fingers of one hand, he suspected. What was he thinking? Whatever it was he must stop now—must not allow it to get hold and take root.
‘What happened to your parents? Mine died carrying out aid work at the site of an earthquake, when a huge aftershock destroyed the building they were in.’
Giselle’s muscles clenched—both against what he was saying and against the shock of his question.
‘After my parents’ death I wanted to talk about it, but no one would let me. I suppose they thought it would be too…’ he stopped.
‘Too painful for you.’ Giselle supplied, her voice cracking slightly, like an unhealed scab over a still raw wound.
What had been a hostile confrontation between them had somehow or other veered sharply into something else and somewhere else—a territory that was both familiar to her and yet at the same time unexplored by her. Because she was too afraid? Because it hurt too much?
She spoke slowly at first, the effort of speaking about something so deeply traumatic and personal making her throat feel raw.
‘My mother and…and my baby brother were killed in a road accident. My father died from a heart attack eleven months after the accident.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He was, Saul recognised. Sorry for the child she had been, sorry for her loss, sorry he had asked now that he knew the full extent of the tragedy.
‘Life is so fragile,’ Giselle heard herself telling him. ‘My baby brother was only six months old.’ She shuddered. “I can’t imagine how parents must feel when they lose a child—especially one so young—or how they cope with the responsibility of protecting such vulnerability. I’d never have a second’s peace. I could never…I would never want that responsibility.’
There was a finality in her words that found an echo within him.
She had said too much, revealed and betrayed too much, Giselle recognised. Not that she had told him everything. She would never and could never tell anyone everything. Some things were so painful, so shocking and so dark that they could never be shared—had to be kept hidden away from everyone. She could just imagine how people would treat her if they knew the truth, how suspicious of her they would be—and with good reason. No, she could never speak openly about her guilt or her fear. They were burdens she must carry alone.
But she must not dwell on the past, but instead live in the present, with her duty to her great-aunt. Determinedly she focused her thoughts on the issue that had led to this unexpected and far too intimate conversation, telling Saul, ‘If you want to cancel the secondment now that you have the answer to your question…’
She wanted him to cancel the secondment, Saul recognised, ignoring the fact that he had wanted to cancel it himself as he let his male drive to win take over.
‘You wouldn’t have been my choice. However, I don’t have the time to interview other applicants. Of course if you want to withdraw…’ He let the offer hang there.
‘You already know that I can’t,’ Giselle said stiffly. Saul shrugged.
‘I doubt that either of us is happy with the situation, but for different reasons it seems that we shall have to endure it and make the best of it.’
Giselle exhaled. Talking about her past had drained her emotionally and physically, and now she felt dreadfully weak and shaky—but there was still something she needed to know.
‘My car—’ she began, and then stopped when she realised how thin and thready her voice sounded. She was perilously close to the limits of her self-control, she knew. Her head was beginning to ache from the stress of their confrontation. Her lips felt dry. She moistened them with the tip of her tongue.
Saul watched the telltale movement of her tonguetip, his gaze sliding unwillingly down to the small movement of her throat as she swallowed. Her upswept hair revealed the length of her neck and the neat shape of her ears. Mauve shadows lay beneath her eyes like small bruises; her face was drained of any other colour. Something inside him ached and twisted, an emotion he didn’t recognise giving birth to an impulse to reach out and touch her, hold her.
Hold her? Why?
Why? He was a man, wasn’t he? And the way she had just drawn attention to her own mouth had had its obvious effect on his body. That was why he felt impelled to touch her. Right now, if he leaned forward and pressed his thumb to that special place behind her ear, if he stroked his fingertips the length of her throat, if he ran his tongue over the soft pillows of flesh that were her lips, he could make her pale skin flush softly with the warmth of arousal. He could make the pulse beat in her throat with desire for him. He could make those green eyes darken to jade and the breath shudder from her lungs. Saul took a step towards her.
Immediately Giselle stepped back from him, with a gasp of sound that brought him back to reality. What the hell was the matter with him? Saul castigated himself. The last thing he felt for her was desire, and the second last thing he wanted was her desire for him. Stepping back from her, he reached for his mobile and spoke into it, announcing, ‘You can bring the car back now.’
Less than five minutes later Giselle watched as her car was driven into the car park towards her. A uniformed driver got out and handed over the keys to Saul before heading for Saul’s own gleaming car.
Without a word Giselle got into her car. She had no idea how they had acquired keys for it, and she wasn’t going to ask. She was beginning to suspect that for a man like Saul Parenti anything and everything was achievable.
Saul watched her drive away. Fire and ice—a dangerous combination, designed to tempt the strongest-willed man when combined in a woman. He, though, could and would resist that temptation.
IT WAS nearly two weeks now since Giselle had begun her new duties in the impressive modern office building that was the headquarters of Saul Parenti’s business empire, and of course she wasn’t in the least bit disappointed that not once during those two very busy weeks had she seen Saul himself and that the glass-fronted office his PA had pointed out to her as his had remained empty. Far from it. She was delighted that he wasn’t in evidence, and that she had been able to take up her new role without having to contend with his presence.
Or at least she had been until something had come to light this morning, whilst she had been checking over the latest batch of reworked plans couriered over to her.
Was what she had picked up a simple mistake? Was it a trick to try and catch her out, instituted by Saul himself? Or was it—and her stomach tensed at the thought of this—a deliberate attempt to defraud the Parenti Organisation, put in place by one of her own colleagues?
Whichever of the three options she chose to believe, the initial outcome was the same, and that was that she would have to report what she had seen to Saul Parenti. Giselle looked towards the office of Saul’s PA, Moira Wilson, wondering if she should discuss her concern with her.
She liked the older woman, who had gone out of her way to make her feel at home in her new environment. On her first morning here, Moira had gone through everything with her, informing her with a smile, ‘I’ll just run through a few things with you. First, we are all on first-name terms here—Saul insists on it. But don’t mistake that for a lack of discipline or respect. He demands and gets both.
