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‘A boyfriend on the scene would have been a nuisance when it comes to what I have in mind….’ Gabriel didn’t do women with husbands, and he didn’t do women who had boyfriends either. Why would he? The world was full of beautiful, single, willing women. Why go to the trouble of courting someone who came with baggage?
‘And what do you have in mind?’
‘You. I have you in mind.’ Gabriel watched with wonderment a face that expressed absolutely no comprehension of what he was getting at.
She was literally at a loss. Any other woman would have followed the thread of this conversation, and certainly by now would have got the message loud and clear. This woman was staring at him with a frown, as though he had produced a complicated maths problem from under a hat and demanded she provide a solution immediately.
‘May I do something?’ he asked with silken assurance, and then, just in case she was still away with the fairies and not getting where he was going, he strolled behind her. Before she could react he was pulling free her hair, releasing it from its constricting braid.
Lucy swivelled round and stood up, faltering backwards until she bumped into the edge of his desk.
‘What are you doing?’ With one hand she clasped her loosed hair, pulling it over one shoulder. She couldn’t peel her eyes away from his face, and her heart was pounding so fiercely in her chest that she could scarcely breathe. She gave a little squeak of horror as he very slowly strolled towards her.
‘I wanted to do that the first time I laid eyes on you,’ Gabriel murmured.
He smiled, and that smile had the effect of making her feel as though she was falling through the air with no safety net beneath her. Her stomach lurched and every nerve in her body was at screaming pitch.
‘I saw you on that bike and I wanted you. Simple as that. You were like a gazelle—all beauty and grace. And, mysteriously, I find that I still want you….’
‘But you can’t…’ Lucy breathed jerkily. ‘You…you date supermodels….’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I looked you up on the internet!’ She went bright red. He was standing so close to her that she could feel his heat. He must be able to feel hers, because she was certainly burning up.
‘You did, did you?’ Gabriel was intensely satisfied that he had made more of an impression on her than he had given himself credit for—boyfriend or no boyfriend. An indifferent woman would never have looked him up on the internet. More to the point, an indifferent woman wouldn’t be looking at him now with lurking excitement in her eyes. Even if she was strenuously trying to conceal it. An expert when it came to the opposite sex, he could sense her response to him as clearly as if it had been emblazoned on her forehead in neon lettering.
‘I was curious….’ Lucy defended.
‘Curiosity is good.’ He leant forward to brace himself on the desk, his hands on either side of her, caging her in.
The fantasy of taking her here—in his office, on his desk—was so powerful that he hardened, his erection painful as it pressed thickly against the zipper of his trousers. Gone was the jaded, world-weary feeling that had settled over him for what seemed like years. For that alone she would be worth every penny.
‘So here’s my proposal…’
Regretfully, he straightened, because being so close to her, breathing in that refreshing innocence, the clean, minty smell of her fabulous hair, was doing all sorts of things to his body. Much as he enjoyed the sensation, he had to acknowledge that they were in his office, and Nicolette was just one door away. Having his secretary accidentally burst in on a scene of rampant lovemaking on his desk would not be good for her dodgy blood pressure.
At no point did it occur to him that Lucy might reject his advances the way she had rejected them two years ago. This time he held the trump card, and he had every intention of using it.
As he strolled back towards his chair he could feel her eyes on him, and he knew with every primitive instinct in his body that she had not been immune to that brief moment of contact when he had touched her hair.
‘I won’t try to wrap it up in any fancy packaging. I want you, and in return for having you in my bed I’m willing to let your father off the hook. All the stolen money will be replaced. Orders issued to my two finance guys that with the debt owing to me cleared the matter is to be buried, never again to resurface. Of course your father won’t be able to return to his job. That would be taking the joke a step too far. After all, a thief is a thief is a thief. But he will be retired with a generous package, and hopefully a salutary lesson in never dipping his fingers in the till of any company again….’
Lucy couldn’t help staring at him. Here was the same man who had shown up at the garden centre with his lackeys in tow and a dinner invitation he’d expected to be accepted. Now he was offering her an invitation of another sort, and this time he was calling the shots. She was truly appalled at his lack of morality. Was this how all rich people operated? Did they assume that they just needed to snap their fingers and the rest of the world would dance to their tune?
‘That’s ridiculous…’ She edged away from the desk and began backing unsteadily towards the door. She eyed the backpack she had brought with her. It was on the ground, next to the chair she had fallen into when she had first entered his office. Her unravelled hair fell in a long, thick blond curtain over one shoulder, but she was hardly aware of it as she took small steps towards the bag.
‘What’s so ridiculous about it?’
His words halted her, and she jerked up to stare at him with an expression of disbelief. ‘You’re asking me to be…to…’
‘Sleep with me…make love…have sex—at times and places of my choosing… No need to tiptoe over the details.’
‘But that’s utterly immoral!’
‘So’s stealing—and on the plus side sex isn’t a criminal offence punishable with a jail sentence….’ He was incredulous that she was even quibbling over his generous offer. As rescue packages went, he didn’t think she could have landed herself a better one.
And yet she was still staring at him as though he had asked if she wouldn’t mind stripping off and running naked down the street. What exactly, he wondered, was the problem here? If she was playing hard to get in an attempt to up the ante then she was definitely barking up the wrong tree. He would never have dreamt of doing a deal like this with any other woman. Perhaps that had something to do with the fact that she was the only woman ever to have turned him down. But, although she might be the exception, her window of opportunity was small.
‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t.’
Lucy retrieved her backpack and clutched it in front of her like a shield. She wondered whether there was anything else she could say that would buy her father some clemency, but in her heart she knew that the offer on the table was the only one this man would be making. She also knew that by turning it down she was condemning her parent to swift retribution.
But how could she possibly do what he wanted? Sex, for him, was clearly no more than a physical transaction. It was irrelevant that there was no emotion involved. She had always promised herself that sex for her would have lots of emotion involved. How could she abandon the moral principles she had been weaned on?
Gabriel shrugged. He strolled towards her and received the impression that she was holding her ground only by the skin of her teeth. Given half a chance she would have hightailed it through the door at speed.
‘Your choice,’ he told her with casual indifference.
‘Isn’t there something else you want?’ Lucy asked desperately.
‘No.’ Gabriel refused to mince words. ‘That’s the only deal on the table.’
‘And so…my dad…’
‘Goodbye freedom. Hello Cell Block H….’
‘You’re the most heartless, unsympathetic man I’ve ever met in my entire life!’
‘But I have many other things to offer….’ Gabriel’s voice was low and husky. She had a dusting of freckles on her nose and her eyelashes were so thick and dark that anyone would think she had laid on the mascara with a trowel were it not for the fact that she radiated a natural glow that had nothing to do with make-up.
He had always found that a certain element of surprise worked when it came to disarming his opponents. He used it now.
Lucy, staring at him with the dazed expression of someone suddenly subjected to a whiplash rollercoaster of events they had been least expecting, was not prepared for his lean brown hand as he reached to curl his fingers in her hair. She was certainly not prepared for his cool mouth as it descended to meet hers, and she was even less prepared for the way her body was galvanised into a reaction that was so strong it deprived her of the ability to breathe.
She had been kissed before, but never like this. As his tongue gently parted her lips she felt scorching heat race through her. Her breasts were heavy, sensitive to the slight brush of his chest against hers. Her nipples tingled in a way that shot signals to every other part of her body. Like wax subjected to open flame, she was melting. She heard a low moan and was shocked to realise that it was coming from her.
With a push, she separated her treacherous body from his and found no opposition. Indeed, he released her immediately and stood back with a slight smile curving his beautiful mouth.
‘How could you?’
‘Take advantage of you? You enjoyed it…’
‘I did not!’ Lucy cried fiercely. ‘I’m not like that! I’m not like those women you go out with!’ But she was mortified, and ashamed of her body—which was loudly protesting her virtuous words. ‘I’m going!’
She took a couple of panicky steps to remove herself from the stranglehold of his proximity and he didn’t follow her. He reached for something on his desk, scribbled on it.
‘Here’s my card. I’ll give you twenty-four hours, and after that my offer expires. Word of advice? It’s a generous offer. Think very carefully before you decide to put your principles ahead of common sense. And don’t kid yourself that you would be disgusted by the deal. You came alive for me just then, and there’s plenty more where that came from….’
‘Don’t say those things!’ But already she was reacting to his words, her mind flashing erotic images through her head—images that made her squirm because they were so new, so unexpected, so horribly, frighteningly different from anything she had ever experienced before.
She was barely aware of leaving his office. She couldn’t have said how she managed to make it to the train station or get on the train. Several times she looked at the card he had given her and was tempted to rip it into shreds and chuck it in the nearest bin.
So why didn’t she? He had offered her a devil’s contract. She should have thrown that card away the second she left his office. She should never have accepted it in the first place!
Her thoughts were all over the place. Scenery flashed past and she saw none of it. When she tried to recall the conversation they had had all she could see was his sinfully handsome face, all she could hear was the velvety persuasiveness of his low, sexy drawl. He hadn’t touched her, but she felt as though he had. Her body tingled as though he had run those lean brown fingers over it.
She was determined that he couldn’t buy her, but even as she stood self-righteously on her podium and declared that as an absolute certainty a little voice in her head was reminding her of how he had made her feel, how that kiss had cut through all her fine words and blown them apart into smithereens.
Once home, she briefly dropped in to make sure Freddy was all right, and then drove to her parents’ house—to find neither of them there and the house in darkness.
On top of everything that had been going on this could only mean bad news—which was confirmed when she called her father on his mobile to be told that they were at the hospital.
‘Your mother had a turn.’
He was holding it together, but with difficulty. Lucy could hear that down the phone line.
‘I didn’t want to worry you. You’ve been worried enough already. At any rate, they’re doing tests, but they think she may have had a mild panic attack. They’ll keep her in overnight. There’s no need to get yourself into a tizzy about it….’
But that was easier said than done.
In the space of a couple of days her world had shifted on its axis. Her comfortable routine had been blown apart.
At the hospital, exhausted after a day’s worth of travelling, Lucy was cheered to hear that her mother had indeed suffered only a mild panic attack, but when the doctor took her aside, with her father, and gravely told them that they should make sure that Celia was kept as stress-free as possible, she could only think of that offer Gabriel had made.
What price high-minded principles when her mother was lying on a hospital bed and her father was staring down the barrel of a gun?
Would it be the end of the world for her? Was she really prepared to sacrifice her parents for the wonderful prize of her virginity?
It was dark by the time she eventually made it back to her cottage. After a day cooped up indoors Freddy was raring for some fun and she spent half an hour outside with him. Her mind was clouded with anxiety as she threw his ball and watched as he fetched it, romping back to her triumphantly and waiting so that the exercise could be repeated.
Lucy knew what she had to do, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
And yet the memory of that searing kiss leapt into her head and her heart began to pound.
The palms of her hands were clammy when, an hour later, after she had tried and failed to have something to eat, she tapped Gabriel’s number into her telephone.
The business card he had given her displayed a dizzying array of numbers but he had handwritten his cell number, which probably meant that it was a number only released to a small number of privileged people. She figured that the women who had that number probably thought they had won the lottery.
He picked up on the third ring and immediately she wondered where he was. At the office? In his house or apartment, or whatever expensive pad he called home? It certainly wouldn’t be a quaint little house in the suburbs!
‘It’s me. It’s Lucy. Lucy Robins. I came to see you at your off—’
‘My memory is in perfect working order,’ Gabriel said drily. He had literally just stepped through the front door of his sprawling house in Kensington. It was the one of the most prestigious houses in one of the most prestigious roads in London.
He began removing his tie, heading to the kitchen to pour himself a whisky. Amazing. Even the sound of her voice had an invigorating effect on his libido.
‘I’m taking it you’ve had a little think about the conversation we had today…?’ he encouraged, when her awkward, stammering introduction was followed by complete silence.
‘Yes, I have.’
‘And you’ve come to what conclusion? That your father is to face those cruel, unforgiving and heartless scales of justice and reap his due rewards?’
‘No…’
That single monosyllable sounded as though it had been dragged out of her, but Gabriel was unperturbed by that. Had she really been as repulsed by him as she had tried to convince him then the offer would have been withdrawn. But she wasn’t. Reaching for a glass, he smiled to himself—the satisfied smile of a predator that has successfully corralled its prey and can look forward to enjoying the catch.
‘Maybe we can talk,’ she muttered.
‘Count on it. I’ll be with you tomorrow.’ Some meetings would have to be rearranged, but she was a prize that would be worth that small inconvenience.
‘No!’ Lucy was alone in the cottage, but she still looked guiltily around her—as though at any moment the walls might decide to spout ears. Have Gabriel swan down to Somerset? She could think of nothing worse! There was no way she would ever let her parents suspect that she had struck this deal. They would be horrified. It would be her shameful secret and would have to be kept exclusively in London. A shameful weekend secret. It was the only way. ‘I… I can come to London at the weekend…’
‘Not sure I can wait that long.’
‘Please. It’s only two days away. If you give me your address…or better still we could meet at…a restaurant…or something…’
‘I’ll text you my address.’ Anticipation roared through him as it never had before. ‘When I see you I don’t want anyone around.’ He was already thinking of that slender, loose-limbed body, as graceful as a dancer’s. He would definitely have to have a cold shower tonight. ‘I can’t wait….’
CHAPTER THREE
TWO DAYS LATER Lucy was back on the train, speeding up to London. On the one hand she was a nervous wreck. Gabriel was no longer someone she could shove to the back of her mind and forget because he wasn’t physically around.
He had phoned her twice since her decision to give him what he wanted. She felt as if he was keeping tabs on her, making sure his quarry wasn’t allowed any second thoughts, although his conversations were not at all threatening. He asked her about her day and expressed interest in the details. Lucy didn’t believe for a minute that he really cared one way or the other about successfully transplanted orchids or the large order the garden centre had taken from a chain of hotels in the north. She knew that he was trying to put her at her ease, but instead of feeling relieved she just felt increasingly as if she had been bought and was now being primed for consumption.
On the other hand the wheels were in motion for her father’s reprieve.
She had told her dad haltingly, because lying didn’t come easy—especially lying to her parent—that she had managed to get in touch with Gabriel and the meeting had been a good one.
‘I think he might be prepared to let you off,’ she had said only the morning before.
A more suspicious parent would have immediately jumped to the right conclusion that any favour granted from someone like Gabriel Diaz would require a hefty payback, but suspicion didn’t run deep in Nicholas Robins’s bones. He was a man who saw the good in people, and he had had no trouble accepting that Gabriel Diaz had been open to persuasion.
‘It’s a first-time offence,’ she had offered by way of explanation for a decision that made no sense, ‘and I don’t know—maybe he doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of the local people by dragging you through the courts. I… er…told him how sorry you were, and how affected everyone in the community would be if you were to be punished…how they close ranks against outsiders…’
‘And did you tell him that I will be willing to sacrifice all my pay until the debt’s cleared? I could get a second job…something to bring a little money in… The bulk of my earnings could go towards paying him back…. Did you mention that I had already started making repayments?’
Lucy hadn’t had the heart to tell her father that the likelihood of him returning to his old job was about as likely as a trip to the moon. Instead she had waxed lyrical about Gabriel’s wonderfully sympathetic nature…the vast reserves of wealth that had enabled him to write off her father’s debt as a mere bagatelle that could be swept under the carpet…his empathy for a man who had borrowed money, misguidedly, for a very worthwhile cause…
She’d had to stop herself from laughing out loud at the one hundred percent inaccurate and ridiculous picture she had painted of a man who was just the opposite of the one she had so feverishly described to her father.
The main thing was that her father no longer faced the threat of being thrown into prison. Also, her mother had been released from the hospital and was cheered by this change in their fortunes.
They were both so naive that Lucy could have wept, but she’d kept up the optimistic front and only sagged when she’d got to the station and bade farewell to her village for the weekend.
Details to finalise, she had told them, and then, to add credence to her story, she had hinted that she liked Gabriel more than she was letting on.
All in all she had given an award-winning performance. She hated herself for it, but her hands were tied.
Now she stared down at the overnight bag that was on the seat next to her. She was travelling first class at Gabriel’s insistence. Well, it was preferable to the car he had offered to send for her, or the helicopter that he’d assured her would be no great trouble. She had explained a lot to her parents, but there was no way she could have explained a helicopter landing in the village square to collect her.
As soon as her eyes alighted on the overnight bag her pulses began to race and she had to lean back and briefly close her eyes. Tonight she should have been going to the movies with two of her girlfriends, who had now also been on the receiving end of a few white lies. Her life, which had been so uncomplicated before, now seemed to be comprised of a string of half-truths. She was an innocent little insect that had inadvertently strayed into a spider’s web, and her every move ensured greater entrapment.
Gabriel had told her that a driver would be sent to collect her from the station. But she walked out into the blinding sunshine to see immediately that any prolonged period of reprieve was at an end—because Gabriel himself was there, casually dressed and looking ludicrously out of place amidst the banks of stressed-out, tired passengers leaving the station.
She couldn’t fail to notice how many women looked at him. He, with arrogant indifference, appeared not to notice the attention he was getting. He was lounging against the railings, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. Across the street she could see his black limo, parked and waiting.
Gabriel spotted her as soon as she walked out of the station and noted with dissatisfaction that she seemed to have gone to great pains to dress in the least flattering outfit conceivable. Not jeans this time, but combat trousers the colour of sludge and yet another T-shirt. The flat shoes had been replaced with trainers. He didn’t think that he had ever gone out with or even personally known any woman who possessed a pair of trainers. As far as he was concerned that kind of footwear was suitable only for the gym.
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