Free Temporary Intrigue by Judy Huston Page A

don’t need him telling me how to live my life.”
    Sandra had shrugged.
    “I wouldn’t worry. You made your feelings pretty clear and he looks like a fast learner. Sexy accent, too,” she’d added wickedly.
    Very.
    Dimity finished a letter and looked at the clock again. It wasn’t worth starting more work until after the coffee break. With a few minutes to go before that happened she checked her emails then called up a search engine, typed in “overweight beagle” and began looking for advice on Bert’s diet. She hardly noticed Amanda leaving for morning tea.
    A throat cleared. Behind her were Melissa and Gail. Both were staring at the picture on her monitor, showing a floppy-eared beagle curled up in a basket.
    Dimity flicked back to the emails.
    “This is our marketing manager, Gail Addison,” Melissa said quickly. “We didn’t expect her back until tomorrow but the workshops finished early. This is our new temp, Gail – Dimity Forbes.”
    Getting up to shake hands, Dimity entertained a wild hope that Gail wouldn’t recognise her. It was, of course, too much to wish for. Gail, all corporate in a black pantsuit and white shirt, also wore the outraged expression Dimity remembered from their past two encounters.
    “We don’t encourage wasting time on the internet,” she said by way of greeting, her hand barely touching Dimity’s before retreating as if afraid of contracting the plague. Cold blue eyes stared at Dimity’s, which were losing their blackness and acquiring a yellowish tinge, then raked across the disorderly heap of papers on the desk. “Come into my office straight after lunch and I’ll give you some work to go on with.”
    Dimity nodded demurely, resisting a strong temptation to snap to attention and bellow “Ma’am! Yes, Ma’am!” Gail stalked into her office. Melissa threw Dimity a sympathetic look and took off in her wake.
    “Did you check that person’s credentials before you–”
    The door closed on Gail’s voice. Dimity raised her eyes to the ceiling, thanking her lucky stars that she had kept to the truth in her CV and the intranet spiel. Otherwise Gail would probably be summoning the fraud squad.
    Sitting down again, she blew out her cheeks in a sigh of regret for what had been, before thinking apprehensively of what was to come.
    Well, she’d worked for pains in the past and survived. It was unfortunate, though, that Gail by association would be a constant reminder of Josh, just as Dimity was almost at the stage of being able to put him out of her thoughts for whole minutes at a time.
    At a few seconds past two, following a rather depressing sandwich lunch in a nearby park while she kept a close eye on the time, she ventured into Gail’s inner sanctum. From an immaculate office Gail somehow managed to extract a mountain of documents requiring typing, filing, mailing and various other kinds of attention.
    “Now,” she went on, while Dimity staggered under the weight of work in her arms, “is everything organised for the reception?”
    “Reception?” Dimity racked her brains.
    Gail clicked her tongue in irritation.
    “I assume you’ve booked the hotel function room and organised the catering? I’ll need a confirmation. And please do something about your desk. Our policy is Clear Surfaces.”
    Dismissing Dimity with an imperious wave of her hand she picked up her phone and began snapping orders at some unfortunate person on the other end of the line.
    “Should we fasten our seatbelts or what?” Dimity whispered, passing Amanda’s desk. Amanda’s only reply was a wan smile.
    After tidying her desk by the simple expedient of shoving everything into drawers, Dimity followed her instinct and tackled Gail’s work in reverse order. Her judgment proved right when Gail appeared an hour later, demanding to know the progress of the item that had been on the bottom of the pile.
    “All finished,” Dimity told her with an angelic smile, her triumph sweetened by the flash of