The Secretary's Scandalous Secret

Agatha gaped at him, mortified, barely noticing when the lift doors pinged open and he guided her out of the lift towards a gleaming, silver Aston Martin.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said in a tight, breathless voice.

‘Well, you’d better start. Edith is worried. You don’t sound happy; you’re vague when she asks you about the job. You tell her that it’s all right, by which she takes it to mean that it’s making you miserable. The last time she saw you, you seemed to be losing weight.’ As far as Luc could make out, under the shapeless coat she looked perfectly healthy to him.

Agatha groaned and buried her head in her hands.

‘Strap up and tell me where you live.’

While he fiddled with his sat nav, giving it instructions to go to the address she could barely impart through gritted teeth, Agatha had time to conduct a quick mental review of the last hour, starting with his sudden interest in producing more challenging work for her to do.

‘This is awful.’ She placed cool hands on her burning cheeks.

‘You’re telling me.’

‘Is that why you hunted me down to give me all that stuff to do?’

‘Try getting one-hundred percent involved and you might have less time to spend crying down the line to your mother and complaining that you’re bored and unhappy. I have no idea how I managed to get roped into a caretaker role, but roped in I’ve been.’

‘But I don’t want you taking an interest in me!’ she all but wailed. Luc, in passing, thought that was interesting because women usually wanted just the opposite out of him.

‘I’m not taking an interest in you,’ he disputed flatly. ‘I’m broadening your work parameters: more interesting projects. Less back-room stuff. So you can start thinking about the wardrobe issue. Front-of-house demands a more stringent dress code than sacks and old shoes.’

‘Okay, I will.’ Just to bring the horrifying conversation to an end.

‘And call me a mug, but I’m giving you a lift back to your house because I want to find out about this date of yours, satisfy myself that you’re not about to put your life at risk with some low-life drifter. The last thing I need is my mother showing up at my office like an avenging angel because you’ve managed to get yourself into trouble.’

If she could have burrowed a hole in the soft, cream leather of the car seat and escaped to another county, Agatha would have done so. Never had she felt so humiliated in her life before. In all the scenarios that had played in her head over the years, not one had involved Luc taking an interest in her because he had no option. Nor had she ever envisaged being told that she looked like a bag lady, which was what he had implied.

She should never have accepted this job. No good ever came of accepting hand outs, although she knew that if she voiced that opinion he would have the perfect come back. Hadn’t his own mother accepted a hand out of sorts when she had moved in with her parents in their rambling vicarage? That, to her way of thinking, was different, as was the dispenser of the hand out. Luc Laughton was hardly a kindly, middle-aged man charmed at the thought of doing a favour for a neighbour in need. He was a predatory shark who would have no qualms about eating the recipient of his charity if he felt like it.

‘I can take care of myself,’ she opined, staring straight ahead. ‘I’m not going to get myself into any trouble.’

‘You obviously haven’t breathed a word of this so-called date to your mother,’ Luc guessed shrewdly. ‘Which leads me to think that you might be ashamed of him. Am I right?’

‘I haven’t said anything to Mum because I’ve only just met him! ‘

He noticed that she hadn’t tackled the issue of whether she was ashamed of the man. Was he married? If he were to guess the kind of guy she would go for, it wouldn’t be a married man. Her life had been nothing if not sheltered. His distant memory was of a girl with almost no sense of style, certainly not the sort of style favoured by her peer group: short, tight skirts, skinny, tight jeans, dangly jewellery. No, if he had to take a stab in the dark, he would bet his last few bucks on a fellow garden-lover, someone who got worked up about eco issues and saving the planet.

But if that were the case wouldn’t she have been on the phone in a heartbeat to tell all to Edith? Even if, as she said, he had only recently landed on the scene.

‘Is he married? You can tell me, although don’t expect me to give you my blessing, because I strongly disapprove of anyone getting entangled with someone who’s married.’

Agatha’s head jerked round at the cool contempt in his voice. Who did he think he was, she wondered? A shining example of morality? Normally reduced to quaking jelly in his presence, she took a deep breath and said very quickly in a very high, tremulous voice, ‘I don’t think you have a right to disapprove of anything.’

For a few seconds she actually wondered if he had heard her because he didn’t say a word. She found that she was holding her breath, which she expelled slowly when he finally answered, his voice icy cold. ‘Come again?’

‘I’ve been given the job of buying all your discards their parting presents,’ Agatha admitted tightly. ‘Flowers, jewellery, expensive holidays—what’s so great about having a string of pointless relationships? How can you preach about married men when you think it’s all right to string some poor woman along knowing that you have no intention of getting involved with her?

Luc cursed fluently under his breath, outraged that she dared bring her opinions to bear on his private life. Not that he was about to justify his behaviour.

‘Since when is pleasure pointless?’ was all he said, clamping down on the rising tide of his temper because for Agatha fun without commitment would be anathema. When he had launched himself into the City, climbing that first rung of the ladder which he knew would lead him to the top, he had had the misfortune to fancy himself in love with a woman who had turned from a softly spoken angel to a harpy the second the demands of work had begun to interfere with her daily need to be stroked. She had complained solidly and noisily about meetings that over ran, had dug her heels in and lashed out at trips abroad and had eventually started look- ing elsewhere for someone who could give her undivided attention.

It had been a salutary lesson. So leading women up a garden path was definitely not a route he was interested in taking. From the very start, they knew that commitment wasn’t going to be on the agenda. He was honest to a fault which, he personally thought, was a virtue to be praised, for it was in short supply in most men.

Which brought him back to the issue of this mysterious guy about whom she was being so secretive.

‘But perhaps you don’t agree with me,’ he drawled, flicking a sidelong glance in her direction. ‘Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’ve been bitten by the big-city bug and come to the conclusion that there’s nothing pointless in having fun. Is that it? I notice you still haven’t mentioned Stewart’s marital status.’

‘Of course he’s not married! He happens to be a very nice person. In fact, he’s taking me out to a very expensive restaurant in Knightsbridge—San Giovanni. Stewart says that it’s famous. In fact, you’ve probably heard of it.’

At which point, Luc’s ears pricked up. This was definitely not the kind of man he’d pictured and, yes, he certainly had heard of the restaurant in question. It was the frequent haunt of the rich and famous.

So what did Agatha have that would attract someone who could afford to take her there? He shot her a sidelong glance and frowned; it struck him that she did have something about her, a certain innocence that a wide-boy Londoner might find suitably challenging. He didn’t like to entertain the notion but sweet, prim Agatha might just be seen as ripe for corruption.

Not an eco-warrior, not a married man…so just someone out to use her? Or was he reading the situation all wrong?

Curiosity, lamentably in short supply in his life, shifted somewhere inside him. He had acted on the spur of the moment in offering her a lift home, and really he should be heading back to his office to put the finishing touches to reports that needed emailing sooner than yesterday. But, hell, work could wait for a little while. Hadn’t he been entrusted with a mission, in a manner of speaking?

In the space of seconds, plans for the remainder of his evening were put on hold.

‘I’ll drive you to Knightsbridge. And before you say anything…’ his sensuous mouth curved into a half smile ‘… there’s no need to thank me.’

CHAPTER TWO

LUC settled down with a cup of coffee for the long haul. Never mind about running late; it was his experience with women that their ability to get changed in under an hour was practically zero. Agatha might not follow the normal pattern of the women he knew, but she was of the female species. Enough said.

He glanced around the poky room with an expression of distaste. He had nothing against bedsits, per se, but it was evident that, whoever the landlord was, he specialised in the art of ripping off the young and inexperienced. The walls showed promising signs of damp and the single radiator looked like something rescued from the ark. The large, old-fashioned sash window overlooking the busy pavements was reasonably attractive but the wood was peeling, and he knew that if he stood too close to it he would be in danger of frostbite from the cold air blowing through the gaps in the frame. He wondered whether he should get more details about the guy. It would take next to no effort to put the fear of God into him.

He was restlessly pacing the room, stopping to scowl with displeasure at the hundred and one little deficiencies in her living accommodation to which Agatha had grown accustomed over the months, when she emerged from her bedroom.

‘I got ready as quickly as I could. You didn’t have to wait here for me. I could easily have got the tube back into London.’

Luc spun round at the sound of her voice behind him, and for a few seconds he stood very still, his stunning eyes unreadable—which was a disappointment. Although she hated the situation she was in, and hated the fact that he now considered her a burden with which he had to deal, he did still happen to be in her bedsit and she was quite dressed up. For her.

‘How do you think I look? ‘ she asked nervously, stretching out her arms and trying in to suck in her stomach.

An only child adored by her parents who had given up on ever having children until she’d come along, Agatha was still keenly aware that her figure didn’t fit the trend, despite all the reassurances she had had growing up. She wasn’t tall enough or skinny enough or flat-chested enough ever to look fashionable. Nor was her blond hair poker-straight.

But, having been insulted about her clothes, she had made a special attempt to look as smart as she could for her date—and incidentally to prove to Luc that she wasn’t the complete fashion disaster that he seemed to think she was.

‘You’ve done something to your hair,’ he commented neutrally. She had a figure. Hell, how had he managed to miss that? It was weirdly shocking to see her in figure-hugging clothes that made the most of what he now registered, with a stunned attention to detail, as a tiny waist and the sort of lush breasts that made teenage boys and grown men stop in their tracks. When had she grown up? When had she stopped being a gauche, awkward teenager who hovered in the background and become…? He had to look away because his body had been galvanised into a response that stunned him.

‘Well, I left it loose. It’s so curly and unmanageable that I tie it up for work.’

‘And it’s heart warming to see that you possess something other than a flowing skirt and baggy jumper. It bodes well for your new approach to dressing for the office, although you might want to have a serious re-think about the length of the skirt.’ Slender legs encased in sheer, black tights staged an all-out battle with his self-control. He was in the grip of utter, stupefied surprise—unfamiliar territory for him.

‘What’s wrong with it?’ She bent slightly to inspect the hem of her dress with a frown. ‘It’s no shorter than some of the skirts the other girls wear.’ She sighed, knowing what he meant without him having to spell it out. Short and tight was only acceptable on stick insects. ‘Anyway,’ she added defensively, ‘I wouldn’t dream of wearing anything like this to work. In fact, it’s the only dress I have. Well, the only—’

He was reaching for her coat, clamping down on a reaction that he deemed inappropriate, inexplicable and ridiculous, and she winced at her propensity for rambling. Her mother had always called her a chatterbox and they had all been convinced at the garden centre that her success with the difficult plants lay in her ability to talk to them about anything and everything. But Luc wasn’t interested in anything she had to say. She shut her mouth abruptly, and stiffly allowed herself to be helped into her coat.

‘The only what?’

‘It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t very interesting, anyway. I was just going to say that I don’t have an awful lot of dresses. There was never much need to wear them when I worked at the garden centre.’

‘I do recall some green overalls,’ he drawled.

‘I’ve never seen you at the garden centre.’ Embarrassed colour was spreading to her hairline, and she was really relieved that he was following her so that he couldn’t see her face.

‘You would have remembered seeing me? That garden centre was pretty big.’

‘Of course I would have remembered seeing you—because…because you would have been so out of place there. I guess you might have been with Danielle. You might have a fleet of gardeners at the big house, but she always gets involved choosing the flowers, and the herbs, of course, for that little herb garden at the back of the kitchen.’

‘No idea what you’re talking about. I noticed you walking back to your house one evening in some green overalls and workman boots.’

Agatha flushed and had a vivid picture of how she must have looked to him, hurrying home still in her overalls, her boots dirty, her hair a tangled mess. And then in his office—no longer in overalls or dungarees but still dressed down in her comfortable, baggy clothes, while every other woman wafted around in high-heeled pumps and dapper little black or grey suits with their hair neatly combed back, obeying orders not to wriggle out of their pins and clips by mid-morning.

‘I don’t suppose you know a lot of women who would wear overalls and boots,’ she said weakly, stepping into his car and slamming the door behind her.

‘Not one.’ He turned to her as he switched on the engine and the low, powerful car roared into life. ‘In fact, the women I know wouldn’t be seen dead in anything like that.’

‘I know.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, I’ve seen the kind of women you’ve gone out with over the years. Not that I’ve taken any real interest, you understand, but when Danielle lived with us you often came to visit with one of your girlfriends; they all looked the same,so I’m guessing you like them with lots of make-up and designer clothes.’

‘Is there a sting in the tail with that remark?’ Luc looked at her wonderingly before easing his car out of its parking space to head back towards the centre.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘No,’ he said shortly, still unnerved by the underhand trick his body had played on him back there. ‘I don’t suppose you do.’

‘What do you mean, then? ‘

‘I mean that honesty is all well and good, but in London it might pay to be a bit more streetwise.’ No wonder Edith worried about her. ‘For one thing, you’re being ripped off by your landlord. How much are you paying for that dump? ‘

‘It’s not a dump!’ But she told him, and her heart sank when he gave a bark of cynical laughter.

‘The man must have seen you coming a mile off. Green round the ears, no clue as to what sort of questions to ask, waving a stash of money. So what does he do? Overcharge for a disgusting hole with erratic heating and not enough space to swing a cat. Fifteen minutes in that place and I could spot enough signs of damp and rot to get the whole house condemned.’

‘It’s more comfortable when the weather’s warm.’

‘I bet it is.’ Luc’s lips curled with derision. ‘You don’t have to spend your nights praying that the place will be warm when you wake up in the morning! It’s a disgrace.’

‘I suppose,’ Agatha admitted on a sigh. ‘But when I looked around, Mr Travis promised that he would put right loads of things. I keep asking him, but his mother’s been taken into hospital and the poor man’s hardly been around.’

At this Luc burst out laughing before glancing across at her with rampant disbelief at her gullibility. ‘So Poor Mr Travis has a sick mother in hospital which means that he just can’t find the time to make sure that the damp problem in the bedsit gets seen to—or the rotting window frames get fixed, or the rancid carpet gets taken up? I wonder how poor Mr Travis would feel if a letter from my lawyer landed on his desk tomorrow morning.’

‘You wouldn’t! ‘

‘Oh, I would, believe me. The man’s a crook who’s decided to take advantage of you. I’m not a superstitious guy, but I’m beginning to think that my mother’s phone call was the hand of fate, because another month in that place in the middle of January and you would have been the one occupying the hospital bed—with pneumonia! No wonder you wear ten layers of clothing when you come to work. You’ve probably become accustomed to that!’

‘I don’t wear ten layers of clothes when I come to work.’ The words ‘charity case’ were swimming in her head, making her feel nauseous.

‘You weren’t equipped for life in London.’ Luc steamrollered over her interruption. ‘You grew up in a vicarage and spent your short working life in a garden centre watering plants. I can’t say that I enjoy being anybody’s caretaker, but I’m beginning to see why my mother wanted me to get involved.’

‘That’s the most horrible thing you could ever say to me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because…’ Because, a little voice said nastily, she didn’t want Luc Laughton to think of her as a hapless country bumpkin who needed looking after. She wanted him to think of her as a sexy young woman—or even just as a woman. Fat chance! He hadn’t even noticed her outfit. At least in any way that could be interpreted as complimentary.

‘Well? I’m not in the habit of doing good deeds, but I’m willing to change my life rules for you. You should be flattered.’

‘No one’s ever flattered to think that they’re too stupid to take care of themselves,’ Agatha told him stiffly. Her eyes stung but she wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself. She was going to remember that she was about to have dinner with a dishy, eligible man who would never have asked her out if he had thought that she was as pathetic as Luc made her out to be.

‘I’ve always found that it pays to be realistic,’ Luc responded bracingly. ‘When my father died and I came home to that financial mess, I realised very quickly that I could do one of two things: I could sit around, get depressed and become bitter or I could just go out and begin to rebuild everything that was lost.’

‘I find it hard to think of you getting depressed or feeling bitter.’

‘I don’t allow those negative feelings to influence what I do in life.’

‘I wish I could be as strong minded as you,’ Agatha was forced to concede, thinking of all the doubts she had nurtured over the years despite her very happy background.

When her friends had all started experimenting with make-up and going on diets so that they could look like the models in magazines, she had taken a back seat, knowing that inner beauty was all that mattered, and that wanting to look like someone else or aspire to someone else’s life was a waste of time. Of course, in London, the whole inner-beauty conviction had taken a bit of a knocking. She had largely felt like a fish out of water when she had gone out with her girlfriends from work, who had developed amazing skills of transformation, morphing from office workers to vamps with a change of clothes and bold make-up. Her stretchy black dress which made her feel horrendously exposed because it was fairly short with a fairly revealing neckline was still conservative compared to the stuff some of her friends wore, and she was so unaccustomed to wearing jewellery that she had to stop herself from twiddling with the strands of chunky copper round her neck.

‘I mean,’ she continued, musing, ‘You’re so sure of yourself. You set your goals and you just go after them. Like a bloodhound.’

‘Nice comparison,’ Luc muttered under his breath.

‘Don’t you ever sit back and wonder if you’re doing the right thing?’

‘Never.’ With more than half the journey completed, Luc thought that it was time he got down to the business of quizzing her about her date. More and more, he got the feeling that she was a loose cannon, an innocent released to the mercy of any passing opportunist. ‘So this Stewart character…?’ he prompted.

Brought back down to earth with a bump, Agatha blinked. Her mind had been wandering. She had almost forgotten about Stewart.

‘Yes…?’

‘How did you meet him? ‘

‘Oh, usual way,’ she said with a casual, studied shrug; this was the perfect opportunity to prove to him that she wasn’t as abnormal as he seemed to think she was. ‘At a bar. You know…’

‘At a bar? You go bar hopping?’

‘When you say “bar hopping”…’

‘Moving from bar to bar,’ Luc intoned very slowly, emphasising each word. ‘Getting more and more drunk before finally landing up somewhere, barely able to stand.’

Agatha bid a fond farewell to nurturing that misconception for him. The whole idea sounded pretty disgusting. She had heard ample stories of girls who had got themselves in trouble by doing just that sort of thing. Her father had counselled at least three that she could remember.

‘When you told me that you were worried about me getting into trouble, that’s not what you were talking about, was it? You didn’t really think that I might end up pregnant by some guy whose name I never found out because I had gone out and had too much to drink, did you?’

‘Calm down. I don’t think you’re the kind of girl.’

Insult or compliment? she wondered. Compliment, she decided. ‘I met him at a wine bar. Near the office, actually. I went there with a couple of girls from work. We were having a drink and the bar tender brought over a bottle of champagne and told us that Stewart had sent it for me. When I looked over, he waved and then he came across to join us, and he and I ended talking for quite a while.’

‘What about?’

‘Lots of things,’ Agatha told him irritably. ‘He’s very interesting. And very smart. Also good-looking.’

‘I’m beginning to get the picture.’

‘He wanted to know all about what I did, which was great, because most guys just like talking about themselves.’

‘I didn’t realise that you were that experienced…’

‘I’m not experienced…with men in London. Naturally I’ve been out with quite a few boys at home, and generally speaking they just want to talk about football or cars. Very stereotypical.’ She slid her eyes across to Luc, and as usual her mouth suddenly went dry, and she felt hot and flustered for no apparent reason. This was the first real conversation she had ever had with him, and she was enjoying herself, much as she loathed to admit it. ‘What do you talk about when you go out with a woman?’ she found herself asking curiously.

‘Strangely enough, I find that it’s the women who tend to do all the talking.’ He had little interest in holding hands over the dinner table and sharing his thoughts with someone he planned on bedding.

‘Perhaps you make a good listener,’ Agatha suggested doubtfully. ‘Although I’m not really sure that you do. You didn’t listen to me when I told you that I could take care of myself.’