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Lucy was grateful for that. She was awed and impossibly daunted by her surroundings. Every slab of marble and sheet of glass in the building breathed money and power. The employees were all decked out in designer suits and looked as though they were dashing off to very important, life-changing meetings.
In her jeans and T-shirt and flat black ballet shoes she felt as conspicuous as a bull in a china shop. She knew that people were staring as the lift disgorged them into a vast, elegant space, thickly carpeted, with a central circular sunken area in which various other besuited people were doing clever things in front of computers.
Her skin literally crawled with nerves, and her legs were so wobbly that it was a challenge to move one in front of the other.
Beyond the central atrium, a wide corridor was flanked on either side by private offices the likes of which could only, surely, be found in a company with profits to burn.
She found that she was lagging behind as Nicolette strode briskly towards the office at the very end of the corridor. Noiseless air-conditioning meant that it was much cooler inside the building than it had been outside, and it felt positively chilly up here on the eighth floor. She clamped her teeth together to stop them from chattering.
‘If you’d wait here…?’
Nicolette’s smile was kindly but Lucy hardly noticed. Her pink mouth, lip gloss long since gone, had fallen open at the opulence of her surroundings. Light grey smoked glass concealed this outer office from prying eyes. The walls were white, and dominated on one side by a huge abstract painting and on the other by smoked ash doors behind which lay heaven only knew what. Another office? A wardrobe stuffed full of designer suits? A bathroom? Or maybe a torture chamber into which recalcitrant employees could be marched and taught valuable life lessons?
Nicolette’s desk was bigger than the studio room in her house where Lucy did her meticulous drawings. At a push it could be converted into a dining table to seat ten.
She was staring at it, fighting the sensation that she had somehow been transported into a parallel universe, when she was told that Mr Diaz would see her now.
Lucy had thought she hadn’t forgotten what Gabriel looked like. As she entered his office and the door behind her clicked softly closed she realised she actually had. The man slowly turning from the window where he had been standing, looking out, was so much taller than she remembered. She was pinned to the spot by eyes the colour of bitter chocolate. Time had done nothing to dim the staggering force of his personality—the same force she had felt the first time she had seen him, surrounded by his minions. It swept over her, strangling her vocal cords and scrambling her ability to think.
This was not what Gabriel had expected. He had expected a middle-aged harpy with a begging bowl and pictures of unfortunate children.
But this was the woman whose image he had never quite been able to eradicate from his head. She had been stunning then and she was even more stunning now—although he would have been hard pressed to put his finger on what, exactly, it was about her that held his gaze with such ferocious intensity.
Her skin was pale gold and smooth as satin, and that amazing hair, pulled back into a long plait that ran down the length of her narrow spine, had the same effect on him now as it had two years ago. Confronted by the one and only woman who had ever said no to him, Gabriel schooled his features into polite curiosity. He didn’t know what she wanted, but the residue of his frustration and annoyance suddenly lifted.
‘Thank you for seeing me.’ Lucy hovered by the door, not having been invited to take one of the leather chairs that were ranged in front of a desk that was even bigger than the one belonging to his secretary. His silence was unnerving. It propelled her into hurried speech. ‘You probably don’t remember me. We met a couple of years ago. When you…ah… came to Somerset… Sims Electronics? It was one of the companies you took over…. I’m sorry. I didn’t even introduce myself. Lucy…ah… Robins. I’m sorry. You won’t have a clue who I am….’
Regret at her hasty decision to descend on him unannounced rushed over her, making her want to stumble back out of the door and as far away from this intimidating building as she could get. She didn’t know if she should walk towards him and extend her hand in a gesture of politeness, but just the thought of touching him sent her nerves into further debilitating freefall.
Not have a clue who she was? Gabriel wanted to laugh aloud at that one. One look at her face and he was realising that her polite rejection still rankled a lot more than he had suspected. He was not a man who had his advances spurned. The experience had burnt a hole in his memory. But what the hell was she doing here? Had she turned up two years ago he would have assumed that it was because she’d had a rethink about her incomprehensible decision to turn him away—but now…? All this time later…? No, something was at play here, and intense curiosity kicked into gear. It felt great. Invigorating. Especially after his ludicrous phone call with Imogen.
‘Are you going to say anything?’ she asked, her nerves making her stumble over the question.
At that, Gabriel pushed himself away from the window and indicated one of the chairs in front of his desk.
‘I remember you,’ he drawled, resuming his seat and watching every detail of the emotions flitting across her face. ‘The girl from the garden centre. You returned an item of jewellery. What did you do with the flowers? Introduce them to the incinerator?’
Lucy lowered her eyes and fumbled her way to the chair, not knowing whether he expected an answer to that deliberately provocative question. Her skin was burning, as though someone had shoved her to stand in front of an open flame, and although she wasn’t looking at him the harsh, perfect angles of his face were imprinted in her head with the forcefulness of a branding iron.
Staring down uncomfortably at her entwined fingers, she literally could see nothing else but his dark-as-midnight eyes, the curl of his sensuous mouth, the coolly arrogant inclination of his head. But she was glad to be sitting. At least it gave her legs some reprieve from the threat of collapsing under her.
‘So what do you want?’ Gabriel asked with studied indifference. ‘You have ten minutes of my time and counting.’
Lucy balled her hands into fists. She understood that they had parted company on less than ideal terms. Perhaps his pride had been wounded because she had turned him down. But was that any reason for him to make this even more difficult for her than it already was? Two years ago she had been offered a glimpse of his arrogance. Now she could see that in no way had it diminished over time.
‘I’ve come about my father.’ She took a deep breath and forced herself to meet his mildly enquiring gaze. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s been a bit of a situation…at the company…’
Gabriel frowned. His business interests were so extensive that entire companies that sheltered under his umbrella were practically self-accounting. Now he rapidly clicked his computer and began scrolling through all the details of Sims. It took him no time at all to unearth what her mystery trip to his office was all about.
‘By situation,’ he said coldly, ‘I take it that you’re referring to your father’s embezzlement?’
‘Please don’t call it that.’
‘You’re here because your father’s been caught out with his hand in the till. I’m hoping you’re not going to ask me to turn a blind eye to his thieving just because once upon a time I gave you a second look…?’
Mortification ripped through her, making her slight frame tremble. ‘You don’t understand! My father’s not a thief’.
‘No? Then we have a different take on what constitutes a thief. In my view, it’s someone who has been caught trying to rip a company off…dipping into the coffers…taking money…’ He leant forward and placed the palms of his hands flat on his desk. ‘Taking money without permission, presumably to enjoy the high life!’
‘He… Look, he knows that what he did was wrong….’
‘Good! Then perhaps the courts will look on him favourably and not make the sentence too harsh! Alternatively, they might just want to flex their muscles and demonstrate that fraud isn’t something to be taken lightly! Now…’
He stood up and cursed himself for the impact she still seemed to have on him—even when she was sitting in his chair, in his office, bleating on about her father and trying to pull the sympathy card. All of which added up to a situation with which he had less than zero tolerance.
‘If that’s all, Nicolette will show you out….’
CHAPTER TWO
LUCY’S SPINE STIFFENED in stubborn, angry refusal to see this as the conclusion of her expedition to London. He had treated her with contempt and hadn’t even bothered to hear her out. Of course he had every good reason to dismiss her, but the thought of her father being chucked into a prison cell like a common criminal…. He would never survive that, and neither would her mother.
She could feel his eyes burning into her downturned head and she fought down the sickening wave of pride that made her want to leave with her head held high. Right now pride was a commodity she couldn’t afford.
‘Please…please hear me out,’ she whispered, daunted beyond belief by the cold hostility emanating from him.
‘Whatever for?’ Gabriel’s voice was harshly blunt. ‘Embezzlement in my company is not accepted on any level. It’s as simple as that. It’s outrageous to think that you came here to parade your wares in front of me in the hope that I might bend the rules. Hell, you haven’t even bothered to wear something decent!’
‘Parade my wares?’ Lucy looked at him with bewilderment.
‘I wasn’t born yesterday. I know the way women operate. Fair means or foul pretty much sums it up. You thought that you could use your sexy little body to score a few points. Big mistake. I’ve seen a lot of sexy bodies in my time, and I’m inured to any woman who tries to use hers for any kind of profit.’
Sexy little body. Those three words, uttered so casually, brought a hectic colour to her cheeks. Having never considered herself in terms of how she looked, it was somehow shocking to hear him refer to her appearance so bluntly.
She was also uncomfortable with the brief surge of pleasure she’d felt at hearing herself described as sexy. She had never felt like a sexy woman. Sexy women had attitude. They flashed their eyes and swayed their hips and pouted and flirted. She had never done any of those things, and wouldn’t have been able to do them even if she had spent a lifetime reading books on how to achieve it. She just wasn’t sexy, and that was why she had shied away from relationships with boys at college.
She was conservative, traditional—one of those boring types who had never slept around and was saving herself for the guy she eventually fell in love with. Her parents had done a good job in instilling values that had long been left by the wayside by most girls over the age of seventeen.
And yet he had called her sexy. She thought that perhaps he needed his eyes checked, but now was hardly the time to point that out. Not when he was staring at her as though she was something that had crawled out of a dustbin into his immaculate office with the sole intention of making a mess.
‘I didn’t come here to…to…’
Watching the rise and fall of her chest, and inwardly remarking on a repertoire of facial expressions he hadn’t seen in a very long time in any woman, Gabriel caught himself wondering whether it was that wide-eyed innocence that he found so appealing. Appealing against his better judgement.
She had a face that would make any man go crazy, and yet it was coupled with a transparency that could only be dangerous.
‘To…to…?’ He parroted her stammer mockingly.
‘You’re horrible,’ Lucy uttered on a desperate cry, ‘and I’m really sorry I came here in the first place. I shouldn’t have. Dad said that he’d tried to explain to your people at the company but none of them would listen. I might have guessed that you wouldn’t listen either. I’m sorry I took up your precious time!’ She began to stand up.
His order to ‘Sit!’ took her so much by surprise that she practically fell back into the chair.
‘You mean you’re going to listen to…?’
Gabriel raised one imperious hand to cut her off mid-sentence. ‘You can forget about any sob stories. Your father stole money from my company and that’s the end of it. I’m not interested in listening to a long, tedious and fabricated list of extenuating circumstances. There are no extenuating circumstances when it comes to theft.’
He swung his long, lean body out of the chair and moved with economical grace to perch on the edge of his desk, his hands loosely clasped together. Nicolette knocked and popped into the office to remind him of a meeting due to be held in the conference room in fifteen minutes. Gabriel waved her aside.
‘Let Davis cover for me,’ he said, not taking his eyes off Lucy’s downbent fair head. Her entire posture spoke of weary, despairing resignation. She had come to try and save her father’s skin, and he supposed he could award her one or two brownie points for that, but he was pleased that she had got the essential message—which was that he was no sucker. Spinning him hard luck stories was a non-starter.
He knew that at this juncture he should send her away and let her father try and convince the long arm of the law that it had all been a terrible mistake. But why hide from the truth? She was the one who’d got away and he still found her curiously attractive. Even dressed in clothes no woman should wear, and with a begging bowl in her hands.
His last abortive relationship with Imogen…the line of beautiful bodies and beautiful faces and easy availability…he was bored with them all. He was tired of women who simpered whenever they were with him, sick of the certain knowledge that they would all do whatever he wanted, however outrageous his request might be.
At the age of thirty-two, he found his palate was lamentably jaded. Looking at the woman in front of him made him feel as though he had been injected with youth serum. Everything about her fascinated him—from her naïveté in showing up at his office with a sob story right down to the novelty of being in the company of a woman who didn’t ask How high? the second he told her to jump.
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 her small, high breasts and his arousal was as fierce as it was sudden. She chose that very moment to raise moss-green eyes to him and he smiled a slow, satisfied smile—the smile of someone anticipating victory in a battle that had yet to commence.
‘How was your trip to London?’ Gabriel asked, maintaining eye contact.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Good trip? It must have been a wrench leaving the plants behind….’
‘Why are you asking me these questions? I thought you were in a rush. I thought you could only spare me a few minutes. What’s the point wasting the few minutes I have telling you about my trip?’
‘Well, it’s more worthwhile than wasting them telling me about what a sterling character your father is….’
Lucy fell silent, although he continued to stare at her. She didn’t know where his weird turn in the conversation was going, but she clung to the slender hope that whilst he was talking he might still be prepared to listen. Surely he couldn’t be so lacking in emotion that he wouldn’t even hear her out?
His dark, watchful eyes set up a series of stirring reactions inside her until she could feel her temples begin to throb. She just didn’t know what he wanted her to say and confusion brought a flush of colour to her cheeks. ‘I… the journey was fine….’
‘And your job? How’s that going?’
‘Good. Great. I…’ She was gripped by a sudden idea and her eyes brightened. ‘Better than great, in fact. I… I don’t only work in the garden centre—I do quite a bit of illustrative work as well. I… I did a degree in graphic art and I was commissioned two years ago to do some drawings of the rare plants and flowers for a compendium the centre was putting together….’
Gabriel made a non-committal sound that was neither encouraging nor discouraging. Frankly he couldn’t care less about whatever drawings she had been commissioned to do, but he was enjoying the genuine enthusiasm on her face. He toyed with the pleasant thought that he might be able to generate that same enthusiasm. Once more he was subjected to a wildly pressing urge to release her hair so that he could tangle his fingers in its rippling length.
Any woman in possession of looks like hers should not have been caught dead in a pair of faded jeans and a T-shirt—least of all in his presence. He had expressed disgust that she might come to him with a view to using her body to get what she wanted without even bothering to dress for the occasion, but now he realised that he would have been disappointed had she done so.
Hadn’t he had his fill of Barbie dolls? Wasn’t he sick to his back teeth of women who were perfectly manicured, perfectly groomed and perfectly dressed in the most expensive and revealing clothes that money could buy?
Lucy was disconcerted by that lazy appraisal in his roving dark eyes. It made her feel uncomfortable. She suppressed the crazy notion that buried beneath her discomfort a slow swirl of excitement was eddying in her veins, making her breasts tingle and sending a shooting, melting warmth between her legs.
She pressed her legs firmly together and leaned forward, gripping the soft leather of the chair. ‘What I’m trying to say,’ she said quickly, because he struck her as a man who lost interest fast and she needed to grab his attention before that happened, ‘is that I get paid well for my art work. I’ve been putting money aside for the past couple of years. I’ve been trying to save so that I can afford to buy the little cottage I rent at the moment. Mrs Hardy, who owns it, says that she’ll continue renting it to me until I can afford to put down a deposit and get a mortgage from the bank….’
‘Where are you going with this?’
‘Right. Well…would you be amenable to me paying you back the money that Dad…er… borrowed from your company? You can take all the money I’ve saved. It’s a little over four thousand pounds. And I’m willing and happy to give you everything I earn. I mean, I’d have to keep a little aside for bills and food, but you could have the rest….’
‘First, your father didn’t borrow the money. Second, I’m afraid your savings and some of your monthly earnings wouldn’t begin to put a dent in his debt. Frankly, you’d be paying me until the day you died and beyond. So you can scrap that suggestion straight away.’
‘In other words there’s no point to me being here at all, is there?’
Lucy watched her bright idea disappear over the horizon, taking with it all hope that she might appeal to Gabriel’s better side. It was clear that he didn’t have one of those. Not only that, but he was deriving great enjoyment from watching her squirm. Perhaps this was his way of exacting revenge for having been turned down by her two years ago. A man like Gabriel Diaz, blessed with drop-dead good looks and the trappings of wealth, would not be used to any woman turning him down. She was now paying the high price for being one of that rare breed of woman who had.
‘Call me crazy—because anyone else in my situation would have thrown you out on your ear the second you walked into this office and opened your mouth—but you might have a way out of this….’
‘Really?’ Hope flared and she looked at him with nervous, wary anticipation.
Gabriel noted that she had amazing eyes. They were a peculiar shade of green—deep green, the colour of the sea in certain lights.
‘Really. But before I get to what I have in mind let me ask you this: what happened to the boyfriend?’
‘Sorry?’ Lucy frowned, at a loss to understand where this reference to a boyfriend had come from. She didn’t have a boyfriend.
‘The boyfriend,’ Gabriel said impatiently. ‘The one you told me you had when you sent me your Dear John text.’
‘I really offended you back then, didn’t I?’
Gabriel laughed with caustic amusement. ‘Offended me?’
‘I—I didn’t mean to…’ Lucy continued in an anxious stammer. ‘I’m not used to…’
‘Spare me the involved explanation. Just tell me the fate of the boyfriend.’
Lucy had no idea what this had to do with the matter in hand. She had to cast her mind back even to remember that small white lie. At the time the presence of a man in her life had seemed the only way of wriggling out of the situation. Gabriel Diaz had oozed sex, and there was no way she would have accepted his proposition. He had also oozed persistence. Added together, she had felt it perfectly acceptable to produce a fictitious other half, and afterwards she’d been very glad she had done so—because a quick trip on the internet had shown her what she had already suspected. Gabriel Diaz was a player—a man who, from everything she had read, worked his way through women without conscience. There were pictures of him with various beauties, none of whom had stayed the course of time.
‘He…ah… it didn’t work out,’ Lucy mumbled, dropping her gaze and staring with furious concentration at the tips of her very unflattering black pumps.
‘No? What went wrong?’
‘I don’t really want to talk about it,’ she muttered, licking her lips and frantically trying to imagine what the fate of this made up guy might have been. One tiny and necessary white lie was one thing. A series of follow-on lies was not going to do. But his continuing silence was already telling her that she was expected to expand. And yet, she thought with a rare spark of defiance, why should she? He had been horrible to her. Arrogant, sneering and dismissive. Why should she tell him anything she didn’t want to?
But that sliver of hope he had dangled in front of her was an effective gag on her rebellious thoughts. If nothing else she owed it to her parents to take advantage of any crumb of mercy he was prepared to throw her way. Perhaps he could arrange for her father to be let go, but for his reputation to remain intact and any prison sentence to be waived. That would certainly be a worthwhile result. Her parents played an active part in the community. It would be hard if her father’s situation were to become public knowledge. Fortunately the two men who had uncovered the problem were both Londoners and would not be hanging around.
‘He…um… broke up with me,’ Lucy imparted reluctantly. ‘And then, shortly afterwards, he went away. To…to New Zealand… To live with the woman he dumped me for…’ This seemed the best way to ensure that her fictitious boyfriend was well and truly out of the way. ‘But I still don’t understand what this has to do with anything….’
‘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.
