Everything You Are (2 page)

Ian looked at her, properly this time, and frowned. He crossed his arms. “I hire my own assistants.”

“Yes, and we’ve seen how well that worked out.” Mr. Thornton stood up.

The crease between Ian's eyebrows deepened; he lowered his gaze and light pink dusted the bridge of his nose.

He looks as if he’s embarrassed
, Jane thought. It was... cute, a word she never thought she would associate with a man who was built like a bull.

“Fine. I'll tell Martha to introduce her to the --”

“Martha is a housekeeper, not a personal assistant,” Mr. Thornton said to his son before he turned to Jane. “You job is not to iron his shirts or to clean; your job is to hire somebody for that.”

“I don't need her to hire somebody, Martha can do that quite easily.”

“Martha is our housekeeper, not yours. Your mother has already asked her to return to the main house,” Mr. Thornton said.

Jane inwardly sighed. Sebastian Thornton -- Ian -- might look like a Viking god, but he behaved like a spoiled child. He was going to be a handful.

With the frown still marring his face, Ian didn't seem pleased. “I assume you want her to start right away?”

“Can you?” Mr. Thornton asked Jane.

“Yes.”

“Very well then.” Another sigh came from Ian's throat as he turned on his heel and waved his hand for her to follow him.

With furrowed eyebrows and his hands in the pockets of his suit pants, Ian waited by his Mercedes, his eyes on the girl who was rushing toward him. Mousy, that was what he called her; not only because of her hair, which was mousy brown, but because of her withdrawn and shy attitude, and the fact that she always wore dark-coloured and inconspicuous clothes. She was practicable and resourceful, and in the three days that she had been working for him she had proved to be a better assistant than the girls before her, even though she didn’t have any previous experience. “Jane,” he greeted the girl and opened the car door for her.

“Ian.” She nodded and slipped onto the seat.

He closed the door, went around the car and lowered himself into the driver’s seat. “Did you get everything?”

“Yes.” She showed him a plastic bag.

He stretched out his hand.

“Do you even know how to turn it on?”

He glanced down at her, arching one eyebrow. “I'm slightly technologically challenged, not stupid.”

“You said that you’ve never used a tablet.” From the bag she pulled out a box and opened it.

“Not personally, but I have seen enough of them to know that they operate on the same principle as smart phones.”

“Here.” She gave him the thin rectangle the size of an A4 notebook.

He took it. There were two buttons at the side of it. One small, with a circle and a line, and one longer, with V minus and V plus at its sides. He pressed the smaller one. Nothing happened.

“You have to hold it down.” She rummaged through the bag and pulled out a small black triangle thing.

“I knew that.” He held the button down.

She unwrapped the triangle thing, pulled out and plugged it into the car's power socket.

The tablet turned on.

She hauled it away from him. “Its battery isn't fully charged yet.”

He fastened his seatbelt and watched her for a while as she busied herself with the tablet. She appeared to know what she was doing. He started the car.

She pulled the seatbelt across her chest and secured it before she again bent over the tablet. “I'll use your company email, is that okay?”

“Yes.” He steered the car onto the street, his destination the Double-T, as Thornton employees called Thornton Tower. He had a meeting at eleven o'clock, for which he had already prepared, but he had another at three o'clock, for which Richardson had put together documentation that waited for him in his office. Since he previously accepted an invitation to have lunch with a business associate, he didn't have time to drop by to the office, so he had asked Jane to bring him the folder with the Trio documentation. She had proposed that Richardson scan the documents and send them to him, and he could look over them on his tablet. He told her that he didn’t own a tablet, at which she had immediately insisted that he buy one.

“Which apps do you need?”

“I don't know.”

“The usual then.”

“I guess.”

She nodded. “I can't install them now, since I'm not connected, but I'll do that in the office while you are in the meeting.”

The Tower was already visible in the distance; they were only a few streets away. “I'll pick you up at one,” he told her. “Don't be late.”

“No, sir.”

The way she said 'sir' sounded as if she was making fun of him, but then when he glanced at her, her face was serious and her focus was on putting the tablet into the bag. She was such a strange girl, so different to the ones he usually socialised with. It felt as if she wasn't the slightest bit fazed that he was Sebastian Thornton Junior, the heir of Thornton Enterprises and descendant of Thornton and Cromwell, two prominent families, a fact he was very proud of. “And don't forget the Trio folder.”

“I won't.”

“It’s supposed to be on my desk.” He stopped beside the pavement and then, as soon as she was out of the car, he turned back onto the road, his eyes landing on the triangle thing in the car's power socket. If she didn't plan to use it, why did she even put it there? He shrugged and decided to leave it there, his mind already on the Holden acquisition, the subject of the meeting.

#

“I'll sit there.” Jane pointed at the table in the corner of the coffee shop, two tables away.

Ian nodded in agreement and walked to the booth occupied by his brother, Chris. He slipped behind the table, across from the blond, who had his long hair tied into a low ponytail.

“Hey,” Chris greeted him. “Who's the girl?”

Ian glanced at Jane, who had already sat down, before his gaze was back on Chris. “My new assistant,” he said, even though he for now only used her for business-related tasks.

“You're kidding.”

“Do I look like I'm kidding?”

“I never imagined that you would choose such a bland looking girl, and with glasses.”

“Jane's very resourceful.”

“And flat-chested.”

“And quite practical.”

“And not blond.”

“She's employed to work, not to look pretty.”

“The last time I saw you, you were quite particular about what kind of attributes your assistant should have; resourceful and practical weren't among them, nor was the working part.” Chris leaned his forearms on the table.” What happened?”

Ian sighed. “Father hired her.”

Chris laughed.

“He's constantly lecturing me lately, about how it's time for me to settle down and to cease with my short term relationships. That I should find myself a wife and start a family.” He face darkened. “I don't want to be tied to one woman. And why should I be?” He narrowed his eyes at his brother. “You're lucky that Father leaves you alone.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it.” Chris crossed his arms as he leaned back in the seat. “If you weren't so spoiled, careless and too used to people doing things for you, Father wouldn't get involved in your affairs either. And he's right; isn't it already time for you to stop your skirt-chasing?”

“I'm not skirt-chasing.”

“Than what do you call your week-long relationships?”

“Relationships that didn't work out in the long-term,” Ian said, with seriousness in his voice. It wasn't his fault that the women he dated couldn't hold his interest for more than a few days. He doubted that he would ever find one with whom he could have a long and loving relationship like the one his parents shared. So why waste time trying? “I'm not spoiled, either.”

“I heard Mother lent you Martha, and that Beth still sends you lunch every day.”

Beth was his family's cook and her family had been working for the Thorntons for generations. “As if you don't get food from the main estate either.”

“Only on special occasions, not daily like you do.”

“I can't help it if Beth likes me better than you.”

Chris sighed and slightly shook his head in that patronising way Ian was already used to. His brother, younger by two years, had a knack for making Ian feel as if he were the younger one, not the other way around.

“I'm the first-born, it's logical that I'm more special to them than you are,” Ian said, despite knowing that, yes, he really was more special to his family, but it had nothing to do with him being the first-born, and everything to do with him being a weak and sickly child.

A waitress came and they ordered.

There was a moment of silence, then Chris spoke, “Where did Father find her?”

“In a store parking lot.”

“So typical for him.”

“At least he doesn't do it often, only once a year or so,” Ian said.

“He did find a few good people that way though.”

“Like Richardson; he was working as a cashier in some store when Father found him, right?”

“That's the story.”

The waitress brought them their order; one latte, one black coffee and two bottles of water.

Chris pulled the latte closer and tore a packet of sugar, pouring it into the milk's fluffy foam, while his eyes slid toward the centre of the coffee shop. “She could be beautiful.”

“Who?” Ian glanced at the waitress.

“Your assistant. Not
your
kind of beautiful, or the right kind of beautiful to work for my model agency, but with the right hairstyle, makeup and clothes, she would turn heads,” Chris said. “If you look at her more closely, she has nice features and a nice body, she just hides it with that old fashioned hairstyle -- who nowadays still wears a bun, besides our grandmother? -- and with her simple and shapeless clothes and glasses.”

Ian turned to Jane and studied her as she fumbled with the tablet. She was just a girl, an average girl who didn't stand out. Mousy. But his brother had an eye for beauty; that's why he had chosen fashion as his profession. If he said Jane could be beautiful, that meant that Jane was beautiful and he was too blind to have noticed it on his own. “You really think so?”

“Should I give her a makeover?”

“If you want to.” Ian stared at Jane, trying to imagine her without glasses, with make-up, in a tight dress and high heels. He couldn't.

She lifted her gaze.

Their eyes met.

He smiled.

She averted her gaze.

“She just snubbed you,” Chris commented.

“Yes, she did.” It was not the first time she had done it, either. It had surprised him when it happened for the first time, since he had thought that she would be worse than his previous assistants, who stuck close to him, hung on his every word and used every opportunity to touch him, which he didn't mind at all. He liked the attention women gave him. But Jane maintained a respectful distance between them and, at first, had even refused his request to call him by his name. What a strange girl. He focused on his brother. “What was so urgent that you had to see me?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to see my brother and have a cup of coffee with him.”

“I have piles of reports that urgently need my attention, so stop wasting my time and tell me what you want.”

Chris sighed. “You were never one for finesse, but you could at least allow me to make some --”

“Stop whining and tell me what you want already.”

“Always so crude.” Chris flicked a long strand of hair that fell over his face off his forehead. “I need a male model.”

“I'm a serious businessman.”

“With a well-toned body.” Chris leaned forward. “A model just cancelled on me and I need to find somebody immediately, since I have a photo-shoot --” he looked at his watch “-- in twenty minutes.”

“It was fun working for you when I was younger, but appearing in a fashion magazine now would harm my reputation.”

“You mean the reputation of a presumptuous womaniser?” Chris arched his eyebrows. “If you are so worried about that we can put a wig on you and transform your appearance so that even Mother won't be able to recognize your face.”

“I am not a presumptuous womaniser,” Ian indignantly told his brother.

“Of course you are. You are arrogant and you love women's attention.”

He might be just a tiny bit arrogant, Ian could admit that. “So what if I like women's attention?”

“Are you going to help me or not?”

“What's in it for me?”

“I'll introduce you to that model like you asked me to.”

“I'm not interested in meeting her anymore.”

“I'll owe you one.”

“I don't know.”

“A big one.”

“How big?” Ian calculatedly studied his brother.

“'I'll have your back the next time you and Izzy have a dispute' big.”

Izzy was their younger sister. “Even if I'm in the wrong?”

“Yes, even if you're in the wrong.”

Ian was proud of his intelligence; he had a good pragmatic mind that did well with numbers and that had helped him complete his studies with honours, but compared to his younger siblings, who had both skipped classes and gotten their Master's degrees when they were under twenty, he was the stupid one. “Is the favour big enough to include counterattacks on Izzy's deviously conceived plans of revenge?”

Chris sighed, rolling his eyes.

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

Ian grinned. “Very well. I'm all yours.”

“Let's go, then.” Chris stood up and, without a second glance, he went outside.

Ian went to pay for the drinks, including Jane's, then, gesturing for Jane to follow him, he joined Chris, who waited for them outside.

“Hello there,” Chris greeted Jane. “I'm Christian Thornton, this big brute's brother.” He offered her his hand.

Jane took the hand and shook it, while a blush spread over her cheeks. “Jane Bennet. Ian's personal assistant.”

Why was she blushing? Ian pinched his mouth and his eyes narrowed.

“Jane Bennet,” Chris repeated, his hand still holding the girl's. “Is there Mr. Bingley?”

She giggled and shook her head in what seemed to be a 'no.'