The Boss's Proposal (13 page)

‘Of course not,' Vicky said tightly.

‘Sure?' he asked softly, and she wondered whether he was trying to massage his own masculine ego by forcing
her to admit that yes, he bothered her, and yes, she didn't think straight when she was around him.

‘Quite sure. Now if that was all…'

‘Actually, not quite all.' He produced some folded paper which he must have been holding the whole time but which she had failed to notice. ‘This document you typed to Dobson is completely off track.'

‘It is?' She reached out for it, embarrassed to have been picked up on an error, even though she had been particularly careful with this one because of the nature of the client.

‘Have you got a PC with a printer? You'll have to make all the alterations on it now because I'm going to have to get back to the office and fax it off so that they have it sitting with them by five-thirty tomorrow morning when Bill's leaving for the Far East to consult with their sister firm over there about the operations.'

‘Have you altered it on hard copy? If you have, you can leave it with me and I'll make sure it arrives on his desk by tomorrow morning.'

‘Sorry.' He shook his head ruefully. ‘I've added a couple of extra paragraphs, so we're going to have to go through this one together. Looks like I'm going to have to come in.'

M
AX
looked at the unwilling set of her face and the stiffness of her shoulders and managed to sustain his implacable smile with effort. He knew that he shouldn't be here at all, but that was a road he had no intention of going down. It led to too many frustrating questions.

‘Is there a problem?' he asked politely, cocking his head to one side and shoving his hands deeper into his trouser pockets. ‘I won't stay very long. Just long enough to get this damn thing done, and it goes without saying that I wouldn't have bothered coming here in the first place if you hadn't typed the wrong information in the first place.' He saw her colour deepen and felt a twinge of sheepish guilt. It galled him to realise that the changes he wanted to make were simply a handy excuse for showing up unannounced on her doorstep.

Somehow, somewhere, he couldn't get it out of his head that she was concealing a lover somewhere, and he vaguely thought that appearing out of the blue might smoke the man out.

‘Well,' she hedged, looking up at him and chewing her bottom lip in a nervous gesture. ‘I
was
about to go to bed…'

‘At this hour?' He looked at his watch with overdone amazement. ‘I've heard of quiet lives, but isn't nine o'clock taking things a little far?' He grinned, and wondered whether her intention of going to bed at an hour when most children over the age of thirteen were still up had anything to do with the mystery man, whose presence
now seemed large, looming and gut-clenchingly real. Was he upstairs lying in the bed, sprawled and waiting? ‘Don't tell me that you need your beauty sleep.' He tried to peer around her up the staircase, which was shrouded in darkness and she followed the line of his eyes with an irritated click of her tongue.

‘Well, if you're quite sure that this won't take too long,' she told him, standing back to allow him access. Chloe was safely ensconced upstairs, sound asleep. There was almost no chance that she would suddenly awaken and come downstairs. Her sleeping habits had always been predictable. When she got into bed, she went to sleep, and only roused when the first fingers of light were beginning to worm their way past the closed curtains and into the bedroom. She wasn't one of those children who randomly prowled at odd hours in search of a warmer bed or a cup of juice or something to eat.

Nevertheless, she could feel her eyes anxiously flicker up the stairs as she led him away from all possible danger points and into the relative safety of the kitchen.

‘I'm sorry about the mess,' she said perfunctorily, making a space on the kitchen table for him to spread the paperwork. The kitchen was small, but it was the brightest room in the house. No chance of subdued lighting creating any kind of atmosphere or playing havoc with her common sense. ‘I've just finished eating.'

‘Oh, really? What?' He made himself at home in one of the chairs, dumped the papers on the table and adjusted himself so that he could watch her as she self-consciously wiped the kitchen counter and put the kettle on to boil.

‘Just some beans on toast.'

‘I'm ravenous,' he told her casually. ‘I dropped by the office on the way back from my meeting to collect this
letter and then I came straight here to go through the corrections. Haven't had anything to eat since lunchtime.'

Vicky paused, turned to face him and met his candid gaze with a flicker of impatience. ‘Are you hinting for something to eat?'

‘Well, I
would
have had more than enough time to dine out this evening with…to have a meal if I hadn't been compelled to rush over here and get this matter sorted out post haste.'

‘I'm afraid there's nothing fancy in the fridge.' She wondered what he would say if she offered him some fish fingers with potato shapes, or turkey dinosaurs with spaghetti hoops. ‘I could fix you a cheese sandwich.'

‘Beans on toast would be better.' He stretched out his long legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankles and clasped his hands behind his head. ‘Haven't had that since…since I was a child, come to think of it.'

Vicky moved to the cupboard and began opening a can of baked beans, the contents of which she proceeded to dump into the saucepan which she'd used for heating her own only half an hour before. Then she stuck two slices of bread into the toaster and turned to face him, leaning against the counter, arms folded.

‘What do your girlfriends cook for you?' she asked innocently, her eyes wide open. Girlfriends, she thought, as opposed to drunken one-night stands with employees. Girlfriends who did normal, girlfriendy things like cook meals instead of one-night stands who were in the position of being ordered to cancel their plans for the evening, prepare some food, and then, for that after-dinner treat, sit down and go through a load of work which would have to be typed until heaven only knew what time in the morning.

‘Not beans on toast,' he said succinctly, and Vicky ploughed on with fatalistic intensity.

‘What, then?'

‘If I recall, a couple of them tried to prepare elaborate three-course meals…'

‘Tried?'

‘My kitchen isn't equipped for the preparation of elaborate three-course meals. God, that smells good. Any chance of some grated cheese over the top?'

The bread popped up and she liberally spread butter on it, then poured the entire tin of beans over both slices and finished the ensemble with a generous helping of grated cheese which melted into the beans. She stuck the plate in front of him and watched as he rearranged himself so that he could dig in. Anyone would think that he was enjoying a piece of the finest steak.

‘If I recall, you have an extremely well-equipped kitchen.'

‘Oh, that was before I had the new kitchen installed. Have you anything to drink? A cup of tea, perhaps? White, two sugars.'

‘Sure that'll be all? I can always rustle up some plum crumble for afters,' Vicky informed him with sweetly biting sarcasm, unable to resist. He looked at her, fork poised
en route
to mouth, and she added quickly, ‘It was a joke.'

‘Plum crumble. A fading memory.'

‘Oh, for goodness' sake! If your girlfriends can whip up gourmet meals, they're perfectly equipped to rustle up beans on toast and plum crumble. Please stop acting as though it requires talent.'

‘A good plum crumble requires a great deal of talent,' he contradicted. ‘And my
girlfriends
don't
rustle up
beans on toast for me, or
anything
else, for that matter, because I don't encourage that sort of thing.'

Vicky looked at him, mouth open, as though he had suddenly taken leave of his senses. ‘You don't encourage that sort of thing?' she asked, confused. ‘What's the point of having that kitchen if you never use it?' Comprehension dawned in her eyes. ‘Oh,
I
get it.
You
are the one to do the cooking!' She imagined him whipping up an impressive array of food in under ten minutes and clad only in an apron. It was a sexist thought but irresistible. If
she
were the woman in his life, she would insist that he prepare her a meal, wearing nothing but a white apron, and she would fondle him as he cooked, distracting him with the tantalising flicker of her fingers on his body. She blinked away the sexy thought.

‘Don't be absurd.' He finished eating with a gratified sigh of pleasure and stood up with the plate, heading to the sink and washing it without waiting for her to intercept him. ‘I don't like women cooking for me, just in case it gives them ideas…'

‘What kind of ideas?' Vicky asked, at a loss.

‘Ideas of permanence.'

‘Oh,
those
kind of ideas.' She nodded wisely. ‘Very clever of you. What man in his right mind would want a woman to get ideas of permanence? When he can enjoy fruits of a relationship with no commitment or strings attached?'

Max turned very slowly to face her, and he slung the tea towel over his shoulder. Incongruously, it made him look all the more dangerously masculine. ‘I don't think this has much to do with the purpose of my visit, do you?' he asked softly, and Vicky felt herself flush with shame. She'd reluctantly let him come in through lack of choice, even though she realised the necessity of getting him out as quickly as possible, and yet here she was, indulging in
pointless conversation just because her curiosity was niggling away at her.

‘Right.' She briskly wiped her hands on a towel, sat down at the kitchen table and shuffled the papers around to face her. The first set of corrections, which were done insultingly in bright red pen, made her frown. ‘Are you
sure
these haven't been typed correctly? I mean you're just rephrasing what was said in the original draft.'

‘I've added bits in,' Max informed her testily.

‘Relevant bits?'

‘Are you questioning me?'

‘No, of course not, I just wondered…' Her voice trailed off into silence as she quickly inspected the rest of the documents. With a spot of rapid typing, she would be able to get this lot done in under forty-five minutes. ‘My computer's in the utility,' she said, standing up and flicking through the paper. ‘Give me a few minutes and I should be able to have this all typed up for you.' When he stood up, she eyed him sceptically. ‘I shouldn't bother,' she said, ‘The utility's a bit on the cramped side.'

‘Why do you store your PC in your utility?' He ignored her request to stay put, and followed her through the kitchen door, briefly out into the cold, and then into a separate shed which housed a washing machine, a tumble drier, various clothes lines which were coiled in disarray on the floor, a sink and a stack of wellingtons shoved in the corner. Vicky switched on an electric heater, pulled a chair in front of the beaten-up desk on which the computer sat, beady-eyed and waiting.

‘I keep meaning to move it,' Vicky admitted, switching on and watching the flat black screen jump into life. ‘When I got back from Australia, this was the first thing I bought, thinking that I could work from home if need be, and I wasn't home when it came, so my neighbour got them to
stick it in here and the thought of moving the whole lot out and into one of the bedrooms was so exhausting that—' She peered at the screen, licked her lips and clicked to open a new file and rapidly began to type ‘—I left it here. Besides, I like it in here.'

‘You
like
your utility?'

‘There's no need to sound so surprised,' she said tartly, glancing up from her typing to glare at him briefly. ‘Everyone has a special place.
You
must have a special place. Haven't you?'

‘No,' he said bluntly. ‘If you discount my bed.'

‘Well,
this
is my special place,' Vicky informed him, looking at the screen. ‘I used to have picnics here when I was a kid. Made it kind of exciting because it wasn't attached to the house and Mum and Dad didn't mind me using it in winter because they could stick the heater in and warm it up. And whenever Mum did the ironing in here, I made sure that one of my picnics was in operation.' Vicky smiled at the sudden memory. ‘She spent half her time tripping over my dolls.'

‘Happy childhood stuff, that.' She hadn't realised but he'd moved directly over her, and he now leaned down, encircling her with his arms so that his head was on a level with hers, and he could read the document as she typed it. She could feel his warm breath against her neck and her thought processes thickened in response. Her breasts were beginning to ache. Would he see her nipples hardening behind the fine, stretchy cotton of the T-shirt? She wanted to glance down and evaluate what her wretched body was doing, but didn't dare.

Instead she frowned in concentration at what she was doing and tried to work even faster. On either side of her chair, his arms were like two steel bands, trapping her in. If she moved five inches in either direction, flesh would
meet flesh. The thought sent another wave of light-headed giddiness racing through her.

‘No, no. Those figures don't look quite right. Go back to the last page.' When she did, he reached out and traced the offending lines on the computer screen, his arm way too close to her for comfort, but shifting her body would only put her into contact with his other arm. Vicky tried to look knowledgeable, but in fact she barely heard when he instructed her to carry on. She just knew that reaching the last page couldn't come too soon.

When she was finished, she saved the lot and then asked him whether he would mind switching on the printer. He moved away and she felt her body go limp before she straightened up and began printing.

‘Well done,' he said, as page after page was printed and he collected the lot, standing to one side with his hip resting gently against the washing machine, pushing his fingers through his dark hair as he narrowly inspected what she'd just written. If he made the mistake of telling her that there were one or two things still to correct, she felt she might fling the computer at his handsome head. It wasn't fair that he could waltz into her private life like this and shake the hell out of it. She needed all the personal space she could find to come to terms with what he had done to her, and showing up on her doorstep unannounced wasn't helping matters along.

‘Is everything in order?' Vicky asked, vacating the chair rather than face the possibility of another trapped situation. She waited, and when he finally nodded switched off the computer terminal and then, for the sake of safety, pulled out the plugs. ‘Just in case,' she informed him, when she realised that he was watching her with an odd expression. ‘It's an old house.'

‘Which brings me to Andy. What did he have to say?'
He slipped the papers into the thin leather case and followed her out of the utility and back through the kitchen door, which Vicky locked behind them.