Free Blueprint for Love (Choc Lit) by Henriette Gyland

him upset him more than he cared to admit.
              He swore silently to himself. They had to talk about it, and soon.
              Frowning, he looked up as his father entered his office and closed the door firmly behind him.
              ‘Dad? What can I do for you?’
              ‘It’s that girl,’ said George. ‘Your new secretary. Hazel. I want to talk about her.’
              ‘What’s she done now? I mean, apart from peeping through your windows.’
              ‘Nothing.’ George crossed his arms.
              ‘Then what’s the problem?’
              Through the glass partition, Jonathan glanced across the office to the far end where Hazel was sitting. She was tapping a pencil against her chin – something he’d come to view as her thinking pose – then she quickly scribbled something on a yellow Post-it note and stuck it to the front of a folder. She seemed completely absorbed in what she was doing.
              ‘I don’t trust her,’ George continued.
              Jonathan’s eyes flew back to his father. ‘Because of last night?’
              ‘That’s only part of it. For starters, she wasn’t the one we expected, was she?’
              ‘The other secretary had an accident, and the agency sent a replacement,’ Jonathan pointed out.
              ‘Yes, but don’t you think that was a little convenient? One girl happens to break her leg, and the agency happens to have another suitable applicant on their books?’
              Jonathan smiled wearily. Ever since his father had been swindled out of his share of the research company by his unscrupulous partner, he’d been paranoid. But whenever he broached the subject, as gently as he could, George’s temper would flare up and they wouldn’t speak for days.
              ‘I’m sure it wasn’t so convenient for the girl who broke her leg,’ he said, with only a hint of sarcasm.
              George wasn’t listening. ‘What if she’s in cahoots with that other woman, that catty blonde?’
              ‘Tabitha,’ Jonathan corrected him automatically. He felt uncomfortable when his father criticised anyone in his employ, even if there was a good reason. He looked at Tabitha, saw her flicking her golden hair, and pouting and posing as if she knew she was being watched. Then he looked across to pixie-haired Hazel again, whose loyalty to him had made her want to tackle, single-handedly, what she thought was a burglar. He remembered the wounded look in her soft brown eyes last night; it had shaken him to see her like that, and even more so that he’d been the cause of her anguish. She was the polar opposite to Tabitha.
              ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Like chalk and cheese, those two. Besides, Tabitha has never made any secret of her old job with the oil company.’
              ‘Uh-huh.’ George raised his eyebrows. ‘Ever asked her why she left them?’
              ‘She didn’t approve of the way they were doing business. In her shoes, neither would I.’
              ‘And you believed her? What if she’s an industrial spy? What if this Hazel person is one too? Apart from the fact that I don’t want people around when I conduct dangerous experiments in that building, I’m not having anyone steal my invention. These new bio-friendly fuels are meant to benefit the whole world, not just some unscrupulous company.’
              ‘You haven’t succeeded yet, Dad.’
              ‘That’s beside the point. And I don’t want anyone in there, trampling all my plants either. Then how will I be able to extract any oils from them? You mark my words, someone will be after my invention. How can you be sure it’s not either of them?’
              ‘I can’t,’ Jonathan admitted, ‘but if I go around suspecting my employees of