Seduced By The Boss. Sharon Kendrick

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      ‘I have lots of friends of both sexes,’ came the silky correction. ‘Don’t you?’

      ‘Er, yes,’ stumbled Megan, feeling slightly foolish. ‘Of course I do.’

      He continued to look at her questioningly. ‘So who was it?’

      Horror dawned on her as she realised that she hadn’t even asked the woman’s name! ‘Er, I don’t know.’

      ‘You don’t know?’ he repeated ominously.

      ‘No.’

      ‘You didn’t think to take a name?’

      ‘Well, I—’

      ‘Aren’t you aware that taking incomplete messages is one of the most irritating traits known to mankind?’ he demanded heatedly. ‘It’s bad enough in a flatmate—but in an assistant it becomes more than merely irritating, it veers into the realms of sheer incompetence!’

      Megan felt torn between protecting her job and protecting the woman on the telephone—even though the job was the best-paid she had ever had, and she didn’t know the woman from a bar of soap.

      But…sisterhood, and all that.

      Which was presumably why she found herself staring fearlessly into those grey eyes and saying, ‘She told me she’d written to you, but said that you hadn’t bothered to reply.’

      He saw that her gaze was now burning into the top drawer of his desk where he’d stashed the stack of pastel-coloured envelopes in the hope that they might somehow go away if he ignored them for long enough.

      ‘Oh, did she?’ he asked, in a voice so soft that Megan failed to notice the dangerous undertone to it. ‘And what else did she say?’

      ‘That she would see you this weekend, and talk to you then.’

      Dan let out a long, resigned sigh. ‘I see.’

      Megan made one last attempt in the name of female solidarity. ‘She sounded very…upset, Dan.’

      He correctly latched onto the disapproval in her voice. ‘And?’ he questioned silkily.

      Megan blinked. He seemed to be asking her opinion, so why not give it? Wasn’t that what she was being paid to do? ‘I think you owe it to her to at least do her the courtesy of replying.’

      Dan almost laughed aloud at what was, in fact, a beautifully worded insult. From his assistant, no less!

      ‘Oh, do you?’ he questioned, keeping his irritation at bay with difficulty. ‘And didn’t it occur to you that there might be a reason why I’ve let them all go unanswered?’

      ‘Some men play hard to get,’ suggested Megan boldly. ‘Treat them mean to keep them keen! Maybe you’re one of those men?’

      ‘I can see that I’ve already reached dizzy heights in your estimation of me,’ he said sarcastically.

      ‘It was only an option,’ Megan shrugged. ‘I don’t really know you very well.’

      ‘No, you don’t!’ he grated. ‘Because if you did you would know that my ego isn’t in any way fragile! And that I certainly don’t need to encourage the attention of lovelorn teenagers in order to get my kicks!’

      ‘Teenagers?’ asked Megan in a voice so shocked that Dan glared at her some more. ‘Lovelorn?’

      ‘Well, there’s no need to sound quite so outraged!’ he defended as he clipped the words out. ‘I’m thirty-three years old—not quite at the stage of queuing up for my pension book. Anyway, she’s nearly twenty.’

      Megan tried to sound worldly-wise. ‘And you’ve been having an affair with her, have you?’

      Maybe it was the fact that he wasn’t used to people he barely knew making negative character assessments about him that made him feel so uncharacteristically angry. But whatever it was—in that moment, Dan felt like striding across the office and shaking her!

      ‘Bloody hell!’ he swore. ‘You’re making me sound like Bluebeard! No, I have not been having an affair with her—cradle-snatching has never turned me on!’

      ‘Well, what is it, then?’ asked Megan in confusion. ‘What’s her name, and what’s it all about?’

      Dan sighed. He kept his private life just that. Private. But if Katrina had started phoning and writing to him here, then inevitably his professional life would be involved. And compromised, too, if he wasn’t careful.

      ‘Her name is Katrina,’ he said. ‘And she thinks she’s in love with me.’

      ‘Why?’

      In spite of everything, Dan laughed. He threw his dark head back and let rip with a throaty chuckle as her question brought him crashing down to earth. Because if his ego had been threatening to get out of hand that guileless one-word query had checked it! But then he saw the reproach which had clouded those huge hazel eyes of hers, and felt his temper flare. Again.

      ‘Why do you think?’ he demanded. ‘Because I had my wicked way with her when she was barely out of nappies?’

      ‘Dan!’

      ‘Well, that’s what the prissy look of concern on your face is implying, isn’t it, Megan?’

      ‘No!’

      ‘And you’ve obviously taken her side—’

      ‘I haven’t taken anyone’s side! I felt sorry for her, that was all.’

      ‘Even though,’ he continued furiously, his grey eyes growing thunder-dark, ‘even though you don’t know her and you barely know me? In fact, you don’t have a clue about the true situation!’

      ‘Maybe I don’t,’ she agreed. ‘But that’s easily remedied. Why don’t you tell me?’

      Dan’s mouth flattened into a thin, hard line, and he stared at her with misgiving. He had been brought up to view the airing of emotions as a weakness—while to take a virtual stranger into his confidence would be interpreted as positively indulgent.

      But he couldn’t just carry on ignoring a situation which was threatening to spiral out of control, could he? And Megan had no axe to grind. She didn’t know Katrina. She stood to gain nothing by giving him her opinion. Surely it would not be disloyal to confide in his assistant?

      ‘Maybe I should tell you,’ he said slowly.

      But, even so, Megan was amazed when Dan sat back in his chair and studied her intently from between narrowed eyes, the way he sometimes studied a spreadsheet.

      ‘Okay.’ He nodded, and gave a smile which managed to be angry and thoughtful all at the same time. ‘I will. I’ll tell you the whole story about Katrina and then we’ll see where your sympathies lie, won’t we, Megan?’

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