Page 3 of His Secretary's Nine-Month Notice
Violet wiped her perspiring hands on her jeans and busied herself making his cup of coffee, just the way he liked it. Black, no sugar. With her back to him, she was spared the piercing intensity of those deep-blue eyes, but she could still feel them boring into her.
Like her, he was in casual clothes. Black jeans and a faded polo shirt and loafers. She’d seen him dressed down many times before. However, the fact that she was similarly dressed down was making her self-conscious and uncomfortable.
‘That’s not true,’ she said, eyes downcast as she pushed a cup of coffee towards him and then took up position on the chair at the farthest end of the kitchen table.
She knew him well enough to know that his curiosity about her personal circumstances had not conveniently vanished into the ether. There just happened to be the more pressing matter of her resignation for him to contend with first, then he would return to the subject of where she lived.
She quailed with apprehension, but her smile remained composed, her expression polite and tolerant, if a little puzzled.
Just the sort of professional image she wanted to convey.
‘So youdidn’tremember that I was supposed to be at the ballet...’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I’m disappointed in you, Violet. I thought we were friends and yet, here you are, too scared to tell me to my face that you’re bailing on me.’
‘I work for you, Matt, that’s all,’ she countered and he shook his head sadly.
‘So do two hundred other employees who occupy the four storeys of that glass house, but none of them knows me as well as you do. Although...’ He paused. ‘If you’d known me well enough, you would have known that Clarissa and I were on the verge of breaking up. Going to the ballet with her was just one step too far.’
‘You’ve broken up with her?’ Violet felt a twinge of sympathy for the voluptuous, blond-haired, blue-eyed woman who might not be the sharpest knife in the block, but was bubbly, friendly and hardly deserving of the obligatory bunch of goodbye flowers that Violet would no doubt be asked to send in the next few days. If he didn’t react to her resignation by showing her the door with immediate effect.
‘Don’t look so shocked,’ Matt said drily. ‘You know my life is too busy for committed long-term relationships. Anyway, we’re going off-piste here. I came about that resignation email and I want to know why you’ve suddenly decided, out of the blue, that you’re fed up working for me. Is it the money? If it is, then you could simply have approached me and made your case for a pay rise.’
Violet was momentarily distracted by her boss’s sweeping assumption that any relationship longer than five seconds qualified ascommittedandlong-term.
She blinked and focused on him. Her heart sped up and her pulse raced as their eyes tangled, deep-blue meeting guarded brown. She knew that she was blushing and she hated herself for not having the wherewithal to maintain an air of indifference and neutrality. At work, in her neat suit—grey jacket, white shirt, grey skirt, sensible black pumps—she was well protected from the lethal impact of his charm, but she wasn’t in her neat suit here.
Nor was her brain playing ball. She should have remembered that someone like Matt, who was God’s gift to the opposite sex, went for a certain type of woman. Leggy, big-breasted, very, very blonde and with a line in conversation that always included the phrases ‘of course’, ‘sure’ and ‘whatever you want’. He definitely didn’t go for little five-foot-three sparrows with straight brown bobs, unremarkable features and slender, flat-chested bodies who stood their ground whatever the provocation.
Why on earth had he descended on her like this? What gave him the right? It was unfair that he should be sitting in her kitchen, lounging back in one of her chairs and getting under her skin when she already had so much on her plate!
‘Of course it’s not the money,’ she said, swallowing some of her coffee and wincing because it was so hot. ‘And, yes, if I was unsatisfied with my pay then I wouldn’t resign, Matt. I would approach you to discuss it.’
‘So, if not the money, what then?’ he demanded forcefully. ‘You can’t say that the job lacks challenge. Hell, Violet, you’ve got more responsibility than any of the women who have ever worked for me in the past.’
‘That’s because none of them have stayed very long.’
‘Rubbish.’ He waved aside that riposte with a casual, dismissive gesture, keeping his eyes very firmly fixed on her face. ‘Admittedly, a number of them were short-lived, but none of them had what it took to cope with anything but the lightest of workloads.’
Violet lowered her eyes and said nothing. When she’d joined, the personnel manager had been tearing his hair out.
‘It’s a difficult situation.’ He had all but groaned with frustration. ‘Matt is very...er...demanding... Lots of past candidates have found him impossible to work for. They’ve also mentioned that he makes them nervous. They’re perfectly capable when they enter the building, and they’ve all passed the series of interviews with flying colours, but ten minutes with him and their nerves are shredded...’
She’d understood exactly what he’d meant the minute she’d spent five minutes in his company. Matt Falconer was brutally clever, horribly intolerant if you couldn’t keep up and so spectacularly good-looking that it was a wonderanyonehad been able to work for him for longer than a day without having their brains scrambled.
Thankfully, she was made of sterner stuff. Life had prepared her for just about anything, and she had dealt with her boss the way she had dealt with all the larger-than-life, crazily impulsive and wildly unpredictable people who had entered and left her life, thanks to her father. With equanimity, keeping to herself and protecting herself behind a wall of impenetrable calm.
‘If you want more responsibility,’ he growled, ‘then say so. I can give you a title...more work...varied projects. You name it.’
‘It’s not the work.’
‘Then what the hell is it?’ He narrowed his eyes and sat forward, resting his elbows on his thighs and staring at her until she wanted to squirm with discomfort. ‘Has someone been making life difficult for you?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Violet looked at him with genuine bewilderment.
‘Some of those guys who work with me can be a little overboisterous. Comes with the territory, I’m afraid. Working on computer apps and dealing with innovative start-up companies requires a different kind of personality to the stuffy sort who work in banks and insurance companies. There’s a chance you might be finding one of them impossible to deal with. Is that it? Give me a name and they get the sack. Instantly. Wait.’
