Lynne Graham's Brides of L'Amour Bundle

Seconds after the door closed on Sal’s departure, Pippa shot out from her hiding place. Standing up, she smoothed herself down with shaking hands while refusing to award Andreo a single glance and walked straight back out of his office again. After all, what more was there to say? She had made her feelings clear. Furthermore, she was all too painfully conscious that she had a very low resistance threshold to those sleek, dark, gorgeous good looks of his.

Mid-afternoon, instead of working, she found herself staring into space, utterly, frighteningly shorn of her usual great concentration. She tried to boot Andreo back out of her thoughts but he hung in there as if he were tattooed on her brain cells. She was furious with herself. He had no shame. He would not agree that he had been an irresponsible, selfish toad in refusing to admit that he was her boss. So now she knew what the surprise he had been planning to break to her over dinner would have been…

Yes, now she knew and she also had the unarguable proof of how basically unimportant he had deemed the whole issue to be. Brow furrowing, she reconsidered that angle as she recalled his insistence that the attraction between them should take priority over all else. Hadn’t he also sworn that she was the only employee he had ever been involved with? Taken together with his behaviour, didn’t those facts suggest that Andreo might be genuinely interested in her? For goodness’ sake, was she already falling back into that demeaning trap of dreaming that her wildest fantasies could come true?

How naive could a woman be? Andreo D’Alessio was a rat! A sleek smooth rat. He was also very, very rich and he had a very bad reputation with women. How likely was it that such a male had even vaguely decent intentions towards the stupid, trusting virgin who had flung herself into his bed the very first time they’d met? Pippa paled. She was ashamed of her own desperate desire to believe that she could trust him. Hadn’t she learned anything at all since she was seventeen?

That last summer in France she had fallen in love for the first time. A student staying in the neighbouring village, Pete, had been four years older, blond, good-looking, a motorbike fanatic. For a whole month, she and Hilary and occasionally even Jen had hung out with Pete and his mates. Tabby had met the boys too, but once her friend had met Christien, who was now her husband, Tabby had spent all her time with him.

Pippa had fallen like a ton of bricks for Pete. He had held hands with her, kissed her, acted as though he was interested in her and her life. Perhaps she ought to have questioned why he’d been so keen to encourage her to talk about how worried she’d been about Tabby, who had embarked on a wild affair with Christien. Tabby with her caramel-blonde hair and voluptuous figure had always attracted the guys and she had come out with them all again only because Christien had been away on business.

That day, Pete had taken Tabby on the back of his bike instead of Pippa. Although he had pretty much ignored Pippa, she had honestly thought he was just being friendly. So when he had kissed Tabby right in front of her, she had been shattered, but pride had made her hide her pain. Tabby had had no idea that Pippa had regarded Pete as her boyfriend and she had said afterwards, ‘I was annoyed when Pete came on to me but he told me he’d been waiting his chance with me all summer and I felt really sorry for the poor bloke…because, let’s face it, the only bloke in the world for me is Christien.’

The hardest thing that Pippa had ever done was pretend indifference to the humiliation that Pete had inflicted on her. Pete had just used her to pump her for information about Tabby and as an excuse to call at the farmhouse where they’d all been staying in the undoubted hope of running into her friend again. What little faith Pippa had had in her own judgement of the opposite sex had taken a hammering, for Pete had made it painfully obvious that he’d felt absolutely nothing for her.

Surfacing from those wounding recollections, Pippa looked up with a dazed aspect to her bespectacled blue eyes when she saw the post boy poised in front of her desk holding a gigantic basket of flowers.

‘Wow…’ Jonelle gushed with inquisitive eyes. ‘Is it your birthday or something?’

Gulping, Pippa scrambled upright. She detached the envelope from the basket handle and tore into it with hands that she could not keep steady.

‘Text me your address…finish early?’

There was no signature and it was not his handwriting but she knew the glorious arrangement was from him because she did not know another living soul in the country who could have afforded to spend that much on flowers. Her knees felt wobbly and she dropped back into her seat. She decided that it would be more dignified to ignore both the gesture and the message, but she was horribly conscious of just how badly she wanted to dig out her mobile phone and text him. She had never had a guy to do that with.

‘Call for you, Pippa…’ Jonelle announced, having answered the extension on what was now Cheryl’s desk.

Pippa took the call.

‘Do we have to sneak around?’ Andreo complained huskily. ‘My English grandmother used to say, “Tell the truth and shame the devil”.’

‘It’s a pity her outlook didn’t rub off on you!’ Pippa whispered in a controlled hiss while she slid her forefinger into the long ringlet that had broken loose from her pony-tail and wound bright strands of hair round and round in a frantic, enervated spiral.

‘I had to throw all my staff out of the boardroom to call you—’

‘Did I ask you to?’ But an appreciative grin tugged at Pippa’s mouth.

‘I need to use my phone!’ Without any further warning, Cheryl simply snatched the receiver from Pippa’s hold and stabbed a punitive finger down on the cut-off button.

In astonishment, Pippa wheeled round. ‘There was no reason to do that—’

‘Wasn’t there?’ Cheryl gave her an enraged scrutiny. ‘Thanks to you I’ve just gone through the worst ordeal of my life!’

‘Sorry?’ Pippa was now noticing how hot, bothered and tearful the pretty brunette looked.

‘I gave my presentation and that sarcastic bastard, D’Alessio, blew me away with the most awful questions. I couldn’t answer them and he treated me like I was stupid…it’s your fault that I wasn’t well enough prepared!’ Cheryl was sobbing in noisy earnest long before she reached the end of that impassioned outburst.

In the ghastly silence that stretched through the section, Ricky Brownlow hastened up, his discomfiture in the radius of Cheryl’s distress palpable. ‘Miss Long’s upset and she doesn’t know what she’s saying. Pippa…er…I’m sorry about this. I’m sure Cheryl will want to apologise to you later when she’s feeling more herself.’

As the blond man urged the crying brunette into his office, Cheryl was heard to loudly deny any desire to apologise to Pippa for anything.

‘Since when did Ricky get so chummy with Cheryl?’ someone asked.

‘Seems she found out the hard way that she couldn’t do Pippa’s job. Serves her right too.’ Jonelle sniffed. ‘I’m more amazed she had the nerve to even apply for it!’

Pippa’s mobile phone buzzed. Instead of answering it, she switched it off. It would be Andreo and she did not trust herself to check that it was and still ignore his call. Stuffing her phone back into her bag, she went back to work. As she was leaving an hour later Cheryl sidled up to her, her eyes and her nose still pink, her resentment barely concealed as she forced out grudging words of apology for her verbal attack.

Pippa was as gracious as she felt she could be but the brunette’s behaviour had merely underlined her own conviction that her own days of working at Venstar were strictly numbered. When she got home to the terraced house that she had once shared with her late father, she phoned out for a pizza. She loosed her wayward hair, finger-combed her curls and shed her suit in favour of a T-shirt and shorts. Making herself comfortable, she rang Tabby at her Breton home and asked if she could come and stay with her friend and her husband for a while.