A Daring Proposition

A Daring Proposition

Miranda Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER ONE

SAMANTHA stood in front of the large black desk, feeling sick with nerves. Her wide hazel eyes were fixed on the man seated behind the desk, on his darkly elegant head as it bowed to read the letter she had given him only moments before.

Impossible to gauge what his exact reaction to her resignation would be. But Guy Haywood had been her boss for five years and Samantha knew him far too well to hope to get off lightly in this matter.

His right index finger was tapping with apparent nonchalance on the desk as he appeared to re-read the letter. Any second now, she thought with increasing trepidation. Any second...

His chin came up slowly, his tanned and very handsome face dominated by piercing blue eyes. ‘Is this your idea of a joke, Sam?’ His voice was rich and very male, like the rest of him. ‘Might I remind you that April Fool’s Day was last week?’

‘It’s no joke, Guy,’ she said with a composure that belied the butterflies in her stomach.

Again he looked at her with a bemused air. ‘You really want to leave?’ His tone suggested that such an event was impossible.

Oh, God, she thought despairingly. Of course I don’t really want to leave. I love you, you fool. Can’t you see that? Haven’t you ever noticed?

She smothered a sigh. Of course he hadn’t noticed. Why should he? She hadn’t realised it herself till a year after coming to work for him, a wee bit late to start batting her eyelashes and giving him the come-on. Not that such a tack would have worked.

By then Samantha knew exactly what sort of woman her swinging bachelor boss was attracted to. She had to be blonde, preferably petite, definitely slender to the point of anorexic. If she had a brain, he didn’t like it to be too much on display when in his company. Above all, she had to realise that his relationship with her was only semi-permanent and strictly sexual. Marriage and family commitments were not part of Guy Haywood’s life plan.

As a statuesque brunette who couldn’t bear to act dumb and wanted one day to marry and have children, Samantha had to accept she didn’t quite fit the bill.

She should have left straight away once she had realised the awful truth, but love had a way of making one weak, and she’d hung in there, half hoping that during one of Guy’s brief celibate stints between affairs he might notice what was right under his nose, might even change his mind about what he wanted in life.

Four years had gone by. Four years and a good few blondes.

Nothing had changed.

Nothing was ever going to change!

Her spine straightened.

‘Yes,’ she lied determinedly. ‘I really want to leave.’

He leant back in the black leather swivel chair, his elbows on the aluminium arm rests, fingertips meeting at chest level. His eyes never left her. Light blue and clear as a cloudless spring sky, they had a range of expressions from charming to chilling.

Samantha did not feel charmed at that moment.

‘Why?’ he asked in that ultra-reasonable tone he adopted when he was at his most annoyed and trying to control it. Guy valued self-control above all else. It was the reason he had hired her in the first place, claiming that he liked her countrified air of no-nonsense down-to-earth practicality. He had wanted no female hysterics in his office!

Well, this practical, down-to-earth female did a highly emotional thing, she wanted to fling at him. She fell in love with her boss! Don’t you find that hysterical?

‘I’ve decided to go back home to live,’ she stated calmly.

His face showed he didn’t believe her, not for a minute. ‘You want to go back to Paddy’s Plains to live?’ he scoffed. ‘To a bush town with a population of one hundred and thirteen from which you were only too happy to escape?’

For a second Samantha regretted all those coffee breaks they had shared when he had elicited far too much of her background. Paddy’s Plains wasn’t quite as small as he suggested, but it wasn’t much bigger. As a teenager she’d had to travel twenty miles to the next town to go to high school. Naturally, Guy would be suspicious of her wanting to go back to a life she’d admitted finding much too narrow and which offered her no employment opportunity other than serving behind the counter in her parents’ general store. But it was the only excuse she could think of.

She took a deep breath and let it out evenly. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I need a break. I’m tired of the rat race. I’m tired of Sydney.’

‘Then take a week off.’

He wasn’t going to let her quit, she thought with a wild mixture of panic and pleasure.

Don’t you dare weaken, an inner voice berated. You’ll regret it. Remember dear, sweet Debra yesterday? Long blonde hair, eyes like limpid pools, as slender as a willow branch. Guy’s taking her out tonight to dinner and a show. They made plans in this very office, in front of you. Will you be able to stand it when he gives up smoking again tomorrow, as he does every time he starts a new affair? You’ve stood it for far too long, dying inside every time it happens. Soon you’ll be dead!

Her teeth clenched hard in her jaw. ‘A week won’t do it,’ she countered tautly. ‘Besides, I—’

‘If it’s money, you can have a raise,’ he cut in coldly.

‘It’s not money,’ she returned, the beginnings of fluster sending heat into her cheeks. Oh, why couldn’t he let her resign with dignity?

He snapped forward on the chair, the action sending a lock of his dark brown hair on to his high wide forehead. He scooped it back with an angry sweep of his hand and set exasperated eyes upon her. ‘Damn it all, Sam!’ he pronounced, angry now and showing it for once. ‘You and I know that this job is your life almost as much as it’s mine. You don’t want to go back to that tinpot town. You’re a city girl now. A career girl. You’d go mad out there in the bush. You’d be bored to tears within days!’

He stood up then and strode around the desk, putting firm hands on her shoulders and turning her to face him. Her whole insides tightened, as they did whenever he touched her, even accidentally.

‘Sam,’ he said in a voice so unexpectedly tender that it brought a lump to her throat, ‘take some time off, if that’s what you want, but please...’ his lips pulled back in a smile designed to melt any woman’s heart ‘...don’t desert the ship. You’re my first mate, and this captain needs you.’

That almost did it. Telling a woman that you needed her was almost as persuasive as saying you loved her.

But not quite.

‘No, Guy.’ Samantha swallowed down the lump and lifted her chin. ‘I’ve given you two months’ notice, plenty of time to break in someone new so that I can leave without any hitches. If you like I’ll ask Mrs Walton if she’s interested. I know she wants to work somewhere full-time, and she’s already familiar with the layout here.’

Guy’s hands dropped from her shoulders and he fairly scowled. ‘That stupid woman is hard pushed to answer the phone. She’s a complete ditherbrain!’

‘No, she’s not,’ Samantha defended. ‘She’s very intelligent. Have a heart, Guy. She’s been out of the work-force for years and only had a few weeks retraining before the agency put her on as a temp. I felt very sorry for her getting someone as demanding as you for a boss on her first job. You frightened the life out of her. If I hadn’t had to go home for my brother’s wedding that week I wouldn’t have.’

‘Pity you did!’ he grumbled. ‘The place was a mess by the time you got back. That woman couldn’t possibly do your job on a regular basis. You’re more than a secretary, dammit. You’re my personal assistant, my right-hand man, my... Hell, Sam, I can’t do without you!’ he announced in an aggrieved tone.

‘No one’s indispensable,’ she returned quietly.

He glared at her calm demeanour, then spun away to stalk back to his chair, more agitated than Samantha had ever seen him before.

But there was no real satisfaction in having disturbed his equilibrium for once. He was temporarily put out, that was all. Irritated that his well-run ship was sailing into some rough weather for a while. But in the end he would survive, would go on as though she had never made a single wave in his life.

The pain of it all was a knife twisting in Samantha’s heart. Loving someone who didn’t love you back, who wasn’t even aware of you as a member of the opposite sex, was sheer torture.

‘Well, you’ve certainly picked a fine time to leave me in the lurch,’ he muttered as he glared up at her once more. ‘I’ve just booked the Dambusters for an Australian tour next summer. You know how much organising goes into a tour for a popular rock band like that. They want to make a music video while they’re here as well, something I was going to discuss with you at a later date, but...’

He shrugged, looking oddly lost, and Samantha almost weakened.

But only almost.

‘I’ll still be here for two months,’ she reasoned. ‘Plenty of time to make all the bookings for the tour. And, since you won’t consider Mrs Walton, I’ll let the head-hunters know you’re on the look-out for a new secretary.’

‘I don’t want a new secretary,’ he growled, sounding and looking like a sulky little boy.

Samantha almost laughed as she watched his bottom lip pout slightly, his very sexy bottom lip. It was hard to believe at times that he was thirty-six, he was so young-looking, with very few lines around his eyes and mouth. But then, a man was always a boy, her mother had used to say, till he became a father. Something this particular male would go to great pains to avoid, Samantha thought drily.

Guy spotted her cynical amusement, and immediately any hint of boyishness disappeared, replaced by the implacable face of the man who hadn’t become a highly successful showbiz agent and entrepreneur by being soft.

He picked up her letter of resignation and ripped it asunder, depositing the pieces in the waste-paper basket beside him. ‘Let’s not hear any more of this nonsense, Sam,’ he pronounced belligerently. ‘You’ve made your point. I’ve been working you too hard. Take a fortnight off starting next Monday and there’ll be another five grand a year in your pay-packet as from today.’

Samantha was taken aback for a moment. This type of bullying, high-handed tactic was not one Guy ever used with his business associates. He usually got his way with either cool logic or latherings of charm. He was never aggressive. Aggression, he’d always claimed, bred aggression.

It certainly did in this case.

She drew herself up straight and glared at him. ‘I don’t think I have made my point. You certainly haven’t got it, anyway! Two months, Guy,’ she bit out. ‘Tear up another letter of mine like that and it will be two minutes, tour or no bloody tour!’

She had the satisfaction of seeing Guy literally gape at her. The prim and proper Miss Samantha Peters, swearing? His cool, calm and collected secretary, losing her temper? Unheard of!

If she’d had her hair loose she could have tossed her head as she turned to make a dramatic exit. As it was, with her long brown waves tamed into her usual coiled bun, she had to settle for swinging on her sensible heels and marching out of his office into hers, pulling the intervening door shut with a resounding bang.

Guy made no attempt to follow her or call her back. Running after tantrum-throwing secretaries was not his style.

Samantha was shaking when she finally sat down at her own desk. Literally shaking.

You’ve done the right thing, she kept telling herself. The only thing. You couldn’t have gone on indefinitely, trying to hide your feelings, putting up with the agony of his indifference just to savour the dubious pleasure of his company. It was self-destructive and demeaning. It was...futile.

Yes, she decided with a shuddering sigh. You’ve done the right thing.

Sixty seconds later she was in her private washroom, bawling her eyes out.

* * *

The traffic crawled across the bridge the following morning, bumper to bumper. Samantha checked her watch, accepted she would probably be late, then turned her head to gaze resignedly through the window of the bus down at the harbour below.

Not quite postcard material today, she thought wearily as another squall of rain dumped itself on Sydney. Really, wasn’t it ever going to stop raining?

It was cold too. Far too cold for April. Anyone would think it was the dead of winter, instead of mid-autumn.

She rubbed a circle on the window to clear the mist on the glass, and could just make out the opera house in the distance. It looked uncustomarily dismal and grey, the sails of its roof huddling on Benelong Point like wet droopy birds. Closer in, a ferry chugged to a halt at the quay, spilling darkly raincoated people out on to the wet pier.

Samantha sighed. How depressing it all looked. Which was the last thing she needed this morning. The only consolation to having to face another day with Guy was that it was Friday. She really needed two days away from him.

Yesterday had proved to be a dreadful strain. He had called her back into the office eventually, but he hadn’t tried to talk her out of leaving. Instead he had made a surprising apology, then insisted they go through all the files together, checking on every person, act or group that he managed, seeing what they were doing at that moment and what could be lined up for them in the immediate future. His attitude had been matter-of-fact and businesslike. Clearly he had accepted the situation and wanted to get the ship shipshape before his ‘first mate’ set off for other horizons.

His easy acceptance of her leaving upset Samantha terribly. So did their meticulous going through the files. With each file memories were thrown up to her, memories that held a disturbing amount of recalled pleasure.

How could she have forgotten that her life over the past five years had been filled with all sorts of exciting and rewarding events? What about the shows she had been to that involved singers and musicians Guy had managed? The premières, the parties afterwards? What of all the interesting, larger-than-life people she had met? The challenges she had had to rise to? The satisfaction she had felt when something she had personally organised had gone off without a hitch?

When she left Haywood Promotions she would leave not just Guy, but a way of life. What would she do? Where would she go?

Oh, she didn’t doubt she could get another job in Sydney, but could she bear to be in the same city as the man she loved and not be a part of his life? Guy was a high-profile personality. He would be on television, in newspapers and magazines, probably with a stunning blonde in tow.

Samantha grimaced, remembering his date with Debra last night. She was a relatively successful singer on the local club circuit who had come to Guy, ostensibly seeking him as a new manager. One hour after walking into his life she had looked like becoming his next lover.

Would she have gone to bed with Guy on their first date? Samantha wondered bitterly.

Nothing surer, came back the cruel answer.

Her heart squeezed tight.

‘Excuse me, but don’t you get out here?’

Samantha jolted out of her mental agony, throwing the woman seated next to her a startled look before recognising her as a regular on this particular bus. Her eyes snapped back to see that they had long left the bridge and were standing at the King Street junction. Luckily the lights were red at that moment so the bus couldn’t move off.

‘Gosh, yes, I do,’ Samantha gasped, snatching up her umbrella and jumping to her feet. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘No trouble. You’d better hurry, though. The lights will change soon.’

They did. Just as Samantha made it to the back platform. The bus lurched forward and she half jumped, half fell off, landing in a gutter that was doing a good imitation of the Grand Canyon rapids in full flood.

It was all she could do to keep her balance as the torrent surged around her ankles, splashing up her legs and under her skirt. She swayed and yelped. People were streaming by along the pavement, shoulders hunched, heads down, umbrellas jammed down low. But no one stopped to help. No one cared.

‘Who could ever want to live in this heartless place?’ she muttered, and stomped out of the raging torrent, unleashing her automatic umbrella with a vicious snap.

You do, came the dampening answer.

Infuriated with herself more than the rain, Samantha joined the trampling herd and eventually made it across George and Pitt Street, up through Martin Place then left down Elizabeth Street to the building that housed Guy’s office. The rain eased off as soon as she pushed through the circular glass doors, making her mutter several reproachful words to higher authorities.

Not that He would take any notice, Samantha thought crossly. Look at all the prayers she had said on a certain other matter! She might as well have been praying to win the lotto, for all the results she’d had.

Soaked and very irritated, Samantha marched across the huge black and white tiled foyer and stuffed herself into one of the crowded lifts, jabbing the floor-fourteen button with the end of her umbrella. Living in the city, she decided, wasn’t conducive to maintaining the sweet, Christian-like nature she’d had as a child.

Well, she rethought more honestly as the lift heaved its cargo upwards, one shuddering floor at a time. Perhaps I never was exactly sweet...

The memory of herself at high school flooded back, bringing with it the remembered agony of her adolescence. On the surface she had maintained the quiet, reserved, ladylike façde that her mother’s strict country upbringing had imparted to her. Underneath she had longed to break out, to scream at her classmates who had cruelly nicknamed her Amazon Sam, to rant and rave against the body Mother Nature had given her. No wonder she and poor skinny, pimply Norman had gravitated towards each other. They had been the misfits in their class. The uglies.

Samantha smiled wryly to herself in the corner of the lift as she thought of her graduation dance. She’d looked as good as she could that night, all done up and dressed in a pretty mauve dress that had minimised her figure faults. Norman had looked surprisingly good as well, his well-tailored suit giving him shoulders, the night-light softening the effect of his bad skin.

Had it been her improved appearance or the promise of imminent freedom from the torture of school that had made her act so recklessly later in the evening?

Samantha sighed as floor nine came and went. Be honest, she told herself. You know precisely why you let Norman go ‘all the way.’ He started telling you you were beautiful and that he loved you.

Now, no other boys had ever said either of those things to Samantha. At five feet ten inches tall and carrying far too many pounds during her teenage years, she had not been the femme fatale of her school.

Norman’s protestations of everlasting love had been very disarming.

Only later had Samantha realised what a crazy thing she had done, giving her virginity so carelessly. She hadn’t even enjoyed it! Could hardly even remember it happening, it had been over so fast. Never again, she had vowed. Never again!

It had been difficult, though, to convince Norman she didn’t love him, and it had been a relief when at the end of summer she had gone to live with her widowed Aunt Vonnie in far-away coastal Newcastle while she did a secretarial course.

Samantha shook her head fondly as she thought of her Aunt Vonnie. It had been her aunt who had directed her towards more sensible eating habits, which had trimmed down her bulk to more graceful proportions, her aunt who had paid for her deportment lessons, her aunt who’d overridden parental objection when she’d wanted to find a career in Sydney.

Samantha had been ever so grateful to her at the time. Now she wasn’t so sure. If she hadn’t come to Sydney, hadn’t answered that newspaper advertisement which had ended up with her sharing a flat with gorgeous blonde Lana, hadn’t met Guy that ghastly night when Lana had been supposed to go to Jesus Christ Superstar with him and stood him up...

‘Don’t you get out here?’ someone said for the second time that day.

Samantha bit her lip and muttered sheepish thanks to the man holding the doors open for her. This would never do, she told herself as she squelched along the green-carpeted corridor. What did it matter what she’d done all those years ago or how she’d come to be in Sydney in the first place? Her problem was getting through today, through having to watch Guy breeze in all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, without a cigarette in sight.

She stopped at the door furthest along on the left and fished around in her handbag for her set of office keys. Finding them, she inserted the heaviest one, turned the lock and extracted the key. She was about to go in when she stopped and stared at the gilt lettering on the door. ‘HAYWOOD PROMOTIONS,’ it said on the top line. ‘GUY HAYWOOD—MANAGING DIRECTOR.’

She could vividly recall the day they had moved into this office, the feeling of excited relief at having a real place to work in after many difficult months of trying to help Guy run his expanding business from the front room of his terraced house in Paddington.

He had taken her out to dinner after work as a reward for staying on late. Tired and hungry, she had gone, without thinking of any possible consequences.

Not that Guy hadn’t been a perfect gentleman. He had. But it had been the first time Samantha had been exposed to the relaxed, social animal her boss became during his leisure hours, so different from the demanding, often distracted dynamo she dealt with during the day.

She’d always thought him attractive, admiring his elegant dark looks as well as his tall, athletic build. But she had never before felt the impact of his sex appeal, which had hit her in waves from across the table as he’d automatically slipped into the mode of charming dinner companion. He hadn’t realised what effect he was having on her, she was sure, but by the end of the night her feelings had taken an irreversible change of direction, her respectful admiration being overwhelmed by a love that was to grow deeper and deeper with the passing of time.

Controlling a rush of emotion, Samantha opened the door and went inside, shutting the door quickly behind her. She leant against it for a moment, then looked up at the clock on the far wall. Five past nine. Not too late. Still plenty of time to get herself under control and organised before Guy made his usual appearance somewhere between nine-thirty and ten.

She would have to hurry, though, and dashed a rebel tear from her cheek. She didn’t want to look flustered or upset when Guy arrived. She wanted to be every inch her usual competent self. All she could salvage from this situation was her pride and, by golly, she was going to leave here with it intact.

Taking a deep breath, she walked briskly across the reception area, dumping her handbag on her chair before continuing on into the small room which doubled as a kitchenette-store-room. There, she propped her umbrella in a corner, hung her raincoat on a wall peg, then stripped off her wet tights and shoes, replacing them with spares she kept in an old filing cabinet.