CHAPTER ONE

      THE lift doors slid open, and out stepped Louisa Dennison, bang on time. As always.

      Watching her from across the lobby, Patrick was conscious of a familiar spurt of something close to irritation. Dammit, couldn’t the woman be five seconds late for once?

      Here she came, in her prim little grey suit, whose skirt stopped precisely at the knee, not a hair of her dark head out of place. She looked sensible, discreet, well groomed, the epitome of a perfect PA.

      Patrick knew that he was being irrational. He had been lucky to inherit such an efficient assistant when he’d taken over Schola Systems. Lou—her name was the only relaxed thing about her, as far as he was concerned—was a model secretary. She was poised, punctual, professional. He never caught her gossiping or making personal phone calls in the office. She showed no interest whatsoever in his personal life, so Patrick never felt obliged to ask about hers. No, he couldn’t ask for a better PA.

      It was just that sometimes he found himself wishing that she would make a mistake, just a little one. A typing error, say, that he could pick her up on, or a file that she couldn’t lay her hand on immediately. Maybe she could ladder her tights, or spill her coffee. Do something to prove that she was human.

      But she never did.

      The truth was that Patrick found Lou secretly intimidating at times, and it annoyed him. If there was any intimidating to be done, he was the one who liked to do it. Grown men had been known to tremble when he walked into the room, and his reputation as a ruthless executive was usually enough to make people tread warily around him.

      Not Lou Dennison, though. She just looked at him with those dark eyes of hers. Her expression was usually one of complete indifference, but sometimes he suspected it also held a quiet irony that riled Patrick more than he cared to admit. It wasn’t even as if there was anything particularly special about her, he thought with a tinge of resentment. She was attractive enough, but she had to be at least forty-five, and it showed in the lines around her eyes.

      That cool, composed look had never done anything for him, anyway. He liked his women more feminine, more appealing, less in control. And younger.

      ‘I’m not late, am I?’ Lou asked as she came up to him, and Patrick repressed the urge to glance ostentatiously at his watch and announce that she was a good fifteen seconds overdue.

      ‘Of course not.’

      He forced a smile and reminded himself that it wasn’t actually Lou’s fault that high winds had forced the closure of the east coast line that evening, that it was too far to an airport, or that he would rather be having dinner with almost anyone else. There had been no way he could have got out of asking her to share a meal with him since they were both stranded, but he was hoping they could get it over with quickly and then go their separate ways for the rest of the evening.

      He nodded in the direction of the restaurant. ‘Shall we go straight in? Or would you like a drink first?’

      The drink option was such a patent afterthought that Lou was left in little doubt that Patrick was looking forward to their meal with as little pleasure as she was. Clearly she was supposed to meekly agree to eating straight away, but Lou didn’t feel like it.

      She’d had a long day. It had begun with a five o’clock alarm call, progressed to getting two squabbling adolescents