Page 20 of A Wedding Negotiation with Her Boss

‘Don’t you want to relax on your last night here?’

‘I can come to the meeting room; just let me know what time you’d like me there.’

‘Helen, there’s no need for such formality. You don’t have to take notes. I can just verbally brief you. I really shouldn’t have interrupted your evening but I’m on my way back now. Probably have a drink on the veranda at the cottage. It was a ludicrously early dinner, but the older guys wanted to head off.’

‘I’ll come to your cottage. You can fill me in. It’s no bother at all.’

How had it been professional to scuttle off like a scalded cat earlier? Did she want him to get the impression that he got under her skin? That he made her feel hot and bothered? She’d told him about her broken engagement because she’d wanted to point out that she wasn’t an ingénue, utterly clueless about the ways of the world. So why was she behaving like one? Why was she letting him get to her like this?

She had to play it cool. She had worked late into the night in his office many times, with a takeout between them as they had pored over whatever thorny issues required completion to a deadline. Twice, she had been summoned to his magnificent house in Holland Park, and had worked in his home office there for a couple of hours, because he’d had everything set up for complex co-ordination of external meetings on different time zones.

She’d never run scared on any of those occasions! Why should it bother her now to sit outside with him and go through stuff for half an hour? To be her usual unflappable, reliable self?

‘Fine. Meet me there in half an hour. That suit?’

‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘That suits me fine.’

Gabriel was having a whisky when he heard Helen knock and sauntered out to open the door to her.

He wasn’t sure why he’d called her. Nothing needed to be done as a matter of urgency. That said, as he pulled open the door he was glad he’d made the call, because the evening suddenly seemed a little less insipid.

She’d changed into a pair of faded, light jeans and wore a tee shirt that hung loosely to the waist so that, if she raised her arms, he would be able to see a sliver of skin.

And, of course, she’d come armed with her trusty laptop. Gabriel didn’t mind. He stepped aside and she swept past him straight into the small living area before spinning round to face him.

‘So...’

At her brisk, no-nonsense voice, he smiled and was suddenly at ease in himself.

‘Drink? I’m on the veranda at the back. Splendid view, even with the sun fading. They’ve done clever things with the lighting so that it’s somehow possible to see for quite some distance before everything disappears into fields and open land.’

He spun round on his heels and she followed but, instead of following him out, she plonked her bag and belongings on the table in the living area and took up residence on one of the chairs, ready and poised to take notes.

A drink? A romantic view from his veranda? A twilight vista studded with fairy lights in the trees and twinkling stars in a velvet-dark sky?No, thanks.Table in the living area bathed in bright overhead lighting?Yes, please.

He got the message and sat opposite her, but the way he sprawled in the chair somehow detracted from the business-like atmosphere she was aiming for.

He talked to her about the tweaks she would have to make to the wording of the agreement, which would then be perfect and waiting only for final approval from Arturio.

It was straightforward.

Helen relaxed.

‘And,’ she said, tweaks done, ‘you mentioned something about Mexico?’ Her voice was clipped as she reached into her laptop bag for the slim notebook she always kept there.

‘Ah, yes.’

Gabriel sipped his drink and eyed her over the rim of the glass, noting the faint tinge of colour pinking her cheeks.

‘If you tell me the sort of thing you have in mind, I can make the necessary arrangements.’

‘I’ve never actually been to Mexico,’ he said, dumping his squat glass on the table and then relaxing back with his hands folded behind his head. ‘Don’t supposeyouhave?’

‘I haven’t, as it happens,’ Helen returned politely. ‘Although I’m struggling to see what that has to do with anything.’

Gabriel decided that he very much liked this new version of his secretary—polite but a different sort of polite from what had been on offer before. A more nuanced andimpolitepolite, if there was such a thing. The politeness of someone who’d opened up and probably regretted it. The politeness of someone who had tossed him titbits of her past which had really inflamed his senses. It challenged something in him and was as invigorating as the fizz of expensive champagne after a diet of soda water.

‘If you had to go there—for a long weekend—what sort of thing would you say would appeal to you?’

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