Secretary on Demand Read online

  ‘She likes you.’ Kane’s voice snapped her out of her worrying speculation and Shannon turned to him with a bright smile. ‘Some coffee in the sitting room?’ He moved over to the kettle and switched it on.

  ‘I really should be heading back, actually.’

  ‘At nine-thirty? On a Friday night? We need to talk about how often you’re prepared to take over from Carrie,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Eleanor…’ He perched against the kitchen counter and folded his arms thoughtfully. ‘To be honest, I’ve never seen Eleanor respond so quickly to anyone.’

  Shannon had a sharp mental picture of Eleanor in the presence of the mysterious line of women, which had been preying on her mind more than she was willing to admit, shyly retiring, insecure, mouse-like, seeking her father’s approval even though the furthest thing from his mind would have been the attention-seeking of his daughter.

  ‘I always knew that having so many brothers and sisters would come in handy some day.’ She followed him into the sitting room and sat in the deep chair closest to the fire, curling her legs underneath her like a cat.

  ‘Shall we scrap the coffee and have a nightcap instead?’ Kane moved over to a wooden cabinet in the corner of the room and clicked open a concealed door to reveal a healthy supply of glasses and drinks. ‘What would you like? I have pretty much everything. What about a brandy? Or a glass of port?’

  ‘I’ll have a port,’ Shannon told him. ‘You have a lovely house, Mr Lindley…Kane. How long have you lived here?’

  ‘My wife and I bought this house when we were first married…’

  ‘And you stayed on after…?’

  ‘After she died?’ He strolled over to her and handed her a glass of red liquid, his fingers brushing hers as she took it from him. Then he sat on the sofa and crossed his legs, resting his hand lightly on his knee. ‘I thought about moving, but only briefly. I like the house and, at any rate, you can’t run away from your memories. They’ll follow you to the end of the earth. You just have to learn to cope with them. Now, what did you think about Eleanor? It’s not an ideal situation, leaving work to come immediately here, and I expect you to be honest and tell me now if you don’t think you’ll be able to do it on a regular basis.’

  Shannon took a sip of port and it rushed down her throat like fire. ‘By regular basis, you mean…?’

  ‘Every day after work,’ he said lazily, ‘but, of course, that’s open to negotiation.’

  ‘Don’t you get back early any evening?’ Another sip of port. This time the fire seemed slightly less potent, although her head was now beginning to feel fuzzy. Her new-found freedom and aspirations towards a exciting, cosmopolitan lifestyle hadn’t included nurturing a taste for alcohol. She still only drank wine, and in small amounts, and the port was like a bullet being fired into her brain.

  ‘Some evenings. And I always make sure that I keep the weekends free.’

  ‘Hmm. That’s big of you.’ She could grow to quite like this drink, she thought, swigging back the remainder in the glass and making a poor show of refusing a refill. Over dinner, with Eleanor present, Shannon had been a model of perfect behaviour. Aside from her brief debate on the relative safety of kitchen gadgets, she had chatted amiably to Eleanor about school and friends and hobbies, but after the glass of port she could feel the polite veneer beginning to slip a little.

  That had always been her problem. She’d never been able to resist saying exactly what was on her mind, even though she’d had many an occasion to regret her lapses. If she’d had ten pence for every time she’d spoken without thinking, according to her mother, she would have been a millionaire by her eighteenth birthday.

  ‘I mean…’ she said, deciding to go easy on the second glass of port. A little honesty was often bad enough but an overdose of it could be lethal. In fact, might lose her job, which she was already beginning to enjoy, despite her initial reservations. ‘You ask me about Eleanor…’

  She frowned in the manner of someone focusing on a knotty problem when, in fact, she was simply struggling to gather her thoughts together so that she could formulate a sentence or two that made sense. ‘I feel a little sorry for her, to be honest. She’s so desperate to get some of your attention.’

  ‘Desperate to get my attention? She has my attention whenever I’m around! And whatever she wants, she gets.’

  ‘Have you noticed that every time she says anything, she looks to you for approval? It’s as though…’ As though what? Time, she thought, for another sip of the yummy burgundy liquid that was really very helpful when it came to clarifying her thought processes. ‘As though…she doesn’t want to put a foot wrong in case she disappoints you!’

  ‘How on earth could Eleanor disappoint me?’ He shot her a wry look and said mildly, ‘Are you sure your observations aren’t originating from two glasses of port?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Shannon laughed merrily. ‘Actually, I’ve always been able to hold my drink! You asked me about what I thought of your daughter, and I told you. In my opinion…’ she leaned forward and grasped the collar of her coffee-coloured blouse which was, she had thought earlier, the perfect outfit for a prospective child-minder—babysitter meeting her charge but was now revealing an offputting tendency to gape and expose the lacy top of her matching beige coloured bra… ‘Shannon needs a mother.’

  ‘Oh, that’s your opinion, is it?’

  Why did she get the impression that Kane was humouring her?

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. Girls need mothers, it’s as simple as that.’

  He appeared to give this statement a bit of thought. Then he said in an infuriatingly amused voice, ‘Well, at the risk of disappointing you, there’s no mother substitute in the picture at the moment.’

  ‘Not even from the long line of women who flit in and out of your life?’

  ‘Ah. I wondered when you would bring that up. I caught that expressive little flicker in your eyes when Eleanor was talking about Mrs Porter and her handy knack of whipping up meals for all these women who come and go.’ He settled back comfortably on the sofa and linked his fingers behind his dark head while his eyes continued to survey her face with lazy amusement. ‘Now, Shannon, tell me truthfully, do I look like the kind of man who has a queue of women lining up to go out with him? Hmm?’

  That compelled her to look at him. Out of his impeccably tailored office suit, he looked less conservative, but only slightly less so. His khaki-coloured trousers and green short sleeved shirt and brown loafers were all traditional garb. His black hair was raked back from his face and there was no stubble to suggest anything wickedly decadent about the man sitting in front of her.

  ‘Out of the mouths of babes…’ she said weakly.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘All right. Then the answer is yes!’

  ‘Because I’m exciting and sexy?’ he asked drily, enjoying the flush that was creeping steadily up her cheeks and the nervous fluttering of her fingers as she slipped them around the stem of the glass and drained the remainder of her port.

  ‘Because,’ Shannon said, ‘Eleanor would have no reason to lie. Anyway,’ she said defiantly, ‘perhaps you’re too fussy when it comes to women. Surely you’ve felt the need to remarry, settle down, perhaps have more children…?’

  ‘I haven’t found the right woman. I told you, I’m a sad old man who will probably end up on my own with no one to look after me but my faithful housekeeper who knows how to cook five-star meals.’

  He grinned boyishly at Shannon and she went a little pinker. She suspected that if she felt round the edge of her bra, she would find a thin layer of nervous perspiration. For a man who never raised his voice, at least not at work, ever, he still had the ability to make most people feel flustered. It was something to do with the laser-like sharpness of his eyes. Right now her port-clogged mind was feeling very flustered indeed.

  ‘But still you keep trying.’

  ‘As you must.’ The smile was still playing at the corners
of his mouth as if her unwarranted intrusive line of questioning was a source of enjoyment rather than discomfort. ‘How else will I ever find Mrs Right?’ he asked in a sanctimonious voice.

  ‘Is there any specific routine I should stick to with Eleanor?’ Shannon asked, reflecting weakly that her crisp tone of voice was a little late in coming. It also wouldn’t last very long, not with two glasses of port swimming around inside her. She tilted her head to one side to lend more authority to her tone and felt a little giddy in the process.

  ‘I believe Carrie makes sure that homework is done, food eaten, bath taken and some reading done before bed. Sometimes I make it home by book-reading time but, as you’ve seen for yourself, it’s impossible to stick to any kind of timetable in my line of work.’

  ‘And would you prefer it if you could?’ Shannon asked curiously.

  ‘Of course,’ he answered, not that she believed a word of that. She doubted whether Kane Lindley ever consulted his watch when it came to leaving work behind. Well, as his secretary, she could very well arrange a more sociable timetable for him when it came to seeing his daughter more regularly. In fact, she decided that she would make it a top priority.

  ‘So, how are you finding the job so far? As invigorating as the restaurant business?’

  ‘More concentrated, if anything,’ she admitted. ‘Alfredo never had much of a conscience when it came to relieving me from secretarial duties when there was a shortage of waiters. He said that it was the typically Italian way of running things.’ She grinned. ‘Actually, he had a reliable habit of blaming most things on his Italian temperament. I think he expected us to fall in line because his temperament, according to him, was volatile but basically non-negotiable.’

  ‘And you never questioned that?’

  ‘I’m accustomed to volatile people!’

  ‘And aside from the temperamental Italian, we poor Londoners must seem very tame in comparison.’

  Shannon was unsure how to deal with this informal, teasing question. Within the confines of the office, Kane was formal and utterly self-controlled. She had seen how he dealt with other members of staff. Polite, courteous, the epitome of the professional man, not given to chit-chat. She realised that in accepting the job of babysitting his daughter during the week, she had opened a door to a less predictable side of him. Less predictable and more disconcerting.

  ‘Have you made any friends in the company yet?’ he asked, relieving her of the task of answering his unanswerable question, even though she would have been more relieved if he’d ended all conversation by standing up, yawning and saying goodnight. ‘I’ve more or less left you to your own devices. What have you been doing at lunchtimes?’

  ‘The canteen, actually. Sheila felt sorry for me and took me down on my first day and introduced me to some of the people who work in the other departments. In fact, did you know that there’s something called the Lottery Club?’

  ‘The Lottery Club?’ He looked at her with a bewildered expression.

  ‘Yes!’ She leaned forward, pressing her hands against the sides of the sofa, and stared earnestly at him. Or, at least, she hoped that her stare was earnest. If a little unsteady at the edges. ‘Apparently lots of people are on it. They all put in money to do the lottery and then on a Friday they go down to the pub to celebrate the fact that they probably haven’t won! In fact, I would have been there now if I hadn’t been, well…here instead. But next Friday they’re all going to a club in Leicester Square and I’ve been invited to go along. It’ll be fun!’

  In fact, she couldn’t wait. This was what she had come to London for, she decided. Fun with a capital F! Despite her exuberant personality, she was more of a homebody than she would have ever cared to admit to anyone, and she had eschewed clubbing in Ireland for the more mundane activities of going to the movies with her friends or having a meal out at the local pizza place or Chinese restaurant. The first she’d tasted of a more glitzy lifestyle had been during her brief and traumatic fling with Eric Gallway, and even then, she thought sourly, she’d been more interested in running around behind him like a pet pooch than enjoying the nightclubs he had taken her to. It had been one of his many angry criticisms of her when the whole thing had blown up. That she was boring and unsophisticated. That she was like a teenager, but without the sense of daring.

  Daring was something she was currently striving for, and next week’s fun at a club would be the first step.

  Unfortunately, Kane was looking at her with a concerned expression, as though she had inadvertently informed him that she intended to become a lap dancer for the evening. Perhaps, she thought crossly, he was wondering whether she was a suitable candidate after all to look after his child for a handful of hours every week. Perhaps, on top of the children-should-be-allowed-in-the-kitchen attitude, an admission of wanting to go to a nightclub in Leicester Square was confirmation of her juvenile tendencies.

  ‘Sounds like a bundle of laughs,’ he said drily. ‘Even though you don’t look too convinced.’

  ‘I happen to be very convinced,’ Shannon informed him, tilting her chin up.

  ‘And you’ve been to clubs before, have you?’

  ‘Of course I’ve been to clubs! Dublin is very well stocked with them, in case you didn’t know. And what makes you think that I haven’t been to any? I may not be a Londoner born and bred, but I’m not exactly green round the ears!’

  ‘I do apologise if I’ve given you the impression that that’s what I thought,’ he said, in an unapologetic voice, ‘but for some reason I got the impression that you were a family person, perhaps even rather sheltered.’

  ‘I used to be,’ she corrected him firmly, breaking off to ask for a top-up, just to prove that wild and daring was the woman she was and not young and uninitiated, which had been Eric’s opinion of her. Young, uninitiated and therefore ready for a little corruption. ‘But we all grow up, don’t we?’ Her head was beginning to feel a little chaotic, and for some strange reason she had the maddest urge to shock him. He always looked so un-shockable. If a mushroom cloud had gathered over his house and there had been a two-minute warning going off, she doubted whether he would have been galvanised into panicky action. She wondered madly what he would look like roused.

  ‘And you’ve decided that now is your time to grow up.’

  ‘I’m certainly looking for adventure,’ she confided, leaning forward to retrieve her glass of port and recklessly not bothering to clasp the top of her blouse so that her small breasts could be tantalisingly glimpsed. No wonder he was pursued by women, she thought. They probably were all falling over themselves to rise to the challenge of making him lose control.

  ‘Would this have anything to do with your experience in Ireland? Before you came down here?’

  ‘What experience?’ Shannon dodged, frankly glugging the port at this point.

  ‘With Eric Gallway.’ He stretched out his long legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankles, and proceeded to fix her with an unblinking stare.

  ‘Nothing happened between Eric and me,’ she muttered feebly.

  ‘Which is why you threw hot food all over him.’

  ‘Anyway,’ she said with sullen resistance, ‘as I’ve already told you, it’s none of your business.’

  ‘But in a way it is. The fact is, we’re thinking of hiring him…’

  ‘What? To work in your company?’ Her stubborn expression was replaced with horror. She would pack in the job tomorrow if the alternative was running into Eric Gallway round every corner!

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Then you can accept my resignation as of now.’ She teetered to her feet, alarmed at how unsteady they felt, and hovered there, hoping that she could make it to the front door without losing either her dignity or, for that matter, her sense of balance.

  ‘Oh, sit down! He won’t be working where you are. He’ll be working for my newly acquired media group, in front of the cameras. I gather the thought of that rather appealed to his vanity.’<
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  Shannon sat back down. Sitting felt distinctly better.

  ‘And the reason I want to know what happened between you is that I want you to tell me if there’s any reason why we shouldn’t hire the man.’

  ‘Any reason like what?’ She was beginning to feel vaguely cornered by this subtle battering of her defences.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps you uncovered something about him…’

  ‘Oh, I uncovered something about him all right,’ she said bitterly, ‘but nothing that would make him unemployable.’

  ‘And what was that?’ His voice was a silky whisper and he leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs and staring intently at her. She sincerely wished he wouldn’t do that. It made her feel giddy.

  In the short, taut silence that followed his question, she could feel a reckless urge to confess everything to the man sitting in front of her. And why shouldn’t she? It wasn’t as though it were some dark, horrifying secret. In fact, it would be a relief to tell someone, someone unconnected with the whole affair. Since coming to London, she had maintained a rigid silence about the unfortunate episode, preferring to be accepted as the person she was now, and not judged in any way by what had happened in the past. But wasn’t it more in keeping with the varnished exterior she was cultivating to laugh the whole incident off with a casual shrug and a knowing smile?

  ‘I had an affair with him!’ she confessed gaily, ruefully realising that her glass was once again empty just when she could have done with a bit of morale bolstering.

  He nodded and failed to look nonplussed. ‘How did you meet in the first place?’

  ‘He came to the radio station to do an interview with my boss about the differences between working in Ireland as opposed to working in England. How things differed in the area of media and suchlike. Also our radio station was up and coming because it was small and really only dealt with local gossip.’

  ‘And you fell for his charms, did you?’ He stood up and watched patiently and expressionlessly while she wobbled to her feet, then he helpfully took her arm to steady her. ‘I gather you’re not accustomed to drink?’