Page 4 of Royally Promoted

How hard was it to get hold of the pill?

A week after she’d been ditched, she had miscarried. She’d barely been pregnant and yet the pain had been immense. She’d turned her back on all the expectations lying on her shoulders and she’d started walking down a different road. She hadn’t regretted it. It had led her to the most interesting job imaginable, working for the most interesting man imaginable, with a stupendous pay cheque and none of the constant stress her sisters seemed to face in their chosen fields of medicine and law.

A pay cheque she had grown accustomed to. At the moment she rented, which was very expensive to do in London, even where she lived in her small box on the third floor of a mansion block, the saving grace being the fact that it was in an okay part of North London.

So, with Malik departing for faraway shores for an indeterminate length of time... Well, from where she was sitting, the future was beginning to look far from rosy. All the managers there had their own dedicated secretaries. The intense nature of their jobs demanded it. Was she about to be tacked on to someone else’s desk, fetching cups of coffee while Malik disappeared on a one-way ticket to Sarastan?

She was highly imaginative and now, as she stared at him, for once in complete silence, her imagination was hurtling in free fall. She was further dismayed by that hesitation on his face again and, instead of doing what she would normally have done, instead of flatly asking him what was going on, she found herself biting her lip. Sometimes to ask a question risked getting an answer you didn’t particularly want to hear.

‘It’s inevitable, I’m afraid, and not at all welcome.’

‘I can imagine, although I’m sure your parents will really enjoy having you back with them. I’m confident your dad will be released from hospital and be fighting fit in no time at all.’ She wondered what it would be like, not waking in the morning to the thought of going in to work, where Malik would be waiting with a list as long as his arm of things for her to do. Her heart skipped a beat at a sudden sense of loss.

Malik raised his eyebrows. ‘Positivity, yes. I got it the first time. No need to revisit the theme. You’ll no doubt be wondering where you fit into this picture.’

Lucy reddened. ‘It’s a tough time for you,’ she said gruffly, ‘And where I fit in isn’t important. The most important thing is for you to be out there for your family. They need you.’

‘A generous sentiment. Here’s where you fit in—I will have a great deal of work to do out there. Naturally, I’ll make sure that everything is in place here to cover my absence, and remote work is largely trouble-free, but I will still have to devote considerable time to making sure everything over here ticks along without any hitches. Not just this office, but as you know there are a lot of ongoing deals at the moment, and taking my eye off the ball isn’t going to do.’

‘I suppose not, although...’

‘Although...?’

‘I could do my best to keep things ticking over if you assign someone to temporarily take your place. You know how good I am at self-motivating and I know most of those deals going through like the back of my hand. Ask me any question about any of them and I’ll be able to give you an answer. I’m obviously not saying that as a long-term solution it would work—that would be crazy. But in the short term, I could do my best.’

‘I hate to break this to you, Lucy, but, good as you are, I am irreplaceable.’

Lucy’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You have a very high opinion of yourself.’ She dimpled and Malik returned the smile with raised eyebrows and one of his own.

He’d been wired since his mother had called him. Yes, he was concerned for his father’s health, but beyond that the unravelling ramifications of what had happened had initiated a series of conclusions, none of which were particularly pleasant and all of which would have to be dealt with.

But here, with Lucy, he felt himself relax. The woman was a tonic, with her breezy irreverence. That was something he reluctantly had to concede.

‘How well you know me,’ Malik drawled but the half-smile left his lips as quickly as it had appeared and he stood up and strolled towards the window.

Lucy’s eyes followed him.

He was a thing of beauty, she mused. It never failed to impress her. Everything about him was stunning, from the chiselled perfection of his harsh, arrogant features to the grace and symmetry of his long, muscular body.

He was six-four and there was not an ounce of wasted fat to be seen. He was all sinew, muscle and well-honed physical perfection. If all else failed, a career in modelling awaited.

He was intensely private and, despite the fact that Lucy had worked for him for over three years, she had in fact only ever met one of his girlfriends, a judge, and, she had later learnt, the youngest woman ever to have taken silk.

From that one encounter, Lucy had formed a picture in her head of the sort of women he favoured: tall, elegant, career-driven beauties who had powerful jobs and dressed in snappy, sharp designer clothes that were immaculately tailored and never prone to mundane things like creasing or the occasional coffee stain. Women who definitely wouldn’t go with festive colours in September.

He was a guy who liked sophistication, beauty and could easily get both. Why had he never married? She had no idea, but rich guys played the field...didn’t they? And he wasn’t old by any means, so he had years left in him to play in whatever fields took his fancy.

He might be a million light years away from the nightmare she had once dated, but Lucy knew that, however seriously sexy he was, and however often her disobedient eyes were inclined to stray in his direction, she could never consider him anything other than her gorgeous boss, because he was a guy who couldn’t commit.

Heartbreak, and the loneliness and disillusionment that had come with it, had taught her that the one thing in life she wanted in a man was commitment. She didn’t care about anything else because nothing else mattered. The guy who was willing to commit was the guy who was willing to give his heart, and without that what was left was some chump happy to use a woman for as long as it suited him before dumping her by text.

That would never be Malik’s style. She knew him well enough by now to know that. But he still wasn’t into long-term commitment. So she allowed her eyes to stray, and now and again her imagination went for the ride, but that was as far as it would ever get.

Which was all moot anyway, because he would never spare a glance her way. She idly thought of her friend Helen, now happily married to her billionaire boss and just expecting their first baby, and had to reluctantly concede that at times the exception proved the rule.

Her mind drifted. Helen was contained and mysterious. They had been out many times together, and Lucy had always noticed the way guys had surreptitiously glanced at her friend, sizing her up and taking her in. Of course, Helen never seemed to notice, but at first she had still been wrapped up in memories of George and her own disappointment there, and then without even realising it wrapped up in the whole business of falling for her boss.

Unlike her friend, Lucy was the opposite of mysterious. There was no room for mystery when she’d grown up in a family of vocal, assertive people. Mystery, in the environment in which she had grown up, would have been the equivalent of disappearing. Her dad often joked that he had to make an appointment to get a word in edgeways, which made her think of Malik and his dad, and how calmly and coolly he’d relayed the facts about his hospitalisation.

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