Oh-So-Sensible Secretary

strolled to open the door.

I could hear him exchanging chit-chat with Imelda and the photographer in the narrow hallway as I desperately tried to compose myself. I was horrified when I looked in the mirror to see that my hair was all over the place, my eyes huge and my lips swollen. I hardly recognised myself. I looked wild. I looked wanton.

I looked sexy.

I looked the part, just like Phin had said.

The next moment Phin was ushering Imelda into the room. She stopped when she saw me. ‘Hello,’ she said, obviously surprised.

‘Hello,’ I said weakly, and then remembered-far too late, I know-that I was the one who had set up this interview. I cleared my throat and stepped forward to shake her hand. ‘We’ve spoken on the phone,’ I said. ‘I’m Summer Curtis-Phin’s PA.’

‘Ah.’ Imelda looked amused, and when I followed her gaze I saw that she was looking at my shirt, which I had managed to button up all wrong in my haste.

Flushing, I made to fix the top button, and then realised that I was just going to get into an awful muddle unless I undid them all and started again. As Phin had no doubt intended.

‘Not just my PA,’ said Phin, coming to put his arm round my waist and pulling me into his side.

‘So I see,’ said Imelda dryly.

Her elegant brows lifted in surprise. I didn’t blame her. She must have known as well as I did that I wasn’t exactly Phin’s usual type, and I lost confidence abruptly. We’d never be able to carry this off. Not in front of someone as sharp as Imelda.

‘Shall I make coffee?’ I asked quickly, desperate to get out of the room. My heart was still crashing clumsily around in my chest, and I was having a lot of trouble breathing. I felt trembly and jittery, and I kept going hot and cold as if I had a fever.

Perhaps I did have a fever? I latched onto the thought as I filled the kettle with shaking hands. That would explain the giddiness, the way I had melted into Phin with barely a moment’s hesitation. My cheeks burned at the memory.

Not just my cheeks, to be honest.

When I came back in with a tray, having taken the opportunity to refasten my shirt and tuck myself in properly, Phin was leaning back on the sofa, looking completely relaxed. He pulled me down onto the sofa beside him. ‘Thanks, babe,’ he said, and rested a hand possessively on my thigh.

Babe? Ugh. I was torn between disgust and an agonising awareness of his hand touching my leg. It felt as if it were burning a hole through my trousers, and I was sure that when I took them off I would find an imprint of his palm scorched onto my skin.

‘So, Phin,’ said Imelda, when we had got the whole business of passing around the milk and sugar out of the way. ‘It sounds as if you’re making a lot of changes in your life right now. Does your new role at Gibson & Grieve mean you’re ready to stop travelling?’

‘I won’t stop completely,’ he said. ‘I’ve still got various programme commitments, and besides, I’m endlessly curious about the world. There are still so many wonderful places to see, and so many exciting things to do. I’m never going to turn my back on all that completely. Having said that, my father’s stroke did make me reassess my priorities. Gibson & Grieve is part of my life, and it feels good to be involved in the day to day running of it. It’s time for me to do my part, instead of leaving it all to my brother.

‘And then, of course, there’s Summer.’ He lifted my hand and pressed a kiss it. His lips were warm and sure, and a shiver travelled down my spine. I did my best to disguise it by shifting on the sofa, but I saw Imelda look at me. ‘She’s changed everything for me.’

‘You’re thinking of settling down?’ She made a moue of exaggerated disappointment. ‘That’s another of the most eligible bachelors off the available list!’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Phin, entwining his fingers with mine. ‘I was always afraid of the idea of settling down, but since I’ve met Summer it doesn’t seem so much like giving up my freedom as finding what I’ve been looking for all these years.’

You’ve got to admit he was good. No one could have guessed he’d been ranting about cushions and commitment only a few minutes earlier.

Imelda was lapping it all up, while I sat with a stupid smile on my face, not knowing what to do with my expression. Should I look besotted? Shy? Smug?

‘You’re a lucky woman.’ Imelda turned to me. ‘What’s it like knowing that half the women in the country would like to be in your place?’

I cleared my throat. ‘To be honest, it hasn’t sunk in yet. It’s still very new.’

‘But it feels absolutely right, doesn’t it?’ Phin put in.

He was doing so much better than me that I felt I should make an effort. ‘Yes,’ I said slowly, ‘funnily enough, it does.’

And then, bizarrely, it didn’t seem so difficult. I smiled at him, and he smiled back, and for a long moment we just looked at each other and there was nothing but the blueness of his eyes and the thud of my heart and the air shortening around us.

It took a pointed cough from Imelda to jerk me back to reality. With an effort, I dragged my eyes from Phin’s and tried to remember what I was supposed to be talking about. Phin, that was it. Phin and me and our supposed passion for each other.

‘We’re so different in lots of ways,’ I told Imelda, and the words seemed to come unbidden. ‘Phin isn’t at all the kind of guy I thought I would fall in love with, but it turns out that he’s exactly right for me.’

‘So it wasn’t love at first sight for you?’

‘No, he was just…my boss.’

‘And what made the difference for you?’

Images rushed through my head like the flickering pages of a book. Phin smiling. Phin wiping cream from my cheek. Phin pulling the clip from my hair. Phin’s mouth and Phin’s hands and the hard excitement of Phin’s body.

‘I…I don’t know,’ I said hesitantly. ‘I just looked at him one day and knew that I was in love with him.’

I thought it was pretty feeble, but Imelda was nodding as if she understood and looking positively dewy- eyed.

I was all set to relax then, but that was only the beginning. I still had to endure an excruciating photo session, posing cuddled up to Phin or looking at him adoringly, and my nerves were well and truly frayed by the time it was over. I tried to get out of the photographs, pleading that the article was about Phin, not me, but Imelda was adamant.

‘All our readers will want to see the lucky woman who has convinced Phin Gibson to settle down,’ she insisted.

I can tell you, I didn’t feel very lucky by the time we’d finished. I was exhausted by the effort of pretending to be in love with Phin, while simultaneously trying to convince him that all the touching and kissing was having no effect on me at all.

But at last it was over. We waved them off from the steps, and then Phin closed the door and grinned at me. ‘Very good,’ he said admiringly. ‘You practically had me convinced!’

‘You didn’t do badly yourself,’ I said. ‘You weren’t lying when you said you were a good actor.’

No harm in reminding him that I knew he had been acting.

‘If you can fool a hard-boiled journalist like Imelda, you should be able to fool Jonathan,’ Phin said.

Why hadn’t I remembered Jonathan before? I wondered uneasily. Jonathan was the reason I was doing this. I should have been thinking about him all morning, not about the sick, churning excitement I felt when Phin kissed me.

‘Let’s hope so,’ I said, as coolly as I could. I looked at my watch. ‘We’d better get back to the office.’

‘What’s the rush? Let’s have lunch first,’ said Phin. ‘We should celebrate.’

‘Celebrate what?’

‘A successful interview, for one thing. Promoting Gibson & Grieve’s family image. And let’s not forget our engagement.’

‘We’re not engaged,’ I said repressively.