Page 26 of His Secretary's Nine-Month Notice
‘Come!’
Violet pushed open the door and did her utmost to look calm and composed.
‘Violet.’ He smiled, but his eyes were guarded and watchful. ‘You’re here. An unexpected pleasure.’
He’d been sprawled in his waiting-for-inspiration-to-strikepose, but now he sat up, smiling and indicating the chair in front of his desk. Ex-boss politely welcoming ex-secretary. He was uncomfortable, because he didn’t know why she was here in his office, and she felt a pang of misery, because not so long ago he had been her lover, touching her in places she had never been touched and turning her into a woman she had barely recognised.
‘I guess you’re surprised to see me,’ she opened, not quite meeting his eyes but not looking away, either. Just sort of looking through him and past him with a fixed smile that more or less mirrored his own.
‘You have a house here. Should I be? Perfectly natural for you to return for a break. Brought your father with you? How is he, by the way?’
Violet, trying desperately to gather her thoughts, took her time sitting down. She’d put a great deal of thought into her clothes and was wearing a pair of black trousers, a casual baggy tee shirt tucked into the waistband and some sensible shoes.
‘Dad’s in Melbourne and, yes, he’s fine. If it weren’t for you, I might never have got to the bottom of his anxieties over his liver, so I must thank you for that. He must have spent months blowing everything out of proportion until he convinced himself that he was on the way out unless he had a liver transplant. A few words from the consultant taken the wrong way, and he could have been spared an awful lot of anxiety. But all’s well that ends well. On that front.’
If they were any more polite with one another, she reflected, he would ask her to send him a memo as to the reasons why she had demanded an audience. As far as he was concerned, they’d had a bit of fun and that was the end of that. He was, after all, the guy who considered anything longer lasting than a nanosecond a commitment from which he was compelled to escape.
‘Good to hear.’ He paused. ‘So, tell me why you’re here—not that it isn’t good to see you, Violet. Problems to sort out with your house?’
‘I wanted to talk to you and I wanted the talk to be done face-to-face,’ she told him flatly.
‘Please don’t tell me that you’ve returned for your old job.’ Matt shifted, uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation but knowing that he had to be blunt. ‘As you can see, the delectable Candy didn’t work out, but John—one of your recommendations—is doing very nicely in the post. Would be very reluctant to put his nose out of joint by sending him back down to the bowels of Accounts...’
‘I haven’t come here to talk about getting my job back.’ Violet surreptitiously wiped her hands on her trousers and licked her lips.
‘No?’ Matt tilted his head to one side and looked at her narrowly. ‘What, then? I’m consumed with curiosity.’
‘Matt... This is difficult for me to say...’ She sighed. Her hair had grown just a little and she combed her fingers through it, eyes skittered away from him.
‘Shall I help you out?’ Matt asked heavily, suddenly restless, and she darted a look of astonishment at him.
‘You know why I’ve come here?’
‘If not for your job, then there’s only one other reason I can think of.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She rushed into speech. He knew! And he seemed to be processing the situation with a surprising lack of drama, which came as such a relief, because it meant that they could have a sensible, unemotional discussion and then she could get on with her life. ‘I wasn’t lying when I told you that I was on the pill—even though you probably didn’t believe me, because you made sure you used protection every single time after...after that first time. Iwason the pill, but I was so sick after with Dad and everything... Well, I never thought that I would get pregnant, but I was wrong.’
He’d guessed. At least, that was what he had said, but if he’d meant it, then why on earth did he look as though the bottom had suddenly decided to drop out of his world? His jaw had sagged. His expression was the expression of a man who had just been sucker punched. His face had gone a deathly shade of grey.
‘You didn’t think that was what I was going to say, did you?’ Violet managed into the ever-lengthening silence.
Matt managed to shake his head, but his vocal cords were still missing in action.
Violet wondered why she had been stupid enough to leap to all the wrong conclusions when he’d said that he knew why she’d turned up at his office from halfway across the world. ‘You thought that I’d come all the way to London because I wanted to carry on what we had in Melbourne. Is that it? Was that why you looked so nervous when I walked in?’
She felt anger surge through her. She thought back to that expression on his face when she had walked in. Wary, cautious. She thought back to his demeanour. Ultrapolite and just the right side of amicable. ‘You were braced to gently let me down, weren’t you?’ That dark flush said it all. ‘Of all the egotistic...arrogant...!’
She shook her head and banked down the fury waiting to blow like a volcano. ‘Don’t you think I know better than to ever go there, Matt? We were two ships that passed in the night! Did you think that I would be stupid enough to imagine that there could ever be more to it than that?’ She clenched her fists and tried not to succumb to the hurt of knowing that he’d walked away and had truly been alarmed at the suspicion that she might have wanted to tug him back, that she might have put him in the uncomfortable position of having to gently dislodge her like a stubborn thorn that refused to be pulled out.
‘Pregnant?’ Matt finally managed to croak.
‘Yes, Matt. Pregnant.’ His obvious horror had the effect of making her suddenly very calm. ‘I’m afraid the pill isn’t one hundred percent accurate. I had that stomach upset, if you remember, and as luck would have it I fell pregnant in that window when it stopped working. It wasn’t your fault, but neither was it mine.’
‘Are you sure?’ His voice was cracked and barely audible.
‘Yes.’ One word. There was no point letting him think that there might be some mistake.
He looked as though the sky had fallen down, right on top of his sexy, unsuspecting head. He was clearly horrified, and she bit down the temptation to cry. Her hormones had been all over the place, but she wasn’t going to break down here in his office because she felt sorry for herself. Because the dreams she’d had of having a baby had never involved the father of the baby looking at her as though she’d single-handedly made all his worst nightmares take shape.
