Secretary On Demand

She tentatively knocked at the door, which was opened by a middle-aged woman with iron grey hair and sharp eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ Shannon stammered. ‘Actually, I’m looking for Mr Lindley’s office. The girl at Reception—’

‘Should have called me to come and fetch you,’ the woman said, interrupting her nervous explanation. ‘I shall have to have a word with her. Step inside, Miss McKee. Allow me first of all to introduce myself. I’m Sheila Goddard. I don’t normally work for Mr Lindley, although it has to be said that he hasn’t found a suitable replacement for his previous secretary for…well, frankly, months, and I’ve spent quite a bit of my time covering. Most inconvenient.’ She gave Shannon a look that seemed to imply that this inconvenience was somehow her fault.

‘This will be your office. As you can see, Mr Lindley’s office is just beyond the inner door. Now, my dear, I must confess that we were all a little surprised when Mr Lindley informed us that he had found himself a permanent secretary…’

Not as surprised as I was to be offered the job, she thought. ‘I’m on one month’s probation,’ Shannon pointed out quickly, as she looked around the large outer office with its walnut desk and swivel chair and discreet company advertising pictures framed on the walls. Her optimism was fading fast in the face of all this sterile, hygienic space. No one around, no one to occasionally chat to. She might very well go mad within the month.

‘Naturally,’ Sheila said. ‘You may join the line of unsuitable candidates, which is why I did suggest to Mr Lindley that it might have been a bit rash to take you on full time rather than as a temporary.’

‘If you don’t mind me asking, why exactly has there been a long line of unsuitable candidates?’

‘Mr Lindley,’ Sheila said ominously, ‘is a demanding boss. Anything less than first rate never satisfies him.’ She knocked respectfully at the imposing door separating the two offices, giving Shannon ample time to accommodate the prospect of trying to work for a monster who would attack at the first sign of a typing error.

The monster, waiting for her behind his desk, was on the telephone when she entered and he carried on talking, his voice clipped, while Shannon looked all around her, taking in the even more sterile surroundings of his office, unbroken by any hint of personality. Not even a picture or two of his daughter in sight. When there was nothing else to look at without doing damage to her neck muscles, she finally rested her green eyes on him. As he spoke, he leaned back in the leather chair, nodding at whatever was being said, answering solely in monosyllables.

‘Right,’ he said, as soon as he had replaced the receiver. ‘You’re here.’

‘With my references,’ Shannon agreed. ‘But I must be honest, Mr Lindley, you were very kind to employ me but I don’t think this arrangement is going to work out.’ She pushed the references over to him and he began scanning them, then he sat back and looked at her.

‘Why not?’

‘Because this isn’t the sort of working environment I’m used to at all. I really don’t think I’ll be suitable for the position.’

‘Why don’t you let me be the one to decide? Would you like some coffee? Tea? While I explain what your specific duties will involve?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘You’re nervous.’ He sat back and looked at her with his hands loosely folded on his lap. ‘I’d never thought it of you, reds.’

‘I’m not nervous.’ Pointless, she thought, trying to tell him to use her full surname. ‘It’s just that…this is all a bit too formal for me… I wouldn’t want to waste your time.’

‘Very considerate of you,’ he said drily. ‘Your references are excellent. You’re computer literate, you’re willing to accept responsibilities… What makes you think you’d be wasting my time?’

‘Apparently you’ve run through quite a number of unsatisfactory secretaries. Well, either the recruitment agencies have all been failing to do their jobs, or else you’re a difficult man to work for.’

‘I set high standards, if that’s what you mean. Now, stop wittering about letting me down and let’s start getting down to business. When I’m finished going through one or two clients with you and explaining what we do here, you can trot off to Personnel and sign your contract of employment.’ He stood up, and glanced down at his watch, flicking back the cuff of his sleeve to expose dark hair gently curling at the strap.

‘I have meetings this afternoon, but I shall leave you to do the basics. Some letters, faxes, e-mails. You can fence incoming calls by taking messages and I’ll get back to them later. Sheila’s always down the corridor if you run into difficulties.’ He could see doubt stamped in her wary green eyes and he wondered, in passing, whether she realised exactly how appealing it made her.

‘Look, if you really don’t want to work for the company, I won’t force you to stay. I can’t force you to stay. The door’s there and you’re more than welcome to walk right through it and keep on walking until you get to an agency that has vacancies for interesting jobs in exciting, informal environments. Clearly you think that all this is just a little too stuffy for you. Perhaps you think that bosses should just lounge around all day in garish clothes with their feet on the desk, making as few demands as possible on their staff so as not to interrupt the enjoyment of it all. But,’ he said, ‘I can guarantee that your pay will be more than double what you were earning at that restaurant. And that’s excluding what you’ll personally be paid by me for anything you do involving my daughter.’

Shannon gave him a wry look to match his own. ‘I’ll give it a go. I’m as open to bribery as the next person.’ Their eyes tangled in perfect mutual and amused understanding before she looked away.

She preceded her new boss into her office and sat down at the desk. He watched as her skirt rode a few centimetres higher, exposing slim, pale thighs through her tights. She’d disposed of the coat and the peculiar jacket, revealing a blouse that fitted snugly over her small breasts.

‘Clients.’ Kane Lindley cleared his throat and frowned in concentration as she flicked on the computer and waited for him to pick up the sentence. ‘Accounts. Yes. Well, you’ll be expected to update accounts and everything has to be filed in alphabetical order.’ He leaned forward so that his forearm rested on the desk, almost brushing her bare skin.

‘A lot of business is conducted overseas, so it would be helpful if you knew the money markets. Not in any great detail, but it would give you some idea of what is likely to be profitable and what is not. Now the media group I’ve just taken over…’ He leant past her to flick back to the main menu so that he could begin running through details of the finances of the various companies under the one umbrella and as he did so she felt him brush against her breast. She drew away, a little shaken at the fleeting contact.

‘Generally speaking, you won’t be needed to accompany me to meetings.’ He moved away from the desk and chose instead to pull up a chair so that his eyes could remain safely fixed on the same level as hers. ‘However, you will need to check every e-mail I get when I’m not in the office and I get quite a number. In time, you should be able to deal with a good proportion of those.’

Shannon, turning to look at him, was a little disconcerted to find him quite so close to her. Close enough for her to distinguish the various shades of dark brown and black in his eyes and to breathe in the musky scent of male body, unimpeded by any colognes.

‘Now,’ he said finally, sitting back and pushing himself away from the desk, ‘any questions?’

Shannon swivelled her chair to face him. ‘About work?’

He looked at her wryly. ‘No. I thought we might just have a general discussion about world affairs.’

‘Don’t you get a little lonely stuck out in this office on your own?’

‘Lonely? Don’t I get a little lonely?’

‘Yes. You know…surely you don’t spend the entire day focused on work. You must need to chat now and again…’

‘Chat?’

‘To people? Maybe when you break off to have a cup of coffee?’

‘When I break off to have a cup of coffee, reds, I actually normally remain at my desk and more often than not I devote my attention to paperwork while I’m having it,’ he said crushingly, and she nodded.

‘Then how do you know what’s going on in your company? You know, if you don’t get around and hear the gossip on the ground floor?’

‘Hear the gossip?’

‘Well, you did ask me whether I had any questions,’ Shannon trailed off, when he continued to stare at her as though she were crazy. ‘As far as the actual work goes, I think I can handle it. I might be a bit slow to start with, of course. Until I find my feet.’

‘I shouldn’t think it’ll take you very long,’ he said. ‘I’ve told Linda in Personnel to expect you some time before lunch.’ With a swift, graceful movement, he stood up and eyed her blandly. ‘Right now I shall be busy with meetings, so I probably won’t see you until tomorrow. Linda will fill you in on all of this, but if you’re interested, there’s an office restaurant on the ground floor. I suspect that’s where all the chat and gossip occurs.’

‘Perhaps you should eat there more often in that case,’ Shannon said with a slow grin.

‘Actually,’ he threw at her over his shoulder, as he slipped on his jacket and adjusted his tie, ‘I do. Whenever I get the chance.’

He walked towards the door, then paused before turning to look at her. ‘I think it might be a good idea if you met Eleanor. Carrie’s been staying on late to accommodate me over the past two months, but now that you’re here we can work something out so that she can get back to her social life.’

‘I thought the babysitting arrangement was more on an…occasional basis,’ Shannon faltered. ‘And what about my social life?’

‘Oh.’ He walked slowly towards her, rubbing his chin with his hand as though startled at the concept of her having a social life. ‘I thought you had come to London to nurse a broken heart. Don’t you spend all your free time pining?’

Shannon flushed at his blatant and cheerful disregard for boundaries. ‘Actually, if you read any self-help book, you’ll discover that women with broken hearts immediately rush off to cultivate new and exciting social lives,’ she replied tartly. She wondered whether dinner dates with Sandy constituted a new and exciting social life. Having come to London, she had quickly realised that the novel taste of freedom from her brothers and sisters and extended family members also carried a downside. Namely, that there was no handy cushion to protect her from her nights spent on her own. She went out with Sandy and with some of the other staff who worked at Alfredo’s and was gradually building up a social life of sorts, but it was hardly humming.

‘Well,’ Kane conceded, ‘I normally return home by eight, so your exciting social life shouldn’t suffer too much.’

‘By eight? When do you ever get to see your daughter?’

‘I usually try and keep weekends free,’ he muttered, turning away as a dark flush spread up his neck. ‘Do you know your way around London?’ He bent over and scribbled his address on a piece of paper. ‘No, forget that. I’ll get my driver to come and collect you, say, Friday evening? Around seven-thirty? Eleanor usually stays up late on a Friday as there’s no school on a Saturday.’

‘I’m sure I can find my way to your house, Mr Lindley.’ She looked at the address and wondered how far it would be from an underground station. She wasn’t averse to walking but walking at night, freezing cold and potentially without any real clue as to where she was heading, wasn’t her idea of fun.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ He smiled briefly. ‘After all, you’re the one who will be doing me the service.’

‘What is she like?’ Shannon asked curiously, folding the piece of paper and stuffing it into her bag.

‘Small, blonde hair, blue eyes.’

‘Actually, I meant her personality.’

‘Oh, Eleanor is…very quiet.’ He frowned and seemed to be thinking of some other way he could find of describing her. ‘Doesn’t give any trouble at all.’

To Shannon, that hardly sounded like a great description of an eight-year-old child. I mean, she thought, if you can’t get into a spot of trouble when you’re eight, then when on earth can you? She had spent most of her formative years getting into trouble! When she’d left school at sixteen, she could remember the headmistress telling her mother that never in the history of the school had one parent paid so many visits.

‘Right,’ Shannon said in a subdued, reflective voice.

‘Don’t forget, if you run into anything you can’t handle, and I’m not around, Sheila will help you out. She knows as much about this business as I do, probably.’ He moved towards the door and stopped to say with a gravity in his voice that was only belied by the glint in his eye, ‘And don’t forget the office canteen. It’s a hotbed of gossip and intrigue. Let me know if you hear about any insurrections I should beware of.’

She could have sworn she heard a chuckle as Kane shut the door behind him and she was left with the computer, a stack of letters to type and the prospect of dinner en famille in four days’ time with a man who was reluctantly beginning to intrigue her even more than he had when she’d been serving him his coffee and bagels.

CHAPTER THREE

KANE LINDLEY’S house was as far removed from Shannon’s expectations as it was possible to be.

She’d expected something modern and austere, perhaps a penthouse suite in a renovated building with thick white carpets to drown out the noise of an eight-year-old child, whom she imagined wandering forlornly amid the luxury, searching for places to hide from a largely absent father.

But when the chauffeur-driven car turned into a pair of wrought-iron gates, the house confronting her was an ivy-clad Victorian house with neatly trimmed lawns. The outside lights revealed mature trees shading some swings and a slide.

She rang the doorbell, feeling her stomach muscles tense. Kane Lindley was proving to be a very good boss, so how was it that she still felt a little quiver of alarm every time she saw him? In fact, even when he was working in his office and out of sight, there was still a part of her that seemed tuned in to his presence, waiting for him to emerge. She assumed that it was all wrapped up in the usual nervousness of being new to a job.

She might have surmounted this initial nervousness if he’d been out of the office much, as he’d implied he would be at their first interview, but, in fact, he was in a great deal. Through the partially open door, she was always aware of his clipped voice as he conversed on the phone or else his steady silence as he worked through paperwork and on his computer. Ever so often he would call her in and dictate something, and then he would swivel his chair away from his desk and talk fluently and smoothly at her, frowning as he spoke, while his fingers lightly drummed his thigh. And he never failed to peer in at least twice a day just to see how she was progressing.

She couldn’t really see why he hadn’t been able to find a suitable secretary. It was hardly as if he was prone to dramatic mood swings or unpleasantly critical behaviour, and she could only think that his pace was maybe too fast for someone with too little experience. If nothing else, working at Alfredo’s and at the radio station had promoted a healthy ability to think quickly and react without confusion to abrupt changes of routine.

A rotund, middle-aged woman answered the door, introduced herself as Mrs Porter and informed Shannon, without preamble, that Kane was waiting for her in the sitting room.

‘And where’s Eleanor?’ Shannon asked, anxious to make sure that the object of this evening visit hadn’t done something unfortunate, like gone to bed. A cosy little dinner with only Kane Lindley for company, while his daughter innocently slumbered upstairs, wasn’t an appealing prospect. But Eleanor, she was told, was in the sitting room with her father and was, she was also told in a confidential whisper, eagerly looking forward to meeting Shannon.

‘If you ask me,’ Mrs Porter said, her voice sinking lower so that Shannon had to strain to hear what she was saying, ‘Mr Lindley should have remarried a long time ago. A child needs a mother figure. No stability, that’s her problem, poor little mite. Young Carrie is fine with her, but she really needs someone permanent. Not these women friends who seem to drop in one minute and out the next.’

Shannon nodded, loath to continue talking in this manner about someone else’s private life yet avidly curious to find out more about Kane. Women friends? He had women friends? Of course he had, she thought, wildly trying to imagine what this long line of inappropriate women friends was like. He always seemed so controlled that the idea of him flinging himself passionately at a woman, growing weak at the knees whenever she came into the room, was beyond the powers of even her imagination.

Fortunately, the temptation to elicit more information on this suddenly raunchy side of Kane Lindley was abruptly halted by Mrs Porter pushing open the door to the sitting room and then stepping aside so that Shannon could enter.

‘I’ll be off now, Mr Lindley, if that’s all right with you. The food will just need heating up, but the table’s all set.’

‘Heating up?’

‘I can help, Dad.’ There was a childish eagerness to Eleanor’s voice that made Shannon ache.

‘Eleanor, this is Shannon, my new secretary. You’re going to be seeing a bit of her when I’m not around.’

‘Hello.’ She smiled briefly, then turned to her father with a pleading face. ‘But, really, Dad, I can help. I know what to do. Honestly.’

‘Eleanor, darling, you’re far too young to be doing anything in the kitchen. Most domestic accidents originate in the kitchen, did you know that? There are knives, fire, pans of boiling water—’

‘She can do a bit, Mr Lindley,’ Shannon interrupted, growing impatient with his listing of danger points which made the average kitchen sound like a death trap. ‘When I was Eleanor’s age, I was already doing a few basic things.’ She sneaked a glance at Eleanor who was gaping at her with shy gratitude. ‘You just have to make sure that there’s supervision and—’

‘You may have been preparing three-course meals at the age of eight, but Eleanor didn’t have your sturdy upbringing.’ He turned to his daughter. ‘Shannon comes from a family of seven children.’

‘Seven? Wow!’ The revelation had turned her eyes into saucers. ‘How lucky! I wish…’ Her voice trailed off and her eyes flitted across to her father.

‘I’ll make sure I supervise her, Mr Lindley,’ Shannon said hurriedly, before the telling sentence could be completed. ‘I mean, Eleanor, don’t you do home economics at school? A bit of baking and stuff?’

‘Not really,’ Eleanor admitted, frowning.

‘There, you see! Even the school realises the limits of letting children loose with dangerous objects.’ His eyebrows rose with the satisfaction of someone who has proved a point, and Shannon flushed hotly.

‘Actually, Mr Lindley—’

‘Kane. It’s ridiculous for us to be on such formal terms. And I can see from the indignant expression on your face that I’m about to be subjected to a lecture on the importance of teaching young children how to play with fire.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of lecturing you on anything of the sort,’ Shannon informed him in a huffy voice, ‘but what I’m talking about here is a wooden spoon, a bowl and a bit of stirring perhaps. How many young children do you personally know who have fallen victim to a sharp cut from a wooden spoon? And how many serious domestic accidents have been caused from a bit of stirring?’

‘We do woodwork at school,’ Eleanor interrupted helpfully. ‘Don’t we, Dad? Do you remember that box I made for you a few months ago? The one with the lid that could open and close?’

‘Yes, of course I do.’ But Shannon could tell from the vague expression on his face that the last thing currently stored in his memory bank was a box with a lid that could open and close.

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