The Secretary's Scandalous Secret. CATHY WILLIAMS
strike the right note for someone working in these offices. Look around you—do you see anyone one else who dresses in long gypsy skirts and baggy cardigans?’
Agatha was engulfed in a wave of anger and shame. He might be beautiful, but then roses were beautiful until you got to the thorns. How could she have nursed an inappropriate crush on this guy for all these years? she asked herself, not for the first time. From afar, when she’d been a kid, he had appeared all-powerful and so breathtakingly gorgeous. Even when Danielle had moved in with her parents, and she had had a chance to see the three-dimensional Luc when he had visited and stayed, she had still not been put off by the way he had always managed to eliminate her even when she had been right there in his line of vision.
She wasn’t a stunning blonde with legs up to her armpits and big hair; it was as simple as that. She was invisible to him, a nondescript nobody who hovered in the periphery, helping prepare suppers and losing herself in the garden.
But he had always been scrupulously polite, even if he had barely registered her growing from a girl to a woman.
This, however, was beyond the pale.
‘I’m comfortable in these clothes,’ she told him in a shaking voice. ‘And I know you’re doing me a huge favour by employing me, when I obviously have no talent for office work, but I don’t see why I can’t wear what I want. No one important sees me. I don’t attend any meetings. And, if you don’t mind, I really would like to go now. I have a very important date, as it happens, so if you’ll excuse me…?’ She stood up.
‘A date? You have a date?’ Luc was startled enough to find himself temporarily sidetracked.
‘There’s no need to sound so surprised.’ Agatha walked towards the door, conscious of his eyes boring into her back.
‘I’m surprised because you’ve been in London all of five minutes. Does Edith know about this?’
‘Mum doesn’t have to know every single thing I do here!’ But she flushed guiltily. Her mother was a firm believer in the gentle art of courtship. She would have had a seizure had she known that her little girl was about to go out for dinner with a guy she had met casually in a bar whilst out with some of her girlfriends. She wouldn’t understand that that was just how it happened in London, and she definitely wouldn’t understand how important this date was for Agatha. At long last, she had decided to throw herself into the dating scene. Dreamy, fictitious relationships were all well and good for a kid of fifteen; at twenty-two, they were insane. She needed a real relationship with a real man who made real plans for a real future.
‘Wait, wait, wait—not so fast, Agatha.’ He reached out, captured her arm in a vice-like grip and swivelled her to face him.
‘Okay, I’ll come in really early tomorrow morning—even though it’s Saturday—and sort out that stuff…’ Just feeling his long fingers pressing into her coat was bringing her out in nervous perspiration and suddenly, more than ever, she wanted this date. She was sick to death with the way her body reacted to him. ‘But I really, really need to get back to my flat or else I’m going to be late for Stewart.’
‘Stewart? That the name of the man? ‘ He released her, but his curiosity was piqued by this sudden insight into her private life. He really hadn’t thought that she had one. In actual fact, he hadn’t thought about her at all, despite his mother’s pressing questions whenever he had called, asking him whether she was all right. He had given her a job, made sure that she was paid very well indeed, given her lack of experience, and frankly considered his duty done.
‘Yes,’ Agatha conceded reluctantly.
‘And how long has this situation been going on?’
‘I don’t see that that’s any of your business,’ she mumbled with considerable daring. Was she supposed to hang around? Did he still want her to carry on working?
She decided to brave an exit, but she was sickeningly aware of him following her out of her office towards the lift. It was Friday and most of the employees on her floor had already left. She knew that the rest of his dedicated, richly rewarded staff further up the hierarchy would be beavering away, making things happen.
‘None of my business? Did I just hear right?’
‘Yes, you did.’ Frustrated, Agatha swung round to look at him, her hands clenched into tight fists in the spacious pockets of her coat. ‘Of course, it’s your business what I do here between the hours of nine and whatever time I leave, but whatever I do outside working hours isn’t your concern.’
‘I wish I could concur but, like it or not, I have a responsibility towards you.’
‘Because of a favour my parents did for Danielle a hundred years ago? That’s crazy! Dad is—was—a vicar. Looking after the parishioners was what he did, and he enjoyed doing it. So did my mother. Not to mention that your mum was already a friend and had helped out countless times at the church fetes.’ She punched the lift button and stared at it, ignoring the man at her side.
‘Baking a few cakes now and again is a bit different from housing someone for a year.’
‘Not for my parents. And Mum would be appalled if she thought that I was in London being a nuisance.’ She had to cross her fingers behind her back when she said that. Her mother worried daily about her. Her phone calls were punctuated with anxious questions about her diet, rapidly followed up by not-too-subtle reminders that London was a very dangerous place. Sometimes, to back this up, Edith would quote from newspaper clippings, overblown, dramatic stories about knifings, murders or muggings that had occurred somewhere in London. She was unfailingly sceptical about any reassurances that Agatha was well and fine and didn’t live anywhere remotely close to where said knifings or murders or muggings had occurred. Her mother would have loved nothing better than to think that Luc was taking Agatha’s welfare on board.
The lift had finally decided to arrive and she looked at Luc in alarm as he stepped inside it with her.
‘What…What are you doing?’
‘I’m taking the lift down with you.’
‘But you can’t!’
‘How do you work that one out?’
‘You’ve just told me that you have this deal to complete—remember? All hands on deck? ‘ She was about to press the ‘ground’ button, but Luc got there before her, and she spun round to face him in angry disbelief,
‘Why are we going down to the basement?’
‘Because my car is there, and I’m giving you a lift to your house.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘Look, do you want the truth?’
Agatha, in receipt of various home truths from him already, was heartily against hearing any more, but her mouth refused to work.
‘I had my mother on the telephone yesterday,’ Luc imparted bluntly. ‘It would seem that I haven’t shown sufficient interest in what you’ve been up to since you’ve come here.’
This was turning out to be a favour that carried a very high price. Normally indifferent to the opinions of other people, Luc dearly loved his mother, and so had gritted his teeth and listened in silence as she’d gently quizzed him about Agatha. She’d registered concern when told that he hadn’t the faintest idea how she was doing. Nor had she bought in to the logic that he had fulfilled his part of the bargain and so what was the problem if he washed his hands of the problem?
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.