A Stranger's Kiss

from a new box. She tapped on Adam’s door and opened it.
    ‘Ready?’ He didn’t wait for her answer. She had hardly seated herself before he began. ‘I want this retyped.’ She recognised the report from the previous evening. He looked up. ‘Preferably without any mistakes.’
    ‘I’ll do my best, Adam.’ Her humble tone earned her a sharp look.
    He worked swiftly through a pile of correspondence. ‘Tell these people no. No. No. Ask for more details,’ he said, tossing letters at her. And so it went on. Eventually they reached the bottom of the pile and he leaned back and linked his hands behind his head. ‘I’m going to dictate a report that I need as soon as you can manage.’ He raised an eyebrow in polite query. ‘Today, perhaps?’
    ‘Perhaps,’ she agreed, half-hopefully and once more received the benefit of a searching glance.
    He began to dictate, without reference to notes and at such a speed that Tara wondered, in a brief moment when he paused for breath, if he was simply reciting from memory in an effort to have her begging for mercy. Her pencil flew over page after page until, at last, he reached his conclusion.
    She looked up then, waiting for the next onslaught. ‘Is that everything?’
    ‘It should keep you busy for the rest of the morning. Let me have a draft of that before you do anything else.’
    ‘It’s already half-past-twelve,’ she pointed out. ‘And according to your secretary’s diary you have an appointment at one o’clock. With Jane.’
    ‘So I have.’ She made a move to go. ‘Oh, and Tara, while I remember.’ She paused before his desk. ‘I don’t want to see any of your admirers, desperate or otherwise falling over themselves in my office. You will make certain they are all aware of that fact?’
    Tara was in grave danger of losing her self-control. In danger of slapping Adam Blackmore’s imperious, overbearing face so hard that all chance of gaining his company’s business would be lost forever. That thought alone kept the smile pinned to her mouth.
    ‘I’ll issue a bulletin for the one o’clock news. Just to be certain,’ she said, her voice somehow retaining a teasing lightness she was far from feeling.
    ‘There are so many?’ A spark that might have been anger flashed in the shadowed depths of his eyes. ‘I leave the method of broadcast entirely up to you, Tara. Just make sure you do it in your own time.’
    ‘Yes, sir,’ she said. But very quietly.
    * * *
    Tara did not consider the possibility of taking an hour for lunch. Or even half an hour. Lunch would have to wait. There was too much at stake to waste time eating and she set to work, rattling out a draft of the report that Adam had dictated.
    She found the original version of the report that needed corrections and dealt with that, too, before hunger finally drove her in search of a sandwich. She had been gone barely fifteen minutes, but when she returned it was to find Adam Blackmore fuming in her office.
    ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he demanded, before she had hung up her coat.
    ‘Lunch?’ she offered.
    He stared at his watch. ‘Lunch! Is this the usual length of lunch break your so-called superior secretaries take?’
    ‘About average,’ she agreed. ‘If you’re looking for your report I left the draft on your desk.’
    He turned and walked into his office without a word.
    ‘Thank you, Tara. You’re a treasure, Tara,’ she murmured to herself. Then she began to tackle the pile of correspondence he had given her. Despite an endless stream of interruptions from Adam she had finished by five. He threw the blotter of signed letters on her desk.
    ‘When you’ve got those away you can go,’ he said.
    ‘Go?’ For one appalling moment she thought he had decided that one day was enough, but before she could protest that he hadn’t given her a fair chance, he took the wind out of her sails.
    ‘I’ve a meeting this evening with the manufacturers for whom I prepared that report and I want you to take notes.’
    Whew… ‘Are you holding the meeting in the boardroom, or up here?’
    ‘Neither. The meeting is in Hammersmith. I’ll pick you up at six-thirty.’ He paused in the doorway that connected their offices. ‘It’s not inconvenient is it, Tara?’
    ‘And if it is?’ she asked.
    His mouth curved in an insolent smile. ‘Tough.’
    He didn’t wait to see the effect this response had on her, which was probably as well. She telephoned Beth to cancel their meeting