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‘If you’re suggesting what I think you are, then forget it!’ Gabriella glared up at him accusingly, her cheeks suffused with colour.
From anger? he wondered. Or something else…?
‘Pity,’ he drawled mockingly. ‘It might have been—interesting, talking over old times.’
‘We don’t have any “old times” to talk about,’ she assured him determinedly.
‘No.’ He gave a derisive smile. ‘What we have to talk about is the future,’ he added hardly. ‘And we do need to do that, Gabriella,’ he said firmly as she would have protested. ‘Perhaps come to some sort of—compromise,’ he added grimly.
Compromise had never been a word he had associated with thoughts of Gabriella—it was either all or nothing. And until today he had chosen nothing.
Why had his father put that clause in his will?
What possible good could come from forcing the two of them into living as husband and wife, even for six months?
But his father wasn’t here to answer those questions, which only left the two of them to find those answers for themselves.
‘Compromise…?’ Gabriella echoed warily.
She obviously hadn’t associated that word with him before, either, Rufus acknowledged ruefully. But it was something they were going to have to find if they weren’t both to lose everything. And he didn’t seriously believe Gabriella was willing to lose twenty-five million pounds just because she wasn’t willing to marry him and live with him for six months to get it!
His mouth twisted derisively as a couple holding hands, obviously deeply in love if the way they gazed into each other’s eyes was anything to go by, stepped around them as they stood in the middle of the pavement. ‘I really think you’re going to have to come back to Gresham’s with me, Gabriella, because I have no intention of continuing this conversation in the middle of a public street.’
Gresham’s? Gabriella frowned. Why on earth did Rufus want to take her to Gresham’s?
She hadn’t been in the store since before she had moved to France as she’d been very aware of the fact that Rufus had his office on the sixth floor, and could walk onto one of the shop floors at any given moment. She hadn’t wanted to risk even the slightest chance of accidentally bumping into him.
‘I have something I would like to show you,’ he added throatily.
‘Really?’ she came back sceptically.
He nodded. ‘I think you might be impressed.’
Her gaze narrowed at his deliberate provocation. ‘I wasn’t last time,’ she came back tartly.
‘No?’ He raised mocking dark blond brows. ‘That’s not the way I remember it.’
She very much doubted that Rufus remembered their time together in Majorca at all, knowing from James’s worried conversations over the years that Rufus had been involved with numerous women since his divorce six years ago. None of those relationships had been of any duration, but she was sure they certainly made his brief encounter with an overeager eighteen-year-old completely forgettable.
She gave him a saccharin-sweet smile. ‘I believe it’s called selective memory!’
‘Maybe. But which one of us is being selective?’ he came back mockingly.
She should know by now not to engage in verbal confrontation with Rufus. He was just too cynical, too much in control, for her to ever be able to win.
Rufus gave an impatient sigh, this sparring with Gabriella achieving nothing but heightening his awareness of her. Something he could quite well do without at the moment.
‘I actually thought you might want to take a look at what is going to become Gabriella’s,’ he bit out harshly, the thought of Gabriella working in the restaurant, two floors down from his own office, not exactly conducive to a calm working environment.
In fact, none of the simpler emotions came to mind when he thought of Gabriella!
Her eyes widened. ‘You aren’t seriously thinking of complying with the conditions in your father’s will?’
‘Aren’t you?’he came back derisively, Gabriella not resisting this time as he took a light hold of her arm in order to cross the road to where his car was parked.
Rufus was absolutely positive that there was no way this woman would give up the chance to get her hands on that twenty-five million pounds. She was just playing hard to get, or perhaps she thought she could make a separate deal with him, knowing the money wasn’t what he was interested in.
His mouth twisted with distaste as he unlocked the Mercedes for them to get into, deliberately not touching Gabriella again as he moved round to get in behind the wheel.
Was she thinking of marrying him? Gabriella wondered with a frown as she sat in the car next to Rufus, both of them silent as he drove to Gresham’s.
Her immediate answer was no.
A more considered answer was maybe.
Being married to Rufus was the very last thing she wanted, but the alternative was that Toby inherited everything, including her thirty-thousand-pound debt. A debt she couldn’t repay, and Toby, being the warped individual that he was, would probably demand repayment for it in a way that was totally unacceptable to her.
More unacceptable than marrying Rufus?
Most definitely.
‘Having second thoughts?’ Rufus taunted at her lengthy silence.
And third, and fourth, ones!
She didn’t doubt for a moment that being married to Rufus, even short term, would be a living nightmare. She knew that he would take every opportunity he could to make her life a misery, and would naturally assume her compliance meant she only wanted to inherit her half of the fifty million pounds.
But the alternative to that loveless marriage was being indebted to Toby.
At least the nightmare of being married to Rufus would have an end.
‘I’m—thinking, about it,’ she admitted huskily.
‘I thought you might,’ Rufus came back bitterly.
‘Not for the reason you’re thinking,’ she snapped impatiently.
‘No?’ He quirked dark blond brows.
Gabriella didn’t even bother to try and defend herself. What was the point? Rufus enjoyed thinking the worst of her, so why disillusion him? Even if she could!
Gabriella had forgotten how good it felt to enter Gresham’s, as the doorman in his black uniform jumped to attention to open the door for them as soon as he recognized Rufus. Entering the huge store was to be assailed by exotic smells and sights; it was a feast for the senses, with hundreds of customers being efficiently and warmly served by the dozens of sales staff with items from the food hall to exclusive handbags, to furniture, glasswear, and even a grand piano. Gabriella’s eyes glowed with pleasure as she and Rufus walked through the store to the private lift on one side of the ground floor.
For a few minutes, thinking only of the possibilities of opening up a restaurant in this exclusive store, she had totally forgotten the reason she and Rufus were here!
‘You don’t need me to tell you what an excellent store this is, or how well you run it,’ she bit out dismissively.
Rufus eyed her speculatively. ‘I was always surprised by your own choice of career…’ he murmured questioningly.
She stiffened defensively. ‘Why?’
He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Obviously a restaurant in Gresham’s would only be open the same hours as the store, but usually restaurant work involves long, unsociable hours.’
Gabriella still eyed him challengingly. ‘Your point being?’
His point being that it seemed a career too much like hard work for a woman who had always had her eye on attaining a rich husband…
But maybe she really had thought the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach…?
He could have told her years ago that it was usually another part of a man’s anatomy that governed his decisions!
Whatever. If they went through with this, after six months Gabriella would no longer have any need for a husband, rich or otherwise.
He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘You’ll have to cook a meal for me some time,’ he said dryly.
Gabriella eyed him impatiently. ‘You would be taking a risk—I might be tempted to add arsenic to it!’
‘Oh, I’d make you eat some first,’ he assured her as they stepped out of the lift onto the fourth floor.
Gabriella gave what was obviously a totally impulsive laugh, her violet eyes glowing, her teeth white and even against the fullness of her lips.
Rufus found himself fascinated by that smile, and stared down at her with hungry eyes.
The laugh caught at the back of Gabriella’s throat as she saw the way Rufus was looking at her. Almost as if it were her he would like to eat!
But she must have been mistaken, she decided as that cynicism hardened his face once more, green eyes pale and assessing now as he returned her gaze challengingly.
‘Rufus, what—?’She broke off as she realized where he had brought her, her eyes widening and pulse leaping as she looked excitedly round the huge restaurant area on the fourth floor.
A restaurant that, if she agreed to marry Rufus, would become hers. Hers to keep even when the marriage was over.
The restaurant was at the front of the store, taking up half the fourth floor, totally separate from the book and magazine department that took up the rest of the floor space. At the moment it was being run more as a self-service cafeteria, but the possibilities for it becoming an exclusive lunch-time restaurant, as well as a place for morning coffee and afternoon tea, were endless. Gabriella was already able to envisage the changes she would make to the décor, like taking away some of the tables and replacing the utilitarian chairs with more comfortable upright armchairs.
It would become somewhere to relax and enjoy a leisurely lunch that Gabriella would make from totally fresh ingredients—
It could only become that if she agreed to marry Rufus!
‘Let’s go up to my office and finish discussing this, Gabriella,’ he said briskly, once again taking a firm hold of her arm.
Finish discussing it? She wasn’t aware that they had started!
Gabriella was familiar with the executive offices on the sixth floor, and indeed the chairman’s—Rufus’s—plush office, having visited her mother there very occasionally over the period she had worked as James’s secretary.
God, that seemed a lifetime ago!
Which, in fact, it was in a way—with her mother and James both gone now, and only Rufus left to torment her.
She didn’t recognize the secretary behind the desk in the outer office—but then, why should she?—a tall, shapely blonde who turned to smile warmly at Rufus as the two of them entered the room, and Gabriella gave Rufus a speculative look.
His fingers tightened painfully on her arm as he all but dragged her into the inner office to shut the door firmly behind them. ‘I would never make the same mistake my father did,’ he assured her coldly as he released her so suddenly Gabriella almost lost her balance.
Never fall in love with his secretary, Gabriella knew he meant. Certainly never marry her.
‘They were happy together, Rufus,’ she defended impatiently. ‘Couldn’t you see that? Feel that when you were with them?’
Oh, yes, he had seen his father’s happiness with Heather, and knew that losing her had probably killed him. But he believed his father had been blinded by love and had never allowed himself to get close enough to Heather to hear her side of the story, truthful or not.
Heather had certainly tried to get closer to him over the years, but only for his father’s sake, Rufus felt sure.
Anyway, Rufus had totally resisted Heather’s friendship for his own sake as much as anything else.
Heather and Gabriella, despite Gabriella’s years in France, had continued to be close, and if Rufus had lowered his guard towards Heather then he would have been lowering it towards Gabriella, too. And that was something he had no intention of doing.
Either then.
Or now.
He might be being forced into marrying Gabriella if he wanted to keep Gresham’s, but that didn’t mean he had to like it!
‘Did you ever take my advice?’ he prompted dryly.
Gabriella frowned her puzzlement at this sudden change of subject, not sure what advice he was talking about.
Rufus’s mouth twisted mockingly as he enlightened her. ‘Did you ever ask your mother why, six years ago, she needed a hundred thousand pounds?’
Gabriella froze at the taunt, knowing Rufus had done this deliberately, and that he intended to hurt.
Her chin rose challengingly. ‘Yes, I did.’
‘And?’ he prompted impatiently.
And she had promised her mother she would never tell anyone else about it. James had known, of course, because Heather had told him all about her first husband’s gambling, and the debts he had left behind for his widow and young daughter. But Heather had wanted to keep that particular skeleton of the Benito family in the closet where it belonged.
‘And it’s none of your damned business!’ Gabriella told Rufus with hard dismissal, having no more intention of sharing that secret with him than her mother had.
‘Right,’ he accepted scornfully. ‘So how much did you owe my father when he died, Gabriella? More, or less, than he gave to your mother all those years ago?’
This time she felt the colour drain from her cheeks.
So Rufus hadn’t missed her completely instinctive response in David Brewster’s office as he covered that part of his father’s will. Or failed to guess the reason for it.
But she should have known that he wouldn’t. Rufus was too astute, too intelligent, to fail to guess the cause of her dismayed groan.
‘Less,’ she sighed, knowing there was no point in prevaricating, Rufus only had to ask David Brewster the same question for the lawyer to produce the contract that Gabriella and James had signed over a year ago. ‘Much less.’
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