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Her thoughts screeched to a halt. No, she was not going to think about it any more!
‘We want to hire someone with practical skills, not simply an ability to make you laugh,’ she ground out.
Duncan flexed his elbows behind his head, the bleached white cotton straining across his torso, revealing a dark shadow where the hair curled thickly on his chest. Kalera knew exactly how soft and luxuriant that growth was, how sensuously springy it felt against her bare skin. She licked her dry lips as he continued, ‘Lara had other qualities.’
‘Name two!’ she foolishly challenged.
He pretended to consider and a wolfish smile prowled across his face. ‘Her legs.’
The candidate had indeed worn a mini-skirt that was barely decent, but Kalera knew when she was being taken for a ride.
‘She doesn’t type with her legs,’ she said coolly, sitting back in her chair. ‘In fact, judging from this—’ she flicked the dictation test ‘—she doesn’t type at all! And since I know you’d never hire a woman simply for her looks—’
‘I hired you, didn’t I?’
She bristled. ‘I presumed it was because I had the best qualifications.’
She had graduated top of her secretarial class, to the despair of her parents who had considered it a diploma in repression and a betrayal of her roots. ‘But you can’t be truly creative in an office,’ her mother had cried when she had told them she was taking the course. ‘It’s so sterile and unimaginative. You’ll end up as a slave to routine, a prisoner to technology!’
To Kalera, her parents’ fanatical adherence to the teachings of the latest feel-good guru was a more constrictive form of slavery, but of course they didn’t see it that way.
Duncan shook his head, his eyes heavy-lidded with amusement.
‘True, but that’s not the primary reason I chose you. I knew as soon as I saw you walk through that door that I wanted you…’ he paused a dangerous beat ‘…for my secretary. I assure you, I was acting on pure instinct—I hadn’t even read your CV.’
‘And now your instinct’s telling you that a grammatically challenged bottle-blonde with legs up to her ears and a single-figure IQ is my perfect replacement!’
Kalera bit her lip as her bitchiness echoed in her ears, for all the world as if she were a jealous wife. But her objections were purely logical, she told herself fiercely. Lara might well be a very nice girl—but Duncan needed someone mature in charge of his office, someone coolheaded who could keep her feet on the ground when he was bouncing off the walls. The last thing he needed was another breathless admirer pandering to his reckless genius.
‘Actually, my idea of a perfect replacement for you is you,’ he replied smoothly. ‘So…how about it?’
She ignored the blatant provocation. ‘If we don’t find a replacement by the time I’m due to leave—don’t expect me to extend my notice,’ she warned, voicing the lurking suspicion that he might be spinning out the process to just that end.
‘In that case we’d better stop wasting time and get back to work,’ Duncan said, glittering a smile at her that showed no sign of guilt or remorse. ‘I hope you haven’t made any lunch plans because it looks like we’ll have to work straight through…I’ll send out for some sandwiches. And I’ll probably have to ask you to stay on late again this evening, as well.’
Kalera opened her mouth to object, and then changed her mind. Stephen had been supposed to phone to let her know whether he was free to meet her for lunch, but since it was already mid-morning and he hadn’t yet done so it was probably safe to assume he, too, would be busy during her lunch-hour. She could save her protests and her dignity, and offend no one by her compliance.
CHAPTER SIX
SHE discovered her mistake later that afternoon when she paused at the temporarily unoccupied reception desk to answer the unattended telephone, and found an irate Stephen on the other end of the line.
‘I’ve been trying to get through to you all day but that damned receptionist keeps telling me you’re unavailable.’
Kalera bit her lip. ‘You should have left a message—’
‘I did, several times, but you never replied to any of them—I assume they were never passed on.’ Stephen’s voice rose in outrage as he continued, ‘And when I called by to pick you up for lunch Royal’s bully-boy excuse for a security man refused to send word up to you that I was there.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Kalera feebly. She had no doubt that the orders to censor Stephen’s calls and messages had been issued by Royal decree.
Nor, apparently, had Stephen. ‘It’s just petty vindictiveness. You tell Duncan you’re not going to tolerate his blatant interference in your private
life.’
‘Well, I suppose he could claim he’s within his rights as an employer to place a restriction on personal phone calls during business hours…’ said Kalera, striving to be fair. Before their engagement became public Stephen had never phoned her at work and she couldn’t help thinking that it was a mite tactless of him to expect loyal Labyrinthians to instantly embrace the enemy.
Stephen’s voice chilled several degrees. ‘Are you defending him?’
‘No, no, of course not,’ she said hurriedly, seeing Kirsty Seymour trotting back to the reception desk, a cup of coffee in hand. ‘Look, I must go—I’m sorry about lunch, but I wouldn’t have been able to leave the office anyway; we were just too busy—’
