his head and proceeded to look at her with a highly amused, alert expression.
‘Do you? You mean you’re a trespasser as well as being a clairvoyant? I’m impressed! I’m not too sure whether George will be—’
‘You’re Miss Wilson.’ He grinned but with the ground rapidly shifting underneath her feet, grinning back was the last thing Tessa felt inclined to do. ‘Have a seat. Really. You look as though you might just fall down if you don’t.’
‘I think I need to call George…’ she said uncertainly, sitting down.
‘You don’t. Well, you can if you really feel you need to, but believe me, that’ll just lead to embarrassment. Yours. Look, let me put you out of your misery and introduce myself…’ He stood up, all formality now, even though the impression was hijacked by the casualness of his clothes. ‘I’m Curtis Diaz.’ He stretched out his hand and smiled with sickening kindness.
‘You…you can’t be…’ Tessa ignored the outstretched hand and grasped the handbag on her lap tightly.
Well, she had been bored with the monotonous tedium of her last job! What better antidote than to be thrust into a surreal world where she didn’t have a clue as to what was going on?
‘Why not?’
‘Because…’
‘I know.’ He looked ruefully down at himself and shook his head. ‘Code of dress, right? Powerful men who run powerful companies dress in pinstriped suits and ties, always carefully knotted at the neck.’
Tongue-tied and mortified, Tessa stared back at him, her mouth half open and a delicate bloom of colour rising up her cheeks. She wasn’t fashioned to deal with situations like these. Above all things, Tessa Wilson liked to be in control. Time and time again she had seen people passively and helplessly steamrollered by events. It happened in their jobs, it happened with their love lives. She often wondered what would have happened to her and Lucy if she had been like all those people who never seemed to cater for the unforeseen.
The unforeseen had happened with her and she had dealt with it, and had continued dealing with life by reining it in. She liked to know where she was going and how she was going to get there because working things out, knowing where she stood, made her feel safe.
She also resented the fact that he was laughing at her.
‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ she said stiffly. Her body was ramrod straight in the chair.
‘And I apologise. Profusely.’ He levered himself back into his chair and reclined back. ‘Allow me to explain. My team and I have just completed a weekend of virtual solid work, thrashing a deal out with one of our suppliers and then finalising the nitty-gritty with the lawyers. We didn’t finish until the early hours of the morning at which point I decided to let them all go home and catch up on some well-deserved rest.’
So this was what his mother had meant by interesting, Tessa thought dazedly. When she had used that word, Tessa had tied it up in her head with the job and not the man. The man, she was slowly realising, was nothing like she had expected. She had expected someone a bit like Mrs Diaz. Sophisticated, very English and probably fair haired. The man staring at her, waiting for her to digest his information, couldn’t have been further from her expectations. Restless, passionate energy vibrated out of him in waves and the only bit of him that resembled his mother were his eyes, which were as blue and as piercing, except a lot more dramatic against his olive colouring and dark, springy hair.
‘Right. Well, I wish you had telephoned me to explain that my services wouldn’t be required today…’
‘Never occurred to me,’ Curtis informed her truthfully. He idly switched on one of the two computer terminals on his desk and it buzzed into life with a faint humming sound.
Poor woman, he thought, glancing across at the rigid pink-faced figure sitting opposite him. He really should have stood firm and recruited his own secretary, but he loved his mother dearly and giving in had eventually seemed preferable to staging a protracted war. Mothers liked to think they knew best and his mother was no exception to the rule. She had stared at him gimlet-eyed and told him in no uncertain terms that hiring floozies, as she had called them, was a waste of company money.
‘But they look good,’ he had protested, thinking back to the last one, a red-haired, buxom wench who had worn delightful handkerchiefs, which she had loosely claimed were miniskirts.
‘Which is hardly a satisfactory recommendation when it comes to being a secretary.’
The tirade had gone on and on until he had thrown up his hands in resignation and left it to her to sort out.
Unfortunately, looking at the Tessa character now, he could immediately see the downsides of his mother’s well-intentioned but misguided rationale.
The poor girl looked as though she had suddenly found herself wandering in the vicinity of hell without any map giving her the quickest route back to normality. He sighed under his breath and raked his fingers through his hair.
‘Look, Miss Wilson…now that you’re here, maybe we should go and grab some breakfast, have a bit of a chat…’
‘Some breakfast…?’
‘That’s right,’ Curtis said, curbing his irritation, ‘I haven’t eaten since yesterday…some time…’ He stood up and stretched, eyeing her out of the corner of his eye, which only confirmed his opinion that she was not going to be suitable for the job.
‘I’m hungry,’ he told her bluntly, throwing on his overcoat. ‘I need something to eat and dried-up slices of pizza in the bin just isn’t going to do it for me. And we need to have a little talk.’
Tessa scrambled to her feet and hurried after him as he headed out of his office. It took quite some running. High-heeled shoes might look the part but when it came to scurrying after someone who walked at a pace that most people ran, they weren’t exactly practical. She nearly careered into him when he finally came to a dead stop by the lift.
‘So,’ he began conversationally, noticing the way she had edged away from him in the confines of the lift, back pressed against the side as though her life depended on it, ‘it must have been a bit of a shock when you came to work this morning and found the offices empty…?’
‘I was a little surprised.’
‘Hmm. A little surprised. Diplomatic choice of words.’
‘George at Reception had warned me that he had witnessed a mass exodus earlier in the morning, but, naturally, I thought that he might have exaggerated a bit. I…well, I wasn’t prepared for…’
‘A scene from a late-night horror movie?’ The lift doors disgorged them back into the expansive waiting area where George was still in attendance. He winked at her and exchanged a large grin with Curtis.
‘So you managed to find one still alive and kicking, then?’
‘Don’t tease her, George. She’s had a very stressful day so far.’
The banter made Tessa feel suddenly foolish and sidelined and the unfortunate butt of some ongoing joke at her expense. ‘I wouldn’t say stressful,’ she retorted, ‘just a little disorienting.’
She
