said hesitantly. ‘I just looked at him one day and knew that I was in love with him.’

  I thought it was pretty feeble, but Imelda was nodding as if she understood and looking positively dewy-eyed.

  I was all set to relax then, but that was only the beginning. I still had to endure an excruciating photo session, posing cuddled up to Phin or looking at him adoringly, and my nerves were well and truly frayed by the time it was over. I tried to get out of the photographs, pleading that the article was about Phin, not me, but Imelda was adamant.

  ‘All our readers will want to see the lucky woman who has convinced Phin Gibson to settle down,’ she insisted.

  I can tell you, I didn’t feel very lucky by the time we’d finished. I was exhausted by the effort of pretending to be in love with Phin, while simultaneously trying to convince him that all the touching and kissing was having no effect on me at all.

  But at last it was over. We waved them off from the steps, and then Phin closed the door and grinned at me. ‘Very good,’ he said admiringly. ‘You practically had me convinced!’

  ‘You didn’t do badly yourself,’ I said. ‘You weren’t lying when you said you were a good actor.’

  No harm in reminding him that I knew he had been acting.

  ‘If you can fool a hard-boiled journalist like Imelda, you should be able to fool Jonathan,’ Phin said.

  Why hadn’t I remembered Jonathan before? I wondered uneasily. Jonathan was the reason I was doing this. I should have been thinking about him all morning, not about the sick, churning excitement I felt when Phin kissed me.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ I said, as coolly as I could. I looked at my watch. ‘We’d better get back to the office.’

  ‘What’s the rush? Let’s have lunch first,’ said Phin. ‘We should celebrate.’

  ‘Celebrate what?’

  ‘A successful interview, for one thing. Promoting Gibson & Grieve’s family image. And let’s not forget our engagement.’

  ‘We’re not engaged,’ I said repressively.

/>   ‘As good as,’ he said, shrugging on his jacket and slipping a wallet into the inside pocket. He held the door open for me. ‘You’re now officially the woman who’s convinced me to settle down.’

  ‘You may be settling down, but I’m certainly not spending my life with anyone who calls me babe!’

  Phin grinned at me as he pulled the door closed behind him. ‘It’s a mark of affection.’

  ‘It’s patronising.’

  ‘Well, what would you like me to call you?’

  ‘What’s wrong with my name?’

  ‘Every self-respecting couple has special names for each other,’ he pointed out.

  We walked towards the King’s Road. ‘Well, if you have to, you can call me darling,’ I allowed after a moment, but Phin shook his head, his eyes dancing.

  ‘No, no-darling is much too restrained, too ordinary, for you. You’re much sexier than you realise, and we need to make sure Jonathan realises, too. Shall I call you bunnikins?’

  ‘Shall I punch you on the nose?’ I retorted sweetly.

  He laughed. ‘Pumpkin? Muffin? Cupcake?’

  ‘Cupcake?’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ said Phin. ‘But you’re right. I don’t see you as a cupcake. What about cookie?’

  ‘Oh, please!’

  ‘Or-I know! This is perfect for you, and in keeping with the baking theme…cream puff?’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’

  ‘Cream puff it is,’ said Phin, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘All crispy on the outside, but soft and delicious in the middle. It couldn’t be better for you,’ he said. ‘That’s settled. So, what are you going to call me?’

  I looked at him. ‘You really-really-don’t want to know,’ I said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PHIN only smiled and took my hand. ‘Come along, my little cream puff. Let’s go and find some lunch. If you don’t want to celebrate our non-engagement, let’s just celebrate the fact that it’s a beautiful day. What more reason do we need, anyway?’

  I tried to imagine Jonathan suggesting that we celebrated the fact that the sun was shining, but I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t that he was a killjoy. Jonathan would celebrate a promotion, a rise in profits, a successful advertising campaign, perhaps. But a lovely day? I didn’t think so.

  And if he did celebrate he would want to plan it. Jonathan would book the very best restaurant, or order the most expensive champagne. He wouldn’t just wander along the King’s Road the way Phin did, and find the first place with a table in a sunny window.

  But that was why I loved Jonathan, I reminded myself hastily. I loved him precisely because he wasn’t spontaneous, because he was the kind of man who would think things through and plan them sensibly, instead of dropping everything when the sun came out, and because he didn’t act on a whim the way my mother and Phin did.

  On the other hand, I have to admit that I enjoyed that lunch-although that may have been largely due to the large glass of wine that came with it. I asked for water, but the wine came, and then it seemed too much of a fuss to send it back, so I ended up drinking it. I’m not used to drinking in the middle of the day, and I could feel myself flushing, and laughing a lot more than I usually do.

  Perhaps it was relief at having got through the interview. Perhaps it was the sunshine.

  Or perhaps it was Phin sitting opposite me, making me believe that there was nowhere else he would rather be and no one else he would rather be with. Having spent months having to be grateful for any time Jonathan could spare me, it was a novel sensation for me to be the focus of attention for a change.

  It was so little, really-to feel that Phin saw me when he looked at me, that he was listening, really listening, to what I was saying-but I’d have been less than human if I hadn’t responded, and I could feel myself unfurling in the simple pleasure of having lunch with an attractive man on a sunny day.

  It was very unlike me. I’m normally very puritanical about long lunches in office time. I wasn’t myself that day.

  I felt really quite odd, in fact. Fizzy, is the best way to describe it, as if that kiss had left all my senses on high alert. I was desperately aware of Phin opposite me, scanning the menu. I could see every one of the laughter lines around his eyes, the crease in his cheek, and that dent at the corner of his crooked mouth which always seemed on the point of breaking into a smile.

  I was supposed to be looking at the menu, too, but I couldn’t concentrate. My eyes kept flickering over to him, skittering from the prickle of stubble on his jaw to his hands, to his throat and then back to that mobile mouth. And my own mouth dried at the memory of how excitingly sure his lips had been.

  My whole body still seemed to be humming with the feel of his hands, of his mouth, but at the same time it seemed hard to believe that we could have kissed like that and yet be sitting here quite normally, as if nothing had happened at all. I shifted uncomfortably as I remembered how eagerly I had kissed Phin back. What must he think of me?

  On the other hand, it hadn’t been a real kiss, had it? It hadn’t meant anything. Phin had made it clear enough that he had only been kissing me for effect, and I wondered if I ought to make it clear that I had been doing the same. And, yes, I know, that wasn’t exactly how it was, but a girl has her pride.

  Or perhaps I should pretend to ignore the whole issue?

  I was still dithering when Phin looked up from the menu. ‘Have you decided? I’m going to have a starter, too. I don’t know about you, but all that kissing has given me an appetite!’

  Now that he had raised the subject, I thought I might as well take the opportunity to make my position quite clear.

  ‘Speaking of kissing,’ I said, and was secretly impressed at how cool I sounded, ‘perhaps we ought to discuss what happened earlier. I understand why you kissed me-’ I went on.

  Phin’s brows lifted and his smile gleamed. ‘Do you, now?’

  ‘Of course. It created a convincing effect for Imelda, and I can see that it worked, but I hope there won’t be any need to repeat it,’ I said, at my most priggish.

  Much effect it had on Phin. ‘Now, there we differ, cream puff, because I hope there will. I enjoyed that kiss very much. Didn’t you?’

  My eyes darted around the table and I longed for the nerve to lie.

  ‘I just don’t want to lose sight of what we’re trying to do here,’ I said evasively. ‘And don’t call me cream puff.’

  ‘That wasn’t quite an answer to my question, though, was it?’ said Phin with a provocative smile.

  I might have known he wouldn’t let me get away with it.

  We locked eyes for a mute moment, until he gave in with a grin and a shake of his head.

  ‘Look, don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten that for you this is about getting Jonathan back.’

  ‘And it’s promoting Gibson & Grieve,’ I added quickly, not wanting it to be all about me. ‘Not to mention keeping Jewel at arm’s length!’

  ‘All very fine causes,’ Phin agreed with a virtuous expression. ‘But since we’re going through this pretence, it seems to me we might as well enjoy it. We’re not going to look like a very convincing couple if we never touch each other, are we? Touching is what couples do.’

  Jonathan and I had never touched in public. But then we hadn’t been a real couple, had we?

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘but only when necessary.’

  ‘Only when necessary,’ he confirmed, and held up crossed fingers. ‘Scout’s honour. Now, let’s get serious and talk about lunch…’

  I felt that I had made my point, and after that I was able to relax a little. I suppose that glass of wine helped, too. I don’t remember what we talked about-just nonsense, I think-but I was still in an uncharacteristically light-hearted mood when we made it back to the office.

  We waited for a lift in the glossy atrium, with the sun angling through the building to lie across the floor in a broad stripe. Phin was telling me about a disastrous trip he’d been on for one of the Into the Wild programmes, w
here everything that could possibly go wrong had done, and I was laughing when the lift pinged at last and the doors slid open to reveal Lex and Jonathan.

  There was a moment of startled silence, then they stepped out. I had a sudden image of myself through Lex’s eyes, flushed and laughing and dishevelled. Somewhere along the line I had mislaid my clip, and my hair was still tumbling to my shoulders. In my silky red shirt I must have looked almost unrecognisable from my usual crisp self.

  My smile faded as I encountered first Lex’s stern gaze, then Jonathan’s astounded look.

  ‘Hello,’ said Phin cheerfully. ‘Don’t tell me you two are sloping off early?’

  ‘We’ve got a meeting in the City.’ Pointedly Lex looked at his watch and, like Pavlov’s dog, I looked at mine, too. My eyes nearly started out of my head when I saw that it was almost three o’clock. How had it got that late?

  ‘I see you’re not letting your new position here change your work ethic,’ he added, with one of his trademark sardonic looks.

  Phin was unperturbed. ‘Less of the sarcasm, please,’ he said. He was the only person I knew who wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated by Lex. I suppose it helped that Lex was his brother. ‘I’ll have you know we’ve been busy promoting Gibson & Grieve all morning.’

  ‘It’s some time since morning,’ said Lex, less than impressed.

  ‘We’ve been recovering from the stress of persuading the media of my family friendly credentials. Summer did an absolutely brilliant job.’

  I wished he hadn’t mentioned me. Lex’s cold grey gaze shifted back to me, and it took all I had not to squirm. I was unnervingly aware of Jonathan’s astounded gaze fixed on me, too. I managed a weak smile.

  ‘Remarkable,’ was all Lex said.

  ‘Isn’t she?’ said Phin fondly, putting an arm around me and pulling me against him. I could feel the heat and weight of his hand at my waist, making the slippery material of my shirt shift over my skin. ‘That’s just what I’ve been telling her.’