‘Is that it?’ he asked, leaning forward with frowning intensity. ‘Have you got a gripe against me...?’
He couldn’t quite conceal the incredulity in his voice and Emily, for the first time, looked at him with cynical directness. Of course never in a million years would Leandro Perez ever think that any woman wouldn’t be one hundred per cent happy to be in his presence. She might have bucked the trend by not being one in that long line of women who swooned the second those dark, intense eyes settled on them, but even so he would still assume that he had an effect on her because that was just the sort of man he was.
A player. Someone so inherently aware of his massive pulling power that it would be just inconceivable that it might not work on some women.
‘I haven’t got a gripe against you,’ Emily said slowly.
She felt a thrill of recklessness, because right now, at this very moment in time, she was permitted to speak her mind. By tomorrow afternoon she would have cleared her desk and would have disappeared from here for good, with no need for references from him—although she knew instinctively that they would be very good, because he was, for all his faults, scrupulously fair.
Leandro tilted his head to one side and kept his eyes firmly fixed on her face. Her colour was up. Was she blushing? He hadn’t associated her with such a girlish reaction. She was always so self-possessed...and yet...
His dark eyes drifted down to her mouth. She had full, soft lips, and even if they had registered somewhere in his subconscious before now he certainly felt as though he was seeing them for the first time. Perhaps she had shed that ice-cold image, because there were cracks in it now, through which he wanted to pry, find out what lay underneath.
Emily sensed the shift in his attention—from boss trying to uncover the reasons for her sudden unexpected resignation to boss looking at her with masculine interest.
Her skin tingled. She felt as though she was in the grip of an acute attack of pins and needles.
‘No?’ Leandro drawled. ‘Because your expression is telling a different story.’
Emily, so accustomed to being the dutiful impeccable secretary in his presence—the secretary who never allowed her personal feelings to tip over into the work arena—stiffened.
‘If you must know, I’ve never enjoyed having to do your dirty work for you.’
‘Come again?’
She couldn’t quite believe that she had just said what she had. The blood rushed to her head and she knew that she was as red as a beetroot. Gone was the frozen, aloof façade she had kept up for the past year and a half.
She looked at him with defiance and took a deep, steadying breath. ‘Presents for those women you no longer had any use for...goodbye gifts you couldn’t even be bothered to choose...arranging opera tickets and theatre tickets...booking expensive restaurants for women I knew I would be sending those goodbye gifts to in a few weeks’ time... That should never have been part of my secretarial duties...’
‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’
‘That’s because you’re not accustomed to anyone telling you anything you don’t want to hear.’
Leandro released a long, sharp breath and sat back to look at her. Her face was alive with genuine, sincere emotion. She was leaning forward in the chair, and of their own accord his eyes drifted down to the prissy top.
He wondered what she looked like underneath it—wondered what it would feel like to make love to his icy secretary who was now in the act of revealing the sort of passion that could make any red-blooded man burn. He wondered what that hair would be like let loose. Hell, he didn’t even know how long her hair was! His intense curiosity extinguished any anger he might have felt at what she had just said. At any rate, it was certainly true that he wasn’t accustomed to being criticised.
‘So you didn’t like your involvement in my personal life?’ he murmured.
‘Maybe Marjorie was accustomed to doing stuff like that, but I feel you should have established whether I would mind...’
‘I guess if you felt so strongly about it you should have said something earlier...’
Emily blushed, because he was absolutely right. And why hadn’t she? Because she had needed the money and she had been keen not to put a foot wrong.
‘There’s nothing more annoying than a martyr who puts up with the unacceptable and only says her piece when she’s handed in her resignation...which brings me back to the why...’
‘Well, like I said, I feel it’s time to move on... I realise you will probably want me to leave immediately, so I thought I could just pack my things up and be done in a day...’
‘Leave immediately? What gives you that idea?’
‘What do you mean?’ Emily asked in some consternation. ‘Of course you want me to leave immediately. You don’t see the point of employees hanging around once they’ve handed in their notice. I remember quite clearly you saying that they need to be removed from sensitive information, and also that their demotivation can spread like a virus...’
In actual fact she had only known of a couple of instances of employees handing in their notice. Pregnancy and emigration being the reasons. Mostly people stayed with the company because the pay was second to none—as were the working conditions.
‘Marjorie stayed on for quite a while before she finally left...that seems to fly in the face of your sensitive information theory...’
‘Yes, but...’
She looked at his raised eyebrows, the slight tilt of his head, and for a second she wondered whether he was just toying with her.
‘My responsibilities have been far greater.’ She stumbled over her words as she contemplated the prospect of working out her notice having told him in no uncertain terms what she thought of certain aspects of her job...
‘True,’ Leandro agreed.
He allowed the silence to thicken and deepen. Immediate departure? Why?
‘And you’re telling me this because...?’
‘Why would you want me around if you think I’m an annoying martyr?’
Emily took a different approach, but Leandro Perez was not a man who could be browbeaten, and even as she tried a different ruse she felt the sinking sensation of knowing that her departure would not be going quite according to schedule. She had been short-sighted, had dropped her mask, and now she would be stuck for at least another month with their boss-secretary relationship not on the safe footing on which it had always rested.
‘You have a month’s notice to work out,’ Leandro informed her flatly. ‘You’ve lost your mind if you imagine that you’re going to leave me in the lurch with a string of unsuitable candidates turning my working life upside down.’
And he was honest enough to admit to himself that it rankled...the fact that she had been happy to jump ship without a backward glance when she must have known that he depended on her! What the hell had ever happened to a sense of responsibility?
He offered her an expression of thoughtful contemplation and politely waited for her to try and find a few more pointless excuses.
Emily envisaged one long month of interviewing prospective candidates for a guy who would almost certainly reject all of her choices. She had handed in her notice and he wasn’t going to make life easy for her. And now that she had been foolish enough to actually tell him what she thought about his antics involving the opposite sex...
No, life was not going to be a walk in the park at all over the next four weeks.
‘But of course you do have a point,’ he mused, resuming the light tapping of his fountain pen on his desk. ‘You have assumed far greater responsibilities than Marjorie ever did. She always maintained that she was hanging on to new technology by the skin of her teeth whilst knowing very well that there was no way I would ever get rid of her because of her length of service. She worked for my father in Argentina. Did you know that?’
‘She didn’t mention it.’
‘She was over there on holiday after university and looking for temporary work so that she could improve her Spanish. She applied for an office job at my father’s company and he liked her. Said she had spirit. He employed her on the spot, and as things turned out she fell in love with a local guy, married him and remained working for my father until eventually she and her husband moved over here years ago so that she could be close to her family.
‘Two of her daughters married English guys and now live here as well. When she moved she came as a package deal to me, but in truth her heart was never in the upward climb. She did a damn good job, but you...’ He relaxed back and folded his hands behind his head. ‘You’re quick...you’re professional...you never need to be told anything twice...’
Emily accepted the flattery with as composed a demeanour as she could muster and reminded herself that it came with the massive downside of being asked to work out her notice. But the pleasure of being complimented so elaborately brought colour to her cheeks.