Deceiving Her Boss by Elizabeth Powers Read Free Book Online

kitchen
table, drinking coffee.  Paul looked up at his fiancée's roommate and shook his
head. 
     
"Wow.  You look a little different than you do around here on the
weekends, sweetheart.  I was surprised to see you looking so... well...."
     
"Awful.  You can say it, Paul.  It's deliberate."
     
"I gathered that.  But why?"
     
"Because the last three secretaries that Sean Greyson hired were all interested
in him, or at least in his wealth.  He finally refused to hire anyone under the
age of fifty, or at least happily married.  I figured that if I could show him
that I was just a competent but sexless young woman, interested only in my job
and my cats, he'd give me a chance.  So I wear makeup that makes my skin
sallow, I dress in shapeless suits or dresses, and I talk to him about nothing
except work.  I do absolutely nothing to appear attractive to him, and nothing
to call attention to the fact that I'm female."
     
Anna spoke up then, rolling her eyes.  "And she's leaving out the fact
that her last boss thought that secretarial duties included out-of-office
activities."
     
Paul looked closely at Allie then, and said, "The man may be many things,
but he is not an idiot.  And given the way that he reacted tonight when he
found you talking with me out on the patio, I'm not sure that your strategy has
worked."
     
"Oh, it worked all right.  He just thinks that you're seducing the poor
homely secretary in an attempt to learn all his secrets."
     
"Oh please.  Did you tell him that I'm madly in love with your
roommate?"
     
"I figured that would give him even more ammunition to distrust me.  I
just told him that I wasn't interested in you, and told him that he was being insulting."
     
"And he took that well, did he?" Paul asked with a grin.
     
"Oh, about as well as you can imagine.  But at least he acknowledged that
he was being an idiot, and let me leave."
     
"You should have left with me."
     
"Yeah, if I didn't want a job waiting for me on Monday morning,"
Allie grinned.  "I'm going to go take a good long bath, and then I'm going
to bed.  Have a good night, you two."
     
     
    FOUR
     
     
On Monday morning, Allie was in the office early, trying to get through some
filing before the workday officially started.  She was already fielding calls
and answering e-mails when her boss walked in at 8:30.
     
"Good morning, Mr. Greyson," she said politely, putting a caller on
hold.
     
"Good morning, Allie.  How was the rest of your weekend?" he asked,
equally politely.
     
"Fine, thank you.  Gregory Liles' secretary called this morning to see if
we could move your meeting back by a few hours.  I was able to do that, but I
had to make a few changes on your schedule for the day to fit it in.  There's a
print-out of your calendar on your desk.  And I need you to sign the Arrowfund
contract before you do anything so that I can have it notarized and sent out
this morning."
     
Sean nodded.  "I'll do that.  Listen, Allie.  About Friday night..."
     
"Nothing to talk about, Mr. Greyson," she said shortly.  "And
I've got Dan Peters on line one for you."
     
Sean gave his assistant a hard look, but just nodded.  “When is my last meeting
today?”
     
“You’re done at 4:00 today, but you have a dinner date tonight at 7:00 at
Guillermo’s.”
     
“I’m going to need to cancel that.  Can you…”
     
“Make the call and send flowers.  Yes, sir.  I’ll take care of it.”
     
“Thanks, Allie.  I may need you to work late with me tonight, but only if you
don’t have other plans.”
     
Allie nodded, and smiled.  “My plans tonight were doing laundry and cleaning
the kitchen, so you’re in luck.  I’m happy to stay.”
     
“Great.  Go ahead and put Dan through,” he said with a nod, heading back to his
office.
     
After calling Guillermo’s to cancel her boss’ reservation, Allie called his
dinner date for the night.  She hated making these calls, but the women that
Sean dated seemed to