‘I would not dominate it!’ Perdita’s dark eyes sparkled with temper.

‘Oh, yes, you would,’ he said coolly. ‘They would all be laughing and having fun, but you would be the one making it happen, and making sure that they were all looking at you.’

Perdita eyed him with dislike. She didn’t want to admit that there was a certain familiarity about the scenario he had just described. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling to think that a perfect stranger could see through her quite so easily.

‘How come you know so much about it, anyway?’ she demanded.

He shrugged. ‘I’m interested in people.’

‘That’s not very panther of you,’ she said waspishly, and he grinned, a surprising smile that made him look suddenly younger.

‘All right, I’m interested in getting the most out of the people who work for me,’ he conceded.

‘That sounds more like it,’ sniffed Perdita, who was still feeling oddly jolted by the suddenness of his smile. It had really been quite startling to see how completely it transformed him, and then was gone again. ‘You seem very well-informed,’ she added with just a trace of sarcasm. ‘Have you been on courses like this before?’

‘A few,’ he said carelessly. ‘What about you?’

‘No, this is my first.’

‘You surprise me. Most firms take management training seriously these days.’

‘My ex-boss didn’t think they were worth spending any money on. There was talk about an assertiveness course a couple of years ago, but my colleagues threatened to strike if I was allowed to go on it. The feeling was that if I were any more assertive than I already was I would be unbearable. All nonsense, of course,’ said Perdita, who had told this as a story against herself often enough now to be able to treat it as a joke just as everyone else did.