‘And you, you commute to London every day?’ Keep the conversation on an impersonal level, she told herself feverishly. ‘It... it must be exhausting.’
‘I live in Berkshire. It’s not a million miles away from London and, at any rate, I have a driver who takes me in to the city. Except, of course, when I decide to stay in my apartment in Chelsea.’
‘If you’re working late?’ The house was thankfully within sight and Laura had never been more grateful to see it.
‘Working late or ...playing late,’ he murmured, sliding his eyes across to her and watching as two bright patches of colour appeared on her cheeks.
Playing late. There was no need for him to expand on that. Laura could well visualise the type of games he played and the sort of women he played them with. Sophisticated, beautiful women, the female counterparts of himself.
‘So what would you do with the place?’ she reverted to her original question.
‘Allow me.’ His hand brushed hers as he pushed open the front door and Laura felt an alarming quiver of sexual awareness race through her veins, making her jerk back. He stood aside and she scuttled past him into the hall. ‘I would keep it as a riding stables, of course,’ he harked back to her original question. ‘It would require a considerable amount of money to bring the place hack up to a respectable standard, but it is feasible.’
‘And when do you think you’ll be able to give me an answer on, uh, whether you’re interested in buying or not?’
‘After I’ve looked at all the paperwork,’ Gabriel said lazily. ‘Which reminds me, I need to get it all from the kitchen.’
‘Uh, yes, of course. I’ll just go and fetch it.’ Anything to get away from him so that she could clear her head! She hastily gathered all the paperwork together and was rushing, head down, back into the hall, intent on shoving the lot into his hands and escorting him to the front door post-haste, when she more or less catapulted into him coming towards her.
The shock made her stumble and he caught her, wrapping his solid arms around her body to steady her.
‘What are you doing?’ she shrieked, pulling back and instantly regretting her desperate outburst as his coal-black eyes raked over her flushed face. She could have sworn that the devil could read every panic-driven thought in her head!
‘You came hurtling out of that kitchen like a bullet,’ he said drily, propelling her gently back but keeping his hand firmly on her arms. Her face was flushed with defensive anger, which was slowly replaced by the dawning realisation that she had overreacted to his simple attempt to pre vent them both from crashing to the ground. Like it or not he thought with grim satisfaction, he was turning her world on its head. She might feel nothing for him emotionally but he had awakened a dormant passion and if she thought that he was going to allow it to go away without first getting exactly what he wanted, then she was in for shock.
‘The papers?’ She was looking at him in a dazed fashion. Now she blinked as he reminded her of the reason she had been rushing out of the kitchen and she quickly thrust the lot into his hands.
‘I’ll be in touch ...soon.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Laura sat at her desk, staring ahead at her computer screen and trying to focus on what was in front of her. Some agreement about a house that had just been sold. She had just typed it, but she really didn’t have much of a clue as to what she had actually typed. Three days and still no phone call. Phillip had told her that he would make the call to Gabriel on her behalf, to find out what his intentions were for buying the stables, and she had hotly denied him permission to do any such thing. She would not beg. She would not encourage Gabriel’s notion that she was so desperate for him to purchase that she would do anything. Her behaviour three days previously, when she had fallen into his arms like a sex-starved nymphomaniac, still terrified her because she could see it happening again. And she would have to fight against any such thing with every bone in her body.
Lord, she had spent so long trying to expunge him from her mind. When he had walked out of her life, she had been desperate with grief, but she had hidden her desperation well. Her mother’s health had been failing, and her father had already told her in no uncertain terms that any shock might prove the final straw and running after Gabriel Greppi would surely constitute shock. She had listened to them, aching and silent, and their soothing words that it was all for the best, that she was young, that she had her whole life ahead of her, that their two worlds could never meet and he was from a different world from the one she knew, had gradually numbed her into staying put.
And at the back of her mind grew the nagging suspicion that if he had truly loved her, he would have understood why she had refused his proposal. She had pleaded with him to stay and he had abandoned her. Then her mother had died and everything had slowly gone into free fall.
Seeing him again had been more than a shock, and realising the depth of his hatred for her even greater. But far more shocking was the fact that when he had touched her, every fibre in her body had burned and come alive and she had responded. God!
She printed off the letter in front of her, determined not to let him invade her mind, and was scanning Hugo’s spidery handwriting to begin another letter when the door clanged open and she looked up to see the object of her fevered thoughts standing in the doorway. It was so unexpected a vision that she had to blink several times, convinced that the darkly sexy shape framing the doorway was an illusion.
No chance. Not unless everyone else in the office was simultaneously having the same illusion because a quick glance around showed six faces all turned in his direction and Hugo was briskly exiling his office, hands out-Stretched, obviously sensing someone with a lot of purchasing power.
Gabriel’s black eyes found hers but he remained where he was, his sheer presence rendering total silence amongst her normally garrulous colleagues.
‘Do come in! I’m Hugo, Hugo Ross. Come in, come in!’ Hugo’s booming voice broke the silence and they all returned to what they were doing. All except Laura, who could feel a sizzle of treacherous excitement exploding in her veins as Gabriel continued to watch her bewildered face.
‘Hugo.’ His voice was drily polite, but he did manage to tear his eyes away from her sufficiently to concentrate on the blandly handsome man bearing down towards him. ‘I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not in the market for a house...’
To be fair, Hugo took the disappointment well. He fell back and shrugged with a rueful smile. Gabriel was well aware that she was stunned to see him here where she worked. He was no longer looking at her but he could sense her eyes on him, wondering, no doubt, what decision he had come to in connection with the stables.
‘Are you quite sure? We have some glorious properties around just at the moment.’ Laura had seen that Hugo had already sized up the cut of Gabriel’s cloth and she had no doubt that those glorious properties would begin at the million pound mark.
‘I’m sure you do,’ Gabriel returned smoothly, ‘but I’m here on personal business.’
All eyes swivelled interestedly onto her as she stood up and plastered a bland smile on her lips.
‘Hugo,’ she said, moving into action and searingly aware of Gabriel’s dark eyes riveted on her. ‘This is Gabriel Greppi. Remember I told you that he might be interested in buying the stables?’
‘Ah, yes, so you did.’ This time Hugo’s blue eyes were speculative as they focused on Gabriel. He was well aware of the extent of the financial difficulties hanging over the stables and Laura could see him making a careful judgement of the man in front of him. Judgement of the man as her prospective rescuer and of the man as simply a man and she felt a twinge of sympathy for him.
He had employed her initially as a favour to her father and they had become friends and he had made it clear that they could be more than just friends if she’d wanted. She had not and he had taken her refusal in good spirit, proving in the end to be one of the steadiest friends she had had over the years.
‘I thought you might have telephoned,’ she addressed Gabriel, ‘or perhaps called Phillip to let him know...’
‘Oh, I prefer to deal face to face with you in this matter.’ He turned to Hugo with an icily polite smile. ‘If you don’t mind, Laura and I will discuss this matter in private. Get your bag,’ he told her and, when she glanced uncertainly towards Hugo, he repeated the command, leaving her no choice but to obey.
‘What time will you be back, Laura?’ Hugo pointedly turned his back to Gabriel, a gesture that did not appear to disconcert Gabriel in the slightest. Hugo placed his hand on her arm with a look of concern on his face and over his shoulder Laura met Gabriel’s stony expression with bland disregard.
If he thought that he could purchase her with the property, then he was wrong, and he was doubly wrong if he thought that he could control who touched her and who didn’t. He might be pulling her out of a quagmire not of her making, but that didn’t make him her saviour. Just the opposite, she thought, and a cold shudder of apprehension trickled down her spine.
‘she’ll be back when she’s back and only to collect her things Gabriel announced shortly, moving around so that he was standing beside them both.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You heard me, Laura. I am taking you out to lunch to discuss my decision and you will not be returning to this job here.’
‘Don’t be ridiculuos.’ The door clanged open and a couple walked inside holding hands and looking bright-eyed and optimistic. First-time buyers. Hugo, torn between sorting out the dramatic situation unfolding before him and seeing to the young couple, who were shortly followed by an elderly man and his wife, reluctantly left them alone.
‘I am not being ridiculous,’ Gabriel informed her with no effort to lower his voice.
‘Shh! Gabriel,’ she hissed, I can’t just walk out of here and never return.’
‘You will return. I told you—to collect your things.’
‘Will you keep the volume down?’
Gabriel felt his lips twitch as he took in her flustered face. ‘You never did like scenes,’ he mocked. ‘And, no, I will not keep my voice down, so, in order to avoid one, I suggest you do as I say.’
And with Hugo now glaring at her whilst trying to placate his prospective buyers that the dark, handsome man with the arrogant tilt of his head did not actually work for him, Laura resigned herself to grabbing her bag from the chair and stalking out of the office, ahead of him.
‘How dare you?’ She turned on him the minute they were outside, hands on her hips and her body thrust forward in a stance of pure aggression.
‘How dare I come up here with the glad tidings that I am going to buy your riding stables? I thought you would have been overjoyed to see me.’ He had thought nothing of the sort. He had known precisely what her reaction would have been to look up and see him standing there in her cosy little workplace. But he had discovered that he’d wanted to see where she worked. Another piece of the jigsaw that was slowly coming together to form the complete picture.
‘You know what I mean, Gabriel!’
‘Where do you want to go for lunch? I will rely on you to suggest somewhere quiet where we can have a talk ...about business.’
‘I’m not hungry!’
‘Well, I am. So humour me.’ With that he began striding along the high street, attracting stares from most of the women who walked past him, bar those too old or too young to notice.
Laura half ran until she caught up with him. Tall she might be, but her strides were no match for his, especially in her slightly heeled court shoes, which she was not accustomed to wearing.
‘What about this place?’ He stopped in front of a spacious wine bar that advertised its specials of the day with a blackboard on the pavement.
‘You can’t make me give up my job, Gabriel!’
He ignored her and she wanted to literally scream with frustration. If this was his primitive, caveman way of getting his own back on her after seven years, by controlling every aspect of her life, then he was doing a very good job of it, she thought furiously.
‘We’ll talk inside,’ he informed her, glancing back at her Hushed face over his shoulder as he stood aside to allow her to walk past him into the wine bar.
Laura maintained a simmering silence as they were shown to a table towards the back of the wine bar and handed two oversized menus, which she barely glanced at.
‘Is it all right for me to talk now?’ she asked sarcastically, leaning forward so that her breasts rested against the surface of the table and her straight, impossibly fair hair swung around her face.
‘Must so long as you don’t raise your voice. We wouldn’t want to create a scene.’ He glanced across at a waitress, who almost tripped over her feet in her haste to get to their table and take their I drink order. Champagne. To celebrate. To which Laura automatically replied that she never drank alcohol at lunchtime since it made her feel sleepy.
‘Does that matter? You are more than welcome to fall asleep in my car on the way to the house. Once you have collected your possessions from your office and said a rueful goodbye to your fellow employees.’ Not to mention your employer, Gabriel thought to himself, recollecting the hand on her arm and the expression of fondness in Hugo’s eyes when he had looked at her. The thought that there might be something going on there made his lips tighten and he forced himself to relax. He would get to that later.
‘I am not going to be leaving my job, Gabriel. That was not part of the deal.’
‘It is now.’ He sat back to allow their waitress to place two champagne flutes on the table and waited until she popped open the bottle and poured them both some of the bubbly golden liquid. ‘After I had a look around the stables, well, I was frankly alarmed at their state of disrepair. You may not have noticed, but there are cracks on the ceilings, what looks suspiciously like rising damp in some of the rooms, not to mention parts of the roof that look as though they have exceeded their sell-by date by several years.’ He played with the stem of his champagne flute, allowing his words to hit home and settle in, then he took a leisurely sip of his drink and proceeded to run his finger lightly and absent-mindedly around the rim of the glass.
‘Naturally, I will have to have the place professionally surveyed, but I estimate the house alone will cost thousands in terms of refurbishment, and that is not taking into account possible structural faults.’ He leaned back into his chair and linked his fingers loosely on his lap. ‘A massive job.’ He shook his head. ‘I very nearly decided against buying, but...’ Actually, he had thought no such thing. The sweet challenge of winning her back only to discard her was too irresistible.
Laura gulped down a generous mouthful of champagne and almost choked in the process.
‘I still don’t see what all of this has to do with my job,’ she persisted in a panicky voice, I am very grateful that you’ve decided to buy the stables and you can sort out all the ins and outs with Phillip, but...’ She trailed off into helpless silence as he sat there, politely listening to her and shaking his head in the thoughtful manner of someone dealing with a person who was missing something glaringly obvious.
‘You’re part of the bargain, Laura.’
‘What do you mean? I’m not part of any bargain. I have my own life...’
‘Oh, but you don’t.’ There was a cutting smoothness to his tone that she didn’t like. What did he mean that she was part of the bargain? Did he think that he was going to sleep with her, have her as his concubine or else no deal?
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Well, then, I had better explain, hadn’t I?’ But he would take his time, watch her stewing over his words, watch her wondering whether he intended to make her into a sex slave as a fair exchange for digging her out of the hole in which she had become submerged. Sex slave. The thought filled him with sudden warmth and he leaned forward, instantly invading her space. ‘The sort of business that your family was involved in does n
ot operate along the same lines as a normal company, as you yourself pointed out. For a start, it can only work if the person in charge knows about horses and, more importantly, knows people within the world of horses and horse-racing. Are you beginning to get my drift here?’
Only too clearly. ‘There are plenty of people around who would jump at the chance of working for you. I could easily put you in touch with them.’
‘But my solution rests a lot closer to home than that...’
He smiled with dangerous intent. ‘Who better to help reconstruct the tatters of the riding stables than yourself, Laura?’ He beckoned the waitress across and, having treated her to a full-wattage smile of pure charm, gave his lunch order and waited in polite silence whilst Laura stammered out hers, frankly the first thing she could spot on the menu.
‘Another glass of champagne?’ He tipped some more bubbly into her empty glass and said soothingly, ‘There’s no need to look so worried. I have absolute confidence in you.’
‘That’s not what’s worrying me, Gabriel...’
‘Is it not? What, then?’ He inclined his head to one side and frowned in supposed puzzlement. Laura could easily have tipped her glass of champagne over his arrogantly beautiful head. He knew precisely what she was worried about. She was worried about the trap that she felt slowly closing in around her, but she knew that to mention any such thing would have him throwing back his head and roaring with laughter. He would deny any such thing, would accuse her of being melodramatic, and to all intents and purposes he would have good reason because what he was offering her was a generous deal with the opportunity to remain living under her own roof and helping to resurrect the riding stables she had grown up loving.
On paper, it all sounded wonderful. In practice, a little voice was issuing warnings at a rate of knots.
‘Perhaps I could help out in my spare time,’ she conceded lightly. ‘I’m sure Hugo would be flexible with my hours, if I needed to have time off now and again.’
The Millionaire's Revenge Page 6