The Secretary's Scandalous Secret (2 page)

Agatha was engulfed in a wave of anger and shame. He might be beautiful, but then roses were beautiful until you got to the thorns. How could she have nursed an inappropriate crush on this guy for all these years? she asked herself, not for the first time. From afar, when she’d been a kid, he had appeared all-powerful and so breathtakingly gorgeous. Even when Danielle had moved in with her parents, and she had had a chance to see the three-dimensional Luc when he had visited and stayed, she had still not been put off by the way he had always managed to eliminate her even when she had been right there in his line of vision.

She wasn’t a stunning blonde with legs up to her armpits and big hair; it was as simple as that. She was invisible to him, a nondescript nobody who hovered in the periphery, helping prepare suppers and losing herself in the garden.

But he had always been scrupulously polite, even if he had barely registered her growing from a girl to a woman.

This, however, was beyond the pale.

‘I’m comfortable in these clothes,’ she told him in a
shaking voice. ‘And I know you’re doing me a huge favour by employing me, when I obviously have no talent for office work, but I don’t see why I can’t wear what I want. No one important sees me. I don’t attend any meetings. And, if you don’t mind, I really would like to go now. I have a very important date, as it happens, so if you’ll excuse me…?’ She stood up.

‘A date? You have a
date?’
Luc was startled enough to find himself temporarily sidetracked.

‘There’s no need to sound so surprised.’ Agatha walked towards the door, conscious of his eyes boring into her back.

‘I’m surprised because you’ve been in London all of five minutes. Does Edith know about this?’

‘Mum doesn’t have to know every single thing I do here!’ But she flushed guiltily. Her mother was a firm believer in the gentle art of courtship. She would have had a seizure had she known that her little girl was about to go out for dinner with a guy she had met casually in a bar whilst out with some of her girlfriends. She wouldn’t understand that that was just how it happened in London, and she definitely wouldn’t understand how important this date was for Agatha. At long last, she had decided to throw herself into the dating scene. Dreamy, fictitious relationships were all well and good for a kid of fifteen; at twenty-two, they were insane. She needed a real relationship with a real man who made real plans for a real future.

‘Wait, wait, wait—not so fast, Agatha.’ He reached out, captured her arm in a vice-like grip and swivelled her to face him.

‘Okay, I’ll come in really early tomorrow morning—even though it’s Saturday—and sort out that stuff…’ Just feeling his long fingers pressing into her coat was bringing her out in nervous perspiration and suddenly, more than ever, she
wanted this date. She was sick to death with the way her body reacted to him. ‘But I really, really need to get back to my flat or else I’m going to be late for Stewart.’

‘Stewart? That the name of the man?’ He released her, but his curiosity was piqued by this sudden insight into her private life. He really hadn’t thought that she had one. In actual fact, he hadn’t thought about her at all, despite his mother’s pressing questions whenever he had called, asking him whether she was all right. He had given her a job, made sure that she was paid very well indeed, given her lack of experience, and frankly considered his duty done.

‘Yes,’ Agatha conceded reluctantly.

‘And how long has this situation been going on?’

‘I don’t see that that’s any of your business,’ she mumbled with considerable daring. Was she supposed to hang around? Did he still want her to carry on working?

She decided to brave an exit, but she was sickeningly aware of him following her out of her office towards the lift. It was Friday and most of the employees on her floor had already left. She knew that the rest of his dedicated, richly rewarded staff further up the hierarchy would be beavering away, making things happen.

‘None of my business? Did I just hear right?’

‘Yes, you did.’ Frustrated, Agatha swung round to look at him, her hands clenched into tight fists in the spacious pockets of her coat. ‘Of course, it’s your business what I do here between the hours of nine and whatever time I leave, but whatever I do outside working hours isn’t your concern.’

‘I wish I could concur but, like it or not, I have a responsibility towards you.’

‘Because of a favour my parents did for Danielle a hundred years ago? That’s crazy! Dad is—
was
—a vicar. Looking after the parishioners was what he did, and he enjoyed doing it. So did my mother. Not to mention that your
mum was already a friend and had helped out countless times at the church fetes.’ She punched the lift button and stared at it, ignoring the man at her side.

‘Baking a few cakes now and again is a bit different from housing someone for a year.’

‘Not for my parents. And Mum would be appalled if she thought that I was in London being a nuisance.’ She had to cross her fingers behind her back when she said that. Her mother worried daily about her. Her phone calls were punctuated with anxious questions about her diet, rapidly followed up by not-too-subtle reminders that London was a very dangerous place. Sometimes, to back this up, Edith would quote from newspaper clippings, overblown, dramatic stories about knifings, murders or muggings that had occurred somewhere in London. She was unfailingly sceptical about any reassurances that Agatha was well and fine and didn’t live anywhere remotely close to where said knifings or murders or muggings had occurred. Her mother would have loved nothing better than to think that Luc was taking Agatha’s welfare on board.

The lift had finally decided to arrive and she looked at Luc in alarm as he stepped inside it with her.

‘What…What are you doing?’

‘I’m taking the lift down with you.’

‘But you can’t!’

‘How do you work that one out?’

‘You’ve just told me that you have this deal to complete—remember? All hands on deck?’ She was about to press the ‘ground’ button, but Luc got there before her, and she spun round to face him in angry disbelief,

‘Why are we going down to the basement?’

‘Because my car is there, and I’m giving you a lift to your house.’

‘Are you mad?’

‘Look, do you want the truth?’

Agatha, in receipt of various home truths from him already, was heartily against hearing any more, but her mouth refused to work.

‘I had my mother on the telephone yesterday,’ Luc imparted bluntly. ‘It would seem that I haven’t shown sufficient interest in what you’ve been up to since you’ve come here.’

This was turning out to be a favour that carried a very high price. Normally indifferent to the opinions of other people, Luc dearly loved his mother, and so had gritted his teeth and listened in silence as she’d gently quizzed him about Agatha. She’d registered concern when told that he hadn’t the faintest idea how she was doing. Nor had she bought in to the logic that he had fulfilled his part of the bargain and so what was the problem if he washed his hands of the problem?

Agatha gaped at him, mortified, barely noticing when the lift doors pinged open and he guided her out of the lift towards a gleaming, silver Aston Martin.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said in a tight, breathless voice.

‘Well, you’d better start. Edith is worried. You don’t sound happy; you’re vague when she asks you about the job. You tell her that it’s all right, by which she takes it to mean that it’s making you miserable. The last time she saw you, you seemed to be losing weight.’ As far as Luc could make out, under the shapeless coat she looked perfectly healthy to him.

Agatha groaned and buried her head in her hands.

‘Strap up and tell me where you live.’

While he fiddled with his sat nav, giving it instructions to go to the address she could barely impart through gritted teeth, Agatha had time to conduct a quick mental review of
the last hour, starting with his sudden interest in producing more challenging work for her to do.

‘This is awful.’ She placed cool hands on her burning cheeks.

‘You’re telling me.’

‘Is that why you hunted me down to give me all that stuff to do?’

‘Try getting one-hundred percent involved and you might have less time to spend crying down the line to your mother and complaining that you’re bored and unhappy. I have no idea how I managed to get roped into a caretaker role, but roped in I’ve been.’

‘But I don’t
want
you taking an interest in me!’ she all but wailed. Luc, in passing, thought that was interesting because women usually wanted just the opposite out of him.

‘I’m not taking an interest in you,’ he disputed flatly. ‘I’m broadening your work parameters: more interesting projects. Less back-room stuff. So you can start thinking about the wardrobe issue. Front-of-house demands a more stringent dress code than sacks and old shoes.’

‘Okay, I will.’ Just to bring the horrifying conversation to an end.

‘And call me a mug, but I’m giving you a lift back to your house because I want to find out about this date of yours, satisfy myself that you’re not about to put your life at risk with some low-life drifter. The last thing I need is my mother showing up at my office like an avenging angel because you’ve managed to get yourself into trouble.’

If she could have burrowed a hole in the soft, cream leather of the car seat and escaped to another county, Agatha would have done so. Never had she felt so humiliated in her life before. In all the scenarios that had played in her head over the years, not one had involved Luc taking an interest in her because he had no option. Nor had she ever envisaged
being told that she looked like a bag lady, which was what he had implied.

She should never have accepted this job. No good ever came of accepting hand outs, although she knew that if she voiced that opinion he would have the perfect come back. Hadn’t his own mother accepted a hand out of sorts when she had moved in with her parents in their rambling vicarage? That, to her way of thinking, was different, as was the dispenser of the hand out. Luc Laughton was hardly a kindly, middle-aged man charmed at the thought of doing a favour for a neighbour in need. He was a predatory shark who would have no qualms about eating the recipient of his charity if he felt like it.

‘I can take care of myself,’ she opined, staring straight ahead. ‘I’m not going to get myself into any trouble.’

‘You obviously haven’t breathed a word of this so-called date to your mother,’ Luc guessed shrewdly. ‘Which leads me to think that you might be ashamed of him. Am I right?’

‘I haven’t said anything to Mum because I’ve only just
met
him!’

He noticed that she hadn’t tackled the issue of whether she was ashamed of the man. Was he married? If he were to guess the kind of guy she would go for, it wouldn’t be a married man. Her life had been nothing if not sheltered. His distant memory was of a girl with almost no sense of style, certainly not the sort of style favoured by her peer group: short, tight skirts, skinny, tight jeans, dangly jewellery. No, if he had to take a stab in the dark, he would bet his last few bucks on a fellow garden-lover, someone who got worked up about eco issues and saving the planet.

But if that were the case wouldn’t she have been on the phone in a heartbeat to tell all to Edith? Even if, as she said, he had only recently landed on the scene.

‘Is he married? You can tell me, although don’t expect
me to give you my blessing, because I strongly disapprove of anyone getting entangled with someone who’s married.’

Agatha’s head jerked round at the cool contempt in his voice. Who did he think he was, she wondered? A shining example of morality? Normally reduced to quaking jelly in his presence, she took a deep breath and said very quickly in a very high, tremulous voice, ‘I don’t think you have a right to disapprove of anything.’

For a few seconds she actually wondered if he had heard her because he didn’t say a word. She found that she was holding her breath, which she expelled slowly when he finally answered, his voice icy cold. ‘Come again?’

‘I’ve been given the job of buying all your discards their parting presents,’ Agatha admitted tightly. ‘Flowers, jewellery, expensive holidays—what’s so great about having a string of pointless relationships? How can you preach about married men when you think it’s all right to string some poor woman along knowing that you have no intention of getting involved with her?

Luc cursed fluently under his breath, outraged that she dared bring her opinions to bear on his private life. Not that he was about to justify his behaviour.

‘Since when is pleasure pointless?’ was all he said, clamping down on the rising tide of his temper because for Agatha fun without commitment would be anathema. When he had launched himself into the City, climbing that first rung of the ladder which he knew would lead him to the top, he had had the misfortune to fancy himself in love with a woman who had turned from a softly spoken angel to a harpy the second the demands of work had begun to interfere with her daily need to be stroked. She had complained solidly and noisily about meetings that over ran, had dug her heels in and lashed out at trips abroad and had eventually started look-
ing elsewhere for someone who could give her undivided attention.

It had been a salutary lesson. So leading women up a garden path was definitely not a route he was interested in taking. From the very start, they knew that commitment wasn’t going to be on the agenda. He was honest to a fault which, he personally thought, was a virtue to be praised, for it was in short supply in most men.

Which brought him back to the issue of this mysterious guy about whom she was being so secretive.

‘But perhaps you don’t agree with me,’ he drawled, flicking a sidelong glance in her direction. ‘Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’ve been bitten by the big-city bug and come to the conclusion that there’s nothing pointless in having fun. Is that it? I notice you still haven’t mentioned Stewart’s marital status.’

‘Of course he’s not married! He happens to be a very nice person. In fact, he’s taking me out to a very expensive restaurant in Knightsbridge—San Giovanni. Stewart says that it’s famous. In fact, you’ve probably heard of it.’