Page 45 of His Secretary's Nine-Month Notice
‘Because you couldn’t bear to say goodbye to whoever was on the receiving end?’ She clenched her hands into tights fists and stared at him with simmering hostility.
How could so much beauty be so lethal? But then, wasn’t nature full of poisonous creatures whose physical appearance could seduce and enchant?
‘Because I didn’t know how to say hello,’ Matt muttered under his breath. She had to strain to catch what he was saying. She was grudgingly riveted because, for the very first time, he was shorn of his usual self-assurance. A dark flush highlighted his cheekbones and he had lowered his eyes. Every muscle in his body shrieked tension.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m no good at this sort of thing.’
‘What sort of thing? Behaving like a decent human being and telling the truth?’ An unfair and uncharitable remark. She knew that. He was a decent human being. He’d been decent from the start and it was all her fault if she’d hoped for more.
‘Violet...would you listen to me? Please? No interruption?’
Violet shrugged, but the plea in his voice held her still. He was so assertive, so dominant, that that ghost of a plea momentarily derailed her.
‘All of this...us...what happened... None of it... I never predicted any of it.’
‘That makes the two of us, Matt,’ Violet muttered, flicking resentful eyes at him.
‘You handed in your notice, Violet, and I didn’t think how much I really relied on you until you did that. I read that email and my blood ran cold. Why do you think I raced over to your house? There was no way I could have waited until the following morning.’
‘I don’t know what that has to do with anything.’
‘No interruption. Remember?’ He smiled crookedly at her and she felt her treacherous body melt a little. She sternly reminded herself that melting was not an option.
‘I’ve asked myself whether I would have gone to Melbourne if I hadn’t had those deals on the go, if I hadn’t had an excuse. The more I realised that I would have, the more I realised just how...dependent I had become on you over the years. It wasn’t a message I was happy to take on board, so I did the obvious thing and ignored it.’
Violet was listening intently. She didn’t know where this was going, but for the moment she had forgotten all about the flowers and was focused instead on whatever road he was leading her down.
He was so intent,his navy eyes so compelling. Part of her wanted to break away but she was held in place against her will.Dependent how?she wanted to ask, but that was a dangerous road to follow, so she focused on telling herself that she’d been a brilliant secretary who could handle him and of course he’d unwittingly become dependent on her. There was no point reading beyond that.
‘I saw you on that stage, Violet, and something else I never realised hit me like a sledgehammer.’
‘What was that?’
‘I wanted you. I was attracted to you. Something about you...went beyond physical attraction, and I never registered that because, for me, there had never been anything beyond physical attraction. Physical attraction was something I could understand. Sex was good, but sex was all there was, and as far as I was concerned it was all there ever would be with any woman. A relationship involved feelings I knew I would never have and I was never going to be in the business of pretending otherwise. I grew up in a house where there was never any demonstration of affection between my parents and I guess what you see becomes learned behaviour. I accepted that without really analysing it. But then you left me.’
‘Matt, I hardlyleftyou.’
‘You left me,’ he said gruffly. ‘That’s what it felt like. I should have known that what I felt weren’t the usual feelings of a boss who has lost his brilliant PA—and I certainly should have realised that what I felt was something way deeper the very minute we climbed into bed. Nothing had felt so right, Violet. Everything was magnified. Exquisitely intense. I never wanted it to stop. That should have set the alarm bells ringing, but I’d never heard those bells before, and I had no idea what they signified.’
‘Please, Matt, don’t say things you don’t mean.’
‘I wouldn’t. When I left Melbourne, I thought life would go back to normal, but it didn’t. On the surface, everything was as it should be, but below the surface...a crack had opened, and it grew bigger by the day. There was no way I was conditioned to put two and two together but, when you showed up at my office all those weeks later, I was over the moon.’
‘You were?’
‘You’d come back. And then you told me that you were pregnant and I was shocked at how readily I accepted the situation. I’d never planned on having a family, yet there I was, and I wasn’t complaining half as much as I should have been.’
‘Matt...’ Violet whispered helplessly.
‘I wanted to marry you. I couldn’t stand the thought of not having you and our baby in my life on a permanent basis. But you weren’t having it and, while I understood where you were coming from, I still couldn’t stand it.’
‘You stopped asking very quickly,’ she pointed out, unwillingly drawn into a conversation that was dangerously seductive.
‘I didn’t want to scare you off, but then you relented, told me that you were willing to meet me halfway.’
‘I hated the thought of you finding someone else,’ Violet admitted, breaking all her self-imposed rules about revealing as little as possible. ‘I hated thinking that I would see you with another woman hanging on your arm whenever you came round to see our child. I hated the thought that you would probably end up marrying one of those women. Like I’ve said, a single guy pushing a pram is an irresistible temptation. I also knew, whether I wanted to admit it to myself or not, that two parents were always going to be better together than apart when it came to a child’s best interests. You were prepared to be unselfish. Why shouldn’t I?’
