Carole Mortimer - A Christmas Affair

Carole Mortimer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Cover

Title Page A Christmas Affair Carole Mortimer www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Copyright

WHAT were you supposed to do when the man you were in love with didn't even seem to realise you were female, let alone that you had lustful feelings towards him?

Cathy knew exactly what she was going to do, and Dominic Reynolds wasn't going to like it one little bit!

Even as the thought entered her mind—with a determination that was unshakeable—a bellow of rage came from within the adjoining office, quickly followed by the man himself exploding out of the room to cross to her desk with forceful strides.

Mary, one of the secretaries from the outer office, had been in the middle of a conversation with Cathy, but she took one look at Dominic's thunderous expression and scuttled from the room.

Cathy's own manner was as casual as usual as she continued to look through the papers strewn across her desktop, shaking her head derisively. ‘If Mary wasn't of a nervous disposition before she came to work for you, she certainly is now,’ she drawled in an amused voice, not at all perturbed herself by his obvious bad temper—or the reason for it.

Dominic scowled. ‘I don't give a damn about Mary's nerves.’

‘That's the trouble with you,’ Cathy bit out tautly, her eyes flashing with anger, coloured a deep smoky grey by the emotion. ‘You “don't give a damn” about anyone else's feelings but your own!’

Dominic's mouth tightened: a finely chiselled mouth that looked too perfect to firm with temper or thin with displeasure—and yet Cathy knew it was capable of much worse than that; Mary hadn't got her nervous disposition for no reason during the last three months she had worked as one of Dominic's secretaries.

‘What the hell do you call this?’ He waved a piece of headed paper in front of her nose.

Cathy didn't flinch, coolly raising blonde brows at the object that so offended him. ‘Well,’ she said with a casual lack of interest, ‘I don't know what you call it, but it looks decidedly like a letter to me.’ She looked at him challengingly.

His harshly indrawn breath showed he wasn't in the least amused by her levity at his expense. But at this precise moment Cathy didn't particularly care what he felt. Maybe she would later—she was sure she would later!—but right now she was only concerned with showing him she didn't give a damn.

Which was a complete fabrication. She had cared about Dominic from that very first interview with him five years ago, had loved him almost from the day she came to work for him. But, as she very well knew, Dominic didn't care about anyone or anything, only about being successful—which, with his varied and profitable enterprises, he certainly was.

Women were a non-event in his life, Dominic not even seeming to see them most of the time. Which Cathy had found, when she had been told on more than one occasion that she was beautiful enough to be a model, could be very frustrating.

Perhaps if she didn't love him, if Dominic didn't look like a romantic hero himself, with his slightly overlong dark hair, fierce green eyes, perfectly chiselled features, and tall, muscular body invariably clothed in a three-piece suit of one sombre colour or another, it wouldn't have mattered quite so much what he thought—or rather, didn't think—of women.

But Dominic had the sort of male good looks that could stop conversation in a room when he entered it, could have—and had had!—an Arabian princess promising him half her father's kingdom if he would marry her. The former he seemed genuinely not to notice, and the latter he had ignored as a childish prank—except that Cathy knew the princess had been perfectly in earnest!

But what could you do with a man who had never, to Cathy's knowledge, even invited a woman out with him for the evening during the whole time she had worked for him?

To Dominic, social occasions were just an extension of work, and if he required a female companion for one of those occasions then Cathy, as his personal assistant, would do.

He could be so flattering to a woman's ego!

And sarcasm wasn't going to get her anywhere, she acknowledged miserably.

Nothing she had done the last five years had got her anywhere with this man; to him she was just a second storage unit for all his business dealings, his right-hand man, his Man Friday. She might just as well have been a man for all the notice he took of her.

Which brought her right back to the reason for his fury with her now.

‘You demanded to have time off for Christmas even though you knew it wasn't convenient,’ he rasped, his eyes glittering angrily. ‘You even persuaded me into letting you use the Audi Quattro when you suddenly decided you had to leave for your sister's home in Devon in the middle of the night while a snowstorm raged. And then,’ he breathed deeply, ‘after only one night away instead of the week you had insisted upon, you arrived back here to give me this!’ He slapped the letter angrily against the palm of his other hand.

‘Let's just get the facts straight, shall we?’ She straightened, her gaze unflinching—one thing: no matter how arrogantly demanding he was, he had never managed to fray her nerves to breaking-point as he had poor Mary and the other secretaries. And he wasn't about to start now! ‘It's never convenient with you if I take a holiday, let alone want to spend Christmas with my family. Just because you don't believe in them—families or Christmas—there's no reason to think that the rest of the world isn't entitled to them either!’

His jaw was clenched tightly at her verbal blows. ‘I don't think the rest of the world——’

‘All right, then, maybe it's just my wanting a holiday with my family that you find so. offensive,’ she snapped irritably.

‘You took your damned holiday, two days early, no matter what my feelings were,’ he scowled. ‘So what's the problem?’

‘I haven't got to that yet,’ she grated, eyes narrowed angrily. ‘Secondly,’ she said pointedly, ‘I did not persuade you into letting me take the Audi, you offered. Thirdly,’ she continued determinedly as he would have interrupted, ‘I went to my sister's so suddenly not because of some trivial female whim, which is what you seem to be implying, but because of an emergency!’

‘An emergency that is obviously over now, or you wouldn't be back here,’ said Dominic impatiently. ‘So I still don't see what the problem is.’

Oh, yes, the emergency was definitely over now. Cathy smiled to herself as she thought of the ecstatic telephone call she had received from her friend Jade late the previous evening telling her of the wedding she and David were planning for the New Year. It could so easily have worked out unhappily for all concerned.

But the joy Jade and David had undoubtedly found in each other had only strengthened her own resolve where Dominic was concerned, which was why she had come into the office at all today.

‘Fourthly,’ she told him firmly, ‘I gave you that——’ she indicated the letter he crushed so savagely in his hand ‘—because I no longer want to work for you.’