Kate Proctor - Tall, Dark And Dangerous

‘I’ll be generous and call it seven…Now, by my reckoning, your only free time from working for me would be between the hours of ten at night and eight in the morning and I don’t imagine too many folks would be lining up to have their gardens messed with during those hours.’

‘I don’t mess with gardens,’ Ginny informed him frigidly, ‘and anyway, I was only joking.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ he drawled, his eyes flickering with barely concealed disdain over her dungaree-clad figure before he turned and walked towards the house. ‘We need to talk,’ he called over his shoulder, ‘so how about if you make us some coffee so we can do it in comfort?’

And how about if you took a running jump? fumed Ginny to herself, convinced he intended complaining about her appearance. What had he in mind—decking her out in a uniform?

Muttering angrily to herself, and convinced she wouldn’t survive two hours of this treatment, let alone a whole month of it, she took herself off to the kitchen. But at least some good had come out of this ghastly encounter, she thought, calming a little as she put her purchases away. Her lying awake half the night racked by memories of being kissed by him had been no more than a stress-induced mental aberration—that was for sure.

She got out coffee-beans and the grinder, her moment of relief swiftly dissipating into frustration. She was beginning to feel as though she had a terrible weight on her shoulders. Libby seemed to thrive on intrigue, whereas she simply wasn’t cut out for it. Perhaps it was because Libby’s background was so steeped in wealth that she had such a cavalier attitude towards money.

‘OK, so I’ll pay it all back once I come into my inheritance,’ Libby had laughed, when Ginny had balked at the idea of their claiming the two salaries—and in Ginny’s name—from the villa. ‘No sweat.’

The idea had disturbed her then, thought Ginny miserably, and now it made her shrivel with embarrassment every time she thought about it. If Michael had fired her on the spot, or threatened her with legal action, she couldn’t honestly have blamed him. But her guilt in that respect didn’t alter the fact that his gallingly high-handed attitude was touching a particularly raw spot in her; she had had enough of being treated like an unpaid skivvy by her aunt ever to take it again—and especially not from this over-prvileged, autocratic American!

‘What are you doing—growing the beans for that coffee?’

Ginny responded to those words from a few paces behind her with a jump that sent the coffee she had just ground scattering everywhere.

‘Now look what you’ve made me do!’ she exclaimed accusingly. ‘I’ll have to grind more!’

‘I’ll grind—you clear up that mess,’ drawled Michael.

‘Excuse me,’ hissed Ginny, her hackles rising, ‘I might be employed by you, but would you mind not issuing me orders as though I were some sort of serf?’

‘OK. Please, Ginny, I’d be terribly grateful if you’d clear up the mess you’ve just made,’ he murmured in a grating parody of an English accent. ‘Tell me, are you always this sensitive?’

Ginny’s unladylike retort was drowned by the shriek of the coffee-grinder he switched on just as she uttered it.

‘You’ve over-filled it!’ she yelled over the din.

‘What?’

‘I said…Oh, forget it!’

He switched off the grinder. ‘I couldn’t hear you with that thing on. Does it always make that noise?’ he enquired, his expression over-brimming with puzzled innocence.

‘Only when it’s too full,’ snapped Ginny, flashing him her most withering look before finishing clearing up the mess and then returning to making the coffee.

‘Things have been happening here since you’ve been out,’ he said.

Ginny had to force herself to keep on with what she was doing as she felt herself freeze. He had found out about Libby!

‘The equipment I’ll need to work from here arrived—I’m using the library as an office.’

‘Where do you want to drink this?’ asked Ginny, relief unfreezing her as she turned towards him with the coffee-jug.

‘Here will do fine,’ he replied, making no attempt to lend a hand as he took a seat at the table. ‘Have you any office experience?’

Ginny, who had been just about to pour the coffee, gave him a look of frowning suspicion. ‘A little,’ she muttered, and all of it bad, she added to herself as she poured out two cups. ‘Why?’ she asked, handing him one.

‘I thought you could help me out with a bit of office work—answering the telephone and checking the odd computer print-out with me.’

‘Oh, I see—you’d like me to work for you twenty-one hours a day, is that it?’

There was a mixture of irritation and amusement on his face as he took a sip from his mug.

‘No, it would involve so little time that I planned letting you off cleaning my shoes in lieu,’ he drawled. ‘So, how about it?’

‘With an organisation as vast as yours is reputed to be, I’d have thought you’d have a battalion of experts, not to mention clerical staff, at your beck and call.’

‘And you’d have thought right,’ he said. ‘But, remember, a year ago I was very much the new guy here. Now I’m the not-so-new guy and I feel the time has come for me to take a couple of steps back and see what sort of picture I get of the overall scene.’

In other words, thought Ginny, whatever he was doing here, he didn’t want his Paris staff knowing about it…A somewhat different story from the one he had originally given her.

Irritation flashed across his features. ‘All you have to do is say yes or no.’

‘I’d be happy to,’ stated Ginny, her curiosity aroused, ‘but I’m afraid I wouldn’t be much use—I speak hardly any French.’

‘I guess that could present one or two problems, but I still might be able to use you. Libby’s French is OK—perhaps she might help me out if the need arises. When did you say she’d be back?’

‘I didn’t,’ replied Ginny, her curiosity giving way to an almost sickening feeling of apprehension. ‘I’ve already told you, I don’t know.’ And how many more times was he going to ask her that same question?

‘I guess you don’t think she’d be too happy to help me out in an office or anywhere else,’ he said quietly. ‘Libby and I, as you know, aren’t exactly buddies right now, but it wasn’t always like that. And once she would have jumped at helping out. When she was still quite a small kid, I took her to visit my brother, David, at his office. She was fascinated by the whole set-up and afterwards asked me some pretty adult questions about the family business,’ he continued, his tone surprising Ginny in that it sounded almost wistful. ‘I told her all I could, which wasn’t a great deal as I’d only just started at Princeton and was still pretty ignorant of the set-up myself. Years later, when I’d taken my place as an executive director, I found myself remembering all those questions she had asked—but by then it was too late.’

‘In what way?’

‘Because she’d embarked on a career of screwing up her life in whatever way she could,’ he snapped. ‘Look, I’m not claiming she had an easy time of it—Jack Collier may be in a class of his own as an academic, but he sure as hell was a lousy father.’

‘That may be so, but Libby seems to love him—warts and all,’ stated Ginny. Even in the rare moments when Libby had actually railed against her mixed-up father, there had been no mistaking her exasperated love for him. ‘Which is more than can be said for her feelings towards the Grant family.’

‘I’d be the last to deny the Grants have their faults,’ conceded Michael. ‘Though I’d say mine is pretty much the same as any other family—and not necessarily American—with what some might describe as an over-abundance of wealth and influence. Being the typical patriarch of such a family, my father can be pretty difficult to get on with at times—but my brother’s a much softer character.’