The Secretary's Scandalous Secret Page 3

  ‘The only what?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t very interesting, anyway. I was just going to say that I don’t have an awful lot of dresses. There was never much need to wear them when I worked at the garden centre.’

  ‘I do recall some green overalls,’ he drawled.

  ‘I’ve never seen you at the garden centre.’ Embarrassed colour was spreading to her hairline, and she was really relieved that he was following her so that he couldn’t see her face.

  ‘You would have remembered seeing me? That garden centre was pretty big.’

  ‘Of course I would have remembered seeing you—because…because you would have been so out of place there. I guess you might have been with Danielle. You might have a fleet of gardeners at the big house, but she always gets involved choosing the flowers, and the herbs, of course, for that little herb garden at the back of the kitchen.’

  ‘No idea what you’re talking about. I noticed you walking back to your house one evening in some green overalls and workman boots.’

  Agatha flushed and had a vivid picture of how she must have looked to him, hurrying home still in her overalls, her boots dirty, her hair a tangled mess. And then in his office—no longer in overalls or dungarees but still dressed down in her comfortable, baggy clothes, while every other woman wafted around in high-heeled pumps and dapper little black or grey suits with their hair neatly combed back, obeying orders not to wriggle out of their pins and clips by mid-morning.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know a lot of women who would wear overalls and boots,’ she said weakly, stepping into his car and slamming the door behind her.

  ‘Not one.’ He turned to her as he switched on the engine and the low, powerful car roared into life. ‘In fact, the women I know wouldn’t be seen dead in anything like that.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, I’ve seen the kind of women you’ve gone out with over the years. Not that I’ve taken any real interest, you understand, but when Danielle lived with us you often came to visit with one of your girlfriends; they all looked the same,so I’m guessing you like them with lots of make-up and designer clothes.’

  ‘Is there a sting in the tail with that remark?’ Luc looked at her wonderingly before easing his car out of its parking space to head back towards the centre.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘No,’ he said shortly, still unnerved by the underhand trick his body had played on him back there. ‘I don’t suppose you do.’

  ‘What do you mean, then? ‘

  ‘I mean that honesty is all well and good, but in London it might pay to be a bit more streetwise.’ No wonder Edith worried about her. ‘For one thing, you’re being ripped off by your landlord. How much are you paying for that dump? ‘

  ‘It’s not a dump!’ But she told him, and her heart sank when he gave a bark of cynical laughter.

  ‘The man must have seen you coming a mile off. Green round the ears, no clue as to what sort of questions to ask, waving a stash of money. So what does he do? Overcharge for a disgusting hole with erratic heating and not enough space to swing a cat. Fifteen minutes in that place and I could spot enough signs of damp and rot to get the whole house condemned.’

  ‘It’s more comfortable when the weather’s warm.’

  ‘I bet it is.’ Luc’s lips curled with derision. ‘You don’t have to spend your nights praying that the place will be warm when you wake up in the morning! It’s a disgrace.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Agatha admitted on a sigh. ‘But when I looked around, Mr Travis promised that he would put right loads of things. I keep asking him, but his mother’s been taken into hospital and the poor man’s hardly been around.’

  At this Luc burst out laughing before glancing across at her with rampant disbelief at her gullibility. ‘So Poor Mr Travis has a sick mother in hospital which means that he just can’t find the time to make sure that the damp problem in the bedsit gets seen to—or the rotting window frames get fixed, or the rancid carpet gets taken up? I wonder how poor Mr Travis would feel if a letter from my lawyer landed on his desk tomorrow morning.’

  ‘You wouldn’t! ‘

  ‘Oh, I would, believe me. The man’s a crook who’s decided to take advantage of you. I’m not a superstitious guy, but I’m beginning to think that my mother’s phone call was the hand of fate, because another month in that place in the middle of January and you would have been the one occupying the hospital bed—with pneumonia! No wonder you wear ten layers of clothing when you come to work. You’ve probably become accustomed to that!’

  ‘I don’t wear ten layers of clothes when I come to work.’ The words ‘charity case’ were swimming in her head, making her feel nauseous.

  ‘You weren’t equipped for life in London.’ Luc steamrollered over her interruption. ‘You grew up in a vicarage and spent your short working life in a garden centre watering plants. I can’t say that I enjoy being anybody’s caretaker, but I’m beginning to see why my mother wanted me to get involved.’

  ‘That’s the most horrible thing you could ever say to me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because…’ Because, a little voice said nastily, she didn’t want Luc Laughton to think of her as a hapless country bumpkin who needed looking after. She wanted him to think of her as a sexy young woman—or even just as a woman. Fat chance! He hadn’t even noticed her outfit. At least in any way that could be interpreted as complimentary.

  ‘Well? I’m not in the habit of doing good deeds, but I’m willing to change my life rules for you. You should be flattered.’

  ‘No one’s ever flattered to think that they’re too stupid to take care of themselves,’ Agatha told him stiffly. Her eyes stung but she wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself. She was going to remember that she was about to have dinner with a dishy, eligible man who would never have asked her out if he had thought that she was as pathetic as Luc made her out to be.

  ‘I’ve always found that it pays to be realistic,’ Luc responded bracingly. ‘When my father died and I came home to that financial mess, I realised very quickly that I could do one of two things: I could sit around, get depressed and become bitter or I could just go out and begin to rebuild everything that was lost.’

  ‘I find it hard to think of you getting depressed or feeling bitter.’

  ‘I don’t allow those negative feelings to influence what I do in life.’

  ‘I wish I could be as strong minded as you,’ Agatha was forced to concede, thinking of all the doubts she had nurtured over the years despite her very happy background.

  When her friends had all started experimenting with make-up and going on diets so that they could look like the models in magazines, she had taken a back seat, knowing that inner beauty was all that mattered, and that wanting to look like someone else or aspire to someone else’s life was a waste of time. Of course, in London, the whole inner-beauty conviction had taken a bit of a knocking. She had largely felt like a fish out of water when she had gone out with her girlfriends from work, who had developed amazing skills of transformation, morphing from office workers to vamps with a change of clothes and bold make-up. Her stretchy black dress which made her feel horrendously exposed because it was fairly short with a fairly revealing neckline was still conservative compared to the stuff some of her friends wore, and she was so unaccustomed to wearing jewellery that she had to stop herself from twiddling with the strands of chunky copper round her neck.

  ‘I mean,’ she continued, musing, ‘You’re so sure of yourself. You set your goals and you just go after them. Like a bloodhound.’

  ‘Nice comparison,’ Luc muttered under his breath.

  ‘Don’t you ever sit back and wonder if you’re doing the right thing?’

  ‘Never.’ With more than half the journey completed, Luc thought that it was time he got down to the business of quizzing her about her date. More and more, he got the feeling that she was a loose cannon, an innocent rele
ased to the mercy of any passing opportunist. ‘So this Stewart character…?’ he prompted.

  Brought back down to earth with a bump, Agatha blinked. Her mind had been wandering. She had almost forgotten about Stewart.

  ‘Yes…?’

  ‘How did you meet him? ‘

  ‘Oh, usual way,’ she said with a casual, studied shrug; this was the perfect opportunity to prove to him that she wasn’t as abnormal as he seemed to think she was. ‘At a bar. You know…’

  ‘At a bar? You go bar hopping?’

  ‘When you say “bar hopping”…’

  ‘Moving from bar to bar,’ Luc intoned very slowly, emphasising each word. ‘Getting more and more drunk before finally landing up somewhere, barely able to stand.’

  Agatha bid a fond farewell to nurturing that misconception for him. The whole idea sounded pretty disgusting. She had heard ample stories of girls who had got themselves in trouble by doing just that sort of thing. Her father had counselled at least three that she could remember.

  ‘When you told me that you were worried about me getting into trouble, that’s not what you were talking about, was it? You didn’t really think that I might end up pregnant by some guy whose name I never found out because I had gone out and had too much to drink, did you?’

  ‘Calm down. I don’t think you’re the kind of girl.’

  Insult or compliment? she wondered. Compliment, she decided. ‘I met him at a wine bar. Near the office, actually. I went there with a couple of girls from work. We were having a drink and the bar tender brought over a bottle of champagne and told us that Stewart had sent it for me. When I looked over, he waved and then he came across to join us, and he and I ended talking for quite a while.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Lots of things,’ Agatha told him irritably. ‘He’s very interesting. And very smart. Also good-looking.’

  ‘I’m beginning to get the picture.’

  ‘He wanted to know all about what I did, which was great, because most guys just like talking about themselves.’

  ‘I didn’t realise that you were that experienced…’

  ‘I’m not experienced…with men in London. Naturally I’ve been out with quite a few boys at home, and generally speaking they just want to talk about football or cars. Very stereotypical.’ She slid her eyes across to Luc, and as usual her mouth suddenly went dry, and she felt hot and flustered for no apparent reason. This was the first real conversation she had ever had with him, and she was enjoying herself, much as she loathed to admit it. ‘What do you talk about when you go out with a woman?’ she found herself asking curiously.

  ‘Strangely enough, I find that it’s the women who tend to do all the talking.’ He had little interest in holding hands over the dinner table and sharing his thoughts with someone he planned on bedding.

  ‘Perhaps you make a good listener,’ Agatha suggested doubtfully. ‘Although I’m not really sure that you do. You didn’t listen to me when I told you that I could take care of myself.’

  ‘And evidence of your living conditions proves that I was right on that score.’

  ‘Maybe I should have been a little more insistent with Mr Travis,’ she conceded, giving a little ground on this one thing—because he had yet to discover, in addition to all the other problems he had listed, the temperamental fridge and its even more temperamental close relative, the oven. ‘But I’m a big girl when it comes to dealing with everything else.’

  ‘That’s true enough on the surface,’ Luc murmured. ‘You might look the part but I have a feeling that it only runs skin deep.’

  ‘Look the part?’ Was he telling her that she was fat? She might not be a stick insect, but she wasn’t fat—plump, maybe, but not fat. And, if that was what he had meant, why was she stupidly asking for confirmation? Did her capacity for masochism never end?

  ‘You’re a big girl, Agatha. Funny, I hadn’t really noticed until now.’ Again he tried to equate the teenager with the woman next to him, and again that weird kick that shot through his body as if he had been suddenly hot-wired.

  ‘You mean the dress?’ she suggested in a taut voice. The very same dress she had exhibited for him, hands outstretched, vainly hoping that he might compliment her. They had reached the restaurant, but she wasn’t quite ready to drop the conversation, so when he parked and turned towards her she garnered her very small supply of courage and stayed put, arms folded, her full mouth flattened into a thin line. ‘I’m not ready to go in just yet.’

  ‘Pre-dinner nerves? Don’t worry. If he’s that good-looking, that charming and that interested in every word you have to say, I’m sure you’re in for a scintillating evening.’

  ‘It’s not pre-dinner nerves. It’s…it’s you! ‘

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You haven’t said one nice thing to me all evening. I know you would never have employed me to work for your company. I know you’ve been forced to help me out because you think you owe my family a favour—which you don’t, but you could at least try and be nice. You’ve told me that I’m no good at what I do…’

  She tabulated all her points by sticking up her fingers one by one. ‘You’ve told me that the clothes I wear to work are horrendous because I don’t wear that uniform of tight suits and high heels, even though I’m hidden away most of the time. I need to invest in a new wardrobe just in case someone important sees me and falls into a dead faint, I suppose. You’ve told me that I wouldn’t have a clue how to look after myself in a place like London, you’ve told me how awful my bedsit is, and now? Now you sit there telling me that I look fat!’

  Listing all those slights out loud hadn’t been a good idea. Taken one at a time, she could reason them away, but faced with all of them in their entirety was just too much. A wave of forlorn self-pity rushed over her; her eyes began to leak and it wasn’t long before the leak became a flood. When she found a handkerchief pressed into her hands, she accepted it gratefully and dabbed her eyes as her silly crying jag was reduced to the odd hiccup.

  Embarrassment replaced self-pity. She blew her nose and stuffed the hankie into her bag.

  ‘Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I must be nervous; you’re right.’

  ‘I should be the one apologising.’ Luc had no time for weeping, wailing women, but for some reason the sight of Agatha in floods of tears had struck right to the heart of him. Hearing her neat little summary of everything he had said to her over the course of the evening had not been one of his proudest moments.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she whispered, desperate to remove herself from his presence where seconds before she had wanted to stay and speak her mind. She tilted her face to him. ‘Do I look a mess? I bet my make-up’s everywhere. What’s he going to think?’ She gave a wobbly laugh.

  ‘That you’ve got amazing eyes and that you’re anything but fat,’ he said roughly.

  And just like that the atmosphere altered with sudden, sizzling electricity. It was as if the world had suddenly shrunk to the small space between them. She thought she could actually hear the rush of blood through her veins but then she realised that she was just imagining it. Thinking straight, this was the man who hadn’t had a good word to say to her.

  ‘You don’t have to say that.’

  ‘No. I don’t.’ But his voice had changed imperceptibly. ‘But, just for the record, you do have amazing eyes, and when I said that you’re a big girl now I didn’t mean it in the literal sense.’

  ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘I meant you’ve grown up. That dress makes you look sexy.’

  ‘Sexy? Me?’

  ‘You. Why do you sound so shocked?’

  Because you’re saying it, she thought, while her face burnt and her pulses raced and her heart sang. ‘Let’s hope Stewart agrees! ‘ Just in case those laser-sharp eyes of his could bore a hole in her head and pluck out that inappropriate thought.

  ‘Stewart. The hot date. Yes.’ His voice was clipped and he reached to open his car doo
r. ‘I’ll come in with you. Hang on…’ He leaned across and carefully rubbed his finger under her eye, and then he laughed softly when she jerked back in surprise.

  ‘Relax. Just a bit of smudged mascara. Anyone would think you’d never been touched before, Agatha.’

  ‘I…I have my hankie. Well, your hankie. I can do that! Could you switch on the light? I need to have a look at my face. Make sure my eyes aren’t too puffy.’ She laughed shrilly, and then chattered and tutted and avoided eye contact as she inspected her face in her little hand mirror, so that by the time she had finished dabbing and rubbing she could present him with a bright, tinny smile.

  ‘Right, all ready! Can’t wait!’

  Three and a half hours later, a driving, bitter rain greeted her outside.

  ‘So, when can I see you again?’

  Agatha looked at Stewart who was pressed a bit closer to her than she would have liked—unavoidable because they were both sheltering under his umbrella. She had made sure that the buttons on her coat were done up to the neck. Whilst it had been flattering to be the object of his compliments, she had felt uncomfortable under his roving eye, even though she knew that this was what she should have expected. Several times she had caught him addressing her cleavage.

  Also, her mind had been all over the place, analyzing and re-analysing everything Luc had said to her, then picking apart what she remembered of their conversation so that she could begin the process all over again. She had had to ask Stewart to repeat himself several times, had failed to notice the quality of the wine, which he had brushed aside—although she knew that he had been offended from the mottled colour of his neck—and had left most of her main course because she had accidentally ordered the wrong thing from the menu, which was in Italian.

  She had no idea why he wanted to see her for a second date, and it felt almost churlish to have to think about it when he had been so good to overlook her little lapses and show so much interest in everything she had to say about every aspect of her life and job, however insignificant the detail.