The Parenti Marriage: The Reluctant Surrender. PENNY JORDAN
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to be aroused physically by her, then what would happen? Did he really need to ask? He knew, after all, what happened when someone put a light to a keg of dynamite. The result was destruction. Destruction? Did this infuriating woman have the power to arouse him to the point where that arousal could destroy the barriers he had put in place to keep him immune to the weakness of needing one specific other person in his life? Impossible, Saul reassured himself.
Saul was waiting for her response, Giselle knew—just as she knew that she didn’t want to answer him.
‘Why stay in a job for which you are over-qualified and I daresay underpaid? Unless, of course, you fear that all those qualifications of yours are merely pieces of paper and that in reality you are not up to the work you would be required to do at a higher level.’
Saul pressed her, determined not to step back from his probing just because of an inner warning he refused to give credence to.
His accusation jolted Giselle into an immediate repudiation.
‘Of course I’m up to it.’ Angry pride reflected in both Giselle’s voice and the look she gave him. ‘And I am confident that I could do any job I was offered.’
‘Are you now?’ Her assertion showed him yet another strand to her personality. With the revelation of each new strand he felt increasingly compelled to know more about her. Because she infuriated and antagonised him. Because she was so unlike any other woman he knew. Because she didn’t treat him as they did, with delight and docility, eager to please him and pleasure him, his own inner voice dryly mocked him.
She was obviously determined not to answer him, but Saul was equally determined that he would have an answer. He changed tack, saying silkily, ‘Correct me if I am wrong, but the Kovoca Island project is, as I understand it, all that currently stands between your employers and insolvency—and with that insolvency the loss of your job?’
Giselle’s mouth went dry and her heart started pounding wretchedly heavily as she recognised the threat in his words. She was forced to concede. ‘Yes, that is correct.’
‘Given your employer has suggested to me that it will facilitate matters if you are seconded to me, to ensure that in future all redrawn plans and costings are in line with my requirements, I should have thought that it is only natural that I would have the right to enquire into your reliability and your probity—in all professional matters.’
Silenced by the shock of what she had just learned, Giselle could only stare at him in appalled dismay.
This couldn’t be happening. He—her tormentor—could not be standing there saying that she would be working directly with him, that she would in effect be responsible to him and thus in his power. But he was, Giselle acknowledged as she fought against the panic washing through her at full flood force. If only she could tell him to find someone else to be seconded to him. If only she could turn on her heel and walk away from him…if only he didn’t affect her in the way that he did. So many if onlys. Her life was full of them—heartsickening, cruelly destructive words that spoke of what could never be. She was trapped, by duty and by love, and she had to hold on to this job even though that now meant that she would be in Saul’s power.
At least he did not know how vulnerable she was to him as a woman, Giselle tried to comfort herself. A man like him must be so used to arousing desire in her sex that he simply took it for granted—just as he seemed to take his pick of the beautiful women who flocked around him, from what Emma had told her. Well, he’d certainly never want to pick her. Thank goodness.
‘It is not my choice that you be my point person on this project,’ Saul pointed out. ‘And given what I already know about your inclination towards theft I must warn you that you will be very much on probation. The first sign I see that you are using the same unscrupulous methods you used to gain access to my parking space in your work, you will be out of a job.’
‘I made a mistake—’ Giselle tried to defend herself, but Saul wasn’t in any mood to be compassionate.
‘A very big mistake,’ he agreed. ‘And you will be making another if you don’t show some honesty now and tell me why you turned down two prestigious jobs. I won’t have someone whose morals I find suspect working for me in a position of trust.’
His meaning was perfectly plain, and it caused Giselle to blench.
Watching her, Saul felt confident that now she would tell him what he could do with his job. That was certainly what he wanted her to do. Loath as he was to admit it, somehow or other she had got under his skin in a way that he was finding increasingly hard to ignore—like an annoying, irritating, unignorable itch that needed to be scratched. He didn’t want that kind of intrusion in his life.
Giselle was trying not to let Saul see how vulnerable and anxious she felt. He wanted her to hand in her notice, she suspected. But she was not going to do so. She couldn’t.
His accusations might be unjust, and she might feel angry, but anger was a luxury that she couldn’t afford, Giselle was forced to concede.
She took a deep breath and said, as calmly as she could, ‘Very well. I will tell you.’
Her response was not what Saul had been expecting—and very definitely not what he had wanted.
Lifting her head, Giselle continued, ‘I turned down the other jobs because the great-aunt who brought me up now needs full-time care, and in addition to helping fund that I want to be here to ensure that the care is as good as the care she gave me. I can’t expect her to leave Yorkshire after she’s spent her whole life there, but I do expect myself to be here for her, doing everything I can to ensure that she has all the comfort and care she deserves. Working in London means that I can see her regularly. If I worked abroad that wouldn’t be possible.’
Against all his own expectations Saul felt an unwilling tug of grudging respect—and something more.
‘You were brought up by your great-aunt? What happened to your parents?’ he felt impelled to ask, the words almost dragged from him against his will.
‘They died, and I was orphaned,’ Giselle answered as steadily as she could, proud of how calm she managed to keep her voice.
Damn, damn. Saul swore inwardly as the result of his forcefulness was made plain to him along with something else—something that touched the deepest part of him, no matter how much he might wish that it did not. That single word ‘orphaned’ had such resonance for him—such personal and deep-rooted private emotional history.
He might have forced a confession from Giselle Freeman, but he wasn’t going to be able to force a resignation from her, given what she had just told him.
He started to turn away from her, and then something stopped him. ‘How old were you when…when you lost your parents?’
His voice was low, the words betraying something which in another man Giselle might almost have thought was a hushed, respectful hesitancy. But this man would never show that kind of compassion to anyone, Giselle was sure—much less someone he disliked as much as he had made it plain he disliked her.
‘Seven.’ Well, nearly seven. But there hadn’t been a party to celebrate her November birthday that year—just as there hadn’t been the year before either. A picture slid remorselessly into her head: coffins, two of them, one for her mother and one for the baby brother who had been buried with her, his coffin heaped with white flowers. And the house she had returned to with her father, filled with the agonising silence of his grief and her own guilt. She had longed so much for her father to hold her and tell her that it wasn’t her fault, but instead he had turned away from her, and she’d known he did blame her, just as she blamed herself. They had never talked about what had happened. Instead he had let her great-aunt take her away because he couldn’t bear the sight of her.
Seven! A thought, a fleeting memory of himself at that age, hazy and shadowed: his mother laughing as she stroked a smear of dirt from his cheek, how as that child he had felt his love for her and his happiness because she was there spill out of him to mix with the sunshine.