In Bed With The Boss

CHAPTER TWO

‘So…HOW did he take it?’

‘Not very well,’ said Kalera wryly, watching as her fiancé neatly cracked another crayfish leg between his strong fingers and extracted the meat with minimal fuss. She envied the combination of easy self-confidence and natural fastidiousness that allowed him to make it look so simple.

If Kalera had ordered the crayfish in butter sauce she would have been in grease up to her elbows by now, with all sorts of debris clinging to her face. She loved seafood but had never quite got the hang of tangling politely with crustaceans at the dinner table and in the interests of romance, not to mention her white silk dress and unbound hair, had decided to forgo the restaurant’s specialty in favour of discreetly de-boned duckling.

Stephen dabbled his fingers in the lemon-scented bowl of water beside his plate and dried them on his starched white napkin. His gold signet-ring gleamed dully in the candlelight, the only embellishment to his elegant, understated style. His dark, custom-tailored jacket and white shirt were as plain as they were expensive and provided the perfect setting for his lean frame and boyish good looks.

‘I take it that’s one of your masterly understatements,’ he said, picking up his champagne glass and toasting her silently before sipping the contents. Not for the first time Kalera basked in his wonderful manners. Whenever she was with Stephen she was made to feel like a lady, as well as a woman. Harry had been a lovely man and a good husband, but he had been a bit short on social graces. Romantic gestures were simply not his style.

She looked around the plush restaurant, enjoying the novelty of dining in sumptuous surroundings with an escort who provoked envious glances from other women. So far all their meetings and dates had, from necessity, been conducted in discreet, out-of-the-way places where neither of them rated a second glance but now they had finally gone public and Stephen said that he wanted to show her off in style. Now there was no longer a need for secrecy he intended to introduce her to the social whirl. He was proud of his future bride and wanted the world and all his friends to approve his good fortune.

He was already planning for them to host a lavish engagement party and Kalera hoped that she wouldn’t disgrace him with her inexperience. She and Harry had lived a very quiet life. Going out to the movies or a neighbourhood café or having a few couples around for a casual barbecue had been typical highlights of their social week whereas Stephen was used to a very different scene. She knew that his divorced first wife had a Fine Arts degree and a social pedigree a mile long, and had been renowned for her parties, and, although he had assured Kalera that he would never make comparisons, others in his circle were bound to judge her by Terri’s standards.

‘I suppose any man would become upset at the news that his secretary has become engaged to his bitterest rival,’ Stephen continued, the intent look in his brown eyes belying the casualness of his tone. ‘So how did he react?’

Thinking that he had been more than tolerant of her disinclination to talk about her traumatic day, Kalera sighed and put down her fork. At least she had managed to get through most of her meal before Stephen’s curiosity burst the bonds of his restraint.

‘You want chapter and verse?’

‘The highlights will do if anything more is going to compromise your honour,’ Stephen said with a rueful smile.

He was clearly dying to know every detail of the encounter, but was equally intent on sticking to the pact that they had made when they first met—no discussions about their work. Stephen’s ownership of InfoTech Systems put him in direct competition with Labyrinth and he had been labelled Private Enemy No.1 by Duncan Royal. Although Labyrinth currently held the edge, the fierce battle for a bigger slice of the booming New Zealand market in computerised office systems continued to rage between the two companies, fuelled by the owners’ personal animosity.

Initially wary of becoming involved with any man, let alone one who presented a potential conflict of interest, and seriously doubting that Stephen’s suggestion of mutual self-censorship would work, Kalera’s fears had soon been allayed. He was scrupulous about observing the unwritten rules of their relationship and they found plenty to talk about that didn’t involve projects or personnel at Labyrinth and InfoTech.

‘It was awful, wasn’t it?’ he groaned as Kalera hesitated, searching for a tactful way to describe the scene. ‘I know I should have insisted on being there when you told him—’

She shuddered at the thought. ‘That would only have made things worse. Anyway, you’re so much persona non grata at Labryinth that you wouldn’t have got through the front door. The security guards have your photo.’

‘Really? I didn’t know that.’

Kalera bit her lip at the slip and he quirked an understanding eyebrow. ‘Don’t worry, the same kind of precautionary measures apply at InfoTech, except we have Royal’s face pasted to our games-room dartboard. You can tell him if you like.’

She could just imagine how that tidbit of information would be received. It would merely prove to Duncan that she had lied when she said that she and Stephen never discussed any aspect of their work, let alone anything that would compromise professional ethics on either side. She felt a small spurt of annoyance at the amusement on her fiancé’s face. There was nothing funny about departing a job she loved with a cloud over her honour.

‘No, thanks, I’m in enough trouble as it is.’

He caught the edge in her voice and smoothly adjusted his expression to one of remorseful concern. ‘I’m sorry, darling; I know how difficult this has been for you.’ He frowned. ‘Are you saying he threatened you?’

He sounded so incredulous that Kalera’s bruised sense of humour was warmed back to life by his effort to soothe her wounded sensibilities.

‘We are talking about Duncan Royal,’ she pointed out with a dry chuckle. ‘Of course he threatened me.’

Stephen didn’t share the joke. ‘I mean physically. I know how terrifying he can be in one of his rages. When we were at school he used to have the most frightful fits—that was one reason he was never made a prefect in spite of his brilliant academic record—he was simply considered too unstable. And then at university—well, he had a reputation for creating mayhem wherever he went…’

‘I knew you were briefly in partnership with him a few years ago, but I didn’t realise that your acquaintanceship went right back to your childhood,’ said Kalera slowly, aware of a slight sense of unease as it suddenly occurred to her that in spite of the illusion of intimacy created by their secret courtship she still had an awful lot to learn about the man she had promised to marry—and vice versa.

‘We both had parents who were fixated on their sons attending the “right school” and since our fathers were Old Boys who had boarded together it was fairly inevitable that we ended up in the same college.’ Stephen shrugged dismissively. ‘He was an arrogant bastard right from the third form—probably would have been expelled several times over if his father hadn’t been a leading QC and a heavy donator to school funds. As a senior his temper even terrorised the teachers.’

‘I suppose I must have become desensitised to him over the years,’ Kalera murmured, thinking that her own family background had been the perfect training ground for coping with Duncan Royal’s lightning-bursts of emotion. ‘Even when he’s yelling blue murder and throwing furniture—like he was this morning—I’ve never actually been scared of him….’

Stephen leaned forward, his wheat-blond hair burnishing his frowning forehead. ‘What exactly was he yelling at you?’

Kalera’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘You mean before or after he fired me?’

He looked suitably grave, but unsurprised. ‘I’m sorry, darling—I did warn you that was probably what would happen. But at least you don’t have to worry about being out of work. Even if he gets nasty and refuses you a reference, you know you can walk into a job at InfoTech tomorrow if you like—all you have to do is say the word…’

However fondly couched, ‘I told you so’ was still the most aggravating phrase in the English language, decided Kalera, her irritation tempered by the knowledge that Stephen wouldn’t be feeling quite so smug by the time she finished her story.

‘I did try to lead up to it delicately, but as soon as I mentioned your name he fired me on the spot,’ she admitted. ‘Then he called up Security and got two beefy guards to escort me out of the building. He wouldn’t even let me go back to my desk to get my things—’

Her mortification at her treatment was evident in her face as she remembered how it had felt to be marched off the premises like a common criminal.

Stephen’s eyes blazed with sympathy. ‘The bastard! But you’d already formally handed in your written resignation, right? You’re not going to let him get away with putting it around that you were fired—’

‘He won’t,’ she said, flattered by the unexpected heat of his anger. Sometimes she had worried that Stephen was a little too cool and self-restrained, even though it was those qualities about him which she had initially found so appealing. ‘Because he changed his mind before I even got out of the building. He rescinded the firing and demanded I work my notice after all.’

‘He what?’ Stephen collapsed back in his seat, looking thunderstruck.

Kalera didn’t blame him. The swift volte-face had been totally out of character. One of the strengths of Duncan’s charismatic leadership was his ability to make instant decisions based on pure gut instinct, and so rarely did his instincts fail him that he had established a reputation for never failing to act on a snap decision.

‘The guards had taken me as far as the front door and were about to fling me out into the snow when Duncan came racing across the foyer and ripped me out of their hands. He told them he’d made a mistake and then he dragged me back up to his office and locked me in.’

‘He did what?’ Stephen’s smooth baritone rose sharply and Kalera regretted her flippancy when she noticed the covert glances they were receiving from the surrounding tables.

Stephen noticed too and abruptly lowered his voice. ‘My God, he actually locked you in the office with him?’

He looked appalled but there was a tiny thread of speculation in his voice that for no reason at all made Kalera’s whole body flush with heat. She felt the colour rise in her face and suddenly wished her hair weren’t so long and straight that it flowed like water down the middle of her back instead of drifting in handy thickets around her face. Her wispy blonde fringe provided little concealment for her pink cheeks.

‘Not him. Just me,’ she hastened to explain. ‘He pushed me in and locked the door, and then he took off somewhere—to cool down, so he said…’

‘He kept you prisoner!’ Stephen’s raw shock made it sound as if she had been chained to a dungeon wall and flogged. ‘For how long?’

Kalera adopted a soothingly vague expression as she accepted a dessert menu from the waiter whose desire to linger suggested an unprofessional interest in their intriguing conversation.

‘Not long—about an hour or so, I suppose,’ she said, deliberately playing down the drama. She knew exactly how long it had been. She had been left to stew for precisely one hour and fifty-one minutes before Duncan had returned to deliver his pithy lecture on the pitfalls awaiting gullible young widows who fell prey to smooth-talking villains.

She looked over the menu, forcing herself to choose something even though her sweet tooth had been soured by the subject of their conversation. Stephen’s frustration with the interruption was evident as he selected the cheeseboard and sent the flapping-eared waiter briskly on his way before leaning forward again.

‘And then what happened?’

Kalera was reluctant to go into too much detail. Duncan’s comments had not been flattering, either to herself or to Stephen. In fact they had been flagrantly insulting. She had known that the two men harboured an intense dislike of each other but until today she hadn’t recognised the true depth of their mutual hostility.

Her efforts to gloss over the worst bits in the retelling were in vain. For once Stephen seemed insensitive to her distress, insisting that she describe the abrasive encounter word for word, and wanting to know not only what Duncan had said, but how he had looked and sounded when he had realised she would not be cowed into calling off her engagement.

‘And that’s all he said about me?’ he probed, after she had informed him that he had been called a low-down, underhanded, cheating rat; a poor loser who had to compensate for his personal and business inadequacies by blaming others for his own mistakes; a vain, jealous, egocentric man who pursued his selfish goals without caring who he hurt in the process.

‘All! Isn’t that enough?’ asked Kalera, who had been humiliated by Duncan’s assumption that the only possible reason an attractive man could be interested in her was because of him. And he had the nerve to call Stephen egocentric! He had even had the gall to hint that Stephen had tried to cosy up to other female employees of Labyrinth in the past, but that Kalera was the only one naive and stupid enough to fall into his honey-trap.

‘It’s the oldest trick in the industrial espionage book!’ Duncan had declared in disgust. ‘Find a lonely, love-starved female in a sensitive job and seduce her into a secret affair so that her judgment is so clouded by infatuation she doesn’t even notice that her handsome new lover is pumping her for information…and refuses to believe it even when she’s confronted with cast-iron proof!’

Smarting from the image of herself as a pathetic emotional accident waiting to happen, Kalera had icily pointed out that he had produced no proof of anything other than his own paranoia and, given the fact that his own judgment was clouded by unreasonable prejudice against her fiancé, she would thank him to stop making slanderous remarks unless he was prepared to defend them in court!

‘So, he believes that I only asked you to marry me in order to worm his secrets out of you and to deprive him of your valuable services?’ Stephen’s aristocratic mouth curled into a contemptuous sneer. ‘Did his fertile imagination also suggest a motive for my madness?’

‘I thought you asked me here for dinner, not a postmortem,’ Kalera pleaded, his persistence beginning to grate on her nerves. ‘Do we have to talk about it any more? I’m just glad it’s over and done with, and you must admit it turned out better than we expected. Duncan even apologised for the way he overreacted—said it was just the shock—’

‘I’ll bet it was a shock!’ Stephen laughed grimly. ‘Royal doesn’t like it when the tables are turned. He likes to be the one to do the shafting. You should have told him where he could stuff his apology and walked out anyway.’

His unaccustomed crudity made her eyes widen. ‘Stephen!’

‘Well…I don’t trust him,’ he said, a moody look pushing out his lower lip. ‘I just can’t believe he wants you to stay on as his secretary when he knows you and I are engaged. I wouldn’t if our positions were reversed. I wonder what he has up his sleeve? He’s a devious swine—I doubt he’s doing you any favour by letting you work your notice. He probably intends to make your life hell for the next few weeks. Whatever he pays you it won’t be enough…’

It wasn’t a matter of money, but of principle and pride, thought Kalera. In the midst of a disarmingly eloquent apology Duncan had somehow extracted a promise from her that she would stay on until the end of the month to help train her successor. She couldn’t break her word when Duncan’s willingness to keep her on was an act of faith in her integrity; nor did she want to forfeit the respect and liking of her friends at Labyrinth by slinking away from her job as if she were guilty of some wrongdoing.

‘I’m sure I can handle it,’ she said, hoping that he was wrong. ‘I’m tougher than I look, you know.’ She straightened her narrow shoulders, laid partially bare by the classic cut of her simple, sleeveless silk sheath. Her slender, breakable body often led people to overlook her inner strength and mistake her serenity for lack of assertiveness.

‘I know.’ Stephen cupped his hand over hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze. ‘I just don’t like the idea of you being hurt because of me. I never wanted to put you through this…’

She felt a familiar tightening in her chest followed by a blossoming of sweet contentment, and turned her hand palm up in his grasp, twining her fingers with his. He lifted their clasped hands to his mouth and gallantly saluted her knuckles with a soft kiss.

She loved the way that he could make her feel cherished and special with simple statements of caring rather than extravagant compliments. She recognised the same emotional reserve in him that existed in herself. After Harry was killed so tragically and so young, she hadn’t wanted to fall in love again. She hadn’t thought that she would ever find another man so perfectly suited to her needs. But then fate had thrown Stephen across her path and his gentle persistence had won her wary heart.

His gaze shifted and suddenly he stiffened, the tender light in his melting brown eyes instantly extinguished. ‘Did you tell Royal that we were coming here this evening?’

Kalera raised her finely arched brows at his curtness. Surely Stephen wasn’t going to turn paranoid on her too! ‘No…at least—I might have mentioned that we were going out to dinner after we shopped for the ring, I suppose, but I don’t think I said where. Why?’

‘Because he’s here—in the restaurant—and he’s coming over,’ said Stephen through his teeth. ‘And you can bet it’s not to offer his best wishes.’

Kalera’s head snapped around, her fine hair spraying over her silk-clad shoulders as Duncan Royal came to a halt beside her chair. It was only long experience of his eccentric taste in clothes that prevented her mouth from falling open at the sight of his attire. He was dressed from head to toe in black, his sculpted silk velvet jacket cropped like a matador’s, the wide lapels and cuffs stiff with flamboyant gold embroidery. Everything about him, from his clothes to the expression on his darkly amused face, reeked of challenge.

‘Well, well, well…if it isn’t the happy couple,’ he drawled, looking down at them with a tigerish smile. ‘What an extraordinary coincidence.’

His gaze shifted to their entwined fingers and before Kalera could curb the impulse she had guiltily snatched her hand from Stephen’s loosened grasp. She immediately picked up her glass and pretended to be drinking from it, but the glint in Duncan’s eye told her that he wasn’t fooled.