The Notorious Gabriel Diaz

It was almost challenging to think that what he had missed first time round could now be his.

Dark, speculative eyes drifted down to the shape of Lucy’s small, high breasts, and Gabriel’s arousal was as fierce as it was sudden.

Lucy was disconcerted by that lazy appraisal in Gabriel’s roving dark eyes. It made her feel uncomfortable. She suppressed the crazy notion that buried beneath that discomfort a slow swirl of excitement was eddying in her veins, making her breasts tingle and sending a shooting, melting warmth between her legs.

‘And what do you have in mind?’

‘You. I have you in mind.’

CATHY WILLIAMS is originally from Trinidad, but has lived in England for a number of years. She currently has a house in Warwickshire, which she shares with her husband Richard, her three daughters, Charlotte, Olivia and Emma, and their pet cat, Salem. She adores writing romantic fiction, and would love one of her girls to become a writer—although at the moment she is happy enough if they do their homework and agree not to bicker with one another!

Recent titles by the same author:

A TEMPESTUOUS TEMPTATION

THE GIRL HE’D OVERLOOKED

THE TRUTH BEHIND HIS TOUCH

THE SECRET SINCLAIR

Did you know these are also available as eBooks?

Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Notorious

Gabriel Diaz

Cathy Williams

CHAPTER ONE

‘WHAT DO YOU mean? Explain again. I’m not getting it.’ Lucy Robins looked between her parents, buying time while her brain tried to catch up with what she had just been told. Running round and round at her feet, Freddy, the pug she had adopted three years ago, now made a stab at grabbing her attention by flipping over on his back and playing dead.

‘Not now, Freddy!’ she said, patting her lap. With that small show of encouragement, the brown and black dog scrambled onto her lap and proceeded to gaze adoringly up at her.

The second Lucy had got her mother’s phone call she had known something was wrong. Celia Robins never called her daughter at work, even though Lucy had repeatedly told her that it really didn’t matter—that it wasn’t as though she worked in an office where there was a big, bad boss keeping a watchful eye over employees and punishing anyone caught using their mobile.

The huge garden centre, set within the grounds of botanical gardens, which drew visitors from the across the country, was the most relaxed of environments. There, Lucy was part-gardener, helping with the landscaping team, and part-artist, using her newly gained degree in graphic art to draw exquisite detailed illustrations of flowers for a comprehensive book of the flora and fauna at the centre.

Her mother’s call had come just as she had been about to start replanting a batch of delicate orchids that had been meticulously cared for since their arrival at the centre six months previously. She had heard the words, ‘Honey, could you possibly come home? There’s something of an emergency…’ and had flown to her car, pausing only to tell Victor where she was going and to scoop up Freddy, who was allowed free rein in the outdoor space.

Now she stared in dismay at her father’s drooping figure. ‘What do you mean you’re in trouble with the company finances?’

Nicholas Robins, as small and round as his wife was tall and slender, raised apologetic eyes to his daughter. ‘I borrowed some money a few years ago, Luce. Not much. When your mother had her stroke…things just got a little crazy… I thought we were going to lose her… I wanted to give her her dream of a cruise… I wasn’t thinking rationally…’

On her lap, Freddy had nodded off and was snoring. Lucy stroked his fat tummy. Her skin was clammy. When her father had announced that he and her mother were going on a cruise—a lifetime dream, a wonderful opportunity that might be their last—he had told her he had received an unexpected bonus at work. The company had just been taken over by an electronics giant and Lucy had believed him—had been over the moon at his unexpected good luck.

‘When she recovered—’ her father’s voice was laboured, heavy ‘—I wanted to take her somewhere special. I thought if I borrowed a little bit more I could repay it before it was missed. I can’t believe I was that stupid.’

Lucy glanced worriedly towards her mother. Celia Robins was a frail woman who would be unable to cope with the distressing catastrophe unfolding in front of her. The stroke she had suffered had sapped her of her energy, and both Lucy and her father lived in constant fear that she would suffer another.

‘I didn’t think that anything would change after GGD took us over,’ her father continued in a shaking voice. ‘Before the takeover, I was the only bookkeeper there. They brought in a team of financial whiz kids. I managed to keep things under wraps for as long as I could, and I’d started repaying the money, but this morning I was called in and told they had found some discrepancies and that it might be an idea if I took a little leave until it gets sorted out….’

Appalled, Lucy didn’t know what to say. Her father was by no means a crook, and yet she knew with a sinking heart that no lawyer in the land would see it that way. He had helped himself to company funds and that was where the story would end. There would be no room for sob stories or excuses. That wasn’t how big organisations operated. Especially that would not be how GGD would operate.

Gabriel Garcia Diaz was the guy who had founded GGD. Ruthless, cold and brilliant, he had risen to dominate the field of electronics in the space of a mere eight years, consuming smaller companies and growing more and more powerful in the process. Gabriel Garcia Diaz was the shark in the pond, and a shark wouldn’t look at small minnows like her father and weep tears of sympathy for his plight.

A wash of nervous perspiration broke out over her. For the past two years she had contrived to put Gabriel Diaz out of her mind, but now the past galloped towards her, stampeding into the present and crashing through the flimsy defences she had erected to keep the unsettling memory of him at bay.

She had met him quite by accident. For weeks the talk of the town had been the takeover of Sims Electronics by GGD. The big guns were rolling into town and would be rescuing the ailing company where her father worked, transforming it into a mega-sized giant and in the process creating hundreds of jobs.

Lucy hadn’t been able to get worked up over it. She’d been pleased that the rampant unemployment that afflicted their little slice of Somerset would be brought to an end, but big business didn’t interest her. She had just got her job at the garden centre and all her excitement had been saved for that. She loved plants, she loved working outdoors, and she’d also had something else to celebrate. She had been called in and offered the task of illustrating the centre’s first documented book of all the rare and exotic species of flowers being cultivated in the massive greenhouses.

Indeed, she had forgotten that the big boss of GGD would be rolling into town. Excited to tell her father about her new area of responsibility, for both her parents knew how keen she was to utilise her art degree, she had hopped on her bike in her lunch hour and cycled like the wind to where he worked.

It had only been when she had spotted the sleek black limo and the convoy of similarly grand cars in the parking lot that she’d belatedly remembered that it was the big day.

In the glittering summer sun, all the employees of Sims had gathered outside the building while, dominating the space in the centre, and surrounded by an alarming circle of threatening men in dark suits, one man had stood literally head and shoulders above the rest.

Lucy’s eyes had been drawn to him, and even from a safe distance she’d been able to feel the power of his personality radiating out with shocking force. Everyone’s attention had been glued to his face. Some of them had had their mouths half open, in thrall to whatever he was saying. She hadn’t been able to hear. She’d been too far away. However, she’d understood what it was about the man that commanded their attention. Beyond the aura of power he was just the most incredible human being she had ever clapped eyes on. Tall, with raven-black hair, harsh, beautifully chiselled features and a bronzed colouring that lent him the air of someone breathtakingly exotic, he was as spectacularly beautiful as a lovingly carved statue of a Greek god.

Her father had been in the inner circle, dressed in his best suit, but as the tall man had headed to the open doors of the company, surrounded by his entourage, her father had fallen back and she’d taken the chance to race towards him on her bike so that she could tell him her good news.

Mr VIP had been heading off to inspect the building and the components centre. Later, Lucy hadn’t understood how it was that he had managed to notice her amidst the excited commotion surrounding him. Had he spotted her cycling away? Had he radioed one of his lackeys who had remained outside with the fleet of cars, primed for a hasty departure? Nor, at the time, had she thought anything of the beefy guy in the suit who’d asked her who she was and what she was doing on the premises.

Anxious not to mention any connection with her father, for she didn’t know if it was against rules for employees to speak when their attention should be one hundred percent focused on their leader, Lucy had instead vaguely told him that she worked at the garden centre and had been checking to make sure all the plants they’d installed for the visit were okay.

Later, packing up for the day, she had had her first real contact with Gabriel Garcia Diaz. About to cycle home, she had been bending down to the wheel lock on the bike. When she’d stood up, there he’d been. At a distance, two bodyguards had lounged by a shiny black car.

He had literally taken her breath away. Never had she felt such a strange compulsion to stare and stare and stare—as though her eyes couldn’t get their fill of his bronzed, exotic beauty. Up close he’d been so much more breathtaking, and when he’d spoken, his voice had been a low, dark, lazy drawl…asking her to tell him her name…telling her that he had noticed her…informing her that he hadn’t planned on staying over but he would now make an exception to take her out….

Lucy had been speechless, flustered and vaguely terrified. What sort of man approached a woman he didn’t know and informed her that she would be taken out to dinner? In a tone of voice that denied any negative response?

His urbane sophistication, his staggering good looks, and the lazy, sexual appreciation in those dark, dark eyes had made her head swim. Backing away, she had turned him down. She hadn’t been able to imagine what a man like him would want with someone like her, but as soon as she’d asked herself the question she’d come up with the answer. Sex.

She had virtually run for cover and had continued to turn him down for the remainder of that week, which had seen deliveries of flowers—terrifically expensive flowers, the centre of attention at the garden centre—and one express delivery of a gold bracelet that she had refused to accept. He hadn’t approached her again in person, but the sustained bombardment, designed to erode her defences, had confused her and sent her further into hiding. In the end she had left a text message on the cell number he had given her. She had told him to go away, that she had a boyfriend…

And he had.

Curiously, the abrupt cessation of all that attention had left her feeling deflated for weeks afterwards. Then, gradually, she had gathered herself and put the memory of him behind her as just one of those weird things.

Working at the garden centre left her no time to question the disturbing impact he had had on her. Nor had he returned to visit the offices where her father continued to work. Huge though the modernisations and expansions had been to Sims, it remained, or so she had been told, just a very small tentacle of one mammoth conglomerate.

Now, as Lucy looked at her parents, who seemed frightened and diminished by the rapidity with which everything they knew seemed to be unravelling, the image of Gabriel Diaz rose up in her head like a dark, avenging angel.

‘Perhaps I could help,’ she offered, her heart beating nervously. ‘I mean, I get a good salary at the garden centre, and I could always ask whether they would advance me some of the money for the illustrations I’ve already done for their second volume. I’m nearly through with them. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind…. Plus Kew Gardens are interested in commissioning me to do some work for them….’

‘It’s no good, honey.’ Nicholas Robins shook his head with something approaching despair. ‘I tried to talk to them…to explain the circumstances. I offered to have my salary cut by as much as it took to pay the debt off but they weren’t interested. They said that’s not how they run their organisation. One strike and you’re out.’

‘And you spoke to…to… Mr Diaz himself?’ His name passing her lips sent a shiver through her, and again she recalled those glittering, mesmerising dark eyes and the way they had looked at her.

‘Oh, no.’ Her father sighed. ‘I asked if I could see him but this matter isn’t important enough for him to get involved. The man’s hardly in the country as it is.’

‘So what’s going to happen?’ Lucy could barely phrase the question because she was so scared of the answer, but ducking reality was never a good idea. Her voice was thick with tears but she wouldn’t let herself cry. Her parents were both distressed enough as it was. She was an only child, and they had had her late in life and always protected her. Her unhappiness would be as wounding to them as their own.

‘At best,’ her father confessed, ‘we’ll lose the roof over our heads. At worst…’

That dreadful worst-case scenario remained unspoken, but it hovered in the air like a malignant cloud. At worst he could go to jail. Embezzlement was an offence that the courts took very seriously.

Lucy opened her mouth to suggest that they could both always come and live with her, sell their house and beg to pay off the debt with the proceeds, but practically how on earth would that work? She rented a small one-bedroomed cottage on the edge of the village. It suited her needs ideally, with its big, rambling garden and a tiny studio off the kitchen, where she often worked at her illustrations at night, but at best it was only good to house one girl and her dog. Stick two more human beings in and there wouldn’t be room to move.

The options were running out fast. Her mother rose to make them all another pot of tea, and in her absence Lucy leaned forward and hurriedly asked how her mother was doing. Really.

‘I’m worried,’ her father said unhappily. ‘She’s being supportive but she has to be scared stiff. And we both know her health isn’t good. If I get put away you’ll have to look after her, Luce. She can’t look after herself….’

‘You won’t get put away!’ But the sound of options running out was the sound of jail doors being clanged shut. ‘I could have a word….’ she said finally.

‘With who, my darling? Believe me, I’ve tried my damnedest and they’re not interested. I even offered to show them receipts for how the money was spent…the holiday Mum and I took after she had the stroke…. They don’t care. They’re there to do a job and there’s no appealing to them….’

‘I could see Mr Diaz…’

‘My love, he’ll be a hundred times worse. He’s a money-making machine without an emotional bone in his body. Sims went from being a small, friendly family firm to being part of a giant company where profits get made but there’s a price to be paid. There’s no such thing as compassionate leave. He has his minions there to make sure no one leaves early or even makes personal calls….’

Lucy thought back to that broodingly arrogant face and could well believe that anyone daring to disobey Gabriel Diaz would be hung, drawn and quartered without trial.

And yet he had sought her out two years ago, had made his intentions perfectly clear. He had wanted her. She hadn’t understood why at the time, and she was no nearer to understanding now, but couldn’t that brief flare of attraction help her out now? Perhaps encourage him to be more sympathetic to her parents’ plight than he might normally have been under the circumstances?

Glancing up, Lucy caught sight of herself in the long oval mirror over the fireplace. What she saw was a slender girl with waist-length fair hair the colour of vanilla ice cream streaked with toffee, at the moment swept back into a haphazard ponytail, a heart-shaped face and green eyes. There was nothing there to get excited about as far as she was concerned, and chances were that the man wouldn’t even remember who she was, but wasn’t it worth the risk of approaching him?

‘Let me think about things, Dad,’ she told him, moving to where he was slumped on the sofa to give him a hug. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try and get to Mr Diaz…you can never tell…’

She was thankful that her parents knew nothing of that peculiar little episode two years ago. Had they known that the devil in disguise had made a pass at her they would have immediately forbidden any contact. They were deeply traditional and would have been appalled to think that she might be allowed entry to Gabriel Diaz’s hallowed walls simply because he had once fancied her for a week.

As it was, they did their best over the next hour to drop the conversation, to talk about less contentious topics, but by the time Lucy left later that evening she was drained, and so scared on behalf of her parents that she almost couldn’t think clearly.

Not even the soothing act of drawing could calm her tumultuous thoughts and Freddy, sensing her mood, trotted behind her with a forlorn look on his squashy little face, the very picture of a depressed mutt.

The following morning she didn’t give herself a chance to argue her way out of what she knew she had to do. Instead she phoned the garden centre first thing and explained that she wouldn’t be coming in. She didn’t anticipate being in London longer than a couple of hours, but Freddy would have to be deprived of his day dashing around the gardens, chasing insects. He gazed at her reproachfully as she closed the front door on him, immune to her promises of a treat when she returned.

It was warm outside. Summer had arrived with a bounce, delivering blue, cloudless skies for the past three weeks, and today was no exception.

It was a shame that she had no attractive dresses to wear to a meeting she suspected would be grueling—if it even took place at all. As her father had said, Gabriel Diaz was out of the country most of the time. Working at the garden centre had made her lazy when it came to her wardrobe. There was no need for her to wear anything dressy, so she had a cupboard that was full to bursting with faded jeans, combat trousers, jumpers, T-shirts and overalls.

She chose the least worn of her jeans, one of the few T-shirts that didn’t advertise a rock band, and the most respectable of her shoes—a pair of black flats.

The mirror reflected back to her a picture of a girl, five foot eight, slender to the point of skinny, with long blond hair, which she personally considered her best feature. As a last resort, to add glamour to the package, but feeling tainted by the very act of aiming to appeal to someone via her looks, she dabbed on a little lip gloss. That, however, was as far as she was prepared to go.

In the middle of concluding a distasteful conversation with a certain tall, sexy brunette model he had been seeing for the past four months, and whose presence in his life had now outstayed its welcome, Gabriel Diaz was interrupted by his secretary poking her head into his office to tell him that he had a visitor.

‘Name?’

‘She refused to say,’ Nicolette said apologetically. ‘She said it’s personal. I could tell her that you’re not in…’

In receipt of information like that, Gabriel’s first response would usually have been to assume that the woman in question was a lover. Despite his dislike of any woman intruding in his workspace, it had been known to happen. Women had an irritating tendency to think that sex bought them leniency in certain areas—to imagine that sleeping with him entitled them to pop into his office for nothing more than a quick chat. Gabriel could have told them that such behaviour only guaranteed an early exit from his life.

But having just come off the phone with Imogen, he knew that his mood was not conducive to completing the report that was blinking at him on his computer.

He berated himself for not taking action sooner to terminate his relationship with Imogen. Glamorous she might very well be, but she had displayed sufficient signs of clinginess early on for him to have realised that whatever they had would end in tears. Sure enough, the fifteen-minute telephone conversation he had just had with her had been ample proof that her expectations had far exceeded what had been on offer.

This was the third woman Gabriel had had in eight months. Even for him that was a record. What was it about women who just never seemed to get the message that he wasn’t in it for the long haul? It wasn’t as though he didn’t make it clear to them from the very beginning that he was not a man who was on the lookout for commitment. No one could ever accuse him of not being scrupulously fair on that front. He never, ever made promises he had no intention of keeping. And yet time and again what started out as something light-hearted and fun ended up with him having to wriggle away from a woman who’d begun taking an unhealthy interest in domestic life and an even more unhealthy interest in diamond rings and friends with babies.

He scowled at the memory of Imogen shrieking down the phone that he had led her on. Such behaviour disgusted Gabriel. And he found it particularly annoying that she had seen fit to call him at work.

Faced with the prospect of being distracted from his report or seeing a mystery woman for ten minutes, he decided that bit of light relief might do the trick.

‘Show her up.’ He sat back and braced himself for someone on a begging mission. ‘But make sure you tell her that I have ten minutes to spare and no more. Oh, and Nicolette? Remind her that I already contribute heavily to a number of charities. The money pit isn’t bottomless….’

Hovering on the ground floor, where all the marble and glass and chrome and well-groomed artificial plants were combining to send her blood pressure shooting through the roof, Lucy was trying hard not to panic.

A surprise visit to Gabriel Diaz had seemed such a good idea at the time. In fact, it had seemed like the only idea at the time. But now a serious case of nerves was threatening to make her turn tail and flee.

The building, which she had located in the labyrinth of office buildings in the heart of the City, was terrifyingly impressive. Everyone at Sims had been thrilled to death when their small two-storeyed brick-clad office block had been expanded and turned into a high-tech glasshouse. Her father had related numerous tales of clean tiled floors and brand-new top-of-the-range desks. Lucy thought that he would be rendered speechless were he to see the opulence of DGG headquarters.

She had almost expected to be told that Gabriel wasn’t in the country, and she told herself that it was a sign that he was in the country, was in his office and would see her.