The Boss's Inexperienced Secretary
Шрифт:
She remembered she had shaken her head, feeling stunned. It was then he had added, ‘I don’t expect my personal assistant to be a yes-man, or -woman. But when you disagree with me you do it in private when it’s just the two of us. Is that clear?’ She’d nodded then, equally stunned.
Kim glanced round her sitting room. Before she had moved in she’d had the flat decorated from top to bottom exactly how she had wanted it. With her savings she had lashed out on ankle-deep carpeting, cream leather sofas and thin, drifty drapes which had been wildly expensive considering there was hardly anything to them. A new bathroom and kitchen had completed her extravagance, and her bedroom was unrepentantly feminine, soft pinks, creams and gentle mauves creating a soothing place which declared quite loudly no man lived here. And she loved it. Every inch of it. Could she continue to live here if—by the remotest chance—Blaise West offered the job to her? If the journey home was a taste of things to come…
Stop it. She was doing the negative thing; she always reacted like this when she was tired. The journey into London had been as smooth as silk, the return was merely bad luck. Besides which, she was getting herself all worked up for nothing. She didn’t even know if she would be offered the job; there must be other applicants far more qualified and experienced than she.
And if she was successful? A curl of something potent stirred in the pit of her stomach. She stood up, walking into the kitchen and switching on the coffee machine. She would cross that bridge in the unlikely event she came to it.
Kim went to bed early and slept badly in spite of having tossed and turned the night before. At six in the morning she abandoned any thought of sleep, padding through into the tiny kitchen and making a mug of coffee which she drank curled up on one of the two sofas in the sitting room. She had opened the windows to the warm summer morning and shafts of sunlight and birdsong filtered into the room.
It was peaceful and cosy…but suddenly not enough. Kim sat up straighter, startled at the way her mind had gone. But it was true. Something had changed yesterday; she wasn’t quite sure what or how, but the interview with Blaise West had brought to the surface a whole host of things she had been avoiding for some time.
She was only twenty-five, for goodness’ sake, twenty-six in October, and she wanted to do something with her life. The last couple of years had been a period of licking her wounds and that was fine, but she didn’t want to carry on as she had been doing. Getting the interview against all the odds had restored a smidgen of the self-confidence that had been so badly knocked when David had left her. And now the whole marriage and kids and roses round the door scenario wasn’t on the agenda, she could concentrate on something she’d never envisaged having—a career.
OK, she acknowledged in the next moment, it wasn’t actually the path she’d have chosen but it would have compensations. She nodded to the thought, her eyes contemplative. Broadening her horizons, travelling, meeting new people.
Like Blaise West? a separate part of her mind asked.
As though someone else had asked the question she spoke out loud, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She hadn’t been thinking of him specifically, she hadn’t.
But he was the most fascinating man she had ever met in her life. This time she didn’t bother to deny it; she couldn’t. It was true. She sprang up and marched into the kitchen for a second mug of coffee.
Once again established on the sofa, she took stock. Yes, Blaise West was something else but it wasn’t only she who thought that. When she had gone for the interview she had already been aware of his reputation and history, both of which spoke for themselves. He was one of those rare men who had something akin to a magnetic field around them to which other people would be irresistibly drawn, whether they liked him or not.
Did she like him?
She considered the question. She wasn’t sure. He would certainly be interesting to work for, she thought wryly. If she survived the first day, that was. But she was unlikely to get the chance. And that didn’t matter, it didn’t, because if nothing else the last twenty-four hours had told her that the next stage of her life was due to begin and it would be one in which she made changes. Changes she controlled. There had been enough of the other kind.
She inhaled the fragrant scent of coffee beans as she let her mind meander back into the past. She had been so gullible when she’d met David, so thrilled that someone like him—handsome, self-assured, popular—had singled her out. Her childhood had been happy enough on the whole, but her teenage years had been made miserable by her height. Or rather her sensitivity about it. She had always been the wallflower at school discos; the girl most boys avoided because she tended to tower over them. Some wit had dubbed her the beanpole when she was thirteen and the nickname had stuck for a long time, even when she had filled out in all the right places.
And then at eighteen she’d met David Stewart. Six feet three in his bare feet, blond and beautiful. An Adonis. They had been together all through university and he had proposed to her on graduation day. Her cup had been full. They’d decided while he continued to study law—his father had his own law firm which one day David would take over—she would get a nine-to-five job with no commitments so she could fit in with him and see him when he had any free time between studying at law college. He had sailed through the solicitors’ final examination at the end of twelve months, and joined his father’s firm to serve articles, at which time they had set the wedding date.
Every weekend she had travelled from her parents’ home in Surrey to Oxford, where David lived in his family’s massive seven-bedroomed house complete with swimming pool and tennis courts. His parents and younger sister adored her, and she them. Everything in the garden was rosy. And then, six weeks before the wedding, he had turned up on her doorstep one night and taken her out for a meal so they could ‘talk’.
She had known even before he told her that something was dreadfully wrong but nothing could have prepared her for what she was about to hear. There was someone else. They’d only known each other a short time but it was the real thing.
Reeling from shock, she had asked who it was. Miranda, the girl next door who had been mad about him for ever, according to what his sister had whispered? Someone at his father’s work? A mutual friend?
No, he’d replied. She didn’t know Francis; neither did his family.
Frances? she’d repeated shakily. Where had he met her?
It was then he had looked at her steadily and told her that the ‘her’ was a ‘him’. It was Francis with an I. And he’d met him at one of the bars they both frequented. He had thought he could do the marriage and children bit to keep his family happy but he couldn’t. He liked her, he assured her. Loved her even, but not in that way.