with the levels Saul pays those who work for him, and you will be eligible for an annual bonus, medical insurance, and a car allowance. Any expenses you incur in the course of your work should be submitted to the accounts department on a monthly basis, and I should warn you that here we do not have a culture of fudging such expenses—if you take my meaning.’
This last piece of information had been accompanied by a grim look which had ensured that Giselle knew exactly what she meant.
‘I never fudge my expenses. It would go against my principles to do so,’ Giselle had responded truthfully.
‘Excellent. I am sure you will fit in very well here,’ had been Moira’s response, before she had added, ‘Oh, and when you complete your personal details form I shall need your passport details.’
‘My passport?’
‘Yes. You do have one, don’t you? If not we must sort one out for you, just in case you are required to travel abroad on behalf of the company with Saul—to site meetings and that kind of thing. Saul takes a very personal and keen interest in all his projects, and is very hands-on about checking their progress.’
‘Yes,’ she had a passport, Giselle had confirmed. She was also used to travelling abroad to conferences and site meetings with clients—so why on earth had that tingle of something she refused to name zipped down her spine? It was doing so now, at the memory—as though someone had feathered a touch against her bare skin. What was happening to her? Nothing, Giselle assured herself fiercely. Nothing was happening to her and nothing was going to happen to her. Normally she enjoyed visiting the various sites she worked on, especially when they were abroad. It made up for the fact that she had missed out on the kind of foreign trips enjoyed by most of her peers when they had been growing up.
Her great-aunt simply hadn’t had the money for that kind of luxury. Additionally, the circumstances of her life—the dreadful tragedy that still haunted her and filled her with guilt—meant that she had always been wary of allowing others to get close to her even as friends, so she hadn’t joined in the group holidays abroad enjoyed by her peers during her early twenties, even when she could have financed them herself. Instead she had concentrated on getting the very best qualifications she could. Then, when she had started to think about taking solo holidays to explore the architecture of other countries, her great-aunt had needed to move into residential care, and once again there simply hadn’t been the money for such unnecessary expenses.
Giselle judged Moira to be somewhere in her early fifties, which had surprised her. From Emma’s comments about Saul’s lifestyle she had imagined that his PA would be glamorous and nubile, not a woman of Moira’s age, even if she was a very smart and elegant fifty-something. Her appearance was much like that of the other women Giselle had seen in the offices, making her acutely conscious of the shabbiness of her own clothes. There was nothing she could do about that, though. Only two days ago she had received a letter informing her that regrettably the fees for her great-aunt’s care and accommodation were to be increased by twenty per cent—not far short of the unexpected increase in her salary. There were cheaper care homes, but Giselle was determined that her great-aunt would go on enjoying the level of comfort she had where she was—even if that did mean she herself would have to go without the new clothes she had been tempted to buy, having seen how smart the other women working here were.
Now, as she looked round her spacious office, Giselle admitted that in many ways she preferred her new working environment—even if she would rather have worked for the devil himself than Saul Parenti. She doubted that she would be missed by her old colleagues. The men she worked with had shown quite plainly prior to her departure that they resented the fact that she had been selected over them for what they considered to be a prestigious and career-boosting opportunity, and of course her own pride had not allowed her to tell them that she would have preferred not to be chosen. However, it was the well-meaning Emma’s words that were still sending scalding waves of humiliation burning painfully through Giselle’s emotions.
She had spoken to her in private. ‘It’s just as well that it’s you who’s been seconded to go and work for Saul Parenti. If it was anyone else then all the other girls would be seething with jealousy at the thought of someone getting the opportunity to work closely with such a fabulously sexy man. But of course they won’t be jealous of you, because they all know that there’s no danger of you attracting him—not with your attitude to men and the way you give them the cold shoulder. Especially not with a man like Saul, who can have any woman he wants.’
Giselle knew it was ridiculous of her to feel humiliated by Emma’s remarks—somehow less of a woman. After all, Giselle herself had always made it plain that she wasn’t interested in flirting with or attracting men, cold-shouldering their advances and retreating into herself whenever they showed any interest in her. The last thing she wanted was a man pursuing her—any man—and especially a man like Saul Parenti. Why especially him? Because she was afraid that she might be vulnerable to him? Because she was afraid that she might actually want him?
Giselle stood up, panicked by her own thoughts, and then subsided back into her chair. Of course not. It was nothing to do with anything like that. She knew that she was perfectly safe from desiring Saul Parenti, and even if by some foolish misjudgement she did, she also knew that it was impossible for anything to come of that desire. Because, as Emma had made clear, Saul Parenti would never find her desirable? No! Because she did not want him to desire her—just as she did not want any man to desire her.
She had taken refuge in angry disdain, demanding of Emma, ‘Does everything have to come down to sex?’
Emma had laughed and told her, ‘For most of us—yes.’ Before adding, ‘Men can’t help being men, and they are predatory by instinct. It’s in their genes. But in your case…Well, what I’m trying to say, Giselle, is that…’
‘That a man like Saul Parenti wouldn’t find me desirable enough to want to go to the trouble of trying to seduce me?’ Giselle had supplied for her colleague.
‘Well, you do send a keep-your-distance vibe to men, you must admit, and men like Saul Parenti have plenty of women all too ready to give them what they want to be bothered with a woman who freezes them off. I haven’t hurt your feelings, have I?’ Emma had asked anxiously.
Giselle had shaken her head.
‘No, of course not.’ Giselle had assured her. And that was the truth. Of course she wasn’t hurt because Emma had spoken the truth and said that Saul wouldn’t be interested in her. She didn’t want him to be. She didn’t want any man to be interested in her. She couldn’t afford to allow any man to become interested in her because she knew that she could not and must not become interested in them. She could never have in her life the relationships that others took for granted. She could not fall in love. She could not commit to anyone, and most of all she could not within that commitment help to create a child. She must never have a child. Never.
Anyway, how she looked and whether Saul Parenti did or did not see her as attractive were not subjects she should be paying any mind to. Instead she must focus on the reason she was here and on what she was being paid to do.
The office provided for her was well planned out and perfect for her duties, with its large windows flooding the room with natural light. It contained all the equipment she might need, including a good-sized table in the middle of the floor on which she was able to spread out paper copies of architectural drawings and plans—just as she had done earlier, with the new drawings and costings that had been sent over.
Uncertainly Giselle looked back at them. She had been worrying about them for so long, going back to check and then recheck them just in case she had made a mistake, that she hadn’t realised how
