About The Author

CATHY WILLIAMS is originally from Trinidad, but has lived in England for a number of years. She currently has a house in Warwickshire, which she shares with her husband Richard, her three daughters, Charlotte, Olivia and Emma, and their pet cat, Salem. She adores writing romantic fiction, and would love one of her girls to become a writer—although at the moment she is happy enough if they do their homework and agree not to bicker with one another!

Agatha looked up into those glittering, unreadable eyes and fought for something sensible to say. But her mouth was dry, and all she could see in her mind’s eye was his beautiful face close to hers, and all she could hear was her racing heartbeat and the rush of blood in her ears.

‘So this is what you’ve been hiding.’ And he had never suspected it. She had managed to maintain such a low profile that even his highly developed antennae had missed it.

‘What?’ Agatha managed to squeak, in a preternaturally high voice.

The silence thrummed between them. Agatha found that she could hardly breathe as he continued to stare at her, his dark winged eyebrows raised speculatively.

‘Is it because I’ve caught you in a vulnerable moment…?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Of course you do,’ he chided softly, reaching out to brush one long finger against her cheek, and then finding his body charged with a savage, urgent want that descended so fast and so hard that he sucked his breath in sharply.

Agatha shuddered and closed her eyes, and rested against the back of the sofa, her body yearning up towards him.

THE SECRETARY’S

SCANDALOUS

SECRET

CATHY WILLIAMS

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘I CALLED. Five minutes ago. You failed to pick up.’ Luc Laughton flicked back the cuff of his shirt to look pointedly at his watch. ‘I don’t appreciate clock-watching in my employees. People who work for me are well paid for a reason.’

Cool green eyes swept over the small blonde huddled in a thick coat of indeterminate colour that looked as though it had been rescued from the local charity shop. There was, he was forced to concede, a pretty good chance that it had been, knowing her as he did.

Bright patches of colour had appeared on Agatha’s cheeks. Of course she had heard the telephone ring. Of course she had known that she really should have picked it up—but she had been in a rush, and it wasn’t as though she didn’t put in her fair share of overtime when it was necessary. In fact, it was already five-forty-five, so it was hardly as though she had raced to join the five o’clock Friday-evening exodus!

‘Because you’re here as a favour to my mother,’ Luc continued with that implacable edge of steel in his voice that made him so feared in the cut-throat world of high finance, ‘doesn’t mean that you can slope off on the dot of five whenever it suits you.’

‘It’s after five-thirty, and I wasn’t sloping off.’ Agatha stared down at the ground with ferocious concentration because it was a lot less traumatic than actually having to look at Luc Laughton. Looking at Luc Laughton always resulted in a thumping heart, a racing pulse and an inconvenient, prickly feeling all over her body. It had been that way since she had been a kid of thirteen and he had been eighteen—on the verge of manhood, fabulously good-looking and with the sort of dangerous, dark looks that made women stop and stare and then do a double-take every time he walked by.

How could she have failed to have a crush? All the girls in the village had had a crush on him, not that he had ever paid any of them a blind bit of notice. He was the rich kid who lived in the mansion on the hill. He had attended a top boarding school which had honed his razor-sharp intellect and invested him with the kind of cool self-assurance that Agatha had found both scary and weirdly compelling.

‘If it’s important, I guess I could stay on a bit longer…’ she mumbled to the carpet.

Luc gave an elaborate sigh and leaned against the door frame. He had known from the very beginning that this was where the favour to his mother would end up, but what choice had he been given?

Six years ago his father had died unexpectedly, leaving behind him a financial train-wreck brought about by gross mismanagement of his company by the person he had most trusted. While Luc had been living it up at university, on the verge of leaving for Harvard to begin a Masters in economics and history, the wealth that had supported a lifestyle way beyond most people’s wildest dreams had been unravelling faster than the speed of light. His charming father had played golf and entertained clients, and his unscrupulous finance director had played with the books and embezzled vast sums of money.

Luc had been summoned home to face a grief-stricken mother and a house about to go under the hammer to pay off the creditors who had been baying like wolves at the door.

Distraught at having nowhere to live, Danielle had been taken in by the vicar and his wife. They had looked after her and seen her through some tough times for the better part of a year, until the misery of her non-existent finances had been sorted. Sufficient money had been scraped together to rent a small cottage outside the village, which had provided her with a roof over her head while Luc had abandoned his postgrad plans and begun the process of savagely, ruthlessly and single-mindedly reclaiming what had been lost.

So when, eight months ago, his mother had told him that little Agatha Havers had been made redundant a few months ago and needed a job he had had no option but to provide one. Her parents had been an invaluable rock to his mother when she had most needed one, and thanks to them he had had the freedom to instigate the meteoric rise which, less than four years later, would see his mother restored to the house that was rightfully hers.

In the high-tech glass building with its high-achieving staff, however, Agatha stood out like a sore thumb. The daughter of the local vicar of a small parish in a small village in the middle of nowhere, trained in the vital skills of gardening and potting plants, was perilously out of step in his world of mergers, acquisitions and making money.

‘Has Helen gone?’ Helen was Luc’s personal assistant. Agatha felt sorry for her. She might get bits and pieces of his eagle-eyed attention, but Helen received the full brunt of it, because Luc was nothing if not an exacting task-master. Agatha could only shudder at the thought of having to be under Luc’s radar all day, only to return home to all the peace and quiet of four children and a husband.

‘She has. Not that that’s relevant. I need you to collate the information on the Garsi deal and then make sure that all the legal documents are in order. The schedule is tight on this one, so it’s all hands to the deck.’

‘Wouldn’t you be better off…um…getting someone a little more experienced to deal with something like that? ‘ Agatha ventured hesitantly.

Unable to continue staring at the carpet any longer, she reluctantly looked up at him and instantly she felt as though the oxygen levels had plummeted as she feverishly absorbed the refined, beautiful angles of his face. He had inherited the olive skin and black hair from his French mother, and the green eyes of his very English, very aristocratic father, and they worked together to give him drop-dead, killer looks.

‘I’m not asking you to seal the deal, Agatha.’

‘I realise that, but I’m not as fast on the computer as, well…’

‘Most people in the building?’ Luc inserted helpfully, fighting to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. ‘You’ve had nearly eight months to get to grips with the work and you apparently did a one-month crash course in IT.’

Agatha tried not to shudder at the memory of that particular course. Having been made redundant from the garden centre, she had spent three months at home with her mother and, sweet-natured though her mother was, she knew that her patience had been tried to the limit.

‘You can’t spend the rest of your days drifting through the house and tinkering in the garden, darling,’ she had said gently. ‘I love having you here, especially since your dad passed on two years ago, but you need a job. If you don’t think that there are any jobs around here, well, why don’t you perhaps think of working further afield? Maybe even London? I’ve had a little word with Danielle, Luc’s mother, and she suggested that Luc might be able to find a spot for you in his company. He’s very successful, you know—does something important in the City. All you’d need to do would be a short little computer course…’

Agatha privately thought that most ten-year-old kids had more computer savvy than her, but then computers had not been much in evidence in the vicarage. By the time she’d emerged into a world reliant on them, she had found herself wildly at sea and woefully ignorant. Computers, for her, were not friends to be played with. They were potential enemies out to get the better of her the second she pressed a wrong key.

‘Yes, I did,’ she said glumly. ‘But I really wasn’t brilliant at it.’

‘You’ll never get anywhere in life if you droop around convinced that failure lies just around the corner. I’m giving you a golden opportunity to take a step up from filing.’

‘I don’t mind filing,’ Agatha said quickly. ‘I mean, I know it’s dull, but I never expected to…’

‘To find working here exciting?’ Luc held on to his patience with difficulty. Agatha, as timid as a mouse, and as background as canned elevator-music, irritated him. He could remember her as a teenager, skulking in corners, too tongue-tied to hold even the most basic of conversations with him. Apparently she was absolutely fine with everyone else, or so his mother had assured him. He had his doubts. Right now, she was trying hard to disappear into the folds of her oversized coat.

‘Well? ‘ he demanded impatiently.

‘I don’t think I’m really cut out for office work,’ honesty compelled her to admit. ‘Not that I’m not incredibly grateful for the opportunity to work here.’ Or at least, she thought realistically, the opportunity to occupy a broom cupboard on the third floor from where she typed the occasional letter and received orders to file the occasional file. Mostly she was at his beck and call to do such things as sort out his dry cleaning, ensure his fridge was well stocked for those fleeting occasions when he was going to be in his apartment in Belgravia and see off his discarded women with appropriate tokens of fond farewell, ranging from lots of flowers to diamonds—a job delegated to her by Helen. In the space of eight months, five exotic supermodels had been given the red card.

‘I realise you probably didn’t have much of a choice.’

‘None at all,’ Luc agreed deflatingly. Nervous though she was, it would have been terrific if he had contradicted her statement, perhaps told her that she was, in her own way, a valued member of staff.

‘Yes, Danielle and Mum can be quite forceful when they put their minds to it.’

‘Agatha, why don’t you sit down for a few minutes? I should have had a little chat with you sooner, but time’s in scarce supply for me.’

‘I know.’ She hovered indecisively for a few seconds, then reluctantly shuffled back to her desk and sat down, watching as Luc perched on the edge and subjected her to one of those blistering looks that promised unwelcome revelations—probably to do with her lack of computer skills, or at the very least at her lack of enthusiasm for developing what precious few computer skills she did have.

Distracted, Luc frowned. ‘What do you mean, you know?’

‘I mean your mum always goes on about how hard you work and how you’re never at home.’

Luc could scarcely credit what he was hearing. ‘You’re telling me that you sit around like the three witches in Macbeth, yakking about me?’

‘No! Of course not.’

‘Don’t you have any kind of life back there? Anything better to do with your time?’

‘Of course I have a life!’ Or at least she had until she’d been made redundant from the garden centre. Or was he talking about her social life? ‘I have lots of friends. You know, not everyone thinks that it’s a top priority to head down to London at the first chance and make a fortune.’

‘It’s just as well I did, though, isn’t it?’ he inserted silkily. ‘In case you’d forgotten, my mother was languishing in a two-bedroom cottage with peeling wallpaper and threadbare carpets. I think you’ll agree that someone had to take charge and restore the family finances.’

‘Yes.’ She stared down at her fingers and then sneaked a look at him, and for a few heart-stopping seconds their eyes clashed, clear blue against deep, mossy green. That crush, which she had done her utmost to kill off, fluttered just below the surface, reminding her that, however hard she looked, Luc Laughton remained in a league of his own. Even when, like now, he was looking at her with the sort of rampant impatience that was even more insulting than open antagonism.

Her ready capitulation made him scowl. ‘This…’ he spread an expressive hand to encompass the office and beyond ‘…is real life, and thanks to it my mother can enjoy the lifestyle to which she has always been accustomed. My father made a lot of mistakes when it came to money, and fortunately I have learnt from all of them. Lesson number one is that nothing is achieved without putting in the hours.’ He stood up and prowled through the tiny office, which was tucked away from the rest of the offices—and just as well, because he figured that she would have been even more lost had she been positioned in the middle of one of the several buzzing, high-energy floors occupied by his various staff.

‘If you’re not enjoying your job as much as you’d like, then you only have yourself to blame. Try looking at it as more than just biding time until some other gardening job comes available.’

‘I’m not on the look out for another gardening job.’ There were none to be had in London. She had looked.

‘Take one step towards really integrating in this environment, Agatha. I don’t want you to be offended by what I’m about to say…’

‘Then don’t say it!’ She looked at him with big, blue pleading eyes. She knew that he was one of the ‘cruel to be kind’ breed of person with almost zero tolerance for anyone who didn’t take the bull by the horns and wrestle life into subservience like him.

‘He can be a little scary,’ Danielle had confessed just before Agatha had moved to London. Just how scary, Agatha hadn’t realised until she had started working for him. There was little direct contact, because most of her work came via Helen, who always wore a smile and pointed to any inaccuracies in her typing with a kindly shrug. On those occasions when he had descended from his ivory tower and cornered her himself, he had been a lot less forgiving.

‘You can’t be an ostrich, Agatha.’ He paused in his restless, unnerving prowling to stand directly in front of her and waited until he had one-hundred percent of her attention. ‘If you had taken your head out of the sand, you would have predicted your redundancy from that garden centre. They’d been losing money for at least two years; the credit crunch was the final straw. You could have been looking for a replacement job instead of waiting until the axe fell and finding yourself on the scrap heap.’

A rare spark of mutiny swept through her and she tightened her lips.

‘But, no matter. You’re here, and you are being paid a handsome wage, which you earn by taking absolutely no interest in anything at all.’

‘I’ll try harder,’ she muttered, wondering how she could find someone so intensely attractive and yet loathe him at the same time. Were her feelings born out of habit—was that it? A silly, teenaged crush that had developed into some kind of low-lying, semi-permanent virus?

‘Yes, you will, and you can start with your choice of clothes.’

‘I beg your pardon? ‘

‘I’m telling you this for your own good,’ he imparted in the kind of voice that warned her that, whatever he had to say, it definitely wouldn’t feel as though it was being delivered for her own good. ‘Your choice of clothing doesn’t really 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. The last time she saw you, you seemed to be losing weight.’ As far as Luc could make out, under the shapeless coat she looked perfectly healthy to him.

Agatha groaned and buried her head in her hands.

‘Strap up and tell me where you live.’

While he fiddled with his sat nav, giving it instructions to go to the address she could barely impart through gritted teeth, Agatha had time to conduct a quick mental review of the last hour, starting with his sudden interest in producing more challenging work for her to do.

‘This is awful.’ She placed cool hands on her burning cheeks.

‘You’re telling me.’

‘Is that why you hunted me down to give me all that stuff to do?’

‘Try getting one-hundred percent involved and you might have less time to spend crying down the line to your mother and complaining that you’re bored and unhappy. I have no idea how I managed to get roped into a caretaker role, but roped in I’ve been.’

‘But I don’t want you taking an interest in me!’ she all but wailed. Luc, in passing, thought that was interesting because women usually wanted just the opposite out of him.

‘I’m not taking an interest in you,’ he disputed flatly. ‘I’m broadening your work parameters: more interesting projects. Less back-room stuff. So you can start thinking about the wardrobe issue. Front-of-house demands a more stringent dress code than sacks and old shoes.’

‘Okay, I will.’ Just to bring the horrifying conversation to an end.

‘And call me a mug, but I’m giving you a lift back to your house because I want to find out about this date of yours, satisfy myself that you’re not about to put your life at risk with some low-life drifter. The last thing I need is my mother showing up at my office like an avenging angel because you’ve managed to get yourself into trouble.’

If she could have burrowed a hole in the soft, cream leather of the car seat and escaped to another county, Agatha would have done so. Never had she felt so humiliated in her life before. In all the scenarios that had played in her head over the years, not one had involved Luc taking an interest in her because he had no option. Nor had she ever envisaged being told that she looked like a bag lady, which was what he had implied.

She should never have accepted this job. No good ever came of accepting hand outs, although she knew that if she voiced that opinion he would have the perfect come back. Hadn’t his own mother accepted a hand out of sorts when she had moved in with her parents in their rambling vicarage? That, to her way of thinking, was different, as was the dispenser of the hand out. Luc Laughton was hardly a kindly, middle-aged man charmed at the thought of doing a favour for a neighbour in need. He was a predatory shark who would have no qualms about eating the recipient of his charity if he felt like it.

‘I can take care of myself,’ she opined, staring straight ahead. ‘I’m not going to get myself into any trouble.’

‘You obviously haven’t breathed a word of this so-called date to your mother,’ Luc guessed shrewdly. ‘Which leads me to think that you might be ashamed of him. Am I right?’

‘I haven’t said anything to Mum because I’ve only just met him! ‘

He noticed that she hadn’t tackled the issue of whether she was ashamed of the man. Was he married? If he were to guess the kind of guy she would go for, it wouldn’t be a married man. Her life had been nothing if not sheltered. His distant memory was of a girl with almost no sense of style, certainly not the sort of style favoured by her peer group: short, tight skirts, skinny, tight jeans, dangly jewellery. No, if he had to take a stab in the dark, he would bet his last few bucks on a fellow garden-lover, someone who got worked up about eco issues and saving the planet.

But if that were the case wouldn’t she have been on the phone in a heartbeat to tell all to Edith? Even if, as she said, he had only recently landed on the scene.

‘Is he married? You can tell me, although don’t expect me to give you my blessing, because I strongly disapprove of anyone getting entangled with someone who’s married.’

Agatha’s head jerked round at the cool contempt in his voice. Who did he think he was, she wondered? A shining example of morality? Normally reduced to quaking jelly in his presence, she took a deep breath and said very quickly in a very high, tremulous voice, ‘I don’t think you have a right to disapprove of anything.’

For a few seconds she actually wondered if he had heard her because he didn’t say a word. She found that she was holding her breath, which she expelled slowly when he finally answered, his voice icy cold. ‘Come again?’

‘I’ve been given the job of buying all your discards their parting presents,’ Agatha admitted tightly. ‘Flowers, jewellery, expensive holidays—what’s so great about having a string of pointless relationships? How can you preach about married men when you think it’s all right to string some poor woman along knowing that you have no intention of getting involved with her?

Luc cursed fluently under his breath, outraged that she dared bring her opinions to bear on his private life. Not that he was about to justify his behaviour.

‘Since when is pleasure pointless?’ was all he said, clamping down on the rising tide of his temper because for Agatha fun without commitment would be anathema. When he had launched himself into the City, climbing that first rung of the ladder which he knew would lead him to the top, he had had the misfortune to fancy himself in love with a woman who had turned from a softly spoken angel to a harpy the second the demands of work had begun to interfere with her daily need to be stroked. She had complained solidly and noisily about meetings that over ran, had dug her heels in and lashed out at trips abroad and had eventually started look- ing elsewhere for someone who could give her undivided attention.

It had been a salutary lesson. So leading women up a garden path was definitely not a route he was interested in taking. From the very start, they knew that commitment wasn’t going to be on the agenda. He was honest to a fault which, he personally thought, was a virtue to be praised, for it was in short supply in most men.

Which brought him back to the issue of this mysterious guy about whom she was being so secretive.

‘But perhaps you don’t agree with me,’ he drawled, flicking a sidelong glance in her direction. ‘Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’ve been bitten by the big-city bug and come to the conclusion that there’s nothing pointless in having fun. Is that it? I notice you still haven’t mentioned Stewart’s marital status.’

‘Of course he’s not married! He happens to be a very nice person. In fact, he’s taking me out to a very expensive restaurant in Knightsbridge—San Giovanni. Stewart says that it’s famous. In fact, you’ve probably heard of it.’

At which point, Luc’s ears pricked up. This was definitely not the kind of man he’d pictured and, yes, he certainly had heard of the restaurant in question. It was the frequent haunt of the rich and famous.

So what did Agatha have that would attract someone who could afford to take her there? He shot her a sidelong glance and frowned; it struck him that she did have something about her, a certain innocence that a wide-boy Londoner might find suitably challenging. He didn’t like to entertain the notion but sweet, prim Agatha might just be seen as ripe for corruption.

Not an eco-warrior, not a married man…so just someone out to use her? Or was he reading the situation all wrong?

Curiosity, lamentably in short supply in his life, shifted somewhere inside him. He had acted on the spur of the moment in offering her a lift home, and really he should be heading back to his office to put the finishing touches to reports that needed emailing sooner than yesterday. But, hell, work could wait for a little while. Hadn’t he been entrusted with a mission, in a manner of speaking?

In the space of seconds, plans for the remainder of his evening were put on hold.

‘I’ll drive you to Knightsbridge. And before you say anything…’ his sensuous mouth curved into a half smile ‘… there’s no need to thank me.’

CHAPTER TWO

LUC settled down with a cup of coffee for the long haul. Never mind about running late; it was his experience with women that their ability to get changed in under an hour was practically zero. Agatha might not follow the normal pattern of the women he knew, but she was of the female species. Enough said.

He glanced around the poky room with an expression of distaste. He had nothing against bedsits, per se, but it was evident that, whoever the landlord was, he specialised in the art of ripping off the young and inexperienced. The walls showed promising signs of damp and the single radiator looked like something rescued from the ark. The large, old-fashioned sash window overlooking the busy pavements was reasonably attractive but the wood was peeling, and he knew that if he stood too close to it he would be in danger of frostbite from the cold air blowing through the gaps in the frame. He wondered whether he should get more details about the guy. It would take next to no effort to put the fear of God into him.

He was restlessly pacing the room, stopping to scowl with displeasure at the hundred and one little deficiencies in her living accommodation to which Agatha had grown accustomed over the months, when she emerged from her bedroom.

‘I got ready as quickly as I could. You didn’t have to wait here for me. I could easily have got the tube back into London.’

Luc spun round at the sound of her voice behind him, and for a few seconds he stood very still, his stunning eyes unreadable—which was a disappointment. Although she hated the situation she was in, and hated the fact that he now considered her a burden with which he had to deal, he did still happen to be in her bedsit and she was quite dressed up. For her.

‘How do you think I look? ‘ she asked nervously, stretching out her arms and trying in to suck in her stomach.

An only child adored by her parents who had given up on ever having children until she’d come along, Agatha was still keenly aware that her figure didn’t fit the trend, despite all the reassurances she had had growing up. She wasn’t tall enough or skinny enough or flat-chested enough ever to look fashionable. Nor was her blond hair poker-straight.

But, having been insulted about her clothes, she had made a special attempt to look as smart as she could for her date—and incidentally to prove to Luc that she wasn’t the complete fashion disaster that he seemed to think she was.

‘You’ve done something to your hair,’ he commented neutrally. She had a figure. Hell, how had he managed to miss that? It was weirdly shocking to see her in figure-hugging clothes that made the most of what he now registered, with a stunned attention to detail, as a tiny waist and the sort of lush breasts that made teenage boys and grown men stop in their tracks. When had she grown up? When had she stopped being a gauche, awkward teenager who hovered in the background and become…? He had to look away because his body had been galvanised into a response that stunned him.

‘Well, I left it loose. It’s so curly and unmanageable that I tie it up for work.’

‘And it’s heart warming to see that you possess something other than a flowing skirt and baggy jumper. It bodes well for your new approach to dressing for the office, although you might want to have a serious re-think about the length of the skirt.’ Slender legs encased in sheer, black tights staged an all-out battle with his self-control. He was in the grip of utter, stupefied surprise—unfamiliar territory for him.

‘What’s wrong with it?’ She bent slightly to inspect the hem of her dress with a frown. ‘It’s no shorter than some of the skirts the other girls wear.’ She sighed, knowing what he meant without him having to spell it out. Short and tight was only acceptable on stick insects. ‘Anyway,’ she added defensively, ‘I wouldn’t dream of wearing anything like this to work. In fact, it’s the only dress I have. Well, the only—’

He was reaching for her coat, clamping down on a reaction that he deemed inappropriate, inexplicable and ridiculous, and she winced at her propensity for rambling. Her mother had always called her a chatterbox and they had all been convinced at the garden centre that her success with the difficult plants lay in her ability to talk to them about anything and everything. But Luc wasn’t interested in anything she had to say. She shut her mouth abruptly, and stiffly allowed herself to be helped into her coat.

‘The only what?’

‘It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t very interesting, anyway. I was just going to say that I don’t have an awful lot of dresses. There was never much need to wear them when I worked at the garden centre.’

‘I do recall some green overalls,’ he drawled.

‘I’ve never seen you at the garden centre.’ Embarrassed colour was spreading to her hairline, and she was really relieved that he was following her so that he couldn’t see her face.

‘You would have remembered seeing me? That garden centre was pretty big.’

‘Of course I would have remembered seeing you—because…because you would have been so out of place there. I guess you might have been with Danielle. You might have a fleet of gardeners at the big house, but she always gets involved choosing the flowers, and the herbs, of course, for that little herb garden at the back of the kitchen.’

‘No idea what you’re talking about. I noticed you walking back to your house one evening in some green overalls and workman boots.’

Agatha flushed and had a vivid picture of how she must have looked to him, hurrying home still in her overalls, her boots dirty, her hair a tangled mess. And then in his office—no longer in overalls or dungarees but still dressed down in her comfortable, baggy clothes, while every other woman wafted around in high-heeled pumps and dapper little black or grey suits with their hair neatly combed back, obeying orders not to wriggle out of their pins and clips by mid-morning.

‘I don’t suppose you know a lot of women who would wear overalls and boots,’ she said weakly, stepping into his car and slamming the door behind her.

‘Not one.’ He turned to her as he switched on the engine and the low, powerful car roared into life. ‘In fact, the women I know wouldn’t be seen dead in anything like that.’

‘I know.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, I’ve seen the kind of women you’ve gone out with over the years. Not that I’ve taken any real interest, you understand, but when Danielle lived with us you often came to visit with one of your girlfriends; they all looked the same,so I’m guessing you like them with lots of make-up and designer clothes.’

‘Is there a sting in the tail with that remark?’ Luc looked at her wonderingly before easing his car out of its parking space to head back towards the centre.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘No,’ he said shortly, still unnerved by the underhand trick his body had played on him back there. ‘I don’t suppose you do.’

‘What do you mean, then? ‘

‘I mean that honesty is all well and good, but in London it might pay to be a bit more streetwise.’ No wonder Edith worried about her. ‘For one thing, you’re being ripped off by your landlord. How much are you paying for that dump? ‘

‘It’s not a dump!’ But she told him, and her heart sank when he gave a bark of cynical laughter.

‘The man must have seen you coming a mile off. Green round the ears, no clue as to what sort of questions to ask, waving a stash of money. So what does he do? Overcharge for a disgusting hole with erratic heating and not enough space to swing a cat. Fifteen minutes in that place and I could spot enough signs of damp and rot to get the whole house condemned.’

‘It’s more comfortable when the weather’s warm.’

‘I bet it is.’ Luc’s lips curled with derision. ‘You don’t have to spend your nights praying that the place will be warm when you wake up in the morning! It’s a disgrace.’

‘I suppose,’ Agatha admitted on a sigh. ‘But when I looked around, Mr Travis promised that he would put right loads of things. I keep asking him, but his mother’s been taken into hospital and the poor man’s hardly been around.’

At this Luc burst out laughing before glancing across at her with rampant disbelief at her gullibility. ‘So Poor Mr Travis has a sick mother in hospital which means that he just can’t find the time to make sure that the damp problem in the bedsit gets seen to—or the rotting window frames get fixed, or the rancid carpet gets taken up? I wonder how poor Mr Travis would feel if a letter from my lawyer landed on his desk tomorrow morning.’

‘You wouldn’t! ‘

‘Oh, I would, believe me. The man’s a crook who’s decided to take advantage of you. I’m not a superstitious guy, but I’m beginning to think that my mother’s phone call was the hand of fate, because another month in that place in the middle of January and you would have been the one occupying the hospital bed—with pneumonia! No wonder you wear ten layers of clothing when you come to work. You’ve probably become accustomed to that!’

‘I don’t wear ten layers of clothes when I come to work.’ The words ‘charity case’ were swimming in her head, making her feel nauseous.

‘You weren’t equipped for life in London.’ Luc steamrollered over her interruption. ‘You grew up in a vicarage and spent your short working life in a garden centre watering plants. I can’t say that I enjoy being anybody’s caretaker, but I’m beginning to see why my mother wanted me to get involved.’

‘That’s the most horrible thing you could ever say to me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because…’ Because, a little voice said nastily, she didn’t want Luc Laughton to think of her as a hapless country bumpkin who needed looking after. She wanted him to think of her as a sexy young woman—or even just as a woman. Fat chance! He hadn’t even noticed her outfit. At least in any way that could be interpreted as complimentary.

‘Well? I’m not in the habit of doing good deeds, but I’m willing to change my life rules for you. You should be flattered.’

‘No one’s ever flattered to think that they’re too stupid to take care of themselves,’ Agatha told him stiffly. Her eyes stung but she wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself. She was going to remember that she was about to have dinner with a dishy, eligible man who would never have asked her out if he had thought that she was as pathetic as Luc made her out to be.

‘I’ve always found that it pays to be realistic,’ Luc responded bracingly. ‘When my father died and I came home to that financial mess, I realised very quickly that I could do one of two things: I could sit around, get depressed and become bitter or I could just go out and begin to rebuild everything that was lost.’

‘I find it hard to think of you getting depressed or feeling bitter.’

‘I don’t allow those negative feelings to influence what I do in life.’

‘I wish I could be as strong minded as you,’ Agatha was forced to concede, thinking of all the doubts she had nurtured over the years despite her very happy background.

When her friends had all started experimenting with make-up and going on diets so that they could look like the models in magazines, she had taken a back seat, knowing that inner beauty was all that mattered, and that wanting to look like someone else or aspire to someone else’s life was a waste of time. Of course, in London, the whole inner-beauty conviction had taken a bit of a knocking. She had largely felt like a fish out of water when she had gone out with her girlfriends from work, who had developed amazing skills of transformation, morphing from office workers to vamps with a change of clothes and bold make-up. Her stretchy black dress which made her feel horrendously exposed because it was fairly short with a fairly revealing neckline was still conservative compared to the stuff some of her friends wore, and she was so unaccustomed to wearing jewellery that she had to stop herself from twiddling with the strands of chunky copper round her neck.

‘I mean,’ she continued, musing, ‘You’re so sure of yourself. You set your goals and you just go after them. Like a bloodhound.’

‘Nice comparison,’ Luc muttered under his breath.

‘Don’t you ever sit back and wonder if you’re doing the right thing?’

‘Never.’ With more than half the journey completed, Luc thought that it was time he got down to the business of quizzing her about her date. More and more, he got the feeling that she was a loose cannon, an innocent released to the mercy of any passing opportunist. ‘So this Stewart character…?’ he prompted.

Brought back down to earth with a bump, Agatha blinked. Her mind had been wandering. She had almost forgotten about Stewart.

‘Yes…?’

‘How did you meet him? ‘

‘Oh, usual way,’ she said with a casual, studied shrug; this was the perfect opportunity to prove to him that she wasn’t as abnormal as he seemed to think she was. ‘At a bar. You know…’

‘At a bar? You go bar hopping?’

‘When you say “bar hopping”…’

‘Moving from bar to bar,’ Luc intoned very slowly, emphasising each word. ‘Getting more and more drunk before finally landing up somewhere, barely able to stand.’

Agatha bid a fond farewell to nurturing that misconception for him. The whole idea sounded pretty disgusting. She had heard ample stories of girls who had got themselves in trouble by doing just that sort of thing. Her father had counselled at least three that she could remember.

‘When you told me that you were worried about me getting into trouble, that’s not what you were talking about, was it? You didn’t really think that I might end up pregnant by some guy whose name I never found out because I had gone out and had too much to drink, did you?’

‘Calm down. I don’t think you’re the kind of girl.’

Insult or compliment? she wondered. Compliment, she decided. ‘I met him at a wine bar. Near the office, actually. I went there with a couple of girls from work. We were having a drink and the bar tender brought over a bottle of champagne and told us that Stewart had sent it for me. When I looked over, he waved and then he came across to join us, and he and I ended talking for quite a while.’

‘What about?’

‘Lots of things,’ Agatha told him irritably. ‘He’s very interesting. And very smart. Also good-looking.’

‘I’m beginning to get the picture.’

‘He wanted to know all about what I did, which was great, because most guys just like talking about themselves.’

‘I didn’t realise that you were that experienced…’

‘I’m not experienced…with men in London. Naturally I’ve been out with quite a few boys at home, and generally speaking they just want to talk about football or cars. Very stereotypical.’ She slid her eyes across to Luc, and as usual her mouth suddenly went dry, and she felt hot and flustered for no apparent reason. This was the first real conversation she had ever had with him, and she was enjoying herself, much as she loathed to admit it. ‘What do you talk about when you go out with a woman?’ she found herself asking curiously.

‘Strangely enough, I find that it’s the women who tend to do all the talking.’ He had little interest in holding hands over the dinner table and sharing his thoughts with someone he planned on bedding.

‘Perhaps you make a good listener,’ Agatha suggested doubtfully. ‘Although I’m not really sure that you do. You didn’t listen to me when I told you that I could take care of myself.’

‘And evidence of your living conditions proves that I was right on that score.’

‘Maybe I should have been a little more insistent with Mr Travis,’ she conceded, giving a little ground on this one thing—because he had yet to discover, in addition to all the other problems he had listed, the temperamental fridge and its even more temperamental close relative, the oven. ‘But I’m a big girl when it comes to dealing with everything else.’

‘That’s true enough on the surface,’ Luc murmured. ‘You might look the part but I have a feeling that it only runs skin deep.’

‘Look the part?’ Was he telling her that she was fat? She might not be a stick insect, but she wasn’t fat—plump, maybe, but not fat. And, if that was what he had meant, why was she stupidly asking for confirmation? Did her capacity for masochism never end?

‘You’re a big girl, Agatha. Funny, I hadn’t really noticed until now.’ Again he tried to equate the teenager with the woman next to him, and again that weird kick that shot through his body as if he had been suddenly hot-wired.

‘You mean the dress?’ she suggested in a taut voice. The very same dress she had exhibited for him, hands outstretched, vainly hoping that he might compliment her. They had reached the restaurant, but she wasn’t quite ready to drop the conversation, so when he parked and turned towards her she garnered her very small supply of courage and stayed put, arms folded, her full mouth flattened into a thin line. ‘I’m not ready to go in just yet.’

‘Pre-dinner nerves? Don’t worry. If he’s that good-looking, that charming and that interested in every word you have to say, I’m sure you’re in for a scintillating evening.’

‘It’s not pre-dinner nerves. It’s…it’s you! ‘

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘You haven’t said one nice thing to me all evening. I know you would never have employed me to work for your company. I know you’ve been forced to help me out because you think you owe my family a favour—which you don’t, but you could at least try and be nice. You’ve told me that I’m no good at what I do…’

She tabulated all her points by sticking up her fingers one by one. ‘You’ve told me that the clothes I wear to work are horrendous because I don’t wear that uniform of tight suits and high heels, even though I’m hidden away most of the time. I need to invest in a new wardrobe just in case someone important sees me and falls into a dead faint, I suppose. You’ve told me that I wouldn’t have a clue how to look after myself in a place like London, you’ve told me how awful my bedsit is, and now? Now you sit there telling me that I look fat!’

Listing all those slights out loud hadn’t been a good idea. Taken one at a time, she could reason them away, but faced with all of them in their entirety was just too much. A wave of forlorn self-pity rushed over her; her eyes began to leak and it wasn’t long before the leak became a flood. When she found a handkerchief pressed into her hands, she accepted it gratefully and dabbed her eyes as her silly crying jag was reduced to the odd hiccup.

Embarrassment replaced self-pity. She blew her nose and stuffed the hankie into her bag.

‘Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I must be nervous; you’re right.’

‘I should be the one apologising.’ Luc had no time for weeping, wailing women, but for some reason the sight of Agatha in floods of tears had struck right to the heart of him. Hearing her neat little summary of everything he had said to her over the course of the evening had not been one of his proudest moments.

‘It’s okay,’ she whispered, desperate to remove herself from his presence where seconds before she had wanted to stay and speak her mind. She tilted her face to him. ‘Do I look a mess? I bet my make-up’s everywhere. What’s he going to think?’ She gave a wobbly laugh.

‘That you’ve got amazing eyes and that you’re anything but fat,’ he said roughly.

And just like that the atmosphere altered with sudden, sizzling electricity. It was as if the world had suddenly shrunk to the small space between them. She thought she could actually hear the rush of blood through her veins but then she realised that she was just imagining it. Thinking straight, this was the man who hadn’t had a good word to say to her.

‘You don’t have to say that.’

‘No. I don’t.’ But his voice had changed imperceptibly. ‘But, just for the record, you do have amazing eyes, and when I said that you’re a big girl now I didn’t mean it in the literal sense.’

‘You didn’t?’

‘I meant you’ve grown up. That dress makes you look sexy.’

‘Sexy? Me?’

‘You. Why do you sound so shocked?’

Because you’re saying it, she thought, while her face burnt and her pulses raced and her heart sang. ‘Let’s hope Stewart agrees! ‘ Just in case those laser-sharp eyes of his could bore a hole in her head and pluck out that inappropriate thought.

‘Stewart. The hot date. Yes.’ His voice was clipped and he reached to open his car door. ‘I’ll come in with you. Hang on…’ He leaned across and carefully rubbed his finger under her eye, and then he laughed softly when she jerked back in surprise.

‘Relax. Just a bit of smudged mascara. Anyone would think you’d never been touched before, Agatha.’

‘I…I have my hankie. Well, your hankie. I can do that! Could you switch on the light? I need to have a look at my face. Make sure my eyes aren’t too puffy.’ She laughed shrilly, and then chattered and tutted and avoided eye contact as she inspected her face in her little hand mirror, so that by the time she had finished dabbing and rubbing she could present him with a bright, tinny smile.

‘Right, all ready! Can’t wait!’

Three and a half hours later, a driving, bitter rain greeted her outside.

‘So, when can I see you again?’

Agatha looked at Stewart who was pressed a bit closer to her than she would have liked—unavoidable because they were both sheltering under his umbrella. She had made sure that the buttons on her coat were done up to the neck. Whilst it had been flattering to be the object of his compliments, she had felt uncomfortable under his roving eye, even though she knew that this was what she should have expected. Several times she had caught him addressing her cleavage.

Also, her mind had been all over the place, analyzing and re-analysing everything Luc had said to her, then picking apart what she remembered of their conversation so that she could begin the process all over again. She had had to ask Stewart to repeat himself several times, had failed to notice the quality of the wine, which he had brushed aside—although she knew that he had been offended from the mottled colour of his neck—and had left most of her main course because she had accidentally ordered the wrong thing from the menu, which was in Italian.

She had no idea why he wanted to see her for a second date, and it felt almost churlish to have to think about it when he had been so good to overlook her little lapses and show so much interest in everything she had to say about every aspect of her life and job, however insignificant the detail.

‘Tomorrow’s Saturday,’ he murmured. ‘I know a great little club in Chelsea. Anybody who’s anybody is a member. You wouldn’t believe the famous faces I’ve spotted there; you’d love it.’

‘Maybe we can do something next week.’

Stewart pouted with disappointment but picked himself up with remarkable ease, and as he reached out to hail a cab he pulled her close to him and, before she could wriggle away, planted a hot, laughing kiss full on her mouth.

‘Sure I can’t tempt you back to my place? I make a pretty good Irish coffee, if I say so myself.’

Agatha laughed and declined, and was guiltily relieved when he slid into the taxi, taking his umbrella with him, cheerily insouciant to the fact that she was now in the process of being drenched. And would therefore have to hail a cab, even though a taxi ride back to North London would be a ridiculous waste of money.

And, now that she did require one, there were none to be spotted. Although…

A familiar silver car pulled up to the kerb and she found the passenger door pushed open, waiting for her to oblige.

‘Get in, Agatha. Or risk pneumonia.’

‘Wow. How did you do that—show up just when I was about to start walking to the underground? Anyway.’ she straightened ‘…I can’t have you messing up your Friday night to give me a lift home because you feel sorry for me.’ She dug her hands into her pockets and began walking towards the underground while the car trailed her, sped up and then the passenger door was flung open again and Luc was glaring out at her from the driver’s seat.

‘Get in or I’ll have to get out, lift you up and chuck you in. Do you want that? Do you want that kind of scene in the middle of Knightsbridge? ‘

‘Have you been here the whole time waiting for me?’ she asked as soon as she was inside the car, luxuriating in the warmth and dryness.

‘Don’t be crazy, but I had to come back here for you.’

‘Why on earth would you have to do that? I know you think I’m a hopeless case, but I’ve been getting to and from work every day on public transport. I know how to use the buses and tubes! Course, it took a little time, but I got there in the end. Mum hates it. She keeps telling me that tubes are a breeding ground for muggers. And she’s only been to London a handful of times—and never on a tube! Gosh, sorry; I’m talking too much again.’ But like a bad dream all thoughts of her date had disappeared like a puff of smoke.

‘I got Antonio to call me when you were about to pay the bill.’

‘Who’s Antonio?’

‘The owner of the place. We go back a long way.’

‘What if Stewart and I had decided to move on to somewhere else—a club, or a bar? Or I could just have decided to go back to his place.’

‘Did he ask you to? ‘

‘As a matter of fact, he did.’

‘And you turned him down. Good girl. Wise decision.’

‘Who knows what I’ll say the next time he asks, though?’She looked across at him. He had changed out of his work clothes into a pair of dark jeans and a thick, black jumper. His coat had been tossed to the back seat. She was ashamed to admit even to herself that if she had all the time in the world, she would never tire looking at him.

He opened his mouth as though on the verge of saying something, only to think better of it.

‘So you’ve arranged another date, have you?’

‘Not as such…’ She teased those three little words out as long as she could. ‘Who knows?’

‘Who knows indeed? ‘ Luc intoned in a peculiar voice.

‘What have you done this evening?’ she asked a little breathlessly.

‘Work. I’ve been working on, eh, a very interesting project, let’s just say.’

‘Do you know, it’s great that you enjoy your job so much,’ Agatha said warmly. ‘Although it’s a little sad that you want to spend your Friday nights doing it.’

‘Your honesty is beyond belief, Agatha. I would have entertained myself in the usual way, but there was something a little more important I had to do. After doing that, I realised that I needed to have a little chat with you. Let’s just say that one thing gave rise to the other.’

‘Why are you being mysterious? What do we need to chat about?’ Why did the words ‘little chat’ inspire such feelings of dread? Was he about to sack her? Had she overstepped the line with her beyond-belief honesty?

Agatha quailed at the thought of returning to Yorkshire as a failed charity case—but London, even a bedsit in London, was impossible without a pay packet at the end of the month.

‘This isn’t the right place. I am going to take you to your house, you are going to ask me in for a cup of coffee and we can have our chat then.’

‘Can’t it wait until Monday? ‘

‘I think it’s better to get it out of the way. Now, relax; tell me about your evening. Take me through how a guy who leaves a woman standing in the pouring rain sees fit to entertain her.’

Now out of a job, Agatha didn’t think she had anything to lose by being totally, one-hundred percent honest. People were never honest with Luc, with the exception of his mother. They tiptoed around him, bowing and scraping, ‘yes, sir’, ‘no sir’. He was one of those lethally good-looking men who were just too powerful for their own good. He was unapologetic in his arrogance and in his assumption that he could play by his own unique set of rules.

‘I don’t want to be having this conversation with you.’

‘Why not? Are you embarrassed? There’s nothing to be ashamed of because it was a flop. These things happen. You just have to shrug it off and move on.’ Furthermore, she would be glad of his sterling advice when he filled her in on a few missing jigsaw pieces. His Friday night had been ruined, but he was upbeat about it.

Without the hassle of traffic, it took them less than half an hour before he pulled up outside her house, and Agatha hadn’t said a word for the brief drive. Her evening out had been disappointing, but there was a slow resentment building inside her at the way Luc had showed up for her, like a parent collecting a child from a birthday party. And then to hear him dismiss her date as a flop, something unfortunate that she should step over and forget with a shrug, made her even more angry.

She hadn’t asked him to start interfering in her life. He had barely noticed her for the past eight months, but now that he had been forced to he had decided to give the project his full and complete attention. But he still couldn’t conceal the fact that he found her annoying and a nuisance. Everything about her offended him, starting with the way she didn’t seem to know how to suck up to him sufficiently, and ending with the way she looked—and Luc, being Luc, he made no bones about hiding his reaction.

And now he needed to chat to her. It could only be about her job. He had gone away, added up all the reasons why she didn’t belong in his company and was going to break it to her that, however indebted he felt to her mother, having her as dead weight in his office was too steep a price to pay.

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ she burst out as soon as he had killed the engine. ‘And you can just tell me right here.’ She had unclasped her seat belt, and now she swivelled round to look at him.

‘You know what I’m going to say?’

‘Yes. I know what you think of me, and I know exactly what you’re going to say.’ The words tumbled out with feverish urgency.

‘I don’t think you have a clue what I think of you,’ Luc informed her huskily. ‘And you certainly don’t know what I’m going to say to you. And, no, we are not going to have this conversation in my car.’

‘I just want to get it over and done with,’ Agatha implored, but he was already out the car and she hurriedly followed suit, fumbling in her bag for the house key and feeling the tension escalate with every step up to her bedsit.

Stepping back into the room, she switched on the light and looked around it with new eyes, Luc’s eyes. She took in the discoloured walls, which she had tried to hide by sticking up two large, colourful posters, the sagging, tired furniture, the stained carpet peeping out from behind the thin Moroccan rug she had put over it and the seeping cold. He was right; who else would put up with all that?

‘I’m a failure, and you’ve come to terms with that, and you want to find a polite way of telling me to get lost,’ she said in a rush, before she had even removed her coat. ‘I’m sacked, aren’t I?’

‘Sacked? Why would I want to sack you?’ Eyes as green as the deep ocean stared steadily at her. ‘I want to tell you that I know Stewart Dexter and I know what he wants from you.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘YOU know Stewart? ‘ Agatha’s mouth fell open and she gaped at him in complete bewilderment. ‘I don’t understand. You’ve never met him before; I didn’t introduce you…’

‘Take your coat off and sit down.’

‘If you knew him, why didn’t you come across to say hello? ‘ While she hovered, frantically trying to unravel this unforeseen turn of events, she found herself being helped out of her coat. ‘Well, I guess it’s a good thing that I’m not being sacked,’ she breathed shakily, clutching the one thing he had said that had made sense.

His fabulous green eyes settled on her and suddenly she felt very exposed in her tight black dress and her silly, high black shoes. It was a relief to sink into the chair facing him. When she glanced down, she was accosted by the embarrassing sight of her deep cleavage and abundant breasts straining against the soft, elastic fabric of her dress. She resolved to shelve the outfit first thing in the morning.

‘But I don’t understand why it was so important for you to race over to the restaurant to tell me this.’

‘When you mentioned the name of the guy you were meeting, it rang a bell, but I didn’t think anything of it,’ Luc said carefully. ‘I have a finger in a lot of pies and so I meet people from a range of industries. And Dexter is a common enough surname. But then I saw the guy at the restaurant and the alarm bells started ringing.’

‘Alarm bells? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You’re not going to like what I have to say.’ Never one to waste time beating about the bush, Luc now paused and considered his words carefully. Staring across the table at him, her eyes wide and perplexed, Agatha looked very, very young, and strangely enough the revealing nature of her dress only accentuated that impression.

‘How old are you? ‘ he asked roughly, finding himself momentarily sidetracked.

‘Sorry?’

‘Forget that. It’s not important. There’s no easy way to say this, but Dexter might not be the guy you think he is.’

‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about. You mean Stewart Dexter isn’t Stewart Dexter? Who is he, then?’

‘He’s someone who used to work for one my companies. When I thought I recognised him, I went back to the office and did a little research.’

‘You ran a background check on my date?’ Agatha trembled. ‘How could you do that?’ Her huge blue eyes, staring up at him, were full of reproach.

‘I’d advise any woman to run a background check on a man they’d picked up in a bar before they went out with him on a date, Agatha. This isn’t a small village in Yorkshire.’

‘I’m not ashamed that I trust people, Luc. I know you don’t, and I can understand why. Your father trusted George Satz and in return he had all his money stolen from him.’

The story had run in the local newspaper for weeks, with each new revelation of embezzlement producing a fresh torrent of speculation. With Elliot Laughton no longer around to defend himself, details went uncontested. Members of staff were interviewed and their bafflement at the scale of the financial losses only added to the scandal. At the time, Agatha had felt deeply sorry for Luc, although that was something she would never have shared with him. He had returned from university with a protective barrier around him that repelled words of sympathy. The whole business would surely have accounted for the man he was later to become—a man who would never know how to give anyone else the benefit of the doubt.

Her meandering mind returned to the present and she cleared her throat. ‘Well, almost all his money. So I can see why you’re so suspicious of other people—but I’m not. It would never occur to me to do a background check on anyone! Anyway, we were meeting in a public place, and there was no way that I was going to go anywhere afterwards with him.’ Her angry eyes locked with his and she leaned forward, her hands balled into fists.

‘Like I told you,’ Luc’s voice was cool and even and controlled, ‘You’re not savvy about the kind of guy a girl can get mixed up with in London. Dexter was sacked from the company a year and a half ago. He was a minor cog in one of the IT companies I took over. He was caught trying to hack into confidential programs to do with software. He was kicked out the second the breach was discovered by one of my people.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘You don’t want to believe me. And I don’t want to be sitting here telling you this. But some good Samaritan’s got to fill you in on the man. Naturally, in the case of a dismissal of that nature, no references were forthcoming. He disappeared and, as far as I know, he isn’t working for any of the major players in the country. Did he mention the name of his employer?’

‘No.’ Agatha was beginning to feel giddy. ‘Are you sure about all this? I mean, it’s easy to confuse people…to think you recognise someone when you don’t know them really…’

‘I don’t make those kinds of mistakes.’

Agatha was immediately silenced.

‘Everyone makes mistakes,’ she muttered eventually.

Luc ignored that. ‘I could find out what outfit Dexter managed to inveigle his way into and get him fired, not least because he would have had to forge his references from my company.’

‘I’m not a child! If Stewart is really the person you think he is, then I can just ask him outright.’

‘And I’m sure he would come up with a very convincing story.’

‘And I would be so easy to convince, wouldn’t I? Because I’m green round the ears.’

‘How is it that you are so good at making me feel like a monster?’ he murmured softly. An unnatural urge to put his arms around her was squashed before it could take form. ‘I’m actually doing you a favour by telling you this.’

‘It doesn’t feel like a favour. Even if Stewart is who you say he is—and I’m still not certain that you haven’t got it wrong; people do get things wrong, even people like you—well, what does that have to do with me?’

‘I think Dexter sought you out.’

‘Sought me out? That sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory.’ Agatha’s head was in a whirl.

‘Course, it all could be pure coincidence, but my gut feel is that he decided to set up in competition. Have you any idea of the value of gaming software? Which is why it’s one of the most highly confidential areas of all my companies. I have computer-game designers working to create games that could outrun some of the biggest sellers. After Dexter’s hacking attempts, I made sure that all entries were closed down. If he really wanted to get his hands on some of my developing ideas, he might have thought that he needed to go down a different route.’

Realisation was beginning to dawn for Agatha. Naturally, Luc could be off target with his assumptions, but would he really ever make a mistake like that? When it came to business, his acumen was legendary. Everyone in the company reverently believed that everything he touched turned to gold; only someone blessed with an ability to make sound decisions would ever have possessed that Midas touch.

‘Question: has Dexter been asking you all sorts of questions about the company?’

Agatha twisted in her chair so that she could look at him. ‘Of course he’s been interested in what I have to say.’

‘I’ll bet.’

If only there had been a part of her that could really and truly believe that she hadn’t been used, she would have run with it. Instead, all she could volunteer feebly, was, ‘Everyone deserves a second chance. Even people who come out of prison get second chances.’

She belatedly realised how often the subject of her work had cropped up in the conversation. She had been flattered at the interest and had downplayed her role in the company. In fact, she hadn’t mentioned the broom cupboard once.

‘I think Dexter is manipulating you to access information,’ Luc told her bluntly.

‘What sort of information? This is too much. My head’s beginning to spin.’

Feeling disadvantaged on the chair, Agatha stood up and weaved a wobbly path to the kitchen so that she could pour herself a glass of water. She returned to find Luc standing by the window and idly peering out. He turned when he heard her but remained where he was, six foot two of towering alpha male with the subtlety of a sledge hammer.

Suddenly she was really angry that Luc was the one who had taken it upon himself to point her in the right direction by humiliating her and then calling it doing her a favour.

She realised how much she preferred the comfort of lusting from afar. Having her heart flutter whenever she glimpsed him at a distance had been a little inconvenient but it had never threatened her peace of mind. She could remember sitting in the snug at the vicarage, curled up with a book, half-reading it, half-pleasantly day dreaming about Luc suddenly noticing her and sweeping her off her feet. At seventeen, it had been a very nice day-dream.

A living, fire-breathing Luc with a mission to save her from herself was more than she could bear. He was just too much. She felt like a moth helplessly drawn to the blinding brightness of a fire, knowing that the nearer she got the more dangerous her situation became.

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