Page 3 of Royally Promoted

She had been working for him for three years and she could say, in all honesty, that she had never met anyone as focused, as single-minded, as crazily sharp or as utterly self-assured as the guy sitting opposite her. He could be ruthless, forbidding and cold but, for Lucy, those traits were eclipsed by other, more compelling ones.

She knew that he scared a lot of people but, oddly, he didn’t intimidate her and he never had—even when she had walked into his office all those years ago, having made it through the gruelling preliminary interviews, to face the final hurdle for the job she had hoped to secure.

He had thrown her a challenge, something to do with the stock market, and she had met the challenge in half the allotted time, tempted to ask him if he had anything harder up his sleeve. Just as she was leaving, he’d asked her why she thought she deserved the job when there were more qualified candidates desperate for it. She hadn’t batted an eyelid. She’d smiled and told him that that was a question that wouldn’t even cross his mind in a year’s time because she would have long since proved herself.

Lucy knew that, whether he would ever agree with her or not, her ability to answer him back and speak her mind went a long way to earning his respect...whether she had a university degree or not.

Speaking her mind was something that came naturally to her. Sandwiched between four sisters, speaking her mind was the only tool she’d had ever been able to use to get heard.

As the only non-graduate in her entire family, and that included her parents, she’d had to find her voice from very early on to make sure she wasn’t squashed by her much more academic sisters with their strident opinions, all of whom wanted to be one step ahead of the others.

A sprawling family of girls had come with other disadvantages, along with the amazing up sides, but being invisible had never been one of those disadvantages.

‘You’re looking at me as though you want to tell me something but can’t figure out how,’ she said now, direct as always, even though just voicing those thoughts made her feel a little uneasy. ‘You’re not about to sack me, are you?’

‘I’m not about to sack you.’

‘Thank goodness. I couldn’t face jumping back into the job market. It’s a shark pit out there.’

‘I had a call very early this morning, Lucy. My mother telephoned to tell me that my father has been rushed to hospital—his heart. He’s had a triple bypass, and they’re waiting overnight to see whether the operation has been successful.’

‘Oh. My. Goodness...’ She half-stood, hesitated, then sat back down. She knew that she was emotional, but her boss was not, and a hug was the last thing he would welcome.

Thinking about it, hugging him was also something that made a curious tingle feather up and down her spine.

‘I’m so sorry, Malik,’ she said with genuine sympathy. ‘You must be devastated. How is your mother taking it?’

‘As well as can be expected.’

‘You’ll want to think about going over, I suppose. Do you want me to arrange a flight for you?’ Her voice was uncharacteristically subdued.

‘Yes. I’ll have to return, and possibly for a matter of several weeks. I’ll have to see how the land lies, and naturally I’ll be returning to London, but in the interim arrangements will have to be put in place while my father recuperates—and that is if there’s no worst-case scenario.’

‘Worst-case scenario?’

‘If he doesn’t pull through,’ Malik said bluntly and was unsurprised when she paled.

She was as transparent as a pane of glass and generous when it came to expressing her feelings. After months spent dissuading her from that weakness, because emotionalism frankly got on his nerves, he had now given up. Maybe he’d just got used to it, but it didn’t get on his nerves in her case.

‘Oh, don’t even think of going there, Malik. The most important thing you can do now is remain positive. It’s called the laws of attraction. At least, I think that’s what it’s called. It’s all about positivity making good outcomes. What can I do? I’m so, so sorry.’

‘These things happen, Lucy,’ he said flatly. ‘And, for the record, I’ll dispense with the mumbo-jumbo nonsense. I’m a realist and I know that preparations will have to be made for all eventualities. However, we won’t dwell on that. Let’s return to the fact that I’m going to be out of the country for quite some time.’

‘Yes, let’s.’ Lucy was trying to work out how the place would run without him there but, then again, he was a master at delegation and had the sort of well-oiled, high-level team that could march onwards without supervision, such was their level of excellence and the depth of their loyalty to their paymaster.

Which begged the question...where did she fit in to all of this?

Which instantly brought her back to that moment of hesitation she had seen shadow his face earlier. He might not be sacking her, but was he going to give her a little reduced-pay time off? Lucy sincerely hoped not. Despite being surrounded by high powered sisters, she was on a par with them earnings-wise, and had been furiously putting money aside to get her own place.

She knew she was proving a point because she had no degree. Proving that she could be a success at what she did, because everyone had had their say when she’d ditched university without warning. One minute her bags had been packed for Durham, and the next minute they’d been unpacked and she’d turned her back on what her entire family had expected of her. Goodbye maths and economics course, hello technical college in Exeter, as far from the family home in leafy Surrey as she’d been able to get.

No one could fathom the reason why, and she hadn’t confided, because she had never been more alone than at that very point in time in her lovely, noisy family.

How could she have told any of them about the fool she had been? How could she have admitted that she had fallen head over heels for a smooth-talking charmer who had turned her head, strung her along and then ditched her the minute she’d told him that they’d made a very costly mistake?

How could she ever have borne the mortification of telling any of the family that she had accidentally fallen pregnant? Two of her sisters were married with kids. Their pregnancies had been meticulously planned. Noisy debates had abounded over the years about girls who had unplanned pregnancies.

How on earth did that happen?

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