by Lynne Graham
Her brain was being challenged in all sorts of ways. She was personally responsible for three large accounts. She had enrolled for her accountancy studies. And, by her standards, she was being paid a small fortune.
It was amazing, given the fact that she disapproved of much of what Gabriel stood for. She disapproved of his blatant womanising; she disapproved of the way he picked up lovers and then discarded them. He made no secret of the fact that he was as ruthless in his private life as he was in his working one. She disapproved of his supreme certainty that whatever he wanted would be his. She disapproved of the way every female employee, almost without exception, practically went down on bended knee whenever he deigned to address them. She disapproved of his ego.
On a daily basis, she fielded calls from women who wanted to talk to him and she could gauge from their hopeful, breathless voices that talking was not the only thing they wanted.
She disapproved of all of that.
The guy clearly didn’t have to try when it came to the opposite sex, so he didn’t. He was pursued and presumably, when he felt like it, he took one of his pursuers up on her offer and established something that couldn’t even really be called a relationship.
He was lazy.
But so beautiful, a little voice in her head absently pointed out, and Alice halted for a second so that the crowds parted around her, some of them muttering impatiently under their breath.
She wouldn’t deny that he had looks. The strong, aggressive lines of his lean, dark face were imprinted in her head with the force of a branding iron. She thought about him in passing more than she liked, then justified her lapses by telling herself that of course she would think of him—he was an exciting person to work for and she was only new to the job, hadn’t had time to get used to him yet.
Which was why she knew just how long his dark lashes were and the way they could conceal the expression in his eyes... Which was how she knew that the second he entered the office, bringing all that force and vitality behind him, he would roll up the sleeves of his shirt, walk past her and immediately ask for his coffee.
She doubted that he even really noticed her. She was his über-efficient secretary who did as she was told faster than the speed of light. For long periods of time, he barely glanced in her direction at all.
She picked up speed, suddenly irritated for allowing her thoughts to stray down forbidden paths. He didn’t notice her because she wasn’t his type.
His type was...
No, she wasn’t going to let her mind start speculating.
By now familiar with the impressive entrance foyer and well used to the hordes of workers and, later in the day, the tourists who were always milling about, Alice blanked everyone out as she strode purposefully towards the lift.
It was not yet eight. The three floors occupied by his company would only be partly peopled. She liked the relative quiet as she was transported upwards...and upwards and upwards...
She felt a curl of excitement as she exited the lift. She barely recognised the emotion. Her head was full of what she had to do that day. The last thing she was expecting was to enter her office to the sight of two figures having an argument in Gabriel’s office.
Through the slender panes of glass, Gabriel’s face was dark with anger. She couldn’t make out what was being said but his voice was low and deadly. The woman’s, on the other hand...
She should interrupt. She should try to manage this situation because it was just the glorified version of what she occasionally had to do on the phone.
He didn’t seem to care whether women chased him or not, or even whether they threw hissy fits down the end of the line, but he kept sharp dividing lines between work and play.
Obviously some poor woman had failed to pay attention to that dividing line and was paying the price.
And doesn’t it serve him right?
The thought sprang from nowhere but, once it took hold, it couldn’t be budged.
She had no idea who this woman was but why shouldn’t he sort this situation out himself? Just because he had all the money and power in the world, it didn’t mean that he could take the easy way out when it came to the situations he engendered with his women!
She calmly removed her lightweight coat and hung it up in the sliding cupboard. Then she made herself a cup of coffee and, with mug in hand, she sat at her desk and switched on her computer.
But she couldn’t focus. Her eyes kept sliding from her computer screen to the sketch being enacted behind Gabriel’s closed door. That said, she was still shocked when the closed door was banged open and out flew a woman with waist-length dark hair and a porcelain-white complexion. Her red dress was skin-tight, her heels were five inches high at the very least and she was trailing a pink-and-black-checked summer coat over her shoulder.
She looked furious. Furious and upset. She paused just long enough to glare at Alice through tear-filled eyes.
‘He’s a pig!’ She glared over her shoulder to where an impassive Gabriel was watching them both with steely-eyed coldness, then fixing enraged dark eyes on Alice. ‘But at least he hasn’t got one of those dolly birds working for him this time!’
‘Georgia...’ Gabriel’s voice silenced what promised to be a tirade. He spoke very quietly and with such contained menace that Alice felt sorry for the poor woman. ‘If you don’t leave my premises immediately, I will call security and have you thrown out. And you...’ He directed this at Alice who tilted her head to one side in perfect secretarial mode. ‘Kindly escort Georgia out of the building and then come into my office...’
She was barely aware of Georgia talking non-stop on the way down in the lift. The diminutive brunette was angry, bitter and, reading between the lines, humiliated because she had never been dumped in her life before. Men chased her and she was the one responsible for doing any dumping.
Alice could have told her that she had taken on far more than she could ever have hoped to chew with a man like Gabriel.
‘Well, at least you’ll be safe as houses,’ the other woman sniped as her parting shot. ‘Gabriel would never look twice at someone like you. And tell him from me—I hope he rots in hell!’
The spurt of courage that had prompted her to stay put in her office twenty minutes earlier had evaporated by the time Alice returned there, having successfully deposited Georgia on the street outside. Still, there was no way that she intended to apologise for not having interrupted the scene in his office.
With any luck, he would simply brush over the whole incident and the day would commence as it always did, at full tilt.
‘What the hell do you think you were playing at?’ were his opening words as she walked into his office with her tablet in her hand, ready for the day to begin.
‘I beg your pardon?’ She started as he swooped round his desk to perch on the edge so that he was looming over her, face as dark as thunder.
‘And don’t give me that “butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth” look! I saw the way you sneaked into the office and hid behind your computer!’
‘I did not sneak into my office, Gabriel...’ It always felt odd to call him by his Christian name but after three days of ‘sir’ and ‘Mr Cabrera’ and ‘Mr Cabrera, sir’ he had impatiently insisted that she drop the titles and call him Gabriel. It was one of those names that did not happily roll off the tongue. It was just too...sexy...
‘Nor,’ she asserted firmly, ‘did I hide behind my computer!’
‘You did both. You knew that I was trapped there with that woman and instead of offering to escort her out you ducked for cover and watched from the sidelines!’
‘That woman...?’
Gabriel flushed darkly and raked long fingers through his hair. ‘I’m not in the mood for your sermonising,’ he growled, glaring at her.
‘I didn’t realise that I sermonised,’ Alic
e said truthfully. She had her thoughts, but those she kept very much to herself.
‘You don’t have to! I know exactly what goes on in that head of yours whether you voice your opinions or not!’
Alice didn’t say anything. His proximity was having a weird effect on her. If she looked directly at him, the glittering intensity of his dark eyes was unnerving. But if she looked a little lower, then she was confronted by his thigh, the taut pull of fine fabric over muscular legs, and that was even more unnerving. She could almost hear the steady drum roll of her heart and the rush of blood in her ears. He rarely invaded her space like this and she didn’t have the resources to withstand the impact he had on her nervous system.
‘Explain that remark.’
Alice had subtly pressed herself into the back of her chair. She wished he would let this conversation go because she could feel it teetering on the brink of getting too personal, and getting personal was something he had studiously avoided over the past three weeks. He never even asked her how she had spent her weekends.
‘What remark?’ she asked warily and he gave her another of those piercing looks that seemed to imply that he was perfectly aware that she was trying to dodge the conversation.
‘You should try to avoid doing that as much as you can, you know,’ he murmured softly.
It was like having her skin lightly brushed with a feather; the lazy speculation in his voice was even more disconcerting than the full-body impact of his towering presence so close to her.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me what I mean by that?’ Gabriel continued into the lengthening silence, and Alice tried her best to dismiss the prickles of sensation racing through her body like tiny sparks of fire. ‘No, of course you won’t, but I’ll tell you anyway. You should never try and wriggle away from a direct question. It makes me all the more determined to prise a suitable answer from you. The rule of thumb is that there’s nothing more challenging to a man like me than a gauntlet that’s been thrown down—and your silences count as gauntlets.’ He didn’t normally like challenges when it came to women but, hell, he liked this one...
A man like him?
Alice steeled herself to look him squarely in the face. ‘I don’t think it’s very nice of you to throw your ex-lover out of the building because she happened to be upset with you.’ There was a lot more she could have said on the subject but she chose to keep that to herself.
‘It wasn’t,’ Gabriel grated, ‘very nice of my ex-lover to descend on me, in my office, so that she could throw a tantrum.’ He vaulted upright and prowled through the office which she had somehow managed to make her own in the handful of weeks she had been working for him. There were two plants on the bookshelf, another on her desk and a discreet Buddha figurine which she kept next to the telephone. Having circled the room, he returned to stare down at her, hands thrust into his pockets.
‘I don’t suppose that was her intention,’ Alice told him calmly. ‘I don’t think she came here planning to have a yelling fit at you. I think if she’d planned on screaming she could have done it down the telephone rather than come here and risk the humiliation of being ushered out of the building like a common criminal.’
‘But then, if she’d used the telephone, she would have had to get past my faithful and extremely proficient secretary, wouldn’t she?’
Alice blushed and wondered how two perfectly flattering adjectives could end up sounding so unappealing.
‘Maybe,’ he mused, leaning down, palms of his hands on her desk, ‘she was overcome with a pressing need to vent. Do you think that might be it?’
Alice shrugged and for a few seconds their eyes tangled. Her mouth went dry and her brain seemed to seize up completely so that she had to suck in air and force herself to breathe evenly.
‘Have you ever experienced that before, Alice?’
‘Experienced what?’ Alice asked in a hoarse whisper, and he laughed under his breath.
‘The grip of passion that makes you behave irrationally...’
‘I prefer to trust reasoning and logic,’ she managed to say.
‘So that’s a no...’
‘If you recall...’ She was close to snapping because not only was he making her feel uncomfortable but he was enjoying himself. ‘I did say to you when I took this job that I didn’t want to talk about my private life!’
‘Was that what we were doing? Talking about your private life?’ He stood up, flexed his muscles, debated whether to let this conversation go and just as quickly decided not to. Georgia’s untimely visit had dented his concentration and he was finding it strangely enjoyable to offload on his secretary. Offloading was not something he normally did. In his formidably controlled life, there was seldom any reason to, and he had to concede that, had Alice not been there, not been his secretary, he wouldn’t have felt tempted.
But, hell, why deny it? She roused his curiosity. She was so contained, so secretive whilst giving the impression of being straightforward, so unwilling to share even the smallest of confidences, such as what she did on those precious weekends of hers that couldn’t possibly be interrupted...
He would stake his fortune on ‘nothing’ and he wondered whether his curiosity was sparked by the mere fact that she never mentioned it. When you could have anything you wanted, including access to people’s thoughts and emotions, what price for the person who withheld everything?
‘You may think it’s okay to treat women exactly how you like, but everyone has their story to tell, and you have no idea what sort of collateral damage you could be inflicting!’ Her eyes skittered away from his narrowed gaze and she knew that she was beetroot-red and angry with him for encouraging an outburst that was inappropriate.
‘Collateral damage...?’ he asked thoughtfully.
‘I apologise. I shouldn’t have...said anything.’ She offered him a weak smile which he chose to ignore.
‘We work closely together,’ he murmured. ‘You should always feel free to speak your mind.’
‘You like women speaking their minds, do you?’ Alice asked tartly and was rewarded with one of those rare smiles that always knocked the breath out of her body.
‘Touché... It can occasionally be a little tedious, but then I never encourage the women I date to ever think that it might be a good idea to give their thoughts an airing.’
Why not? Alice was tempted to ask. She didn’t dare look at him because she had a sneaking suspicion that he might be able to read her mind.
Besides, didn’t she know why? Why go to the bother of working at something meaningful if you could have whatever you wanted without putting the effort in? People got where they were because of circumstances shaping them over the course of time and, whatever the circumstances that had shaped Gabriel Cabrera, they had left him in a place where he just couldn’t be bothered.
‘What do you encourage them to do?’ She asked her reluctant question, which was motivated by a burning curiosity she was desperate to kill whilst being unable to resist.
‘I don’t.’ Gabriel gave her a slashing smile of satisfaction. ‘And, now that we’ve plumbed the depths of my psyche, why don’t we get down to doing something productive?’
* * *
It was nearly six by the time she surfaced. He had spent a good part of the day involved with high-level meetings, giving her the chance to quell the sludgy, disturbing feelings that had come to the fore during their conversation, when he had strayed beyond their normal boundaries like an invader testing a solid wall for cracks through which unwelcome entrance might be possible.
As she began clearing her desk to leave, she succumbed to a little smile at what an overactive imagination could produce. He didn’t want to find out about her. He wasn’t interested in whether there were cracks in her armour or not. He enjoyed pushing against barriers because that was the way he was built and, if the barriers happened
to be around her, then push against them he would if the inclination took him.
As a woman, she held no interest for him.
She thought of Georgia of the husky voice and imagined that that was the sort of woman that interested him. Men always went for the same type, didn’t they?
An image of Alan sprang uninvited into her head. Alan of the floppy blond hair and the brown eyes, who had ditched her for a version of womanhood not a million miles removed from her boss’s ex. Flora was small and curvy as well. Not as stunning, and probably not as breezily self-confident about the power she had over the opposite sex, but, yes, fashioned from the same mould.
‘You’re smiling.’
She hadn’t even been aware of Gabriel entering the office behind her as she shrugged on her jacket and she started and blushed.
‘It’s nearly the end of the week,’ she responded automatically, although, thinking about it, her week days were more relaxing than her weekends, which were consumed with long trips down to visit her mother.
‘Is working for me that much of a trial?’ She had been awarded the same clothes allowance as the other employees on her level yet she still wore the same dreary suits to work. Black and shades of black seemed to be the preferred, professional option with his staff, yet her suits, although the requisite colour, didn’t seem to fit with the same snug panache.
The errant thought occupied his mind for a few seconds and he frowned and pushed it away.
‘Of course not. I...I love it, as a matter of fact.’ He was lounging against the doorframe, as dramatically good-looking at the close of day as he was first thing in the morning. Where most people occasionally looked harried, he always seemed to be brimming over with vitality, however frantic his day might have been.
‘That’s good to hear because I haven’t got around to having any kind of appraisal with you.’
Alice doubted he had ever done an appraisal in his life. If his employee didn’t fit the bill, then he simply dispensed with them.