The Italian Boss's Secretary Mistress. Cathy Williams

kind of dog?’

      ‘A very big one.’

      ‘Because I’m six foot two?’

      Well, of course, that comment invited her to look at him and for a few seconds her heart seemed to stop beating. Six foot two of pure blue-eyed, black-haired alpha male.

      ‘You’d better go,’ she said abruptly, standing up.

      ‘I will, in about fifteen minutes. I told Harry to go and fill the car up instead of just waiting and he won’t be back yet.’

      ‘Why did you do that?’ Rose said in dismay. Now that she was on her feet, she couldn’t decide whether to go across to the sink and risk an awkward situation with them both there, squashed side by side into an impossibly small space, or else ignominiously sit back down. In the end she clicked her tongue and turned on her heel, out to the sitting room cum room where everything was done, from television watching to out of hours work to reading the newspaper on a Sunday morning before she walked down to the bakery to buy her weekly treat of croissants.

      ‘Because,’ his voice came from behind her, ‘it beat the hell out of sitting in the car waiting for me in the dark.’

      ‘He could have turned the light on and read!’

      ‘Provided he remembered to come equipped with a book.’

      Rose shot him a long-suffering look, which was water off a duck’s back, and sat down. ‘Harry always travels with a book.’

      ‘How do you know?’

      ‘Because I once asked him how he tolerated having to drive you places and then wait, sometimes for hours, until you finished whatever meeting you might have been in.’

      ‘You’ve been having long conversations with my chauffeur?’ His tone of voice implied that she had been hiding some dirty secret from him, something which he had only just unmasked, much to his horror.

      ‘Occasionally we walk to the bus stop together if we happen to be leaving at the same time. And there’s no need to look so staggered, Gabriel. People do have lives outside your corporation.’

      ‘I know that!’

      ‘Well, stop acting as though whatever happens outside your little world doesn’t exist.’

      ‘I don’t live in a little world,’ Gabriel grated.

      ‘Of course you do.’ She tidied up the criticism by tossing in a generality. ‘You’re bound to, really. Anyone in your position would. Running a corporation as huge as yours, having to dictate to other people most of the time, snapping your fingers and knowing that you’ll be obeyed. It’s not the real world.’

      Gabriel’s eyes narrowed on her. ‘I’m a petty dictator?’

      ‘No, of course not! That’s not what I said at all!’

      ‘I give orders, I snap my fingers and expect obedience. I suppose the next step is to issue the royal command that all my subjects kneel when I walk by!’

      ‘I’m sorry if I offended you.’

      ‘You haven’t offended me,’ Gabriel said coolly. ‘You work for me and as my employee you are entitled to an opinion and I appreciate your opinion. I only wish you had had the guts to tell me a little sooner instead of scuttling around like a mouse, smiling and obeying and harbouring unpleasant resentments.’

      Rose’s mouth fell open and she stared at him in horror. ‘I wasn’t harbouring resentments,’ she denied, her face turning a deeper shade of red.

      ‘No?’ Gabriel felt as though he had been struck a blow beneath the belt and he didn’t like the feeling. Underneath the guise of the man who worked hard and played hard, was a man of exceptional self-control. Right now he could feel his iron control shifting and it was a very unpleasant sensation. Especially considering that the woman was no more than his secretary. A valued member of his team, yes, but still a member of his team and nothing of any worth personally to him.

      ‘No…if I had any problems working for you…well, I would have told you…I wouldn’t have scuttled around like a mouse…’ That description hurt because she could see how he would have arrived at it. She came in, she did her job, she went home. Her own confusing emotional vulnerability as far as he was concerned had made her a more silent person than she was by nature, but how was he to know that? What he knew was a quiet, efficient woman who did her job but never said anything that might have expressed any feelings that were unrelated to work. A highly competent scuttling mouse. And, three months ago, a plump little mouse.

      Not for the first time, Rose was besieged by images of all the women he had dated. In her head, they marched past in a long, beautiful procession. She had met them all, or at least most of them because he would often arrange for them to meet him at the office when he had finished work, only he rarely finished when he promised and so they would sit in her office, long legs crossed, their perfect faces blank with boredom as they stared around them or tried to make small talk. Blonde, brunette, red-haired—Gabriel showed no favouritism. His only criteria was that they were gorgeous and intellectually undemanding.

      Sometimes Rose would spot an item of jewellery she had bought on his behalf. A diamond bracelet, a necklace, maybe a Hermes scarf, which always went down a treat because it was somehow a little more personal than an item of jewellery, or so they imagined, unaware that Gabriel would have had nothing to do with the choosing.

      She looked at him now and saw herself through his eyes. The plump mouse scuttling quietly around, doing his bidding. Little wonder she had become his perfect secretary! And even less surprising that he had been staggered when she had returned from Australia clutching her letter of resignation and sporting a whole new image. He had turned on the charm and pulled out all the financial stops, but her decision to stay had nothing to do with either of those things.

      She was a different woman now. She looked different and inside she had changed. She wasn’t going to scuttle any more because she had nothing to lose. She had made her mind up that her life was going down a different path and, if she happened to still be working for him, she was merely biding her time.

      She liked the sound of that. Biding her time. It gave her a heady rush of courage.

      ‘I have no problem working for you, Gabriel, because I’m not afraid of you. I’ve worked alongside you long enough to know…’

      ‘How to handle me…?’