myself in the usual way, but there was something a little more important I had to do. After doing that, I realised that I needed to have a little chat with you. Let’s just say that one thing gave rise to the other.’
‘Why are you being mysterious? What do we need to chat about?’ Why did the words ‘little chat’ inspire such feelings of dread? Was he about to sack her? Had she overstepped the line with her beyond-belief honesty?
Agatha quailed at the thought of returning to Yorkshire as a failed charity case—but London, even a bedsit in London, was impossible without a pay packet at the end of the month.
‘This isn’t the right place. I am going to take you to your house, you are going to ask me in for a cup of coffee and we can have our chat then.’
‘Can’t it wait until Monday? ‘
‘I think it’s better to get it out of the way. Now, relax; tell me about your evening. Take me through how a guy who leaves a woman standing in the pouring rain sees fit to entertain her.’
Now out of a job, Agatha didn’t think she had anything to lose by being totally, one-hundred percent honest. People were never honest with Luc, with the exception of his mother. They tiptoed around him, bowing and scraping, ‘yes, sir’, ‘no sir’. He was one of those lethally good-looking men who were just too powerful for their own good. He was unapologetic in his arrogance and in his assumption that he could play by his own unique set of rules.
‘I don’t want to be having this conversation with you.’
‘Why not? Are you embarrassed? There’s nothing to be ashamed of because it was a flop. These things happen. You just have to shrug it off and move on.’ Furthermore, she would be glad of his sterling advice when he filled her in on a few missing jigsaw pieces. His Friday night had been ruined, but he was upbeat about it.
Without the hassle of traffic, it took them less than half an hour before he pulled up outside her house, and Agatha hadn’t said a word for the brief drive. Her evening out had been disappointing, but there was a slow resentment building inside her at the way Luc had showed up for her, like a parent collecting a child from a birthday party. And then to hear him dismiss her date as a flop, something unfortunate that she should step over and forget with a shrug, made her even more angry.
She hadn’t asked him to start interfering in her life. He had barely noticed her for the past eight months, but now that he had been forced to he had decided to give the project his full and complete attention. But he still couldn’t conceal the fact that he found her annoying and a nuisance. Everything about her offended him, starting with the way she didn’t seem to know how to suck up to him sufficiently, and ending with the way she looked—and Luc, being Luc, he made no bones about hiding his reaction.
And now he needed to chat to her. It could only be about her job. He had gone away, added up all the reasons why she didn’t belong in his company and was going to break it to her that, however indebted he felt to her mother, having her as dead weight in his office was too steep a price to pay.
‘I know what you’re going to say,’ she burst out as soon as he had killed the engine. ‘And you can just tell me right here.’ She had unclasped her seat belt, and now she swivelled round to look at him.
‘You know what I’m going to say?’
‘Yes. I know what you think of me, and I know exactly what you’re going to say.’ The words tumbled out with feverish urgency.
‘I don’t think you have a clue what I think of you,’ Luc informed her huskily. ‘And you certainly don’t know what I’m going to say to you. And, no, we are not going to have this conversation in my car.’
‘I just want to get it over and done with,’ Agatha implored, but he was already out the car and she hurriedly followed suit, fumbling in her bag for the house key and feeling the tension escalate with every step up to her bedsit.
Stepping back into the room, she switched on the light and looked around it with new eyes, Luc’s eyes. She took in the discoloured walls, which she had tried to hide by sticking up two large, colourful posters, the sagging, tired furniture, the stained carpet peeping out from behind the thin Moroccan rug she had put over it and the seeping cold. He was right; who else would put up with all that?
‘I’m a failure, and you’ve come to terms with that, and you want to find a polite way of telling me to get lost,’ she said in a rush, before she had even removed her coat. ‘I’m sacked, aren’t I?’
‘Sacked? Why would I want to sack you?’ Eyes as green as the deep ocean stared steadily at her. ‘I want to tell you that I know Stewart Dexter and I know what he wants from you.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU know Stewart? ‘ Agatha’s mouth fell open and she gaped at him in complete bewilderment. ‘I don’t understand. You’ve never met him before; I didn’t introduce you…’
‘Take your coat off and sit down.’
‘If you knew him, why didn’t you come across to say hello? ‘ While she hovered, frantically trying to unravel this unforeseen turn of events, she found herself being helped out of her coat. ‘Well, I guess it’s a good thing that I’m not being sacked,’ she breathed shakily, clutching the one thing he had said that had made sense.
His fabulous green eyes settled on her and suddenly she felt very exposed in her tight black dress and her silly, high black shoes. It was a relief to sink into the chair facing him. When she glanced down, she was accosted by the embarrassing sight of her deep cleavage and abundant breasts straining against the soft, elastic fabric of her dress. She resolved to shelve the outfit first thing in the morning.
‘But I don’t understand why it was so important for you to race over to the restaurant to tell me this.’
‘When you mentioned the name of the guy you were meeting, it rang a bell, but I didn’t think anything of it,’ Luc said carefully. ‘I have a finger in a lot of pies and so I meet people from a range of industries. And Dexter is a common enough surname. But then I saw the guy at the restaurant and the alarm bells started ringing.’
‘Alarm bells? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You’re not going to like what I have to say.’ Never one to waste time beating about the bush, Luc now paused and considered his words carefully. Staring across the table at him, her eyes wide and perplexed, Agatha looked very, very young, and strangely enough the revealing nature of her dress only accentuated that impression.
‘How old are you? ‘ he asked roughly, finding himself momentarily sidetracked.
‘Sorry?’
‘Forget that. It’s not important. There’s no easy way to say this, but Dexter might not be the guy you think he is.’
‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about. You mean Stewart Dexter isn’t Stewart Dexter? Who is he, then?’
‘He’s someone who used to work for one my companies. When I thought I recognised him, I went back to the office and did a little research.’
‘You ran a background check on my date?’ Agatha trembled. ‘How could you do that?’ Her huge blue eyes, staring up at him, were full of reproach.
