Czytaj książkę: «After Hours...»

CHAPTER ONE

CARA WINSTONE CLIMBED the smooth slate steps to the shiny black front door of the town house in South Kensington and tried hard not to be awed by its imposing elegance.

This place was exactly the sort of house she’d dreamed about living in during her naïve but hopeful youth. In her fantasies, the four-storey Victorian house would be alive with happy, mischievous children, whom she and her handsome husband would firmly but lovingly keep in line and laugh about in the evenings once they’d gone to bed. Each room would have a beautiful display of fresh seasonal flowers and light would pour in through the large picture windows, reflecting off the tasteful but comfortable furnishings.

Back in real life, her topsy-turvy one-bed flat in Islington was a million miles away from this grand goddess of a mansion.

Not that it was going to be her flat for much longer if she didn’t make good on this opportunity today.

The triple espresso she’d had for breakfast lurched around in her stomach as she thought about how close she was to being evicted from the place she’d called home for the past six years by her greedy landlord. If she didn’t find another job soon she was going to have to slink back to Cornwall, to the village that time forgot, and beg to share her parents’ box room with the dogs until she got back on her feet.

She loved her parents dearly, but the thought of them all bumping elbows again in their tiny isolated house made her shudder. Especially after they’d been so excited when she’d called six months ago to tell them about landing her dream job as Executive Assistant to the CEO of one of the largest conglomerates in the country. Thanks to her mother’s prodigious grapevine, word had quickly spread through both the family and her parents’ local community and she’d been inundated with texts and emails of congratulations.

The thought of having to call them again now and explain why she’d been forced to hand in her notice after only three months made her queasy with shame. She couldn’t do it. Not after the sacrifices they’d made in order to pay for her expensive private education, so she’d have the opportunities they’d never had. No, she owed them more than that.

But, with any luck, she’d never be forced to have that humiliating conversation because this chance today could be the ideal opportunity to get her feet back under the table. If she could secure this job, she was sure that everything else would fall into place.

Shifting the folder that contained her CV and the glowing references she’d accumulated over the years under her arm, she pressed the shiny brass bell next to the door and waited to be greeted by the owner of the house.

And waited.

Tapping her foot, she smoothed down her hair again, then straightened the skirt of her best suit, wanting to look her most professional and together self when the door finally swung open.

Except that it didn’t.

Perhaps the occupier hadn’t heard her ring.

Fighting the urge to chew on the nails she’d only just grown out, she rang again, for longer this time and was just about to give up and come back later when the door swung open to reveal a tall, shockingly handsome man with a long-limbed, powerful physique and the kind of self-possessed air that made her heart beat a little faster. His chocolate-brown hair looked as though it could do with a cut, but it fell across his forehead into his striking gold-shot hazel eyes in the most becoming manner. If she had to sum him up in one word it would be dashing—an old-fashioned-sounding term, but somehow it suited him down to the ground.

His disgruntled gaze dropped from her face to the folder under her arm.

‘Yes?’ he barked, his tone so fierce she took a pace backwards and nearly fell off the top step.

‘Max Firebrace?’ To her chagrin, her voice came out a little wobbly in the face of his unexpected hostility.

His frown deepened. ‘I don’t donate to charities at the door.’

Taking a deep breath, she plastered an assertive smile onto her face and said in her most patient voice, ‘I’m not working for a charity. I’m here for the job.’

His antagonism seemed to crackle like a brooding lightning storm between them. ‘What are you talking about? I’m not hiring for a job.’

Prickly heat rushed across her skin as she blinked at him in panicky confusion. ‘Really? But my cousin Poppy said you needed a personal assistant because you’re snowed under with work.’

He crossed his arms and shook his head as an expression of beleaguered understanding flashed across his face.

‘I only told Poppy I’d look into hiring someone to get her off my back,’ he said irritably.

She frowned at him in confusion, fighting the sinking feeling in her gut. ‘So you don’t need a PA?’

Closing his eyes, he rubbed a hand across his face and let out a short, sharp sigh. ‘I’m very busy, yes, but I don’t have time to even interview for a PA right now, let alone train them up, so if you’ll excuse me—’

He made as if to shut the door, but before he could get it halfway closed she dashed forwards, throwing up both hands in a desperate attempt to stall him and dropping her folder onto the floor with a loud clatter. ‘Wait! Please!’

A look of agitated surprise crossed his face at the cacophony, but at least he paused, then opened the door a precious few inches again.

Taking that as a sign from the gods of perseverance, Cara scooped up her folder from the floor, threw back her shoulders and launched into the sales pitch she’d been practising since Poppy’s email had landed in her inbox last night, letting her know about this golden opportunity.

‘I’m very good at what I do and I’m a quick learner—I have six years of experience as a PA so you won’t need to show me much at all.’ Her voice had taken on an embarrassing squeaky quality, but she soldiered on regardless.

‘I’m excellent at working on my own initiative and I’m precise and thorough. You’ll see when you hire me,’ she said, forcing a confidence she didn’t feel any more into her voice.

He continued to scowl at her, his hand still gripping the door as if he was seriously contemplating shutting it in her face, but she was not about to leave this doorstep without a fight. She’d had enough of feeling like a failure.

‘Give me a chance to show you what I can do, free of charge, today, then if you like what you see I can start properly tomorrow.’ Her forced smile was beginning to make her cheeks ache now.

His eyes narrowed as he appeared to consider her proposal.

After a few tense seconds of silence, where she thought her heart might beat its way out of her chest, he nodded towards the folder she was still clutching in her hand.

‘Is that your CV?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ She handed it to him and watched with bated breath as he flipped through it.

‘Okay,’ he said finally, sighing hard and shoving the folder back towards her. ‘Show me what you can do today, then if I’m satisfied I’ll offer you a paid one-month trial period. After that I’ll decide whether it’s going to work out as a full-time position or not.’

‘Done.’ She stuck out a hand, which he looked at with a bemused expression, before enveloping it in his own large, warm one.

Relief, chased by an unnerving hot tingle, rushed through her as he squeezed her fingers, causing every nerve-ending on her body to spring to life.

‘You’d better come in,’ he said, dropping the handshake and turning his broad back on her to disappear into the house.

Judging by his abrupt manner, it seemed she had her work cut out if she was going to impress him. Still, she was up for the challenge—even if the man did make her stomach flip in the most disconcerting way.

Shaking off her nerves, she hurried inside after him, closing the heavy door behind her and swivelling back just in time to see him march into a doorway at the end of the hall.

And what a hall. It had more square footage than her entire flat put together. The high, pale cream walls were lined with abstract works of art on real canvases, not clip-framed prints like she had at her place, and the colourful mosaic-tiled floor ran for what must have been a good fifty metres before it joined the bottom of a wide oak staircase which led up to a similarly grand stairwell, where soft light flooded in through a huge stained-glass window.

Stopping by a marble-topped hall table, which, she noted, was sadly devoid of flowers, she took a deep calming breath before striding down the hallway to the room he’d vanished into.

Okay, she could do this. She could be impressive. Because she was impressive.

Right, Cara? Right?

The room she entered was just as spacious as the hall, but this time the walls were painted a soft duck-egg blue below the picture rail and a crisp, fresh white above it, which made the corniced ceiling feel as if it was a million miles above her and that she was very small indeed in comparison.

Max was standing in the middle of the polished parquet floor with a look of distracted impatience on his face. Despite her nerves, Cara couldn’t help but be aware of how dauntingly charismatic he was. The man seemed to give off waves of pure sexual energy.

‘My name’s Cara, by the way,’ she said, swallowing her apprehension and giving him a friendly smile.

He just nodded and held out a laptop. ‘This is a spare. You can use it today. Once you’ve set it up, you can get started on scanning and filing those documents over there,’ he said, pointing to a teetering pile of paper on a table by the window. ‘There’s the filing cabinet—’ he swung his finger to point at it ‘—there’s the scanner.’ Another swing of his finger. ‘The filing system should be self-explanatory,’ he concluded with barely concealed agitation in his voice.

So he wasn’t a people person then.

‘Okay, thank you,’ she said, taking the laptop from him and going to sit on a long, low sofa that was pushed up against the wall on the opposite side of the room to a large oak desk with a computer and huge monitor on top of it.

Tamping down on the nervous tension that had plagued her ever since she’d walked away from her last job, she booted up the laptop, opened the internet browser and set up her email account and a folder called ‘Firebrace Management Solutions’ in a remote file-saving app. Spotting a stack of business cards on the coffee table next to the sofa, she swiped one and programmed Max’s mobile number into her phone, then added his email address to her contacts.

Throughout all this, he sat at his desk with his back to her, deeply absorbed in writing the document she must have stopped him from working on when she’d knocked on his door.

Okay. The first thing she was going to do was make them both a hot drink, then she’d make a start on the mountain of paperwork to be digitally backed up and filed.

Not wanting to speak up and disturb him with questions at this point, she decided to do a bit of investigative work. Placing the laptop carefully onto the sofa, she stood up and made for the door, intent on searching out the kitchen.

He didn’t stir from his computer screen as she walked past him.

Well, if nothing else, at least this was going to be a very different experience to her last job. By the end of her time there she could barely move without feeling a set of judging eyes burning into her.

The kitchen was in the room directly opposite and she stood for a moment to survey the lie of it. There was a big glass-topped table in the middle with six chairs pushed in around it and an expanse of cream-coloured marble work surface, which ran the length of two sides of the room. The whole place was sleek and new-looking, with not a thing out of place.

Opening up the dishwasher, she peered inside and saw one mug and one cereal bowl sitting in the rack. Hmm. So it was just Max living here? Unless his partner was away at the moment. Glancing round, she scanned the place for photographs, but there weren’t any, not even one stuck to the enormous American fridge. In fact, this place was so devoid of personalised knick-knacks it could have been a kitchen in a show home.

Lifting the mug out of the dishwasher, she checked it for remnants of his last drink, noting from the smell that it was coffee, no sugar, and from the colour that he took it without milk. There was a technical-looking coffee maker on the counter which flummoxed her for a moment or two, but she soon figured out how to set it up and went about finding coffee grounds in the sparsely filled fridge and making them both a drink, adding plenty of milk to hers.

Walking back into the room, she saw that Max hadn’t budged a centimetre since she’d left and was still busy tapping away on the keyboard.

After placing his drink carefully onto the desk, which he acknowledged with a grunt, she took a look through the filing cabinet till she figured out which system he was using, then squared up to the mountain of paperwork on the sideboard, took a breath and dived in.

* * *

Well, she was certainly the most determined woman he’d met in a long time.

Max Firebrace watched Cara out of the corner of his eye as she manhandled the pile of documents over to the sofa and heard her put them down with a thump on the floor.

Glancing at the drink she’d brought him, he noticed she’d made him a black coffee without even asking what he wanted.

Huh. He wasn’t expecting that. The PAs he’d had in the past had asked a lot of questions when they’d first started working with him, but Cara seemed content to use her initiative and just get on with things.

Perhaps this wasn’t going to be as much of a trial as he’d assumed when he’d agreed to their bargain on the doorstep.

It was typical of Poppy to send someone over here without letting him know. His friend was a shrewd operator all right. She’d known he was blowing her off when he promised to get someone in to help him and had clearly taken it upon herself to make it happen anyway.

Irritation made his skin prickle.

He was busy, sure, but, as he’d told Poppy at the time, it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. He’d allow Cara to work her one-month trial period to placate his friend, but then he’d let her go. He wasn’t ready to hire someone else full-time yet; there wasn’t enough for her to do day-to-day, and he didn’t need someone hanging around, distracting him.

Leaning back into the leather swivel chair that had practically become his home in the past few months, he rubbed the heels of his hands across his eyes before picking up the drink and taking a sip.

He’d been working more and more at the weekends now that his management consultancy was starting to grow some roots, and he was beginning to feel it. It had been a slog since he’d set up on his own, but he’d been glad of the distraction and it was finally starting to pay dividends. If things carried on in the same vein, at some point in the future he’d be in a position to rent an office, hire some employees and start expanding. Then he could relax a little and things would get back to a more even keel.

The thought buoyed him. After working for other people since graduating from university, he was enjoying having full control over who he worked for and when; it seemed to bring about a modicum of peace—something that had eluded him for the past eighteen months. Ever since Jemima had gone.

No, died.

He really needed to allow the word into his interior monologue now. No one else had wanted to say it at the time, so he’d become used to employing all the gentler euphemisms himself, but there was no point pretending it was anything else. She’d died, so suddenly and unexpectedly it had left him reeling for months, and he still wasn’t used to living in this great big empty house without her. The house Jemima had inherited from her great-aunt. The home she’d wanted to fill with children—which he’d asked her to wait for—until he felt ready.

Pain twisted in his stomach as he thought about all that he’d lost—his beautiful, compassionate wife and their future family. Recently he’d been waking up at night in a cold sweat, reaching out to try and save a phantom child with Jemima’s eyes from a fall, or a fire—the shock and anguish of it often staying with him for the rest of the following day.

No wonder he was tired.

A movement in the corner of his eye broke his train of thought and he turned to watch Cara as she opened up the filing cabinet to the right of him and began to deftly slide documents into the manila folders inside.

Now that he looked at her properly, he could see the family resemblance to Poppy. She had the same shiny coal-black hair as his friend, which cascaded over her slim shoulders, and a very short blunt-cut fringe above bright blue almond-shaped eyes.

She was pretty. Very pretty, in fact.

Not that he had any interest in her romantically. It was purely an observation.

Cara looked round and caught him watching her, her cheeks flushing in response to his scrutiny.

Feeling uncomfortable with the atmosphere he’d created by staring at her, he sat up straighter, crossing his arms and adopting a more businesslike posture. ‘So, Cara, tell me about the last place you worked. Why did you leave?’

Her rosy cheeks seemed to pale under his direct gaze. Rocking back on her heels, she cleared her throat, her gaze skittering away from his to stare down at the papers in her hands, as if she was priming herself to give him an answer she thought he’d want to hear.

What was that about? The incongruity made him frown.

‘Or were you fired?’

Her gaze snapped back to his. ‘No, no, I left. At least, I opted for voluntary redundancy. The business I was working for took a big financial hit last year and, because I was the last in, it felt only right that I should be the first out. There were lots of people who worked there with families to support, whereas I’m only me—I mean I don’t have anyone depending on me.’

Her voice had risen throughout that little monologue and the colour had returned to her cheeks to the point where she looked uncomfortably flushed. There was something not quite right about the way she’d delivered her answer, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

Perhaps she was just nervous? He knew he could come across as fierce sometimes, though usually only when someone did something to displease him.

He didn’t suffer fools gladly.

But she’d been fine whilst persuading him to give her a shot at the PA job.

‘That’s it? You took voluntary redundancy?’

She nodded and gave him a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘That’s it.’

‘So why come begging for this job? Surely, with your six years of experience, you could snap up a senior position in another blue-chip firm and earn a lot more money.’

Crossing her arms, she pulled her posture up straighter, as if preparing to face off with him. ‘I wouldn’t say I begged you for this job—’

He widened his eyes, taken aback by the defensiveness in her tone.

Noting this, she sank back into her former posture and swept a conciliatory hand towards him. ‘—but I take your point. To be honest, I’ve been looking for a change of scene from the corporate workplace and when Poppy mailed me about this opportunity it seemed to fit with exactly what I was looking for. I like the idea of working in a small, dedicated team and being an intrinsic part of the growth of a new business. Poppy says you’re brilliant at what you do and I like working for brilliant people.’ She flashed him another smile, this time with a lot more warmth in it.

He narrowed his eyes and gave her an approving nod. ‘Okay. Good answer. You’re an excellent ambassador for yourself and that’s a skill I rate highly.’

Her eyes seemed to take on an odd shine in the bright mid-morning light, as if they’d welled up with tears.

Surely not.

Breaking eye contact, she looked down at the papers in her hand and blinked a couple of times, giving the floor a small nod. ‘Well, that’s good to hear.’ When she looked back up, her eyes were clear again and the bravado in her expression made him wonder what was going on in her head.

Not that he should concern himself with such things.

An odd moment passed between them as their gazes caught and he became uncomfortably aware of the silence in the room. He’d been on his own in this house for longer than he wanted to think about, and having her here was evidently messing with his head. Which was exactly what he didn’t need.

Cara looked away first, turning to open one of the lower filing cabinet drawers. After dropping the documents into it, she turned back to face him with a bright smile. ‘Okay, well, it won’t take me too much longer to finish this so I’ll nip out in a bit and get us some lunch from the café a couple of streets away. When I walked past earlier there was an amazing smell of fresh bread wafting out of there, and they had a fantastic selection of deli meats and cheeses and some delicious-looking salads.’

Max’s stomach rumbled as he pictured the scene she’d so artfully drawn in his mind. He was always too busy to go out and fetch lunch for himself, so ended up eating whatever he could forage from the kitchen, which usually wasn’t much.

‘Then, if you have a spare minute later on, you can give me access to your online diary,’ Cara continued, not waiting for his response. ‘I’ll take a look through it and organise any transport and overnight stays you need booking.’

‘Okay. That would be useful,’ he said, giving her a nod. It would be great to have the small daily inconveniences taken care of so he could concentrate on getting this report knocked into shape today.

Hmm. Perhaps it would prove more advantageous than he’d thought to have her around for a while.

He’d have to make sure he fully reaped the benefit of her time here before letting her go.