on one’s physical attributes like you seem to want to accuse me of doing?’
He gave her a withering look but didn’t actually comment as he crossed the room and came and stood in front of her. ‘Tell me about your son,’ he said without any preamble. ‘It can’t be any picnic, bringing up a child on your own.’
His words triggered something that was too elusive to grasp, yet what lingered in the forefront of her mind was a real and crushing fear. An intangible yet instinctive knowledge that if this man realised she’d had his child he wouldn’t hesitate to try and take Theo away from her....
‘What...what do you want to know?’ she faltered, casting her eyes down briefly, her lashes dark wings of ebony against the wells of her eyes. Had he detected the tension in her? she wondered when she saw the deepening groove between his thick black brows. Guessed at the reasons for her reluctance to discuss her little boy?
‘Did Rushford really dump you before you’d even reached the full term of your pregnancy?’
So he was still insisting that Marcus Rushford had been her lover. The thought of sleeping with her former exploitative agent made her stomach queasy, even though he was an attractive and very worldly man. That was preferable, though, to the possible consequences of explaining to Andreas that he was the father of her child, and crazily she uttered, ‘If it makes you feel smug, believe it.’
His response to that was merely a slight twitching of his mouth. ‘So...does Rushford even see his son?’
Magenta’s mouth felt dry. She wished the coffee would come as she struggled for composure under this very disturbing line of questioning.
‘His name is Marcus. And, no, he doesn’t ever see Theo.’
‘What?’ Hard lines of disbelief lined Andreas’s face. ‘Never?’ He looked and sounded appalled.
‘Never,’ she uttered dismissively, deciding to end the conversation there and then. ‘There never was another vacancy, was there?’ she accused again, deciding he really had only brought her up here to satisfy some warped agenda of his own. ‘So now you’ve shown me just how well you’re doing...’ quickly she got to her feet ‘...and clarified that all those rumours you heard about me were probably true, I’ll be on my way.’
Trying to save face before she walked away from him, wondering how in the world she was ever going to pay her mounting bills, she forced back her concerns and told him, ‘This wasn’t the only job I was being interviewed for today.’
She hadn’t even reached the door when she heard him say confidently, ‘Liar.’
She swung round, speechless at his mocking arrogance.
‘I haven’t got where I am today without gaining some insight into human nature,’ he disclosed, moving towards her with the self-possessed demeanour of a man who knew he was right. ‘A woman doesn’t normally go to pieces over losing the prospect of a job, as you nearly did down there, if she has another package tucked neatly up her sleeve and hasn’t pinned her hopes on just one that she thinks might be a little way out of her league.’
Was that what he thought? That she wasn’t suitable for the post? ‘I didn’t think any such thing! And I wasn’t going to pieces, as you’d like to imagine I was.’
‘Weren’t you?’ The trace of a smile played around his mouth. ‘You seem to forget—I know you. Although you’ve done your level best since we met again last Friday to try and make me believe you’re suffering from some sort of selective memory loss, I do know you, Magenta. Very well. I know how your eyes always glitter when you’re inviting me to challenge you. How the excitement of some delightful reprisal serves to put colour in your cheeks.’
He was moving purposefully towards her, making her instincts scream in rejection. Her body, though, trembled with the excitement he had spoken of—even as she feared that he might just remind her of what other responses he could evoke in her, as he had done on the way up here.
‘Apart from which,’ he added, coming to a stop just centimetres in front of her, ‘you were almost visibly shaking. Just like you’re doing now.’
She wanted to protest and say that she wasn’t shaking, and that the other responses he had mentioned were just a figment of his self-deluded ego. But if she did that then they’d both know that she was guilty of doing what he had accused her of doing a few moments ago. Telling lies.
He was playing with her just for his own warped sense of satisfaction, she guessed, feeling the burn of humiliating tears sting the backs of her eyes again, and she knew she had to get out of there before she showed herself up completely.
‘Goodbye, Andreas.’
He was at the door, blocking her exit, even before she had time to reach for the handle.
‘Do you really think I asked you up here just for my own amusement?’ he drawled, startling her with how close he had come to reading her thoughts. But then—as he had said—he knew her, didn’t he?
‘You didn’t ask.’
‘All right, I brought you up here,’ he amended casually, as though it was of no consequence. ‘But at the time you didn’t seem in a fit state to handle anything else.’
His eyes were raking over her face as though looking for signs of her earlier weakness, but his subtle reference to that kiss they had shared earlier was far too disconcerting and Magenta swallowed, taking a step back.
‘Do you have a point?’
That smile touched his lips again as he moved around her, away from the door.
‘Ah, the same old Magenta. Always cutting to the chase.’
‘I’m in a hurry.’
‘Of course. Your other interviews.’ His tone mocked. ‘However, despite all your accusations and suspicions regarding my ulterior motives, there is another position becoming vacant in this company.’
‘There is?’ Magenta’s heart gave a little leap of hope, although she was still viewing him with suspicion.
‘Another PA is taking an indefinite spell of leave,’ he told her with a grimace. ‘Rather sooner than we expected her to. We haven’t yet found anyone suitable to fill the post.’
‘And you’re offering me the position?’ Something like relief started to trickle through her veins. Could this mean that there was an end in sight to her endless and ever-increasing money worries? That she wouldn’t be forced to impose on her great-aunt’s generosity when Josie had given so much of herself already?
‘Why so surprised, Magenta? Your CV looks promising, if a little lacking in experience, and it does say that you can start right away. The PA in question is taking time off to look after her mother during a period of scheduled surgical operations and she’s expected to be away for four or five months. She’s the one, incidentally, whom you were trying very hard not to let me catch you looking at in the bar the other night. I was trying to talk her out of going so soon, but circumstances dictate that I have to be a gentleman about it and comply with her wishes. In short, Magenta, you’ll be working for me.’
A tremulous little laugh left her lips—something between amazement and utter disbelief. ‘Tell me
