‘Not good enough, Laura. Getting the stables back up to running standard is going to be a full-time job and you know it. People are going to have to be employed, contacts are going to have to be revived...’ And the thought of her popping out to do her job with Hugo there to mop up any flagging spirits would not do at all. In fact, the mere thought of it made his stomach clench in violent knots. I will ensure that you are paid handsomely for your work, of course...’
‘So in other words, I shall become your employee.’
‘If you want to put it like that.’
‘Is there another way of putting it?’
‘You could see it simply as being offered the chance of a lifetime to get the stables back on the map where they belong...’
‘In other words, I have no choice.’
‘Naturally you have a choice. We all have choices. You can choose to reject my offer, in which event I shall be forced to return to London empty-handed.’
So in other words, no choice. Laura sighed and gulped down a bit more of the champagne. She could already feel it going to her head but she didn’t care. ‘So what happens next?’
‘You mean after you go and collect your things from work?’
‘After I go and tell Hugo what’s happening. I don’t have anything at work, as such.’
‘He already knows what is happening.’ Gabriel narrowed his eyes on her flushed face. God, but how he would have liked to have plunged straight into her beautiful head and found out what exactly was going on in there. He couldn’t imagine her being attracted to a man like Hugo, making wild love with him, but then maybe she now liked them safe and bland and unexciting.
‘I don’t intend to disappear without any sort of explanation to him. I’ve worked there for years now and he’s been ...good to me...’
‘And in what ways has he been ‘good to you’?’ Gabriel’s mouth twisted and Laura glared back at him.
‘You have a one-track mind.’
‘I recall a time when you liked that...’ he murmured, and she couldn’t help it. A faint pinkness invaded her cheeks. Oh, yes, she remembered that time well. Too well.
‘That was then and this is now,’ Laura informed him crisply. ‘After I quit my job, what then?’
‘What then? Why, we sign papers. Mine are all prepared, including the stipulation that you work for me running the place. I can have them faxed to your accountant by lunchtime tomorrow. More immediately, we return to the house. My surveyor is booked to inspect it this afternoon. As soon as the deal is signed, I can begin throwing some food to the baying wolves and you can begin sleeping easier at night knowing that the bailiff will not be knocking at your front door.’
Their food arrived but all Laura could do was toy with the Caesar salad on her plate. Her mind was buzzing with thoughts, most of them vaguely alarming.
‘You should eat more than that,’ she heard him saying and Laura blinked in surprise at the sudden change in conversation. One minute informing her that he was now in charge of her life, or at least a hefty part of it, and the next minute chiding her for not eating enough for all the world as if they were two normal people, having a normal conversation in a normal situation.
‘Is salad all you have been living on since your father died?’
‘Why do you ask?’ Laura retorted suspiciously, only to sigh at her overreaction to a perfectly polite question, it’s easier.’ In fact, she had lost weight since her father had died. Everything had fallen on her shoulders and somehow rounding up the day with a hearty meal for one had not been top of her agenda.
‘You’ve lost weight.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since I last made love to you seven years ago.’
Laura nearly gagged on the bluntness of his statement. Had he done that on purpose? Because he knew that it would send her entire nervous system into a rapid nosedive? But when she looked at him, it was to find him returning her gaze with complete innocence.
‘I happen to like the way I look,’ she retorted. ‘You’re entitled to your own taste in women if you like them plump.’
‘Voluptuous,’ Gabriel corrected mildly.
‘I was never voluptuous, so your tastes must have changed over the years!’
‘Oh, you were. Curves in all the right places ...breasts a man could fill his hands with.’ His voice was low and lazy and at the mention of her breasts he openly looked down at hers before flicking his dark eyes back to her flushed face. ‘Your breasts at any rate are still as wonderfully bountiful as they used to be...’
‘This is a ridiculous conversation,’ Laura choked hotly. ‘We were supposed to be discussing business.’
‘We were. Now I thought we might move on to more general conversation.’
‘If your idea of general conversation is discussing my figure, then ...then...’
‘Then...?’
‘Then you’re wasting your time because I’m not going to join in!’
‘Perhaps it was a little rude of me, but really, you need to take care of yourself. I don’t want you collapsing on me when you need to have all the strength at your disposal to deal with the work ahead.’
‘Have you got some sort of ...plan ...or timetable?’ Laura grasped the opportunity to steer the conversation away from the dangerously personal observations he had just thrown at her. She was mortified to discover that, unwittingly, he had stirred something inside her that had had her melting, thinking thoughts best kept hidden.
‘You’re the one in the know when it comes to horses. What do you suggest?’ She was making a big effort to calm down. The blushing hue of her cheeks was subsiding and her normal colour was returning, but she still couldn’t quite meet his eyes. Gabriel watched it all and he realised that at least part of his pleasure, if not all of it, was derived from the knowledge that he was getting under her skin. He also realised that he wanted badly to get under her skin, that his purely male response to her went beyond any desire for revenge. He wanted to taste the sweetness of that full mouth once again. That brief moment of passion three days earlier had only served to tease his appetite and to remind him of how intensely satisfying the act of making love had been with her.
He dragged his mind back to what she was saying and realised that he had been staring at her with an utterly blank expression when she tilted her head to one side and frowned.
‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Oh. Yes. Of course. You were saying...?’ Was he so bored that he couldn’t even keep his mind focused on what she had just spent five minutes rattling on about? Laura wondered.
‘I was saying that I can get in touch with all our old suppliers and hopefully convince them that they can resume doing business with us again. But before then, I would have to begin the process of wooing old clients back. Some of them will have gone for good, but I personally know a few who were truly sad about ...about the way things turned out and privately told me that if ever the business picked back up, they would return their horses. God, Gabriel ...it’s such a huge job. I just don’t know...’
Her eyes clouded over and he found that he didn’t like that. He almost preferred the resentment to the sadness. Not, he reminded himself grimly, that the disintegration of the stables had anything to do with him, but he felt a sudden rage for the old fool who had done this to his daughter.
‘You can do it,’ he said gently. ‘If anyone can do it, you can. I have utmost faith in you, Laura.’
‘But I have no real idea where to start. There’s so much...’ She chewed her lip, fighting back the overwhelming urge to burst into tears. His anger she could handle. She didn’t like it but, in a funny way, she understood it. His gentleness she found much more disconcerting, as she found her own sudden temptation to lean on him, get strength from him, let him hold her and soothe her problems away.
I must be mad, she thought shakily. He declared himself the enemy and made no bones about it. How on earth can I be thinking of leaning on him? She shook her head
to clear it and raised her eyes to his.
‘I can’t do a thing, anyway, without ...without finance.’
‘It will be taken care of,’ Gabriel informed her, calling for the bill and removing one of several platinum credit cards from his wallet to pay. He glanced at his watch. ‘We just about have time for you to pay a visit to your office and then we will head to the house.’ Back to the business in hand. For a second there he had felt a compelling need to gather the wretch up in his arms and kiss her troubled expression away. Lessons, he reminded himself harshly, are never learnt by forgetting the past.
‘And don’t forget,’ Gabriel informed her as he pulled up just a few metres down from the estate agency, ‘there is no time for any lingering farewells. I will give you five minutes.’
‘Or else what?’ Laura retorted, swinging open her car door and putting one long leg out of the car.
‘Or else I shall come in and get you.’
And he would, too, she thought sourly as she dashed into the office. In fact, the beast would probably enjoy it. Drawing himself up to his full height, flinging his arrogant dark head back and crooking one imperious finger in her direction. In other words, bringing the entire place to a complete standstill.
She had just enough time to assure Hugo that she would call him later in the evening to explain all and to promise her work colleagues that she would keep in touch. Judging from the avidly curious expressions on their faces, she wryly thought that she would have no choice. If she didn’t call them, they would make sure to call her!
She arrived back to find Gabriel standing outside, indolently leaning against the polished black driver’s door of the car, and she immediately slowed her pace.
‘Seven minutes,’ she informed him, ‘and forty-six seconds.’
‘Good of me to allow you the extra two minutes and forty-six seconds, wouldn’t you agree?’ But he grinned wickedly when he said this and Laura felt her body surge into sudden, maddening response.
‘You deserve a medal,’ she muttered, hiding her confusion by sliding quickly into the car. ‘What time is the surveyor coming?’ she asked, once he was inside the car and gunning the engine.
‘Probably there already,’ Gabriel said nonchalantly. ‘If not on his way back to London having got there and found no one at home.’
‘Oh, Anna will wait.’
‘Anna? Your chartered surveyor is a woman?’
‘No need to sound so surprised.’ Gabriel briefly slid his eyes across to her. ‘This is the twenty-first century.
Women have invaded the working place and many now hold down substantial jobs.’
‘I know that!’ Laura snapped.
‘And I happen to be an extremely non-sexist employer. Everything rests on credentials, as far as I am concerned.’
Laura bit back the temptation to inform him that he could have fooled her, considering he had all the macho arrogance of someone living in another century!
‘She will probably find it useful to have a look around the outside of the house and establish visually what might need doing,’ he was saying now. ‘She is very thorough and I trust her utterly to provide me with an unadorned statement of what will need looking at and how much I should expect to pay.’
The image of a middle-aged professional woman briskly walking around with a notepad in one hand and a pen tucked into the top pocket of her severe suit was dispersed the minute they pulled into the courtyard to find a gleaming silver Porsche parked at an angle. Before Laura could readjust her mental impression of what to expect, the woman in question rounded the corner and she wasn’t wearing anything remotely resembling a severe suit. An appreciative smile curved Gabriel’s lips and then he was walking towards her, arms outstretched, speaking in quick, unintelligible Spanish. And whatever he was saying, it didn’t have much to do with bricks, mortar and rising damp, Laura considered sourly, lagging in the background.
At least not judging from the warm tinkle of laughter that punctuated the woman’s rapid phrases.
‘Laura, come and meet Anna.’ He still had his arm around the other woman’s waist and his mouth was still relaxed with a smile.
‘This,’ he said with a gesture meant to embrace the house, ‘is Laura’s legacy and my next purchase. What do you think?’
Close up Anna was a little older than Laura had originally surmised, but just as pretty. Small, olive-skinned, with dark eyes and dark hair that was loosely tied at the nape of her neck but with loose tendrils escaping that promised long, rebellious curls when released. And she was voluptuous. Full breasts under the tight-fitting cream jersey and tan jacket. Laura suddenly felt sick and had to force herself to smile and shake the dainty hand extended towards her.
it needs a bit of work,’ Anna was saying, all business now and commanding no less of Gabriel’s attention for it. She turned to point at various bits of the house, efficiently indicating damage that Laura had not even been aware of. ‘May I have a look inside?’ she finished and Laura nodded curtly, leading the way whilst the other two fell back and began chatting in low tones. Low, intimate tones, it seemed to Laura.
She practically flung open the front door and, once in, was chagrined to be told that she could perhaps go and prepare a pot of coffee whilst the two of them made a more detailed examination of the house.
‘Perhaps I ought to come along,’ she suggested with saccharine sweetness. ‘After all, I have lived in this house all my life and I would be very interested to know what repair work might have to be done.’
‘No need,’ Gabriel drawled. He had managed to disengage himself from the raven-haired bombshell and Laura was besieged by a further attack of acidity at the thought that he would probably resume intimate contact the minute they were out of sight. ‘It may have been your house, but as of tomorrow it will be in my possession. It is far more pertinent that I find out firsthand the extent of damage.’
‘I will have my report ready within a week,’ Anna addressed her with a smile. ‘It will be quite detailed.’
‘And I’ll be allowed a copy, will I?’ Her voice dripped sarcasm although Gabriel appeared blithely unaware of that. In fact, he seemed in remarkably high spirits, Laura thought as she politely stared him down with her hands planted firmly on her slim hips.
‘Naturally.’ For sheer devilry, he once again slipped his arm around Anna’s waist before guiding her towards the spiral staircase winding up to the first floor. God, he wanted to look back over his shoulder just to see if she was still standing there, all bewitching defiance, simmering. But he didn’t.
In fact, he kept his arm wrapped around the brunette’s waist and only removed it when they had cleared out of sight. And only then did he begin quizzing Anna about her husband, Rodolfo, and their eighteen-month-old son. If his cousin was slightly bemused by her exuberant welcome, she concealed it well, chattering happily about family business, whilst casting her well-trained eyes into corners and nooks and crannies and up the fireplaces for any hazards waiting to be uncovered.
‘What games are you playing, Gabriel?’ she finally asked him curiously as they inspected the last of the rooms one and a half hours later, having agreed to call it a day.
‘Games, my dearest cousin?’
‘Games,’ she declared firmly.
‘Cat and mouse,’ he said succinctly, aware that that only covered the tip of the iceberg.
‘And which one is the mouse?’ she teased. ‘Do I resemble a mouse to you?’
‘No, but then I have never seen you play this type of game with a woman before. Do not enter into something only to discover that you do not know the rules.’
‘Trust me, Anna.’ His eyes gleamed in anticipation of the woman waiting in the kitchen. He could feel her presence calling him. ‘I am in total control ...am I not always?’
CHAPTER FIVE
An hour and a half spent condemned to the kitchen, sidelined into the role of onlooker in her own home, had done nothing for Laura’s temper. She had usefully prep
ared something for herself to eat later, then had sat at the kitchen table contemplating every little thing she now thoroughly disliked about the man who had once been the centre of her life.
The fact that he was canoodling in one of the rooms with a curvaceous brunette, flaunting his sex life in front of her as a stark reminder that she was nothing to him now except a bitter taste in his mouth he was determined to eradicate, only made her more sour.
Laura remembered something her father had told her months after Gabriel had walked out of her life. She had been staring out of the kitchen window, lost in the familiar cloud of depression, when Peter Jackson had surprised her from behind. Her infernal moping around had to end, he had informed her angrily, it was not doing anyone any good at all, least of all her mother. Had she ever stopped to think, he had snapped, that she was busily mourning the loss of a man who had had his eye on the main chance? That this so-called love of her life had wanted the status and position she offered and that if she had been anyone else he would not have looked at her twice?
No, it certainly had not occurred to her then, but it was occurring to her now.
There was no shred of nostalgia in him for the past they had once shared, no hint that he remembered her wide-eyed adoration with any affection, because, she had thought in the solitude of the kitchen, he had never really cared about her.
By the time Gabriel and Anna finished their extended tour of the house, Laura was stiff-lipped with the battery of thoughts that had been whirling around in her head.
She stood up when she heard their footsteps, arms folded. And he still had his infernal arm around the woman’s waist!
‘Something smells good in here,’ Gabriel said, disengaging himself. ‘Anna, you’ll stay for some coffee, won’t you?’ Her body language was speaking volumes, he thought with satisfaction. Arms folded, face rigid with disapproval. Yes, he was utterly and pleasurably in control. The thought did wonders for his sense of well-being.
‘I can’t, Gabriel.’ The brunette smiled apologetically. ‘It’s late and I face a long drive back to London.’ She gave him a look of intimate and indulgent affection that had Laura’s teeth snapping together.
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