The Italian Boss's Secretary Mistress

Rose, accustomed to his brilliance, his impatience and his temper, which was seldom directed at her, was thrown off balance by his flirtatious charm, something which she had always assumed was abundant but reserved for the women he dated. She didn’t like it. It made her feel vulnerable and uneasy and she stoically hung on to her composure and managed to say, without any inflection whatsoever in her voice, ‘You think you do, Gabriel, but no one is indispensable, least of all a secretary.’ She sipped her wine and eyed him over the rim of her glass.

‘Don’t underestimate yourself.’

‘I’m not. But I’m not about to think that your working life will grind to a halt if I’m not around.’

‘Maybe not grind to a halt,’ Gabriel admitted. ‘But run considerably less smoothly. I’ve spent the past three months finding that out.’ He was amused to realise that she had never voiced her opinions to him about the women in his life. He also realised that, without using so many words, she had managed to imply distaste with how he conducted his private life. Belatedly it occurred to him that she had widely overstepped the mark with her smugness and she had got away with it. How did that follow when he prided himself on being a man who knew exactly where to draw his verbal boundaries? Healthy criticism on the work front was fine. In fact, to be encouraged! His personal life was, however, his own business and not up for discussion. He chose to disregard the little voice in his head telling him that he had solicited her opinion. It was not really fair now if he castigated her for having one because he didn’t like it.

She had moved on, though. Was defining the role of secretary and why it was a position relatively easy to fulfil. Sounding like a member of the Personnel department giving advice to a prospective interviewee.

Gabriel grunted non-commitally.

‘Basically,’ she concluded, ‘if I’m to be successful recruiting someone, then you need to tell me exactly what you’re looking for.’

‘Recruiting someone?’

‘For the days when I’m at college.’

‘How many days would that be?’

‘I…I’ll be able to tell you that by the end of the week and I can start recruiting in a few weeks’ time.’

‘Naturally, you will have to continue managing sensitive clients and anything that might be of a confidential nature.’ He signalled for the bill and contemplated the dispiriting prospect of a never-ending train of incompetent girls scuttling around, trying and failing to keep up with him. ‘The key quality I’m looking for is an ability to function without behaving like terrified little rabbits every time I speak.’

‘We’ve been through that,’ Rose said patiently. She glanced at her watch and realised that it was a lot later than she had imagined. And they still hadn’t touched upon all that work which apparently she needed to be filled in on. ‘We haven’t got down to discussing work,’ she pointed out.

‘And now you have to go? Or else you might turn into a pumpkin?’ He frowned and tapped in the pin number for his card. ‘I’ll drop you back to your house.’

‘No need. I live within walking distance.’

‘Nonsense. I would never let a woman walk back to her house at night.’

‘I do it every single day, Gabriel! Do you think I take taxis to and from work? The bus stops just down from here and I walk to my house quite safely, no matter how dark it is.’ She didn’t really know why she was bothering to protest because Gabriel always did what he wanted to do. Right now he wanted to play the gentleman and drop her back to her house.

‘You need a car,’ he said abruptly.

Rose stopped dead in her tracks and looked at him with her mouth open. ‘I need a what?’

‘A car. A company car. The fact that you haven’t got one has been an oversight on my part.’

‘You must be desperate to hang on to me,’ she said wryly, ‘if you’re now offering me a car…’

‘It’s not exactly unusual for a PA to have a company car.’ He held open the car door for her to slide in. ‘Where do you live?’

Rose gave his driver the directions. Today was proving to be a day of firsts for her and she was uneasily aware that a number of them didn’t sit well with her. This was the first time Gabriel had managed to crash through her carefully maintained barriers. No, they hadn’t shared confidences over a bottle of wine but he had seen her professional mask slip and that wasn’t good. It was also the first time he had flirted with her. Or at least spoken to her in that velvety, amused voice that she had only ever heard him use occasionally on the phone to one of his women. It was also the first time they had shared a meal together in a restaurant, just the two of them with no particular work agenda driving the occasion. None of these firsts did anything to soothe her frayed nerves at being back in his company after three months.

It was odd but it almost felt as if a door between them had opened. Over the years she had managed to cope with her feelings for him by being very careful to make sure that their roles were defined. He was her boss, a man she respected, got along well with but ultimately a man who gave her orders which she was obliged to follow. Over time, as they had grown into one another, his orders had stopped resembling orders but she had never deluded herself into thinking that she was anything to him but a very useful tool.

Some of the things she had been requested to do, as far as she was concerned, went beyond the bounds of secretarial duties. Presents for some of his girlfriends, flowers at the end of an affair, bookings for restaurants. She had done them without argument, however. She had never volunteered an opinion and he had never asked her for one. Tonight, some of those barriers had been eroded and Rose felt like a snail suddenly deprived of its protective shell.

Just thinking about it made her skin tingle and she was relieved when, after just a few minutes, the car pulled up outside her house. She pushed open her door, smiling a very hurried thank you, and was only aware that he had followed her up to her front door when he reached down to take the bundle of keys out of her fingers.

‘My mother always told me to see a lady to her front door. You’re trembling.’

‘It’s a little chilly out here.’ Rose watched his long fingers as he turned the key in the lock. ‘I think I must have become accustomed to the milder weather in Australia.’ He handed her back the keys and their fingers brushed. ‘Well—’ Rose planted herself in the doorway and stared at him in a no nonsense manner ‘—goodnight and thank you once more for the dinner. I’m sorry we didn’t get around to discussing work-related issues. Perhaps I could check your diary for the next week or so and slot in a convenient time for us to go through the problem areas…?’

‘I’ll leave a note about which files you need to check on your desk and you can have a look at them some time during the day, when you get a free moment.’ He placed one foot in the doorway but Rose didn’t notice. She was too busy frowning and trying to work out why he had invited her out if the work issue could have been solved by way of a note on her desk.

‘You could have told me that in the first place, Gabriel!’

‘True,’ he was quick to admit. ‘But I really wanted to discuss the matter of your temporary replacement with you.’

‘I won’t be starting my course until September, in all probability! There’s no urgency for the interviewing process to begin as yet! We’re only in May.’

‘The end of May,’ Gabriel said darkly. ‘Before you blink, we’re in July and you know how normal life stops in summer with people clearing off on holiday. After the fine examples of the possibilities on offer, I would say that the interviewing process needs to begin sooner rather than later.’

Rose released a frustrated sigh.

‘Have you a problem with that?’

‘No. Not at all. You pay my salary. How can I have a problem with that?’ She smiled to make a joke of it, but there was no answering humour in his eyes.

‘In other words, what I pay you buys your compliance even if you don’t agree with what I’m asking you to do.’

His remark was so close to what she had only been thinking herself minutes earlier that she blushed and looked down, to see where his foot was firmly planted.

‘I’m beginning to think that all this talk about wanting to move forward your career and being held back professionally by working for me is just so much nonsense…’He wedged his foot a little more firmly through the doorway and leaned against the door frame, arms folded, his expression one of calculating suspicion. ‘I smell mutiny in the ranks and experience has taught me that mutiny usually arises from personal grounds…’

‘You’re being over-imaginative, Gabriel…’ She licked her lips nervously and wondered where he was going with this one. ‘If I had…any personal problems with working for you, I would have told you…’

‘Would you?’ He pushed himself past her, taking her by surprise. ‘Money can buy loyalty, but loyalty that’s only skin-deep, and that’s no good to me.’ He turned to her and Rose was forced to marvel at the speed with which he had managed to get inside her house and was dwarfing its small confines.

‘Can we discuss this in the morning?’

‘Why? You know, it’s actually only a little before nine. You’ll recover from jet lag quicker if you try and maintain your normal waking times. And anyway, if there’s an underlying problem I want to hear about it.’

‘I told you…’ She hoped that she was the only one who could detect the desperation in her voice.

‘I would never have stopped you from saying what you thought…’ Gabriel said slowly, his eyes raking over her embarrassed face. ‘And I’m insulted that you would think me such an autocrat that you might be scared to voice your opinions in case I sacked you…or cut your salary…’

‘Of course I didn’t think that!’

Gabriel could spot a sincere answer when he heard one. Anyway, he was pretty sure she knew him better than to think that he might really try to control her with her pay cheque, but she had given him pause for thought. Starting with her letter of resignation and ending with remarks which, in a way he couldn’t put his finger on, carried the ghost of criticism in them. Something in the tone of her voice and the lowering of her eyes had pricked his curiosity. Curiosity was an untapped emotion for Gabriel. The frenetic pace of his work life got his adrenalin flowing but he had been in the game long enough for uncertainty and nerves to have disappeared. He ran his empire with the confident hand of a master horseman controlling the reins of his animal. And there was no woman who incited his curiosity. Interest, yes, lust, definitely, but curiosity, not at all.

So he was like a dog with a bone now, especially since he had long ago formed very preconceived notions of his efficient secretary, notions which were in the process of being dismantled.

‘Why don’t you make us both a cup of coffee…?’

‘No!’

‘Because underneath all the yes, sirs and no, sirs and three bags full, sirs you can’t really stand to be cooped up with me for any length of time?’

That was so far from the truth that Rose burst out laughing and after a while Gabriel grudgingly allowed his bunched muscles to relax.

‘Okay. Maybe a quick cup of coffee. I wouldn’t want to keep your driver waiting.’ She headed towards the kitchen, mentally adding another first to the stack already piling up. A first for Gabriel coming inside her house. She knew that he had gone outside to tell his driver that there would be a wait. She intended to make it a short one. By the time he came back, the coffee was made, black, no sugar, as he liked it.

Rose was sitting at her kitchen table and had placed his mug conveniently at the opposite end.

‘So, talk to me,’ Gabriel commanded, sitting down.

‘When do you want me to start interviewing for someone? Would next Monday do? Or sooner?’

‘Explain your remark about obeying me because of the money.’

‘I’m sorry I said that. I didn’t mean it.’

‘How long have you thought that way? Since you started working for me? In the last few months? Only since you got back from seeing your sister? When?’

Rose nearly groaned aloud. ‘It doesn’t matter, Gabriel.’

‘It does to me. Now tell me what it is that you have disagreed with? You can talk to me. You’ll find that I can be very sympathetic. I don’t want to lose you and if you’ve been harbouring any grudges about the way I run things, then now is the time to get it off your chest.’

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