The Boss's Proposal (11 page)

‘We couldn't have been more understanding,' Max said bluntly.

‘
You
couldn't have been more understanding. After all, you
will
be virtually taking over as his financial backbone until medical treatment on his daughter can't go any further.'

Max, seeing the frank and open admiration on her face, didn't know whether to feel flattered or impatient. The generous gesture had been made without thinking. His father's friend, whatever he had done, had a sick child and was broke. Max had money—
not
helping Harry was not an alternative. No, he didn't want her admiration for his altruistic gesture. He wanted much, much more than that, and right now he was a million miles away from it. But at least she had shed that air of nervous suspicion, even if, he suspected with wry self-irony, it was the wine rather than his witty, seamless conversation that was responsible.

‘It was nothing,' Max said with a dismissive shrug of his broad shoulders.

‘Oh, but it
is
,' she insisted, watching as he topped up her glass. ‘It may be nothing to
you
, but lots of men would
have just turned their backs and walked away from the situation without feeling any sense of responsibility.'

Adulation for a simple act of humanity, he wanted to tell her, was
not
what he was after. Her cheeks were beginning to look a little flushed, and he saw, with some surprise, that most of the second bottle of wine he had ordered had gone and she was now toying with the food on her plate. She had shoved the few remaining bits of vegetables into a face-like shape, which made him grin to himself, because there was something endearingly childlike about it when her approach to life was always so coolly efficient and businesslike.

‘Nice face,' he remarked gravely. ‘Anyone in particular?' He tilted his head to one side in a question and tried not to burst out laughing when she went bright red and hurriedly closed her knife and fork, looking around her to see whether anyone had been observing her little activity.

‘Perhaps we ought to leave,' he suggested. ‘And don't look so tortured.' He leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, ‘
No one was watching you. It's not that kind of place.'
When she smiled sheepishly back at him, he felt his heart do something odd and his breathing thickened slightly.

They had to get out of here. She was driving him crazy. He couldn't wait to pay the bill, leaving an outrageously generous tip because he couldn't wait for the head waiter to find him some change, and he was so excruciatingly aware of her sitting next to him in the cab that he could almost feel his skin tingling. She'd had too much to drink and the effect was devastating to his senses.

‘Oh, walk with me to my room,' she sighed, supporting herself on his arm when he attempted to point her in the direction of the elevator, mumbling something about having one last drink on his own at the bar before retiring.
She'd braided her hair into a French plait and she played with it as it hung over one shoulder.

‘Okay,' he said reluctantly, ‘but you should get a good night's sleep. You must be exhausted.'

Her eyes danced. ‘Never felt livelier.' Her hand, he noticed as they rode the elevator to her floor in silence, was still on his arm, a slight but insistent pressure that was having a noticeable effect on his body parts, one in particular.

He virtually pulled her to her room, watching as she fumbled with the credit card-style key and finally removing it from her and opening the door himself, then he stood politely back so that she could enter. Enter and turn to face him.

‘I had a fantastic evening,' she breathed, looking at him then walking through into the small sitting room of the bedroom suite so that he inevitably followed. She turned abruptly and approached him. ‘Did you?'

‘Fantastic.' He cleared his voice.

‘Then why do you look so edgy?' she teased.

Her lips were still curved into a smile when he bent his head and covered them with his own. It was like tasting nectar for the first time and after a moment's pause, she returned his kiss. Returned it with all the passion he was feeling himself, arching her body into his, pressing so that she could be in no doubt as to the urgency of his response.

He groaned hoarsely. Somehow they found themselves to the sofa. Her breasts. He had to see them, taste them, lick them. He wanted to touch every inch of the body that had filled his mind for longer than he cared to think.

When she pulled up her jumper, exposing her small, ripe breasts with their erotic lace covering, he drew his breath in sharply. Through the lace, he could see the pink, protruding tip of her nipple and he licked it, but the delicacy
of this was too much for him. He felt as though he couldn't wait.

With urgent hands, he tugged the bra down so that her breasts spilled out, small, firm breasts with big nipples that were dark and engorged.

With a moan, she pushed his head down and he could feel her body shudder as he suckled at one, then the other, taking as much of her into his mouth as he could while his feverish hands prised open her legs and massaged her thighs.

Another time, he thought, and there
would
be another, he would take his time, turn lovemaking into a work of art. But for now, he was too explosively hungry for her to wait.

V
ICKY
made very sure that she was out of her office when Max returned to work after New York. She knew that he would be coming in to the office at nine-thirty because of the e-mail he'd sent her the previous day. Nevertheless, from the cowardly sanctuary of the Ladies, she could still feel her heart thumping at a mile a minute.

She would give him fifteen minutes, a never-ending stretch of time during which she pointlessly stared at her reflection in the mirror and attempted to look busy with a make-up compact, just in case someone else entered the large, plush cloakroom and wondered what small, red-haired Vicky Lockhart was doing there, her cheeks flushed with colour, her eyes over-bright. It was a relatively small, friendly company, and during the short space of time that she'd been working there she could say with reasonable accuracy that she was on nodding acquaintance with most of the staff. If anyone came upon her now, staring sightlessly in the mirror, hands shaking, lips dry and an expression of gut-wrenching dread on her face, they would rush her to the nearest hospital. Or, at any rate, the nearest Sanatorium. At the very least, they would ask lots of concerned, prying questions for which she had no answers.

She only knew that her mind had spent the past few days preoccupied with one thing and one thing only.

Or perhaps
one person
would be more to the point.

When she thought of Max Forbes, her brain seemed to close down completely, leaving her at the cruel whim of memories that made her body begin to ache.

She gripped the chrome tap and stared hard and purposefully into the sink, willing the onslaught of thoughts to go away, but it was no good.

The worst, most humiliating thought of all was the realisation that none of it would have happened if she had not invited him into her bedroom. True, she'd had more than her usual amount to drink, but she knew, inside herself, that blaming a few glasses of wine for what had happened between them would be an act of cowardice. The plain, unadorned truth was that she had felt relaxed enough with him in that restaurant to open up. She'd stopped putting up barriers and had succumbed to the power of his raw masculinity and the sexy charm that she'd fought desperately against from the very first minute she'd laid eyes on him.

She turned on the tap and rinsed her face with ice-cold water, but beneath the water she could still feel her cheeks burning. Not only had she proceeded to force the man into her room, or at least put him in a position where to say goodnight and leave would risk appearing rude, she'd then done the unthinkable.

Her body had been on fire. During the meal, she'd felt herself get more and more turned on every time his eyes fell on her. By the time they'd reached her bedroom, her imagination had been in full flow and she'd been in no mood to put the brakes on.

She'd felt sexy and alluring and vampish. The memory of it was enough to make her shudder with mortification. Amazing what a few glasses of good wine and an active imagination could do to a girl, she now thought bitterly. She had slowly begun to pull up her jumper, her fingers playing with the soft fabric, while he'd stood in silence and watched, his eyes dark with desire at what she was so readily and eagerly offering him. No strings attached. On
a plate. With a silver spoon. And all condiments included. What man wouldn't have been burning up with enthusiasm for such an abandoned offering? She'd opened the floodgates by kissing him, and doing a strip tease, in a ridiculously sensuous fashion which had probably had him sniggering all the way back to his bedroom.

But he hadn't been sniggering then. She'd seen the darkening intent in his eyes with a flare of wild excitement. When their mouths had met, she'd felt as though the moment had been one she'd been waiting for all her life and the greed of his responses had fuelled in her a heady sense of power. When he'd pulled down her bra, the air had felt wonderfully cool on her hot skin and her nipples had puckered in response and pulling back had been out of the question. She had, and the thought of it now made her groan with shame, shoved him down to her breasts. There had been just one thing in her head at that point, and that was the burning need to have her desire sated. She
needed
to feel his mouth on her nipples, sucking, drawing them in, nibbling and licking the pulsing, protruding bud.

Her legs, opened and waiting for his urgent exploring hand, had been a wet cavern of delight. He'd massaged her thighs while she had placed both her hands behind her head, eyes shut, body arched upwards to receive his ravaging mouth.

From outside, the light had filtered into the room and spread an interesting array of shadows around them, so that everything seemed other-worldly. She could remember watching in drugged fascination as he'd stripped off his clothes. His hands hadn't been able to undo his shirt-buttons quickly enough and in the end, he had ripped it off. Only a few hours before, he'd been the archetypal boss with his demure, efficient secretary. She'd taken notes, her legs neatly crossed beneath the prim, unrevealing skirt. No
one would ever have guessed that only a few hours later she would have shed all her inhibitions and thrown herself at her boss with the urgency and feverish passion of a woman who had spent her entire adult life in a sexual desert.

Vicky inspected her face in the bathroom mirror for guilt and shame. She would have to make sure that she eliminated both before she ventured back into her office. She'd made an utter fool of herself but she wasn't about to lose every shred of dignity in the process.

She would have to make a show of pretending that the whole sorry episode had not made any indelible mark on her. She smiled ruefully at her reflection at the thought of that whopping lie. The fact was that her moment of abandon had cost her dearly. She straightened, fished into the make-up compact and began applying a little mascara, controlling her shaking fingers with effort.

Even in the throes of her love affair with Shaun, before revulsion had set in, she'd never felt such a burst of dangerous, white-hot craving. She'd not been able to get enough of Max. When his mouth had left her breasts and moistly made its way down the flat planes of her stomach, the throbbing between her legs had made her squirm. The first touch of his tongue flicking gently at her pulsing womanhood had made her moan loudly and thrash against the bed, then she'd begun to move against his mouth, her body twisting up and down and from side to side while he gripped her hips and plunged his tongue deeper and deeper into her welcoming, honey-sweet essence. Her orgasm had been a wild, shuddering release that had seemed to vibrate into infinity, and still their lovemaking had continued. He'd waited for her body to sag then, slowly but surely, like a maestro fine-tuning an instrument, he'd aroused her all over again, and this time she'd been the one to explore
his body, until his desperate need for her had made him push her down onto his huge erection.

At no point and at all points, they could have stopped themselves from reaching the final destination.

But they hadn't and there was no point killing herself with regrets. It had happened and now she would just have to suffer the consequences.

She finished with the mascara, and dabbed a little lipstick on. Blusher she would leave. There was enough natural colour in her cheeks to make anyone think she had overdone it with the artificial stuff anyway.

She was stuffing the compact into her bag and wondering whether she should head back, when the cloakroom door was pushed open and Catherine, secretary to one of the company directors, let out a little squeal of relief.

‘I've been looking for you
everywhere
,' she said anxiously. ‘What on earth have you
done to him
?'

‘
Done
to him? Done to
whom
?' Vicky said, feigning ignorance.

‘Your boss! He got in ten minutes ago and stormed into Jeremy's office like a tiger in need of a victim, then he ordered me to
smoke you out
. Those were his precise words, Vicky.
Smoke you out
.' The excitement of what could possibly be going on had replaced the urgency of her mission. Catherine now looked as though she would be more than willing to listen to any number of juicy explanations, however impatient Max had been to get hold of Vicky. ‘
So what's going on?
I haven't seen him that thunderous for…forever, and
I've
been here since the company got going!
What
have you gone and done?'

‘I'd better go, Catherine. No point
you
getting into trouble as well by staying here too long.' Which did the trick. Catherine jumped and practically shoved Vicky out of the cloakroom so that she found herself propelled into her of
fice with a lot less preparation time than she had hoped for.

Forbiddingly, he was waiting for her in his office, and the dividing door was open so that she was subjected to the full force of his scowling face as he beckoned her into the chair in front of his desk. Vicky sat down, crossed her legs and adopted a bland expression. At least, that was what she'd aimed for. Her mouth felt as though the muscles had seized up, which probably meant that she was displaying something more akin to a deranged grimace.

‘What's
this
all about?' He held a sheet of paper in one hand, which he then proceeded to dangle dismissively before letting it flutter down to the desk. Vicky followed its progress downwards, mesmerised, before finding her voice.

‘I thought it best… I realise that…I'm afraid that due to my own stupidity…' She didn't dare look him directly in the eyes so instead she shifted her focus to an indeterminate point somewhere beyond his left shoulder. He'd tilted his head to one side and now appeared to be settling down to wait for her to finish her sentence.

‘I just think that what happened in New York has jeopardised my position here, that's all,' she concluded, when she realised that she was going to find no help whatsoever from his quarter. He began drumming his fingers on the desk, an aggravating, steady sound that did nothing for her already shredded nerves.

‘And don't act as though you don't know what I'm talking about!' she muttered when he still hadn't said anything. ‘I don't think that a boss-secretary relationship is feasible when the boss has slept with the secretary! Do you?' Or even, she thought guiltily, when the secretary has slept with the boss. The steadily drumming fingers slowed
their rhythm without actually stopping. The sound was driving her mad.

‘It happened,' he said softly, leaning back into the chair and folding his hands behind his head so that he could stare at her through narrowed eyes. ‘These things do, believe it or not. People have too much to drink…'

‘I knew it! You're blaming me! I wondered when you would get down to that.'

‘I wasn't blaming
anyone
. I was merely saying that human nature is not always strong. We both made a mistake—' he paused, allowing her to digest that ‘—but that doesn't mean that we have to let one slip-up throw everything out of proportion. Unless, of course, you feel that you wouldn't be able to put the incident behind you…in which case, I would more than understand if you walked out of this office right now.'

‘What do you mean,
not able to put the incident behind me
?' Vicky asked suspiciously.

‘I'm merely saying that you may feel yourself more involved with me than you care to admit…'

Vicky emitted a shriek of near-hysterical laughter which she hoped was sufficient to inform him of the absurdity of his suggestion. In case it wasn't, she clarified coldly, ‘It was a mistake, as you said. Nothing more.'

‘So where's the problem? We put it behind us, we get on with life. I don't want to lose a brilliant secretary and I don't suppose you're that willing to throw away a damn good pay packet, so let's make a deal. We put it down to experience and it's never mentioned again. Believe me, I feel as exposed as you do. I don't approve of any boss having sex with his secretary and, aside from that, I opened myself up to any number of scenarios which I'm experienced enough to spot and avoid. What if you'd cried
sexual harassment
? It's a measure of my trust in you and my
belief that we can carry on working together that I'm asking you to stay at all.'

‘And what if we find that it doesn't work that way?' She noticed that he hadn't even euphemistically used the phrase
making love
. They had
had sex
: regrettable, but not earth-shattering.

‘If it doesn't work that way, then…' He shrugged and fixed his cool, grey eyes on her. ‘We call it a day.'

Choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea were equally unimpressive options, she was fast discovering.

Walking out would tell its own story. And what if he got it into his head to follow her? If only because of the secretarial skills she knew he valued? He obviously had no qualms about just
showing up
on her doorstep. What if he just
showed up
and Chloe happened to be around?

On the other hand, to remain was to open a Pandora's box. Making love to Max had stirred her emotions into a chaotic, seething mass. She didn't know what she felt, she just knew that fear was involved—and not just fear of what Max could do to her should he ever find out the truth of her situation, but fear of what she could do to herself simply by spending time with him. She was finding it easier and easier to let her defences slip. One day she would make a fatal error.

‘I'll give it a couple of weeks,' she said now, sitting on the fence because she couldn't think of where else to go. ‘But I'll only stay on one condition,' she continued inflexibly, ‘and the condition is that if I decide, for whatever reason, that I'm unable to work for you, then you leave me alone. You don't try and persuade me to stay, you just respect my decision.'