Sarah practically tripped over her too-high heels as she went to fix his tea. The conference room had built-in cabinets with glossy granite counters at one end of the room where a tea and coffee service was always set out for meetings, along with any food that had been ordered. There would of a certainty be some type of breakfast pastries – bagels, muffins, croissants – along with fruit and juice, but Ian rarely partook of such things. He was extremely disciplined about his diet and exercise regime, and seldom allowed himself sweets. It was one of the many reasons he was in better physical condition now than he’d ever been in his life – including his years at Oxford, where he’d been on the boxing team and won the heavyweight title three years in a row.

His tea was placed in front of him by Sarah’s none-too-steady hand, and some of the liquid sloshed over onto the table.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Gregson,” gushed Sarah. “Just let me get something to clean that up.”

“It’s fine,” he assured her rather abruptly. “I’m rather anxious to get the meeting started so don’t bother about it. Thank you.”

“Oh. Okay. I’ll just – um, take notes then.”

Ian merely arched a brow at her, until she got the hint and hastily tottered over to her seat at the other end of the room. He noticed with a discreet and wholly impersonal eye that Sarah’s dress was rather on the short side, and made a mental note to have Andrew remind their newest team member about proper office attire. Ian knew that many in the office viewed his guidelines as rather archaic and bordering on male chauvinism, but he had good reasons behind enforcing such strict rules. For one thing, in order to maintain the very, very high standard that the Gregson name was associated with, it was critical for both the company’s properties and its employees to always appear classy and well kept.

As for the other – well, while Ian himself was more than capable of keeping his mind focused solely on business and not letting a pretty, provocatively dressed female distract him, the same couldn’t be said for some of the other male employees. In particular, the detested Jason Baldwin, who was married to Ian’s cousin Charlotte, and who had unfortunately been dumped on Ian a few months ago after yet another complaint had been filed against him. His Uncle Richard – Jason’s father-in-law - had had to sweep the incidences under the rug in order to avoid damaging sexual harassment suits, and this most recent case had been volatile enough to warrant shipping Jason and his family to California all the way from London.

Ian had not been pleased at this development, and especially when he’d been obliged to place Jason into an executive position. He had never liked his cousin’s husband, finding Jason to be on the crude side without much polish or class, and Ian suspected that Jason had married the rather plain, almost dowdy Charlotte largely for her money and connections. But Charlotte seemed happy enough with the bastard, and they had three children together by now. Ian wondered with a disgusted shake of his head if his poor, naïve cousin even suspected that her rat of a husband cheated on her on a regular basis, and that his roving eye had been the reason for their sudden move to San Francisco.

Even now, Jason was rather boldly flirting with Morgan Cottrell, and Ian thought dourly that the pair of them deserved each other. If rumor could be believed, the two of them had been sleeping together on and off for months now, not long after Jason had arrived in California. Ian wasn’t sure what was more appalling – that Jason so flagrantly betrayed his marriage vows, or that Morgan would chase after a married man. Whether it was due to being hopelessly old-fashioned, or simply being a man of exceedingly high moral standards, Ian knew that he would never become involved with a married woman, no matter how attracted to her he might be.

He took a sip of his tea, grimacing as he realized that the liquid was at best lukewarm, overly sweet, and weak. He pushed the cup and saucer aside, wondering why most Americans had little to no idea how to brew a proper cup of tea.

As the meeting progressed, Ian’s discreet, but all-seeing gaze would flick around the room from time to time to observe each person present. His father had taught him this particular skill a long time ago – how to observe people without them ever being aware they were being watched. It was a skill he was now something of an expert at, and that he had used many times to his advantage. He noticed the rapt attention on the face of one executive, boredom on another’s, annoyance on a third’s. And he frowned while noticing that Jason’s attention had suddenly shifted from Morgan to Sarah, eyeing the young admin assistant in a very assessing manner.

‘Randy bastard,’ Ian muttered to himself. ‘If he thinks he’s going to take up where he left off in London, he’s got quite another thought coming to him. Time to have a word or two with Jason and make sure he keeps his dick in his pants around here. I’m not willing to deal with the threat of a sexual harassment suit.’

Ian jotted a quick note to himself to also place a call to the very discrete, very efficient private investigator he’d had occasion to use from time to time since arriving in San Francisco. Not for personal reasons, of course, though keeping tabs on his lecherous cousin-in-law could be considered both business and personal. In any event, it wouldn’t hurt to be kept apprised of Jason’s actions, especially since Ian didn’t trust him in the least.

He also noticed, with mingled annoyance and dismay, that Sarah’s own gaze continued to drift his way far too often, and in far too hopeful of a manner. He sighed, realizing that he would likely have to take more extreme measures with the newest member of his management support team, freezing her off without seeming too much of a cold-hearted bastard. He always made sure to treat the team members with respect and consideration, to be polite and pleasant, but at the same time making sure to keep things impersonal and strictly business. With the starry-eyed Sarah, however, it seemed that he would have to be a bit less pleasant and far more impersonal until she took the hint and stopped mooning over him.

Even if the girl hadn’t been his employee, Ian would have paid her scant attention. She simply wasn’t his type, any more than Alicia or Morgan or any other female in this office was. Oh, Sarah was pretty enough, he supposed, with long chestnut hair, a small, heart-shaped face, and a trim figure that was too lean for Ian’s liking. But there was nothing terribly special about her, nothing in her face or body or personality that made her stand out from the dozens – hundreds – of other women who had crossed his path over the years.