After Hours...

Where was she, anyway?

She’d only been going to make herself a hot drink. Surely she must have done that by now?

Getting up from his chair with a sigh of irritation, he walked through to the kitchen to find her. The last thing he needed was to have to chase his PA down. It was going to be a demanding day which required some intense concentration and he needed her to be on the ball and ready to knuckle down.

She was leaning against the table with her back to the door when he walked into the kitchen, her head cocked to one side as if she was fascinated by something on the other side of the room.

He frowned at her back, wondering what in the heck could be so absorbing, until she spoke in a hushed tone and he realised she was on the phone.

‘I don’t know whether I’ll be able to get away at lunchtime. I have to fetch my boss’s lunch and there’s a ton of other stuff I have to wade through. His systems are a mess. Unfortunately, Max isn’t the type you can ask for a favour either; he’s not exactly approachable. I could make it over for about six o’clock, though,’ she muttered into the phone.

The hairs rose on the back of his neck. She was making arrangements to see her friends on his time?

He cleared his throat loudly, acutely aware of the rough harshness of his tone in the quiet of the room.

Spinning around at the noise, Cara gave him a look of horror, plainly embarrassed to be caught out.

Definitely a personal call then.

Frustration rattled through him, heating his blood. How could he have been so gullible as to think it would be easy having her as an employee? Apparently she was going to be just as hard work to manage as all the other PAs he’d had.

‘Are you sure you took redundancy at your last place? Or did they let you go for taking liberties on the job?’ he said, unable to keep the angry disappointment out of his voice.

She swallowed hard and he found his gaze drawn to the long column of her throat, its smooth elegance distracting him for a second. Shaking off his momentary befuddlement, he snapped his gaze back to hers, annoyed with himself for losing concentration.

‘I do not expect behaviour like this from someone with six years of experience as a personal assistant. This isn’t the canteen where you waste time gossiping with your mates instead of doing the job you’re being paid to do. Things like this make you look stupid and amateurish.’

She nodded jerkily but didn’t say anything as her cheeks flushed with colour and a tight little frown appeared in the centre of her forehead.

Fighting a twist of unease, he took another step forwards and pointed a finger at her. ‘You do not take personal phone calls on my time. Is that understood? Otherwise, you and I are going to have a problem, and problems are the last thing I need right now. I took a chance on you because you came recommended by Poppy. Do not make a fool out of my friend. Or out of me.’

‘I’m sorry—it won’t ever happen again. I promise,’ she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

The look in her eyes disturbed him. It was such a change from her usual cheery countenance that it sat uncomfortably with him. In fact, to witness her reaction you’d have thought he’d just slapped her around the face, not given her a dressing-down.

‘See that it doesn’t,’ he concluded with a curt nod, an unnerving throb beginning to beat in his throat.

As he walked back into his office, he found he couldn’t wipe the haunted expression in her eyes from his mind, his pace faltering as he allowed himself to reflect fully on what had just happened.

Perhaps he’d been a bit too hard on her.

Running a hand over his tired eyes, he shook his head at himself. Who was he kidding—he’d definitely overreacted. For all he knew, it could have been a sick relative on the phone whom she needed to visit urgently.

The trouble was, he’d been so careful to keep her at arm’s length and not to let any of his own personal details slip he’d totally failed to ask her anything about herself.

And he was tired. So tired it was making him cranky.

Swivelling on the spot, he went back out of the room to find her, not entirely sure what he was going to say, but knowing he should probably smooth things over between them. He needed her on his side today.

Walking back towards the kitchen, he met her as she was coming out, a cup of tea in her hand.

Instead of the look of sheepish upset he’d expected to see, she gave him a bright smile.

‘I know you have a conference call in a couple of minutes, so if you can walk me through what I need to tackle today I’ll get straight on it,’ she said, her voice steady and true as if the past few minutes hadn’t happened.

He stared at her in surprise, unnerved by the one hundred and eighty degree turn in her demeanour.

Had he imagined the look in her eyes that had disturbed him so much?

No, it had definitely been there; he was sure of it.

Still, at least this showed she wasn’t one to hold grudges and let an atmosphere linger after being reprimanded. He appreciated that. He certainly couldn’t work with someone who struggled to maintain a professional front when something didn’t go their way.

But her level of nonchalance confused him, leaving him a little unsure of where they now stood with each other. Should he mention that he felt he’d been a bit hard on her? Or should he just leave it and sweep it under the carpet as she seemed keen to do?

What was the matter with him? This was ridiculous. He didn’t have time for semantics today.

Giving her a firm nod, he turned around and walked back towards the office. ‘Good, let’s get started then.’

* * *

Determined to keep her hand from shaking and not slop hot tea all over herself, Cara followed Max back into the office, ready to be given instructions for the day.

She knew she couldn’t afford to show any weakness right now.

Based on her experiences with Max so far, she was pretty damn sure if he thought she wasn’t up to the job he’d fire her on the spot and then she’d be left with absolutely nothing.

That was not going to happen to her today.

She needed this job, with its excellent wage and the prospect of a good reference from a well-respected businessman, to be able to stay here in London. All she had to do was keep her head down and stick it out here with him until she found another permanent position somewhere else. She had CVs out at a couple more places and with any luck another opportunity might present itself soon. Until then she’d just have to make sure she didn’t allow his blunt manner and sharp tongue to erode her delicate confidence any further.

The trouble was, she’d allowed herself to be lulled into a false sense of security on her first day here after Max’s compliment about her being a good ambassador for herself, only for him to pull the rug out from under her regrouping confidence later with his moods and quick temper.

The very last thing she needed was to work with another bully.

Not that she could really blame him for being angry in this instance. It must have looked really bad, her taking a personal phone call at the beginning of the working day. The really frustrating thing was that she’d never done anything like that before in her life. She was a rule follower to the core and very strict with herself about not surfing the Net or making personal calls on her employer’s time, even in a big office where those kinds of things could go unnoticed.

Putting her drink down carefully, she wheeled her chair nearer to Max’s desk and prepared to take notes, keeping her chin up and a benign smile fixed firmly on her face.

His own professional manner seemingly restored, Max outlined what he wanted her to do throughout the day, which she jotted down in her notebook. Once he appeared to be satisfied that he’d covered everything he leaned back in his chair and studied her, the intensity of his gaze making the hairs stand up on her arms.

‘Listen, Cara, I’m finishing early for the day today,’ he said, surprising her with the warmth in his voice. ‘I’m meeting a friend in town for an early dinner, so feel free to leave here at four o’clock.’

She blinked at him in shock before pulling herself together. ‘That would be great. Thank you.’

There was an uncomfortable pause, where he continued to look at her, his brows drawn together and his lips set in a firm line. He opened his mouth, as if he was about to tell her what was on his mind, but was rudely interrupted by the alarm going off on his phone signalling it was time for his conference call.

To her frustration, he snapped straight back into work mode, turning back to his computer and dialling a number on his phone, launching straight into his business spiel as soon as the person on the other end of the line picked up.

Despite her residual nerves, Cara still experienced the familiar little frisson of exhilaration that swept through her whenever she heard him do that. He’d set up a small desk for her next to his the day after he’d offered her the trial, which meant there was no getting away from the sound of his voice with its smooth, reassuring intonation.

He really was a very impressive businessman, even if he was a bit of a bear to work for.

Forcing her mind away from thinking about how uplifting it would be to have someone as passionate and dedicated as Max for a boyfriend—especially after the demeaning experience of her last relationship—she fired up her laptop and started in on the work he’d given her to take care of today.

After a few minutes, her thoughts drifted back to the fateful phone call she’d taken earlier, before their confrontation, and she felt a twitch of nerves in her stomach. It had been a friend calling to let her know about a possible flat coming onto the rental market—which was why she’d broken her rule and answered the call. If she managed to get there early enough she might just be able to snag it, which was now a real possibility thanks to Max’s sudden announcement about leaving work at four o’clock.

Come to think of it, she was a little surprised about him finishing early to meet a friend in town. He’d never done that before, always continuing to work as she packed up for the day and—she strongly suspected—on into the evening. That would certainly account for the dark circles under his eyes. And his irascible mood.

The man appeared to be a workaholic.

After an hour of working through some truly tedious data inputting, Cara got up to make them both a hot drink, aware that Max must be parched by now from having to talk almost continuously since he’d begun his call.

Returning with the drinks, she sat back down at her desk to see she had an email from the friend that had called her earlier about the flat for rent.

Hmm. That couldn’t be a good sign; she’d already mailed the details through earlier.

With a sinking feeling, she opened it up and scanned the text, her previously restored mood slipping away.

The flat had already been let.

An irrational impulse to cry gripped her and she got up quickly and made for the bathroom before the tears came, desperate to hide her despondency from Max.

Staring into the mirror, she attempted to talk herself down from her gloom. Her friend Sarah had offered to put her up on her sofa for a few days, so she at least had somewhere to stay in the interim. The only trouble was, her friend lived in a tiny place that she shared with her party animal boyfriend and he wouldn’t want her hanging around, playing gooseberry, for too long.

The mere idea of renting with strangers at the ripe old age of twenty-seven horrified her, so she was going to have to be prepared to lower her standards to be in with a chance of finding another one-bedroom flat that she could afford in central London.

That was okay; she could do that. Hopefully, something would come up soon and then she’d be able to make some positive changes and get fully back on her feet.

Surely it was time for things to start going her way now?

CHAPTER THREE

AFTER MAKING UP the excuse about seeing a friend on Friday night in order to let Cara leave early, Max decided that he might as well phone around to see if anyone was available for a pint after work and actually surprised himself by having an enjoyable night out with some friends that he hadn’t seen for a while.

He’d spent the rest of the weekend working, only breaking to eat his way through the entire contents of the fridge that Cara had stocked for him. Despite his initial disdain at her choices, he found he actually rather enjoyed trying the things she’d bought. They certainly beat the mediocre takeaways he’d been living on for the past few months.

Perhaps it was useful for him to have someone else around the house for a while, as Poppy had suggested the last time they’d seen each other. He’d baulked at her proposal that he should get back out on the dating scene though—he definitely wasn’t ready for that, and honestly couldn’t imagine ever being ready.

He and Jemima had been a couple since meeting at the beginning of their first year at university, their initial connection so immediate and intense they’d missed lectures for three days running to stay in bed together. They’d moved in with each other directly after graduating, making a home for themselves first in Manchester, then in London. After spending so much of his youth being moved from city to city, school to school, by his bohemian mother—until he finally put his foot down and forced her to send him to boarding school—it had been a huge relief to finally feel in control of his own life. To belong somewhere, with someone who wouldn’t ask him to give up the life and friends he’d painstakingly carved out for himself—just one more time.

Jemima had understood his need for stability and had put up with his aversion to change with sympathetic acceptance and generous bonhomie. His life had been comfortably settled and he’d been deeply content—until she’d died, leaving him marooned and devastated by grief.

The idea of finding someone he could love as much as Jem seemed ludicrous. No one could ever replace his wife and it wouldn’t be fair to let them try.

No, he would be fine on his own; he had his business and his friends and that would be enough for him.

Walking past the flower arrangement that Cara had left on the hall table on his way to sort through yesterday’s junk mail, he had a memory flash of the expression on her face when he’d bawled her out in the kitchen the other day.

His chest tightened uncomfortably at the memory.

He needed to stop beating himself up about that now. He’d made amends for what had happened, even if she hadn’t seemed entirely back to her happy, bright-eyed self again by the time she’d left on Friday afternoon. But at least he hadn’t needed to delve into the murky waters of how they were both feeling about what had happened. He’d had enough of that kind of thing after forcing himself through the interminable sessions with grief counsellors after Jemima’s death; he certainly didn’t need to put himself through that discomfort again for something as inconsequential as a spat with his employee.

Fortunately, Cara seemed as reluctant to talk about it all as he was.

Rubbing a hand over his face, he gave a snort of disbelief about where his thoughts had taken him. Again. Surely it wasn’t normal to be spending his weekend thinking about his PA.

Hmm.

His initial concerns about her being an unwanted distraction seemed to be coming to fruition, which was a worry. Still, there were only a few more weeks left of the promised trial period, then he’d be free of her. Until then he was going to have to keep his head in the game, otherwise the business was going to suffer. And that wasn’t something he was prepared to let happen.

* * *

Monday morning rushed around, bringing with it bright sunshine that flooded the house and warmed the still, cool air, lifting his spirits a little.

Max had just sat down at his desk with his first cup of coffee of the day when there was a ring on the doorbell.

Cara.

Swinging open the door to let her in, he was taken aback to see her looking as if she hadn’t slept a wink all night. There were dark circles around her puffy eyes and her skin was pallid and dull-looking. It seemed to pain her to even raise a smile for him.

Was she hung-over?

His earlier positivity vanished, to be replaced by a feeling of disquiet.

‘Did you have a good weekend?’ he asked as she walked into the house and hung up her coat.

She gave him a wan smile. ‘Not bad, thanks. It was certainly a busy one. I didn’t get much sleep.’

Hmm. So she had been out partying, by the sound of it.

Despite his concerns, Cara appeared to work hard all day and he only caught her yawning once whilst making them both a strong cup of coffee in the kitchen, mid-afternoon.

At the end of the day, she waved her usual cheery goodbye, though there was less enthusiasm in her smile than she normally displayed at knocking-off time.

To his horror, she turned up in the same state the following day.

And the next.

In fact, on Thursday, when he opened the door, he could have sworn he caught the smell of alcohol on her as she dashed past him into the house. She certainly looked as though she could have been up drinking all night and plainly hadn’t taken a shower that morning, her hair hanging greasy and limp in a severely pulled back ponytail.

Her work was beginning to suffer too, in increments. Each day he found he had to pick her up on more and more things she’d missed or got wrong, noticing that her once pristine fingernails were getting shorter and more ragged as time went on.

Clearly she was letting whatever was happening in her personal life get in the way of her work and that was unacceptable.

His previous feelings of magnanimity about having her around had all but vanished by Thursday afternoon and he was seriously considering having a word with her about her performance. The only reason he hadn’t done so already was because he’d been so busy with back-to-back conference calls this week and in deference to Poppy he’d decided to give Cara the benefit of the doubt and put her slip-ups down to a couple of off days.

But he decided that enough was enough when he found her with her head propped on her arms, fast asleep, on the kitchen table when she was supposed to be making them both a hot drink.

Resentment bubbled up from his gut as he watched her peaceful form gently rise and fall as she slumbered on, totally oblivious to his incensed presence behind her. He’d been feeling guilty all weekend about how he’d spoken to her on Friday and here she was, only a few days later, turning up unfit for work.

His concern that her presence here would cause more harm than good had just been ratified.

‘Wakey, wakey, Sleeping Beauty!’ he said loudly, feeling a swell of angry satisfaction as she leapt up from the table and spun around to look at him, her face pink and creased on one side where it had rested against her arm.

‘Oh! Whoa! Was I sleeping?’ she mumbled, blinking hard.

Crossing his arms, he gave her a hard stare. ‘Like a baby.’

She rubbed a hand across her eyes, smudging her make-up across her face. ‘I’m so sorry—I only put my head down to rest for a moment while I was waiting for the kettle to boil and I must have drifted off.’

‘Perhaps you should start going to bed at a more reasonable time then,’ he ground out, his hands starting to shake as adrenaline kicked its way through his veins. ‘I didn’t hire you as a charity case, Cara. For the money I’m paying, I expected much more from you. You had me convinced you were up to the job in the first couple of days, but it’s become clear over the last few that you’re not.’ He took a breath as he made peace with what he was about to say. ‘I’m going to have to let you go. I can’t carry someone who’s going to get drunk every night and turn up unfit to work.’

Her eyes were wide now and she was mouthing at him as if her response had got stuck in her throat.

Shaking off the stab of conscience that had begun to poke him in the back, he pointed a finger at her. ‘And you can hold the “It’ll never happen again” routine,’ he bit out. ‘I’m not an idiot, though I feel like one for letting you take me in like this.’

To his surprise, instead of the tears he was readying himself for, her expression morphed into one of acute fury and she raised her own shaking finger back at him.

‘I do not get drunk every night. For your information, I’m homeless at the moment and sleeping on a friend’s couch, which doesn’t work well for her insomniac boyfriend, who likes to party and play computer games late into the night and who came home drunk and spilled an entire can of beer over me while I was trying to sleep and who then hogged the bathroom this morning so I couldn’t get in there for a shower.’

Her face had grown redder and redder throughout this speech and all he could do was stand there and stare at her, paralysed by surprise as she jabbed her finger at him with rage flashing in her eyes.

‘I’ve worked my butt off for you, taking your irascible moods on the chin and getting on with it, but I’m not going to let you treat me like some nonentity waster. I’m a real person with real feelings, Max. I tried to make this work—you have no idea how hard I’ve been trying—but I guess this is just life’s way of telling me that I’m done here in London.’ She threw up her hands and took a deep shaky breath. ‘After all the work I put into building myself a career here that I was so proud of—’

Taking in the look of utter frustration on her face, he felt his anger begin to drain away, only to be replaced with an uncomfortable twist of shame.

She was right, of course—he had been really unfriendly and probably very difficult to work with, and she was clearly dealing with some testing personal circumstances, which he’d made sure to blithely ignore.

He frowned and sighed heavily, torn about what to do next. While he could do without any extra problems at the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to turn her away now he knew what she was dealing with. Because, despite it all, he admired her for standing up for herself.

* * *

Cara willed her heart to stop pounding like a pneumatic drill as she waited to see what Max would say next.

Had she really just shouted at him like that?

It was so unlike her to let her anger get the better of her, but something inside her had snapped at the unfairness of it all and she hadn’t been able to hold back.

After spending the past few days using every ounce of energy keeping up the fake smile and pretending she could cope with the punishing days with Max on so little sleep, she’d hit a wall.

Hard.

The mix of panic, frustration and chronic tiredness had released something inside her and in those moments after she’d let the words fly she had the strangest sensation of the ground shifting under her feet. She was painfully aware that she’d probably just thrown away any hope of keeping this job, but at the same time she was immensely proud of herself for not allowing him to dismiss her like that. As if she was worth nothing.

Because she wasn’t.

She deserved to be treated with more respect and she’d learnt by now that she wasn’t going to get that from Max by meekly taking the insults he so callously dished out.

At her last place of work, in a fug of naïve disbelief, she’d allowed those witches to strip her of her pride, but there was no way she was letting Max do that to her, too.

No matter what it cost her.

She could get another job—and she would, eventually—but she’d never be able to respect herself again if she didn’t stand up to him now.

Her heart raced as she watched a range of expressions run across Max’s face. The fact that he hadn’t immediately repeated his dismissal gave her hope that there might be a slim chance he’d reverse his decision to fire her.