Dating Her Boss. Liz Fielding

that she could cut my accent with a knife,’ she continued cheekily, ‘and serve it up in wedges with clotted cream.’

      ‘Amanda was exaggerating.’ Jilly’s accent was elusive, not something to be cut, but spooned like warm honey over toast… ‘But somewhere north of Watford, I’d guess,’ he continued rapidly, disconcerted at the direction his mind seemed to be taking.

      That was very nearly a joke, Jilly thought. ‘Then you’d guess right. Home is somewhere no one has ever heard of, but it’s near enough to Newcastle as makes no difference. Which reminds me, would it be possible to use your telephone? I’ll pay for the call.’

      Pay? She was offering to pay for a phone call? He was beginning to doubt his hearing. For the past two weeks Amanda’s Garland Girls, with their designer clothes and perfectly rounded vowels, had been treating his telephone as if it had been installed for their own personal convenience.

      ‘I’m supposed to be staying with my cousin but she doesn’t know I’ve arrived yet,’ she continued confidingly. Then, ‘At least, she might do—I did leave a message on her answering machine…’ She gave a little shrug as if suddenly aware that she had been running on.

      ‘But you’d like to be sure?’

      ‘Well, the thing is, I rang from the station first thing this morning. When I arrived. I mean, it was early. Really early. I thought she’d be there.’

      ‘And she wasn’t.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Perhaps she was out.’

      ‘At that time in the morning?’

      Innocent or what? he thought. Well, it wasn’t up to him to suggest what her cousin might have been up to. ‘Jogging, perhaps,’ he suggested drily.

      ‘It’s a possibility,’ she agreed, but not with any conviction. ‘Anyway, I thought it might be better to wait a while and call her at work. I would have called from a box, but Ms Garland said you were—’

      ‘Desperate?’ A delicate pink suffused her cheeks as he filled in the word that she was suddenly unwilling to repeat, a delightful blush that turned this rather bold young woman into something a whole lot more vulnerable. ‘I was,’ he found himself admitting. ‘I am.’ Then because, as the target of those large brown eyes, he felt more than a little vulnerable himself, he continued abruptly, ‘But you’d better call your cousin before you start. I don’t want your mind wandering while you’re typing that report.’ He turned to go, then paused. ‘And you’d better ring your family, if you have one. Let them know you’ve arrived safely.’ Good grief, he was beginning to sound like a mother hen. ‘They might be worrying,’ he added more sharply.

      ‘Might?’ Her eyes fanned into tiny creases at the corners as she finally laughed and a dimple momentarily appeared beneath her cheek. Appeared and then was gone so quickly that he had to restrain himself from reaching out to touch the spot to convince himself that he hadn’t imagined it… ‘My mother will be wearing a track in the carpet pacing up and down waiting to hear how the job worked out.’ Hoping it hadn’t.

      ‘Then you’d better ring her straight away…before the damage to the carpet is irreparable.’

      ‘Ah, well, you see, I can’t do that—’

      ‘Why not?’ He knew he would regret asking the question, but their conversation seemed to be taking on a life of its own.

      ‘I can’t phone her until I’ve spoken to Gemma. I promised if anything went wrong, if she couldn’t put me up, I’d go straight home.’ She gave a little shrug, little more than a lift of her shoulders. ‘It’s my first time away from home, you see, and she worries.’

      He did see. His own mother had worried about him. Still did, probably, but these days she knew better than to voice her concerns. ‘Then let’s hope that your cousin had simply slipped out for a few minutes. If she’s away you’re in big trouble—’

      ‘Away? In January?’ Jilly was incredulous.

      Max followed her glance to the window, to the overcast greyness of a winter day in London. ‘Unbelievable as it may seem, there are places where the sun is still shining.’

      ‘Expensive places.’

      ‘Not these days.’ He could see that she considered his idea of expensive and hers were unlikely to coincide. ‘There’s always skiing—’ The word was out before he could stop it. Max had known it was a mistake to get involved. It was always a mistake to get involved.

      ‘Gemma’s not the athletic type.’

      ‘Not everyone goes for the exercise,’ he snapped. Then, more gently, because it was hardly this girl’s fault that she’d reminded him of things he longed to forget. ‘Some people are more interested in après-ski.’

      And Jilly’s head was suddenly filled with a travel-brochure image of glamorous girls and beefy blond ski instructors sipping glühwein around a roaring log fire in some snowbound mountain chalet. That was much more like Gemma’s idea of fun. ‘But if she’s away I’ll have nowhere to stay,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to go straight back home. I promised—’

      ‘Not before you’ve typed up that report, I hope—’

      It had been an unforgivable thing to say—Max regretted the words before they were out of his mouth—but instead of throwing the notepad at him and telling him to type the damned thing himself, which was what any self-respecting Garland Girl would do, Jilly Prescott tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear and said, ‘No, no, of course not. I’ll get right onto it.’

      Max stared after her for a moment. Was she being sarcastic? The question was redundant, of course she wasn’ t…This wasn’t one of Amanda’s usual hard-boiled temps. The girl had just arrived in London, was on her own, vulnerable. And that made him even more irritable. He didn’t need this. How dared Amanda send him a waif from somewhere no one had ever heard of?

      He wasn’t interested in her problems. He didn’t want to know. And yet something propelled him after her, urging him to apologise.

      But she was already sitting at the computer, her fingers moving swiftly over the keys, wasting no time in starting work. Not even to make her telephone call. He wanted to tell her to do that first, but her back was stiff with pride, as great a barrier to communication as a brick wall.

      It wouldn’t have stopped him once, but it seemed that he had lost the gift of kindness, along with everything else…

      ‘Are you ready for your lunch now, Max?’

      He turned to Harriet, waiting in the doorway, watching them both. ‘I’ve been ready for ten minutes,’ he replied coldly. Then, ‘You’d better organise something for Jilly as well.’ Jilly! How could anyone be formal with someone called Jilly? He should have stuck to Miss Prescott. ‘And show her around, make sure she knows where everything is.’

      Jilly heard the inner door close and leaned back in her chair, easing her shoulders. She’d slept on the train—she could sleep anywhere—it was tension knotting her muscles, making her feel suddenly weepy. She sniffed, found a handkerchief and blew her nose. Weepy! How ridiculous. She never wept.

      It was just that yesterday everything had seemed so simple. Too simple. If only her mother hadn’t made her promise. If only she hadn’t been stupid enough to believe that nothing could go wrong!

      She blinked, straightened, tucked her hankie out of sight and forced a smile to her lips as Harriet reappeared with a tray, jumping to her feet to open the inner door for her.

      ‘Thank you, Miss Prescott.’

      ‘Oh, please, call me Jilly.’ Harriet nodded and reappeared a moment later. ‘I’ll show you where the cloakroom is, shall I? I expect you’d like to wash your hands before you have something to eat.’

      ‘I’m sorry to be such a bother. I’d go out but Mr