A Diamond Deal With Her Boss

by Cathy Williams

  She had signed up to a deal that would help her father. He would surely be worried sick about money as he and her mother cruised their way round the world on a trip that would gradually eat up all his savings and leave them on a much reduced pension. He was doing it for her mother, but if Abby could help her father then she would do so in a heartbeat.

  So her rights when it came to calling the whole thing off were non-existent.

  She would just have to salvage some of her composure and not go to pieces. She took a few deep breaths, and when she told him that he could go ahead her voice was as normal as his had been.

  ‘And I apologise,’ she said, ‘if I overreacted. This is a very strange situation for me, and naturally I’m not one hundred percent comfortable with it.’

  Gabriel thought that she looked like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Shorn of every scrap of her PA’s façade, she was human all the way through, and he couldn’t deny that he was enjoying this side of her, the ultra-feminine side that she had been at pains to conceal.

  ‘Understood.’ He turned away, but in his mind’s eye he retained the image of her pink-cheeked, calm, grey eyes stormy and glittering, prissy clothes slightly askew and hair desperate to break free of its restraints.

  Feminine. It was a word he had never associated with her but it best described her now. She was utterly and defiantly feminine.

  Abby watched until the bathroom door was safely shut behind him and she could hear the running of the shower, then she moved at speed.

  She didn’t take time out to appreciate the cool beauty of the bedroom, which really was enormous, including as it did a seating area with two deep chairs and a little table on which a few magazines had been placed. The colours were neutral and calming, and the voile at the windows gave it a tropical feel, but all of those details were lost on her as she hastily began stripping the bed, removing two of the pillows and getting rid of the top flat sheet so that she could hobble together a sleeping arrangement for Gabriel on the floor.

  She was sitting on one of the deep chairs when he eventually emerged from the shower. She couldn’t have been more relieved that she had done what she had because he emerged with just some loose tracksuit bottoms on. No top. No comfy bedroom slippers.

  Abby’s mouth went dry. She stared, looked away, stared again and then spread her arms wide as he took in his new sleeping arrangement.

  ‘You’ve been busy, I see,’ he drawled, opening one of the drawers and extracting a tee shirt. He kept a stash of clothes in the room permanently and he slipped it on now as he cast a jaundiced eye at what had to be the most unappetising makeshift bed he had ever seen.

  She could kid herself that he was going to sleep there, but she was wrong. His offer to take the floor had been polite at best. She had been on the point of exploding with nerves and it had been the only thing on the table to ease her mind. However, she would just have to appreciate that the floor was not conveniently carpeted, not that that would have made a whole lot of difference. It was cool marble, very pretty to look at but hardly good bedding fodder. The huge silk rug did nothing to help matters.

  ‘You did offer...’

  Gabriel grunted and pulled out his laptop, which gave Abby some measure of hope that he was going to do the decent thing and vacate the bedroom so that he could go and work somewhere else in the house.

  With a little start, she realised that it was only the sight of the laptop that had brought her back down to earth with a bump.

  He was her boss! So far had she gone since they’d arrived in Seville, she’d almost forgotten!

  They hadn’t discussed work once, not that there had been a lot of time, but still...

  It was why she had come on this trip in the first place! Instead, here she was. Guilty grey eyes skittered away from the tantalising sight of her powerfully built boss clad in nothing but tracksuit bottoms and an old, soft tee shirt. The same guilty grey eyes travelled down to his feet and then back up, only to race past the tell-tale bulge in the bottoms that seemed to advertise that he was as well built there as he was everywhere else.

  ‘I’ll use the bathroom now, if you don’t mind.’ She leapt to her feet, practically falling in her haste to get out of the bedroom.

  ‘Why would I mind?’

  ‘Good idea to do some work now,’ Abby gabbled as she opened her suitcase and pointedly turned away from him to search out the stupidly sexy lingerie she had brought.

  Sexy lingerie and sexy underwear were her little secret pleasures. On the outside, she was perfectly happy with jeans and jumpers, and grey, black and navy-blue for work, but ever since her break-up with Jason she had quietly rebelled against the good-girl image he had had of her.

  ‘You’re a lovely girl,’ he had said in just the sort of patronising voice that made her blood boil. ‘And you’ll make some lucky man a great wife, but I think I need someone a little more adventurous...’

  He had found that adventurous lady fast enough. Indeed, rumour had it that he had encountered quite a few of those.

  But, in the wake of Jason’s backhanded compliment, Abby had quietly rebelled through her choice of underwear. She’d ditched sensible, ‘good girl, you’ll make some lucky guy a great wife’ underwear and cotton nighties and gone wicked.

  Never had she regretted that impulse until now as she clutched the silky burgundy piece of nothing she had brought to sleep in, and the thong.

  Gabriel wasn’t even looking in her direction. ‘You have a point,’ he said absently, scrolling down whatever he was reading. ‘I think I’m going to have to do some work, because from the sounds of it my dear Grandmama has chosen to reinterpret what I told her about having to deal with a couple of clients while I was over here.’

  Abby had been creeping stealthily towards the bathroom and now, as she slipped through the door, she said with airy insouciance, ‘Brilliant idea.’ And just in case he was in any danger of forgetting the balance of their relationship under the weight of unforeseen circumstance, ‘And you can email anything you’d like me to do.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’ He glanced at her to see that she was peering round the door at him, modesty personified. Did it ever occur to her that all that modesty could be as much of a turn-on as if she’d decided to shed her clothes and perform a pole dance?

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why would I email you when we’re sharing the same space and I can just sit and tell you face to face?’

  ‘Because,’ Abby said a little desperately, ‘Your grandmother is going to think it odd if we’re supposed to be an item and yet we’re going through reports and getting up to date on a client list.’

  Gabriel stood up and tucked his laptop neatly under his arm. Abby breathed a sigh of profound relief as she shut the bathroom door and began running a bath.

  She could afford to relax. If there was one thing she knew about Gabriel, it was this—when he began focusing on work, he could be involved for hours. He never did anything in half-measures, especially when it came to work. That laptop under his arm was indication enough that she could have a relaxed bath and be safely tucked up before he returned to the bedroom.

  In the morning, she would make sure she went into Seville and bought some sensible sleeping stuff, more for her own peace of mind than anything else.

  For the first time since she’d arrived at the villa, Abby took time out as she lay in the bubbly bath really to observe her surroundings.

  The bathroom was huge and very modern. The shower was a walk-in, big enough to fit several people, and the bath tub was likewise oversized. Cool white complemented azure touches here and there. The towels on the heated towel rail were big, fluffy and snow-white. She could have been in a five-star hotel, which made sense, considering the villa was not used very often by anyone bar Ava.

  Abby’s mind drifted this way and that. Whenever it touched on the four-poster bed awaiting her, it reared up like a frightened horse facing an obstacle it couldn’t surmount.

&n
bsp; It was as silent as the grave as she finally drained the tub and then cleared the condensation from the bathroom mirror to stare at her reflection: bright eyed, skin pink and dewy, hair damp because, try as she had, she had not been able to keep it completely dry.

  She looked down at the sexy short nightie that barely skirted her thighs and quickly slipped on the bathrobe provided on the back of the door.

  Fingers riffling her hair, she pushed open the bathroom door and stopped short.

  ‘You’re out,’ Gabriel drawled from where he was sprawled on the bed. ‘I was about to send in the armed forces to make sure you hadn’t come to any harm.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Working.’ He held up the laptop and waved it.

  ‘This is no place to work!’ Suddenly remembering what she was wearing, and weak at the knees with relief that she hadn’t made the mistake of prancing out in her next-to-nothing nightie, Abby yanked the belt of the bathrobe tightly around her. ‘And why are you on that bed?’

  Gabriel sat up and linked his fingers on his stomach. She’d pulled that belt so tightly around her that he was surprised she could carry on breathing but she hadn’t got there fast enough. He’d seen something he would never have imagined possible in a million years. His PA, his perfect PA, who did her utmost to make sure every strand of hair was in place, had a liking for sexy underwear!

  That glimpse...it had fired him up like a jolt of pure adrenaline.

  A short, silky little number in a hot red colour, and slender legs that would make the pulse of any red-blooded male go into instant overdrive.

  It was almost a punishable crime that she had spent the past two years concealing those from sight!

  Gabriel had always had a hard and fast rule never to mix business with pleasure, but right now that rule was in serious danger of going out the window.

  ‘Which question would you like me to answer first?’

  ‘Don’t be funny, Gabriel!’

  ‘I can’t help it when you’re standing there with steam pouring out of your ears.’

  ‘You said you’d be downstairs working!’

  ‘I never said any such thing. That must have been the result of your fertile imagination. This is as good a place to work as any, and I’m in this bed because there’s no way I’m sleeping on the floor.’

  ‘But you promised!’ Riven with uncertainty, Abby remained where she was, hovering by the bathroom door. She couldn’t look at him, yet she couldn’t resist. He was so superbly, aggressively masculine, sprawled on that bed with his legs crossed, half-propped up with the pillows squashed behind him, his fabulous dark eyes boring holes into her and turning her brain to mush.

  ‘I suggested that it might be an option,’ Gabriel corrected. ‘That was before I worked out just how uncomfortable the ice-cold marble ground was going to be.’

  Abby automatically followed his gaze to the makeshift bed she had erected, which was still in place, untouched. How had things spiralled so completely out of control? She’d worked so hard at putting together a shield that was strong enough to weather anything thrown at it, any Jason who might bounce along and try to wreck her life again, and she positively hated Gabriel right now for dismantling it in the space of a few fraught hours.

  ‘Fine,’ she said tautly. ‘I’ll take the floor. This isn’t my house and I should have known better than to have asked you to do the honours.’

  She gingerly tiptoed across the floor, which suddenly seemed as broad and as limitless as the Norfolk broads, then angled herself under the sheet, trying hard not to grimace at the unspeakable discomfort.

  She wanted to burst into tears. Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut tightly, and was so absorbed in trying not to move, even though her body was already beginning to ache, that she didn’t sense Gabriel’s approach until she was being lifted into the air and heaved over his shoulder as he walked back to the bed with her, dropping her on the mattress and then towering at the side of the bed with his arms folded.

  ‘This is ludicrous,’ he growled, while Abby frantically tried to shuffle into a sitting position whilst keeping the bathrobe in place. Appalled, she eyed her naked thighs, and with a yelp of horror she dove under the duvet and then proceeded to glare at him with all the ferocity at her command.

  Never had she felt so mortified. Never had she wanted the ground to open, swallow her up and disgorge her somewhere very, very far away.

  ‘Neither of us is going to sleep on the floor,’ Gabriel said in a voice that brooked no debate, never mind argument. ‘It would be a recipe for a visit to the local hospital. It’s physically impossible to sleep on this floor, and not only am I not going to jeopardise my health but I have a duty of care to you as my employee and I will simply not allow it, Abby.’

  He strode towards the linen on the ground, swept the lot up and dumped it all on the bed. Then he proceeded to lie down and grope for the discarded laptop so that he could carry on where he had left off.

  While Abby fumed and seethed, hunched on her side and staring at the wall, she tried to block him out of her mind completely.

  Abby had no idea when or even how she managed to fall asleep but she did.

  Next to her, Gabriel had managed to sit in front of his computer for over an hour and a half without seeing anything at all. He was so acutely aware of the body next to him on the bed that it took almost superhuman effort not to turn and look.

  That nightgown.

  Who’d have thought?

  When at last he quietly switched off his laptop and turned, it was to see that she had shifted in her sleep. She’d kicked off most of the duvet so that her slender leg rested on top. The bathrobe had likewise dislodged. Of course, it would be ridiculously hot sleeping with it on, and without waking she had tried to wriggle out of it so that it was half-on, half-off, just enough off to reveal the dip of her cleavage and the peep of her nipple. Moonlight pouring through the window emphasised the pale softness of her skin.

  Gabriel knew he should look away. He couldn’t. Not yet. He was riveted by the sight of her and by that pink nipple. He closed his eyes and shuddered. Stifling a groan of frustration, he slipped out of the bed and headed straight to the shower.

  This time it was going to have to be a cold one.

  * * *

  When Abby woke the following morning, the room was quiet and there was a space beside her where Gabriel had been. She could still see the indentation left by his body.

  A glance at her mobile told her that it was already after nine, way later than she was accustomed to waking, which was good, because it left her no time to think about events that had happened the day before or to ruminate on the night she had spent in bed with her boss.

  If this was going to be the pattern set, then she could live with it. It wasn’t going to be great but it was obvious that he was sticking to his usual routine of working from very early in the morning. He’d once told her, in passing, that sleep was a waste of perfectly good working time. He’d been joking, but only half-joking, and now she hoped that he hadn’t been joking at all, in which case she could look forward to seeing precious little of him in the bedroom.

  Buoyed by that, Abby was less stressed as the day progressed. Gabriel excused himself for a call which, he explained to his grandmother, was unavoidable.

  ‘It’s either that or I try and set up a series of meetings in Seville,’ he said.

  If he’d expected opposition, then he was mistaken, for Ava was only too happy to have Abby to herself.

  ‘What if your grandmother starts asking me about wedding plans?’ Abby hissed to him as she followed him out to the perfectly good office which he had shunned the night before, preferring instead to wreck her sleep by working in bed next to her.

  ‘Use your imagination.’ Gabriel looked down at her and lounged against the wall. ‘You seem to have an excellent one when it comes to all sorts of scenarios.’ Behind her, on the way to the kitchen, he spotted his grandmother who had paused to look at them
fondly, clearly interpreting their body language as that of adoring lovers. They were certainly standing close to one another, Gabriel thought, but if only she could see the mutinous scowl on his beloved’s face.

  He grinned. ‘I thought women enjoyed discussing wedding plans—the flowers...the dress...the extensive guest list of relatives who largely hate one another...’

  ‘Very funny.’ But she wanted to grin because of his dry tone of voice. ‘That’s incredibly sexist.’

  ‘Please accept my apologies.’ Gabriel was, unrepentant. ‘If it’s any consolation, there’s nothing I would enjoy more than chatting to my grandmother about wedding plans.’

  Abby’s lips twitched and she tried and failed to stifle a giggle at the incongruous image of her over-the-top alpha male boss talking wedding plans with anyone.

  ‘Don’t look now,’ he murmured, bending so that his posture was now even more intimate, ‘But we have an audience, and as you’ve been so good today so far, smiling, laughing, pretending to enjoy riveting anecdotes about my academic achievements...’

  Staring up at him, Abby could scarcely breathe. The lazy charm in his voice, the teasing glitter in his eyes, that amused, crooked smile, all took her breath away. Never had she been so up close and personal with him before, not like this, and she was responding with every pore and fibre of her being.

  ‘It would almost be a shame not to give my darling grandma something to really smile about, wouldn’t it?’

  He could breathe her in and the smell of her was filling his head: sweet, clean and strangely innocent. Hell, he’d never found it so damned difficult to think about work. The morning had been an exercise in low-level frustration and how to control it.

  And now...

  Gabriel didn’t give her time to protest. He tipped her chin just as he lowered his head and he kissed her.