with that hair of yours.’ He reached out to touch her hair, and she saw Oliver Kemp watching them with widening eyes. How long had he been standing there? She hadn’t heard the click of his door opening.
‘Mr Kemp,’ she said, standing up, ‘I was just about to show Mr Robinson in.’
Mr Robinson had gone an embarrassed shade of red and had hopped off the desk as though suddenly discovering that it was made of burning embers.
Oliver didn’t say a word, and his dark-fringed, pale eyes were expressionless. He simply turned his back. The now very subdued manager bustled in behind him and the door was firmly shut.
Francesca released a long breath. She felt inappropriately as though she had been caught red-handed doing something unthinkable.
When an hour and a half later Brad Robinson hurried out of the office, making sure not to look in her direction, she found that she was concentrating a little too hard on what she was doing, and when Oliver Kemp moved across to her desk the colour flooded into her face.
‘I do apologise,’ she began, stammering, and he looked at her with raised eyebrows.
‘By all means. What for, though?’
She had been so sure that he had been going to say something to her, in that coldly sarcastic way of his, about not flirting with management that his question took her by surprise.
‘I didn’t invite Mr Robinson to sit on my desk…’ she began, faltering and going a deeper red. ‘He—’
‘He’s an inveterate flirt, Miss Wade,’ Oliver cut in unsmilingly. ‘I’ve caught him sitting on more desktops than I care to remember, but he’s a damned good salesman.’
‘Of course,’ she murmured with relief.
‘That’s not to say that I condone a lot of time-wasting during office hours,’ he added.
‘No.’ She paused. ‘Though I know how to handle men like Brad Robinson, anyway.’
‘I’m sure. I expect you’re quite accustomed to men who flirt the minute they clap eyes on you.’
He didn’t say that as a compliment and he was already looking at his watch.
‘I’ve got a few files here,’ he said, moving round the desk and perching next to her. Her eyes travelled along his muscular forearms to where his sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and she felt a sudden twinge of uneasy awareness.
‘Yes, sir,’ she mumbled, disconcerted by her reaction.
His dark-fringed eyes slid across to hers and he said drily, ‘You can call me Oliver. I don’t believe in a hierarchical system, where my employees salute every time I walk past. Bad for the morale.’
‘You’ve studied psychology?’ Francesca asked, and he raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, flustered, ‘I…’
‘Don’t mean to be sarcastic all the time?’ He sat on the edge of the desk. ‘I suspect that that’s because you’ve never had to curb your tongue, have you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I mean, Miss Wade, is that your privileged background has opened a great many doors for you. People are often subservient to wealth, and I suspect that you’ve come to expect subservience as part and parcel of everyday life.’
‘That’s not true,’ she said in a weak voice, but there was more than an ounce of truth in what he was saying. She had not gone through life demanding special treatment, but on the other hand it had frequently been given to her.
‘This is your first job,’ he continued relentlessly, ‘and probably for the first time in your life you’re going to have to realise that no one here is going to treat you as anything other than another employee in this organisation.’ She felt his cold blue eyes skewering into her dispassionately.
‘I don’t want to be treated any differently from anyone else,’ Francesca said defensively. She looked away from the hard, sexy contours of his face, which anyway was only addling her mind still further, and stared at the stack of files on which his hand was resting.
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He slipped off the desk and turned his attention back to the files. ‘There are letters in these which need typing and I’ve highlighted a few things which I want you to sort out. You’ll have to phone the regional managers and arrange appointments for them to come and see me. As far as the Smith Holdings one is concerned, make sure that you get Jeffrey Lake to see me no later than lunchtime tomorrow.’ He looked down at her. ‘Any questions?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Francesca murmured, and a ghost of a smile crossed his face.
‘You’re very confident, aren’t you?’
‘Don’t tell me that there’s something wrong with that!’
‘Nothing at all.’
She looked up at him and their eyes met. ‘I guess you’d be able to analyse that trait in me as well? Wealth breeds self-confidence, doesn’t it? Maybe you start off from the vantage point of thinking that everyone is inferior, so it’s an easy step towards thinking that you’re capable of anything.’
‘Very good,’ he drawled, and his expression was veiled. ‘Too much self-confidence is as bad as too little, though. I’m sure you wouldn’t like to fall flat on your face just because you’re too proud to ask questions.’
‘I don’t intend to fall flat on my face,’ she returned calmly, ‘and I’m not so completely stupid that I don’t realise the value of asking questions when I need to.’
‘Good.’ He walked towards the door and she watched his loose-limbed stride with angry fascination. ‘I won’t be back for the rest of the day,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘If you need me I’ll be contactable on my mobile phone until seven, then anything after that will have to wait until tomorrow.’
Once he had gone she turned to the computer and methodically began working her way through the files, calling the regional managers, arranging appointments.
Every so often, though, her mind would flit back to him. It irked her that he treated her like a child—an over-indulged child who appeared capable of handling the job but of not much else beyond that. There was always a cool dismissiveness in his voice when he addressed her, and even when he had perched on the desk and offered her his little pearls of insight into her personality the basic uninterest had still been there. To him she was a case study in everything that he disapproved of. Someone who would either do her job well or not.
Her father, had he known, would have had a good laugh at that, she thought.
She worked steadily through lunch, and it was only when the door was pushed open that she realised with some surprise that it was after four.
‘Hi.’
One word—a monosyllable—and Francesca knew instantly that she wasn’t going to warm to the girl standing by her desk, looking at her with assessing eyes. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Could you give these to your
