Everyone continued to stare at her as she made a beeline for the empty seat. She couldn’t work out if they were expecting her. It was hard to imagine Luc overlooking a detail like that when he was so scrupulous in every other area of his life.
A thin man with thin lips waited until her bottom was almost touching the seat before telling her, ‘That chair is reserved for Senhor Marcelos.’
‘My apologies,’ she said, shooting up again.
She had replied in English, the universal hotel language Thin Lips had used, which allowed people to confer easily with colleagues of various nationalities.
Everyone was trying even harder not to look at her and she felt bad for embarrassing them. She hadn’t planned to cause such an upheaval on her first day.
‘Sit here, next to me,’ a girl about her own age offered, shuffling her own chair along to make space. ‘Grab one of those chairs against the wall.’
One of the men jumped up, and with a smile carried the chair to the table for her. She was just thanking him when the door swung open and there stood Luc. He stared straight at her. Then he stared at the man who’d had the temerity to hold her chair. ‘Problem?’ he rapped.
‘No problem,’ she said, aiming for calm as everyone stilled around her. Her voice sounded loud in the sudden silence. It was like the moment in a drama before the gun went off, but she made a point of thanking her Good Samaritan before settling into her place. Her heart might be threatening to beat its way out of her chest at the sight of Luc looking hotter than was reasonable in a dark, impeccably tailored suit, teamed with a crisp white shirt and grey silk tie, but she had no intention of allowing this particular rampaging barbarian to know how profoundly he affected her.
She needn’t have worried. Luc didn’t look at her again—not for the whole of the meeting. Taking the chair she had recently vacated, he called the meeting to order and that was that.
Fine. As she had decided back in her room, she would do this with or without him. She had no intention of being browbeaten into her place.
What was her place exactly? Emma wondered as the meeting carried on without her involvement. Everyone else seemed to have a list of tasks to complete, while she had nothing.
‘Excuse me,’ she called out as everyone got up to leave the table. ‘What are my tasks for today?’
There was an embarrassed silence, during which Thin Lips covered his mouth as if he was hiding a smile.
‘Shadow me,’ Luc said in a voice that rang around the room. He glanced at her impatiently, as if to suggest she shouldn’t need to be told what to do when it was obvious.
To him maybe.
Hearing his tone, her colleagues had straightened their backs and adopted purposeful expressions. Even Thin Lips had stopped sniggering.
‘You’ll soon get the hang of things,’ the dark-haired girl she had been sitting next to told Emma discreetly.
What things? That was the question, Emma thought as her companion introduced herself as Karina.
‘Emma,’ she said with a smile.
‘Everyone knows who you are,’ Karina explained quietly, shooting a mischievous smile at Emma as their colleagues filed out of the room. ‘No point in pretending, is there?’ Karina added with a shrug.
‘None at all,’ Emma agreed, feeling she might have found a new friend, though she would have liked time to explain her situation as it truly was.
Would she? Would she really? And what would her colleagues think then?
‘What?’ Luc demanded, frowning, when the line of people waiting to have a last word with him had finally shrunk to nil, leaving just Emma and him alone in the room.
‘You said I would be shadowing you,’ she reminded him.
Luc appeared to consider this, as if he had forgotten all about it, and all about her. ‘Did I?’
As he frowned she thought again how devastatingly attractive he was. He was like a dark angel fallen to earth. He made it so easy for her to make excuses for how natural it was that she should want him to notice her, to spend time with her, when logically she should tell him what she thought. He’d brought her here under false pretences, and now, like a pregnant mare, she was to be kept calm and quiet and safe until she was ready to foal. The offer to shadow him at work was just another of his sops to keep her quiet.
‘You can shadow me, but not today,’ he said, seeing the impatience she had tried so hard to keep off her face.
‘When?’ she prompted, standing in front of him when he moved to leave the room.
‘When it’s convenient for me.’ He made an impatient gesture. ‘I’m not sure exactly when. Talk to my secretary. She keeps my diary.’