And where was Laura? Gabriel cursed softly under his breath. He’d arrived ten minutes late, after an urgent phone call from London. He needed Laura here at once, so he could introduce her to Felipe Oliveira and try to undo the damage that Adriana had spitefully caused.
Oliveira’s mansion was on the most beautiful stretch of the Costa do Sul to the north of Rio. The sprawling house was a white classical confection like a wedding cake, surrounded by multilevel terraces, with a large pool that overlooked a private beach. Oliveira had been a workaholic all his life, but now that he was in his mid-sixties, he’d apparently lost interest in business in favor of possessing—and pleasing—a woman half his age. It was the only reason he’d finally offered to sell the company back to Gabriel after almost twenty years.
Gabriel stood on the upper terrace, looking down toward the pool where he instantly saw Oliveira, wearing baggy shorts and a button-down shirt. The man was deep in conversation with French tycoon Théo St. Raphaël, who was definitely not a local, and whose presence here could be for one reason only.
Gabriel ground his teeth. The Frenchman wore a sleek gray suit. He alone among all the guests was not even pretending to dress for a pool party. Gabriel’s hands tightened on the railing. The aristocratic French bastard excelled at breaking companies up for parts. The two had tangled before, and Gabriel knew St. Raphaël would like nothing more than to steal Açoazul from under his nose. All the assets of his father’s company would be scattered around the world, coldly dissected for St. Raphaël’s profit.
Gabriel narrowed his eyes. He couldn’t let that happen.
But where was Laura?
Scowling, he glanced at his watch. Carlos had texted that they were on the way. But Gabriel would have to start on his own. Grimly going down the stairs to the lower terrace, he started walking toward Oliveira and his French rival.
“Gabriel,” he heard a woman’s voice coo behind him. Setting his jaw, he turned with a scowl.
Adriana da Costa smiled up at him from a poolside cabana, where she was holding court in her tiny bikini. Five half-naked young men surrounded her, offering her food she would never eat in a million years. Gabriel saw one particularly hapless youngster trying to tempt her with a platter of bread and cheese. Bread and cheese? Adriana’s idea of a fattening meal was menthol cigarettes and a handful of raisins.
Lounging in her chair, she lazily stretched her skinny arm up over her wide-brimmed straw hat as she looked up at him. In her other hand, she was holding a glass of something that looked like water but was likely vodka on the rocks.
“What a lovely surprise,” Adriana drawled. Her eyes raked over Gabriel’s shorts and short-sleeved shirt, now open over his bare chest without the tank top. “I didn’t know Felipe invited you.” She smiled slyly. “I heard the two of you ran into some sort of…trouble.”
Gabriel set his jaw. She knew perfectly well why he hadn’t been able to close the deal. Since Gabriel had ended their short tumultuous affair, Adriana had been determined to get his attention, and now she had it. She clearly wanted to either have him back in her bed, or wreak her revenge.
How he despised her.
Curving his lips into a smile, he walked past the young men clustered around her and stood at the bottom of her lounge chair, near her perfectly pedicured feet. “Does Oliveira know you are keeping such company?”
“Oh, these?” She shrugged, indicating her admirers with a wave of her hand. “They are just my friends.”
“You are an engaged woman. You should not have such friends.”
“Go away, all of you,” she told them in English. Pouting slightly, she sat back in her chair. “It is easy for you to say. You pushed me into an engagement that I never wanted.”
“I would never push anyone into marriage.”
“Dropping me like you did, what did you expect me to do?” She sat up straight in her lounge chair, leaning forward to expose her cleavage to better advantage. “No man has ever left me before. You wouldn’t return my calls. I fell into the arms of the first rich man who proposed to me!”
Gabriel set his jaw again. “And that is why you are trying to destroy my business deal with Oliveira?”
She shrugged gleefully. “I just told Felipe the truth—that we were once lovers.”
“You implied more than that,” he said. “You made him believe if I moved permanently to Rio, I would make it my mission to lure you into my bed.”
Adriana looked up at him like a smug Persian cat, fluttering her long dark eyelashes. “Wouldn’t you?”
He stared down at her, unable to believe her vanity. She’d been a pain in the ass as a mistress, possessive and jealous. But clearly, she still believed that he, like any man, must be lusting after her as a matter of course.
He was tempted to correct that impression, but if he did, she might do some real damage and lie to her fiancé, tell him that Gabriel had made a pass at her. Clenching his hands with the effort it took to hide his dislike, Gabriel forced himself to say pleasantly, “I will always treasure our time together, but that time is over. I am with another woman now. In a committed relationship.”
“Committed? You?” Adriana stared at him, her eyes wide and shocked. It was very satisfying. For several seconds all he could hear was samba music from the live band. Seagulls flew overhead, their cries mingling with those of the guests and laughter of the Cariocas lying out in the sun. She licked her lips. “That’s impossible,” she said faintly. “You will never settle down.”
“And yet I have.”
“Who is the woman?” she demanded. “Do I know her?”
“My former secretary,” he said. “Laura Parker.”
Adriana sucked in her breath. “I knew it,” she declared. Her eyes glittered. “I always knew there was something between you. Every time you ran to her in the middle of the night, every time you explained why she was the only woman who could possibly live in your flat, every time you swore your relationship was innocent, I knew you were lying!”
“I wasn’t lying,” he said. “At the time, she was just my employee.”
“She was always more than that!”
“All right. We were friends,” he said tersely. “But never more. Not until last year, when—”
“Spare me the details!” Adriana hissed.
A wide shadow suddenly fell between them from the front of the cabana, blocking the sun’s reflection off the pool. “Is there a problem?”
Gabriel turned to see Felipe Oliveira standing behind him. His shapeless shirt covered his large belly, and his eyes were hard as bullets in his jowly face. He must have seen Gabriel come down the terrace steps and apparently make a beeline for Adriana. Perfeito, Gabriel thought, irritated.
“No problem.” He glanced at Adriana, who’d folded her arms to look away in sulky silence. “I was just telling your future bride that her love for you has inspired me to make a similar commitment. My secretary and I have had an on-off affair for the last year, and I’ve asked her to move in with me.”
Silence fell, until Adriana cried, “Move in with you?”
Oliveira stroked his double chin with shrewd watchfulness in his heavy-lidded gaze. “So you’ve decided to make a commitment to another woman. How romantic. How very…convenient.”
The older man was no fool. Deliberately, Gabriel shrugged. “Laura is everything I’ve ever wanted.”
Adriana muttered a blasphemous curse. “I always knew the little mouse was in love with you.”
In love? Gabriel frowned. Adriana was mistaken. Laura couldn’t love him. She was too smart for that. She knew his deep flaws far too well. Laura wouldn’t give her heart to an undeserving man who would break it.
Or would she? He paused, remembering how she’d let herself conceive a child by a man who wouldn’t marry her, a man she didn’t even love.
Adriana said scornfully, “With her adoring, sickening gaze on you all the time, I knew it was just a matter of time.” She gave him a hard look. “But your relationshi
p won’t last. Because we both know you care about only one thing.”
Aware of Oliveira watching them, Gabriel stared down at her coolly. “And what is that?”
“Power. Glamour. Blatant sex appeal. And your secretary does not have it.” Adriana tossed her head. “She’s nothing but a drab little nobody who…”
She paused, tilting her head. Gabriel frowned, then he heard it, too—a low hum of male voices behind them, rolling across the pool and terraces like gathering thunder. Adriana leaned forward to look around the doorway of her cabana. Oliveira and Gabriel slowly turned.
A woman had just stepped out of the mansion, and was coming down the stairs from the upper terrace toward the pool. She was wearing a tiny bikini, typical attire for Rio. Carioca women were among the sexiest in the world, and the women at this party were among the most beautiful in the city. One new beauty should have been nothing, and yet something about this particular woman caused every man who saw her to stop in his tracks.
Even the young men who’d hovered around Adriana suddenly were craning their necks to stare. A waiter who’d come to refill Adriana’s drink accidentally poured vodka on her bare thigh, causing her to curse aloud as she rose to her feet. “Oh, you stupid—get away from me!”
But no one was looking at Adriana. Not anymore.
The beautiful new guest was petite and curvy, her hips swaying as she moved. Long honey-blonde hair hung in waves down her bare back. She had creamy skin, and beneath the triangles of her top, the largest, most perfect breasts any man could imagine.
Gabriel’s jaw dropped as he recognized her, this woman coming around the pool toward the cabanas with such effortless grace. The woman who had brought Felipe Oliveira’s exclusive, glamorous party to a standstill.
Laura.
Laura trembled as she walked in her high heels. She felt naked in her bikini, passing through the crowds of beautiful, glamorous people who one by one turned to gape at her. Her legs shook as she walked down the stairs toward the lower terrace, where cabanas overlooked the pool and private beach.
She walked past the musicians, past the buffet table, where a handsome, hawkish man in a gray suit stood staring at her. She stiffened as she walked passed him, her head held high though her cheeks burned. People’s heads were turning sharply enough to cause whiplash. Men’s eyes widened. Women’s eyes narrowed. Laura’s hand shook as she pushed her mirrored aviator sunglasses a little higher up her nose.
Wearing this tiny bikini was almost worse than wearing nothing at all. It had been crocheted of natural, wheat-colored yarn. She’d never gone out in public dressed in so little before. She had barely ever seen herself this naked, always averting her eyes from the mirror when she came out of the shower. Now, she could feel the hot sun of Rio burning against her skin.
Or maybe it was just the flush of heat caused by all the eyes roaming every inch of her, tracing the lines of her breasts, butt and legs.
Laura swallowed, wishing the earth would swallow her whole. She threw a glance of longing toward the Atlantic on the other side of the terrace gate. She had the sudden yen to throw herself in the water and start swimming for Africa.
But she forced herself to keep walking, looking for Gabriel to the right and left. She couldn’t run away. He was paying her a million dollars, and she couldn’t quit just because she was scared. She was on a job and she would earn her money. Every penny.
But she wished she knew what people were thinking. Were they staring because they thought she looked nice? Or because she looked so hideously bad? As soon as she was out of earshot, would they all dissolve into scornful laughter?
Mrs. Tavares had taken her into the center of a whirlwind at Zeytuna, barking orders in quick-fire Portuguese, and there had soon been five stylists surrounding her, doing her hair, hands, toenails. An on-call optometrist had come to fit her eyes for contact lens. Laura had tried on hundreds of potential outfits for the pool party, for the Fantasy Ball, casual clothes for later, even lingerie. Though she had protested at the lingerie, her every complaint had been ignored. Laura’s mousy brown hair had been highlighted. The stylists had started to prepare a spray-on tan to darken her skin, until Mrs. Tavares had stopped them.
“No. Leave her pale. Her creamy beauty will stand out from the fake tans of all the rest.”
Laura’s makeup had been done to perfection, so lightly as to be barely visible, and yet somehow making her look…good.
Mrs. Tavares had ordered her to try on many bikinis before she’d finally been satisfied with this one. Laura couldn’t tell the difference—they’d all just seemed to be tiny triangles of fabric, barely covering anything at all. But the Brazilian woman had chosen this one, crocheted of soft beige yarn. “Perfeito,” she’d said. “It shows you off to perfection, Miss Parker. You are soft, womanly, with those curves. You are real.” Mrs. Tavares’s thin lips had curved. “You will stand out.”
It was true that Laura’s breasts had always been somewhat on the generous side, and since she’d left New Hampshire to have a secretarial career in New York, she’d gone to a great deal of effort to hide them, to make sure it was her professional skills that attracted attention, not her body.
“You have the perfect figure,” Mrs. Tavares had said with satisfaction as they’d stared at the result of Laura’s makeover in a full-length mirror. “A Marilyn Monroe for the modern age. The gold standard of femininity.”
Laura didn’t quite believe her. A lifetime of feeling plain and unfashionable, especially compared to the glamorous women of New York, had left it imprinted on her mind that she was the hardworking one. The smart one. Never in her whole life had she been the pretty one.
But of course Mrs. Tavares would give her compliments, Laura had told herself as Carlos drove her to the mansion. The woman had been hired to give Laura a makeover, so naturally she would try to make the best of things. Laura had taken her praise with a pound of salt.
But still, the older woman had almost managed to convince her. Laura had felt confident, even pretty, when she’d left the boutique. Now, beneath so many open stares, she felt shy.
And afraid. What if, after everything, she failed Gabriel? Would he refuse to pay her the million dollars he’d promised? Or worse, would he just shake his head and look at her with cool dark eyes and say in a low voice, “I’m disappointed in you, Laura. I thought you were better than this”?
It had taken more courage than she’d imagined even to get out of the Rolls-Royce. Carlos had held her door open for almost a full minute, conspicuously clearing his throat before Laura had gathered enough bravado to get out of the car and walk into the mansion with her shoulders thrown back. Now, beneath the eyes of so many glamorous people, she felt vulnerable. Exposed.
Where was Gabriel?
Laura’s feet shook in her ridiculously high heels as she walked around the pool. She didn’t dare meet anyone’s eyes, for fear of the scorn or mockery she might see there. She kept walking, keeping her gaze over people’s heads, looking for one man who would stand out above the rest. She ignored the low hum of voices around her. She held her hand above her forehead, shading her sunglasses, as she looked for him. Would he laugh when he saw her? Would he regret whatever madness had caused him to think, even for an instant, that she could convince the world she was the woman who’d finally vanquished his playboy heart?
The thought made her throat hurt. Her hand fell to her side. She swallowed, suddenly unable to take the strain of all those mocking eyes on her.
“Que beleza.”
Hearing Gabriel’s low, husky voice behind her, she whirled around. She saw him standing in the doorway of a large poolside cabana. He was wearing shorts and an open shirt that revealed his muscular chest, tanned and laced with dark hair. Beside him she recognized Felipe Oliveira, looking sweaty and suspicious. But she was so relieved to find Gabriel that she hurried forward, pushing her sunglasses up on her head with a relieved smile. “Oh, Gabriel. I’m so glad to find you. I—”
Then she
saw the woman standing behind them in the cabana and drew back with an intake of breath. “Oh. Miss da Costa. Hello.”
The supermodel folded her arms icily. “I think we’re a little past the politeness of ‘Miss da Costa,’ don’t you? You must call me Adriana now,” she said, in the exact same tone one might say Go to hell.
Laura blinked beneath the woman’s malevolent gaze. Then she remembered Gabriel’s words. You have something Adriana does not. You have me. Looking at Adriana’s angry expression, Laura realized their plan was working. The supermodel clearly believed Laura was Gabriel’s lover—and hated her for it!
Straightening her shoulders, she looked at Gabriel with a smile. “Sorry I’m late.”
He kissed her cheek tenderly. “I waited thirty-eight years to find you, querida,” he breathed. “What are a few minutes more?”
He put his arm around her. After smiling at each other, they both turned to see the effect.
Felipe Oliveira looked skeptical. Adriana was scowling, sticking out her lower lip.
“You can’t really be moving in together!” she said.
Laura glanced at him. Moving in together?
“It’s already done,” Gabriel said. He looked down at Laura, and his dark eyes were hungry and tender as he stroked her cheek.
Adriana gave a forced laugh. “She’s no one. Nothing.”
Gabriel wrapped his arms around Laura’s bare waist. She nearly gasped at the rough feel of his hands against her naked skin.
“I am the one who is nothing.” His black eyes burned through Laura’s soul. “Nothing without you.”
It’s an act, she told herself as her heart turned over in her chest.
“All this time, you were right in front of me,” he murmured as his wide, rough hand traced softly down her cheek. “The woman of my dreams.” He cupped her face, tilting up her chin as he suddenly smiled. “I would fight them all for you.”
“Fight who?” she whispered.
Staring at her, Gabriel gave a sudden laugh. Turning, he silently pointed behind them.
Desert Jewels & Rising Stars Page 192
