‘You got me over here to cook for you?’
Gabriel looked at her through half closed eyes and wondered whether he should inform her that that particular tone of voice was not at all attractive. Not when he was supposed to be an invalid and she was supposed to be Florence Nightingale. Anyway, what was wrong with cooking for him? He wasn’t asking her to rob a bank! He couldn’t count the number of women who had been desperate to get into his kitchen and start weaving some magic with one of his frying pans!
‘Forget it,’ Gabriel said abruptly. ‘I might have known that putting yourself out would be unthinkable. I’ll do it myself.’ He began levering himself off the couch and Rose reluctantly shook her head.
‘What do you want?’
Gabriel flopped back down and fixed amazing, sleepy blue eyes on her. It was steaming hot outside. Her clothes were clinging to her even though it was cool in here. Years ago he had had an overhead fan installed and it had been a brilliant idea, even though it only came into its own very irregularly. On a day like this, though, it was so much better than air-conditioning.
‘You look hot.’
‘I am hot.’ Rose raised one hand to bundle her hair into a ponytail so that she could fan her neck. Gabriel wondered if she had any idea how provocative she looked, how the movement of her full breasts was very noticeable in what she happened to be wearing.
‘You could always strip off…’ he allowed a fractional pause ‘…and change into something a bit cooler. My sisters have random clothes upstairs in the rooms they use and they’re roughly your size. You could borrow something.’
‘No!’ Rose was horrified. She might have altered her look but underneath she was still the same and was frankly horrified at the thought of stepping into someone else’s clothes. Especially when it would involve getting out of her own…in Gabriel’s house…while he was in it…
‘It was just a thought. As far as I know, all the clothes are clean.’
‘I know that. And…thank you for the offer but I’m fine. Now, if you just tell me what you want to eat, I’ll see what I can do. A sandwich? Or some fruit?’
‘An omelette, I think. And toast. Also some coffee, no…tea. Better in ill health, I believe. With sugar.’
‘Oh, hang on. I’ll just get my pad so that I can write it all down.’
Gabriel grinned. He had always enjoyed her dry sense of humour even though it had been conspicuously absent over the past few weeks when she had been in her Head Down No Nonsense Rose role.
‘Think of it as doing an ill man a good deed.’
‘Only if you think of it as taking advantage of a good-natured secretary.’ Rose exited the room to the sound of his rich chuckle behind her and followed her nose to the kitchen. Like most houses in London, it wasn’t a mansion and she located the kitchen without too much difficulty. It was a wealthy bachelor’s paradise. Black granite counter tops, chrome double-fronted fridge-freezer with integral ice-maker, coffee-maker that looked as though you would need a degree in electronics to operate it. Nothing looked as though it had ever been used, which either meant that he was rarely to be found doing anything like cooking in his own kitchen or else he had an extremely efficient cleaner.
The frying pan, finally located, was gleaming. It was almost a crime to use it for something as mundane as preparing food.
It was half an hour before she eventually walked back into the study to find him still reclining on the couch. The black silk robe was revealing even more sinfully muscled chest and Rose cleared her throat meaningfully, giving him time to cover himself up, which he didn’t. He just sat up, propping himself against the arm of the sofa, which was a band of wood, giving the item of furniture something of a sleigh bed look, a fact she had only now noticed.
‘Smells delicious. Where did you find the tray?’
Rose raised her eyebrows questioningly, although it didn’t exactly amaze her that he was fairly clueless as to the contents of his kitchen.
‘Tucked away in a groove between two of the cupboards. No one would ever guess that it had been used. Along with everything else in the kitchen.’ She placed the tray on his lap and averted her eyes as best she could from the enticing glimpse of hard brown skin.
‘I don’t do a great deal of cooking,’ Gabriel agreed, tucking into the food with evident relish. ‘In fact—’he paused to look at her ‘—the last time I ate home-cooked food was…three months ago when I went back to Italy for a week.’
‘You can’t eat out all the time, Gabriel!’ Rose was suitably shocked by the thought of that. ‘It’s impractical, never mind the expense.’
‘Why is it impractical?’
‘Because…it just is. It’s not nutritious.’
‘Do you make an effort to cook for yourself?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do. I enjoy cooking. I find it very relaxing.’
‘Maybe you could come and cook for me now and again.’ He saw the expression on her face and bit back his sudden impatience. ‘Just a joke, Rose. There’s no need to snatch the nearest bottle of smelling salts in case you pass out from the horror of such a thought.’
‘I don’t cook very fancy food,’ she said, trying to pour a bit of oil on troubled waters. A cooped up Gabriel was a dangerous Gabriel, especially now the boundary lines between them had become frighteningly blurred at the edges. ‘Not the kind of food you would enjoy eating.’
‘I’m enjoying this.’
‘Stop being difficult, Gabriel. You know what I mean.’
‘Do you know you are the only woman I have ever allowed to talk to me like that? Aside from my mother. And, of course, my sisters, who see it as their duty to keep me in my place.’
Rose grinned at the thought of anyone trying to keep Gabriel in his place. She missed the thoughtful glint in his eyes as he contemplated her, back in her position of safety behind the desk, which dwarfed her.
‘What makes you think that you know the sort of food I enjoy?’
Was it her imagination or was he dragging it out with that breakfast? Normally Gabriel worked on full throttle, barely pausing to draw breath. It was unlike him to call her over urgently, only to engage her in chit-chat.
‘I don’t know.’ Rose shrugged and looked down at her fingers, at the pale pink polish which she had applied the day before. She never used to wear nail polish but she did now and she liked the way it looked and the feminine way it made her feel.
‘How are you doing with finding a suitable course? Is that all sorted out now?’ Gabriel changed tack as dragging the conversation on to a personal level obviously wasn’t going to work.
And why exactly he was engaged in this ridiculous charade was beyond him anyway. He felt as fit as a fiddle but despite that had been unable to fight off the driving desire to have her in his territory, have her see him in it. Why? Because curiosity was eating away at him? He would have considered himself above sexual curiosity, but clearly not, considering he had concocted a lame excuse for her to come to his house for no better reason that to play games. On a weekday. When he should have been in meetings. Hell, it wasn’t as if he didn’t work all the hours God made, he decided, squashing his guilty conscience. He deserved a break now and again. And when was the last time a woman had captured his imagination?
‘Oh, yes, I think so.’ She went pink and stared harder at her neatly painted nails. In fact, if only he knew that her search for a suitable course had led her into some very interesting waters.
‘You think so? Shouldn’t you have signed up by now?’
‘Yes. Yes, I have, as a matter of fact.’
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed on her embarrassed face. He could smell concealment a mile off and wondered what it was she was hiding from him. Surely discussing something as boring as a business course did not warrant an air of secrecy. For a few enjoyable seconds he toyed with the notion that perhaps his capable secretary hadn’t signed up for a business course at all. Maybe she had signed up for a pole dancing course. Now that would bring a guilty tinge to her cheeks
.
‘And?’ he prodded.
‘It starts at the beginning of October, but I shall have to have a day off for induction some time in September. I’ll let you know when.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘What?’
‘The sum total of details you intend to throw out at me?’
‘There’s nothing else to tell you! If you’re that interested, I could always bring in the prospectus.’ Gabriel, in the wrong mood, could turn being maddening into an art form and he was doing it now, looking at her in a way that made her stomach flip over, steamrollering his way into her private life even though she had spent weeks giving off all the right Keep Out vibes.
‘Shall we crack on with the workload?’
Prepared to face a barrage of questions that she would be obliged to dodge like flying bullets, Rose was momentarily taken aback by his change of tack. But she jumped on the bandwagon gratefully and after half an hour her pulse had settled back down to normal, as had her voice.
He had remained on the couch, seemingly unaffected by the incongruity of conducting work in nothing more than a bathrobe, and she had stayed at his massive desk, typing directly on to the computer, punctuating the pattern with little notes in her pad, which she would research and transcribe back at the office.
She looked at her watch once. The next time she glanced at it, it was lunch time. They had been working solidly for over three hours!
‘We’ll call it a day now.’ Gabriel watched as she flexed her fingers and attempted a stretch. ‘Come over here.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Come over here.’
Rose obediently gathered up her stuff, everything ordered and clipped together neatly so that she could move swiftly through them when she returned to the office.
‘Sit.’ Gabriel swung his legs to one side and patted a space next to him. ‘And don’t worry, I won’t bite…’ There was something softly alluring and very, very feminine about her hesitation. It made a refreshing change from women who were as sexually aggressive as men and didn’t need an invitation to get close up and personal.
‘I don’t want to catch anything.’
‘You won’t catch anything.’ How very true, he thought wryly. ‘I’m simply going to massage your shoulders, get rid of some of that tension. Come on. Sit. I’m a very good masseur.’
Rose gasped. Her knuckles whitened as she clutched her wad of papers with horrified desperation. Was he being serious? Massage her back? There was nothing simple about the suggestion. Not in her fevered mind. She took a step backwards. She thought she might be overreacting. The amused, self-assured expression lurking on his face was giving her an indication of that, but there was no way that he would be laying a finger on her. She took a couple more steps backwards and of course that was when it happened. Sod’s law, she thought, as she grappled and failed to retrieve her footing, that the one place that damned low footstool was, the same footstool he had kicked aside to make way for her and the tray, would be right there behind her left ankle. Just the right spot to ensure that she fell in an undignified heap on to the ground, surrounded by her neatly compiled paperwork and with her flimsy summer skirt in hideous disarray. Rose scrambled to gather herself, her face burning with embarrassment, only belatedly registering that, for someone who was supposedly ill, Gabriel had leapt out from the couch with remarkable agility and was now, horror of horrors, bending over her with a concerned expression, bathrobe agape, allowing her a glimpse of boxer shorts.
Lord, but could things get any worse?
Rose pushed herself up and yanked her skirt down, just as Gabriel scooped her up, ignoring her yelps of dismay. There went the skirt. Riding up. Undoing the job she had just done. Exposing so much thigh that Rose was scared to let her attention linger. And his arms around her were like steel, forcing her head against his chest, bare skin because his robe was in as much disarray as she was.
The whole mortifying episode must have taken all of five seconds, but to Rose, it seemed like eternity. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion until he had deposited her on the couch, at which point it was real time again except she found that she couldn’t jump to her feet, the one thing she wanted to do, because he was kneeling in front of her.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Rotate your foot. That was a pretty bad fall. We need to make sure that you haven’t twisted anything.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘If you hadn’t been scuttling off like a little scared rabbit, you would never have tripped.’
Rose wanted to smash him over the head with the nearest heavy object.
‘If you hadn’t been…’
‘Hadn’t been what?’
‘Do you mind giving me back my foot?’ He had removed her shoe and was massaging her foot, working his fingers along the soft underside, rotating it with exquisite pressure until she wanted to scream or groan or something. ‘Nothing’s wrong with it! Everything’s fine!’
‘Hadn’t been what?’ Gabriel straightened up, which was a more dangerous position because now he was on her eye level and way too close for comfort. She could so easily slide her hand under his silk robe. Four years’ worth of fantasies crashed through her like a tidal wave and Rose closed her eyes briefly.
‘Well?’
Rose opened her eyes to find that he was even closer to her. And amused. The smile was right there behind eyes that were pretending to be serious and interested. And here she was, desperately trying to fight down the effect he was having on her. It just wasn’t fair! Four years fighting off a lethal attraction to a man who had now decided that it might be a bit of fun to flirt with her once in a while, when he was between women and had nothing better to do.
Every fibre in her being regretted the decision she had made to stay put for a while longer.
‘If you hadn’t been flirting with me,’ Rose said coldly. ‘If you hadn’t forgotten that it’s totally inappropriate. I expected more of you.’
She had been hoping to shame him. She failed. He gave her a slow, devastating smile.
‘Flirting…’ He inclined his head to one side as if considering a new found concept. ‘You’re right. Maybe flirting was a bad idea. Maybe…’his voice was velvety soft and rich with husky sexuality ‘…I should have just done this…’
For three seconds time stood still. His mouth touched hers with gentle curiosity, then hungry urgency that had her clinging to him, matching his want with hers in equal measure. And it took ten seconds for sickening reality to intrude.
‘Don’t!’ Rose pushed him so forcefully that he stumbled backwards, giving her time to get to her feet and put some distance between them. ‘How dare you?’
Gabriel stood up, but he wasn’t angry. Not at all. And that was even scarier. The expression on his face was as though he had sorted something out in his head.
‘I’ll pretend that never happened,’ Rose gritted. ‘But if it happens again, then I’m gone! Do you hear me?’ She couldn’t bear to look at the discarded shoe, but she did, slipping her foot into it and bending to scoop up all the papers, not caring what order they were in. His silence was unsettling. She knew he was watching her and it made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. Would he see? The way her breasts were still throbbing, aching to be caressed? Or the way the dampness was spreading between her legs, honeyed dew begging for his touch? Rose wanted to die a thousand deaths. She would have remained scrambling around on the floor indefinitely but finally she had gathered up the strewn papers and was looking at him with her best ice cold glare.
‘Okay.’ Gabriel looked down at her. ‘It’s a deal. I’ll pretend it never happened and you can pretend that you didn’t want it to…’
CHAPTER FIVE
THE interviewing was not going according to plan. At least not the plan that Rose had germinated in her head, which basically involved finding someone quickly and installing them even more quickly so that in due time, preferably as soon as she had found her feet on h
er course, she could re-submit her letter of resignation and this time leave with a clear conscience.
Because Gabriel was driving her crazy. True to her request, he had not mentioned a word about that kiss but she had still spent the past week in a state of heightened awareness. Big mistake because she was doubly conscious of him. The minute he got within two feet of her, her entire nervous system went into overdrive and she could feel her body tense in dreaded expectation of some casual physical contact.
Of which there had been a fair few instances. More than usual, although she was pretty sure that she was imagining that. A feathery brush of his fingers on her arm when he leant to read something over her shoulder, the briefest of touches when she handed him a cup of coffee or when he sat next to her so that he could go through some detail with her in one of the reports they happened to be working on. Her antennae now seemed to be on red alert and it was driving her crazy.
Try as she might, her body was not letting her pretend that nothing had happened, even if all mention of it was conscientiously avoided. He came close and she felt faint. He casually touched her and her body roared into hot, suffocating awareness. His challenge a week ago, that he would pretend to forget what had happened if she could pretend that she hadn’t wanted it, was proving ominously prescient.
Hence her increasing desperation to find a suitable replacement.
And Gabriel was proving frustratingly uncooperative.
‘If this woman is to possibly be your eventual replacement,’ he’d told her seriously, ‘then I have to make sure that I get it right. We’re not talking about someone who’s going to be around for a few weeks, someone disposable. I need to find exactly the sort of woman I can happily work alongside…’
‘Or man,’ Rose had pointed out, but Gabriel had shot her one of those looks that informed her right there and then that working alongside the ideal man was not on the cards for him.
They had thus spent the past three days poring over applications and squeezing in candidates whenever Gabriel had a free moment.
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