An independent woman, wealthy in her own right, who wasn’t hankering to be swept off her feet and fed nonsense about happy endings.
It would be a challenge finding such a woman but since when did he ever shy away from a challenge? And, once his grandmother accepted that he was sincere and serious about finding a life partner more suitable than the women he had dated in the past, she would be happy and would easily move past the small matter of his so-called broken engagement to Abby.
In the meantime, this charade was essential. He would never be able to live with himself if the single most important person in his life were to slide into irreversible depression because of him. And the charade would only be possible because of Abby.
Which didn’t mean that he was going to trust her to stick to the guidelines.
Not everyone was as strong-minded as he was. He knew himself and knew exactly what he was capable of. It was a strength that would ensure he would never be vulnerable, and he liked that.
‘Let me go and check on my grandmother,’ he said, standing up and stretching, flexing his muscles. ‘She’s probably got lost in reminiscing over old photos while hunting down my mother’s jewellery. I’ll make sure she’s okay and then we can finish this conversation outside.’
Abby watched, unwillingly fascinated at the latent strength of his lean, muscular body. She lowered her eyes and nodded. ‘Shall I meet you out...er...there?’
‘There is seating on the veranda overlooking the gardens at the back. If you use that door—’ he nodded to the kitchen door ‘—you just need to circle to the left, directly facing the swimming pool. I’ll see you there in ten. And, Abby...grab yourself another drink or anything else you want from the fridge.’
‘Think I might need sustenance for the conversation ahead of me?’ she quipped and Gabriel grinned, that slow, amused, unconsciously wildly sexy grin that made all her bones turn to water, something she had managed quite successfully to fend off for two years but which she was finding impossible to ignore now.
He’d always admired her understated intelligence but he was seeing that, unleashed, her dry sense of humour was strangely similar to his own, which doubtless was why he was enjoying it so much.
‘A stiff drink is always a handy prop in stormy seas...’
‘Why are the seas going to be stormy, Gabriel?’
‘Hopefully they won’t be. I think you’ll find my proposition very interesting, just so long as you don’t allow your pride to stand in the way of accepting it. Now, let me go and find my grandmother. I don’t want to...open negotiations with my eye on the clock in case she returns. I’ll make sure she’s settled, and she can join us in due course. And, while I’m gone, you can think about the pride standing in the way of the situation.’
Abby opened her mouth to dispute that but remained silent because, yes, she was proud. She was just surprised that it was a trait he had managed to pick up on but then, as he had pointed out earlier, when you worked alongside someone as closely as they had worked together it was impossible not to pick up all sorts of things along the way.
That thought suddenly and inexplicably made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and she licked her dry lips.
‘I’ll...er...help myself to a glass of water, if that’s all right.’ She followed suit and stood up to discover that, instead of politely stepping away, Gabriel remained just where he was so that they were suddenly very close to one another, her breasts almost touching his chest.
Instinctively she stumbled back, bumping into the chair behind her so that he reached out to steady her.
‘Are you already swept off your feet at the prospect of being my wife?’ He loosed a low, amused laugh which irritated Abby, because she knew that underneath the silky, light banter there was a thread of sarcasm there that bordered on being insulting.
She was conscious of her formal clothing, appropriate for work and certainly not for a romantic tryst in a foreign city with a fiancé. How on earth had his grandmother not picked up on that? If she had met any of Gabriel’s past girlfriends, then surely she would have thought it odd that the woman he was suddenly engaged to hadn’t shown up wearing next to nothing so that she could display endless legs and cleavage?
‘Sadly for your ego, Gabriel, no, I’m not. You have nothing to fear in that area.’ She brushed his arm away and straightened herself, smoothing her skirt and her hair and then folding her arms. ‘I have my head firmly screwed on.’ She reverted to type as a reminder to him that she was far from the sort of ditzy girl who would let a one-week game of pretence go to her head.
‘Splendid! And as my highly efficient secretary whose head is always firmly screwed on, consider job number one of this assignment to be cancelling your hotel room. I can’t think of any reason why we should hang onto it, do you? It would be highly irregular for my fiancée to set up camp on the other side of the city...’
He grinned and moved to the kitchen door. ‘Even my grandmother, old-fashioned as she is, would find that a bit peculiar. Cancel the room, and if they give you any trouble you can smooth the waters by reserving their conference room for our meetings. I had planned on paying on-site visits to the prospective clients but, given the change in circumstances, I think the less time we’re on the road the better. I’ll get the clients to do the running.’
‘Of course.’ She smiled and half-turned, and was relieved when she heard the quiet click of the kitchen door behind him as he went in search of his grandmother.
It gave her time to think about what had happened in the space of a handful of hours.
Like a puppet whose strings have been abruptly cut, she hobbled back to the table and sat, as weak as a kitten.
How had the lines between them become blurred so fast? Yes, of course she knew—he could work that out logically enough—but it was more than a simple case of lines being blurred.
Something had shifted dramatically and it terrified her. She didn’t want Gabriel changing the goal posts. He had the sort of personality that was big enough to suffocate her and she was only realising now how many defence mechanisms she had put into place to combat the threat.
Conscious of her past experience with Jason, all too aware that her own soft nature and desire to be loved and to trust had been her undoing, she had assumed the tough outer shell she had erected around herself to be weatherproof.
Her brilliant, powerful and unpredictable boss, she’d told herself from their very first moment of meeting, was just the sort she could never be attracted to and that had become a valuable mantra over time.
After Jason, she was no longer in the market for anyone charming or good-looking. If he had the slightest whiff of unreliability about him, then he could be safely consigned to the incinerator.
Gabriel, she had seen first-hand, had managed to turn unreliability into an art form. When it came to women, he had the attention span of a toddler in a candy shop. She’d told herself that she almost didn’t have to be careful around him because he was just so inappropriate for her!
Frankly, she felt sorry for the women he went out with. Hadn’t they suspected from the get-go that he was as unreliable as they got?
But here she was now: blurred lines. Thoughts all over the place. Rollercoaster emotions doing all sorts of weird somersaults and back flips.
All hot and bothered, she went outside, easily locating the seating area he had told her about.
Glassy-eyed, she sat and stared out at a picture-perfect landscaped setting.
If Gabriel’s intention had been to locate his grandmother in the most peaceful setting possible that was still close to the amenities of a city, then he couldn’t have been more successful. It was hard to believe that somewhere as vital and bustling as Seville was only a matter of a drive away, because it was as quiet here as the deepest countryside, with an uninterrupted vista of green.
She stilled at the sound of footsteps but only looked at Gabriel when he had pulled up a chair to sit next to her, a refilled glass of wine in
hand.
He wasn’t looking at her as he delved into his pocket and withdrew a box, which he slid over to her.
Abby opened it and swallowed. ‘I can’t.’ She snapped the box shut.
‘Not to your taste?’ Gabriel drawled.
‘You know that’s not it,’ Abby intoned, relieved that they weren’t face to face but instead both staring forward, out toward the dark shadow of the pool bordered with shrubs, trees and manicured lawns, liberally interrupted with flower beds, then, beyond that, to the necklace of rolling green fairways that circled the compound.
It was easier to talk when his dark, unsettling eyes weren’t pinned to her face, depriving her of breath.
‘Don’t worry, it isn’t a declaration of intent, and you don’t get to keep it.’
‘I know that,’ Abby said sharply. ‘I’m not a complete idiot, Gabriel. Like I said, you don’t have to worry that I might start thinking that this charade is for real.’
‘Sure about that?’ Gabriel’s voice was light, but there was an underlying seriousness beneath the casual tone that made her teeth snap together.
There was so much she wanted to tell him and she fought to remember that he was her boss and that, when this was over, she didn’t want to have said anything she might later come to regret.
‘Quite sure,’ she confined herself to telling him, and he chuckled.
‘My grandmother would be hurt and bewildered if you didn’t wear the ring,’ Gabriel said. ‘Deep down, I do believe she thinks that it was always my intention to give my dearly beloved fiancée the ring that belonged to my mother. Indeed, she refused to accompany me down. Didn’t want to spoil the special moment when I placed it tenderly on your waiting finger.’
‘You’re so cynical, Gabriel.’
He shrugged, took the box from her and flipped open the lid, then he removed the ring and circled it thoughtfully between his fingers. ‘I don’t even remember my mother wearing this,’ he mused.
‘That’s really sad.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes. It is.’ She took the box from him and slipped the ring on her finger. ‘This feels...weird.’
‘Well, I don’t suppose either of us ever imagined that we’d end up engaged.’
‘Very funny.’
‘It might be a charade but I don’t want my grandmother suspecting anything. Above all else, we have to be convincing.’
‘That’s going to take some effort,’ Abby murmured lightly, but her heart did a little flip as she held out her hand, twirling it around and admiring the charming old-fashioned setting in which was nestled one perfect diamond surrounded by a circle of tinier ones. The ring she had returned to Jason had been a stark, modern piece. She had thought she liked it but, compared to this, it was forgettable.
‘Why?’
‘You? Me? We’re a good team when I’m working for you...’
‘And this is no different,’ Gabriel said, shifting so that he was looking at her profile. And a remarkably delicate profile it was as well.
She was hot, tired and quite probably dazed, yet he would never have guessed as she stared serenely out to the darkened landscape.
Feeling his eyes on her, Abby remained quite still, but she had to make an effort to breathe normally.
‘We get to my proposition.’ Gabriel broke the silence, although he kept his eyes on her averted face, mesmerised by the smoothness of her cheeks and the silkiness of her hair which had unravelled during their journey so that, normally sleek and tidy, there were strands blowing across her cheeks in the lazy, night-time breeze.
He resisted an insane urge to brush them off her face.
Abby turned slowly to look at him, thankful that the relative darkness hid her expression because she had no idea what to expect.
‘Like I said to you, I am deeply grateful for your agreement in helping me, Abby. Trust me, I know it’s beyond your remit. But I think it’s important that we keep this on a business footing, and here’s what I propose. You’ve told me about your parents and about your father cashing in all his bonds so that he can take your mother on a recuperative cruise. I’m guessing that that must leave him in a somewhat vulnerable state, financially.’
‘It’s nothing he can’t handle.’ Or so he’d assured her worriedly six months ago, when he had told her what he planned to do.
‘Being financially stretched when you’re a certain age is always something a guy finds tough to handle,’ Gabriel said with assertion. ‘So here’s what I propose. I give you the equivalent of what he has had to invest in this trip. In other words, I restore his finances to rude health. Let’s be honest here, Abby, if your father’s pension is exhausted, he’s going to be left in a very precarious state, and that kind of stress is the worst sort.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Abby said calmly. Part of her wanted to turn his offer down flat because it went against every grain of pride inside her, but why should she?
He was right. What he’d asked her to do was way beyond her remit and why should she be the eternally well-behaved secretary, willing to go the distance when it came to sacrifice?
Looking back, she realised that she’d done a lot over the past two years that was beyond her remit, even though she was paid handsomely.
Everyone in the company was paid handsomely but she was one of the few who worked long into the night because Gabriel was a tough taskmaster with almost no comprehension when it came to putting private life ahead of work.
Without complaint, she’d arranged his love life, booking venues, buying trinkets and sorting out flowers when relationship after relationship had crashed and burned. In other words, doing stuff she fundamentally disagreed with. And she’d done it all without complaint because she’d been vulnerable and still hurting when she’d come to London and she’d embraced the wonderful job she’d landed with the enthusiasm of someone embracing a miracle cure.
And, of course, the pay had been enough to keep her there, working like a bee without digging her heels in.
But now...
‘I accept,’ she said simply, linking her fingers on her stomach and maintaining eye contact, enough to see a flicker of surprise cross his lean features. ‘You expected me to argue, didn’t you?’
‘It crossed my mind.’
‘Would we get this all legally documented?’
‘Since when have I ever been known to go back on my word?’ Gabriel was outraged that she could suspect any such thing. She might be a romantic at heart but, when it came to him, she was all business, wasn’t she?
‘I suppose the fewer people who know the better,’ Abby voiced aloud. ‘I don’t have all the details of my father’s finances...’
‘Spare me the boring details,’ Gabriel drawled with a sweep of his hand. ‘A general overview will do just fine. I’ll take it and double whatever it is. In exchange, you become the perfect fiancée, convincing enough to persuade my grandmother that her grandson has found himself the ideal woman.’
‘That’s a very generous offer,’ Abby told him politely. ‘And, now that that’s sorted, I’d like to lay down a few ground rules in connection with this...er...situation.’
Gabriel raised his eyebrows and she looked at him steadily, trying hard not to focus on the way the overhead veranda light—an ornamental hanging lantern that shed precious little light and made the sitting area feel ridiculously romantic—emphasised the strong, perfect lines of his face.
‘I’m all ears,’ he said wryly. She had to be the first woman not to go quietly with the flow. It seemed that he had misjudged the stubborn strength of her personality simply because she’d been the perfect PA, never questioning his orders but just getting on with it. Or maybe, he mused, he’d sensed that quiet strength all along but was only now seeing it first-hand because of the situation in which they found themselves.
He liked it. He was accustomed to women who tripped over him and were always eager to please. He wondered, not for the first time, he realised, what the guy-she-wouldn’t-talk-about ha
d been like and suddenly, out of the blue, it struck him that he might rather like this fake engagement. He was curious about her and he was even more curious now that he had glimpsed previously unseen depths to her. It always paid to know your employees, he reasoned. In this situation, thrown together and pretending to an intimacy they didn’t actually share, he might get to explore those tantalising hidden depths: as a newly engaged couple, they could hardly politely talk about the weather and the state of the economy when they were with his grandmother. She would expect familiarity and, bearing that in mind, who knew what gems might be revealed about his perfectly behaved PA?
‘We’re going to have to get back to normal life in a week, and I’d like there to be no awkwardness between us. I mean...’ She hesitated. ‘Things changed a bit with all that Lucy business. I never meant to get involved in your private life but I found myself in it.’
‘You’re making a big deal of it. No need.’
‘There’s every need!’ Abby told him fiercely. ‘One minute everything is fine between us...’
‘Who says things aren’t fine now? Because I know a bit more about you, apart from the fact that your favourite colour appears to be grey?’
Abby reddened but stood her ground. ‘Whatever pretending we do is just for your grandmother’s sake. I mean, I’m not going to play at being girlish or giggly, and I won’t be staring up at you with eyes like saucers, hanging onto your every word.’
‘I’m disappointed. How did you know that that’s exactly what I look for in the women I date?’
‘You may not look for it, Gabriel, but I’ve seen enough of those women to know that it’s how they treat you. As though you’re the next best thing to sliced bread.’
Gabriel had to concede that she had a point. ‘So, no saucer eyes. On the other hand, like I said, we’re going to have to put on a convincing show, so positioning yourself as far away from me as possible and looking as though you’re only there under sufferance isn’t going to do. Let’s not forget that we have an arrangement—one that will benefit your family considerably.’
A Diamond Deal With Her Boss Page 6