Chapter Two #2
‘I’m glad you approve, Vito,’ she’d answered, ignoring the mocking question in his aquamarine gaze.
Because didn’t it give her a little rush of pleasure when she didn’t conform to what he obviously expected of her?
When she didn’t eagerly trot out some trite explanation about contacting his Milanese headquarters to enquire about his preferred blend.
It wasn’t as if she was seeking praise for simply doing her job properly.
Why bother him with unnecessary detail, when he had enough to do?
One dark December morning, she finished brushing out her wet hair and rode the elevator to the top of the company headquarters, to find Vito already sitting at his desk.
She should have been prepared but she wasn’t and as he glanced up, the unexpected reinforcement of all that raw, masculine presence at this time of the day was enough to send her heart into a dramatic thunder.
‘You’re early!’ she accused.
His eyes glittered as he acknowledged her atypical outburst. ‘But you’re not.’
‘No.’ She didn’t point out that it wasn’t even eight o’clock and all the other offices were deserted.
Perhaps he would like her to acquire a portable bed so she could camp down for the night and work around the clock!
Still, only two days before she accompanied him to Scotland, after which Vito Monticello would be jetting off in his private jet and she doubted their paths would ever cross again.
And although she told herself that was a good thing, she couldn’t deny the inexplicable pang in her heart when she stopped to think about it.
She walked towards her office, acutely aware of his blue gaze following her until, just as she reached the door and the sanctity of her own little enclave, his richly accented voice stalled her.
‘Flora?’
He didn’t say her name very often but when he did.
When he did…
Flora sucked in an unsteady breath.
It made the blood pump like mad in her veins.
It made her have the kind of X-rated thoughts which she hadn’t even realised were on her radar.
Wasn’t that why she had dug out these neglected clothes and given them a new lease of life?
The ones she’d worn before she’d lost that bit of weight, after she’d split up with Liam.
There was nothing wrong with them, she told herself staunchly—especially for work.
Who cared that the styles were a tad dated and the length all wrong and they were a bit loose.
They worked for her, didn’t they? They concealed the ever-present tightening of her nipples, didn’t they?
She turned round and fixed her face into a pleasant smile. ‘Yes, Vito?’
Vito knew he was about to break one of his rules by asking a staff member a personal question and if he was going to be here permanently, he would have resisted the temptation.
But Flora Greening was a conundrum and he couldn’t work out why and, as someone who liked to have all the answers at his fingertips, he found himself intrigued.
He’d never met a woman like her. Not only did she never reveal anything about herself, but neither did she express a scintilla of interest in his life. Which was a first.
Leaning back in his chair to study her, his gaze alighted on a baggy grey skirt which came to just below the knee, teamed with a shirt which looked at least one size too big.
And her hair! He realised he’d never seen it in anything other than a constricting bun, with just the occasional disobedient red-brown wave escaping from its confinement.
Was it short, or was it long? He gave a mirthless smile. Who knew?
Like many of his unmarried billionaire friends cursed with the reputation of being eligible, Vito had been bracing himself for some of the more obvious ploys used by secretaries he’d worked with in the past. But for once, they had failed to materialise and his habitual cynicism had taken a severe dent.
Flora Greening hadn’t smartened up her appearance at all.
She hadn’t gone from frump to stunner overnight and started pouting at every opportunity, forcing him to request she be moved to a different department.
On the contrary, her clothes seemed to have acquired an even drabber aspect than before, which was saying something.
But nobody could deny that she was an excellent worker.
In fact, she was the best secretary he’d ever had, bar none.
She faded into the background so that he hardly noticed she was there.
Why, she was almost like part of the wallpaper!
And hadn’t that been refreshing after all the recent events in his life, he reflected grimly—to briefly feel as if he had found a place of refuge?
‘Why do you always come to work with your hair wet?’ he questioned suddenly.
She looked a little taken aback. ‘Because I take a shower in the staff cloakroom.’
He frowned. ‘You don’t have a bathroom at home?’
Her cheeks grew red. ‘Of course I do—this isn’t Victorian England!’
‘So?’
She shrugged. ‘I cycle in every day from Ealing.’
‘Ealing?’ He screwed up his brow. ‘Where is this?’
‘West of London, sort of towards the airport. If you must know, the journey into the West End makes me very sweaty and…well, you did ask!’ she finished, correctly interpreting his look of astonishment.
For once in his life Vito was speechless, unable to imagine any other woman of his acquaintance who would have admitted to sweating and yet for some extraordinary reason, he found her candour refreshing.
He had grown up surrounded by artifice and deception.
By a hard-wired inability to accept the effects of aging and a tiresome railing against the inevitable.
He thought of all the lives ruined by his mother’s obsession with youth and the bitter consequences of her actions.
He thought of the wiles used by so many women to try and get him to commit.
And wasn’t the complete absence of such wiles the reason why he felt so unusually comfortable around Flora Greening?
‘You’re right. I did ask,’ he mused, twirling his gold pen between finger and thumb. ‘And you cycle this long distance each day because…?’
‘Oh, loads of reasons! It’s economical, keeps me fit and it means I can avoid the morning crush on the Underground, which I loathe.’ Her cheeks had grown pink, as if she had disclosed too much about herself. ‘Er, will there be anything else, Vito?’
He put his pen down. ‘Shouldn’t we discuss the trip to Scotland?’
‘Yes, of course. Everything is in hand,’ she replied crisply, as the colour in her cheeks receded. ‘We’ll be flying up in your plane and there’ll be a four-wheel drive waiting for us, because it’s a pretty remote part of the world and the weather can be a bit dodgy.’
‘I’m fully aware that we aren’t headed for the great Metropolis,’ he interjected dryly.
‘We’ll be taken to the official opening and then back to the airport the same day,’ she continued smoothly. ‘You’ll be going off in your plane to Milan, while I fly commercial back to—’
‘Ealing,’ he supplied sardonically.
‘Yes, Ealing. Well remembered,’ she said brightly. ‘I hope those arrangements meet with your satisfaction.’
‘You just need to make it very clear that I must be in the air by four,’ he drawled. ‘I’m going skiing the next day.’
‘Oh.’ He could see curiosity vying with caution on her face and curiosity won. ‘You aren’t spending Christmas at home?’
‘No, I am not. I hate Christmas.’ He met her gaze with a mocking look. ‘And I like to spend it pretending it doesn’t exist.’
‘Oh,’ she said faintly, her expression conveying that he might as well have confessed he liked ripping the wings off butterflies before her look of horror morphed into one of polite query. ‘Will there be anything else, Vito?’
Vito pillowed his hands behind his head as he leaned back in the big leather chair. Yes, there most definitely was something else which would require levels of diplomacy he wasn’t sure he possessed. How best to broach this, because he didn’t actually want to hurt her?
Once again his gaze flickered over her as she stood before him with her frizzy hair and her stern grey outfit which made her look like the matron of an old--fashioned boarding school.
‘You do realise that the opening of a billion-dollar wind farm is going to be a fairly formal affair?’
‘Of course, I do. I’m the one who’s done all the arrangements,’ she said stiffly. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I was just wondering what you were planning to wear?’
She chewed her lip more vigorously than usual. ‘Do you always quiz your employees about their choice of wardrobe?’
‘No, I don’t,’ he agreed, and for once his voice was almost gentle. ‘But then most of my employees don’t…’
‘Don’t…?’ Her voice husked. ‘What?’
She was not going to force him to insult her. She was going to listen to what he had to say and absorb the truth behind the statement, as anyone else in her position would have done.
‘Sometimes I think you forget that you are no longer working in the library, Flora,’ he said impatiently.
‘You aren’t sitting behind a high counter stamping books and invisible from the waist up.
You will be accompanying me and representing Verdenergia and, like it or not, people will be looking at you.
’ He raised his eyebrows in mocking question.
‘So do you think you could possibly wear something which doesn’t make you look as if you’re auditioning for a part in Les Misérables? ’