Ally Blake - Hired - The Boss's Bride

But now, here, in this big, old, musty, gilded building that echoed with the cultured voices of people who’d walked in her shoes, she felt more than a little intimidated.

The grey papered walls were faded, the massive chandelier in the middle of the entrance looked as if it hadn’t worked in a century and the gunk on the walls, gilded frames around pictures of fussy-looking, overfed royalty, what she could only assume was supposed to be art, were so far beyond her taste and life experience as to seem alien.

Then there was Kristin, the girl who’d once had more piercings than Veronica had handbags, now with a slick dark bob and dressed in an elegant beige trouser suit, while she’d trundled up in her tight jeans and knee-high boots and T-shirt, the exact kind of thing she’d worn to work every day in her last post, auctioning patents on computer-game intellectual property.

She bit back a groan as she imagined throwing herself on the bonnet of her beloved Corvette while it was taken away by goons hired by her bank.

She glanced back over her shoulder. Whatever predicament she had landed herself in, the answer came down to Mitch Hanover; the man who had her future in his firm, long-fingered hands.

Kristin had called him a slave-driving stuffed shirt on more than one occasion. Veronica had thus pictured a balding, overfed, pompous, pasty, married guy on daily blood-pressure medication. Compared with her last boss, the personable, clean-cut and ultimately indiscreet Geoffrey, that combination of traits had sounded like her salvation.

Salvation, as it turned out, had been offered to her in the form of a man whose dark grey suit, darker tie and crisp pinstriped shirt were pressed to the point of agony. But it was the stuff stuffed inside the shirt that made the bigger impact.

Mitch Hanover was beautiful. The kind of beautiful a young girl with dreams of princes and fairy wings and all that jazz would go weak at the knees for.

A shade over thirty, a bit more over six feet tall, with matinee-idol looks, an assemblage of dark preppy hair, sharp jaw and persuasively curved mouth. Stuck in a room with a young Cary Grant and Paul Newman he would have held his own.

But the things that had hit her first, last and every moment in between were his eyes. He had the kind of deep grey eyes that gave her the feeling it wouldn’t take all that much to make them sparkle.

Unfortunately she hadn’t managed it. Yet. But since he hadn’t turned her on her heel and sent her packing, she had time. All for the sake of getting the job, of course. That was why she’d come home. Not to ogle, or allow herself to be consistently ogled, by a colleague. Supremely ogle-worthy though he might well be.

Downstairs Kristin began whispering to her boss animatedly, arms flailing, going pink in the face, no doubt talking her up, while Mitch remained cool, aloof, unflappable. It didn’t ease Veronica’s mind any.

In fact, watching him standing there surrounded by all that gilded finery, his fine mouth pressed into a straight line, his eyes unreadable, his whole mien making him seem as if he took life far too seriously, he made her feel distinctly nervous. Little butterflies came to life in her stomach and she slid a hand beneath her T-shirt and tried her best to silently talk them down.

As though he knew he was being watched Mitch chose that exact moment to glance up at her, his intense grey eyes sending the tummy butterflies into hysterics.

Car payments, car payments, car payments , she repeated inside her head.

She slid her hand from her tummy and casually waved it at a random picture on the wall, some great hulking green monstrosity that looked as if it had been painted by a blindfolded monkey. She poked out her bottom lip and nodded, feigning great appreciation.

Mitch’s gaze trailed away, lingered for a moment on the painting, then shifted back to her. From that distance she could have sworn his eyebrows raised a very little, and that his already enticing mouth turned upwards into the lightest of wry smiles, as though he wasn’t of the mind to take the thing home and stick it on his wall, either.

But then he blinked and once again became a wall of poised professionalism. Shame , she thought. When he let his latent charm shine on through she thought he had great potential for fun.

She cleared her throat and reiterated the new grand plan she had come up with once she’d realised how ridiculous the Barbie hair, wings and fairy-dust ambitions really were: Be good. Work hard. Take care of you. Eat more greens . So long as she stuck to those rules, surely her life would change for the better.

Mitch barked some instructions at Kristin, who nodded and was on the phone sounding professional and brisk in an instant, before he jogged up the stairs to arrive at Veronica’s side. He brought with him a flutter of subtly sexy aftershave that had her breathing deep through her nose, then mentally berating herself for being so weak.

‘Whatever Kristin’s been telling you about me,’ she said, ‘believe about half.’

‘But which half would I choose?’ He glanced sideways at her as he strode past and her knees began to shake all over again.

She jogged to catch up. ‘Whichever fools you into thinking that, beneath this ravishing style icon before you, I’m actually more like you than you’re thinking; I’m sophisticated, responsible, meticulous, fair and open to new ideas and challenges.’

‘Now, what makes you think I am any one of those things, Ms Bing?’

‘Eternal optimism?’ she tried.

He kept walking a step ahead of her, but this time she sensed the wry smile for sure.

The butterflies calmed down to a mild buzz, and Veronica felt herself edge a step closer towards landing the job. To truly starting afresh.

And this time she wouldn’t screw it all up.

Mitch didn’t slow until he’d reached the back office, though Veronica Bing and her long legs, warm persuasive scent and effervescent babbling kept up just fine.

‘Do you mind if I use your office, Boris?’ he asked the curator who had been around the place since before he could remember. ‘I have another interview to conduct.’

Boris eyed him warily, as did most of the gallery staff whenever he deigned to set foot in the place. Nevertheless the older man was enough of a gentleman to acquiesce. ‘Of course, young sir.’

After dragging a high-backed, ornately carved antique chair around for Veronica to sit upon, Mitch swung to the commanding side of the desk.

He sat, and looked up to see that Veronica had ignored the offer of a seat. Instead, as Boris passed she reached out and ran a finger and a thumb over the curl of his red bow tie. ‘Very debonair.’

Boris blushed. He honest to goodness blushed. Mitch wasn’t sure he’d ever even seen the fellow smile, much less find enough raw emotion within himself to blush. He was beginning to fear that the woman might well be some kind of witch.

‘Why, thank you,’ Boris finally managed to spit out when he found his tongue again. ‘Good luck, miss.’

And was his back actually straighter as he shuffled out into the gallery?

Mitch sat back and pondered the situation at hand. If this woman could have both he and old Boris gobsmacked within seconds of meeting her, he wondered just what she might be able to do with a roomful of red-hot Armadale art collectors. Would she outshine them all or would they eat her alive?

‘So who’s Boris when he’s at home?’ Veronica asked as she sauntered around the cluttered room, picking up lovingly polished objets d’art , turning them over, sniffing one or two, then putting them back on whatever spare space she could find. Mitch could only hope they hadn’t been placed in any particular order, or that at least they’d been catalogued and photographed already.