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‘Helipad’s on the roof.’
‘They usually are.’
‘Formal dinner, very boring, but maybe after… What are your plans?’
‘TV dinner, a rerun of my favourite murder mystery.’ Emma gave a sweet smile. ‘So there’s really no contest!’
He really was smiling now, thinking he’d got his easy way, holding the lift and waiting for her to step inside. So, so arrogant, so, so assuming, he really thought he could just snap his manicured fingers and summon her—he only seemed to get the message when she opened the doors to his office suite, his rich, assured voice just a touch perplexed.
‘If you’re worried that you’ve nothing to wear…’
‘I’m not worried at all!’ Emma laughed, and she could be as rude as she liked, could tell him exactly where to go with his smutty offer because, after all, he wasn’t going to be her boss. ‘As I said, there’s really no contest!”
As the lift doors closed on him and she walked over to Evelyn’s office, she was too irked to think before she knocked. Her hand rose, the door flung open and Emma stood there stunned as she took in the sight of Evelyn. The assured, pompous woman, who had dashed her hopes just a few moments before, was sobbing her heart out, first jumping up and shooing her out, appalled at being caught, then too upset to care.
‘Negative!’ she wept as Emma just stood there. ‘I was so, so sure that I was.’
‘I’m so sorry!’ Well, what else could she say? ‘I’m very sorry.’
And what could she do other than lead the sodden bundle to the nearest chair and peel off tissues as Evelyn gulped out her sorry tale?
Married five years.
Trying for a baby for four and a half of those.
IVF and injections and nasal sprays and tests and scans and egg retrieval.
And now she had to ring Paul and tell him, Evelyn had sobbed, had to ring her lovely, lovely husband, who wanted a baby as much as she did, and say that they’d failed to conceive through IVF for a second time.
Emma really didn’t have to worry about saying the right thing, she couldn’t get a word in. Instead, she just sat there and listened and poured water and offered tissues, and finally, when Evelyn had cried a river, she seemed to remember where she was and who she was talking to.
‘You’ve been so nice—I mean, after I was so cool with you.’
‘It’s not a problem. If I’m not the right person…’
‘No, you see…’ Evelyn was wringing the tissue in her hands ‘…it has nothing to do with your experience or that you don’t speak Japanese…’
‘I know that now.’
‘No, I mean—’
‘I get it, okay? I admit, I assumed you must like him yourself, but…’
Emma giggled as Evelyn gave a watery smile and rolled her eyes. ‘Not at all—I’m just sick of training new assistants, only to have them leave once he’s bedded them. He’s incorrigible, you know.’
‘I know!’ Emma groaned. ‘He just asked me if I wanted to join him for dinner in Paris.’ Emma smiled. ‘Maybe you should look for a male PA.’
‘They’d fall in love with him too,’ Evelyn sighed, then she blinked. ‘You said no to Paris?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘You don’t find him attractive?’ she gasped.
‘He’s divine,’ Emma corrected her. ‘He’s side splittingly beautiful and any woman who says otherwise is a liar.’
‘So why did you say no?’ Evelyn wanted to know.
‘Because I know him,’ Emma explained. ‘Not Luca personally, but I grew up amongst his type—I’ve read their rule book from cover to cover. I grew up in an all-male household—an exceptionally good-looking all-male household at that. ‘
