Page 25 of His Secretary's Nine-Month Notice
No, it wasn’t. That was what Violet thought a month later. The night hadn’t ended and it was never going to end. He had stayed another three weeks, then had left without looking back, and her heart had broken in two, but broken hearts mended and hers would mend. He wouldn’t be around. He would never again be around.
How could she have known that there would be a price to pay for those stolen moments?
How could she ever have guessed that she would end up pregnant...?
CHAPTER SIX
‘MISSDUNNISHERE.’
He’d been expecting her. She had emailed him from Melbourne. A brief email which had made no mention of the time they had spent together. She’d politely asked how things were progressing with the start-up company they had worked on and then, as an afterthought, had informed him that she would be coming to London and wondered whether he would be available to meet. There was something she felt she had to discuss with him face-to-face.
For Matt, that could have covered any number of topics. Was she after the job he had offered her, after all? It made sense, because she’d enjoyed the adrenaline rush of working under pressure out there, but then wasn’t that an easy enough topic to broach via email?
Maybe she was planning to return to London. Her father was back on track. Babysitting duties on the other side of the world could be winding up and it was possible that she might be after her old job. Trouble loomed on that front, if that were the case, because they’d slept together. Returning to their old relationship was not going to be possible. He hoped that she would have sufficient knowledge of how he operated to figure that out on her own.
Or maybe...
He relaxed back into his chair and thought, not for the first time since he had received her email, that she was interested in picking up where they had prematurely left off in Melbourne.
Regrettably, that too would be off the cards, because he knew that a casual relationship wasn’t her thing, even though they had been lovers for a while and she had made no mention of taking it any further.
Sex with his prim and proper ex-secretary had been mind-blowing. He’d never known anything like it in his life before. The taste of forbidden fruit had been scintillating, had appealed to his jaded soul on a lot of fronts, but he was realistic enough to recognise the dangers of prolonging that brief liaison, even though he had been sorely tempted. He wasn’t in the market for love and happy-ever-afters, but she was.
He would see where the conversation went, but there were few avenues he could think of that would be free of annoying complications.
‘Shall I show her up?’
He nodded at his PA who, contravening all rules and regulations of a company that promoted an informal dress code, was attired in a natty pinstriped suit and a bow tie. His dress code was a daily source of amusement for Matt. He thought of Violet, and the neat and prissy suits she had been so fond of wearing to work, and he felt a sharp pang of nostalgia. He breathed in sharply and gathered himself.
‘Give it five minutes, John. I have a brief phone call to get out of the way first.’ He didn’t, but for some reason, he felt unsettled and that wasn’t going to do.
John nodded briskly and scuttled off, shutting the door behind him, and Matt relaxed back, fingers steepled, frowning because for once, his well-behaved mind was refusing to play ball. He realised that she’d been in his head, vaguely but persistentlythereever since he had returned from Melbourne. It was an acknowledgement he found a little disturbing, because he had never been one to overthink the end of any of his relationships. What they had enjoyed, intense though it had been, was a moment in time, a brief meeting of ways which had always been very clearly defined as having an ending in sight. It certainly hadn’t been a relationship, as such.
Even though they had got along extremely well. As they would, all things taken into consideration.
He found himself wondering what she might be wearing. In Melbourne, she had sported a far more casual wardrobe. Tight jeans, small tops, cute flat sandals...
The PA had been nowhere in evidence. He had a very pleasing memory of her playing the piano for him in next to nothing, and then forcing him to do a rendition of ‘Chopsticks’ so that she could have a laugh at his expense. He hadn’t objected. They’d made passionate love afterwards.
He shifted, fighting down a sudden erection. He had no intention of picking up where they had left off, however much his body was tempted by the possibility, so why was he suddenly being bombarded with all sorts of inappropriate memories?
He opened up a file on his computer, a boring list of facts, figures and numbers, the sort of file guaranteed to numb a racing imagination, and waited for her to be ushered in.
Several storeys down, Violet was nervously reacquainting herself with the towering glass building that had been her home away from home for over two years.
She’d promised her father that she would be back as soon as she could, as soon as some urgent businesshad been dealt with, and he had been weirdly accepting. He’d said he was toying with the idea that a return to Blighty might be a good idea, now that he was as fit as a fiddle. No more drink, of course—he was over all that—but he could appoint someone to run the music school and keep the house on so that they could visit whenever they wanted. And wouldn’t it be great to catch up with old friends back home...?
Violet had no idea what was going on. She had thought that Melbourne would give her clarity and cure her of her ridiculous infatuation.
Yet here she was and everything was an almighty mess.
When she had emailed Matt to tell him that she was coming to London and wanted to see him, she had opted for meeting him at the office on the assumption that it would provide her with just the right sort of businesslike state of mind she would need to deal with a difficult and personal conversation. Now that she was here, memories were dragging her down. Everything was so familiar. The memory of the simmering excitement she used to feel every time she click-clacked her way to that shiny mirrored lift was like a punch in the stomach.
She wondered what had happened to Candy but, honestly, she didn’t really care. She could barely think straight and her nerves were all over the place as she and John were whooshed up in the lift and, after some halting progress through those familiar plush offices—because so many people wanted to stop and chat and fill her in on gossip—ended up outside Matt’s sprawling quarters.
‘I’ll leave you here, Vi,’ John said, and she thought, in a panic,Must you?
She knocked and pushed open that all-too-familiar door that led into the outer office where she had worked like a busy little bee for such a long time. Matt’s adjoining door was firmly shut and she took a deep breath as she walked towards it.
