Taken by the Boss: His Very Personal Assistant / In the Banker's Bed / The Takeover Bid

But even so, she was tempted. What would it be like to actually go out for the evening with Marcus? To take her time getting ready for the evening, to be collected by Marcus and swept off to an exclusive restaurant for a meal, possibly even a club later.

She had no doubts that he would prove an interesting and charming companion. Or that she would absolutely love to spend the evening with him. What didn’t make any sense was why he was asking her in the first place!

Unless it was just as he had said: he had to eat, she had to eat—and why not eat together?

‘If it takes you this long to decide, maybe you should just forget I asked!’

‘Maybe we should,’ Kit agreed stiffly. ‘I was thinking of going to see my parents,’ she added lightly as she realised how rude she must have sounded.

‘Really?’ He gave her an interested look. ‘Do they live in London?’

‘No. Cornwall,’ she replied awkwardly as she realised she was being rude again. ‘I thought I would go down by train later this afternoon.’

‘That’s quite a way.’ Marcus nodded. ‘I could drive you there, if you would like?’

‘Why on earth would you want to—? No,’ she amended hastily, not even wanting to give him that particular opening. He was far too curious about her private life already, without trying to wheedle his way into meeting her parents; she could hardly accept such an offer from him without inviting him to stay the weekend too. Something she had absolutely no intention of doing! ‘It’s much quicker by train,’ she dismissed, deliberately turning away to look out of the side window.

‘So, no dinner this evening? Either in London or Cornwall,’ he persisted.

‘I’m afraid not,’ she answered with a breeziness she didn’t feel.

‘What do your parents do in Cornwall?’

She gave him a sharp look. ‘Do…?’

‘As in work.’

‘Oh.’ She nodded. ‘My mother looks after the house—cottage, really,’ she amended. ‘And my father paints.’ She wished she had never mentioned her parents. And she wouldn’t have done if it hadn’t seemed like the ideal way of getting out of his dinner invitation without being rude.

‘As in walls or canvases?’

‘Marcus, I really don’t think this is a line of questioning we should be pursuing.’ She straightened uncomfortably in her seat.

‘Line of questioning? Pursuing?’ Marcus was incredulous. ‘You sound like a lawyer defending her client. I was only showing an interest, Kit.’

‘I know you were.’ She sighed, her cheeks blushing warmly. ‘I just—canvases. My father paints canvases,’ she explained reluctantly.

‘Really?’ Marcus raised dark brows. ‘Do I know him? Is he famous?’

‘Would you expect him to be living in a cottage in Cornwall if he was!’ Kit responded, knowing that she wasn’t being strictly honest. There was plenty of money now for her parents to move to a larger, more comfortable home; they just preferred to stay at the cottage where they had lived since they had first married. ‘I believe my father is what is usually known as a starving artist.’

‘But not in a garret?’ Marcus returned lightly.

‘No.’ She laughed, relaxing slightly. ‘But the cottage is certainly—rustic.’ She remembered that, until a few years ago, the cottage hadn’t even had running water, her mother having to get water from a well in the garden until they had had the main water supply connected.

‘Sounds wonderful.’ Marcus smiled.

‘It sounds it,’ Kit conceded. ‘And actually it is. If you don’t mind roughing it a bit.’ She had enjoyed a completely carefree childhood amongst the rugged hills of Cornwall, roaming for miles; it was what had given her her love of walking.

‘I’m ashamed to say I’ve never tried,’ Marcus admitted.

Was he still trying to persuade her into allowing him to drive her to Cornwall?

What would her parents make of him? Her father, she knew, would find him the complete antithesis of himself, but somehow she still had a feeling that he would like the younger man. As for her mother—she would just be pleased to see Kit with a man, her hints of wishing to be a grandmother having increased during the last year or so.

Which was a very good reason for not giving into Marcus’s persuasive tone.

The last thing she needed was her parents thinking she was actually involved with Marcus!

‘I’m sorry.’ She shook her head firmly. ‘The cottage is simply too small to accommodate all four of us.’

‘We could share,’ he suggested.

‘I said my father is an artist—not that he’s an advocate of—Well, the fact that he married my mother within weeks of meeting her should tell you something about him,’ she amended awkwardly; her parents were far from being prudes, would probably accept the idea if she brought a man home for the weekend. It was Kit who had a problem with it!

Marcus gave an appreciative nod. ‘It tells me he’s an astute man. They have obviously been married for some time, so I presume it’s a happy marriage?’

‘Very,’ Kit confirmed unhesitantly.

‘Then that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?’

She gave him a searching look. ‘Is it?’ Somehow it had never actually occurred to her, in light of his own brief relationships with women, that Marcus believed in love and marriage…

‘Of course. Look at Desmond,’ he reminded her. ‘He made two serious errors in his first marriages, and now he’s in love with and married to a woman thirty years his junior. He’s making a bit of a mess of it at the moment, I grant you, but I have complete confidence in him seeing, before it’s too late, what an idiot he’s being.’

‘Did you tell him as much?’ Kit chuckled.

‘Of course,’ he confirmed unrepentantly. ‘He is being an idiot. Second to actually finding the woman you love, having a child with that woman has to be the most wonderful experience of any man’s life. Wouldn’t you say?’

She would, yes. But she wouldn’t have thought that Marcus would say so, too…

He gave her a glance, noting her thoughtful expression. ‘You just didn’t think I would say so, too, did you?’ he guessed shrewdly.

Kit glared at him. ‘Well, you hardly give the impression that marriage and a family are high on your list of priorities!’

‘You have to meet the right woman to even begin to think in that vein.’

And he expected to find that ‘right woman’ by going out with women like Andrea Revel? Somehow Kit didn’t think so.

But if Marcus did, who was she, a complete outsider, to say otherwise? Even if she did love him to distraction!

‘I suppose so,’ she conceded noncommittally. ‘I had rather a disturbed night’s sleep, would you mind if I had a little nap now?’

‘Just as the conversation was getting interesting…’ he murmured speculatively.

‘Maybe to you,’ she shot back, settling down comfortably in her seat. ‘It’s a matter of complete indifference to me.’

‘Of course it is.’

Kit turned sharply at what she felt was a completely patronizing tone. ‘Not every woman wants to get married and have children, you know,’ she snapped.

‘You do,’ he insisted softly.

She gave him a frustrated glare. ‘Maybe,’ she finally accepted tersely. ‘But if Mike Reynolds is an example of what men are like, then I would rather not bother, thank you!’

‘He isn’t,’ Marcus assured her. ‘At least, I hope he isn’t!’ he added frowningly. ‘You don’t think I’m like Mike Reynolds, do you?’

This conversation had taken an extremely strange turn as far as Kit was concerned—one she would rather not pursue!

‘I’ve never thought about it,’ she responded airily.

‘I bet you haven’t,’ he returned, obviously not at all happy with the conversation himself now.

Kit closed her eyes, a little smile playing about her lips, as her last vision of Marcus was a most disgruntled expression as he struggled with the concept of there being any sort of comparison between himself and a man he obviously despised.

Not that there was, of course. But it wouldn’t hurt to leave Marcus with that thought, anyway. It was certainly better than discussing her personal life!

As it was she had told him a lot more about herself, and her parents, than she had really intended doing. But, with any luck, that was the end of the subject…

‘Sure I can’t persuade you into letting me drive you to Cornwall?’ Marcus pressed once he had parked his car outside her apartment building.

‘Positive.’ She pushed open the car door and got out. ‘If I get a move on I’ll be able to make the afternoon train,’ she told him as he got out of the car too in order to take her bag out of the boot.

‘This is goodbye, then.’ Marcus stood beside her on the pavement.

Kit gave an incredulous laugh. ‘Hardly, when I’ll be seeing you in the office on Tuesday morning!’

‘Not the same,’ he said. ‘I very much doubt you’ll be strolling around the office in a bikini!’

‘Very funny!’ she replied, not at all happy with the way her cheeks flushed fiery red at his teasing.

‘I wasn’t trying to be funny, Kit,’ he said quietly, dark blue gaze staring intently into hers.

‘Well, you succeeded, anyway,’ she told him, wishing she could break the intensity of that gaze, but knowing she couldn’t, that it was simply beyond her at this moment.

How she loved this man! How she would love to accept his invitation to dinner, to drive her to Cornwall; anything to spend more time with him.

But ultimately she would only end up hurting herself more than she already had; despite the attraction that had flared up between them briefly this weekend, she knew she simply wasn’t Marcus’s type, and never would be.

‘Kit, you have the most amazingly beautiful eyes I have ever seen,’ he murmured gruffly, his gaze even more intense. ‘Dark and soft, like grey velvet.’

Kit moistened her lips nervously, wishing—

‘Don’t do that!’ he ground out suddenly, his gaze focused on her mouth now. ‘Do you have any idea how provocative that is?’ he groaned before his head bent and his mouth took fierce possession of hers.

She hadn’t, no. But she did now!

Once again she melted as soon as Marcus’s lips touched hers, both his hands cradling the sides of her face as he kissed her with searching passion, sipping and tasting, plundering, possessing.

Kit was aware only of Marcus as she clung to him, of the thrust of desire coursing through them both as her fingers tightly gripped the warm strength of his shoulders, of—

‘Wow!’ came an amused voice. ‘Is that really you, Kit?’

Kit pulled sharply away from Marcus as she easily recognized that voice, turning to look at Penny as her flatmate came down the steps of their apartment building, dressed for her usual Saturday afternoon game of tennis with her fiancé, Roger.

‘Penny!’ Kit greeted lightly, almost afraid to look at Marcus after the desire that had blazed between them so suddenly.

And completely. How was she going to be able to work with Marcus day after day after this, when all she really wanted was to lose herself in his arms, to forget everything else but the fierce attraction they seemed to share?

‘Penny…?’ Marcus looked at Kit enquiringly.

‘My flatmate,’ Kit revealed with a certain amount of reluctance, knowing by the slight smile of satisfaction that suddenly curved his lips that Marcus really had nurtured the idea that her flatmate might be male! ‘Penny Lyon. Marcus Maitland,’ she introduced stiffly, knowing that Penny needed no explanation as to who and what Marcus was.

Although her friend could just be wondering what Kit was doing kissing her boss out in the middle of the street! Could just be wondering? Penny would no doubt demand the full story as soon as she had Kit on her own again!

The problem with that was that Kit had no idea what the full story was where she and Marcus were concerned. Marcus seemed to be acquiring the habit of just taking her in his arms and kissing her whenever he felt like it. And it would be useless to deny that she responded to those kisses. But was there any more to it than that? As far as Kit was concerned, there was, but she had no idea what Marcus’s motivation was.

Except that he seemed to like kissing her…

‘I had a feeling that’s who you were,’ Penny told Marcus as the two of them shook hands. ‘You’re back early.’ She looked enquiringly at Kit. ‘I was expecting you to be away the whole weekend…?’

‘Change of plan, I’m afraid,’ Marcus was the one to answer Penny smoothly. ‘We aren’t delaying you from an appointment, are we?’ he prompted with a pointed look at the tee shirt and the long display of bare leg beneath the shorts Penny was wearing in preparation for her game of tennis.

‘Not in the least—but I can take a hint!’ Penny replied laughingly.

‘My dear, Miss Lyon—Penny?—I can assure you that if I wanted to be alone with Kit then I would just say so,’ Marcus said.

‘I had a feeling you might,’ Penny acknowledged wryly. ‘I’ll see you later, Kit?’

She gave a thankful shake of her head; she needed to get her own thoughts about this weekend into some sort of order before subjecting herself to Penny’s obvious interest in finding her kissing Marcus! ‘I’m going to see my parents this afternoon,’ she explained economically. ‘I’ll be back late tomorrow.’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Penny assured her. ‘Nice to meet you, Mr Maitland,’ she added warmly.

‘Marcus,’ he insisted. ‘Nice to meet you too, Penny.’

A smile remained on his lips only long enough for Penny to get into her car and drive away with a friendly wave of her hand.

At which time he looked down at Kit with accusing eyes. ‘Yesterday you deliberately let me think your flatmate was a man.’

‘I did not,’ Kit defended. ‘I simply didn’t say one way or the other.’

‘Exactly,’ he sighed impatiently. ‘But you knew I had assumed it was a man.’

‘I knew no such thing!’ she denied calmly. ‘If you chose to think that, then—’

‘Kit, why are we arguing again?’ He winced. ‘The last thing I want to do at this moment is argue with you!’

One look at his face, at the glitter of intent in his blue gaze as it fixed on the pouting softness of her mouth, was enough to tell her what he did want to do with her!

But they simply couldn’t continue to behave in this way, not if they were to continue working together. A break away from each other, to get things back into perspective, was exactly what they needed.

‘I really do have to go, Marcus,’ she told him after a glance at her wrist-watch. ‘My train leaves in just under an hour,’ she added pointedly.

He drew in a sharply disapproving breath at her haste. ‘I had better let you go, then, hadn’t I?’

That urge to ask him to come to Cornwall with her after all returned with a vengeance, the words actually on the tip of her tongue. A tongue she bit with sharp purpose, deliberately saying nothing.

‘Fine,’ Marcus said abruptly. ‘Thank you for your help this weekend, Kit. I appreciate it.’

She gave a rueful smile. ‘I don’t think, with the situation that developed with Mike Reynolds, that I was much of an asset!’ More of a liability, really!

He shook his head. ‘Forget Mike Reynolds,’ he dismissed. ‘Desmond was the main reason for going this weekend, and he liked you very much.’

Her eyes widened. ‘He did?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Marcus confirmed. ‘I believe you had a word with him yourself before we left…?’

Actually, she had had several words with their host before leaving earlier, having decided she would probably never see Desmond Hayes again, so she might as well tell him exactly what she thought about his separation from his wife, and the reason for it. But she hadn’t realised he had mentioned that conversation to Marcus…

She gave a self-conscious grimace. ‘Did he say that I had?’

‘He did.’ Marcus nodded approvingly. ‘On your advice, he’s going to call Jackie this afternoon and hopefully meet up with her to discuss having half a dozen kids or so!’

‘Half a dozen—!’ Kit gasped. ‘I don’t think I said anything about six children…!’

Marcus grinned. ‘Whatever you said, it was the right thing. I have a feeling that Desmond and I are going to have quite a healthy business relationship in future.’

Then Kit had fulfilled her role as his personal assistant. Because that was all she was to him, no matter how much she might wish it were otherwise.

‘What did you say to him to make him act so quickly?’ Marcus looked at her searchingly.

‘I think it was something along the lines of life being too short, and love being too hard to find to let it go because sometimes the commitment of that love might frighten us.’

Marcus’s gaze became guarded. ‘You sound like someone who has had experience of the emotion…?’

Only as regards her own parents. If her mother hadn’t been so determined to be with the man she loved, if her father hadn’t been that man, then Kit knew she would never have been born.

‘Maybe,’ she answered noncommittally.

Marcus stepped back from her. ‘I’ll let you get off, then.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed, knowing that one of them had to make a move. But also realising that neither of them seemed to want to do that. ‘I have to catch my train,’ she reminded Marcus firmly, giving him a quick smile before turning to run lightly up the stairs to open the door to her apartment building, determined not to look back, knowing it could be her undoing if she did.

All the time feeling as if she were leaving the biggest part of her standing outside on the pavement…

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘GOOD weekend?’

Kit looked up at the sound of Lewis Grant’s voice. ‘Not particularly,’ she answered honestly.

‘Oh?’ He leant against the side of her desk, obviously in no hurry to go to his own office down the corridor.

She put aside the papers she had been working on for the last half an hour to give him her full attention. ‘Those sort of house parties aren’t really my scene.’

Lewis grinned understandingly. ‘Lots of glitz and glamour on the surface—and knives being wielded behind the backs!’

‘Something like that,’ she said noncommittally.

To be perfectly honest, she really wasn’t quite with it this bright and sunny Tuesday morning, was wishing herself anywhere but here.

Luckily, Marcus hadn’t arrived in the office yet. Kit usually arrived half an hour or so before he did so that she could deal with any urgent correspondence and put it on his desk.

Lewis chuckled. ‘I quite enjoy them, actually. But I can understand why some people wouldn’t,’ he sympathized.

Especially someone like her, Kit silently added. Prim Miss McGuire, the PA from No-Nonsenseville, was back in place this morning; after the intimacy that seemed to have developed between herself and Marcus over the weekend, she had thought it for the best. Not that she for a moment thought she would have Marcus chasing her around the desk at every opportunity; no, prim Miss McGuire was for her own protection—from her feelings towards Marcus!

‘It was okay.’ Kit returned her attention to Lewis.

‘Any success with Desmond Hayes?’ he enquired with interest.

‘Not particularly,’ she returned. ‘I’m really not being a lot of help this morning, am I?’

‘Probably tired after the weekend.’ Lewis smiled understandingly.

‘I still don’t understand why Marcus didn’t take me with him,’ he mused. ‘But there you are. I suppose—’

‘Don’t you have any work to do, Lewis?’ Marcus barked as he came into Kit’s office, dressed in one of the dark business suits and snowy white shirts he usually wore to work, briefcase in hand. ‘Kit,’ he added in tight acknowledgement.

‘M—Mr Maitland,’ she hastily corrected her initial slip of going to call him by his first name.

‘Come through to my office, will you?’ he instructed her curtly, his gaze cold as he looked at Lewis. ‘Anything I can do for you?’ he grated.

‘Nothing at all,’ the younger man said easily, not seeming too concerned by Marcus’s mood.

‘Then don’t let us keep you,’ Marcus responded, looking straight at Kit as he held his office door open.

Kit got up slowly to move across the room and enter Marcus’s office, very aware of his brooding presence as he closed the door behind them with a firm click.

She turned to look at him. ‘Don’t you think you were a little rude to Lewis just now?’

‘Was I?’ he replied unconcernedly. ‘I’m sure he’ll get over it.’ He placed his briefcase down beside his desk before sitting down in the high-backed leather chair behind it, resting his elbows on the desk as he looked at her over the top of the pyramid of his fingers. ‘Why the hell are you dressed like that again?’ he suddenly exclaimed.

Kit felt herself pale as she stared at him through her heavy, dark-rimmed glasses, her breath catching in her throat, in no doubt as to Marcus’s annoyance; his face was grim, a nerve pulsing in his jaw.

‘I thought it best,’ she offered, moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue.

‘And I thought I warned you about doing that,’ Marcus snapped, his gaze focused on her mouth now.

Kit instantly clamped her lips together, the colour flooding back into her cheeks as she remembered what had happened the last time she had moistened her lips in that way in front of Marcus.

‘Well?’ he prompted harshly.

She flinched at his attack. ‘Well, what…?’

He rose quickly to his feet, as if his mood was too big to be contained in a sitting position. ‘Exactly what sort of man do you think I am? Don’t answer that. The fact that you’re back to wearing that ridiculous disguise tells me exactly what you think of me!’

What she thought of him? It was herself, the love she felt towards him, that she was trying to protect!

‘I don’t see how,’ she said wearily.

‘No?’ He moved out from behind his desk to pace the room restlessly. ‘I think I should warn you that I don’t care for being put in the same category as your last boss!’

‘Mike Reynolds…?’ Kit repeated dazedly. ‘But I—’ She broke off, frowning across at Marcus now. ‘I never for a moment thought that you were in the least like him…’ But she could hardly explain that it was herself she was trying to protect by once again becoming Prim Miss McGuire from No-Nonsenseville!

‘Oh, give me a break, Kit,’ Marcus came back. ‘You’ve already told me exactly why you started wearing those ridiculous glasses and unflattering clothes. The fact that you’re back to wearing them today implies you still think you need some sort of protection from my obviously unwanted advances!’

What would he say if she were to tell him that what she really wanted to do—not just now, but all the time!—was throw herself into his arms and have him make love to her? Here. Now.

‘And just when did you intend telling me about your father?’ Marcus continued.

Kit blinked at this sudden change of subject. ‘My father…?’

Marcus nodded tersely. ‘Your father is Tom McGuire!’ he accused.

‘I know who he is,’ she answered levelly.

‘So do I—now.’

Kit looked at him curiously. ‘How do you know?’

Marcus’s mouth twisted self-derisively. ‘Because I have one of his paintings hanging on my apartment wall. I sat there in my apartment all weekend—’

‘We didn’t come back to town until Saturday afternoon,’ Kit reminded him.

Marcus gave her a scathing look. ‘I sat there all weekend,’ he repeated, ‘when I suddenly realised that the painting I was staring at was by Tom McGuire. It was just too much of a coincidence for it not to have been painted by your father!’

Kit didn’t even attempt to deny the connection—how could she? ‘His paintings are considered a very sound investment nowadays—’

‘I didn’t buy the painting as an investment!’ he replied. ‘I’ve owned it for twelve or thirteen years now.’

She nodded. ‘It’s only the last ten years he’s suddenly become quite famous—’

‘Quite famous!’ Marcus echoed with an incredulous note in his voice. ‘Each of his paintings are worth thousands of pounds!’

‘And do you know how old he was when he suddenly became famous?’ she returned exasperatedly. ‘Sixty-two,’ she continued without waiting for him to answer. ‘Before that he and my mother lived on the little they could make selling the odd painting and some of the vegetables my mother grows—in—in their huge—garden.’ Her voice began to falter as the façade she had kept up so far this morning slowly began to crumble and disintegrate. ‘It was a—a happy life,’ she defended huskily. ‘But it certainly wasn’t—wasn’t—’ She simply couldn’t go on any more, her throat clogged with the tears she was trying so hard not to shed.