The Secretary's Scandalous Secret (11 page)

like mad. The combination was driving him crazy, but not as crazy as he had been when he had innocently come upon that website listing so-called eligible men.

Privately, Agatha agreed that Internet dating probably wasn’t for her. In fact, as the afternoon had progressed, her optimistic thoughts about meeting interesting people via a dating site had begun to lose its appeal. By the time Luc had blocked her path outside the office, she had already come
to the conclusion that she must have been suffering from temporary insanity to have cooked up the idea in the first place.

Not that she intended to admit that.

‘I think you’ll find that some dating agencies have an excellent record in successful partnerships.’

‘Really? Is that what you were hoping for? A successful partnership?’

Agatha was busy reading the cynicism behind that pithy little question and wasn’t liking it. Did he think that she was incapable of finding a lifelong partner, even on a dating site?

‘These things
do
happen!’ she snapped, red-faced and flustered. ‘Although,’ she admitted with wrenching honesty, ‘I did think that it would be nice to meet a few new faces before I start looking around for another job.’

Some nice, new, shiny, bright young men who might make me forget you.
She couldn’t look at him. The silence grew and grew, and she really didn’t know what to do with it, because her head was in a whirl and self-pity was beginning to gnaw away at her insides.

‘I don’t like the thought of you meeting new faces,’ Luc intoned bluntly.

That brought Agatha’s head snapping up and she stared at him in open-mouthed surprise. ‘You don’t like the thought of me meeting guys? Are you
jealous?’
She couldn’t believe how quickly the empty feeling inside her was replaced by a soaring sensation of delight—which was short-lived, as Luc granted her a look of harsh incredulity.

‘Jealous?’ He gave a bark of laughter. ‘I have never been jealous in my life!’ But thinking of her even casting her eyes in another direction
did
subject him to a tide of blinding rage.

He had no problem accepting this fact, because he was
a possessive man, and there was nothing wrong with that. But jealous? No way.

‘No, you’re not.’ Agatha dully corrected her over-optimistic interpretation. ‘You still think that you need to look out for me, because if I could get taken in by a creep like Stewart Dexter then who knows how many other creeps lurking on the Internet can pull the wool over my eyes?’

Luc, still standing and commanding every ounce of her unwilling attention, finally lowered his stunning eyes and drawled in that low, lazy voice that could send her into reckless free fall, ‘No new men, Agatha. You and I—we have unfinished business. We’re not putting it behind us and pretending it never happened. It happened and it’s going to happen again. Because it’s what we both want.’

A
GATHA
was mesmerised by the rich, velvety conviction of his voice.

‘No, you’re wrong,’ she protested weakly.

‘But when I make love to you, I want to do it in comfort. This bedsit is not comfortable.’ Luc overrode her feeble denial with ease. ‘We’ll go back to my place.’

‘That’s crazy!’

‘Nice king-sized bed.’ He strode towards her bedroom, literally a matter of a few steps, and began hunting around for some kind of overnight bag. ‘Bathroom with every modern convenience known to man.’ He flung some random clothes on the bed, while Agatha looked at him, stupefied and lulled into immobility. Vague, nebulous thoughts of her optimistic ‘moving on’ process tried and failed to take shape.

‘The finest rugs, a kitchen with a fridge that actually works, plasma TV—although I don’t plan on either of us sitting in front of it.’ More clothes joined the ones piling up in disarray.

‘What are you
doing
?’ She leapt off the sofa and watched as he opened and closed drawers.

‘I’m taking control.’

‘Shut that drawer!’

He reached inside and pulled out an assortment of oversized tee-shirts, holding them up for inspection before
tossing them right back into the drawer. ‘Sleepwear? Never mind. You won’t be needing those.’

‘We can’t do this!’ she screeched in an agonised voice.

‘Why not?’ His eyes clashed with her, vibrant and simmering. ‘Are you going to tell me that you don’t want me to make love to you? For hours? Touch you where I know you like to be touched? Lick you in places that make you squirm and beg for more?’

Agatha was squirming now, imagining all those things she had tried to firmly shut the door on. ‘No. Maybe…I don’t know!’

‘That’s okay because I know for the both of us. Feel free to stop agonising.’ He walked towards her and cupped her upturned face in one hand, then he slowly lowered his head. He met with no resistance. Instead of listening to his pride and stepping back, maybe this was what he should have done all along—forced the issue caveman-style. Lord, but it felt good.

Agatha felt his mouth claim hers and she surrendered with a shameful lack of restraint, her arms reaching up to link behind his neck as though he might disappear in a puff of smoke if she didn’t hold on hard to him.

Everything he had said was true. He was her irresistible passion. If he was only in it for the sex, then why shouldn’t she at least take what was on offer and enjoy it while it lasted instead of making a martyr out of herself? Self-sacrifice might be noble and worthy but since when did it make a good bed companion?

Travelling back to his house with her overnight bag was unbearably exciting. Even the composed tenor of his conversation in the back seat of the black taxi fanned the flames, because underneath the light banter she could smell the hunger inside him, and it matched hers.

When they finally made it to his penthouse suite, she was ready to explode.

She was aware of very modern, neutral surroundings. Pale wooden floors covered an expanse that was vast by London standards and, sure enough, she glimpsed those magnificent rugs he had mentioned, and also huge statement-piece abstract paintings which he hadn’t mentioned.

But then, after those initial moments of sanity, she was swept away on a tide of passion. At some point she knew that her clothes were off and she was on a huge bed, watching as he undressed and closed the curtains. She was so aroused by the sight of him that she had to lightly touch herself, and when he moved to stand naked in front of her, looking down and smiling, she whimpered and allowed him to complete what she had begun.

Entangled between sheets that felt like satin, and which ended up half off the bed, Agatha opened herself up to the joy of being touched by his hands, his fingers, his mouth. It all felt so
right.

For the first time, she confronted her emotions with honesty and realised that her feelings for Luc weren’t just lust. Yes, maybe they once were, but gradually she had fallen in love with the man as opposed to having fallen in lust with the one-dimensional cut-out.

When she curled her fingers into his springy black hair, and watched through half-opened eyes as he feasted on her breasts, she allowed herself the luxury of letting her love show, because he couldn’t see it.

To let him witness how she really felt about him would be a sure-fire way of making him disappear as fast as he could over the horizon.

But still… She could dream, couldn’t she?

When later, she was lying tucked against him, he told her that that was the best sex he had ever had, she smiled and
filed the compliment away. When later still, after they had made love again, he turned to face her and said seriously that she should reconsider handing in her notice, she filed that away too under the optimistic heading of ‘he can’t bear the thought of being too far away from me.’

‘The situation has changed,’ Luc murmured, surprising himself, because having his lover working for him was far from ideal. In fact, it was downright awkward, but the thought of her finding a job in another company made his blood run cold. How long before some office lothario decided that she was fair game? The woman was sexy as hell, and she was bright too. There would be no back room for her in which to hide away from men with their eyes popping out of their heads.

Luc conceded to himself that he might possibly be jealous.

‘I know.’ Agatha trailed her fingers across his broad shoulders, then rested her hand on his arm and arched her body up so that she was looking at him. ‘It’s worse.’

‘Don’t tell me that you’re going to start spouting all that nonsense about mistakes.’ As her full breasts pushed against his chest, Luc felt himself harden. He settled his hand on her juicy derrière and pulled her towards him so that their bodies were now so closely joined that a piece of paper couldn’t have been slotted between them.

‘I can’t think straight when you’re doing that.’ Agatha expelled a long, shaky breath and her eyes fluttered. She slowly moved against his hard arousal. She couldn’t get enough of him. Very lightly she touched his impressive erection and felt a heady sense of power as his big body shuddered against her.

‘Ditto, you little witch.’ Luc parted her legs with his hand and felt the slick moisture between them.

‘Stop! We…we’re having a conversation,’ she panted,
ending on a moan of pure bliss as his questing finger found her sensitive spot and began gently teasing it.

When he slid into her and began grinding with beautiful, rhythmic movements, she lost complete track of their conversation, only dimly recalling it when he said with a sexy growl, ‘I was going to say that, just in case you get it into your head to put this down to another oversight on both our parts, I’m just going to prove to you what we’ve got here is so damned good.’ He flipped her so that she was on top of him, her luscious breasts dangling within reach of his mouth. He simultaneously suckled on one engorged nipple while she moved against him, building up to a tempo that had him struggling not to let go until she had reached her own splintering orgasm.

‘So…’ he murmured when she had finally surfaced. ‘You were saying?’ He kissed the tip of her nose and brushed her curly hair away from her face. She felt as though she was glued to him by a fine film of perspiration, and he liked that.

‘I thought you were afraid that I might not be able to keep this…you know…? Under wraps,’ Agatha ventured.

‘It’s a chance I’m willing to take.’ Which was the closest he planned on getting to telling her that he trusted her—on that score, at least. She wasn’t a gossip. Nor was he going to let her in on the weird, sick feeling he got when he thought of her doing something perfectly innocuous, like standing by a photocopier or bending over to stick some filing in a cabinet, while lecherous and quite probably married men sneaked covert glances at her fulsome assets.

‘So when Helen returns?’

‘You won’t be going back to that cupboard.’

‘I won’t?’

‘Remember that little publishing outfit you’re so interested in?’

‘You mean the one with the gardening books?’

‘It’ll need a little steering in the right direction. You have some good ideas.’

‘You mean you actually listened to what I was saying?’

‘So it would seem. You’re going to take it over. You’re not leaving my company. I want you where I can see you.’

‘Are you just finding something for me to do?’ Agatha asked the question tentatively. A little voice of reason pointed out that accepting a position for which she wasn’t qualified smacked of an exchange of favours, but she swept aside that mental objection and focused on the thrilling prospect of continuing to work for him.

Alert to every nuance in her voice, Luc gave the smallest of shrugs. Then he said, with enough self-assurance to kill off any lingering doubt in her head, ‘Don’t underestimate yourself. You catch on quick. I’ll set you up with a team of three to work out strategies for getting that publishing firm in the black. Management’s been a bit unstable, and no one’s bothered to drag it into the twenty-first century. They need to get on board with the fact that they can be undercut in price from any online bookstore. Personally, I don’t have the time to devote to sorting them out. But you? You’d do a good job. I have every faith in you.’

Agatha could barely credit what she was hearing. Another subconscious tick was put in that box in her head. She snuggled against him, and within five minutes she was asleep.

Luc felt her relax against him and felt too her easy, regular breathing as she drifted off to sleep.

He had no idea why he had suggested what in fact was a truly meteoric promotion for someone with woefully inadequate qualifications but, having suggested it, he found that he was content with the prospect.

The publishing company was small and of relatively little value. There was a limit to how much damage she could
inflict, although he really did have faith in her abilities. She had proved herself to be hard-working and talented, even if she did inherently dislike office work.

Warmed by the thought of having her around him whenever he wanted, and only vaguely aware that for the first time he had broken with tradition in allowing a woman to spend the night with him, Luc eventually fell asleep.

Five weeks later and Agatha was still on a high, still living on that fabulous cloud nine where hopes could truly blossom and the unthinkable might just come to pass.

She had been promoted without any fanfare in a move that had been shrewdly calculated to stifle any opportunity for wagging tongues to spread gossip. Much had been made of her gardening background, which was a unique talent in a company full of thrusting university graduates, and its relevance to the post she had been given.

Her little team of three had been recruited from outside and they had all been established in a cosy section of his building on the first floor. Agatha adored it. She had fellow gardening enthusiasts working with her and, whilst she wasn’t physically working with plants, it was as close as she could possibly get from within the confines of an office.

Sometimes Luc would pop down to check their progress. He never gave any indication of having any interest in her aside from the purely professional, although Agatha was thrillingly aware of the lazy slant of his eyes in her direction, and the light brush of his fingers against her arm when he leaned over to inspect something on her computer.

Once, just once, they had both worked late, and when everyone else had vacated the building he had led her into his office and locked the door and they had made love right
there with the low sofa as their bed and the desk as their foreplay arena.

He had confessed that it was the first time he had ever done that with any woman.

That, along with lots of other little things, was filed away in her head as ‘significant’.

So far, her ‘significant’ box held a promising number of things, including his firsts: his first to have a woman stay the night with him—in fact to have practically moved in—his first to make love to a woman in his office, his first when it came to experiencing the delights of the local supermarket because he was accustomed to having his food delivered from Fortnum and Mason if he wasn’t eating out. In fact, she reckoned that she might very well be the first woman he had entertained with a home-cooked meal, and afterwards a romantic comedy on the plasma television he swore they would never sit in front of.

All of that meant something. Agatha was sure of it.

Tonight, though, was going to be special. Luc would be heading off to New York for a week. She was going to leave work early and prepare something for him. Three courses, candlelight, wine, maybe even some mood music. She had already bought the ingredients for an Italian meal, and at precisely five o’clock she left, taking the tube and bus to her place, which seemed so much smaller and dingier in comparison than she could ever have imagined possible.

It was important to keep things real. That much she
did
know. He would be dropping by at a little after seven to take her to a mega-expensive restaurant on the outskirts of the city but she had cancelled the booking. Instead, they would eat in which was always so much cosier. The weather was nudging into Spring but it was still cold and rainy. By six thirty, she was dressed and when he buzzed her from downstairs she practically flew to the intercom to let him in.

Watching him as he divested himself of his trench coat and took in the candlelight and the carefully set table, she said breathlessly, ‘I decided that it’s better to stay in on the last night before you head off for your trip.’ She was wearing a tight jade-green dress of a kind she would never have worn before, and nothing at all underneath it, which would previously have been unthinkable.

A trace of unease slivered through him. He hadn’t expected her to cook for him, although thinking about it it was hardly the first time. He saw her most evenings and going out every night had not been feasible. He marvelled at how quickly she had infiltrated his life. Other women had been entertained on a sporadic basis, when it suited him. With Agatha he appeared to have developed a routine and he wasn’t entirely sure when this had happened.