A Boss In A Million. HELEN BROOKS

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СКАЧАТЬ you’re missing him, and no doubt he’s missing you.’

      ‘Uh-huh.’ Gillian nodded and then managed a fairly normal smile as she included Cory in her rueful grimace. ‘Pathetic, isn’t it? But the last eight weeks are the first time we’ve been apart in our twenty years of married life and it feels so strange. Still, at least Colin’s found a gorgeous apartment out there and everything is going to be done when I arrive on the doorstep in six weeks’ time.’

      Six weeks. Six weeks! And then—if she was still here, that was—there would be only Max Hunter and herself and no comforting, homely Gillian around. Cory missed her step as she followed the older woman into the lift and immediately a warm firm hand fastened on her elbow. ‘Careful.’ He was just behind her and his six feet four towered over her five feet five as she turned to murmur her thanks. ‘We don’t want you breaking your neck on the first day, do we?’ he added evenly. ‘And certainly not in this building. I can do without a lawsuit for industrial injury.’

      ‘I wouldn’t dream of suing you for something that was my own fault,’ Cory answered hotly as though the accusation were a reality.

      ‘No?’ It was blatantly cynical, his firm, cruel mouth twisting mockingly at the fierceness of her protest.

      ‘No.’ She stared up at him, her mouth very firm, and they were both unaware of the interested spectator watching the little drama in front of her. ‘That would be positively immoral.’

      ‘Immoral…’ He considered the word lazily.

      Cory was instantly aware she had chosen an unfortunate turn of phrase but it was too late to retract it. She’d have to bluff.

      ‘And you are always…moral, Cory?’ he asked quietly, with hateful butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth innocence.

      ‘Always.’ This wasn’t going to work. This job definitely wasn’t going to work. For some reason he didn’t like her; there was veiled antagonism in his every word, his every glance, and she wasn’t imagining it. He had been gentle, understanding even, with Gillian, but with her it was almost as though he was trying to catch her out all the time, Cory thought tightly. He was a cold, hard, macho brute of a man—everything she detested in a male, when she thought about it—and she hadn’t made the move to London to live in a perpetual state of tension and stress.

      ‘Then Gillian has chosen well.’ It wasn’t what Cory was expecting and she was eternally glad the lift chose that precise moment to open its silent doors and deliver them in Reception. ‘Now, a nice relaxing lunch, I think?’

      His voice was even and distant suddenly, and, ridiculous though it was, Cory felt as though the man now escorting Gillian and herself through the ingratiating smiles and nods in Reception was an entirely different creature from the one she had seen so far. He was cool and remote and self-assured, every inch the powerful tycoon and entrepreneur, as he strode through the hushed and immaculate surroundings and out through the gleaming brass and glass doors which one of the reception staff had fallen over themselves to open.

      A blue and silver Rolls-Royce was parked at the kerb outside the building with magnificent disregard for yellow lines, and as Max led the two women towards it Cory had the notion she was taking part in a flamboyant movie, and any moment a director would be leaping in front of them and shouting, ‘Cut! It’s a take.’

      The chauffeur had opened the rear door of the limousine the moment he had caught sight of Max, and now, as Cory followed Gillian into the rich leather interior, she wished there were a little more room in her skirt. Discreet, calf-length and prim it was, cut for scrambling in and out of breathtaking vehicles like this one it wasn’t, and she was vitally conscious of Max Hunter just inches behind her and no doubt with his eyes on the material straining over her backside.

      She was hot and pink by the time she was seated next to Gillian, but then, as Max joined them on her other side and his hard male thigh rested against hers, she knew what a pressure cooker felt like. He was her boss. He was just her boss. Say after me…

      If her life had depended on it Cory couldn’t have told anyone how long it took to reach Montgomery’s, the route the Rolls took through the heavy lunchtime traffic or even what the three of them discussed en route. Every fibre of her being, every cell in her body was concentrated on not making the biggest fool of herself ever, but she must have sounded fairly coherent and behaved normally because Gillian’s nice round face was quite cheerful and relaxed when the limousine eventually glided to a halt outside the sort of establishment that just reeked of class and wealth.

      Of course the glass of champagne might have helped. When Max had leant forward and opened the polished wood cocktail cabinet in front of their seat Cory had determinedly stopped her mouth from falling open—twice in one morning was quite enough—but her eyes had widened all the same. The glasses were tall and exotic and chilled, the champagne was pink and frothy and tasted like all the summers she had ever experienced rolled into one, and Max’s toast—‘A welcome to the newest member of Hunter Operations’—brought the colour that had just receded from her cheeks flooding back again.

      ‘I don’t remember you doing this for me when we first started working together, Max?’ Gillian had already said, with her first sip of champagne, that it would go straight to her head, and certainly as her employer helped both women out of the car Gillian was as flushed as Cory as she grinned at Max.

      He smiled easily. ‘I wasn’t sure how to treat a secretary in those days, Gillian, if you remember. I’ve learned as I’ve gone along.’

      Cory envied the other woman’s quiet familiarity with their boss. Of course Gillian was a good few years older than Max and very happily married to boot, and she’d known him for years, but Cory just knew she would never, never, be able to adopt the almost motherly approach that Gillian did so well and which, at heart, was the basis for all good boss/secretary relationships. He just scared her to death. He did what?

      Immediately the thought formed she caught it in horror. She wasn’t frightened of Max Hunter—she’d never been overawed by any man, even her old headmaster who was a tyrant of the first order and had scared everyone rigid. She was not frightened of Max Hunter! That was the most ludicrous, stupid, crazy notion she’d ever had! It was the champagne. It had to be the champagne.

      ‘Cory? Is anything wrong?’

      Gillian’s gentle voice brought her out of the whirling maelstrom of her thoughts, and to the realisation that she was standing in the middle of the crowded pavement with people weaving around her. Hardly the pose for a young, dynamic secretary!

      ‘Shall we?’ Gillian gestured towards the building in front of them and as Cory’s eyes focused on Max she saw he was holding open the door of the restaurant, an expression of great patience on his face, but it was the look in the beautiful and compelling amber eyes that bothered her. They were narrowed and intent and piercingly steady, and they brought to mind a wildlife programme she had seen just the other night, when a quite magnificent tawny-eyed lion had been watching his prey—a delicate and fine-boned wildebeest—with frightening and fierce single-mindedness.

      And then he blinked and smiled, heavy lids and thick black lashes sweeping down, and when he looked at her again he was just an unusually arresting and powerful man. A man any woman would think worthy of a second glance, a man of intimidating intelligence and undeniable presence but, nevertheless, just a man.

      The meal was simply wonderful, and seated as they were in a quiet and private alcove, where they could see and yet not be seen, Cory found herself relaxing enough to enjoy the good food. From the moment they had been СКАЧАТЬ