Tessa sipped her coffee, which was surprisingly aromatic. ‘I worked for a firm of accountants. Not one of the top three, but one of the bigger ones, doing all the usual stuff. I’m fully computer literate and can handle pretty much anything from spreadsheets to invoicing.’ Silence followed that, interrupted only by his eating. ‘I’ve also arranged training courses, overseen meetings, in short done everything a PA is trained to do.’

Curtis washed down the last of his breakfast with a generous mouthful of coffee, then sat back in his chair and looked at her assessingly.

‘And you enjoyed it, did you?’

‘Well, yes, of course. I was there for a number of years—’

‘Why the change of job, in that case?’

Gone was the light-hearted, unconventional man who had confronted her at eight-thirty that morning. In its place was someone shrewd and forthright and very focused.

‘It wasn’t going anywhere.’ Tessa flinched away from that disconcerting blue gaze. ‘I felt that I needed to expand my horizons and, in a company like that, it’s only possible if you’re one of the professionals.’

‘But you liked working there, aside from the obvious limitations, am I right?’ He watched as she nodded and could hear her wondering where this was going. ‘You liked the order, the environment, the routine.’

‘Those things are very important, I think, in the successful running of a company,’ Tessa said defensively.

Order. Routine. Yes, she did like those things. They formed the perimeter of her life and always had. How else would she have been able to cope with bringing up her unruly ten-year-old sister when she had only been going on eighteen herself? In fact, compared to Lucy, or maybe because of her, she, Tessa, had always had her head firmly screwed on. Her parents had always praised her for that. Lucy might be the beauty with the ebullience, but Tessa was the responsible one, the one on whom they relied. The one on whom they had still been relying when their car had swerved into a tree on a rainy night back home. Tessa had mourned and grieved and picked up the pieces the best she could and, yes, had fallen back on order and routine to help her through.

She blinked away the sudden intrusion of her past and, when she looked at him, she found him staring at her, his bright blue eyes narrowed on her face.

‘Don’t you agree with me?’ The way he looked at her made her feel hot and bothered, even though he didn’t seem to be looking at her in a critical way. Perhaps it was the level of containment, at odds with the aggressively confident and outgoing exterior. Here was a man, she suspected, who did precisely as he liked and yet remained a closed book. It was nerve-racking. ‘I mean, you run a successful company. Surely you don’t just jump in a haphazard manner from one day to the next, hoping for the best and keeping your fingers crossed?’

Curtis threw back his head and laughed. ‘No. Not quite. That approach doesn’t often work, although it sounds as though it could be quite a lot of fun.’

Tessa shuddered. Fun? Never knowing from one minute to the next what life was going to throw at you? Not a chance.

‘You don’t agree? Well, never mind. So you’ve worked in your last job for…how many years?’

‘Nine, give or take a few months,’ she said uncomfortably.

Curtis gave a low whistle under his breath.

‘And you are…? Age…?’

‘Twenty-eight.’

‘At work at nineteen and then staying put with the same company…’

‘Which should tell you how experienced I am.’ Why did she have the sinking feeling that this was the interview that should have been conducted from the start? ‘I’m sorry. I thought I had the job. I thought your mother was in a position to offer it to me.’ She could feel herself perspiring under her armpits and she wished she had removed her jacket when she had first sat down, just as he had done with his overcoat. He looked as comfortable as a cat on a feather quilt while she felt rattled, uneasy and hot.

‘Oh, of course she was.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a family firm. I run it completely, take full responsibility for all profits and losses, but my brother and my mother are naturally still interested in what’s going on, and occasionally my mother will offer her input. In the matter of my hiring someone to work for me, she insisted, and I expect she told you why.’

‘She mentioned that some of your secretaries in the past had been a bit…unsuitable.’

‘Except I don’t imagine she was quite so restrained in her description.’

Tessa frowned and tucked her hair neatly behind her ears. She had fine, slippery, very smooth shoulder-length auburn hair that had a tendency to slide forward and brush her face if she wasn’t careful about tying it back. Today, on Lucy’s advice, she had decided to wear it loose so that she wouldn’t look like a schoolmarm on her first day out. Now, she was regretting the impulse because for some reason she felt as though she needed the protection of her normally very restrained look.

‘I’ll bet she referred to them as bimbos,’ Curtis added helpfully as Tessa was struggling to come up with a diplomatic way of paraphrasing what had been said to her.

‘The thing is…’ He leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. He had pushed up the sleeves of his jumper and she noticed that he had very strong forearms, dusted with black hair. He, too, wore a simple watch although his looked crashingly expensive, unlike hers. ‘Bimbos suited me. How can I explain this?’

Tessa’s heart went into freefall at that rhetorical question.

‘I don’t work in an environment that’s anything like the one you have spent the last nine years, give or take a month or so, enjoying. The world of computers and computer software is far more about creativity and vibrancy and foresight than the world of accountants. The bimbos might have been a little lax when it came to typing and shorthand but they knew how to work around me.’

‘Your mother said the last one was only there for a matter of six weeks.’

‘Ah. Fifi did have a spot of bother now and again with some of the basics…’

‘Fifi?’ Two spots of angry colour blazed on her cheeks and she leaned forward into him, clutching the mug with both her hands. ‘Are you telling me that I’m too dull to work for you because I’m good at what I do and don’t fill all the physical attributes you think are necessary to a good secretary?’

‘I’m telling you that what I don’t want is someone addicted to schedules who is incapable of going with the flow. That would be unfair on me and even more unfair on you. Obviously, I would give you healthy compensation for the inconvenience caused.’

‘Inconvenience?’ Calm and control flew out of the window at the speed of light. Tessa inhaled deeply in an attempt to retrieve some of it. ‘I have thrown in a perfectly good job in order to take up this one. I simply cannot afford to be tossed out onto the streets like a…a beggar gatecrashing a private party to scour the employment agencies looking for something else!’

‘A beggar gatecrashing a private party…?’ Curtis sat back and gave her his full attention. The peak breakfast-hour rush was over and the café was now relatively quiet, with only one other table occupied and stragglers coming in for their daily tea and bacon butties.

‘This isn’t funny!’

‘No, it’s not. And, like I said, you won’t walk away empty-handed. A highly qualified girl like you should have no difficulty finding another position in a company that would suit your talents a lot more.’

‘And how do you know what would suit my talents when you aren’t even prepared to give me a chance?’ The horrendous unfairness of it sent a streak of molten fire racing through her. ‘I have bills to settle, Mr Diaz! Food to buy, rent to pay and a sister to finish supporting!’

‘You support your sister?’

‘At art college. She has one more year there.’

Curtis sighed and made his mind up. Three months’ probation. He owed it to his mother, after all, and if the girl didn’t work out, then at least he had given it a go. He would give her vital but background jobs to do and would just have to make sure that she didn’t compromise the vibrancy of his company, which had gone some way to catapulting it from obscure newcomer to innovative front runner.

‘Okay. Three months’ probation, then we can take it from there…’

Tessa breathed a sigh of relief. Three months would give her a bit of time to look for something else and the pay was so fabulous that she would be able to put aside a healthy amount of money in that space of time. Because the bottom line was that the man was right. She needed to work for someone organised, someone more grounded, someone less flamboyant who didn’t make her stammer like a schoolgirl every time he fixed those vivid blue eyes on her. And, whatever his mother had said, he needed someone to look good and to slot in. He needed another Fifi.

CHAPTER TWO

‘OKAY! Where the hell have you put that file?’

Curtis stormed out of his office and proceeded to circle her desk until he was standing squarely in front of her, and, as if that weren’t enough, he then leaned forward, planting both hands on her desk until Tessa was reluctantly forced to acknowledge him.

The past two weeks had been a learning curve. Curtis Diaz was brilliant, forceful, outspoken, alarming and utterly unpredictable. He obeyed none of the rules most bosses observed. The first in-house meeting she had gone to had been an experience that had left her feeling dazed for hours afterwards. Ideas had bounced around the room like bullets, voices had been raised and anything suggested that had failed to take into account probable loopholes had been loudly shouted down without any attempt made to soothe nerves or compromise.

Interestingly, none of the staff had seemed disconcerted by their boss’s unconventional approach to company management.

‘Well?’ Curtis roared. ‘Have you gone deaf? Is there life in there?’

‘There’s no need to shout,’ Tessa said quietly, but she was adjusting fast to his displays of temper. Rule one, she had learned, was not to automatically cringe back. To start with, she had wondered how his Fifis had coped with his overpowering personality. Then it occurred to her that he had probably never raised his voice in their presence. They were there for his visual satisfaction and, as she had discovered, most of the intricate work had been done by one of the other secretaries out of loyalty to their charismatic leader. The various strings of Fifis had filed, brought cups of coffee and brightened up his office. She, on the other hand, not having the glamour looks to fall back on, was treated like everyone else.

‘I am not shouting,’ he growled now, thrusting his dark face further forward. ‘I’m asking a perfectly reasonable question.’

‘Oh, right. Well, thanks for pointing that out. My mistake.’ Tessa said that with such understated calm that he made an unintelligible sound under his breath and drew back.

‘I gave the file to Richard yesterday before I left. He wanted to go over some of the costings again.’

‘Well, you’d better go and fetch it.’ He prowled off to stand by the window, hands stuffed into his pockets.

‘Anything else while I’m there?’ Tessa stood up and looked at him. She might be getting used to the way he operated, but she doubted in the three-month target she had set herself that she would ever become used to the way he looked. He was quite simply overwhelming. When he banged around the office or called her in so that he could dictate something to her in that rapid-fire manner of his, she was fine, but every time he focused his attention fully on her, as he was doing now, she could feel every nerve in her body begin to quiver with clammy, restless awareness.

‘No.’ Blue eyes did a frowning, absent-minded inspection of her and returned to her face, which had pinkened. ‘Just get the file and come into my office with it. There are one or two things I want to discuss with you. Oh, you might as well grab us both a cup of coffee while you’re about it, even though you’re not much use on the coffee-making front.’ That little jab seemed to do the trick of snapping him out of his mood because he grinned at her. ‘Now, I bet you’re going to tell me that a highly qualified PA isn’t responsible for making decent coffee for her boss.’

Tessa took a deep breath and counted to ten. He didn’t often tease her and, when he did, it always sent a tingle of unwanted emotion racing through her. The only way she knew how to handle that was to be as bland and literal as possible, so she gave him a perplexed look as though considering his criticism fully at face value.

‘You haven’t complained about my coffee-making skills before.’

‘Too weak. Weak coffee is for weak men.’

This time her finely arched eyebrows flew up in an expression of amused disbelief.

‘Oh, really? I never realised that before.’

‘Didn’t think so. Aren’t you glad that you’re learning such amazing things every day, thanks to me?’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ she murmured, looking down and sliding away from her desk. ‘I really don’t know how I survived in my last job before.’

She could almost hear him grinning as she swept out of the room and headed to Richard’s office.

Three days after she had started, his mother had telephoned her at the office to find out how she was enjoying working for her son.

‘It’s a unique experience,’ Tessa had confided truthfully. ‘I’ve never worked for anyone like your son before.’

‘I hope you’re managing to keep him in order,’ Mrs Diaz had said. ‘He can be a little intimidating to the uninitiated. Runs rings around people.’

‘Well, he doesn’t intimidate me,’ she had replied without pausing for breath.

Well, he did, though not in the way his mother had implied. She was confident in her abilities to do her job to the highest standard, thereby giving him no chance to slam into her for inefficiency, but on the personal level it was a different question altogether. He had a certain magnetism that made her quail inside and it was a source of abundant relief to her that she could school her expressions so that that particular weakness was never exposed.

He was waiting for her in his office when she returned ten minutes later with the file and a cup of coffee that was so strong that she could almost have stood the teaspoon upright in it.

He had pushed his chair back and pulled out the bottom drawer of the desk, which he was using as an impromptu footrest.

‘Pull up a chair,’ he said, ‘and close the door behind you.’

‘Close the door?’

‘That’s right. No need to repeat everything I say parrot-style.’

Tessa didn’t say anything. She shut his door, handed him the file and then sat down with her notepad on her lap and her hand poised to take down whatever he was about to dictate.

‘So,’ he began, ‘how are you enjoying it here?’

Tessa looked up at him in surprise. ‘Fine, thank you.’

‘Fine. Hmm.’ What he had intended to discuss, amongst other things, were the costings of extending IT operations somewhere in the Far East. She might not, he had realised, be the eye candy he had previously employed, but she hadn’t been kidding when she had told him that she was good at what she did. Not only were his thoughts channelled into expert documentation, but she could involve herself in more complex debates, which he had discovered was quite a useful talent.

Her persona, though, was a more difficult nut to crack. She greeted everything he said with the same unshakeable composure, which was beginning to prick his curiosity. His method of management was an open-door policy, whereby all his employees were free to voice whatever was on their minds, and they did. Moreover, he had become accustomed to a fast turnover of secretaries who wore their feelings on their sleeves. He liked the people who worked for him to be three-dimensional; he enjoyed the fact that he knew about their personal lives as well as their professional ones. It made for a tightly knit team of people who were secure enough in their abilities to take criticism and felt valued enough to dish it out should they see fit.

Tessa, thrown into this volatile, verbal bunch, was an enigma and it was beginning to bother him.

‘I’m concerned that you might be finding the pace of this industry a little too swift for you.’

‘Would you mind explaining that?’ She looked at him with unreadable brown eyes.

Curtis watched her, irritated by the fact that he couldn’t get underneath that smooth face of hers to the workings of her mind. He began to tap his propelling pencil softly on the protective leather mat in front of his computer.

‘I feel I’m keeping up with the pace of work here,’ she interjected, trying and failing to think back of any time over the past fortnight when she had been unable to cope with the lightning speed of his thoughts.

‘Oh, I don’t deny that.’

‘What, then?’

‘Being successful at a job is only partly to do with an ability to cope with the workload. Coping doesn’t necessarily equate to happiness and happiness goes hand in hand with motivation.’

‘There’s no need for you to be concerned with my happiness,’ Tessa told him. ‘If I was unhappy, I would quit.’

Having not meant to bring this topic up at all, Curtis now found himself uncomfortably aware that he wanted to prolong it until she said something personal rather than simply showing him the same face of complete composure that she had shown ever since she had first started.

‘Why? Have other people been complaining about me?’

‘Oh, no. On the contrary. I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that it was high time I hired someone a little more down-to-earth than my usual brand of secretary.’

What woman in her right mind would like being described as down-to-earth? Tessa wondered. Especially when the description came from someone who looked the way this man did? Today, in deference to a board meeting that had been held with some particularly crusty clients, he had toned his dress code down a notch. Even so, the pink-and-white-striped shirt failed to give the impression of a conservative traditionalist, especially as it was twinned with an outrageously patterned, very slender tie, the likes of which she had personally never seen before, leading her to assume that it must be handmade.

‘But you don’t agree.’ The criticism, packaged up like a compliment, hurt more than she liked.

‘My theory is that for an employee to really enjoy his or her job, they’ve got to feel as though they fit in.’ He wondered why he was labouring this point and whether it was so important to get to the bottom of her when she was doing her job perfectly well. Better than well, in actual fact.

There was no answer to that. She spoke to everybody, sometimes she even went to lunch with a couple of them, although the workload was so intense that she was happy to eat a sandwich at her desk, a half-hour break before she carried on with what she was doing.

‘We’re like a family here,’ he broke into her thoughts, his voice piously ruminative, ‘and, call me old-fashioned, but I like to know what happens in my employees’ lives. It makes them feel wanted and it’s very important to me that they feel wanted.’ He looked at her from under his long, dark lashes and noticed the very slight shift in her position.

‘I don’t think anyone could call you old-fashioned,’ Tessa said, dodging the net he was trying to throw around her.

‘No? Why would that be, do you think?’

‘Because…because you really don’t…you’re quite unconventional compared to the other people I’ve worked for.’ That was the understatement of the year, she thought. He was like a peacock amongst sparrows compared to her previous employers, for she had circulated within the firm in which she had worked on a fairly regular basis over the years.

‘Hence my unconventional approach to my employees…’

‘And you don’t mind if they have an unconventional approach to you in return?’ Tessa felt quite proud of this neat sleight of hand that had managed to toss the question right back at him.

‘Not in the slightest. My personal life is an open book.’

‘I’m…I don’t believe in bringing my private life to work,’ Tessa said, staring down at her fingers. She wondered what he would make of her private life. It was an open book as well, except hers had very little writing in it, at least on the men front, which she was now sure was what was niggling him. ‘Perhaps we could discuss these costings?’ she prompted tentatively. ‘I really need to leave on time tonight and it’s almost five-thirty.’

That sparked his curiosity again. What exactly did she get up to when she left this office? Nothing that relied on her leaving her work promptly, he knew, because over the past two weeks her hours had been anything but regular and not once had she complained.

‘Why’s that?’ he asked idly. ‘Hot date?’

Tessa flushed. She could feel herself reddening and it made her more defensive than usual. ‘Actually, tonight’s hot date is taking place in the supermarket and involves cooking spaghetti Bolognese for four of my friends from my last job as well as Lucy and two of her friends.’

‘Lucy?’

‘My sister.’ Blonde, blue-eyed and beautiful. Just the sort of woman that Curtis Diaz would make a beeline for. If she could have yanked back her words, she would have.

‘Oh, the one you’re putting through college. By the way, how is it that you’re responsible for paying for her education?’

‘That’s just the way it is and it has been that way since I was a teenager.’ She shrugged, dismissing his interest and looking down at the redundant pad sitting on her lap.

‘Must be a burden on your finances,’ he remarked thoughtfully. ‘Is that why you took this job? Because of the salary?’ His thoughts were already moving along, though, playing with other possibilities and enjoying the probing process while being fully aware that he was prying into areas of her life in which he was unwanted.

‘Amongst other things.’

‘Oh, sure, job satisfaction.’ He linked his fingers behind his head and surveyed her with open curiosity. ‘Of course, more money would be reason enough. After all, there’s only so much of those free pleasures you can have, especially in winter when it’s freezing cold outside. Walks in the park just aren’t quite the same, I find… Oh, I forgot. All your money’s going to help your little sister through college. You should tell her to take on some evening work so she can put herself through.’

‘Lucy isn’t into evening work,’ Tessa said without thinking. She could have kicked herself. She could almost hear his ears pricking up at that admission. The truth was that she had mentioned evening work to Lucy and had hit a brick wall. Her sister liked to party. The small legacy from their parents, which had been shared between them, had been put into storage, on the advice of their very shrewd solicitor who had foreseen a time when it might be needed to buy property. Tessa had had no difficulty in concurring with this as far as her half went. Lucy, after much nagging when she had hit her landmark eighteenth birthday, had agreed to have a small allowance paid into her bank account every month to fund her lifestyle. Tessa should have stood firm, but as always she had caved in. Most people did when faced with Lucy’s optimistic, winning smile.

‘Not into evening work? You mean she’s happy for you to pay for her so that she can enjoy herself?’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘Tut-tut. There’s nothing worse than a martyr.’

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