Mistress by Agreement. HELEN BROOKS

not a fool, Rosalie, and I would not offer you the job if I did not think you were capable of doing it. I have been assured from various quarters that to date you have handled your work competently, ethically and thoroughly, and more than one person has told me that you are particularly skilful in detecting problems with builders before they occur. Am I right?’

      She was pinned by the blue eyes and could do no more than nod her head.

      ‘Good.’ He spoke as if the matter was settled and Rosalie had a moment of panic.

      She cleared her throat. ‘The thing is, the decision is not up to me,’ she said carefully.

      ‘No, it is up to me,’ he agreed shortly, standing. Rosalie rose quickly, her head spinning. Was he leaving already? It appeared so. ‘Discuss the job with your partners, by all means, but make it clear I am engaging you, please. If they need to speak to me you have my number in England and in the States on the information I have given you.’

      He was already walking to the door as he spoke and then he paused, turning to look at her. ‘Do you feel you could do the work, given the chance?’ he asked quietly. ‘You said you would love to do it but that isn’t necessarily the same thing. The time angle is not so much of a problem, I can be flexible to a degree.’

      She was still reeling with the suddenness of it all but there was no hesitation in her voice when she said, ‘Yes, I can do it. I’ve not tackled anything on this scale before, I have to admit, but, yes. The job I’m working on at the moment will be finished within a week or so, and after that there is nothing planned which I can’t pass on to one of the others.’

      ‘Good.’ It was silky soft. ‘My secretary will liaise with you as necessary, but I am a hands-on kind of guy, Rosalie, so we’ll be seeing quite a bit of each other over the next months.’

      Rosalie blinked. The words sounded innocent enough but there had been a smoky flavour to them that had set her antennae waving. And then she told herself not to be so silly. This was work, business, that was all. Kingsley Ward was obviously an enormously successful and wealthy mogul, and with his looks, not to mention his money and male charisma, he must have the women lining up in droves. It had been one of the things that had set her teeth on edge at Jamie’s wretched dinner party—the way every woman present had been all but dribbling with lust. And of course he’d lapped up the attention; what man wouldn’t?

      He was waiting for a response. She pulled herself together as the realisation hit, stitching a polite smile on her face with some effort. ‘We’ve still got a way to go before you give Carr and Partners the work, surely?’ she said evenly. ‘You haven’t asked the fee for my services.’

      She realised too late she could have put that better when the blue eyes flickered, just once, and he said, very dryly, ‘What exactly do you charge, Rosalie?’

      With anyone else she could have turned it into a joke or frozen the individual out with one of the icy looks she had perfected years ago, but Kingsley Ward wasn’t anyone else. And she was burning up with enough heat to spontaneously combust.

      Rosalie took the coward’s way out and acted dumb. ‘For a job of this kind we tend to estimate a cost,’ she said tightly. ‘It isn’t always possible to be specific when one is dealing with contractors and subcontractors, and things don’t always go according to plan. Materials might not be available when they ought to be, for example, or there may be a technical hitch which makes the job more difficult and therefore more time-consuming. Of course, this is not usually the case,’ she added quickly.

      ‘Quite,’ he said soothingly, making her aware she was gabbling.

      ‘The first thing I would need to do is to draw up a bill of quantities, which is a list of all the materials needed to complete the project right down to the smallest detail. This would extend to several hundred pages for a job of this nature.’

      He held up a restraining hand, his voice even dryer when he said, ‘You are telling me you don’t come cheap, is that it?’

      She had never met anyone she would like to punch on the nose more, or anyone who could make the most normal conversation sizzle with sexual undertones like this man. Or was it her? The thought kicked like a mule. Was she imagining all this? She didn’t like being confused and it sounded in her voice when she said, ‘It’s always worth paying for the best in the long run.’

      ‘My sentiments exactly,’ he drawled silkily, his American accent suddenly strong. ‘And that being the case I am sure I will hear from you shortly with a tidy breakdown, and some sort of ceiling cost, okay?’

      ‘Yes, of course.’ He had opened the door before she realised she hadn’t thanked him for what was the most fantastic opportunity of her career to date, but even as the words hovered on her tongue he had gone without a backward glance or a goodbye.

      CHAPTER TWO

      ROSALIE worked harder than she had ever done over the next few weeks. Once she’d finished with the job she’d been engaged on when Kingsley Ward had made his amazing proposition, she began working on the bill of quantities for the Ward project, which was an enormous undertaking. It didn’t help that she was aware her three senior partners were a little anxious about it all.

      When she had told Mike Carr and the other two about the meeting with Kingsley Ward, Mike had called Kingsley the same day, after which he had come and perched on her desk in the late evening just as Rosalie had been thinking of going home.

      ‘There’s no doubt he wants you for the job.’ Mike looked at the slim, beautiful woman in front of him, whom he both respected and admired, and in whom he had taken a fatherly interest almost from the first day Rosalie had begun at Carr and Partners fresh from university ten years before. ‘Know much about him, do you?’

      Rosalie stared at him in surprise. Mike was more than a working colleague; shortly after she had been engaged by the firm she had discovered she had been at university with his daughter, Wendy, and after a reunion with the other girl it had become common for her to spend the odd weekend at the Carrs’ lovely old house in Harrow. The family’s friendship had come at a painful time in her private life and had meant the world. It still did, even though—with Wendy now married and living abroad, and Rosalie having been taken on as junior partner, which had doubled her workload and made for less socialising—she saw less of the family as a whole.

      ‘Not a thing, really,’ she admitted after a moment or two. ‘Why? Isn’t he creditworthy?’

      Mike smiled. ‘You really don’t know anything about him, do you? Oh, yes, he’s creditworthy, all right, Lee. Ward Enterprises was begun by his father over thirty years ago, but until Kingsley was old enough to come on board it was just a moderately successful little hotel chain comprising of some three or four fairly middle-of-the-road establishments. Kingsley changed all that. He had the vision to buy up land and make the Ward name synonymous with luxury hotels complete with a couple of golf courses, hundreds of acres of parkland and so on, the sort of places the rich and famous would go to to enjoy peace and seclusion where their every need is catered for. To put it crudely, my dear, Kingsley Ward is loaded.’

      Rosalie smiled, before raising her eyebrows as she said, ‘So why that note in your voice when you asked me if I knew anything about him?’

      ‘What note?’ And then Mike smiled himself at the expression on his junior partner’s face. ‘Oh, all right,’ he said a little shamefacedly. ‘It’s just that, along with the wealth and jet-set lifestyle the man now has, has come a certain reputation.’

      Rosalie’s eyebrows rose higher.

      ‘He’s partial to a well-turned ankle.’

      Dear Mike. Only he could use such a quaint old-fashioned phrase to describe a womaniser, Rosalie thought fondly, before she said teasingly in a mock American accent, ‘You mean he likes the broads?’

      Mike wasn’t smiling now. ‘He likes them, all right,’ he said quietly. ‘Lots of them.’

      ‘What’s that