‘And what time shall I meet you?’ Alice could barely get the words out. She hadn’t sat down, but had remained standing, and her legs were unsteady with sheer anger.
‘The do kicks off at eight. Meet me in the bar here at seven-thirty. We can have a drink first and then get there around eight-thirty.’
Because, she sniped to herself, the great man could arrive late if he wanted. Forget about currying favour with the person whose company you wanted to buy! Currying favour was something only lesser mortals did! Gabriel Cabrera didn’t feel he had to do that, so he didn’t.
‘And will we be doing any work before we leave?’ she asked with wooden politeness.
‘It’s Saturday. I think I can spare you.’
‘Fine.’ She galvanised her legs into action and walked towards the door. She would have a shower, unpack some of her drab grey clothes to wear out and then she would hit the shops and spend that money he had made no bones about telling her she should spend—so that she could get herself up to scratch and blend in! ‘I’ll see you in the bar at seven-thirty. Perhaps you could let me know if there’s a change of plan.’
She let herself out of the room without a backward glance. She had over-reacted, she knew that, but she had just lost her cool at the sheer arrogance and superiority of the man.
She showered quickly, barely paying any attention to the stunning bedroom she had been allocated, which was a mirror reflection of his, then out she went.
He wanted his drab secretary to do something about her appearance so that he didn’t flinch when he looked at her?
Well, she would make sure she did her very best to do as he had asked!
CHAPTER FIVE
ALICE HAD NEVER, ever had anything that could possibly be called an unlimited budget when it came to buying clothes. Or buying anything, for that matter.
Growing up, her father’s job had been good enough. He’d been a middle-management man who had paid the bills, given his wife just enough to get by and spent the remainder on pleasing himself. Holidays had just not happened. Or maybe they had, in the early days before she had come along, and perhaps when she had been a baby, too young to remember them. Maybe they had happened when her parents had been a happily married statistic instead of two opponents fighting their private cold war.
Pocket money for clothes had been thin on the ground. Her mother had passed her some, whatever was left from the housekeeping money at the end of the month, but Alice had never known what it was like to spend cash on things that weren’t strictly necessary.
So it took her a little while to get her head round the fact that that was exactly what she had now been ordered to do.
She had brought a little pocket guide-book with her and, instead of rushing instantly to the shops, she took the limo to the Champs-Elysées, which was hardly necessary, considering how close their hotel was to it.
She wandered. She mingled in the glorious weather with the rich fashionistas. She walked past the expensive restaurants and cafés. There was no time to visit any of the museums but she could admire the architecture of some of the grand buildings and submerge herself in the airy affluence. She stopped to have a coffee and a croissant in one of the cafés and sat outside so that she could people watch.
In her head, she replayed every word Gabriel had said to her and relived the hurt she had felt at being dismissed as someone inferior. It didn’t matter whether he praised her work skills to the skies. It didn’t matter if he complimented her on her initiative in digging out bits of useful information on companies he was interested in acquiring. It didn’t matter if he now trusted her to flesh out reports which he gave to her in skeleton format.
She was the drab, grey little person who didn’t know how to dress.
She had a flashback of Georgia in the office, in her tight red dress and her high, high shoes, with her dark hair everywhere and her long nails painted scarlet.
There was no way that Alice would want to replicate that look. As far as she was concerned, the other woman had embodied everything that was obvious and way too out there.
But she wasn’t going to be a mouse.
It took her a little while, but by the time she hit the fourth shop she was in her stride. She cruised through all the designer shops, growing in confidence as the afternoon wore on, and by five o’clock she returned to the hotel clutching several bags. She could have summoned the limo again but the walk had been tempting, if tiring.
And what better place to soothe a weary body? She dumped the bags in her bedroom, inhaled the gorgeous opulence of a hotel room the likes of which she would never stay in again for a few heady minutes and then phoned through to make an appointment at the hotel pa.
By six-thirty, Alice was fully rested and relaxed. Back in her room, she looked at her nails, her feet, her hair.
Vanity had never been a problem for her. As a teenager, when all the other girls had been preening in front of mirrors and whispering about boys she had been busy keeping her head down, studying and wondering what the following day would bring; wondering what sort of mood her mother might be in or whether her father might be on one of his many ‘time out’ trips.
The years had passed her by without her taking time out to pay much attention to her appearance.
Besides, her learning curve had been subtle but powerful. Beauty came with a price. She wasn’t beautiful and she had no interest in making herself try to be.
But now...
She had a long, lingering bath in a bathroom that was ridiculously luxuriant and emerged twenty minutes later feeling refreshed and...weirdly excited.
She wasn’t Cinderella going to the ball—not exactly—but she would leave behind serious, composed, take-no-risks Alice Morgan for the evening.
She had bought four dresses, one for each evening they would be in Paris, but the dress she had bought for tonight’s affair was the dressiest.
It was a long dress, in the palest of pink, with a scooped neck and was figure-hugging. Her long body, which she had always considered far too thin and far too flat-chested, filled it out perfectly and her height was accentuated by four-inch stilettos. She had bought a matching cashmere throw, iridescent with little pearls, to sling over her shoulders. Her nails matched the outfit and her hair...
Her brown hair, always au naturel, had been highlighted while she had had her hands and feet done. Shades of warm chestnut and caramel streaked through it, giving it dazzling life, turning her into a person she barely recognised as herself.
On the spur of the moment, she took a picture of herself and messaged it to her mother, and grinned when her mother returned a message which was just several exclamation marks.
She was a different person, at least on the surface, and she left her bedroom at precisely seven-thirty to make her way downstairs to the bar.
People turned to stare.
That had never happened to her in her life before. She wasn’t sure whether she liked it or not but it was certainly an experience.
Was this what it was like for Gabriel? she wondered. Was that why he had become so lazy? Why he picked what he wanted from life and discarded the rest without a backward glance? Was he so accustomed to walking into a room and finding himself the focus of attention that he no longer saw the point of trying any more? Why seek people out when they sought you out? Why make an effort with a woman if the woman was happy to do all the chasing? Why commit to a relationship when you could treat life like a great big candy shop where you could pick and choose the candy you wanted before moving on to sample something else?
She wondered whether he got pleasure from making money. He had made so much already and at such a young age, more than enough to last several lifetimes. He threw himself into his work, there was no denying that, and the man was a genius with a knack of knowing the markets—but did it still give him a kick? When
you could have whatever you wanted without trying, was there anything that was still capable of giving you a kick?
She had to ask directions to the bar and, when she got there, she paused and frankly gaped.
It was carpeted, the carpet pale, patterned and very old. On the walls, deep, rich tapestries left you in no doubt that this hotel was old and proud of its age. Rich velvet curtains hung at the long windows and the chairs were regal, blending in with the air of expensive antiquity. There were no modern touches, nothing to indicate that outside the bustling twenty-first century was happening.
It was fabulous French decadence. It recalled the days of aristocracy and noblemen.
At which point, she scanned the room and there he was, sitting at one of the tables, frowning in front of the newspaper.
Temporarily lost in the financial section of the newspaper he was reading, absently drinking a glass of red wine from the bottle that had been placed on the table in front of him, Gabriel was unaware of her entrance.
And of the heads turning in her direction as she stood by the door looking at him.
But gradually he picked up that there was a certain silence. His eyes unerringly found her and for a few seconds he found that he was holding his breath.
He half-stood, which she took as a signal to move forward to join him, and although his breath returned he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her slowly approaching figure. He was aware of men turning to stare.
‘So...’ he drawled when she was standing in front of him. ‘You obeyed my instructions to the letter.’ She was exquisite. How had he failed to notice that before? The pale delicacy of her features was a revelation, as was the slender column of her neck, the graceful elegance of her body. Her presence dominated the room even though what she had chosen to wear was simple, unrevealing and refined.
‘You told me to get rid of my drab, grey clothes...’ Was that all he could say? she thought with a stab of disappointment.
‘Glass of wine?’ He sat back down, inwardly marvelling that she had managed to puncture his composure. ‘Where did you go shopping?’
Alice sat and gave him a little run-down of how she had spent her afternoon. Had he been staring at her as she had walked towards him? Or had he only been just looking to make sure that she could pass muster? His expression had been unreadable and she had a fierce longing for him to tell her that she looked beautiful.
He, of course, looked as stunning as he always did. He was dressed semi-formally in a charcoal-grey suit that looked hand-tailored and lovingly accentuated his physique.
‘Your hair...’ he murmured. ‘Very effective.’
Alice blushed, no longer feeling like his secretary but feeling, weirdly, like his date, even though she recognised the foolishness of letting herself get swept away by such a silly notion.
‘I had it dyed,’ she confessed self-consciously. ‘I hope it’s not too much.’
‘It’s...’ Gabriel was momentarily lost for words. ‘It’s... It suits you.’ He fought the temptation to reach out and run his fingers through its silky length.
‘Should we perhaps run through what sort of questions we might get asked about this buy-out?’
Gabriel found that he couldn’t care less about the buy-out. For once, business could not have been further from his mind. Those little snippets of wayward thoughts that had flitted through his mind now and again—little snapshots of her released from her armour of the perfect little secretary—coalesced into one powerful image of her without that dress on, naked and sprawled on his bed...
And where was he going with that thought, exactly? He had always made it his business never to mix work with pleasure—that was a sure-fire recipe for problems. The sexy little thing in the accounts department might display her wares but those were offers he had always avoided like the plague.
But this woman...
‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘We should do that—discuss potential problems; try and cut them off at the pass...’ He drained his glass and poured himself another. Potential problems? Who cared? He had it covered. His mind wanted to think about other intriguing possibilities...
He half-listened as she launched into a summary of the company and the technicalities of buying something that was rooted in a family.
‘Especially when there are...how many children did you say...? Three? All involved in the decision-making process...?’
‘Three children, yes,’ Gabriel murmured, sitting back and sipping his wine. It took extreme will power not to let his eyes rove over her pert breasts. She was so unlike the women he’d dated who had all been universally proud of the fact that they spilled out of bras. Since when, he mused, was that such a great selling point anyway? ‘Two boys and a girl,’ he added, because she seemed to expect him to expand on that succinct statement. ‘And I gather the daughter doesn’t really care one way or another. She travels, it would seem, spreading peace and love and playing at being a trust-fund hippy. What about you? Any siblings?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘We’re sitting here, having a drink. We don’t have to spend our time discussing work.’ He topped up her glass, gently pushing aside her hand which she had raised to stop him. ‘Tell me about your family. Brothers? Sisters? Usual assortment of nieces and nephews, cousins and aunts and uncles wheeled out on high days and holidays?’
Alice felt the little pulse at the side of her neck beating steadily. Her mother was an only child and her father had a brother in Australia whom, he had always been very proud to say, he loathed. When she had been younger, she had longed for a brother or a sister. As time had gone by, she had ditched those dreams. What if a brother had turned out like her father? No, theirs had always been an unhappy little family unit, marooned on open water without the benefit of a neighbouring craft to help pick up the pieces should anything happen. As it had.
He was simply being polite, and she was hardly confessing to state secrets, but it still felt awkward to start talking to him about her private life. She needed those boundaries between them to be kept in place or else it would be so much more difficult to keep the attraction she felt towards him at bay.
Hadn’t she already fluttered like a girl on her first date? Hadn’t she wanted him to notice her, and not just as his efficient secretary? She was in dangerous territory and control came from not forgetting their respective roles.
But if she dodged his question she’d stir his curiosity and he was tenacious, a dog with a bone, when it came to finding out things he wanted to find out.
‘I’m—I’m an only child,’ she told him haltingly. ‘My father’s dead. A car accident.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Though the way she had said that... ‘And your mother?’
‘Lives in Devon.’ She took two small sips of wine and offered him a bright, brittle smile.
‘Has the polite conversation come to an end?’ he asked.
‘I’ve just had a look at the clock behind you and it’s time for us to go.’ She stood up and carefully avoided looking at him as she smoothed down her dress. When she raised her eyes, it was to find his on her and he didn’t look away. He just kept looking until colour crawled into her cheeks, her mouth went dry and her brains turned to cotton wool.
Confusion paralysed her. Was he looking at her that way? The way she tried hard not to look at him?
‘You look quite...stunning,’ he murmured, extending his arm and then tucking her arm into the crook of his.
‘Thank you,’ Alice croaked. She wasn’t sure what she was finding more disastrous on her nerves, the fact that she had her arm looped through his or the fact that he had just delivered the compliment she had been desperate to hear with a look in his eyes that had made her whole body tingle with forbidden awareness.
Maybe it was a look that he pulled out of the box whenever he saw any woman who didn’t look half bad.
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‘Even though,’ she continued, weakly asserting her independence, ‘I still disapprove of you telling me what I can or can’t wear.’
‘Even though you’re surely going to be the belle of the ball?’
‘Oh, please!’ She tried to dismiss that husky compliment with a laugh.
‘You don’t believe me?’ They were at the limo, which had appeared as if by magic, and the chauffeur swooped round to open the door for her.
‘I...no...maybe. I don’t know.’ Her voice was low, breathless and husky. Nothing at all like how she usually sounded. It was a voice that matched her beautiful Cinderella dress. Her eyes were wide, her pupils dilated as she stared at him, riveted by the beautiful, hard planes of his face and by the way he was still looking at her.
She heard something come from her, something soft and low, and recognised with horror that it was a moan, barely audible, but as loud as clanging bells in her own ears.
Gabriel knew this moment for what it was. Her pliant, warm body was inches away from his. They were leaning into one another, driven by some unseen current. If he turned away right now he would break the spell and that would be the best thing to do.
She was his secretary! And a damned good one. Did he want to jeopardise that by starting something he would not be able to finish? Something that would end in her being hurt, in walking out on him? Wasn’t this the very reason there was such a thing as lines that should never get crossed?
He kissed her.
Long, slowly, lingeringly, his tongue probing into her mouth, tasting her sweetness and hardening as she moaned back into his mouth.
Hell, they were in the back seat of a car! He was not cool or controlled, but he couldn’t help himself as he cupped one small, rounded breast and rubbed his finger over the nipple which he could feel pressing against the fabric.
‘You’re not wearing a bra...’ He was turned on beyond belief. Her nipple was hard and he was gripped with an insane urge to tell the driver to turn around so that he could take her back to his hotel room and...have her. Rip the dress off her, get her down to her underwear and take her as fast and as hard as he could.
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