The Secretary's Scandalous Secret

by Cathy Williams

  Agatha blinked and snapped back to the present. ‘You were saying… Um, you were going to tell me what information you think Stewart wants to drag out of me. I don’t know anything about computer software. I have a laptop in my bedroom, but I hardly ever use it. When I do, it’s just to email.’

  Luc looked at her flushed face: her half-parted mouth, her wide, incredulous eyes and that cloud of tousled fair hair that made her resemble a naughty, slightly dishevelled angel. A very sexy angel. He found that it was a struggle not to let his eyes dip to the generous curve of her breasts.

  He pushed himself away from the window, suddenly restless, but it was a very small room. From whatever angle, he seemed to be confronted with the sight of her smooth skin, the shadow of her cleavage, the slope of her shoulders and her hair tumbling over them.

  ‘You’re mistaken if you think that Stewart has hunted me down so that he could use me to pick my brain about your state secrets.’

  ‘You know that you wouldn’t recognise one of those state secrets if it lay down in front of you waving a white flag and begging to be discovered. And I know that. But he doesn’t, does he?’

  ‘Oh, this is hopeless.’ She had been so optimistic that life as a single girl in the dating game would begin with Stewart. But the date had failed to live up to its promise, and now this.

  ‘The man is using you, and you have to get rid of him. Never mind the personal angle. From my point of view, you become a liability the minute your trustworthiness is in question.’ He had tough lines on company security. There were no loops through which anyone could wriggle.

  Agatha gaped at him. ‘Even though you know that I would never do anything? Even though I’ve just told you how hopeless I am when it comes to understanding all that computer jargon? Are you saying that you don’t trust me?’

  Luc shrugged and lowered his eyes. ‘Sex and pillow talk can work the strangest magic. Who’s to say that he wouldn’t talk you into a little hanky panky at the office when everyone else has left for the evening? He knows the layout of the building. There’s virtually no chance that he could hack into anything important but I’m not willing to risk a situation that could cost me millions.’

  Agatha wasn’t even sure that she would have continued seeing Stewart. She had felt no real connection there. But this was about principles.

  ‘I’ll…I’ll think about what you said.’

  ‘You’ll have to do a bit more than that, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Or else I’m out of a job?’

  ‘Regrettably.’

  Agatha didn’t think that he looked like a man wracked with remorse at the situation—but then dispatching a charity case wouldn’t exactly bring him out in a bout of cold sweat and panic, would it? She was utterly disposable. Always one to see the silver lining in the cloud, she slumped into the chair, battered and dismayed.

  Luc steeled himself and let the silence stretch between them, then he left quietly, shutting the door with a click that resonated in the room like a time bomb.

  Having dug deep and uncovered Dexter for the manipulative and possibly dangerous charmer that he was, Luc had expected a positive response from Agatha. If, for instance, someone had offered him concrete proof that a woman he was dating was in it solely for the money, he knew that he would be only too quick to shed the offending gold-digger. But, then again, he was a realist through and through. Agatha was not; he had to face it.

  Instead of falling on his neck with relief that he had spared her the misery of dating a guy who wanted to use her, she had been disbelieving, argumentative and had eventually put him in the position of having to issue her with an ultimatum.

  What was it they said about no good deed going unpunished?

  Famed for an ability to jettison pointless aggravation, Luc found himself spending the weekend in an unsettled frame of mind. He couldn’t believe that she would choose a man she barely knew over his impeccable advice, not to mention over a job that was extravagantly well paid for what it was. And the prospect of firing her—whilst he would have no option if she didn’t dump Dexter—wasn’t something that filled him with enthusiasm. His mother had rarely asked anything of him; she was stoic by nature. Even when she had found herself at the mercy of the unforeseen, when the full story of the company collapse had emerged, she had not once looked to him for the solution; her only instinct had been to protect him from the cruelty of the press. So the thought of letting her down now was not a pleasant one.

  By six on Sunday evening he was primed to do the unthinkable and he didn’t waste time debating the pros and cons.

  The conference call he had scheduled was cancelled with the minimum of excuses, and by seven Luc was parked outside Agatha’s house in his Aston Martin. Looking up to her floor, he could see that it was in darkness. Having rung the doorbell twice to no avail, and telephoned her landline three times, he was confident that she wasn’t in. He would wait—no big deal.

  He didn’t stop to analyse the wisdom of showing up at her bedsit to find out whether she had made her decision: Dexter or the job.

  The foul humour that had been his constant companion over the weekend was dissipating. He almost missed her dark outline as she scurried towards the front door of the converted Victorian house, fumbling in her bag and dropping the key twice in the process.

  Nor was Agatha aware of his car sandwiched innocuously along the kerb between a motorbike and a small white van. Frankly, she wasn’t aware of very much as she scrabbled with shaking fingers to get the key in the door.

  Her head was buzzing. She was utterly oblivious to the sound of his footsteps as he vaulted out of his car towards her, surprising her just as she had managed to turn the key and was opening the front door.

  Agatha reacted with a shriek and, her nerves already in shreds, swung her right arm at her assailant propelled by the full weight of her voluminous bag. The blow caught him a cracking direct hit on the side of his face.

  ‘Good God, woman!’

  Agatha squinted in the dark and recognised Luc as he nursed his jaw. Uncharacteristically, she was sorely tempted to hit him again, but instead she walked quickly into the dark hall and attempted to slam the door in his face.

  Having waited for over an hour in his car for her to return, there was no way that Luc was having that. Indeed, having a woman slam a door in his face, whatever the reason, was not on his list of acceptable behaviour. He elbowed his way in, still nursing his jaw, so that she was forced to look at him.

  ‘What are you doing here? ‘

  ‘Right at this very moment in time? Wondering whether you’ve broken anything.’

  ‘You shouldn’t creep up on people and then you won’t get hit.’

  ‘I’m beginning to think that looks can be deceiving with you.’ He lowered his hand, having satisfied himself that there was no need to visit the casualty department of the local hospital just yet.

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

  ‘Why not? Where have you been?’

  ‘None of your business. Go away.’

  ‘You know I’m not going to do that. We never reached a conclusion after our last conversation.’

  He kept pace with her easily as she climbed the two flights to her bedsit, and before she could get any ideas about locking him out he insinuated himself into the front room behind her and then leaned against the door, watching her.

  ‘I told you I don’t want to talk to you,’ Agatha muttered, although she didn’t know why she bothered to waste her breath because here he was, larger than life, in her room, waiting to get his wretched answer. It was no longer just a case of her being a ninny and getting involved with an undesirable guy, but a case of it affecting part of his company. She could understand his anxiety, but that didn’t mean that she liked him being here again, making her feel awkward and self-conscious.

  She got rid of her coat. Luc noted that the sexy outfit of the day before had been replaced by her stock-in-trade long skirt, thick tights just visible above her sensibl
e black laceups and what looked like layers of cloth, culminating in a grey cardigan which she had buttoned to the neck. And then from nowhere he was knocked for six by a graphic image of her back in that dress, then stepping out of it wearing nothing underneath, naked, warm and pliant, leaning back so that he could play with her abundant breasts, splay his fingers against her thighs, lead her hand to his erection…The immediate stirring in his loins shocked him and he turned away abruptly and forced himself to think straight.

  ‘I know.’

  Agatha glared and shifted her weight from foot to foot, feeling his presence in the room like a suffocating weight.

  ‘He’s not worth it, you know,’ Luc said harshly. The lights from the street filtered up, turning her hair to silver as it brushed in curls along her jawbone and down to her shoulders. He wondered how he had never noticed the delicacy of her features—wide eyes, a small, straight nose, a full mouth and a heart-shaped face. Maybe it was because she made it her duty never to look him fully in the eye if she could help it.

  ‘How did you know that I went to see him?’ she asked now, conforming to his theory of avoidance by staring down at the rug. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s finished. So you don’t have to worry about him enticing me into a compromising situation.’

  ‘That’s…a good outcome,’ Luc said dismissively, eyes narrowed—and now she did look at him, her cheeks flushed with anger.

  ‘I really hate you!’ she burst out, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. ‘You don’t care about anyone’s feelings, do you? The only thing you care about is your stupid company! You don’t care that Stewart is…was…the first date I’d had since I moved to London!’

  ‘And what a date he turned out to be. If you think your heart’s breaking now, try projecting yourself down the road six months from now if you’d carried on going out with him! How do you think it would have felt when he turned around and dumped you because you couldn’t give him what he wanted? Or when he found out that you didn’t have access to the IT part of my company?’

  ‘How can you be so cold?’ The worst of it was that he was right. The minute she had lied to Stewart and said that she’d decided to hand in her notice—just a little white lie with her fingers crossed behind her back—she had felt him backing away from her faster than a speeding train. They had met at a small restaurant halfway between the city and her house, and his enthusiasm for the bill when she had started waxing lyrical about the stresses of working for a big company and her need to get back to a job close to nature would have been funny if she hadn’t been so disillusioned. She would never know if he had wanted to get to those company secrets, as Luc had suggested, but she had to think that he really had used her to find a way into the company even if only to cause mischief for Luc having sacked him.

  She knew that he was shallow and manipulative, and probably had a raging temper, which she had glimpsed for one frightening moment, but that still didn’t do her ego much good.

  And Luc, standing there and sneering, felt like the final straw.

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like to…to think that something’s going somewhere and it turns out that you’ve been completely wrong!’ she yelled. ‘You’re like a block of ice!’

  ‘He was a creep.’

  ‘Yes, I know he was a creep! You don’t have to tell me that. And I know I wouldn’t have ended up having a relationship with him, but it would have been nice if I hadn’t had my nose rubbed in it! ‘ She stood up, shaking like a leaf, and walked towards him. ‘It’s easy for you because you don’t want to get involved with anyone!’

  ‘I did you an enormous favour.’

  ‘Well, I don’t feel much like thanking you for it.’

  They were only inches apart now. Agatha didn’t quite know how her feet had taken her towards him, and up this close she because dizzily aware of the golden flecks in his irises. All of a sudden it was as though the air had been knocked out of her body. He was staring down at her, his dark face perfectly still.

  ‘Feel better?’ he asked softly and she blinked, mesmerised by his voice. ‘You needed to get angry, Agatha.’

  ‘I…I don’t get angry.’ The gentleness in his voice sent her into a confusing, giddy tailspin. Her face felt hot and her heart was hammering in her chest so that she could barely manage to get her breath out.

  ‘If you don’t get angry now and again, you’ll find that people will walk all over you. Say the word, and I would be more than happy to get angry with that loser on your behalf.’

  Agatha blinked. That felt like the nicest thing that had ever been said to her, but she didn’t understand why because she was so angry with him: wasn’t she?

  ‘I don’t believe in violence.’

  ‘Sit. I’ll get you a coffee.’

  ‘Are you being nice to me?’

  His mouth softened into a ghost of a smile which made her toes curl. She sat down, trying to gather herself while she listened to the sounds of him in the kitchen, opening and shutting cupboards and clumsily trying to make her something hot to drink. She had taken a real bruising earlier on and the prospect of being on her own with just her thoughts for company made her go cold inside.

  Besides, this was a side to him that she hadn’t seen before, and it was the side she suspected had the women flocking to him in droves. Because, rich or poor, Luc would always have had his fan club lining up to do whatever he wanted. When he squatted at her feet, depositing the mug on the little table he pulled towards her, she felt special. It was ridiculous, and she wanted to fight the feeling, but her encounter with Stewart had weakened all her defences.

  ‘You were right, anyway. I don’t belong here in London.’

  ‘Because you got taken in?’ He sat next to her and angled his long body so that he was facing her, his hands lightly clasped on his thighs.

  ‘Because I wasn’t sharp enough or streetwise enough to spot him.’ Luc was so close to her that their arms were nearly touching. When he reached out and caught her fluttering fingers in his hand, she jumped and moved to tug her hand away but then thought better of it. It was a gesture of consolation. She was miserable. It was the first time he had ever touched her in a deliberate way, and her body responded with a surge of heated awareness that made her feel faint.

  ‘Anyway.’ She struggled to get her thoughts in order.She still couldn’t bring herself to look at him for fear that the dual onslaught of those fabulous, sexy eyes and the feel of his long fingers playing with hers would make her do something really, really stupid—especially given the fragile state of mind she was in. So instead she breathed in deeply and gulped.

  ‘It’s no good me working for you; I think you’ll agree with me. I know you were made to help me out, and I’m very grateful, but I’m a liability—you said so yourself. What if you hadn’t recognised Stewart? What if he had…done whatever it was you thought he would do? It’s not as though I would have clued up and smelled a rat.’

  She gave a choked, hysterical laugh. ‘I have no experience of big business, or of finance. Or of anything, for that matter.’ She thought back to her high hopes when she had first arrived in London. She had counted all the positives of stepping outside her comfort zone. She had recognised that small-village life might have been fine as a kid but that there wasn’t a single young woman she knew who wouldn’t trade it for the experience of working in a top company in London. She had thought she would throw herself into office life and gain lots of invaluable experience. She would make dozens of new, exciting friends and into that heady mix would come lots of boyfriends.

  Yes, she had made lots of friends, but her optimism about forging a career in an office had proved to be ill-founded. She’d struggled with her computer course and she had become the dumping ground for work no one else wanted to do. How one earth could she hope to compete with all those bright young things with their degrees in economics and languages?

  And where were all those thrilling young men who were going to rush in to replace her hopeless crush
on Luc Laughton? Few and far between.

  ‘I feel much better now,’ she said in an unnaturally high voice and she offered him a watery smile. ‘I’m definitely not going to get angry again.’

  ‘Why not? I’m tough. I can take it.’

  ‘I’m going to be realistic,’ she told him, while her heart continued to beat a steady, crazy drum roll inside her. ‘I’m going to cut my losses and go back to Yorkshire. There’s no point in looking for another office job in London, and I’ve been to Kew Gardens to ask them if there were any vacancies and there were none. I’ve been thinking of doing a landscaping course. I’d like that. I’m not cut out for anything else.’

  ‘Why don’t you look at me when you’re talking to me? I don’t bite.’

  He had kept his voice low and amused, but her refusal to meet his gaze was really beginning to get on his nerves. Was she so terrified of him or was she scared witless that something might show in her eyes—resentment at being put in the unenviable position of supplicant, manoeuvred there against her will?

  He hadn’t been kidding when he had told her that looks could be deceptive when it came to her, and that flash of anger which he had provoked had hinted at a passionate nature lurking below the surface. Was it something that she was aware of and shied away from?

  Agatha looked up into those glittering, unreadable eyes and fought for something sensible to say, but her mouth was dry and all she could see in her mind’s eye was his beautiful face close to hers, and all she could hear was her racing heartbeat and the rush of blood in her ears.

  ‘So this is what you’ve been hiding.’ He had never suspected it. She had managed to maintain such a low profile that even his highly developed antennae had missed it.

  ‘What?’ Agatha managed to squeak in a preternaturally high voice.

  The silence thrummed between them. Agatha found that she could hardly breathe as he continued to stare at her, his dark, winged eyebrows raised speculatively.

  ‘Is it because I’ve caught you in a vulnerable moment?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’