Nine Months to Redeem Him

by Jennie Lucas

  His lips curled in derision. Was there nothing he couldn’t have? There were definite upsides to being able to get whatever he wanted... Women flocked to him; heads of business fell silent when he spoke; the press followed him with bated breath, waiting for a hint of the next financial scoop or for a glimpse of his very active private life. He was at the very peak of his game, the undisputed leader of the pack, and there were no signs that he would be relinquishing the position any time soon. So why did life sometimes feel so damned unsatisfying?

  He sometimes wondered whether he had used up his capacity for any genuine emotion in his tenacious climb to the top. Perhaps battling against the odds had actually been the great adventure. Now that the game had been played and he had emerged the winner, was the adventure over? Not even the brutal, frenetic push and shove of work could provide him with the adrenaline it once did. What was the point of trying when you could have it all without effort? Was trying just something else that had once mattered but now no longer did in the same way?

  The sparrow was in full flow, telling him about her last job and giving him a long list of her responsibilities there. He held up one imperious hand, stopping her mid-sentence.

  ‘You can only be an improvement on the last girl,’ he drawled. ‘I think somewhere along the line the agency lost track of the fact that I actually wanted someone who knew how to type using more than one finger.’

  Alice smiled politely and thought that maybe the agency was in the dark as to whether he cared one way or another, given that his priorities seemed to lie with how good-looking the candidates were.

  Gabriel frowned at that smile; it seemed at odds with the meek and mild exterior projected. ‘You’ll find the file on the Hammonds deal on your computer,’ he said, focusing now. ‘Call it up and I’ll tell you what you need to do.’

  Alice didn’t surface for the next four hours. Gabriel kept her pinned to her computer. There was no lunch break, because it had been practically lunchtime when he had eventually strolled into the office, and he clearly assumed that she would not be hungry. He wasn’t, after all, so why should she be?

  At four-thirty, she looked up to find him standing in front of her.

  ‘You seem to be keeping up. New broom sweeping clean, or can I expect this show of efficiency to be ongoing?’

  Under the full impact of his rapid-fire instructions, Alice had forgotten how objectionable she found him. If that was his way of telling her that she had done a good job on day one, then surely there had to be more polite ways of delivering the message?

  ‘I’m a hard worker, Mr Cabrera,’ she told him evenly. ‘I can usually handle what’s thrown at me.’

  Gabriel sat down in the chair facing her desk and extended his long legs to one side.

  Every inch of him breathed self-assurance and command. Okay, so she had to admit that the man was clever. He had the astute brain of a lawyer and an ability to pick through the finer details until he found the essential make or break one that was the difference between success and failure. On the telephone, he was confident and authoritative. From every pore of his body, he radiated the self-assurance that what he wanted, he would get.

  ‘Highly commendable,’ he said drily.

  ‘Thank you. Perhaps you could tell me what time I shall be expected to work until today?’ Considering he had kept her waiting for hours for reasons he had not bothered to share.

  ‘Until I’m satisfied that your job for the day is done,’ Gabriel said coolly. ‘I don’t believe in clock watching, Miss Morgan. Unless, of course, you have some pressing need to go by five? Have you?’

  Alice smoothed her skirt with nervous hands. She had read all the promotional literature on offer during the three-hour wait in her office, and within a few seconds had known that the man was beyond influential. He was a billionaire with killer looks and she had seen from the way he had dealt with various interruptions by staff members during the day that, as the little Barbie had informed her, he did exactly as he pleased. One poor woman, the head of his legal department, had been told very firmly that she would be required to work the following weekend without a break because they were closing an important deal and would therefore be required to miss her best friend’s wedding. He hadn’t even bothered to pay lip service to an apology.

  Gabriel Cabrera paid his employees the earth and in return they handed over their freedom.

  That was a bandwagon Alice had no intention of jumping on. Right now, she was nothing more than a lowly temp, so could speak her mind and lay down some boundaries. Because should—and it was a big should—the job be offered to her on a permanent basis, then she would no longer have the freedom to tell him what she was willing to do and what she wasn’t. And working weekends was definitely not on the agenda. Not given her mother’s current situation.

  ‘I’m not a clock watcher, Mr Cabrera, and I’m more than happy to work overtime if necessary. But, yes, I do value my private life and I would have to know in advance if I’m expected to sacrifice my leisure time.’

  Gabriel looked at her narrowly. ‘That’s not how my company operates.’ Indeed, that was not how he operated. Doling out long explanations for what he did was not part of the package. He did as he pleased and the world accepted it. He felt another tug of weary cynicism which he swatted aside. He had earned his place at the head of the table by fighting off the competition. He had started from nothing and now had everything...and that had been the object of the game: to have it all. He was accountable to no one, least of all a secretary who had been with him for two minutes!

  ‘If I understand correctly, you’re being paid double what you would normally get doing the same job in another company.’

  But with a different boss, Alice was tempted to insert. A normal boss.

  ‘That’s true,’ she admitted.

  ‘Are you going to tell me that you don’t like the nice, juicy pay packet? Because I can, of course, slash it if you want to start imposing conditions for your working hours. You’ve been here for five minutes and you think that you can start dictating terms?’ He gave a short, incredulous laugh and shook his head. ‘Unbelievable.’

  ‘The agency implied that there might be a permanent job on offer if I made it through the probation period. I understand you haven’t had a great deal of success with the previous secretaries who were sent to you.’

  ‘And, because you’ve had a good first day, you somehow think that you have leverage?’ But he had had a bad time of it when it came to his secretaries. Perhaps he should have been hunting down a Plain Jane like the one sitting in front of him, but you should be able to get along with the person in whose company you usually ended up spending most of your day. That seemed a sensible conclusion. He was forced to concede that his theory fell down slightly given the fact that some of the girls he had employed had wanted to get along a little too well with him for his liking.

  ‘You seem to be getting a little ahead of yourself here,’ he remarked, watching her closely. ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘No.’ Alice took a deep breath, prepared to stand her ground, because she could see very clearly how the land lay with this guy.

  Dark eyes clashed with hazel and she felt a tremendous whoosh go through her, as though the air had been sucked out of her body. She found him unnerving, yet today had been the most invigorating she had spent in a long time. She had blossomed under the pressure of her workload, had even seen areas where she might be able to branch out and assume more responsibility.

  Was she willing to jeopardise six weeks of a sure thing in favour of laying down ground rules for a permanent job that might not even be hers?

  Even as she asked herself that question, she knew the answer. She wasn’t going to let anyone, however much they were paying her, dictate the parameters of her life, and not just her working life. No one in his company seemed to mind. Half the women were pr
obably besotted with him, but not her, and she needed her time out. Life was difficult enough as it was, with her weekends taken up going to Devon to visit her mother. The last thing she needed was to have her precious week-day evenings sucked away, even if it meant forfeiting paid overtime.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Gabriel couldn’t actually recall the last time anyone had ventured an opinion that was obviously unwelcome. Great wealth gave great freedom, and commanded even greater respect, and hadn’t that always been his driving goal in life—to jettison the dark days of growing up in foster homes, where his opinion had counted for nothing and his life had been in the control of other people?

  ‘I’ve only been here for one day, Mr Cabrera, and on my first day I waited for nearly three hours until you arrived. Yes, that did give me ample time to read your company literature, but I wasn’t aware that that would be how I would spend my morning.’

  ‘Are you asking me to account for my whereabouts this morning?’ He looked at her with blatant incredulity.

  At this juncture ordinarily, she would have ambushed all her chances of having another day in his company, much less the permanent position she seemed to think might be hers. But he was galled to discover that the thought of another line of inept secretaries inconveniently fancying him was not appealing, even if he did enjoy the pleasant view from his office they provided.

  He was also weirdly fascinated by her nerve.

  ‘Of course I’m not! And I do realise that it’s not my place to start laying down any terms and conditions...’

  ‘But you’re going to anyway?’ Blazing anger was only just kept in check by the fact that she had done damn well on the work front, too well to dismiss without a back-up waiting in the wings.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t sacrifice my weekends working for you, Mr Cabrera.’

  ‘I don’t believe I asked you to.’

  ‘No, but I saw you cancel that poor girl’s weekend. Her best friend’s wedding, and you told her that she had no choice but to work solidly here on both days.’

  ‘Claire Kirk makes a very big deal about being one of the youngest in the company to head a department. She’s good at what she does, and it would be a mistake to encourage her into thinking that she’ll go places in this company if she isn’t prepared to go the extra mile.’

  Alice didn’t say anything but she wondered whether he knew that there was ‘going the extra mile’ and then there was sacrificing your life for the sake of a job.

  ‘I wouldn’t have made a big deal about any of this,’ she said quietly, ‘But I thought you ought to know how I feel about my working conditions from day one rather than not say anything and then find myself expected to work hours I’m not willing to work. I’m not saying that I won’t do overtime now and again, but I’m a firm believer in separating my personal life from my working life.’

  ‘Tell me something, did you lay down similar boundary lines for your last boss?’

  ‘I didn’t have to,’ she replied.

  ‘Because he was a nine-to-five-thirty kind of guy? Thought so. Well, I’m not a nine-to-five-thirty kind of guy and I don’t expect my employees to be nine-to-five-thirty kind of people.’ It would be a shame to lose someone who showed potential but he had humoured her for long enough. ‘Employees like Claire, who want to aggressively climb career ladders, work weekends when they don’t want to because they understand the rules of the game. The prize never goes to the person who doesn’t realise that a little sacrifice is necessary now and again if something important arises. Granted, you’re not the head of a department, and you may not want any kind of career to speak of—’

  ‘I do want to have a career!’ Bright patches of colour appeared on her cheeks.

  ‘Really? I’m all ears, because you’re not selling it...’

  Alice licked her lips nervously and stared at him. There was a brooding stillness to him that was unsettling. Nerves did their best to launch her into mindless chatter but a deeply ingrained habit of keeping her private life to herself held her back and she composed herself sufficiently to flash him another of her polite smiles.

  ‘That was why I left my last job. I liked it there but Tom, the director of the company, was going to hand the reins over to his son, and Tom Junior wasn’t a strong believer in women in the workplace, especially not in the haulage business.’

  Gabriel cocked his head to one side, listening to what she was saying and what she wasn’t. She talked like a prissy school-marm but there was nothing prissy or school-marmish about the way she had stood up for herself. She claimed to want a career but, when pressed, could only tell him something vague about why she had left her last company. Given half a chance, most women couldn’t wait to involve him in long stories about themselves, especially long stories that were slanted in their favour, but this one... He got the feeling that she only said what she wanted someone to hear and that included him.

  He glanced over her, his eyes taking in the unimaginative get-up, the long, slim frame, the uninspiring haircut.

  His employees were all given a generous clothes allowance. They could afford designer gear, and this worked in particular favour of his staff lower down the pecking order, whose salaries were less enviable. Everyone, whatever their ranking, projected a certain image and he liked that. Compared to them, the little sparrow in front of him lacked polish, but there was something about her...

  ‘So what were you planning your career to be there, had little Tommy Junior not come along to fill Daddy’s shoes...?’ Gabriel had virtually no respect for anyone gifted a business. He had had to find his way by walking on broken glass and he was fundamentally contemptuous of all those well-groomed, pampered boys and girls born with silver spoons in their mouths. He was a hard man who had travelled a hard road. It had worked well for him, had put him where he was today, able to do precisely as he pleased.

  ‘I thought I might be able to get funding for an accountancy course...’ She thought wistfully of the dreams she had once had to get involved in finance. She had always had a thing for numbers and it had seemed a lucrative and satisfying road to go down. Dreams, she had discovered, had a tendency to remain unfulfilled. Or at least, hers had.

  ‘It wasn’t to be,’ she said briskly. ‘So I thought that perhaps joining a bigger, more ambitious company might be a good idea.’

  ‘But, before you got too accustomed to the job, you felt it necessary to tell me that your working schedule is limited.’

  ‘My weekends are accounted for.’ Alice was beginning to wish that she had decided never to say anything. She should have just kept her head down and then crossed whatever bridge she had to cross when she came to it. Instead, she had made assumptions about the way he ran his company and had decided to act accordingly.

  ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Or maybe husband, although I don’t see any wedding ring on the finger.’

  ‘Sorry, but what are you talking about?’

  ‘Isn’t it usually the boyfriend in the background who ends up dictating the working hours?’ Gabriel asked, intrigued by her outspokenness, her sheer gall in laying down ground rules on day one—as though she had any right—with him. Intrigued, too, by that air of concealment that was so unusual in a woman. At least, in the women he knew.

  ‘Not in this case, Mr Cabrera,’ Alice told him stiffly.

  ‘No boyfriend?’

  Alice hesitated but, perhaps having misjudged her timing to start with, why not go the whole hog and expand on her conditions? He would probably chuck her out on the spot. She would return to the agency, who wouldn’t be surprised to see her, and they would find her another job—something with a normal boss, working normal hours in a normal environment. It sounded unappetising.

  ‘I should mention...’ She heard the wooden formality in her voice and cringed because she was twenty
-five years old, yet she sounded like someone twice her age. ‘I also do not appreciate talking about my personal life.’

  ‘Why not? Have you got something to hide?’

  Alice’s mouth fell open and, in return, Gabriel raised his eyebrows without bothering to help her out of her awkward silence.

  ‘I...I do a very good job. I take my work very seriously. If you decide to keep me on, you won’t regret it, Mr Cabrera. I bring one hundred and ten percent to everything I do in the working environment...’

  Gabriel didn’t say anything. He watched her flounder and wondered whether she brought one hundred and ten percent to whatever it was she did in the leisure time that she was so stridently protecting.

  ‘Accountancy courses require weekend time... What would you do about those precious weekends of yours that you can’t possibly sacrifice?’

  ‘I can do the work in my own time,’ Alice said promptly. ‘I’ve checked it out. And I would pass the exams. I have a good head for figures.’

  ‘In which case, remind me why you didn’t go into that field of work when you left school...college...university? In fact, now that you seem to be campaigning for a permanent job with me, why don’t you hand over the CV which I am sure is burning a hole in your bag...?’

  Alice hesitated fractionally and Gabriel looked at her, his dark eyes cool and assessing.