‘Have you been reading up on this?’ he asked, when she had finished her impressive monologue and Tessa relaxed enough to smile at him.
‘Of course I haven’t “been reading up on it”. I’ve always preferred a good work of fiction to a computer magazine. No, I just happen to have a brain in my head and an ability to voice an opinion.’
‘Which is why you’re turning out to be such a good little secretary,’ Curtis replied smugly. ‘I’m going to have to admit to my mother that she may just have got it right when it came to hiring you. I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but a guy can get tired of beautiful girls sticking the wrong files in the cabinets and typing at a snail’s pace.’
‘I didn’t think the misfiling and slow typing was a problem,’ Tessa came back quickly, bristling under the composed surface. ‘I thought Lizzie and Marge just picked up the slack.’
‘There’s way too much gossip in this office,’ he said, grinning. ‘I’ll have to have a word.’ He was an unrepentant sinner, though. Tessa, however, was in no mood to indulge him. From what she had seen, he was far too indulged already. He had been indulged at birth, by being blessed with staggering good looks, and from that it had probably only been a matter of time before self-assurance and charm had stepped into the equation. Add a brilliant mind and the world, she reckoned, had probably been his oyster from when he was a toddler.
‘Will that be all?’
‘You’ve gone prune-mouthed on me again.’
‘Prune-mouthed?’ Tessa flushed.
‘You know what I mean. Tight-lipped. Like a schoolteacher inspecting a particularly offensive pupil.’
Tessa knew exactly what he meant and that in his own forthright way he had no compunctions whatsoever in airing his views, the way he always did. In all fairness, she knew that she could give him a piece of her mind and he wouldn’t bat an eyelash, but naturally she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t fly off the handle and she certainly would never dream of telling him that being compared to a tight-lipped schoolmarm really hurt. It was just a little too near the mark for comfort.
She wasn’t about to let him totally off the hook, however. She drew in a deep breath and said calmly, ‘If you don’t like my demeanour, then perhaps you’d like me to go?’
‘Now you’re offended.’ He swept out of the chair and was standing by her before she had time to beat a tactical retreat. His voice was gushingly solicitous. ‘And I like your demeanour!’ He placed his hands on her shoulders and Tessa felt a peculiar surge of heat race through her, sending her heart into furious overdrive. ‘It’s very…bracing.’
Bracing? Was that a step up or a step down from tight-lipped? The worst of it was that he genuinely didn’t recognise why she would be offended. Because she wasn’t an airhead, she was virtually sexless. Infuriatingly, it bothered her.
‘That’s a huge improvement,’ Tessa said, forcing a smile.
‘Good. And I want you to know that you’re a valuable member of the team.’
‘Thank you.’ She wished he would just remove his hands from her shoulders. Horrifyingly, he tilted her face to his and gave her a crooked smile, a smile that could turn lead to jelly.
‘You’re welcome. I like the way you speak your mind, I like your opinions and I don’t want you to go away thinking that I ever make unfavourable comparisons between you and my previous secretaries. I use the term secretaries loosely.’
Something funny was happening to her inside, something confusing and frightening. ‘Okay.’ Quick agreement, quick exit.
He released her and she nearly fell backwards. ‘Brilliant!’ He remained where he was, watching as she left his office, only calling out behind her, ‘Just don’t see that as a licence to go shopping with my daughter, though!’
This time Tessa closed the door just a little too loudly behind her.
CHAPTER FOUR
A QUIET weekend at home would be just what the doctor ordered.
Curtis’s outspoken comments, not meant to be insulting but insulting anyway, had got to Tessa and she didn’t quite understand why. In fact, she spent most of Saturday trying to work it out. It was proving annoying, as if the question were like a demon sprite, willing to be boxed in for intermittent periods, but only so that it could leap out at her just when she wasn’t expecting it.
Lucy had gone away for the weekend and the house was blissfully calm.
At five-thirty, Tessa returned to the house after a hectic but essential visit to the supermarket. When she had been at her last job, she had always done her shopping on a Thursday night after work. Her hours had been fairly regular there and she had slipped into a routine that had suited her.
Now…
She had to do several trips from her small, second-hand car to the kitchen and it was half an hour before she had finally unpacked the last of the groceries, then she sat down wearily on a kitchen chair, tipping her head over the back and closing her eyes.
The demon sprite lunged out at her again.
She found herself thinking about him, thinking about the intense beauty of his face, the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed, the way they narrowed when he was thinking about something. She found that she had even committed to memory his various little habits, like the way he always yanked open the bottom drawer of his desk whenever he wanted to lean back in his chair and stretch out his long legs.
Tessa shook her head impatiently, snacked on a bar of chocolate, even though she knew that she would be eating in a couple of hours’ time and was in the shower, in the process of washing her hair, when she heard the sharp buzz of the doorbell.
Lucy, was her first thought as she reluctantly turned off the shower, stepped out and wrapped herself in a bath sheet. Had she come home early from her weekend away? Lucy had a problem with keys. She continually went out and forgot to take them with her. Whenever she was faced with Tessa’s wrath at having to drag herself out of bed at some ungodly hour to let her in, she invariably smiled sheepishly and swore never to repeat the same mistake again.
Her hair clung damply around her face, which was in a definite scowl as she pulled open the front door, lips parted to inform her sister that this was absolutely the last time she was going to go through this predictable charade.
No words came out. Something did but it was akin to a choking, strangled noise.
On the doorstep was Curtis, dressed in an impeccable charcoal-grey suit with a very conventional white shirt peeping out from between the lapels of his jacket. On one side was a highly disgruntled-looking daughter and on the other a leggy blonde with hair tumbling in disarray past her shoulders and a full complement of war paint. Her glossy red lips matched her glossy red fingernails, which in turn matched the glimpse of glossy tight dress that was only loosely covered by a startling terracotta-coloured silk trench coat. On anyone else the combination of colours would have brought on a sudden rush of nausea in the casual observer, but on her the clash of colour was dramatic and overwhelming.
Tessa shrank back and mortified colour crept slowly up her face. She still couldn’t seem to string two words together to form a sentence.
She stared dumbly at Curtis and for once he didn’t give her that lazy, amused grin.
‘Do you normally answer the door with nothing but a towel wrapped round you?’ he asked, levering his eyes upwards to her face.
‘I thought it was my sister.’ At last, she had managed to corner some vocal cords. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘You’d better let us in before you catch a death of a cold,’ he said reasonably. Tessa was very tempted to slam the door on their faces, but he had already wedged one foot on the doorstep. She stood back, burning with embarrassment.
‘Excuse me. I need to change.’
‘Oh, don’t put yourself out for us,’ Curtis said, grinning now and raking his eyes over her semi-clad body in one wicked sweep. Just the sort of look she could imagine him giving the blonde at his side. That thought was enough to put frost into her voice.
‘
The sitting room’s through there. I’ll just be a minute.’ She tried not to be affected by the thought of three pairs of eyes following her progress up the stairs towards the bedroom, but she was trembling when she shut the door behind her and hurriedly grabbed some clothes from the wardrobe. A pair of faded jeans and a long-sleeved black tee shirt that had faded through numerous washes.
Her hair was still a wet mess but, rather than waste time blow-drying it, she did what she sometimes did on a weekend to get it out of the way. She braided it into two plaits that just about reached her shoulders.
Now she looked about sixteen, but frankly she didn’t care. How dared he waltz into her house without calling her beforehand to find out whether he was welcome?
Because he was shrewd enough to guess the response, a little voice said.
She slipped on some bedroom slippers, some garish black and gold pointy-tipped things that looked as though they would have been better suited to life in a Middle Eastern harem, which had been one of her birthday presents from her sister four months previously.
The three unwanted visitors were in the sitting room, although, when Tessa walked in, it was apparent that only one of them was at ease. Curtis had made himself at home in one of the comfy chairs while the other two were perched in rigid discomfort at opposite ends of the sofa.
‘Sorry to barge in on you like this,’ he said pleasantly.
‘You didn’t have to.’ Tessa sat down, uneasy in her own house, which was ridiculous. ‘You could have telephoned first.’ She turned to Anna, caught her eye and smiled. ‘How are you, Anna? Recovering from your first week at work?’
Anna made a valiant attempt to smile back but her eyes slid across to her father and the corners of her mouth turned down. It was a pout full of sulkiness. And, Tessa noted, she was back to wearing her neat, background clothes. A long-sleeved shift dress in brown, dark tights and flat brown shoes with a distinctive and recognisable thin gold designer band at the top.
‘I would have if I had had the opportunity, but coming here only became an option on the drive over. Didn’t it, Anna?’
‘I just don’t want to go to the theatre this evening,’ Anna said stiffly, ‘and I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal of it.’
Tessa wondered what this minor domestic tiff had to do with her, but she refrained from saying anything. Out of the corner of her eye, the vision in red vibrated in silence on the sofa, her body language screaming discomfort.
Curtis must have read her mind because he finally introduced the woman, Susie, his date. His attention was obviously not on her, though, because he immediately reverted to his daughter, frowning as he looked at her. ‘Anna insisted on the way over that we come here,’ Curtis said patiently. She couldn’t have imagined him ever getting cross with his daughter, with whom he was effusively affectionate, but he was cross now. ‘She threw a tantrum, in fact.’
‘I did not throw a tantrum, Dad! You just won’t listen to me!’ Tears thickened her voice and Tessa wanted to groan in dismay. ‘You said that the two of us would be going out!’
So that was it. Poor Susie, the innocent participant in this small family drama. The girl looked close to tears herself and, having resolved to get rid of her guests as quickly as possible, Tessa now heard herself asking whether they wanted anything to drink. She could only offer wine in terms of alcohol.
‘I’ll come with you!’ Anna sprang to her feet and disappeared out of the sitting room before her father could protest, and protest he most certainly was about to, judging from the expression on his face.
‘I’m tired of it!’ was the first thing Anna said as soon as Tessa was in the kitchen. She plonked herself down on a chair and glumly propped her chin in her hand. ‘He promised we’d go out for a night, just the two of us, and then, lo and behold, the next thing I hear is the doorbell and there’s Barbie-doll Susie on the doorstep!’
Tessa rested three wineglasses on the counter and turned round to face Anna. She, uncharitably, thought that the description was very accurate. In her head she had idly wondered what sort of women Curtis was attracted to. In the flesh, she realised that she hadn’t been very far from the predictable truth. Glossy packaging without much of an intellect inside. She wondered whether his daily life was so full of creativity and challenge that beautiful bimbos were restful, a panacea at the end of a long working day.
She reminded herself sternly that, one way or another, speculation like that went nowhere because his private life was no concern of hers.
‘He must have just forgotten about the theatre tickets, Anna,’ she said gently, ‘and I’m sure he didn’t think you’d react the way you have. Surely you’ve been…well, out with him in the company of one of his girlfriends?’
‘Of course I have.’ She sighed laboriously. ‘But when I was younger, I never minded, and anyway, he never made a habit of it. I know I’m behaving like a kid, but…’
‘You are just a kid.’
‘A teenager! And that’s another thing.’ She stuck her chin out belligerently, daring Tessa to side with her father. ‘He said that the clothes we bought together don’t suit me, that I look better in less gaudy stuff, but yet he has the nerve to go out with women who dress like…like teenagers!’ The unfairness of it caused the threat of tears to become reality, and, try as she might, Tessa could find no easy comforting words to that adolescent protest because she basically agreed with his daughter.
She sighed inwardly and marvelled at how a man as clever and as worldly-wise as Curtis Diaz could be so hideously inept when it came to reading his own daughter and understanding what made her tick.
‘You know what fathers are like,’ Tessa said, playing down the situation. ‘They can be a bit overprotective.’
‘Was yours? I mean, when you were my age?’
‘Different philosophy,’ she hedged, thinking of her parents, who had quite rightly suspected that too many stringent guidelines ended up gestating bigger problems than allowing their girls a little leeway here and there, just enough never to make them feel as though they were being imprisoned against their will.
‘I hate arguing with Dad.’ Anna looked at her with such misery that Tessa’s heart constricted. ‘I don’t see all that much of him. I mean, I’m at boarding-school and he does his best to see me whenever I’m on holiday or half-term, but, really, it’s not an everyday thing. I just want us to go back to being how we were, but he can be such a tyrant!’
‘Not always.’ She poured wine into the glasses and offered Anna a glass of something light, which she refused, as she did the offer to come back into the sitting room, preferring to remain in the kitchen.
‘We’ve ruined your evening, haven’t we?’ she asked in a small voice and Tessa laughed.
‘I’d only planned on some pasta on a tray in front of the television. The most relaxing thing I can do when Lucy’s not around.’ She fished a circular tray out of a cupboard and carried the wine into the sitting room where active conversation was under way between Curtis and his Barbie doll, as Tessa now found herself thinking of the other woman.
‘I’m dropping Susie back to her place,’ Curtis announced, standing up and ignoring the wine. ‘There’s no point even thinking of going to any theatre now. The play will already have started anyway. Is there a chance you can hang on to Anna for about forty minutes?’
Tessa did not want to get caught up in this. She didn’t want his private life to begin infiltrating into hers and she didn’t want to find herself reluctant referee in a disagreement between him and his daughter. On the other hand, what choice did she have? She remembered Anna’s forlorn face and felt sorry for her, so she just nodded.
Susie had her hand resting on his, and her face, raised to his, was disappointed. She looked, in fact, as though she had just been put through a wringer, as though, suddenly, from being the woman who was all dressed up, she had become the woman who was all dressed up with nowhere to go. And on top of that she couldn’t even command her date’s attention
, which was very firmly focused on a sullen fourteen-year-old tucked away in the kitchen.
Curtis was back almost to the minute but the trip had done his tension no good. He was still unusually brooding when he stepped into the hall, glancing towards the small kitchen at the back.
‘Thanks for that. Where is she? I’ll take her home and let you enjoy the remainder of your evening in peace.’
‘Bed.’
‘Bed? You were going to enjoy your Saturday evening in bed?’ Hard on the heels of that came a crazy thought, And who’s the lucky man? He wasn’t looking down at his efficient secretary who always had her hair pinned back and always, but always, wore neat little suits and blouses carefully buttoned all the way up. He was looking at someone with calm eyes but a stubborn chin, someone with glossy hair and a figure that managed to be boyish but very, very feminine.
He felt a dangerous stirring in his loins. Never had he felt this sudden, uncomfortable prickling under his skin when in the company of a woman. For a man who was highly complex underneath the easy charm and self-assurance, Curtis had never been drawn to his female counterpart. He liked his women to be easy on the eye and easy on the intellect.
He turned away abruptly and was aware of her following him into the sitting room. ‘Anna? So where is she?’ he demanded sharply, which drew an instant bristling response from Tessa.
‘She’s upstairs in my bed. Asleep.’
‘At this hour?’
‘She was upset, Curtis. I told her to head upstairs to wash her face and when she didn’t come down I went to check her to find her fast asleep. Like a baby.’ They stared at one another and Tessa felt her heart begin to race. He had disposed of his jacket, but he was still disturbingly tall and dark, especially in the confines of her house. She had a sudden feeling of being invaded and she had another spurt of resentment that he had brought his private life here, in her house, where she was defenceless.
The Billionaire Boss's Bride Page 6