But with a different boss, Alice was tempted to insert. A normal boss.
‘That’s true,’ she admitted.
‘Are you going to tell me that you don’t like the nice, juicy pay packet? Because I can, of course, slash it if you want to start imposing conditions for your working hours. You’ve been here for five minutes and you think that you can start dictating terms?’ He gave a short, incredulous laugh and shook his head. ‘Unbelievable.’
‘The agency implied that there might be a permanent job on offer if I made it through the probation period. I understand you haven’t had a great deal of success with the previous secretaries who were sent to you.’
‘And, because you’ve had a good first day, you somehow think that you have leverage?’ But he had had a bad time of it when it came to his secretaries. Perhaps he should have been hunting down a Plain Jane like the one sitting in front of him, but you should be able to get along with the person in whose company you usually ended up spending most of your day. That seemed a sensible conclusion. He was forced to concede that his theory fell down slightly given the fact that some of the girls he had employed had wanted to get along a little too well with him for his liking.
‘You seem to be getting a little ahead of yourself here,’ he remarked, watching her closely. ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘No.’ Alice took a deep breath, prepared to stand her ground, because she could see very clearly how the land lay with this guy.
Dark eyes clashed with hazel and she felt a tremendous whoosh go through her, as though the air had been sucked out of her body. She found him unnerving, yet today had been the most invigorating she had spent in a long time. She had blossomed under the pressure of her workload, had even seen areas where she might be able to branch out and assume more responsibility.
Was she willing to jeopardise six weeks of a sure thing in favour of laying down ground rules for a permanent job that might not even be hers?
Even as she asked herself that question, she knew the answer. She wasn’t going to let anyone, however much they were paying her, dictate the parameters of her life, and not just her working life. No one in his company seemed to mind. Half the women were probably besotted with him, but not her, and she needed her time out. Life was difficult enough as it was, with her weekends taken up going to Devon to visit her mother. The last thing she needed was to have her precious week-day evenings sucked away, even if it meant forfeiting paid overtime.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Gabriel couldn’t actually recall the last time anyone had ventured an opinion that was obviously unwelcome. Great wealth gave great freedom, and commanded even greater respect, and hadn’t that always been his driving goal in life—to jettison the dark days of growing up in foster homes, where his opinion had counted for nothing and his life had been in the control of other people?
‘I’ve only been here for one day, Mr Cabrera, and on my first day I waited for nearly three hours until you arrived. Yes, that did give me ample time to read your company literature, but I wasn’t aware that that would be how I would spend my morning.’
‘Are you asking me to account for my whereabouts this morning?’ He looked at her with blatant incredulity.
At this juncture ordinarily, she would have ambushed all her chances of having another day in his company, much less the permanent position she seemed to think might be hers. But he was galled to discover that the thought of another line of inept secretaries inconveniently fancying him was not appealing, even if he did enjoy the pleasant view from his office they provided.
He was also weirdly fascinated by her nerve.
‘Of course I’m not! And I do realise that it’s not my place to start laying down any terms and conditions...’
‘But you’re going to anyway?’ Blazing anger was only just kept in check by the fact that she had done damn well on the work front, too well to dismiss without a back-up waiting in the wings.
‘I’m afraid I can’t sacrifice my weekends working for you, Mr Cabrera.’
‘I don’t believe I asked you to.’
‘No, but I saw you cancel that poor girl’s weekend. Her best friend’s wedding, and you told her that she had no choice but to work solidly here on both days.’
‘Claire Kirk makes a very big deal about being one of the youngest in the company to head a department. She’s good at what she does, and it would be a mistake to encourage her into thinking that she’ll go places in this company if she isn’t prepared to go the extra mile.’
Alice didn’t say anything but she wondered whether he knew that there was ‘going the extra mile’ and then there was sacrificing your life for the sake of a job.
‘I wouldn’t have made a big deal about any of this,’ she said quietly, ‘But I thought you ought to know how I feel about my working conditions from day one rather than not say anything and then find myself expected to work hours I’m not willing to work. I’m not saying that I won’t do overtime now and again, but I’m a firm believer in separating my personal life from my working life.’
‘Tell me something, did you lay down similar boundary lines for your last boss?’
‘I didn’t have to,’ she replied.
‘Because he was a nine-to-five-thirty kind of guy? Thought so. Well, I’m not a nine-to-five-thirty kind of guy and I don’t expect my employees to be nine-to-five-thirty kind of people.’ It would be a shame to lose someone who showed potential but he had humoured her for long enough. ‘Employees like Claire, who want to aggressively climb career ladders, work weekends when they don’t want to because they understand the rules of the game. The prize never goes to the person who doesn’t realise that a little sacrifice is necessary now and again if something important arises. Granted, you’re not the head of a department, and you may not want any kind of career to speak of—’
‘I do want to have a career!’ Bright patches of colour appeared on her cheeks.
‘Really? I’m all ears, because you’re not selling it...’
Alice licked her lips nervously and stared at him. There was a brooding stillness to him that was unsettling. Nerves did their best to launch her into mindless chatter but a deeply ingrained habit of keeping her private life to herself held her back and she composed herself sufficiently to flash him another of her polite smiles.
‘That was why I left my last job. I liked it there but Tom, the director of the company, was going to hand the reins over to his son, and Tom Junior wasn’t a strong believer in women in the workplace, especially not in the haulage business.’
Gabriel cocked his head to one side, listening to what she was saying and what she wasn’t. She talked like a prissy school-marm but there was nothing prissy or school-marmish about the way she had stood up for herself. She claimed to want a career but, when pressed, could only tell him something vague about why she had left her last company. Given half a chance, most women couldn’t wait to involve him in long stories about themselves, especially long stories that were slanted in their favour, but this one... He got the feeling that she only said what she wanted someone to hear and that included him.
He glanced over her, his eyes taking in the unimaginative get-up, the long, slim frame, the
