No Escaping Love. Sharon Kendrick
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with the careless grace of some jungle feline just before it pounced. ‘In that case, Miss Wilde—you could be just what I’m looking for.’
She sat upright in the soft leather chair, meeting the bright green gaze with a candid stare of her own. ‘Just what are you looking for, Mr Ryder? Your advertisement didn’t make it very clear, I must say.’
The green eyes had narrowed to alarming slits. ‘Oh, must you? And how would you have worded it?’
‘I would have thought it was fairly obvious—if you wanted only fluent Portuguese speakers, then the advert should have been written in Portuguese.’
There was a pause. The look he gave her was very measured. She half thought that she saw the merest hint of humour twitch at the corner of his mouth, but then decided that it must have been a trick of the light.
‘You are, of course, absolutely right, Miss Wilde. If only the young woman from the specialist staffing agency who came here to take “details” of what I required had been credited with your common sense.’
She ignored his sardonic tone. ‘Didn’t you tell her what you wanted?’
‘Of course I told her!’ he barked back. ‘But she wasn’t listening. She spent the whole time wittering on about “what a beautiful house you have, Mr Ryder” and “your photograph didn’t do you justice at all, Mr Ryder”,’ he mimicked.
Shauna gave an almost imperceptible click of disapproval. How could she have done? she wondered. Women like that gave women in business a bad name. Quite apart from the fact that you wouldn’t need a degree in psychology to recognise that a man like Max Ryder would be completely turned off by such an obvious approach. A man like him would have women in their hundreds, if not thousands running after him.
He was still looking at her. ‘Am I to understand that you don’t approve of women using sex appeal at work?’
Her grey eyes were cold. ‘Certainly not. I hope you complained to the agency?’
He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘I just shan’t use them again. Let’s hope I don’t have to.’ He stared at her consideringly. ‘You seem very interested in this staffing agency, Miss Wilde—perhaps you have an affinity for that kind of work?’
‘But I’m being interviewed for this job, Mr Ryder,’ she answered sweetly. She knew that ploy of old. People in power wanted nothing less than one hundred per cent commitment—give them any indication that some other job might suit you more, and you’d be out on your ear. And besides, this job offered her a roof over her head. ‘Would you like to tell me a little about it?’
A spark of humour glimmered in the green eyes. ‘How about “Tyrant requires PA. Hours long, pay lousy”?’ He began to chuckle quietly.
‘And is that the truth?’ Shauna asked.
A tanned hand moved forward to tap a pencil on the surface of the black ash desk. ‘No, I lied about the pay—that’s good! The tyrant bit you’d have to make up your own mind about—but I don’t suffer fools gladly. I’ve been called some rather unflattering names in my time,’ he said softly. He leaned over to push the bonsai tree a fraction to the right, and then, as if satisfied, settled back in his chair again.
‘I buy and sell,’ he explained. ‘And I deal mainly in property. Since the market has flattened out in this country I’ve diversified a little, and I’m doing several deals in Europe. At the moment I’m in the process of buying a plot of land in the Algarve which I intend turning into a golf and holiday complex. The project is estimated to take two years minimum, hence the need for an assistant who can speak Portuguese.’
‘But you speak it yourself!’ she protested.
He shook his head. ‘Enough to get by—and I’m very good at ordering in restaurants—but the subtle nuances of the language all go over my head, and I need to understand what is being said. I certainly can’t get to grips with legal jargon. Which reminds me—just how good is your Portuguese?’
She needed no second bidding. This bit was easy. She wanted to make it clear to him that she, at least, was not here on false pretences. That unlike the others she was—as she had stated in her application—perfectly fluent in Portuguese. She spoke rapidly, deliberately making her speech both formal and colloquial—impossible for anyone but the seasoned linguist to understand. When she had finished, she saw that another wry smile had appeared. ‘How much did you understand?’ she queried.
‘Very little,’ he admitted. ‘You speak very quickly, and your pronunciation is superb.’
She inclined her head, relishing what she accurately assessed was a rare compliment. ‘Thank you.’
The eyes were curious. ‘How come?’
‘How come what?’
‘That you’re so fluent?’
She hesitated just a little. ‘Well,’ she said lightly. ‘I have just spent two years working as a PA in Portugal.’
He waved his hand in the air dismissively. ‘I know that. But you must have been pretty good before that? You wouldn’t speak it as well as that after just two years.’
He was probing, and she resented it. She didn’t want to have to give him a potted history of her life, see pity cloud those enigmatic eyes. She indicated the papers which lay on the desk before him. ‘As you’ll see from my résumé—I studied languages.’ Her grey eyes instinctively flashed a warning.
There was an answering flash in the dark emerald depths. ‘To which the same argument applies.’
He was not, she decided, the kind of man to be put off. He was the kind of man who would take a prize for getting blood from a stone. She made up her mind to give him the barest facts possible. ‘My mother—was Portuguese,’ she stated baldly.
‘And your father?’
‘Irish.’ A flat statement, which dared him to pursue the subject further.
‘Unusual combination,’ he remarked.
‘So I’ve been told.’ She cleared her throat. ‘So what you need primarily, Mr Ryder—is an interpreter?’
If he’d noticed that she’d neatly steered the subject away from her parents, he didn’t show it. ‘Mainly,’ he replied. ‘But as well as shorthand and typing, I need someone to be my right-hand man, so to speak.’ He smiled briefly. ‘Or woman, I should say. Someone who will know exactly what I know, and will therefore know how to deal with any urgent business should I not be available. I employ a great many staff not only in this country, but all over the world. Every time some trifling little problem arises, I don’t personally want to have to deal with it.’ The green eyes held her directly in their full, magnificent gaze.
‘I need cables sent,’ he continued. ‘Documents translated, airline tickets booked, business associates met at the airport. I may need you to travel abroad with me.’
‘That sounds like very long hours,’ she observed.
‘Absolutely. But in return you will be paid handsomely. You’ll have first-class accommodation in London, if you want it, and extremely generous holidays. So what do you think?’
‘And how much is the salary?’
The sum he mentioned almost made her fall out of her chair.
‘Will you be needing accommodation?’ He looked at her quizzically.
‘Yes, I will,’ she nodded. ‘Could you tell me what that consists of?’
There was a moment’s hesitation. ‘There’s a large penthouse flat at the top of this building—part of that will be yours.’
It took her precisely ten seconds to mull it over. He would have to be the worst tyrant ever created to justify her turning a deal like this down.