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Gabriel Cabrera paid his employees the earth and in return they handed over their freedom.
That was a bandwagon Alice had no intention of jumping on. Right now, she was nothing more than a lowly temp, so could speak her mind and lay down some boundaries. Because should—and it was a big should—the job be offered to her on a permanent basis, then she would no longer have the freedom to tell him what she was willing to do and what she wasn’t. And working weekends was definitely not on the agenda. Not given her mother’s current situation.
‘I’m not a clock watcher, Mr Cabrera, and I’m more than happy to work overtime if necessary. But, yes, I do value my private life and I would have to know in advance if I’m expected to sacrifice my leisure time.’
Gabriel looked at her narrowly. ‘That’s not how my company operates.’ Indeed, that was not how he operated. Doling out long explanations for what he did was not part of the package. He did as he pleased and the world accepted it. He felt another tug of weary cynicism which he swatted aside. He had earned his place at the head of the table by fighting off the competition. He had started from nothing and now had everything...and that had been the object of the game: to have it all. He was accountable to no one, least of all a secretary who had been with him for two minutes!
‘If I understand correctly, you’re being paid double what you would normally get doing the same job in another company.’
But with a different boss, Alice was tempted to insert. A normal boss.
‘That’s true,’ she admitted.
‘Are you going to tell me that you don’t like the nice, juicy pay packet? Because I can, of course, slash it if you want to start imposing conditions for your working hours. You’ve been here for five minutes and you think that you can start dictating terms?’ He gave a short, incredulous laugh and shook his head. ‘Unbelievable.’
‘The agency implied that there might be a permanent job on offer if I made it through the probation period. I understand you haven’t had a great deal of success with the previous secretaries who were sent to you.’
‘And, because you’ve had a good first day, you somehow think that you have leverage?’ But he had had a bad time of it when it came to his secretaries. Perhaps he should have been hunting down a Plain Jane like the one sitting in front of him, but you should be able to get along with the person in whose company you usually ended up spending most of your day. That seemed a sensible conclusion. He was forced to concede that his theory fell down slightly given the fact that some of the girls he had employed had wanted to get along a little too well with him for his liking.
‘You seem to be getting a little ahead of yourself here,’ he remarked, watching her closely. ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘No.’ Alice took a deep breath, prepared to stand her ground, because she could see very clearly how the land lay with this guy.
Dark eyes clashed with hazel and she felt a tremendous whoosh go through her, as though the air had been sucked out of her body. She found him unnerving, yet today had been the most invigorating she had spent in a long time. She had blossomed under the pressure of her workload, had even seen areas where she might be able to branch out and assume more responsibility.
Was she willing to jeopardise six weeks of a sure thing in favour of laying down ground rules for a permanent job that might not even be hers?
Even as she asked herself that question, she knew the answer. She wasn’t going to let anyone, however much they were paying her, dictate the parameters of her life, and not just her working life. No one in his company seemed to mind. Half the women were probably besotted with him, but not her, and she needed her time out. Life was difficult enough as it was, with her weekends taken up going to Devon to visit her mother. The last thing she needed was to have her precious week-day evenings sucked away, even if it meant forfeiting paid overtime.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Gabriel couldn’t actually recall the last time anyone had ventured an opinion that was obviously unwelcome. Great wealth gave great freedom, and commanded even greater respect, and hadn’t that always been his driving goal in life—to jettison the dark days of growing up in foster homes, where his opinion had counted for nothing and his life had been in the control of other people?
‘I’ve only been here for one day, Mr Cabrera, and on my first day I waited for nearly three hours until you arrived. Yes, that did give me ample time to read your company literature, but I wasn’t aware that that would be how I would spend my morning.’
‘Are you asking me to account for my whereabouts this morning?’ He looked at her with blatant incredulity.
At this juncture ordinarily, she would have ambushed all her chances of having another day in his company, much less the permanent position she seemed to think might be hers. But he was galled to discover that the thought of another line of inept secretaries inconveniently fancying him was not appealing, even if he did enjoy the pleasant view from his office they provided.
He was also weirdly fascinated by her nerve.
‘Of course I’m not! And I do realise that it’s not my place to start laying down any terms and conditions...’
‘But you’re going to anyway?’ Blazing anger was only just kept in check by the fact that she had done damn well on the work front, too well to dismiss without a back-up waiting in the wings.
‘I’m afraid I can’t sacrifice my weekends working for you, Mr Cabrera.’
‘I don’t believe I asked you to.’
‘No, but I saw you cancel that poor girl’s weekend. Her best friend’s wedding, and you told her that she had no choice but to work solidly here on both days.’
‘Claire Kirk makes a very big deal about being one of the youngest in the company to head a department. She’s good at what she does, and it would be a mistake to encourage her into thinking that she’ll go places in this company if she isn’t prepared to go the extra mile.’
Alice didn’t say anything but she wondered whether he knew that there was ‘going the extra mile’ and then there was sacrificing your life for the sake of a job.
‘I wouldn’t have made a big deal about any of this,’ she said quietly, ‘But I thought you ought to know how I feel about my working conditions from day one rather than not say anything and then find myself expected to work hours I’m not willing to work. I’m not saying that I won’t do overtime now and again, but I’m a firm believer in separating my personal life from my working life.’
‘Tell me something, did you lay down similar boundary lines for your last boss?’
‘I didn’t have to,’ she replied.
‘Because he was a nine-to-five-thirty kind of guy? Thought so. Well, I’m not a nine-to-five-thirty kind of guy and I don’t expect my employees to be nine-to-five-thirty kind of people.’ It would be a shame to lose someone who showed potential but he had humoured her for long enough. ‘Employees like Claire, who want to aggressively climb career ladders, work weekends when they don’t want to because they understand the rules of the game. The prize never goes to the person who doesn’t realise that a little sacrifice is necessary now and again if something important arises. Granted, you’re not the head of a department, and you may not want any kind of career to speak of—’
‘I do want to have a career!’ Bright patches of colour appeared on her cheeks.
‘Really? I’m all ears, because you’re not selling it...’
Alice licked her lips nervously and stared at him. There was a brooding stillness to him that was unsettling. Nerves did their best to launch her into mindless chatter but a deeply ingrained habit of keeping her private life to herself held her back and she composed herself sufficiently to flash him another of her polite smiles.
‘That was why I left my last job. I liked it there but Tom, the director of the company, was going to hand the reins over to his son, and Tom Junior wasn’t a strong believer in women in the workplace, especially not in the haulage business.’
Gabriel cocked his head to one side, listening to what she was saying and what she wasn’t. She talked like a prissy school-marm but there was nothing prissy or school-marmish about the way she had stood up for herself. She claimed to want a career but, when pressed, could only tell him something vague about why she had left her last company. Given half a chance, most women couldn’t wait to involve him in long stories about themselves, especially long stories that were slanted in their favour, but this one... He got the feeling that she only said what she wanted someone to hear and that included him.
He glanced over her, his eyes taking in the unimaginative get-up, the long, slim frame, the uninspiring haircut.
His employees were all given a generous clothes allowance. They could afford designer gear, and this worked in particular favour of his staff lower down the pecking order, whose salaries were less enviable. Everyone, whatever their ranking, projected a certain image and he liked that. Compared to them, the little sparrow in front of him lacked polish, but there was something about her...
‘So what were you planning your career to be there, had little Tommy Junior not come along to fill Daddy’s shoes...?’ Gabriel had virtually no respect for anyone gifted a business. He had had to find his way by walking on broken glass and he was fundamentally contemptuous of all those well-groomed, pampered boys and girls born with silver spoons in their mouths. He was a hard man who had travelled a hard road. It had worked well for him, had put him where he was today, able to do precisely as he pleased.
‘I thought I might be able to get funding for an accountancy course...’ She thought wistfully of the dreams she had once had to get involved in finance. She had always had a thing for numbers and it had seemed a lucrative and satisfying road to go down. Dreams, she had discovered, had a tendency to remain unfulfilled. Or at least, hers had.
‘It wasn’t to be,’ she said briskly. ‘So I thought that perhaps joining a bigger, more ambitious company might be a good idea.’
‘But, before you got too accustomed to the job, you felt it necessary to tell me that your working schedule is limited.’
‘My weekends are accounted for.’ Alice was beginning to wish that she had decided never to say anything. She should have just kept her head down and then crossed whatever bridge she had to cross when she came to it. Instead, she had made assumptions about the way he ran his company and had decided to act accordingly.
‘Boyfriend?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Or maybe husband, although I don’t see any wedding ring on the finger.’
‘Sorry, but what are you talking about?’
‘Isn’t it usually the boyfriend in the background who ends up dictating the working hours?’ Gabriel asked, intrigued by her outspokenness, her sheer gall in laying down ground rules on day one—as though she had any right—with him. Intrigued, too, by that air of concealment that was so unusual in a woman. At least, in the women he knew.
‘Not in this case, Mr Cabrera,’ Alice told him stiffly.
‘No boyfriend?’
Alice hesitated but, perhaps having misjudged her timing to start with, why not go the whole hog and expand on her conditions? He would probably chuck her out on the spot. She would return to the agency, who wouldn’t be surprised to see her, and they would find her another job—something with a normal boss, working normal hours in a normal environment. It sounded unappetising.
‘I should mention...’ She heard the wooden formality in her voice and cringed because she was twenty-five years old, yet she sounded like someone twice her age. ‘I also do not appreciate talking about my personal life.’
‘Why not? Have you got something to hide?’
Alice’s mouth fell open and, in return, Gabriel raised his eyebrows without bothering to help her out of her awkward silence.
‘I...I do a very good job. I take my work very seriously. If you decide to keep me on, you won’t regret it, Mr Cabrera. I bring one hundred and ten percent to everything I do in the working environment...’
Gabriel didn’t say anything. He watched her flounder and wondered whether she brought one hundred and ten percent to whatever it was she did in the leisure time that she was so stridently protecting.
‘Accountancy courses require weekend time... What would you do about those precious weekends of yours that you can’t possibly sacrifice?’
‘I can do the work in my own time,’ Alice said promptly. ‘I’ve checked it out. And I would pass the exams. I have a good head for figures.’
‘In which case, remind me why you didn’t go into that field of work when you left school...college...university? In fact, now that you seem to be campaigning for a permanent job with me, why don’t you hand over the CV which I am sure is burning a hole in your bag...?’
Alice hesitated fractionally and Gabriel looked at her, his dark eyes cool and assessing.
His mobile phone rang; he glanced down at the caller ID and then he, too, hesitated, fractionally, but this time there was a smile hovering on his lips as he disconnected the call.
‘Here’s the deal, Miss Morgan.’ He sat forward, invading her space, and rested his elbows on her desk.
Alice automatically inched back and her breathing quickened as their eyes clashed. Suddenly, she was aware of every inch of her body in ways she had never been before. She felt hot all over; her breasts felt prickly and sensitive, her skin tight and tingly. She took a deep breath and shakily told herself that she would have to subdue reactions like that if she was to be offered the job of working with this man full-time. She might not like the guy but she couldn’t afford to let that dislike control her responses.
‘Yes,’ she said, grateful that her voice was steady and cool.
‘I’m going to read your CV and, provided I don’t discover any...suggestion of little white lies in it, and provided your references check out, I’m going to offer you a full-time job working with me...’
‘You are?’
‘And I’m going to go the extra mile. After all, don’t preach what you can’t practise. I’m going to open the door for you to do that accountancy course you want to do.’
‘Really?’ A thousand jumbled thoughts were flying through Alice’s head but the one that was winning the race was the one that was telling her that her life might finally start moving forward, that she might finally have enough money to start saving a little bit...
‘And, naturally, you won’t be called upon to sacrifice your weekends unless imperative. In return...’
‘You’ll find that I’m up to anything you can throw at me.’
‘In that case...’ He reached over for the telephone on her desk and dialled a number then, before the line connected, he said with a slow smile, ‘You’ll find that there are times when you do need to involve yourself in my personal life, Miss Morgan.’ He handed her the phone. ‘I won’t be in touch with this particular woman again, so maybe you can set her straight on that score. And let’s see whether you’re really up to anything I can throw at you...’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_6dfaa02c-8ee0-5983-a10f-8add9471792d)
GABRIEL SAUNTERED INTO his office and closed the door behind him. He felt energised, pleased with his decision to hire the new woman on the spot. Normally, something as trivial as this would be left to his Personnel department but the impulse had felt right.
On the spur of the moment, he telephoned the company where she had last worked and spoke for five minutes to the boss, who gave her a glowing reference.
So, he had had an interminable string of relatively competent secretaries. They had all looked good, and why shouldn’t he have gone for that? Some of them could even have been brought up to the standard he wanted had they not ended up becoming inconvenient. Lingering looks, offers to work as much overtime as he wanted, skirts that seemed to get shorter and tops more plunging as the days went on... All in all, pretty annoying in the end.
He wondered how this new one was dealing with the latest woman to have been dispatched from his life and he half-smiled when he imagined her tight disapproval.
Georgia had been exciting at the beginning. She had been enthusiastic and innovative in bed and, more importantly, had seemed to really take on board the ground rules for any relationship with him—namely, forget about looking for long-term commitment. So why had he got bored with her? She had certainly been eager to please and what man didn’t want a woman willing to bend over backwards for him? He wondered whether there were just too many women willing to bend over backwards for him: gorgeous, sexy, voluptuous women whose vocabulary largely centred on the word ‘yes’. In his high-octane, high-pressured life, the word ‘yes’ had always been a soothing counterpoint. Although of late...
He scrolled through the report in front of him and acknowledged another successful takeover that would allow him to expand certain aspects of one of his technology companies into Europe. In a rare moment of introspection, he grimly congratulated himself on the distance he had travelled from the foster-home kid with zero prospects to a man who ruled the world. He was sure he had felt more pleasure in the past when he had occasionally contemplated his achievements.
He had started on the trading floor, a sixteen-year-old gofer with an uncanny ability to read markets and predict trends. His first real kick had come when he had realised that the guys with the cut-glass accents and the country estates had begun to take him seriously when he spoke. They had started seeking him out and, with the instincts born of someone from the wrong side of the tracks who was hungry and ambitious, he had learnt how to ruthlessly use and eventually channel his talents. He had learnt when to share information and when to withhold it. He had learnt that money was power and power brought immunity from ever having to do what anyone else told him to do.
He became the man who gave the orders and he liked it that way. Thirty-two years old and he was untouchable.
The firm knock on the door snapped him out of his thoughts and he sat back in his chair and summoned her in.
This, Alice was thinking as she walked into his office, was why she could never like this guy. He had dialled a number and then left her to it and, from what she had gleaned during that conversation with Georgia of the husky voice, he was just the sort of inveterate playboy she despised.
But the job was going to be hers and she wasn’t going to let this type of challenge kill her chances. He seemed to have accepted her request for her weekends to remain sacrosanct and had hired her without the usual bank of interviews. She got the feeling that this was a departure for him. So she could bend a little in this area...
Her face, however, was rigid with disapproval as she sat in the chair indicated.
‘I assume,’ she began stiffly, ‘that you would want to see me to find out how my conversation went with your...girlfriend...’
‘Ex—ex-girlfriend. Hence the point of the conversation. So that she could be left in no doubt as to where matters stood.’ The waves of disapproval emanating from her were palpable. She looked as though she’d swallowed a lime and was painfully having to digest it. ‘I spoke to your ex-boss. Sounds like a nice man. I’m thinking you were never required to step up to the plate and have any awkward conversations with his ex-lovers...’
Was he being deliberately provocative? The lazy intensity of his gaze and the suggestion of a smile on his lips sent the blood rushing to her head and she tightened her jacket around her and sat up a little straighter. Her crossed legs felt as stiff as planks of wood, yet there was a curling sensation low down in her pelvis that she chose to ignore. Top of her mind right now was counting the ways she disliked her new boss. Good-looking he might be...staggeringly good-looking...but she decided on the spot that his personality left her cold.
In a way, it would make for an excellent working relationship. She had already gleaned from her phone call with the unfortunate Georgia that the problem with his past few secretaries, apparently, had been with them all developing inappropriate crushes on him.
‘I can’t believe he’s got one of his secretaries to do the dirty work for him!’ Georgia had wailed down the line. ‘Well, if you’re like the other one...’ she had sobbed, ‘Showing off your boobs and thinking you can snap him up, then you’re making a mistake! He’s never going to go there! He doesn’t like to mix work and play. He told me! So you can forget it!’
Georgia had lasted a mere two months, one week and three days. Was that the average duration of his relationships with women—a handful of months before he got bored and moved on to the next toy?
Thoughts that were usually deeply buried rose swiftly to the surface and she thought about her father—the years spent watching from the sidelines as he’d failed to return home, failed to pretend that he hadn’t been playing away, failed to pay lip service to a marriage he’d wanted to ditch but couldn’t afford to. She killed that pernicious, toxic trip down memory lane and dragged her wayward mind back to the present.
‘Tom was and is a very happily married man,’ Alice intoned. ‘So, no, there were no awkward phone calls to women.’ And you should make your own phone calls, she wanted to snap.
‘I gather from your expression that I’m not winning a popularity contest at this moment in time?’ Did he care one way or another? No. But if they were going to work together then there was no point in pretending to be a saint. Soon enough she would come into contact with the women who entered and left his life, barely producing a ripple. She would have to get used to fending off the occasional uncomfortable phone call and, if her moral high ground didn’t allow for that, then he needed to know right now.
‘She was very upset,’ Alice informed him, trying hard to avoid the trap of sounding judgemental, because what he got up to in his private life was none of her business. If he didn’t care who he shared it with, then that was up to him.
And yet, she couldn’t help feeling that there were sides to him that he shared with no one, and she couldn’t quite work out what gave her that impression—something veiled in his eyes that belied the image of a man who laid all his cards on the table. He didn’t give a damn whether she knew about his women or not but, yes, he did give a damn about other things, things she suspected he kept to himself.
Of course, it was fanciful thinking, because it didn’t take a genius to work out that a man who had reached the meteoric heights that he had would not be the open, transparent type. He would be the type who revealed only what he wanted to and only when it served his purposes.
‘I have no idea why,’ Gabriel said wryly. ‘I’d already informed her that I was pulling the plug on our relationship. Unfortunately, I think Georgia found it harder than she thought to accept the breakup.’
‘Do you usually farm difficult conversations out to your secretaries?’
The edge of criticism in her voice should have got on his nerves but Gabriel found that it didn’t. For once, he was in the company of a woman who seemed in no danger of developing a crush on him. Nor was she his type. He liked them small and curvy with an abundance of obvious charm. Prickly and challenging didn’t work for him. Prickly and challenging smacked of an effort he had no enthusiasm for giving.
‘I can’t say the opportunity has arisen in the past few months,’ Gabriel drawled.
