Assignment: Baby. Jessica HartЧитать онлайн книгу.

      CHAPTER ONE

      Fresh from her success in last Friday’s award ceremony, Britain’s favourite redhead, TV presenter Fionnula Jenkins, arrives at London’s hottest restaurant, Cupiditas, with Gabriel Stearne, founder of US construction giant Contraxa (above). The couple met in New York, where Fionnula attended a charity ball sponsored by Contraxa. Entrepreneur Gabriel’s activities are more usually reported in the financial pages, but since arriving in London he has been seen out several times with Fionnula, who refused to confirm speculation that he had moved to England to be with her. ‘We just enjoy each other’s company,’ she said.

      TESS had barely finished reading the caption when the door to the inner office opened, and she shoved the paper hurriedly out of sight in the wastepaper bin beneath her desk.

      By the time Gabriel appeared, shrugging himself into an overcoat, she was innocently absorbed in typing up the letters he had dictated earlier.

      ‘I’m going to a meeting with our insurers,’ he said, brusquely buttoning his coat. ‘Have those letters ready by the time I get back. I want a copy of the design report and the architects’ files on my desk. All of them. In date order.’

      ‘Yes, Mr Stearne,’ said Tess.

      Her voice was cool, with just a hint of a Scottish accent. Gabriel eyed her sardonically. She was watching him over the spectacles she wore when she was working, pen poised to note his instructions, the very model of a perfect PA.

      In the four weeks she had worked for him he had learned only three things about Tess Gordon. She was exceptionally efficient. She was always immaculately groomed.

      And she didn’t like him one little bit.

      Too bad, thought Gabriel indifferently. He wasn’t here to be liked. He was here to drag this company into the twenty-first century and give himself the toe-hold he needed into Europe, and worrying about what the icy Ms Gordon thought about him was very low down his priority list.

      ‘When you’ve done that, you can send an e-mail reminding all staff that the phones are not for their personal use,’ he went on in a hard voice. ‘That goes for e-mail as well. A monitoring system is going to be introduced shortly, so they’d better start getting used to it now.’

      An order like that would no doubt cause a furore, but Tess didn’t react. She just made a note on her pad and kept her inevitable reflections to herself.

      ‘Any messages?’ Gabriel asked curtly.

      ‘Your brother rang. He asked if you could ring him back.’

      Gabriel grunted, and privately Tess marvelled that he could be related to the irreverent American with the voice like warm treacle who had rung while his brother was closeted in his office. ‘No calls,’ Gabriel had said, and after a month Tess knew better than to try and interrupt him, no matter how important the caller might be.

      Greg, as he had introduced himself, was evidently an incorrigible flirt. Tess, braced to dislike anyone even remotely associated with Gabriel, had found him charming. He had been warm, funny, sympathetic…everything his brother was not!

      Unaware—or, more likely, uncaring—of the unflattering comparisons she had drawn, Gabriel was checking that he had all the relevant papers for his meeting in his attaché case. ‘Anything else?’

      ‘No,’ said Tess, but she hesitated and Gabriel looked up from the case. He had very light, very keen grey eyes that were a startling