The Boss's Proposal (4 page)

Max was standing by the door, saying something, and Vicky's attention snapped back to the present. The house. She couldn't afford to run into problems with the house. She had barely begun to find her feet and Chloe could do without any more changes in her life.

‘Sit down. Please. I might as well hear what you have to say.' She nodded to the chair which he had just vacated and he appeared to give her request some thought.

‘You seem to act as though
I'm
doing
you
a favour. I assure you, Miss Lockhart, you couldn't be further from the truth.'

‘I'm sorry. I have…things on my mind.'

‘Why don't you go and change? Clean clothes might improve your temper.'

She frowned and looked very much as though she would have liked to argue that particular point with him, but instead she informed him that she would bring him a cup of tea, or coffee.

That, she thought, should keep him anchored in one place. The last thing she needed was Max Forbes prowling
through her house. At least the sitting room—the one place that was kept neat at all times, even if the rest of the cottage was in a state of disarray—contained relatively few personal bits and pieces. She'd stuffed the pictures of Chloe in the weather-beaten pine trunk behind the sofa, and the books that lined the bookshelf on either side of the fireplace were the sort of everyday reading that gave nothing away. The ornaments had mostly belonged to her mother and had been retrieved from the attic where they had been stored while the house had been rented out. It was true what they said about there being safety in anonymity.

When she returned to the sitting room with a mug of tea, it was to find him innocently perusing the newspaper which had been lying on the low, square battered pine table in front of the fireplace. She almost said
Good
, but managed to resist the temptation.

‘I won't be a moment,' she told him stiffly, and, just in case he got any ideas about exploring the place, she firmly shut the sitting room door behind her. Then she looked at her watch, to make sure that time was still on her side.

Showering and changing took a matter of fifteen minutes. Self-beautification, even if the situation demanded it, was something she rarely did. Now, she just changed into a clean pair of jeans, a clean T-shirt and re-braided her hair without going to the bother of combing out all the knots, of which there would be thousands. Later, she would wash and shampoo her hair.

‘Now,' she said, slipping into the room and seeing, with relief, that he was still absorbed in the newspaper, ‘you were going to tell me about my house.'

‘Have you heard the rumours?'

‘What rumours?'

‘About the supermarket. Perhaps I should say
hyper
-
market, because apparently there'll be parking for hundreds of cars. If not thousands.'

Vicky, sitting cross-legged on the large comfy chair facing him, looked at him in horror. For a minute, she actually forgot that she was supposed to be on guard. She leaned forward, elbows on thighs, mouth open.

‘You're joking.'

‘Horrendous, isn't it? I can't bear those sprawling supermarkets myself. I much prefer smaller, more personal places to shop. Between Fortnum and Mason's and Harrods, I've never had a problem finding what I want. Tell me, is there an equivalent here, by any chance?' Now that he had launched into his lie, he couldn't wait to distance himself from it. He glanced at her face and discovered that he couldn't tear his eyes away. Her mouth was slightly parted and sitting like that, all folded into the chair in a way he had never seen a woman do before, she looked even more appealingly vulnerable. The T-shirt was small and close fitting and lovingly outlined her small, rounded breasts. He had to remind himself that he was only there because she had posed a mystery and he hated mysteries, and not because he was attracted to her, even though his mind kept churning up some embarrassingly graphic images of her body, unencumbered by clothing.

Frustratingly, she seemed to have no interest in him whatsoever. As a man who was accustomed to women looking at him, uninterest was proving to be a powerful aphrodisiac.

‘Who told you this?' she asked, after a few seconds of shocked silence.

‘No one and everyone. You know how it is with rumours. No one will admit to being the one who starts it. I mean, it may be entirely without foundation and certainly, in the business I'm in, I'm sure I would have
seen
some
thing, something rather more substantial than gossip, but—' he sighed, reluctantly focusing his attention on the bookshelf behind her ‘—I feel better about telling you.'

‘My house won't be worth a thing if a supermarket goes up opposite!' Vicky burst out on the verge of tears. ‘Not that I want to sell up, but…'

‘I'm sure it's all a load of tosh,' Max said hurriedly, guiltily seeing the sheen in her eyes.

‘What if it's not?' She couldn't help herself. A supermarket! No, a
hypermarket
, with parking for ten thousand cars! It was the last straw. She blinked and, of its own accord, a tear trickled down her face. Her reaction appalled and dismayed her, but there seemed nothing she could do to stifle the ridiculous leakage.

She was hardly aware of what was happening until she felt Max perch on the wide upholstered arm of the chair and he dabbed the handkerchief at her face. With a groan of despair, Vicky took it from him and did a better job of mopping herself up, then she leant her head back and closed her eyes with a deep sigh.

‘Look, I should never have said what I did.' Little did she know, he thought, how sincerely he meant that. He reached out and stroked some hair away from her face, then carried on stroking her damp cheeks. Her skin was like satin and, up close, her freckles made a fascinating pattern across the bridge of her nose. His thumb slid a bit further down and, finding no deterrent, lightly brushed her mouth.

‘No, it's just as well to be prepared.' She opened her eyes and looked at him. There was a gentleness in his eyes that was unexpected enough to make the breath catch in her throat.

‘I could find out easily enough whether there's truth behind the rumour,' he told her softly, feeling himself
harden as he carried on stroking her face. The woman was an enigma. He could hardly remember why he thought that she was hiding something. Right now, she was no more than a vulnerable girl and she was bringing out all sorts of ridiculously protective feelings he'd never known he possessed.

‘Could you?' she asked urgently, her eyes flicking across his face. ‘Do you think you could? It would mean a great deal to me.' In the brief silence, she became aware of his fingers on her face and she sprang away, pressing herself back into the chair and looking at him.

‘I could,' he said. He strolled back to his chair and crossed his legs, then he slowly looked around him, as though taking in his surroundings for the first time. ‘You know, I can't remember whether I mentioned this at the interview, but I could arrange to have building work done on this cottage at a nominal cost. The roof looks as though it could do with an overhaul and your fireplace is going.'

‘But I don't work for you.' She paused and looked at him, while her hand idly rubbed her ankle tucked up on the chair. ‘I don't understand why you're so keen to hire me.' There was genuine curiosity behind the question.
She
knew why she couldn't accept his offer of a job, but she had no idea why he'd continued to try and persuade her, even when it was patently obvious that she wasn't interested.

Max sighed a long, resigned sigh and watched her from under his lashes. He could still feel the softness of her skin under his. ‘I'm desperate. That's the bottom line. I've been here for seven months during which time I've had a series of temps, none of whom seemed capable of thinking on their feet, and none of the applicants for the job on a permanent basis were suitable.'

‘
None
of them?'

‘That's right,' he said a little irritably, because there was an element of incredulous accusation in her voice that implied some kind of fault on his part.

‘What was wrong with all of them?'

‘Pretty much a combination of everything, actually.'

‘Perhaps you're a bit too demanding,' Vicky volunteered helpfully, and her suggestion was met with a frown of instant and instinctive denial.

‘I'm the least demanding boss I know. All I ask is a certain amount of initiative and common sense, along with the ability to do the usual things.'

‘And how do you know
I
would have possessed the right qualities?' For the very briefest of moments, she put aside her fears of the man sitting opposite her and she could feel his personality working on her. In a minute, she told herself, she would put her defences back in place, but right now a rush of simple gratitude towards him had mellowed her. She found herself watching him intently, noticing, as she did so, how huge the differences were between him and Shaun, even though, at first glance, she'd been bowled over by their similarities. His face, she realised, was stronger, and stamped with lines of humour that had been missing from his brother's. His mouth was fuller, or perhaps that was just an optical illusion born of the fact that he just seemed more in command and more quietly self-assured than his brother. He lacked the ready smile that spoke of self-obsession and the carefully groomed look of someone to whom appearances were everything. In fact, the harder she stared at him, the less he seemed to resemble Shaun.

‘Because you worked successfully for a man I have long respected,' he said simply. ‘Aside from that, my first impression was favourable and I'm rarely wrong when it comes to first impressions.'

‘Well, you should be,' Vicky heard herself say, her voice laced with creeping bitterness. She looked away and began toying with the end of her braid, flicking it back and forth, aware that two spots of burning colour had appeared on her cheeks.

Now, he thought, was not the time to probe deeper into that enigmatic little remark. She wasn't looking at him, in itself significant, but he could tell by the sudden flare of colour into her pale face that her reply had been instinctive and spontaneous, and that it had been prompted by
something
, some past and probably dark experience. He felt another spurt of intense curiosity, all the more destabilising because it was unaccustomed, and he had to resist the urge to barge in and whittle an explanation out of her. Women had always been an open book for him. To suddenly find himself stumped by one whose pages appeared to be firmly glued together was more than a novelty. He was discovering, to his amazement, the power of a challenge.

‘Perhaps I should be,' he agreed. ‘Maybe I'm more naïve than I think.'

The thought of the man sitting opposite her
ever
being naïve was almost enough to make her burst out laughing.

‘Look,' he said quickly, ‘I'll lay all my cards on the table. I have a gut feeling that you and I could work well together. I've suffered everything over the past few months, from misfiling to complete incomprehension when it comes to transcribing the gist of some of my more technical letters…' Something of an exaggeration, he thought to himself, but what the heck? ‘Not to mention girls who can hardly think straight when they're around me…' He watched her surreptitiously to see what the impact of that comment would be, whether he might read some tacit agreement in her expression, and huffily saw that if any
thing her eyebrows had flickered upwards in contempt and incredulity.

‘I don't think I could bear working for a man who considered himself God's gift to the female sex,' Vicky informed him coldly.

‘I don't believe that's
quite
what I—'

‘Someone who assumes that every woman in the room is eager and panting to climb into bed with him, someone who can't exist without a comb in his jacket pocket and a sporty car to prop up his self-image—'

‘You seem to have totally misunders—'

‘Swanning around, giving orders in between gazing at himself in the nearest mirror and then when all's said and done assuming that it's his right to do as he likes with whomever he wants, because he happened to be born with a passably good-looking face—'

‘Hold on!'

Just at that very instant the telephone rang, and Vicky leapt up out of her chair and hurried into the hall to answer it. She was still trembling from her tirade because his passing remark had brought back a flood of memories, memories of Shaun and his serial infidelity, his addiction to proving his power over women, his swaggering, arrogant assumption that it was his right to break any female's heart if he so wanted. Her brain was still whirring around in angry circles when she heard Pat Down's voice down the line and it took her a few seconds to register that Chloe would be dropped back earlier than planned.

‘I'm ever so sorry, Vicky, but my mum's been rushed to hospital with a heart attack so I shall drop her off in about ten minutes, if that's all right with you.' The voice down the line was just managing to bear up.

‘Ten minutes…' Vicky repeated on a sharply indrawn breath.

‘Sorry.'

‘No, no, that's absolutely fine. Do you need me to hang on to Jess for you?' But no, she would take Jess with her to see her mother and she'd be by in a little under ten minutes.

Vicky hung up and flew into the sitting room like a whirlwind.

‘It's time for you to go!' she ordered him frantically. ‘I…I…I've suddenly remembered a very important appointment. In fact, that was the person in charge…calling to see whether I was still interested…in the job…'

‘On a Saturday?' Max asked, not moving.

With a groan of desperation, Vicky grabbed his arm and began pulling him to his feet. Bad move. It appeared to make him even less inclined to vacate the sofa.