A Very Personal Assistant Read Online Free PDF Page A

been
plagued with just a couple of hours ago seemed to have been erased by the
spiritual fire of orgasm.
    And her strangely serene relationship with Patrick was
unaltered and yet at the same time better somehow. The sex didn’t complicate
things. It just seemed as if the memories of it were bedded in a deep quiet
place that she could draw on when she needed revivification.
    It was clear that the dynamics of their working association
were going to remain unruffled, too. The cottage was a special place—neither
work, nor home. Time out of time. And they returned to it several times in the
next few busy weeks. Always after a taxing time, when Miranda had had to grapple
with curmudgeonly opponents at high-powered meetings. She’d return to the
office, swearing and cursing even if she’d achieved her objective—and she’d see
that sweet knowing twinkle in Patrick’s eyes.
    At home, she thought of him sometimes, perhaps more than she
cared to admit, but life was busy. Work took most of her energy, and what little
social life she had was with an established group of friends of both sexes. No
dating.
    A few times, she’d thought about ringing Patrick, asking him
out, but the specter of workplace complications hung over the question. She’d
seen people get too involved and crash and burn in ridiculously farcical
flames.
    One day, after a bitch of a morning, grappling with a
delegation from the firm’s new Swiss partnership—a set of tough negotiators for
all their superficially polite amenability—she was at the end of her tether. For
once, when she returned from the meeting, Patrick wasn’t there, and that absence
infuriated her.
    She flung her binder across the room and it knocked a tower of
document baskets and a potted plant all over the floor.
    Patrick wasn’t chained to his desk, she knew that. There were
plenty of legitimate reasons why he could be elsewhere, and she’d even asked him
to get some old documents from the file room….
    Yet still, she raged, “Where are you, you fuck! Just when I
need you, you go AWOL…you and those bloody Swiss bastards. Men, you’re all the
fucking same!”
    It was nonsense, and ridiculous, and she knew it, but she
wanted to knock everything off his desk, and send it flying, and smash all the
other plants on the shelves around the office, too.
    “Fuck!” she growled again, stomping across the room and
swooping down to pick up papers.
    “Well, if that’s what you want, boss, I guess another long
lunch is in order.”
    Her heart leapt at the sound of his voice, in a most alarming
way. It wasn’t a sex thing somehow, just relief, huge relief, that he was
here.
    “Yes, it fucking well is!” she countered, still down, a sheaf
of muddled paper in her hand. Of course they’d all had to slide out of the
folders, hadn’t they?
    Teetering in a crouch, on her smart heels, she glowered over
her shoulder at him, then suddenly overbalanced, landing on the carpet on her
bottom. Another howl of rage rose to her lips, but within an instant, Patrick
was at her side, helping her to rise, and the anger seemed to steam away like
morning mist and she found herself laughing along with him as his strong arm
brought her back up onto her feet.
    “Another rough meeting, I guess?” he said, reaching out and
tucking her hair behind her ears in an easy natural gesture.
    Miranda’s heart did another wild lurch. He never touched her in
the office. It was part of their unspoken ground rules. A code they’d somehow
formulated without ever once discussing it. She should have been even angrier
with him for breaching it, but instead the tiny contact felt exquisite. And she
ached for more of it, even as his hand withdrew.
    “Absolute shit. Those bastards from the Swiss partnership are
the most devious and conniving operators on the face of the planet. They project
this nice, reasonable facade but it’s a total sham. They’re all sharks.” She
fussed with her hair herself, to cover the way she was