staring at the figures on his screen with the kind of rapt fascination which most men reserved for beautiful women.
The office was large and spacious and had been designed with the full cooperation of a design consultant. Two desks sat facing one another, which was not really Megan’s idea of fun. Those cool grey eyes didn’t exactly make you feel relaxed. And you certainly couldn’t varnish your nails or telephone a girlfriend—even in your lunch hour—not when your boss was sitting only feet away!
The only respite she got was when Dan had to go away on business, which wasn’t as often as she would have liked. Because, like most assistants, she found the office ran much better when her boss wasn’t around!
In one corner of the room was a seating area which had made a couple of concessions towards comfort. It contained a sofa and two soft chairs, with a low table in between. Fresh flowers were sent each week by a florist and were subtle and scented. Clutter in the room had been kept to a minimum and Megan was trying to enter into the spirit of this new working environment. She had already ‘streamlined’ her desk, and eagerly studied the section of the Softshare manual which included guidelines on how to make your life less stressful. Though so far, at least, she wasn’t sure if it was working.
They worked non-stop until Megan’s stomach began to rumble. When Dan was working, he seemed to forget about such mundane matters as food and drink.
‘Would you like some peppermint tea?’ she asked hopefully. ‘Or maybe you’d prefer camomile?’
Dan winced. ‘No, I wouldn’t! I’ll have that coffee now—strong and black, the same as always.’
‘But too much caffeine can make you irritable, Dan—’
‘Yes, and you seem to be doing a pretty good job of that, too! Why on earth would I need coffee, Megan?’ he snapped sarcastically as he checked his e-mail.
Megan went out to fetch him coffee served just the way he liked it—which was ebony-black without any sugar—and was presumably what kept him so alert. And so lean. She set it down on his desk in front of him, then ate a large green apple while Dan spoke at great length to someone in Tokyo, frowning at her every time she crunched.
After that he took a conference call. At noon Reception buzzed to say that Sam Tenbury was waiting downstairs, and Dan stretched his arms high above his head and gave a lazy yawn.
Megan found herself wondering who he had taken to the theatre with him and how late a night it had been afterwards. And also wondered if the lucky woman was the same woman who had penned the letter which still lay unopened in his in-tray. Megan gazed down at it, but Dan was already by the door and didn’t appear to have noticed her pointed stare.
Anyway, it was none of her business.
‘Okay, Megan. You know where I’ll be. See you in about an hour,’ he promised, and closed the office door quietly behind him.
The room felt a bit empty after he’d gone and Megan threw herself into organising an off-site meeting for the following month, where Softshare employees would congregate for one of the team-building programmes which the company promoted so fiercely.
She was just thinking about eating her own sandwich—which she always made up for herself at home before she drove her scooter into work—when the telephone rang and she picked it up.
‘Hello, Dan McKnight’s office, Megan speaking. How may I help?’
There was a breathy pause. And then a young woman’s voice—asking a studiedly casual question which came out sounding as if it had been rehearsed over and over. ‘Is he there, please? D-Dan, I mean.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Megan. ‘He’s out at a meeting.’
‘Oh. Oh, I see.’ The voice sounded so young and so crestfallen that all Megan’s protective instincts came hustling to the surface.
‘May I take a message?’
‘Not really.’
‘Or say who was calling?’
‘No, no! That’s okay. It doesn’t matter. Honestly.’
But the girl sounded so dejected that Megan felt impelled to ask, ‘Are you sure? I can get a message to him if you like. He’ll be back very soon.’
A noise followed which sounded suspiciously like a gulp. ‘Well, I don’t know if it’ll do any good…’ The voice tailed off uncertainly.
Megan was not the oldest of five children for nothing—and she could tell when someone wanted to get something off their chest. ‘Oh, go on,’ she coaxed gently. ‘You can tell me.’
‘Well…um, do you know if he’s been getting his mail?’ asked the voice tentatively.
Certainty hit Megan like a slap to the face. This was the writer of the elaborate envelopes—she would bet her entire month’s salary on that! But how could she admit to the woman that her letters had been arriving without also having to admit that Dan McKnight had been refusing to read them?
‘Dan always has a great mountain of mail—electronic and conventional mail,’ said Megan smoothly. No lies there. ‘But he’s been snowed under with work lately.’ Which was also the truth. ‘So he probably hasn’t got around to reading them.’ Now…did the fabrication sound as loud to the mystery caller’s ears as it did to her own?
‘Yes,’ said the voice dejectedly. ‘I guess that’s why I haven’t heard.’
‘So why don’t I have him call you when he gets back?’
There was a rather hollow laugh. ‘No, that’s okay. I’ll be seeing him at the weekend. I’ll talk to him then. Th-thanks for all your help.’
The connection was broken and Megan was left staring blankly down at the phone, but her protective instincts had been roused. She found herself logging appointments into Dan’s diary with only half a mind on the task in hand, so that by the time he returned from his lunch she had worked out exactly what she was going to say to him.
Dan walked into the office to find his assistant looking puffed-up and slightly self-important, and began to wonder whether his satisfaction in her performance had been a little premature.
She’d been nothing but a pain this morning! The way she kept drawing his attention to those confounded letters—letters which were currently burning an uncomfortable hole in his conscience.
Yet, at her interview, Megan Phillips had not only displayed all the characteristics which Softshare specifically looked for in an employee, she’d had the added advantage of not being the type to stand out in a crowd, which was definitely a plus as far as Dan was concerned.
He’d had beautiful assistants before—women who seemed to think that a lovely face and stunning body would catapult them from their assistant’s desk into the high-ranking security of the boss’s bed!
Not that Megan Phillips was ugly, he conceded wryly. In fact, she came nowhere near being ugly—she was just refreshingly and unthreateningly ordinary. She didn’t wear make-up and she didn’t wear short skirts, either. In fact, she never wore skirts at all—always trousers. Presumably to cover up her fat ankles. And that was just fine by him.
