Читать книгу Boardrooms of Power - Heidi Betts - Страница 8

SITTING at the very far corner of the staff restaurant, Gabriel had a bird’s eye view of Rose, who was playing with the salad she had taken as though suspecting that something unpleasant might crawl out from under the lettuce leaves at any given moment. He had a feeling that she wasn’t even really aware of the clattering of voices on her table. Frankly, she looked as though she was a million miles away, thinking about God only knew what. Maybe the fact that June was proving to be a record breaker as far as soaring summer temperatures went. For the past two weeks the sky had been cloudless, the heat reaching unbeaten highs of early eighties. London was sweltering. People were complaining, as they did whenever the weather did anything unexpected. The parks were a sea of white bodies slowly going red in the relentless sun.

Of course, here in the restaurant, it could have been a fine autumn day outside. The marvels of central air-conditioning, which was probably why the place was packed. Who wanted to leave the comfort of the cool indoors to venture out into the baking sun? The first few days of novelty value had worn off for most of his employees and the fierce heat was not proving to be worth the bother of a tube journey to the nearest patch of green.

Which in turn was why Rose had not noticed his presence, tucked away with a couple of his corporate finance people and one of the company lawyers. They were discussing the minutiae of his most recent acquisition and Gabriel had switched off from the conversation a while back. In truth, he shouldn’t really be eating in the staff restaurant at all. A business lunch at the Savoy Grill had beckoned. Nothing that he couldn’t delegate to his CEO, allowing himself the bird’s eye view he was now shamelessly enjoying of his secretary.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on what had changed between them, but something had. Their working relationship when she had departed for Australia had been exemplary. The ideal working relationship, in fact. And then she had returned and he wasn’t sure if the physical change in her had kick-started something in him or whether it had been that evening spent with her, first at the restaurant and then afterwards at her house, during which he had caught tantalising glimpses of the red-blooded woman beneath the competent one-dimensional exterior.

Gabriel just didn’t know. He just knew that for the past few weeks he had found his eyes straying towards her, noticing the details of her face, like the light sprinkling of freckles on her nose, the way her straight hair seemed to be streaked with a hundred different shades of brown and copper, the contrast of her clear brown eyes and much darker eyelashes.

And her body. He had caught himself thinking about her body at the most inappropriate times. In the middle of meetings. Sitting in front of his laptop in his office at home. On the telephone to a client, when he could look at her through the glass partition separating their offices, look at the way her full breasts were outlined against the flimsy dresses and thin silky cardigans the sheer summer heat compelled her to wear to work. He was beginning to have steamy thoughts about that body of hers which, until a few months ago, had been so properly concealed beneath sensible layers of dark-coloured clothes. Actually, up until a few months ago, he really hadn’t been that aware that she had a body at all, at least not in the sexual sense of the word. Now he seemed to spend a good amount of his waking time on the verge of an embarrassing arousal.

To start with he had been amused at his intense reaction to her. And baffled. After all, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t spent the past four years in her company!

Very soon, though, irritation with himself had set in, at which point his logical brain reached its logical conclusion. He was suffering from sex deprivation. He had been without a woman for a while, at least three months. The last woman he had dated, a model called Caitlin, had been a willing and able playmate but had evidently wanted more than a man who could be relied upon for expensive gifts, expensive meals out, creative sex and not much else. His frequent cancellations had eventually brought about the inevitable showdown and he had been quietly relieved when she had finished with him.

Having diagnosed the problem, Gabriel had set about sorting out a solution with the speed and efficiency with which he addressed all problems. He had simply rifled through his little black book and extracted a name. The woman in question he had met several months previously and had since bumped into her at various social occasions. At each, she had reminded him that she would love a call and, with his unlikely attraction to his secretary causing him pause for uncomfortable thought, Gabriel had cheerfully set the groundwork for an enjoyable and distracting seduction.

Unfortunately, it had failed to work. Their first meeting had taken place at an intimate but lively club, a favourite haunt of Gabriel’s, who liked the live jazz band and the relaxed atmosphere. The flatness of the evening he could only blame on the music, which must have killed the conversation. Meeting two had been at a restaurant, no music and hence no excuse for the fact that he had struggled through the fine food and wine, glancing down at his watch often enough to make him realise that Arianna was perhaps not quite his cup of tea.

Which, he thought now, still left him with the unexpected problem of a secretary he was beginning to fancy. A secretary, he had to admit to himself, who had maintained an enviable detachment ever since that one evening during which she had opened up. She had reverted to being the cool ice queen, but with a sexy little body and a way of flicking a glance at him from under her lashes that made him want to slam shut that damned interconnecting door, grab her and have his wicked way with her on his grand mahogany desk.

Sam Stewart, his company lawyer, interrupted the pleasant daydream that involved some very satisfactory ripping of blouses and yanking down of lacy white bras with a question about the pension trust fund of a company with which they were negotiating and Gabriel surfaced to realise that he had missed most of a very important conversation. He dragged his attention back to the matter in hand, deliberately turning away from Rose, who was now standing up anyway, looking at her watch, straightening her skirt. Getting ready to head back to the office where she would keep her head dutifully down until five-thirty, at which point she would clear her desk and politely bid him good evening.

Later, much later, after an evening spent poring over reports with only some chilled wine and Mozart for company, Gabriel realised that he would have to do something about his worrying situation. Losing sleep over a woman was bad enough, but suffering lapses in his concentration during the day was beyond the pale.

The only solution to satisfying his curiosity, he reasoned to himself, would be to put it to bed. Literally. And the thought of that alone was enough to make his body harden in immediate response.

He made the call at nine-fifteen the following morning. And Rose took it, as he knew she would.

‘Shouldn’t you be here, Gabriel? I’ve double-checked the diaries and you’re definitely not due for your first meeting until eleven. With the people from Shipley Crew…’ Rose had checked the diaries more than just twice. She had checked it and re-checked it roughly a hundred times since she had entered her office, only to find Gabriel conspicuous by his absence.

‘Cancel all my meetings for today, Rose. Frank can handle Shipley on his own or he can take Jenkins with him just in case they need any expert advice.’

‘Where are you?’ It was so unlike Gabriel to be unpredictable during working hours that Rose actually felt a physical tingle of apprehension race down her spine.

‘At my place.’

‘Doing what?’ She took a few deep breaths and repeated the question in a less crazed voice.

‘Being under the weather.’

‘You’re under the weather? As in ill? You’re never ill, Gabriel!’

‘Try telling that to the strep bacteria in my throat.’ Which he cleared convincingly.

Rose was torn between thinking that, with typical male lack of stamina, Gabriel had caved in to the simple cold bug with which he was unfamiliar, or else he was really ill. Ill as in should go to hospital ill.

‘You seemed fine yesterday,’ Rose informed him briskly. ‘Are you sure you…’ she opted for the least worrying option ‘…haven’t got a hangover?’

‘I think I’m old enough and experienced enough to recognise a hangover,’ Gabriel said.

‘Then it’s probably just a bug you picked up. There are a few of those flying around. I’ll make sure your meetings are cancelled and you can let me know later in the day if I need to rearrange any of the ones you have booked for tomorrow.’

‘You’ll have to come here, Rose.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’ll need you to type some urgent stuff up for me.’

‘You can’t work if you’re ill!’

‘You know where I live, don’t you?’

‘I can’t come over to your place, Gabriel!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because…because I have an awful lot to do here…’

‘And I have an awful lot to do here. Get a piece of paper and write down my address. And, for God’s sake, don’t make the journey by bus. Get a cab. I want you here some time before the end of the week.’

‘But…’

‘I’m keeping strictly to your work to rule, Rose. I’m not asking you to work to an unusually late hour. I’m asking you to have a change of environment for a couple of hours. Now, have you got that pencil?’ Without giving her time to lodge another pointless protest, Gabriel rattled off his address and then repeated it slowly to make sure that she’d taken it down correctly. ‘Got it?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘Should take you half an hour to get here, even with a bit of traffic. So I’ll see you by ten. I’ll make sure the front door’s open so you can just let yourself in.’ He could have sworn he heard another but rising to the surface when he hung up.

Rose stared at the disconnected phone for a few minutes as she tried to get her thoughts in order. She could hardly believe that Gabriel was ill. Ill enough to have taken a day off work. He was always so ferociously energetic that it was hard to imagine him ever being felled by something as small as a bug. She stared at the piece of paper with his address on it. When she thought about actually going into his house or apartment or flat or whatever he had, somewhere posh in Kensington at any rate, she felt physically faint. But what if he really was ill? She couldn’t imagine that he would take himself off to the doctor’s. Heaven only knew if he had one!

Sick foreboding made her gather her things together quickly. Whatever disks she might need, her own laptop which the company provided for her free of charge, bits of post that needed to be checked and letters that required Gabriel’s signature. Then she rearranged meetings and liaised with a couple of people in Finance who would have to cover for Gabriel at least for the day. She caught a taxi just as it was stopping to let someone off outside the office block.

Nerves kicked in as soon as she had slammed shut the door behind her and leaned forward to give the cab driver Gabriel’s address. She could feel her short-sleeved blouse clinging to her as she tried to push down the window so that some breeze could reach her heated face. The knee-length flared floral skirt, which had promised to keep her cool when it had been hanging in her wardrobe, felt horribly constricting in the back seat of a taxi. Everything clung. Even her hair seemed to cling to her skull, making her wish that she had done the sensible thing and tied it back.

When she looked out of the window, she could see that everyone was as uncomfortable as she was. Red faces, makeshift fans from bus timetables, handkerchiefs wiping backs of necks.

But at least that was where their discomfort stopped. She focused on the black computer case by her side, which was big enough to contain everything, and tried not to think about walking into his domain. She hoped that the surroundings wouldn’t be too imposing and that perhaps his thrusting, overwhelming personality found solace in a cottage-style place.

She was wrong. She knew that the moment the taxi stopped in front of an imposing Victorian townhouse in an exclusive crescent which was distinguished by the sheer volume of expensive cars parked nose to bumper outside. She paid the cab driver and asked for a receipt while scanning the pristine row of houses for anything that might look reassuringly unkempt, but no such luck.

The door, as promised, was unlocked, making her wonder how someone as sharp as Gabriel could be so trusting, but as she glanced over her shoulder she noticed Harry sitting in Gabriel’s car on the opposite side of the pavement and waved.

Then she was in his…house. Townhouse, she realised, was too unimaginative a term for the place in which she found herself. The floor was a rich dark wood, interrupted, in the hall, by a stunning blue and red geometrically patterned rug and the cream walls, which should have been bland, were a display case for works of art which looked horribly expensive.

Rose resisted the urge to peer into some of the other rooms and instead eyed the staircase dubiously.

‘I’m here!’

She jumped as his voice surprised her from behind and she spun around to see him standing in one of the doorways, Or rather, she thought, as her heartbeat quickened to a sickinducing speed, lounging indolently. Lounging indolently in a black silk robe which was loosely tied at the front and which appeared to conceal nothing more than bare skin.

Rose nearly yelped. She knew her eyes were round and startled as she made a conscious effort not to stare at the bare legs with their sprinkling of dark hair, the sliver of bronzed chest visible where the lapels of the robe failed to meet. Was he even wearing underwear? she thought.

‘I expected you a little sooner. Lock the front door, would you?’

Rose was more than happy to do that. Anything to rescue her from the sight of Gabriel Gessi in very little.

He had disappeared by the time she turned back round and she headed for the room from which he had appeared. Spot on.

Rose walked into a room that was striking not because of its size but because of its décor. Deep, rich blues provided a dramatic backdrop for the parquet floor and walls lined with bookshelves. Impressive sash windows were dressed in layers of cream muslin that fell and pooled on the floor and dominating the room was a desk on which all the modern gadgets had pride of place. The computers, one laptop and one full sized, a fax machine, two telephones. And, against the only wall that was not occupied with bookcases or windows, was a long, low couch in a rich Paisley print, the beauty of which was ruined by the pillow and sheet.

Gabriel, she realised, was lying on said couch and had been watching her with amusement as she gawped at her surroundings.

‘Blame my mother and sister,’ he said, reclining with his hands folded behind his head. ‘I wanted lots of white and just enough furniture to fit the requirements of being habitable. Well, don’t just stand there with your mouth open. Sit down!’

‘Where?’

‘Well, there’s only one chair available, isn’t there? Unless you want to come and perch on the side of the couch here with me?’ He patted the couch invitingly and Rose hurriedly went and sat behind the desk. Ready for action. She even pulled out the stack of letters she had brought with her and began sorting them into order of priority, waiting for him to tell her where he wanted to begin. In the meantime, she would not look at him because all that flesh was doing disastrous things to her nervous system.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I am?’

‘I’m sorry…’Rose looked at him, flustered. In her haste to avoid staring at him she had bypassed the usual pleasantries and, of course, he would pick up on that even though he himself avoided them like the plague. ‘How are you feeling, Gabriel?’

‘Terrible.’

‘You don’t look too bad,’ she risked truthfully.

‘That’s because I’m putting on a brave face. The fact is I’ve had a helluva night. Very restless. Tossing and turning.’

Rose swallowed. Her thoughts wandered to Gabriel, in a big king-sized bed, powerful, naked body thrashing about. She felt faint. ‘In that case, we should finish things here as quickly as possible so that you can get some sleep! It’s the best cure there is! Where do you want to start? I’ve brought the post. I thought you might like to have a look at it…’

‘What I’d really like,’ Gabriel said, closing his eyes, ‘is something to eat. I know it goes beyond your job specification and it’s well within your rights to refuse…but I haven’t eaten since…hmm…maybe lunch time yesterday…’

‘You got me over here to cook for you?’

Gabriel looked at her through half closed eyes and wondered whether he should inform her that that particular tone of voice was not at all attractive. Not when he was supposed to be an invalid and she was supposed to be Florence Nightingale. Anyway, what was wrong with cooking for him? He wasn’t asking her to rob a bank! He couldn’t count the number of women who had been desperate to get into his kitchen and start weaving some magic with one of his frying pans!

‘Forget it,’ Gabriel said abruptly. ‘I might have known that putting yourself out would be unthinkable. I’ll do it myself.’ He began levering himself off the couch and Rose reluctantly shook her head.

‘What do you want?’

Gabriel flopped back down and fixed amazing, sleepy blue eyes on her. It was steaming hot outside. Her clothes were clinging to her even though it was cool in here. Years ago he had had an overhead fan installed and it had been a brilliant idea, even though it only came into its own very irregularly. On a day like this, though, it was so much better than air-conditioning.

‘You look hot.’

‘I am hot.’ Rose raised one hand to bundle her hair into a ponytail so that she could fan her neck. Gabriel wondered if she had any idea how provocative she looked, how the movement of her full breasts was very noticeable in what she happened to be wearing.

‘You could always strip off…’ he allowed a fractional pause ‘…and change into something a bit cooler. My sisters have random clothes upstairs in the rooms they use and they’re roughly your size. You could borrow something.’

‘No!’ Rose was horrified. She might have altered her look but underneath she was still the same and was frankly horrified at the thought of stepping into someone else’s clothes. Especially when it would involve getting out of her own…in Gabriel’s house…while he was in it…

‘It was just a thought. As far as I know, all the clothes are clean.’

‘I know that. And…thank you for the offer but I’m fine. Now, if you just tell me what you want to eat, I’ll see what I can do. A sandwich? Or some fruit?’

‘An omelette, I think. And toast. Also some coffee, no…tea. Better in ill health, I believe. With sugar.’

‘Oh, hang on. I’ll just get my pad so that I can write it all down.’

Gabriel grinned. He had always enjoyed her dry sense of humour even though it had been conspicuously absent over the past few weeks when she had been in her Head Down No Nonsense Rose role.

‘Think of it as doing an ill man a good deed.’

‘Only if you think of it as taking advantage of a good-natured secretary.’ Rose exited the room to the sound of his rich chuckle behind her and followed her nose to the kitchen. Like most houses in London, it wasn’t a mansion and she located the kitchen without too much difficulty. It was a wealthy bachelor’s paradise. Black granite counter tops, chrome double-fronted fridge-freezer with integral ice-maker, coffee-maker that looked as though you would need a degree in electronics to operate it. Nothing looked as though it had ever been used, which either meant that he was rarely to be found doing anything like cooking in his own kitchen or else he had an extremely efficient cleaner.

The frying pan, finally located, was gleaming. It was almost a crime to use it for something as mundane as preparing food.

It was half an hour before she eventually walked back into the study to find him still reclining on the couch. The black silk robe was revealing even more sinfully muscled chest and Rose cleared her throat meaningfully, giving him time to cover himself up, which he didn’t. He just sat up, propping himself against the arm of the sofa, which was a band of wood, giving the item of furniture something of a sleigh bed look, a fact she had only now noticed.

‘Smells delicious. Where did you find the tray?’

Rose raised her eyebrows questioningly, although it didn’t exactly amaze her that he was fairly clueless as to the contents of his kitchen.

‘Tucked away in a groove between two of the cupboards. No one would ever guess that it had been used. Along with everything else in the kitchen.’ She placed the tray on his lap and averted her eyes as best she could from the enticing glimpse of hard brown skin.

‘I don’t do a great deal of cooking,’ Gabriel agreed, tucking into the food with evident relish. ‘In fact—’he paused to look at her ‘—the last time I ate home-cooked food was…three months ago when I went back to Italy for a week.’

‘You can’t eat out all the time, Gabriel!’ Rose was suitably shocked by the thought of that. ‘It’s impractical, never mind the expense.’

‘Why is it impractical?’

‘Because…it just is. It’s not nutritious.’

‘Do you make an effort to cook for yourself?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do. I enjoy cooking. I find it very relaxing.’

‘Maybe you could come and cook for me now and again.’ He saw the expression on her face and bit back his sudden impatience. ‘Just a joke, Rose. There’s no need to snatch the nearest bottle of smelling salts in case you pass out from the horror of such a thought.’

‘I don’t cook very fancy food,’ she said, trying to pour a bit of oil on troubled waters. A cooped up Gabriel was a dangerous Gabriel, especially now the boundary lines between them had become frighteningly blurred at the edges. ‘Not the kind of food you would enjoy eating.’

‘I’m enjoying this.’

‘Stop being difficult, Gabriel. You know what I mean.’

‘Do you know you are the only woman I have ever allowed to talk to me like that? Aside from my mother. And, of course, my sisters, who see it as their duty to keep me in my place.’

Rose grinned at the thought of anyone trying to keep Gabriel in his place. She missed the thoughtful glint in his eyes as he contemplated her, back in her position of safety behind the desk, which dwarfed her.

‘What makes you think that you know the sort of food I enjoy?’

Was it her imagination or was he dragging it out with that breakfast? Normally Gabriel worked on full throttle, barely pausing to draw breath. It was unlike him to call her over urgently, only to engage her in chit-chat.

‘I don’t know.’ Rose shrugged and looked down at her fingers, at the pale pink polish which she had applied the day before. She never used to wear nail polish but she did now and she liked the way it looked and the feminine way it made her feel.

‘How are you doing with finding a suitable course? Is that all sorted out now?’ Gabriel changed tack as dragging the conversation on to a personal level obviously wasn’t going to work.

And why exactly he was engaged in this ridiculous charade was beyond him anyway. He felt as fit as a fiddle but despite that had been unable to fight off the driving desire to have her in his territory, have her see him in it. Why? Because curiosity was eating away at him? He would have considered himself above sexual curiosity, but clearly not, considering he had concocted a lame excuse for her to come to his house for no better reason that to play games. On a weekday. When he should have been in meetings. Hell, it wasn’t as if he didn’t work all the hours God made, he decided, squashing his guilty conscience. He deserved a break now and again. And when was the last time a woman had captured his imagination?

‘Oh, yes, I think so.’ She went pink and stared harder at her neatly painted nails. In fact, if only he knew that her search for a suitable course had led her into some very interesting waters.

‘You think so? Shouldn’t you have signed up by now?’

‘Yes. Yes, I have, as a matter of fact.’

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed on her embarrassed face. He could smell concealment a mile off and wondered what it was she was hiding from him. Surely discussing something as boring as a business course did not warrant an air of secrecy. For a few enjoyable seconds he toyed with the notion that perhaps his capable secretary hadn’t signed up for a business course at all. Maybe she had signed up for a pole dancing course. Now that would bring a guilty tinge to her cheeks.

‘And?’ he prodded.

‘It starts at the beginning of October, but I shall have to have a day off for induction some time in September. I’ll let you know when.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘What?’

‘The sum total of details you intend to throw out at me?’

‘There’s nothing else to tell you! If you’re that interested, I could always bring in the prospectus.’ Gabriel, in the wrong mood, could turn being maddening into an art form and he was doing it now, looking at her in a way that made her stomach flip over, steamrollering his way into her private life even though she had spent weeks giving off all the right Keep Out vibes.

‘Shall we crack on with the workload?’

Prepared to face a barrage of questions that she would be obliged to dodge like flying bullets, Rose was momentarily taken aback by his change of tack. But she jumped on the bandwagon gratefully and after half an hour her pulse had settled back down to normal, as had her voice.

He had remained on the couch, seemingly unaffected by the incongruity of conducting work in nothing more than a bathrobe, and she had stayed at his massive desk, typing directly on to the computer, punctuating the pattern with little notes in her pad, which she would research and transcribe back at the office.

She looked at her watch once. The next time she glanced at it, it was lunch time. They had been working solidly for over three hours!

‘We’ll call it a day now.’ Gabriel watched as she flexed her fingers and attempted a stretch. ‘Come over here.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Come over here.’

Rose obediently gathered up her stuff, everything ordered and clipped together neatly so that she could move swiftly through them when she returned to the office.

‘Sit.’ Gabriel swung his legs to one side and patted a space next to him. ‘And don’t worry, I won’t bite…’ There was something softly alluring and very, very feminine about her hesitation. It made a refreshing change from women who were as sexually aggressive as men and didn’t need an invitation to get close up and personal.

‘I don’t want to catch anything.’

‘You won’t catch anything.’ How very true, he thought wryly. ‘I’m simply going to massage your shoulders, get rid of some of that tension. Come on. Sit. I’m a very good masseur.’

Rose gasped. Her knuckles whitened as she clutched her wad of papers with horrified desperation. Was he being serious? Massage her back? There was nothing simple about the suggestion. Not in her fevered mind. She took a step backwards. She thought she might be overreacting. The amused, self-assured expression lurking on his face was giving her an indication of that, but there was no way that he would be laying a finger on her. She took a couple more steps backwards and of course that was when it happened. Sod’s law, she thought, as she grappled and failed to retrieve her footing, that the one place that damned low footstool was, the same footstool he had kicked aside to make way for her and the tray, would be right there behind her left ankle. Just the right spot to ensure that she fell in an undignified heap on to the ground, surrounded by her neatly compiled paperwork and with her flimsy summer skirt in hideous disarray. Rose scrambled to gather herself, her face burning with embarrassment, only belatedly registering that, for someone who was supposedly ill, Gabriel had leapt out from the couch with remarkable agility and was now, horror of horrors, bending over her with a concerned expression, bathrobe agape, allowing her a glimpse of boxer shorts.

Lord, but could things get any worse?

Rose pushed herself up and yanked her skirt down, just as Gabriel scooped her up, ignoring her yelps of dismay. There went the skirt. Riding up. Undoing the job she had just done. Exposing so much thigh that Rose was scared to let her attention linger. And his arms around her were like steel, forcing her head against his chest, bare skin because his robe was in as much disarray as she was.

The whole mortifying episode must have taken all of five seconds, but to Rose, it seemed like eternity. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion until he had deposited her on the couch, at which point it was real time again except she found that she couldn’t jump to her feet, the one thing she wanted to do, because he was kneeling in front of her.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Rotate your foot. That was a pretty bad fall. We need to make sure that you haven’t twisted anything.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘If you hadn’t been scuttling off like a little scared rabbit, you would never have tripped.’

Rose wanted to smash him over the head with the nearest heavy object.

‘If you hadn’t been…’

‘Hadn’t been what?’

‘Do you mind giving me back my foot?’ He had removed her shoe and was massaging her foot, working his fingers along the soft underside, rotating it with exquisite pressure until she wanted to scream or groan or something. ‘Nothing’s wrong with it! Everything’s fine!’

‘Hadn’t been what?’ Gabriel straightened up, which was a more dangerous position because now he was on her eye level and way too close for comfort. She could so easily slide her hand under his silk robe. Four years’ worth of fantasies crashed through her like a tidal wave and Rose closed her eyes briefly.

‘Well?’

Rose opened her eyes to find that he was even closer to her. And amused. The smile was right there behind eyes that were pretending to be serious and interested. And here she was, desperately trying to fight down the effect he was having on her. It just wasn’t fair! Four years fighting off a lethal attraction to a man who had now decided that it might be a bit of fun to flirt with her once in a while, when he was between women and had nothing better to do.

Every fibre in her being regretted the decision she had made to stay put for a while longer.

‘If you hadn’t been flirting with me,’ Rose said coldly. ‘If you hadn’t forgotten that it’s totally inappropriate. I expected more of you.’

She had been hoping to shame him. She failed. He gave her a slow, devastating smile.

‘Flirting…’ He inclined his head to one side as if considering a new found concept. ‘You’re right. Maybe flirting was a bad idea. Maybe…’his voice was velvety soft and rich with husky sexuality ‘…I should have just done this…’

For three seconds time stood still. His mouth touched hers with gentle curiosity, then hungry urgency that had her clinging to him, matching his want with hers in equal measure. And it took ten seconds for sickening reality to intrude.

‘Don’t!’ Rose pushed him so forcefully that he stumbled backwards, giving her time to get to her feet and put some distance between them. ‘How dare you?’

Gabriel stood up, but he wasn’t angry. Not at all. And that was even scarier. The expression on his face was as though he had sorted something out in his head.

‘I’ll pretend that never happened,’ Rose gritted. ‘But if it happens again, then I’m gone! Do you hear me?’ She couldn’t bear to look at the discarded shoe, but she did, slipping her foot into it and bending to scoop up all the papers, not caring what order they were in. His silence was unsettling. She knew he was watching her and it made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. Would he see? The way her breasts were still throbbing, aching to be caressed? Or the way the dampness was spreading between her legs, honeyed dew begging for his touch? Rose wanted to die a thousand deaths. She would have remained scrambling around on the floor indefinitely but finally she had gathered up the strewn papers and was looking at him with her best ice cold glare.

‘Okay.’ Gabriel looked down at her. ‘It’s a deal. I’ll pretend it never happened and you can pretend that you didn’t want it to…’