Just be Angie—and set an example to the juniors by enjoying your staff party.
‘Who wants to pull another cracker?’ she questioned brightly.
Riccardo sat back in his chair and watched her as she fished a gaudy-looking bracelet from the tissue paper of a spent cracker, and good-naturedly put it onto her wrist. But then, she was pretty much always good-natured, he realised. She was one of those backroom kind of people—the unseen and unnoticed ones who quietly kept the wheels of enterprise turning, without seeking any attention or glory for themselves. He could talk to Angie in a way he couldn’t talk to other women. Where would the world be without people like her? His eyes narrowed as a disturbing thought popped into his mind without warning. Because God help him if she ever decided to leave.
Did he treat her properly? Did she get from him all the perks a secretary of her standing would expect to receive? His attention was caught by a pale flurry of snowflakes outside the window. Snow was unusual in London and it would be a cold night. His eyes flicked to the scarlet satin and a pulse began to work at his temple. A very cold night. Especially in a dress like that.
And just at that moment, he saw yet another waiter look at her with ill-concealed interest on his face. ‘How are you getting home?’ he questioned suddenly.
Angie stilled. ‘Home?’ she echoed stupidly, digging a spoon into her little dish of trifle.
‘I presume you have one,’ came the dry rejoinder. ‘Where do you live?’
The question hurt more than it should have done. She knew everything about him. She knew the size shirt he wore, the hotels he liked to stay in and the wine he liked best to drink. She knew the birthdays of his mother, his brother and his sister and always reminded him in plenty of time for him to buy them presents. That she inevitably ended up choosing those presents was neither here nor there—because that was what good secretaries did, wasn’t it?
She knew where he liked to ski in winter and where he occasionally basked in summer. She knew that he never ate pudding but occasionally would eat a square of dark, bitter chocolate with his coffee. She even knew which flowers he liked to send women when he was in pursuit—dark pink roses—and an appropriately generous consolation gift when he inevitably ended it—pearl and diamond cluster ear-studs from an international jeweler, and, oh, what pleasure Angie took in the purchase of those.
Yet after five years of her pandering to his every whim and making his life as easy as possible Riccardo Castellari didn’t even know where she lived!
‘Stanhope,’ she said, putting her spoon down.
‘And where’s that?’
‘It’s on the Piccadilly Line—towards Heathrow.’
‘But that’s miles out.’
‘That’s right, Riccardo. It is.’
‘And how are you getting there?’
How did he think? ‘By broomstick,’ she giggled.
He frowned. Angie giggling? Was she drunk? ‘I’m serious, Angie,’ he growled.
‘Oh, all right, then. By Tube.’ She tipped her head to one side, aware of the unaccustomed silky fall of hair over her shoulders. ‘Same way I always get home.’
He thought of the late-night underground network, chock-a-block with Christmas revelers, and the kind of reception she might expect to get. And his eyes flicked over her surprisingly slim waist, accentuated by a flimsy silk gown which he must have been insane to give her. At the way her breasts seemed to be defying gravity by failing to spill out of the damned dress altogether. No wonder the waiters had been circling her like a pack of wolves for most of the evening, until his icy glance had made it very clear that they were jeopardising their tip by doing so. Was he prepared to sit back and let her go alone into the night? Why, it would be like throwing a lamb before lions!
‘Come on—get your coat on,’ he ordered abruptly. ‘I’m taking you home.’
FOR a moment Angie stared at Riccardo in disbelief, her lips parting as she stared at him. ‘You’re…you’re taking me home?’
His black eyes gleamed. ‘I am.’
‘You mean on the Tube?’ she questioned blankly, trying to imagine her billionaire boss accompanying her down the escalator.
‘No, not on the Tube.’ He repressed a shudder. ‘In my car.’
‘You can’t take me home in your car,’ she objected. ‘You’ve been drinking.’
‘I may have been drinking,’ he stated grimly, ‘but I can hold my drink—something I suspect you cannot. And believe me, there’s little that’s more unattractive than a woman who is exhibiting signs of being drunk.’
‘That’s a very chauvinist remark.’
His eyes gleamed. ‘But I am a very chauvinistic man, piccola—I thought we had already established that?’
Angie swallowed. There was something very exciting about him when he was speaking to her like that. In that kind of half-challenging, half-threatening way. But piccola meant small, didn’t it? Her mouth turned down at the corners. That was hardly compliment of the year, was it? ‘Are you saying I’m drunk?’
‘No, but I’m saying you’ve had enough alcohol to make you behave in a way which is…uninhibited. I don’t think you should travel home alone—it’s not safe—and I’m not driving, as it happens. That’s what I employ Marco to do. Now take your handbag and let’s get going.’
Suddenly, he sounded masterful. The way she’d heard him speak to the occasional model he’d dated and who had dropped in at the office on their way to dinner. Angie could see one of the women from the human resources department staring at them with a very peculiar expression on her face. ‘Won’t…won’t people talk—if we leave together?’
He shot her a cool look. ‘Why on earth should they?’ he questioned indifferently. ‘I’m simply giving my sec-retary a lift home.’
Well, that certainly put her in her place!
Marco had the car waiting with the engine running and Angie slid onto the back seat—completely forgetting that she was wearing a hemline about half as short as usual.
A glimpse of delicious thigh was revealed and Riccardo felt the sudden fizz to his blood. Quickly averting his gaze, he turned instead to stare out of the window as they drove westwards on a journey which seemed to take for ever. Lots and lots of tiny houses—all, it seemed, exactly the same, with cars parked nose to nose by the edges of all the narrow roads. The shops looked unexciting and some of them were boarded up for the night. A small gang of youths stood moodily on a street corner, smoking cigarettes.
Riccardo frowned. Surely he didn’t pay her so little that she had to live somewhere like this?
The car came to a smooth halt outside a tall house and he turned to see that she was reclining lazily against the seat. Was she asleep? Her head was
