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.’

CHAPTER THREE

THE restaurant in the glass office building, like everything else, was fairly spectacular. It was one of the invisible but very handy perks that came with working for Gabriel. It was open all day, served a staggering choice of first class food and was so heavily subsidised that loose change could buy a hefty enough breakfast to last the day.

Every so often Gabriel, when he wasn’t entertaining clients or being entertained by them, would emerge from his glorified sanctum and stroll down for lunch. He did it to touch base with his employees. Rose always smiled at that because touching base with his employees was a pretty ridiculous notion when it came to Gabriel Gessi. He chatted to them, invited their ideas, and they chatted back. But scratch the surface and it was easy to see the awe that controlled their replies. He wasn’t just rich and powerful but he looked the part and that in itself was enough to make most of his employees break out in a light nervous perspiration.

Right now, at two-thirty in the afternoon, the lunch time stampede had come and gone. Over by the windows were two small groups of people—three girls from the kitchens, who were having cups of coffee and doughnuts, and a couple of men who were talking animatedly over sheets with graphs and figures.

Aside from that, it was empty. Perfect conditions for Rose to sip from her mug of coffee and morosely mull over events of the night before.

He had asked her for her opinions and to start with she had had no trouble resisting the invitation. Four years of habit had come to her rescue, saving her from succumbing to the novelty of their situation and behaving in a way that would have been out of character. She had looked at him quizzically, lowered her eyes and paid a lot of attention to her cup of coffee.

He, on the other hand, had stared at her over the rim of his cup, in no particular hurry to go. Then, changing the subject, he had quizzed her about what sort of course she was interested in doing, what qualification would she achieve at the end of it, would she want a job supervising other people or working primarily on her own? Harmless questions that were just what an interested boss would ask, nothing to set her antennae quivering.

When he had asked her about her parents, what her father had done for a living, she had not flinched because the questions had been wrapped up in an intelligent observation about the influences of parents on their children.

‘Based on my own parents,’ he said, standing up and taking his cup to the sink, ‘I should have married years ago. In fact, I’m long overdue for the two point two kids and family dog.’ He grinned at her, a self-deprecatory grin that invited her to enter into light-hearted criticism of his rakish lifestyle.

‘I can’t picture you with two point two kids.’ Rose cupped her chin in her hands and stared up at him, noting the way his big, muscular frame dominated her small kitchen. Not in her wildest flights of imagination had she once thought that her letter of resignation, her bid for a life without him, would see her sitting in her kitchen joining him in a cup of coffee as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Talk about plans being derailed! ‘I can just about get my head around the dog.’

‘What kind of dog?’

‘A very big one.’

‘Because I’m six foot two?’

Well, of course, that comment invited her to look at him and for a few seconds her heart seemed to stop beating. Six foot two of pure blue-eyed, black-haired alpha male.

‘You’d better go,’ she said abruptly, standing up.

‘I will, in about fifteen minutes. I told Harry to go and fill the car up instead of just waiting and he won’t be back yet.’

‘Why did you do that?’ Rose said in dismay. Now that she was on her feet, she couldn’t decide whether to go across to the sink and risk an awkward situation with them both there, squashed side by side into an impossibly small space, or else ignominiously sit back down. In the end she clicked her tongue and turned on her heel, out to the sitting room cum room where everything was done, from television watching to out of hours work to reading the newspaper on a Sunday morning before she walked down to the bakery to buy her weekly treat of croissants.

‘Because,’ his voice came from behind her, ‘it beat the hell out of sitting in the car waiting for me in the dark.’

‘He could have turned the light on and read!’

‘Provided he remembered to come equipped with a book.’

Rose shot him a long-suffering look, which was water off a duck’s back, and sat down. ‘Harry always travels with a book.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I once asked him how he tolerated having to drive you places and then wait, sometimes for hours, until you finished whatever meeting you might have been in.’

‘You’ve been having long conversations with my chauffeur?’ His tone of voice implied that she had been hiding some dirty secret from him, something which he had only just unmasked, much to his horror.

‘Occasionally we walk to the bus stop together if we happen to be leaving at the same time. And there’s no need to look so staggered, Gabriel. People do have lives outside your corporation.’

‘I know that!’

‘Well, stop acting as though whatever happens outside your little world doesn’t exist.’

‘I don’t live in a little world,’ Gabriel grated.

‘Of course you do.’ She tidied up the criticism by tossing in a generality. ‘You’re bound to, really. Anyone in your position would. Running a corporation as huge as yours, having to dictate to other people most of the time, snapping your fingers and knowing that you’ll be obeyed. It’s not the real world.’

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed on her. ‘I’m a petty dictator?’

‘No, of course not! That’s not what I said at all!’

‘I give orders, I snap my fingers and expect obedience. I suppose the next step is to issue the royal command that all my subjects kneel when I walk by!’

‘I’m sorry if I offended you.’

‘You haven’t offended me,’ Gabriel said coolly. ‘You work for me and as my employee you are entitled to an opinion and I appreciate your opinion. I only wish you had had the guts to tell me a little sooner instead of scuttling around like a mouse, smiling and obeying and harbouring unpleasant resentments.’

Rose’s mouth fell open and she stared at him in horror. ‘I wasn’t harbouring resentments,’ she denied, her face turning a deeper shade of red.

‘No?’ Gabriel felt as though he had been struck a blow beneath the belt and he didn’t like the feeling. Underneath the guise of the man who worked hard and played hard, was a man of exceptional self-control. Right now he could feel his iron control shifting and it was a very unpleasant sensation. Especially considering that the woman was no more than his secretary. A valued member of his team, yes, but still a member of his team and nothing of any worth personally to him.

‘No…if I had any problems working for you…well, I would have told you…I wouldn’t have scuttled around like a mouse…’ That description hurt because she could see how he would have arrived at it. She came in, she did her job, she went home. Her own confusing emotional vulnerability as far as he was concerned had made her a more silent person than she was by nature, but how was he to know that? What he knew was a quiet, efficient woman who did her job but never said anything that might have expressed any feelings that were unrelated to work. A highly competent scuttling mouse. And, three months ago, a plump little mouse.

Not for the first time, Rose was besieged by images of all the women he had dated. In her head, they marched past in a long, beautiful procession. She had met them all, or at least most of them because he would often arrange for them to meet him at the office when he had finished work, only he rarely finished when he promised and so they would sit in her office, long legs crossed, their perfect faces blank with boredom as they stared around them or tried to make small talk. Blonde, brunette, red-haired—Gabriel showed no favouritism. His only criteria was that they were gorgeous and intellectually undemanding.

Sometimes Rose would spot an item of jewellery she had bought on his behalf. A diamond bracelet, a necklace, maybe a Hermes scarf, which always went down a treat because it was somehow a little more personal than an item of jewellery, or so they imagined, unaware that Gabriel would have had nothing to do with the choosing.

She looked at him now and saw herself through his eyes. The plump mouse scuttling quietly around, doing his bidding. Little wonder she had become his perfect secretary! And even less surprising that he had been staggered when she had returned from Australia clutching her letter of resignation and sporting a whole new image. He had turned on the charm and pulled out all the financial stops, but her decision to stay had nothing to do with either of those things.

She was a different woman now. She looked different and inside she had changed. She wasn’t going to scuttle any more because she had nothing to lose. She had made her mind up that her life was going down a different path and, if she happened to still be working for him, she was merely biding her time.

She liked the sound of that. Biding her time. It gave her a heady rush of courage.

‘I have no problem working for you, Gabriel, because I’m not afraid of you. I’ve worked alongside you long enough to know…’

‘How to handle me…?’

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