Welcome to Mills & Boon. Jennifer Rae

that she’ll go places in this company if she isn’t prepared to go the extra mile.’

      Alice didn’t say anything but she wondered whether he knew that there was ‘going the extra mile’ and then there was sacrificing your life for the sake of a job.

      ‘I wouldn’t have made a big deal about any of this,’ she said quietly, ‘But I thought you ought to know how I feel about my working conditions from day one rather than not say anything and then find myself expected to work hours I’m not willing to work. I’m not saying that I won’t do overtime now and again, but I’m a firm believer in separating my personal life from my working life.’

      ‘Tell me something, did you lay down similar boundary lines for your last boss?’

      ‘I didn’t have to,’ she replied.

      ‘Because he was a nine-to-five-thirty kind of guy? Thought so. Well, I’m not a nine-to-five-thirty kind of guy and I don’t expect my employees to be nine-to-five-thirty kind of people.’ It would be a shame to lose someone who showed potential but he had humoured her for long enough. ‘Employees like Claire, who want to aggressively climb career ladders, work weekends when they don’t want to because they understand the rules of the game. The prize never goes to the person who doesn’t realise that a little sacrifice is necessary now and again if something important arises. Granted, you’re not the head of a department, and you may not want any kind of career to speak of—’

      ‘I do want to have a career!’ Bright patches of colour appeared on her cheeks.

      ‘Really? I’m all ears, because you’re not selling it...’

      Alice licked her lips nervously and stared at him. There was a brooding stillness to him that was unsettling. Nerves did their best to launch her into mindless chatter but a deeply ingrained habit of keeping her private life to herself held her back and she composed herself sufficiently to flash him another of her polite smiles.

      ‘That was why I left my last job. I liked it there but Tom, the director of the company, was going to hand the reins over to his son, and Tom Junior wasn’t a strong believer in women in the workplace, especially not in the haulage business.’

      Gabriel cocked his head to one side, listening to what she was saying and what she wasn’t. She talked like a prissy school-marm but there was nothing prissy or school-marmish about the way she had stood up for herself. She claimed to want a career but, when pressed, could only tell him something vague about why she had left her last company. Given half a chance, most women couldn’t wait to involve him in long stories about themselves, especially long stories that were slanted in their favour, but this one... He got the feeling that she only said what she wanted someone to hear and that included him.

      He glanced over her, his eyes taking in the unimaginative get-up, the long, slim frame, the uninspiring haircut.

      His employees were all given a generous clothes allowance. They could afford designer gear, and this worked in particular favour of his staff lower down the pecking order, whose salaries were less enviable. Everyone, whatever their ranking, projected a certain image and he liked that. Compared to them, the little sparrow in front of him lacked polish, but there was something about her...

      ‘So what were you planning your career to be there, had little Tommy Junior not come along to fill Daddy’s shoes...?’ Gabriel had virtually no respect for anyone gifted a business. He had had to find his way by walking on broken glass and he was fundamentally contemptuous of all those well-groomed, pampered boys and girls born with silver spoons in their mouths. He was a hard man who had travelled a hard road. It had worked well for him, had put him where he was today, able to do precisely as he pleased.

      ‘I thought I might be able to get funding for an accountancy course...’ She thought wistfully of the dreams she had once had to get involved in finance. She had always had a thing for numbers and it had seemed a lucrative and satisfying road to go down. Dreams, she had discovered, had a tendency to remain unfulfilled. Or at least, hers had.

      ‘It wasn’t to be,’ she said briskly. ‘So I thought that perhaps joining a bigger, more ambitious company might be a good idea.’

      ‘But, before you got too accustomed to the job, you felt it necessary to tell me that your working schedule is limited.’

      ‘My weekends are accounted for.’ Alice was beginning to wish that she had decided never to say anything. She should have just kept her head down and then crossed whatever bridge she had to cross when she came to it. Instead, she had made assumptions about the way he ran his company and had decided to act accordingly.

      ‘Boyfriend?’

      ‘I beg your pardon?’

      ‘Or maybe husband, although I don’t see any wedding ring on the finger.’

      ‘Sorry, but what are you talking about?’

      ‘Isn’t it usually the boyfriend in the background who ends up dictating the working hours?’ Gabriel asked, intrigued by her outspokenness, her sheer gall in laying down ground rules on day one—as though she had any right—with him. Intrigued, too, by that air of concealment that was so unusual in a woman. At least, in the women he knew.

      ‘Not in this case, Mr Cabrera,’ Alice told him stiffly.

      ‘No boyfriend?’

      Alice hesitated but, perhaps having misjudged her timing to start with, why not go the whole hog and expand on her conditions? He would probably chuck her out on the spot. She would return to the agency, who wouldn’t be surprised to see her, and they would find her another job—something with a normal boss, working normal hours in a normal environment. It sounded unappetising.

      ‘I should mention...’ She heard the wooden formality in her voice and cringed because she was twenty-five years old, yet she sounded like someone twice her age. ‘I also do not appreciate talking about my personal life.’

      ‘Why not? Have you got something to hide?’

      Alice’s mouth fell open and, in return, Gabriel raised his eyebrows without bothering to help her out of her awkward silence.

      ‘I...I do a very good job. I take my work very seriously. If you decide to keep me on, you won’t regret it, Mr Cabrera. I bring one hundred and ten percent to everything I do in the working environment...’

      Gabriel didn’t say anything. He watched her flounder and wondered whether she brought one hundred and ten percent to whatever it was she did in the leisure time that she was so stridently protecting.

      ‘Accountancy courses require weekend time... What would you do about those precious weekends of yours that you can’t possibly sacrifice?’

      ‘I can do the work in my own time,’ Alice said promptly. ‘I’ve checked it out. And I would pass the exams. I have a good head for figures.’

      ‘In which case, remind me why you didn’t go into that field of work when you left school...college...university? In fact, now that you seem to be campaigning for a permanent job with me, why don’t you hand over the CV which I am sure is burning a hole in your bag...?’

      Alice hesitated fractionally and Gabriel looked at her, his dark eyes cool and assessing.

      His mobile phone rang; he glanced down at the caller ID and then he, too, hesitated, fractionally, but this time there was a smile hovering on his lips as he disconnected the call.

      ‘Here’s the deal, Miss Morgan.’ He sat forward, invading her space, and rested his elbows on her desk.

      Alice automatically inched back and her breathing quickened as their eyes clashed. Suddenly, she was aware of every inch of her body in ways she had never been before. She felt hot all over; her breasts felt prickly and sensitive, her skin tight and tingly. She took a deep breath and shakily told herself that she would have to subdue reactions like that if she was to be offered the job of working with this man full-time. She might not like the guy but she couldn’t afford to let that dislike control her