Innocent In The Boardroom: At Her Boss's Pleasure / Her Boss by Day... / How to Sleep with the Boss

This was Kate’s life, built with her own blood, sweat and tears, and her mother had her own life. In Cornwall. Far away. Separate.

‘What about it?’ She shoved her work laptop into a leather briefcase and reached for the grey jacket she had slung over the back of her chair.

Grey jacket, grey calf-length skirt, flat, sensible patent pumps and, yes, definitely tights. Not stockings. Tights. Possibly of the support variety. Who knew? It was impossible to tell what sort of figure she had under the prim ensemble. Not fat, not thin, tall... The shirt managed to hide everything up top and the skirt did a similar job with everything down below.

And why the hell was he looking anyway?

‘How long have you been here? In it?’

Kate paused and frowned. ‘A little over six months. To start with I was moved in here because I was working late on a couple of very big clients and George thought that the quiet would help concentration. Not that it’s a mad house outside. It isn’t. And then, when I was promoted, I was offered it. I snapped it up.’

She reached for her briefcase, slung her black bag over her shoulder and straightened her skirt.

‘Thanks very much for your offer of a ride home, but there are one or two things I need to collect on the way so I shall take the Tube.’

‘What things?’

‘Things... Food items. I need to stop off at the corner shop.’

Alessandro heard irritation behind her calmly spoken words. This was something he wasn’t used to, and he was as bemused by his own reaction to it as he had been by his earlier curiosity as to what lay underneath the prissy work clothes.

‘Not a problem.’ He waved aside her objection. ‘I’ve sent my driver home and I have my own car. Far more convenient if you load whatever you need to buy into my car rather than having to walk with it back to your house.’

‘I’m accustomed to walking home with my groceries.’

Alessandro looked at her narrowly. He wouldn’t have taken her for being skittish, but there was something skittish about her now. And why turn down a ride home? With him?

‘It would be useful for us to decide how to approach this delicate problem with George Cape and whatever money he’s been siphoning off.’

‘If he’s been siphoning off any. And I was under the impression that you had already decided what you would do if you found out that he had taken money from you...throw him in prison and chuck away the keys.’

‘Let’s hope I’ve got it wrong, in that case, and he’ll be spared the prison sentence.’ He stepped aside, leaving her just sufficient room to brush past him through the door, switching off the lights in her wake. ‘You’ve been in this office for six months and this is the first time it’s struck me that there’s nothing personal in here at all. Nothing.’ Kate flushed. ‘It’s an office,’ she said briskly, stepping in front of him, briefcase in one hand, bag over her shoulder, head held high and deliberately averted from him. ‘Not a boudoir.’

‘Boudoir...nice word. Is that where you stash all your personal mementoes? In your boudoir?’

Kate heard the amusement in his voice and turned to him angrily. Get a grip, she told herself sternly. Don’t let the man rattle you. Green flashing eyes clashed with his oh-so-dark ones and she felt herself sinking into his gaze, had to yank herself firmly back to reality.

Alessandro Preda had a reputation with women. Even if the gossip hadn’t reached her ears, one glance at any news rag would have informed her of that reputation.

He used women. He was always being snapped with models draped on his arm, gazing up at him adoringly. Lots of models. A different model for every month of the year. He could have started his own agency with the number of them he ran through. She wondered whether some of those models had been like her mother—sad creatures, blessed with spectacular looks but not enough common sense to know how to use what they had been given. Hanging on. Hoping for more than would ever be on the agenda.

‘Shall I email you my findings?’ Underneath the scrupulous politeness her voice could have frozen fire. She pressed the button to summon the lift and stared at him, as rigid as a plank of wood.

Alessandro had never seen anyone so uptight in his entire life.

This went way beyond self-control—way beyond a certain amount of composure.

What was her story? And didn’t she know that all those ‘No Trespassing’ signs she’d erected around herself were enticing beacons to a man like him?

He was thirty-four years old, and he wasn’t sure whether to be proud or simply accepting of the fact that he had never had to try very hard for a woman. They offered themselves to him.

But Ms Kate Watson had issues with him. He didn’t know what they were, but he did know that they constituted a challenge—and since when had he ever been a man to turn down a challenge?

If he had, he certainly wouldn’t have ended up in the exalted position of power that he had.

He suppressed the onslaught of thoughts that always managed to put him in a foul mood.

‘I don’t think so.’ He stepped back as the lift doors slid open, allowing her to edge past him, making sure she kept her distance as much as she could, doing her utmost to be casual about it. ‘Emails can be intercepted.’

‘Aren’t you being a bit cloak and dagger about all of this?’

Kate addressed the long metal case in the lift containing the various buttons, but she was acutely aware of him right next to her, of the warmth of his body wafting through the air and settling around her like a dangerous cloak that she wanted to shake off. She couldn’t remember him having this sort of effect on her before, but then they had usually been in a room with other people around—not heading down in a lift, just the two of them.

She was alive to his presence in a way that made her whole body feel uncomfortable.

Alessandro stared at that pale averted profile. She was a beautiful woman, he realized with sudden surprise. It was something that wasn’t immediately apparent, because she was at such pains to play down her looks, but studying her now he saw her features were perfect. Her nose was small and straight, her lips oddly full and sexy, her cheekbones high and sharp. Maybe the severity of her hairstyle accentuated all of that.

He wondered how long her hair was. Impossible to tell.

She swung round sharply and he straightened, flushing guiltily at being caught red-handed staring at her. Not very cool.

‘I doubt George is going to do a runner if he gets wind that you’re on to him. And that’s if he’s guilty of anything at all!’

‘Why are you so keen to protect him?’

‘I’m not keen to protect him. Just being fair. Innocent until proved guilty, and all that.’

The lift doors opened with a purr and she stepped out into the vast marbled foyer that still impressed her after nearly two years.

She wasn’t protecting George Cape. Or was she? When she thought of George, a little guy staring down the barrel of a gun and not even realizing it, she thought of her own vulnerable mother, who had lived most of her life staring down the barrel of a gun and not realizing it, and when she thought about her mother she felt her heart constrict.

Which, of course, was not going to do. Least of all with a man like Alessandro Preda. And naturally she could see his point of view.

‘Commendable,’ Alessandro murmured. ‘So we begin on Monday. The hunt to find out whether Cape is guilty of fraud or stupidity. Either way, he will doubtless end up being sacked. Now, where do you live...? My car’s in the underground car park.’

CHAPTER TWO (#u29a44239-142c-584d-bdfb-84b94218c41c)

IT HAD TAKEN a lot for Kate not to get in touch with George Cape over the weekend. Was he guilty of fraud? It was hard to believe. He was a true gentleman, courteous and kind, and he had taken her under his wing when she had started working for him. That said, he had not been his usual self over the past three months. Was there an explanation there somewhere?

She had looked through the files. Thankfully, no dummy companies had been set up—which she hoped ruled out fraud on a systematic large-scale basis. But the odd entries were definitely there, and...

She sighed and looked at her watch. She had managed to put off Alessandro the previous Friday evening, but he would be expecting her in his office now. At nearly seven p.m., the offices were again practically empty—aside from a few hard-core, nose-to-the-grindstone employees who barely glanced in her direction as she briskly walked out of the office with her files towards the bank of lifts.

It had been a while since she had been in Alessandro’s office. Not since that tax problem that had needed sorting out. George and the head of finance had been there too, but there had been a brief period when it had just been her, doing the grunt work with the numbers, and Alessandro, who had been covering other aspects of the problem, and he had ordered in food for both of them.

It had been one of the few occasions when they had been alone together and she could still vividly recall the way she had burned when she had glanced up at one point and their eyes had met.

He had very dark eyes, fringed with thick, dark lashes, and that day he had had the sort of brooding, thoughtful expression that sent shivers racing up and down her spine. Having him look at her had felt like a very physical experience and she hadn’t liked it.