Powerful Boss, Prim Miss Jones. CATHY WILLIAMS

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      Andreas watched this display of emotion with a censorious frown, at a loss as to what to make of it. On the one hand, he was a gut believer in his own instincts, which were positively screaming that something in the picture wasn’t right. On the other hand, he was capable of recognising genuine feeling when he saw it, and there was nothing staged about this bout of waterworks—and he had seen a fair amount of female waterworks in his time. The tap, he had long recognised, could be switched off at the drop of a hat. This tap, however, looked as though it might continue leaking indefinitely. He stood up and circled the desk so that he could hand her his handkerchief, which she took without looking at him, although he thought he heard a muffled, ‘Sorry.’ He perched on the desk, staring at her down-bent head with a perplexed frown, until she had gathered herself.

      ‘I’m not a monster. I do sometimes give people the benefit of the doubt.’ He tried to think of the last time he had done so and couldn’t.

      Elizabeth raised hopeful eyes to his and said, with earnest urgency, ‘I would never do anything to hurt James. I’m not here to take advantage of an old man. I know that’s what’s going through your head.’

      ‘You have no idea what’s going through my head.’

      ‘I know it won’t be good.’

      ‘You’re being ridiculous.’

      ‘I’m just asking you to trust me when I tell you that I’m not a gold-digger. I don’t care about money.’

      ‘Even though you’ve never had any?’

      ‘I know it’s a cliché, but money doesn’t buy happiness.’

      ‘I have no idea how we managed to get into this conversation.’ Andreas stood up abruptly because those wide, green eyes were threatening to do something to his legendary cool. ‘I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt in this instance because dispatching you might do more damage to my godfather than keeping you on. He’s taken to you, and this is a challenging time in his life. I don’t know what might happen if we have to go through the nuisance of trying to find a substitute, especially if no real explanation’s given for the vanishing act.’

      Elizabeth smiled tremulously and reached out to take hold of his hand, releasing it when he glanced down with a look of mingled surprise and displeasure. ‘You won’t regret it.’

      ‘You bet I won’t, and here’s why.’ He had given this a great deal of thought. Had she confessed to some sinister, ulterior motives, he would have had no option but to sack her on the spot, but he knew that that had been an unlikely possibility. In which case, hustling her through the back door and then trying to fabricate a plausible explanation for his godfather would be nigh on impossible. Which left him no option but to be in a position from which he could seriously keep an eye on her. Emails and phone calls, whilst helpful, could not even be loosely categorised as seriously keeping an eye on her. She could be using her free time to rummage through bankaccount details, for all he knew!

      He very firmly neutered the little voice in his head telling him that that was a preposterous suggestion. Since when was he the sort of guy who fell for a woman’s tricks? Or anyone else’s, for that matter? Life at the very summit of the food chain had opened his eyes to the folly of taking people at face value.

      He circled her and then paused to look down at her very carefully, taking in the anxious, heart-shaped face, the softly parted lips, the big, innocent eyes still glistening from her crying jag.

      ‘I’m coming back home.’

      CHAPTER THREE

      ‘COMING back home?’ Elizabeth was utterly bewildered. Didn’t he live in London? ‘Don’t you live in London?’

      ‘Keep up here, Elizabeth. I’m moving back down to Somerset.’ He had resumed his seat at the desk and was tilting back in it, hands folded behind his head, his dark eyes gleaming with satisfaction. The whole upheaval should have been a major source of dissatisfaction for him. His office was the throbbing soul of his operations, and the thought of being plucked out of it for reasons not of his choosing should have set his teeth on edge, but he felt strangely content with the decision.

      ‘You’re moving back down to Somerset.’ She could scarcely believe her ears.

      ‘You seem to be in a state of shock.’

      ‘You’re moving back down to Somerset so that you can watch my every move. You said that you were going to give me the benefit of the doubt.’

      ‘And I have. Which is why you’re still in gainful employment!’

      Elizabeth looked at him reprovingly and fumbled with the handkerchief which she was still clutching. ‘You would jeopardise your whole working life just because you think that I’m here to do I don’t know what?’

      ‘I’m not jeopardising anything,’ Andreas refuted smoothly. ‘I worked here perfectly fine when James returned from hospital. It’s a big house and, convenient though it is to be in an office environment where everyone is on hand, keeping in touch is really only the press of a button. The joys of the World Wide Web! Some of my employees actually design their own working hours to incorporate working from home. I’m a very progressive employer.’

      Elizabeth was lost in her own tangled thoughts. How on earth was she going to avoid him when he planned on being around all the time, watching her every move? Would he follow her into town when she went to do the shopping? Lurk outside her bedroom with his ear pressed to a glass against the door to find out what she was up to? She imagined bumping into him at unexpected moments, or turning corners to find him lying in wait like a big-game hunter waiting to pounce. She shuddered and realised that he had been saying something.

      ‘I beg your pardon?’

      ‘That’s going to have to change, for a start.’

      ‘What are you talking about?’

      ‘I’m talking about your habit of not listening to me when I speak to you.’ Or else responding with the briefest of answers and with the general demeanour of someone who would prefer to be anywhere in the universe except in his company. Both traits irritated the hell out of him.

      Elizabeth blinked, but, really, how surprised should she be? Andreas resided in a different hemisphere from most other people. In his rarefied world, he snapped his fingers and everyone saluted and jumped to immediate attention.

      ‘I do listen,’ she told him. ‘I was just thinking about how awkward it’s going to be if you’re following me around every second of the day…’

      ‘Why would I be following you around every second of the day?’ Andreas asked, his darkly handsome face incredulous at the suggestion. ‘I may be prepared to transfer operations down here for the foreseeable future, but I don’t intend to abandon work completely so that I can stalk your every movement.’

       Foreseeable future?

      ‘You can’t migrate here for the foreseeable future,’ she said in a staggered voice. ‘Don’t you have to run your empire?’

      ‘We’re not talking about a pirate ship here,’ Andreas told her drily. ‘There won’t be mutiny if I’m not clocking in on a СКАЧАТЬ