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www.millsandboon.co.uk
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
COMING NEXT MONTH
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS not yet seven-thirty and Gabriel Gessi was already at his desk. It was his daily routine. Half an hour running on the treadmill at his gym, half an hour scything through the empty pool, a quick shower, a shave and then on to his office, already charged to face the onslaught that constituted his average day. The only interruptions to this brutally physical routine came in the form of his frequent trips overseas, although, even then, he would try his level best to kick-start his working day on a physical high.
The past three months had not seen him deviate from this punishing routine, even though the accustomed high had been marred by a succession of irritations that he really should not have been expected to handle. Even though they concerned him.
Gabriel Gessi inhabited that rarefied world of the supremely wealthy and, as such, was not accustomed to dealing with life’s minor irritations. His adrenalin rush came from the aggressive cut and thrust of deals and acquisitions, not from the more prosaic set-backs that dogged most people’s working lives.
Set-back number one had come in the form of the temp who had sailed through the interview process under the successful camouflage of an efficient working girl but who, after one week, had turned out to be a ditzy emotional wreck who spent the majority of her two weeks sniffing discreetly into a handkerchief and muttering lame excuses about boyfriend problems.
Gabriel had no time for females with boyfriend problems and even less time for females who cried. He had had to get rid of her and thereafter had followed a catalogue of mediocrity which had left him gritting his perfect white teeth in frustration.
He couldn’t imagine how the incompetents who appeared in front of him could ever have been fortunate enough to find gainful employment and yet, by all accounts, they had.
He had seen off the last one the Friday before with an audible sigh of relief. She, at any rate, had lasted longer than the expected fortnight, but he reckoned that that had only been because he had swallowed his irritation and, with laudable patience, tolerated her annoying tendency to cower whenever he spoke and to address him so quietly that he’d constantly had to tell her to speak up. Whenever he’d told her to speak up, she’d invariably jumped and spilled something. Coffee. Water. Her cup of tea. Something of a liquid nature had always seemed to be around waiting to be nudged accidentally over, which, in turn, had rendered her even more incapable.
The whole thing had been extremely trying and Gabriel was overjoyed that his life was now going to return to normal.
For the first time in three long months, he had actually strolled through the smoked glass doors of his very plush four-storied offices without a scowl on his face.
Rose would be back today. Life could return to its normal smooth course, leaving him to get on with the process of running an empire without having to worry about the tiresome nuts and bolts.
Of course it was not yet eight and, even though he half expected her to demonstrate her enthusiasm to be back at the helm, he did not reasonably expect her to appear, like him, at the crack of dawn. She would, after all, probably still be recuperating from jet lag. A flight back from Australia was enough to throw even the most seasoned traveller, and Rose was not a seasoned traveller. Even though a fair percentage of his business was founded on the leisure industry, including a range of exclusive hotels scattered all over the world, her knowledge of foreign shores was limited. In the four years she had worked for him, she had only travelled with him a handful of times and, even then, only to Europe. He hadn’t minded. He needed her back at the office anyway, in his absence, making sure that things were ticking over.
In that quiet time before employees started arriving, time which he usually spent going through the emails which would have been forwarded overnight, Gabriel instead swivelled his leather chair round so that he was facing the huge window, staring out at a skyline that was cluttered with the busyness of the concrete jungle, but still oddly beautiful against the crisply blue May sky.
The past three months had showed him how much he relied on Rose. She was well paid but he contemplated giving her another pay rise. Or maybe a company car, although he couldn’t imagine her driving to work. Who did? He, personally, either took a cab or else was driven in by his chauffeur, sparing him the horrors of the London traffic. But she might be able to use a car if she ever wanted to get out of London.
Briefly, Gabriel wondered whether she ever did. Despite his occasional prodding, he realised that he knew precious little about her personal life. She had a talent for deflecting unwanted questions that would have guaranteed her a career in the diplomatic service.
Did she even have a driving licence? He vaguely assumed that everyone did, but maybe not.
Wrapped up in the lazy perambulations of his thoughts, he was only marginally aware of time passing and not at all aware that it was nine until, reflected in the glass pane through which he was still staring, he saw her standing in the open doorway that separated his office from her working area.
For a few seconds he was aware of an unusual slam of emotion, then he glanced at his watch and swivelled round.
Rose involuntarily drew in a deep breath, releasing it very slowly. It steadied her nerves. Even when she had been coming in every day, seeing him every day, he still had, had he but known it, an oddly destabilising effect on her. Something about his sheer, overpowering physicality.
Three months spent away intensified the effect to the point that she felt faint, even though her face remained as pleasantly unrevealing as always.
‘It’s nine o’clock,’ Gabriel said, scowling. ‘You normally get in by eight-thirty.’
The brusqueness of his tone released her from her immobility and she walked towards the chair positioned in front of his desk and sat down. ‘I see you haven’t changed, Gabriel,’ she commented dryly. ‘Still avoiding all the rules of common politeness. Aren’t you going to ask me about my trip to Australia?’
‘No need. I gathered from your emails that you were having a whale of a time. You’ve changed. You’ve lost weight.’
Rose couldn’t help it. She blushed as his blue eyes gave her the once-over.
She fought to remember what her sister had said about getting out of the rut she was in, tearing herself away from her hopeless infatuation with a man who was a health hazard when it came to members of the opposite sex.
But he was just so sinfully sexy. It was impossible not to feel her toes curl in her sensible flats as she drank in the sensuous curve of his mouth, the powerful beauty of his features, the daunting perfection of his body.
‘Yes, I have,’ she admitted steadily, looking down at the letter on her lap and nervously smoothing her fingers over it. ‘It was hot over there. I lived on salads. I’m sorry you had such a problem with my replacements,’ she said, changing the subject because those amazing eyes of his were boring holes through her. ‘I honestly thought that Claire was going to work out or else I wouldn’t have recruited her. What exactly was the problem?’
Gabriel, however, was still reeling from the transformation, not sure that he liked what he was seeing. Gone was the comfortably plump Rose, last seen in a practical navy-blue suit and white roll-neck sweater. In its place was a very slim Rose, showing off a surprisingly eye-catching figure in a tan and black checked skirt that actually revealed a bit of thigh and a figure-hugging black three-quarter length T-shirt that revealed breasts that would be more than just a good handful. The only sensible thing about her were her flat ballet style shoes.
‘I never knew you had legs,’ he mused aloud.
‘Of course I have legs, Gabriel! How do you think I manage to get from A to B? On wings?’
‘But you’ve always hidden them before…’ He moved swiftly from chair to desk and perched there, staring down at her assessingly. ‘And very attractive they are, too. But you might want to observe a little more decorum in the office.’
Rose’s mouth dropped open in outrage at his openly sexist remark.
‘What have you done to your hair? Have you done something to your hair? It looks different.’
‘I haven’t done anything to my hair, Gabriel, aside from having it trimmed, and shall we leave the subject of me behind just for a moment…?’ She fiddled with the letter, not quite knowing how she was going to give it to him without having to sit through the torturous process of watching him read it.
‘Why? I’m fascinated by the transformation. I thought you were going over to help your sister with her new baby. I had no idea you were going for a complete make-over.’
‘I did go to help Grace!’
‘And in the process decided to go on a crash diet, cut your hair and lounge around in a bikini all day so that you could go brown…?’
Rose counted to ten and wondered what exactly she saw in a man who was as arrogant as they came and saw nothing amiss in barging through every warning red light she was giving off without a second’s thought.
‘Have you ever been in the company of a newborn, Gabriel?’
‘Now that’s something I’ve always tried to avoid…’
‘Thought so, because if you had you would know that screaming newborns and tanning on loungers are two things that don’t go hand in hand.’
‘Surely your sister didn’t expect you to look after the thing the whole time!’
‘It wasn’t a thing. It was a baby. A beautiful little boy. They called him Ben.’ Her voice softened as she remembered the feel of that small, wriggling, plump body in her arms, a sensation that had kick-started her determination to change the rut into which she had comfortably sunk. Grace, two years older than her, had been so blissfully happy. Next to her, Rose had had an ugly vision of her own life and its sad limitations and she hadn’t cared for what she had glimpsed. In two years’ time she would be twenty-eight, the same age as her sister, but would she be cradling a newborn infant with a loving husband by her side if she continued doing what she was doing—working flat out for a man who didn’t have a clue she existed aside from her role as his capable secretary? Or would she be the eternal career girl who spent her life improving her house and bettering her lifestyle with nothing to show for it in the end? Well, nothing worth having, anyway. A certain wistfulness crept into her voice as she told him about her experiences in Australia. Grace’s husband, Tom, was an orthopaedic surgeon and had needed his nights to be free of interruption so that he could get enough sleep to enable him to operate safely. Hence, Rose’s input had been more than just a luxury. She had done her fair share of waking up during the nights, settling the baby back to sleep after his feed, but she had enjoyed every minute of it.
Gabriel was hardly listening to her spiel about the baby. Babies would doubtless eventually come for him—he was, after all, half Italian—but for the moment he couldn’t care less about the antics of some undersized human being on the other side of the world.
He was far too engrossed in the nut-brown creature sitting in front of him. The nut-brown creature with the abundant breasts, to which his eyes were repeatedly drawn.
At the risk of appearing pathetically lecherous and feeling an unwelcome stirring in his loins, Gabriel removed himself back to his chair and tried to focus on what she was saying about baby Ben and the crazy inaccuracy of his baby clock. He had never seen that soft look in her eyes before, and he suddenly frowned.
‘I hope this trip hasn’t put ideas into your head,’ he said, interrupting her in mid-sentence, and Rose blinked.
‘Sorry?’
‘Trip? Ideas? Your head?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rose told him bluntly.
‘I’m talking about my perfect secretary suddenly deciding that the time has come for her to dip her toes into motherhood. All that baby business can prove contagious sometimes. I know that for a fact.’
‘Oh, really, Gabriel…’ Rose felt a cold anger sweep through her and she had to make a big effort to keep her voice level. ‘And how would you know that?’
‘I have two sisters and a brother and both my sisters have children, roughly the same ages. I have it on good authority that other women are often afflicted by maternal feelings the minute they get too close to a newborn baby…’
Rose looked at that dangerously sexy face and was unsurprised at his dismissive tone when referring to babies, parenthood and all that that implied. He was a man to whom settling down would be a notion best left on the back burner for as long as was humanly possible. Why complicate a perfectly satisfactory life, having any woman at the click of a finger, by choosing one woman and then, to compound the error, having a child? A screaming, demanding infant that would put paid to all thoughts of mobility?
‘I don’t intend to be trying motherhood any time soon,’ Rose said coolly. ‘I believe it’s necessary to have a serious partner before a woman takes a step like that.’
In that one sentence Gabriel had more insight into Rose than he had ever had. He had always assumed that there was no man on the scene but only because she had never mentioned one and women generally couldn’t help mentioning the men in their lives. Now it was confirmed and he was quietly pleased.
‘And there’s no man in your life at the moment?’ he risked, pressing on in the face of her obvious reluctance to prolong the subject.
Rose flushed and wanted to kick herself for the revealing crack in her armour. She had managed to keep their relationship on a strictly business level by making sure never to reveal anything about herself. She had instinctively known that the more he knew about her, the more dangerous her silly infatuation with him became. He could charm the birds from the trees and without really trying he could easily have sussed how she felt about him had he known anything about her private thoughts.
Of course it no longer mattered. She was forgetting that in the heat of the moment. The realisation gave her the strength she needed and she smiled nonchalantly.
‘They come and go,’ she said airily. ‘You know how it is. I’m between chaps at the moment.’ The small white lie was worth every penny just to see the incredulity in his eyes and she smiled demurely, daring him to voice his shock that she might actually have a life outside his corporation. ‘Anyway…’ she fingered the letter nervously ‘…now that I’ve told you all about my trip to Australia, there’s something I need to give you…’ She stretched forward and placed the white envelope on his desk and a sudden rush of sickening nerves flooded through her in a tidal sweep.
But she reminded herself that she was absolutely doing the right thing. She had talked it over with Grace and just voicing her thoughts had been sufficient to make her realise what she needed to do, how badly she needed to escape the powerful net Gabriel had spread around her over the years to the point where he was always somewhere in her head, whatever the time of day or night, whoever she might or might not be with. It was dangerous and getting more so with each passing day. In another four years’ time her emotions would be so tethered to him that she might well find herself crippled by her own inability to find a suitable mate without resorting to unfavourable comparisons.
He was looking at the letter warily, but he eventually took it, ripped it open and quickly scanned the contents. Several times. Obviously thinking that he had misread something. Finally, when her nerves were on the point of totally shredding, he said, very softly, ‘What’s going on here, Rose?’ Shock and disbelief flared in his deep blue eyes and Rose automatically cringed back, her normal assertive crispness abandoning her in the face of his concentrated, focused energy.
‘It’s my letter…of…of resignation…’
‘I know what it is! I can read perfectly well! What I don’t understand is why it’s staring me in the face!’ The pleasant anticipation with which his day had optimistically dawned, when he had contemplated the satisfaction of his life being returned to normal, now seemed like a distant thing of the past.
First of all, she had strolled in way later than she normally would have, sporting a changed look that would have had every man’s head reeling in appreciation as she strode through the office and, as if that hadn’t been bad enough, she had flung a resignation note down on his desk with all the preliminaries of someone who could not give a damn.
Gabriel, in addition to feeling rage and bewilderment, was assailed by a sense of bitter betrayal.
‘I just feel…’
‘I mean, no warning!’ he said, interrupting her harshly, waving the sheet of paper about in an accusatory fashion. ‘You stroll in here at God only knows what time…’
‘Eight-forty-five!’ Rose objected. ‘Fifteen minutes before I’m technically due to start the working day!’
Gabriel chose to ignore her input. ‘And suddenly you’re telling me that you’re walking out on me!’
‘I’m not walking out on you.’ Rose cleared her throat and willed herself to meet his eye. ‘You’re being melodramatic…’
‘Don’t you dare accuse me of being melodramatic!’ Gabriel bellowed, leading her to fear that in a minute the rest of the office would come hurtling through the outside door to see what the commotion was all about. He stood up and placed both his hands squarely on his desk, every muscle in his body rigid with threat. He couldn’t have felt more shocked by her resignation than if he had walked into his office only to find a gaping hole waiting for him instead.
‘I let you go to Australia,’ he thundered, ‘at massive inconvenience to myself…’
Rose, unwilling as she was to wave any red flags in front of charging bulls, was not about to let Gabriel get away with implying that she had cleared off for three months and left him in the lurch. In fact, she could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had not been available for him. She had worked late more evenings than she cared to remember, had eaten takeaway food in front of her desk way after the rest of the workforce had departed, had cancelled friends at short notice so as not to let him down.
‘I arranged a perfectly good stand-in for you in my absence,’ she pointed out quietly.
‘You arranged to have an emotional wreck take over! A woman who spent the duration of her appointment to me on the brink of a nervous breakdown! Not my idea of a perfectly good stand-in!’
‘And the rest of them?’ Rose hung on to her temper with difficulty.
‘Useless. Surprised they could find jobs anywhere. Can’t imagine what that agency was thinking, having them on their books.’
‘Maybe you should have looked at the pattern,’ Rose murmured under her breath but not so softly that Gabriel didn’t hear exactly what she said.
‘What are you trying to say?’ he roared and Rose jumped and glanced nervously over her shoulder.
‘Nothing!’ she said placatingly.
Wrong move. If anything, her attempts to soothe had stoked his anger even further and he shot out of his chair and moved round the desk to where she was sitting, pressed back against the soft tan leather, hands clenched on her lap.
‘Well!’ He leaned over the chair until his face was thrust aggressively into her line of vision. Rose flinched.
She had known that her letter of resignation would not meet with a favourable response. She was good at her job and over the years Gabriel had become accustomed to her. They worked together in perfect harmony, often barely needing to verbally communicate in order to understand what the other meant. Unlike the secretaries he had had in the past, Rose had never been afraid of him. She had witnessed his rage at some piece of incompetence or other presented to him by one of his employees and had always managed to deflate it, usually by ignoring it altogether.
Her unflappability, she knew, meant a lot to him. And Gabriel would not appreciate the huge change to his routines which her resignation would engender. His private life might be colourful and ever changing but he liked his working life to be ruthlessly ordered and part of the order, she knew, was her predictable presence.
‘I’m waiting!’
‘I’m not going to say a word until you…stop leaning over me, Gabriel. You’re making me feel…threatened…’
‘What do you think I’m going to do?’ Involuntarily, his eyes raked over her breasts, noticing the hint of cleavage he could see in the deep V of her T-shirt. When she didn’t answer, he pushed himself away from her and raked his fingers through his black hair in frustration.
Rose instantly felt her breathing get back to somewhere near normal. ‘Every one of those temps couldn’t have been hopeless, Gabriel.’ He glanced at her over his shoulder and their eyes met. ‘You intimidate people. You probably intimidated them.’
‘Me? Intimidate people?’ He resumed his position, perched on his desk so that he was staring down at her. ‘Maybe, occasionally,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘But in the world of business, you know that a little intimidation can be a very handy tool. Is that why you’re leaving? Because you just don’t like working for me?’ Gabriel frowned, trying to make sense of the incomprehensible. She had been happy enough with her work when she had departed for Australia. Now, here she was, suddenly keen to head off to greener pastures.
Not that they existed. As far as Gabriel was concerned, she was on to a damn good deal working for him. Salary wise, she would be hard pressed to match it at any other company in London. Probably in the country, for that matter.
He wondered what that sister of hers had said to her about her job in London. Holed up in some rural retreat in the outback, she had probably been keen to encourage Rose into a similar situation, maybe dump the fast pace of city life in favour of something a little more laid back.
‘Has that sister of yours tried to persuade you that leaving London is a good idea…?’ He frowned as the pieces of the puzzle began reforming in his head. ‘Don’t tell me that you’re stupid enough to consider moving to Australia!’ Shock mixed with something else ripped through Gabriel like a jolt of electricity. ‘Just because your only living relative happens to be there! And what if she decides to move somewhere else? What if that husband of hers gets a transfer to somewhere even more unlikely? Do you pull up your roots and follow them?’ He snorted with disbelieving laughter.
‘If I’m that stupid, then why the fuss if I leave?’
‘Stop fishing for compliments, Rose.’ Gabriel began pacing the room and Rose watched his restless progress out of the corner of her eye until he was back behind his desk, reclining back in the leather chair so that he could look at her with accusatory disapproval. ‘You know I value what you do for me. I don’t need to say it. Are you planning on going to Australia?’ For some reason he found that he didn’t care for the thought of that at all. He tried to imagine her forging a life in the outback, stuck in the middle of nowhere. But then, she wouldn’t be forging it on her own, would she? Hooded blue eyes took in the now slim figure in front of him, her skin bronzed and glowing from three months spent in the sun, her brown hair shiny with copper highlights and falling in a thick, blunt bob to her shoulders. No, some Neanderthal outback rancher would be all too happy to play caveman to her. That thought made his teeth snap together and he frowned at her.