Dating Her Boss

CHAPTER TWO

FOR a moment Max stood mesmerised by the smile. It did something to her mouth, something unexpectedly sexy so that for a moment he couldn’t quite take in what was happening, that she was sitting in front of his desk with a notebook poised ready for dictation.

She was genuine?

Still not quite believing it, Max crossed to the door and checked the hall. It was empty. ‘Harriet!’

His housekeeper appeared from the direction of the kitchen. ‘Yes, Max?’

‘Did Jilly Prescott arrive alone?’

‘Yes. Were you expecting someone else? You didn’t say—’

‘And no one else has turned up in the last few minutes—my sister, for instance?’

‘Amanda?’ she asked. ‘Why? Are you expecting her? Will she be staying for lunch?’

‘No, but—’ She was looking at him a little oddly and, realising that he wasn’t making much sense, he shook his head. ‘No, I’m not expecting anyone. Just bring in some coffee, will you?’ He turned to Jilly. ‘You would like some coffee, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes, please.’ She knew from experience that the chance of drinking it while it was hot was so small as to be incalculable, but her day had started long before dawn and even cold coffee would be welcome. She glanced at the ornate ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. It was just after eleven. She hoped her stomach wouldn’t rumble before she could eat the one remaining chocolate bar in her bag.

Max, returning to his office, noticed her suitcase, her jacket flung over the back of a chair. Genuine. Maybe. They would see.

He returned to his desk, propped his cane against it and lowered himself into his chair before picking up a sheaf of notes.

Across his desk, up close, Jilly realised that he was younger than she had originally thought. The greying temples, the pared-down bony features, had at first glance suggested he was nearing forty, but now she could see that he was younger than that—quite how much younger it was difficult to tell. Had he been ill? Or had it been an accident that had whittled the weight from him and left him walking with a cane? She didn’t have time to give the matter any thought before he began dictating.

Max began dictating slowly, but he realised after a few minutes that she was keeping up with him without any difficulty—actually appeared to be waiting for him. ‘Will you read that back, Jilly?’ he asked. He still wasn’t convinced of her probity and if this was some silly game his sister was playing with him he would prefer to know sooner, rather than later.

She read back everything he had dictated without hesitation, then said, ‘You can go faster if you like. I take a hundred and sixty words a minute.’

He stared at her for a moment. ‘Really?’

Jilly heard the disbelief in his voice. Didn’t he trust his own sister? ‘Honest,’ she said. And just to emphasise the point she slowly drew a cross over her heart.

Max swallowed, hard. In another woman that gesture would have been blatantly sexual, but he had already been so far off right about this girl that he didn’t know what to think. ‘Amazing,’ he muttered, and he wasn’t entirely certain whether it was her shorthand speed or the girl herself who had provoked the word. But there had to be a drawback. ‘Can you type?’ he asked, suddenly suspicious.

‘There wouldn’t be much point if I couldn’t,’ she replied simply. Her face was solemn but a pair of perplexed brown eyes were regarding him through those large spectacle frames. She was puzzled at his caution and why wouldn’t she be? ‘Would there?’ she pressed.

‘I suppose not,’ he said, disconcerted to discover that he wanted to apologise for doubting her. He rejected the idea out of hand—she still had to prove herself. Instead he continued dictating a complicated report, quite steadily at first, then faster, and finally at a speed that should have left her begging for mercy, that if he was honest with himself he intended should have her begging for mercy. She kept pace without apparent effort, her small hand flying over her notepad without the slightest hesitation even when he relayed long strings of calculations or foreign names, and he found himself going ever faster in an effort to have her call a halt. She didn’t.

‘That’s it for now,’ he said irritably. Which was ridiculous. He’d asked for someone efficient and apparently that was exactly what he’d got. The fact that she had the impudence to poke a little fun at him was something he could live with. At least she didn’t fidget with her hair; she seemed blissfully unaware that it was threatening to descend untidily about her ears. ‘How long will it take you to type that?’

‘That depends on the software installed on your computer.’ He told her what it was. ‘No problem, I’ve used that before.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I should be done by three.’

Now she was just being ridiculous. ‘I’d rather have it accurate than rushed,’ he said.

Jilly didn’t bother to argue. ‘Five past three, then,’ she said, taking off her spectacles and rising to her feet. She paused in the doorway and looked back at him. ‘I’ll use the extra five minutes to make a cup of tea. The coffee has gone cold.’ Max stared at her. Garland Girls didn’t make tea. But then Jilly Prescott clearly wasn’t a Garland Girl. Not by a country mile. Where on earth had his sister found her? ‘I’ll make one for you too, if you like,’ she offered when he didn’t move.

‘No,’ he began. Then, ‘No, thank you. That won’t be necessary. And if you ask Harriet, my housekeeper, she’ll make you whatever you want.’ Then as the clock on the mantelpiece began to chime the hour he continued, ‘In fact since it appears to be lunchtime she’ll make you a sandwich or something, too. You started late so you won’t mind working straight through, will you?’

‘Not at all,’ she said, and Max Fleming was disconcerted to discover that he was quite unable to tell whether she was simply being polite or whether she was being just the smallest bit ironic. ‘I did wonder what I’d do for lunch,’ she added. ‘Working through certainly solves that problem.’ Ironic. Definitely ironic.

She went through to her own office and Max followed her. ‘Where are you from, Jilly?’ Max asked, and immediately regretted his curiosity. He wasn’t in the least bit interested in where she had come from. She was just a temp for heaven’s sake. Here today, gone tomorrow—at least if the last two weeks were anything to judge by…

‘Can’t you tell?’ Her eyes sparkled as she looked back at him. Now she had removed her spectacles he could see that they were like the rest of her, just a little too large for her face, but quite unabashed by his scowl they were brimming with laughter, bringing his train of thought crashing to a halt. Hadn’t Amanda warned this girl that he was a bad-tempered ogre who had been going through temps faster than the average person went through a page-a-day calendar? ‘Ms Garland gave me the impression that she could cut my accent with a knife,’ she continued cheekily, ‘and serve it up in wedges with clotted cream.’

‘Amanda was exaggerating.’ Jilly’s accent was elusive, not something to be cut, but spooned like warm honey over toast… ‘But somewhere north of Watford, I’d guess,’ he continued rapidly, disconcerted at the direction his mind seemed to be taking.

That was very nearly a joke, Jilly thought. ‘Then you’d guess right. Home is somewhere no one has ever heard of, but it’s near enough to Newcastle as makes no difference. Which reminds me, would it be possible to use your telephone? I’ll pay for the call.’

Pay? She was offering to pay for a phone call? He was beginning to doubt his hearing. For the past two weeks Amanda’s Garland Girls, with their designer clothes and perfectly rounded vowels, had been treating his telephone as if it had been installed for their own personal convenience.

‘I’m supposed to be staying with my cousin but she doesn’t know I’ve arrived yet,’ she continued confidingly. Then, ‘At least, she might do—I did leave a message on her answering machine…’ She gave a little shrug as if suddenly aware that she had been running on.

‘But you’d like to be sure?’

‘Well, the thing is, I rang from the station first thing this morning. When I arrived. I mean, it was early. Really early. I thought she’d be there.’

‘And she wasn’t.’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps she was out.’

‘At that time in the morning?’

Innocent or what? he thought. Well, it wasn’t up to him to suggest what her cousin might have been up to. ‘Jogging, perhaps,’ he suggested drily.

‘It’s a possibility,’ she agreed, but not with any conviction. ‘Anyway, I thought it might be better to wait a while and call her at work. I would have called from a box, but Ms Garland said you were—’

‘Desperate?’ A delicate pink suffused her cheeks as he filled in the word that she was suddenly unwilling to repeat, a delightful blush that turned this rather bold young woman into something a whole lot more vulnerable. ‘I was,’ he found himself admitting. ‘I am.’ Then because, as the target of those large brown eyes, he felt more than a little vulnerable himself, he continued abruptly, ‘But you’d better call your cousin before you start. I don’t want your mind wandering while you’re typing that report.’ He turned to go, then paused. ‘And you’d better ring your family, if you have one. Let them know you’ve arrived safely.’ Good grief, he was beginning to sound like a mother hen. ‘They might be worrying,’ he added more sharply.

‘Might?’ Her eyes fanned into tiny creases at the corners as she finally laughed and a dimple momentarily appeared beneath her cheek. Appeared and then was gone so quickly that he had to restrain himself from reaching out to touch the spot to convince himself that he hadn’t imagined it… ‘My mother will be wearing a track in the carpet pacing up and down waiting to hear how the job worked out.’ Hoping it hadn’t.

‘Then you’d better ring her straight away…before the damage to the carpet is irreparable.’

‘Ah, well, you see, I can’t do that—’

‘Why not?’ He knew he would regret asking the question, but their conversation seemed to be taking on a life of its own.

‘I can’t phone her until I’ve spoken to Gemma. I promised if anything went wrong, if she couldn’t put me up, I’d go straight home.’ She gave a little shrug, little more than a lift of her shoulders. ‘It’s my first time away from home, you see, and she worries.’

He did see. His own mother had worried about him. Still did, probably, but these days she knew better than to voice her concerns. ‘Then let’s hope that your cousin had simply slipped out for a few minutes. If she’s away you’re in big trouble—’

‘Away? In January?’ Jilly was incredulous.

Max followed her glance to the window, to the overcast greyness of a winter day in London. ‘Unbelievable as it may seem, there are places where the sun is still shining.’

‘Expensive places.’

‘Not these days.’ He could see that she considered his idea of expensive and hers were unlikely to coincide. ‘There’s always skiing—’ The word was out before he could stop it. Max had known it was a mistake to get involved. It was always a mistake to get involved.

‘Gemma’s not the athletic type.’

‘Not everyone goes for the exercise,’ he snapped. Then, more gently, because it was hardly this girl’s fault that she’d reminded him of things he longed to forget. ‘Some people are more interested in après-ski.’

And Jilly’s head was suddenly filled with a travel-brochure image of glamorous girls and beefy blond ski instructors sipping glühwein around a roaring log fire in some snowbound mountain chalet. That was much more like Gemma’s idea of fun. ‘But if she’s away I’ll have nowhere to stay,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to go straight back home. I promised—’

‘Not before you’ve typed up that report, I hope—’

It had been an unforgivable thing to say—Max regretted the words before they were out of his mouth—but instead of throwing the notepad at him and telling him to type the damned thing himself, which was what any self-respecting Garland Girl would do, Jilly Prescott tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear and said, ‘No, no, of course not. I’ll get right onto it.’

Max stared after her for a moment. Was she being sarcastic? The question was redundant, of course she wasn’ t…This wasn’t one of Amanda’s usual hard-boiled temps. The girl had just arrived in London, was on her own, vulnerable. And that made him even more irritable. He didn’t need this. How dared Amanda send him a waif from somewhere no one had ever heard of?

He wasn’t interested in her problems. He didn’t want to know. And yet something propelled him after her, urging him to apologise.

But she was already sitting at the computer, her fingers moving swiftly over the keys, wasting no time in starting work. Not even to make her telephone call. He wanted to tell her to do that first, but her back was stiff with pride, as great a barrier to communication as a brick wall.

It wouldn’t have stopped him once, but it seemed that he had lost the gift of kindness, along with everything else…

‘Are you ready for your lunch now, Max?’

He turned to Harriet, waiting in the doorway, watching them both. ‘I’ve been ready for ten minutes,’ he replied coldly. Then, ‘You’d better organise something for Jilly as well.’ Jilly! How could anyone be formal with someone called Jilly? He should have stuck to Miss Prescott. ‘And show her around, make sure she knows where everything is.’

Jilly heard the inner door close and leaned back in her chair, easing her shoulders. She’d slept on the train—she could sleep anywhere—it was tension knotting her muscles, making her feel suddenly weepy. She sniffed, found a handkerchief and blew her nose. Weepy! How ridiculous. She never wept.

It was just that yesterday everything had seemed so simple. Too simple. If only her mother hadn’t made her promise. If only she hadn’t been stupid enough to believe that nothing could go wrong!

She blinked, straightened, tucked her hankie out of sight and forced a smile to her lips as Harriet reappeared with a tray, jumping to her feet to open the inner door for her.

‘Thank you, Miss Prescott.’

‘Oh, please, call me Jilly.’ Harriet nodded and reappeared a moment later. ‘I’ll show you where the cloakroom is, shall I? I expect you’d like to wash your hands before you have something to eat.’

‘I’m sorry to be such a bother. I’d go out but Mr Fleming is in a hurry for this—’

‘Max is always in a hurry,’ she said. ‘Always was. Some men never learn.’ Then, collecting herself, ‘It’s not a bit of trouble, I promise. What would you like?’

‘Oh, anything. What did Mr Fleming have?’ she said, trying to be helpful, make as little work as possible.

‘Smoked salmon. Will that suit you?’

Jilly blinked. Smoked salmon? She’d tried it once, on a cracker, at a retirement party for the solicitor she had worked for since college, and hadn’t been able to quite make up her mind whether she liked it or not. She could scarcely credit that anyone would put it in sandwiches for lunch. ‘Cheese and pickle will do just fine,’ she said firmly.

Harriet’s face creased into a warm smile. ‘I’ll see what I can do. The cloakroom’s this way. Come through to the kitchen when you’re ready—you’ll be more comfortable in there.’

The walls of the cloakroom were lined with creamy marble, there was a thick carpet on the floor, an antique gilded mirror and a pile of matching towels beside a sunken basin. It was a far cry from the lino and cracked mirror of the cloakroom in the office where she had been temping before Christmas. The kind of office she’d be going straight back to unless she got hold of Gemma soon.

Afterwards, when she had dried her hands on one of the soft towels, pinned her hair back into its combs and freshened her lipstick, she went in search of the kitchen.

‘Sit down, make yourself at home,’ Harriet invited.

‘I really should make a start on that report—’

‘Just because Max never leaves his desk doesn’t mean you have to follow his example. Besides, you can’t eat and type at the same time…’ she waved towards a long pine table in a breakfast annexe, inviting her to take a seat ‘…can you?’ Harriet was tall, elegant, her steely grey hair expensively cut; she was a long way from Jilly’s idea of a housekeeper. But then Jilly had never met a housekeeper before.

‘No, I suppose not. But I have to make a couple of phone calls. Mr Fleming said I could.’

‘If they’re personal, why don’t you use my phone? That way you can be sure he won’t disturb you.’ A hint of laughter as she led the way to a door tucked away in the corner of the kitchen suggested that she knew just how disturbing Max Fleming could be. The office was tiny, not much bigger than a cupboard, but there was a desk, a chair, a telephone; everything else was tucked away on shelves that lined the walls and suggested the room might once have been a pantry. ‘Help yourself.’