He was the essence of the alpha male—tall, dominant, with the sleek, latent power of a predator. In fact, there were times when she felt distinctly like prey when she was around him. This was one of those times, although she didn’t know why. She just knew that watching him pad through the kitchen barefoot, in jeans that delineated every powerful line of his body, was horribly unsettling.
‘You should be wearing something on your feet,’ she said inanely as he joined her by the kitchen counter so that he could help with the tea making. ‘You might be feeling better thanks to the tablets, but you don’t want to get a relapse.’
‘Underfloor heating in the kitchen. If you’d take those black pumps off, you’d find that the floor is very warm.’ She hadn’t so much as undone the top button of her very neat white shirt, he thought. She was out of the office, and there had been no need to wear office garb, but predictably she had not deviated from her strict dress code. She hadn’t even kicked off her sensible patent shoes for the entire time she had been sitting on the sofa in his bedroom taking notes and amending reports on her computer.
She was the stiffest, least relaxed woman he had ever met. Yet, when she had exploded, he had glimpsed a side to her that was as volatile and as fiery as a volcano. It made sense. She was smart, she had a good brain. That in itself would indicate that there was more to her than the dutiful secretary who spoke her mind, but politely, and always managed to leave the impression that there was a lot more to her than met the eye.
He wondered what.
Having grown accustomed to a diet of very willing and very beautiful women, he let his mind wander over the very prickly, very proper and very average Miss Alice Morgan. And, once there, his mind showed every inclination of staying put.
Her dress code was so damned bland that it positively encouraged the eye to look away with boredom, but there was a pale delicacy to her face and a fullness to her mouth that hinted at a sensuality he suspected she was not aware of.
And just like that he felt himself harden.
‘I would rather finish what we’re doing and then head home.’ Alice was uncomfortable with this domestic game they seemed to be playing. She hadn’t signed up for this and she didn’t know how to deal with being yanked out of her comfort zone.
Gabriel scowled. Without warning, he imagined her taking it between those cool hands of hers, lowering her mouth to it and licking it with her very delicate pink tongue. The graphic clarity of the image shocked him.
‘Too bad,’ he snapped. ‘You’re not being paid to skive off early just because I’m not fighting fit.’
What had brought that on? Alice wondered. Maybe he was getting to the end of his tether being cooped up in his house with a woman who wasn’t his temporary bed partner. He was probably used to sharing his kitchen with a Georgia lookalike, except one in even less clothing. A Georgia lookalike wearing nothing but an apron and waving a spatula about with a come-hither grin.
‘That’s not fair,’ she told him quietly. ‘I’m just not very hungry; please don’t think that you have to break off because of me.’
‘I’m not,’ Gabriel said shortly. He was still aching, his erection still hard and throbbing, and his imagination was still galloping merrily on a free rein. Without a trace of vanity, he knew that most women would kill to be in her position—in his kitchen with him, cooking. He had yet to allow any woman to cook for him. Why give them the wrong ideas? No, he entertained them in the relative safety of expensive restaurants. That way they couldn’t start harbouring unrealistic ideas of domesticating him.
Yet here she was, standing with her back pressed against his kitchen counter, trying to find excuses to leave.
It was ludicrous to let that get under his skin but, coming hard on the heels of the erotic thoughts that had taken root in his head, it did.
He fished his mobile phone out of his pocket, called his friend and head chef at one of the top restaurants in the city and ordered a meal for two, menu unspecified. As he spoke, he kept his eyes pinned to Alice’s face and she angrily wondered whether this was an attempt to generate some sort of guilt complex in her because she hadn’t jumped at the chance of cooking a meal for him.
The more she thought about Gabriel, the more she realised just how lazy he was in his personal life. But, if he thought that he could make inroads into her, somehow turn her into one of his followers who did every single thing he wanted with a smile on their face, then he was in for a shock.
‘You do realise that there’s still a hell of a lot of work to do on Trans-Telecom,’ he grated, sitting on one of the chrome and leather chairs by the kitchen table. He could feel the temperature he had managed to keep at bay with the tablets begin to rise as the pain killers wore off. ‘You don’t have to stand over there!’ he snapped. ‘If you’re going to catch anything from me, then chances are you will have caught it already!’
‘I thought you had covered most of the technical details on that.’ Alice walked towards him and perched facing him. The thought that he might be infectious hadn’t even crossed her mind. She had been far too busy just fretting about being in his house with him! He obviously hadn’t shaved this morning and the darkening of stubble on his face was sinfully, extravagantly attractive.
‘There’s a deadline on this deal. The lawyers have pored over it with a fine-tooth comb but I still need to make sure that all bases are covered. I can’t afford to have a comma in the wrong place or else there’s the chance the whole thing will be called off. It’s taken long enough for me to get the family on board with the concept of selling. I don’t want any delay to have them getting cold feet at the last minute.’
Alice nodded. She was mesmerised by the intensity of his eyes, the perfect command he had when he was in work mode; the sheer, unadulterated sexiness of him in casual clothes. When it came to business, he was a machine. He could focus for hours on end without losing concentration. He could tackle a problem at eight in the morning and not let up until he had solved it, whether it took him two minutes, two hours or two days. She watched his hands as he gestured, her brow creased in a small frown which she hoped would convey a suitable level of concentration.
‘And I’m afraid you have no choice in the matter...’
Alice started as she caught the tail end of his sentence.
‘Have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying, Alice?’ Just at that point, the doorbell rang and he returned a minute or two later with two bags filled with beautifully packed gourmet food.
‘I’m sorry. Of course. You were talking about Trans-Telecom...’
‘And informing you that you might get away with avoiding work duty this weekend but I’m giving you advance warning from now that, whatever plans you have for next weekend, you’re going to have to cancel because you’re coming to Paris with me to sign off on this deal. I’ll need you there to transcribe everything that’s said and agreed, word for word.’
‘Next weekend...’
‘Next weekend. So you can spend next week getting your head round it.’
Of course her mother would be fine for one weekend. Alice knew that but she still felt a stab of guilt. She knew that she could have just told him what her weekend plans were, confided the situation about her mother with him, but somehow that would have felt like another line being crossed and she didn’t want to cross any more of those lines.
Besides, Gabriel Cabrera was many things, but a warm and fluffy person who encouraged girlish confidences was not one of those things.
Nor was she the fluffy, girlish type to dispense them.
‘Of course,’ she said brightly. ‘I’ll make sure that I...rearrange my weekend plans...’
Which were what, exactly? Gabriel wondered.
‘Good. In that case, twenty minutes to eat, and then let’s carry on...’
CHAPTER FOUR
ALICE
HAD NOT been out of the country on a holiday for a while. She knew that this wasn’t going to be a holiday—the opposite. But she would still be leaving the country and how hard would it be to take a little time out and explore some of the city on her own? Even if it meant grabbing an hour or two when they weren’t entertaining clients or working.
And her mother had taken it well—better than Alice had expected, in fact.
She had been down in Devon, as usual, at the weekend and had decided, before she had even stepped foot in her mother’s little two-bedroom cottage in the village, that she would break the news when she was about to leave.
Pamela Morgan lived on her nerves. A highly strung woman even in the very best of times, she had become progressively more neurotic and mentally fragile during the long course of her broken marriage.
Still only in her mid-fifties, she remained a beautiful woman, beautiful in a way Alice knew she never could be. Her mother was small, blonde, with a faraway look in her big blue eyes. She was the ultimate helpless damsel that men seemed to adore.
But that ridiculous beauty had been as much of a burden in the long run as it had been a blessing. Growing up, Alice had watched helplessly from the sidelines as her mother had floundered under the crushing weight of her husband’s arrogant, far more flamboyant personality. She hadn’t seemed to possess the strength to break free. She was the classic example of a woman who had always relied on her looks and, when the going had got tough, had had nothing else upon which to fall back.
When Rex Morgan had begun to lose interest in his pretty wife, she had not been able to cope. She had desperately tried to make herself prettier—had done her hair in a thousand different styles, dyed it in a hundred different shades of vanilla blonde, had dieted until her figure made men stop in their tracks—but none of it had ever been enough. In the end she had given up, choosing instead to remain passive as her husband’s philandering had beome more and more outrageous.
She had cowered when he had bellowed and waited without complaining when he had disappeared for days on end, reappearing without a word of explanation but reeking of perfume.
She had sat quietly and in fear as he had sapped every ounce of her confidence so that she could no longer see a way out, far less find the courage to look for it. And she had not complained when he had told her that, if it weren’t for the money, he would have walked out on the marriage a long time ago.
The fact was that he’d been financially tied to her. There was still a mortgage on the house, too many bills to pay, and if they divorced and she got her fair share he would have ended up living in something ugly and nasty, no longer able to live it up with his various women.
So he had stayed put but he had made sure to make life as unpleasant for his fragile wife as he could.
Whenever Alice felt a little insecure about the way she looked, she would sternly tell herself that good looks brought heartache. Look at her mother.
And look at those girls Gabriel dated, the Georgia lookalikes. Who said that a woman with beauty had it all?
Rex Morgan was dead now, in a car accident that had released his wife from her captivity, but he had left a telling legacy behind him. Pamela Morgan was housebound and had been for a while. The thought of leaving the four walls around her and venturing outside terrified her. Over time, and in small but significant stages, she had gradually become agoraphobic and was fortunate now to live in a small village where people looked in on her during the week to make sure that she was okay. In a city, where their house had been, she would have been completely lost.
At weekends, Alice would gently try to ease her out into the garden and, a couple of times recently, actually down to the nearest shop, although that had been a lengthy exercise.
She paid for professional help, which cost an arm and a leg, but recovery was tortoise-slow and uncertain.
Weekends, Alice suspected, were her mother’s favourite times, so Alice made sure to reserve those weekends for her, whatever the personal cost.
And, after a year and a half of treatment and regular weekend visits, Alice felt like she was beginning to see a slightly different woman in her mother. She seemed less tentative, more open to a short walk. Of course, the treatment would continue. In conjunction with the occasional pep talk, Alice felt confident that at some point in time she would be able to have more than just the odd weekend away from her mother’s side.
To do what, she had no idea. Her love life post-Alan was non-existent and, whenever her mother gently asked her about that, she was always quick to point out that she didn’t need a guy.
The unspoken message was: why would I? Just look at Dad...look at Alan... Men are trouble...
She had told her mother bits and pieces about Gabriel as well, which cemented that unspoken message.
But things seemed to be progressing and so, when Alice had sat her down and told her that she wouldn’t be able to make it the following weekend because of work, she was pleasantly surprised by her mother’s reaction.
‘That’s absolutely fine,’ Pamela had said with a smile. ‘I need to know how to be a little more independent.’
Which, Alice thought, meant that the very costly professional whose services she was paying for was actually beginning to make a difference.
So, yes, she was looking forward to Paris.
They had spent the past week working flat out on every single aspect of the deal that could go wrong. In between, there had been the usual high-volume work load. She had been rushed off her feet and had enjoyed every minute of it.
And Gabriel’s so-called flu had disappeared as quickly as it had come, although he hadn’t failed to remind her that she was probably the one who had given it to him, which had made her lips twitch with amusement.
They had arranged to meet at the airport and now, waiting for her taxi to arrive, Alice once again ticked off the mental checklist in her head.
All necessary work documents, including her work laptop, would be in hand luggage. She had her mobile phone and all the necessary work clothes packed.
They would be going for four days and she had managed to fit everything into one average-sized suitcase with room to spare.
Outside, the weather was cool but sunny, and she gave in to a heady feeling of complete freedom. The feeling was so unusual that for a second or two she felt a painful pang that this was something she should have more of; that this was something most girls her age would take absolutely for granted and yet here she was, savouring it like a tasty morsel that would vanish all too soon.
Tasty morsel! She would be in the company of Gabriel most of the time!
Like a runaway train, her mind zoomed off at speed to the memory of him in his bathrobe—the sight of that bare chest, those strong, muscled legs, the way he had been prone on his king-sized bed, macho, dominant and oozing raw sex appeal.
She uneasily shoved aside the unacceptable thought that part of her excitement might have to do with just being with him for four uninterrupted days in Paris, of all places.
Her phoned beeped with the taxi announcing itself outside and, ready for the short trip to Heathrow, Alice focused on practical issues.
Her mother was fine. She hadn’t forgotten anything. Another big deal was brewing on the sidelines and she had thought to read up on the company in question and download relevant facts that Gabriel might find useful.
She made it to the airport to find Gabriel already there and waiting at the designated spot by the first-class check-in counter.
He eyed her case sceptically.
‘Is that all the luggage you’ve brought with you?’ Annoyingly, she had been on his mind more than usual. He didn’t know what he expected when she joined him at the airport but, unsurprisingly, she was in her usual work uniform of nondescript grey suit, a lighter one to accommodate the milder weather, and her neat black patent leather pum
ps.
‘We’ll only be gone for four days.’ Alice’s eyes skirted around him. He was elegantly casual in some cream trousers and a cream jumper under which he was wearing a striped shirt. He looked expensive, sophisticated and drop-dead gorgeous, the sort of man who wouldn’t be travelling anything other than first class.
‘I’ve dated women who have packed more than you have for an overnight stay in a hotel,’ Gabriel remarked drily. He was discovering that he enjoyed the way she blushed, enjoyed the way her eyes never quite met his whenever she felt that something he said might have been a little too provocative.
He checked her in, holding up her passport so that he could examine the unflattering picture of her, and then they headed to the first-class lounge.
Excitement rippled through her.
‘I’ve never been to Paris,’ she confided, impressed with the first-class lounge with its comfortable seating, waiter service and upmarket lounge-bar feel.
Gabriel tilted his head to one side, pleasantly surprised, because she so rarely said anything to him of a personal nature.
In any other woman, that would have been a definite plus point. In her, he found it weirdly irritating. It was as if the more she failed to tell him, the more he wanted to find out.
‘Never?’
‘Never.’
‘I thought school trips over here always involved at least one compulsory trip to France...or have you been to other bits of France?’
Alice thought of her school days. The state school she had attended hadn’t been great and she had had next to no supervision at home. Her father had been absent most of the time, either physically or mentally, and her mother had increasingly removed herself from the normal day to day things that most mothers did, burrowing down in her own misery.
‘I went to Spain once.’ She detoured around his direct question. ‘One of my school friends asked me over with her for two weeks over summer when I was fourteen. It was the nicest holiday I can remember having.’
To Sin with the Tycoon Page 6