‘I did not come here to isolate myself away from what is happening,’ he muttered irritably, his dark eyes sliding across to dwell on the bewitching picture she presented, all ruffled hair and overalls that should have diminished her appeal but instead heightened it. ‘After all, it is my house.’ Had he just said that? A sullen, infantile observation that had her narrowing her eyes fractionally? ‘What are these colours on the walls?’ he asked, pointing at the streaks, and he allowed himself to be carried along with the flow as she began discussing what should be used where, whilst the plasterer made him run his hands along the walls, which would need resurfacing, and the electrician pointed to various sockets and made intelligent sounding remarks about the wiring in the house.
Out of the corner of his eye, Gabriel watched her face become animated as she discussed what could be done and tried to prise time scales out of the three men.
He could hear the sound of yet more men working on the floor above, pulling up the worn carpets and stripping the walls of yet more wallpaper.
On the spur of the moment he made a decision.
‘I think we can leave the workforce here to get on with the basics,’ he announced, pulling her to one side.
‘Leave them and do what? My job is to be here, supervising.’
‘I am temporarily altering your duties,’ Gabriel informed her. He captured her arm with his hand and explained to the three men that they would be on their own for a few hours and could they manage. ‘You know where everything is,’ he continued, still grasping her hand just in case she attempted to wriggle free to play the damned diligent employee. ‘Tea, coffee, milk. Help yourself in our absence and we will see you later.’
This, Laura fulminated as she hurriedly changed in the bathroom into some clean, fairly respectable clothes, was the problem. All was fine when they were making love. Everything could be forgotten then in the midst of explosive passion, but the minute they were in a normal situation he just couldn’t help reminding her who was boss. She worked for him and he never spared a thought for how she felt. Why should he? she asked herself repressively. She was his employee by day and his sex slave by night until he tired of one or both duties and dismissed her. Emotion did not enter into it and feelings were never, ever discussed.
The minute she stormed down the stairs, Gabriel could see that her simmering anger at his high-handed attitude was heading for boiling point, and he countered it with a conciliatory smile.
‘My apologies for behaving with such despicable arrogance,’ he told her before she could let rip. ‘Forgive me?’ His dark eyes appreciatively took in the vanilla cord trousers and the blue and cream checked shirt that she had slung casually over a figure-hugging cropped blue vest.
‘I told you it was a bad idea moving in here. You don’t need to keep a constant watch on me. I’m not going to do anything outrageous with your precious decor!’
‘You look enchanting.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Enchanting and utterly, utterly irresistible.’ He smiled very slowly and watched as the storm in her eyes gave way to pink-cheeked silence. ‘Would you be horribly offended if I told you that I had to come in there and take you somewhere private so that I could thoroughly seduce you?’
‘I would tell you that completing this job would take for ever if you didn’t learn to control your...’
‘My...?’ Gabriel prompted silkily.
‘Your carnal urges.’ Just saying it, though, made her feel like jelly inside. And the beast knew it! ‘Where are we going anyway? I really feel as though I ought to be supervising these men just to make sure that nothing goes horribly wrong.’
‘They are stripping walls, pulling up carpets and doing the odd bit of plastering,’ Gabriel said wryly, slipping his arm around her waist and leading her outside to the car. ‘There is a limit as to how confused they can get by those very simple tasks.’ Before he unlocked the car, he swung her around to lace him. He couldn’t help himself. It felt like years since he had touched her, even though it was only a matter of a few hours.
‘Have you ever been ravished in a car?’ he murmured, threading his lingers through her hair and tilting her face up to his.
‘You still haven’t told me where we’re going,’ Laura said unsteadily. A few well-chosen words and she was putty in his hands! It was pathetic. Or maybe it was just love and love had no qualms about turning a sane human being into an unthinking idiot.
‘So I haven’t.’ He released her, unlocked the car and then opened the door for her, leaning down once she had tucked her long legs inside. ‘But you’ll be pleased to hear that I have not stolen you away simply to satisfy my needs.’ Yes, he thought sourly, he could turn her on all right, just as he always had been able to years ago.
Her velvety brown eyes looked at him in bewilderment. ‘You mean we’re actually going somewhere?’
‘Call it a drive to have a look at some interior design. And there will be no need for us to rush, because whilst you were changing I told Pete Clarke to make sure that the house is locked and everyone out when he leaves this evening. I thought it better, really, because it is a bit of a drive and who knows, cara, we might want to stop en route?’
‘Certainly nowhere that involves pulling up down a narrow side lane,’ Laura admonished as soon as he was in the car and pulling out of the drive, but just thinking about it was enough to bring a smile to her lips. ‘I’m way too old for that kind of thing and, besides, we’re both far too tall for making love in the cramped back seat of your car. Even if it is a very big car.’
‘You might be tall but you’re as supple as a piece of elastic,’ Gabriel replied, his eyes fixed on the road. He gave a wicked grin that set her pulses racing. ‘But maybe you’re right,’ he conceded ruefully.
‘So tell me where we’re going, Gabriel.’
‘We are going to my place in Berkshire. I want you to have a look at my house and tell me what you think, about the style of the decor.’
‘You mean get an idea of what you like?’
He shrugged. ‘Actually, I hired a team of people to do the house for me. Lack of time.’ Or inclination, for that matter.
‘And do you like what they’ve done?’ Laura felt a burning curiosity to see this man whom she adored in his surroundings.
‘It is very grand.’
‘You don’t sound awfully certain, Gabriel.’
‘I thought I liked it, but now I’m not too sure.’ Quite an admission and one that took him by surprise. He had never had any complaints about his mansion before but now, having seen her at work with her colour charts and wallpaper books, he had been overtaken by the feeling that his mansion, kitted out in the most lavishly expensive style by the most sought-after professional interior designers, was not suited to his tastes after all.
‘If you don’t like the way it’s been decorated, then what’s the point of taking me there?’ Laura asked, and he began irritably drumming the steering wheel with his thumb.
‘I thought you might enjoy getting away from the riding stables for a day,’ Gabriel said and he immediately wondered whether she was as conscious of the petulance in his voice as he was. I mean, when was the last time you got away, Laura?’
‘Got away from the house?’
‘House, county, country, whatever!’
‘There’s no need to start shouting.’
‘I am not shouting!’ A simple plan, he thought, to close the books and put the past behind him, and look at where he was now! The woman had managed to get under his skin in ways he could never have imagined! From being a man permanently in control, he had become someone who swung from mood to mood with alarming irregularity, not that she even noticed, never mind cared!
‘Oh, good.’ She glanced wryly at him and their eyes met in a split second of perfect accord which, ludicrously, made him want to stop the car and give her a hug. A hug, he thought with exasperation! Since when did hugs feature in his grand plans of seduct
ion and revenge.
‘Well...’ Laura chewed her lip and thought, I have been to London within the last year...’
‘Have you? Who with?’ He was in there before his brain could tell his mouth to keep silent, but when he glanced sideways at her she hardly seemed to have registered his querulous demand.
‘As for leaving the country ...no, I can’t remember the last time I actually left the country to go on holiday anywhere.’ Laura sighed. When she had been growing up and living in the lap of luxury, trips abroad had been regular annual events. Both her parents had been disinclined to leave the riding stables for too long in the care of someone else, but even so they had always had two weeks in the sun somewhere over winter and a week during the Easter holidays. ‘Why? Are you offering?’ she teased, and when he remained silent she realised that she had crossed an invisible boundary. And one she should have seen from a mile off, she thought miserably. Holidays would have constituted something more than just sex and there was no way that he would have considered that option.
‘What if I did?’ Gabriel asked with mild curiosity. The thought of going on a holiday with the woman sitting next to him was like a promise of paradise and he had to grimly remind himself that he had felt just like this seven years ago when the prospect of marriage had beckoned.
Laura, looking at the stern profile, could almost read what was going on in his head. The thought of going anywhere with her that might indicate a normal relationship was abhorrent to him. It was written in block letters on his unsmiling face. Did he imagine that she would jump at the chance for an all-expenses-paid vacation now that she was indebted to him?
‘I would refuse, of course,’ she said lightly, turning away and staring with unseeing eyes at the fast-moving countryside around them. ‘A dutiful employee never abandons her job when it’s only just started.’
Her glibly spoken answer hit him like a hammer in his gut but he forced himself to nod curtly in agreement.
‘How much further do we have to go?’ Laura asked as his taut silence thickened around them. In the blink of an eye the light-hearted banter between them had evaporated and she knew, once again, how fragile it really was, how easily it was obliterated by one wrong word or one dangerous sentence. ‘Tell me about your house. How long have you been living there?’
Gabriel expelled his breath and shook his head slightly. ‘What can I say about my house? I bought it five years ago when the property market had slumped. I thought it would prove to be a worthwhile financial investment, and I was right. It has ...eight bedrooms and I lose count of the reception rooms. A lot.’
‘And you entertain quite a bit? I can’t imagine you entertaining. You would frighten all your guests.’ She saw his shoulders relax and a small smile replace the hard expression on his face. Ridiculously, she felt a spurt of pleasure that she could manage to shift his mood. He surely couldn’t be that emotionally cold towards her if he could respond to her in that way, could he? Could he?
‘Should I take that as a compliment?’ he asked, flicking her a glance.
‘Depends. Do you want to be thought of as scary?’
‘Sometimes it helps in business,’ Gabriel told her truthfully. ‘Especially when you are an outsider. No matter that I have lived here for years. I am an Argentinean and you, of all people, should know how strong the old-school tie can be.’ But there was no bitterness or resentment in his voice when he said this.
‘I can’t imagine that anyone would let old-school ties stop them from dealing with you, Gabriel, and you know it. You’re way too charismatic to be ignored.’
‘Now that I do take as a compliment. Although...’ he lingered musingly before continuing ‘...you seem to be doing a rather good job of ignoring me at the moment.’
‘Really. And what should I be doing?’
‘My thigh feels a little stiff at the moment.’ This was better. He was discovering that when it came to the physical, he was supremely in control, but whenever the emotional started creeping in, which it seemed to do a little too often for his liking, then his control disappeared like a puff of smoke. ‘Must be all the driving,’ he said helpfully. ‘Perhaps you could massage it just a little...?’
‘Isn’t that a little dangerous when you’re at the steering wheel?’ Laura asked innocently and Gabriel grinned, back in the driver’s seat in more ways than one.
‘Perhaps you’re right.’ Just as well that there was a convenient turning less than five minutes later, and, because they had avoided the motorway, it was simplicity itself to go down sufficient winding turns to leave all signs of traffic behind.
‘I know what you said about being too old and too tall,’ Gabriel drawled, killing the engine and relaxing back against his car door so that he could look at her with lazy thoroughness, ‘but I couldn’t resist the temptation to discover whether you were right...’
A little over an hour later, Laura found out that she was neither ...and nor was he.
When, she thought to herself as they approached the roundabouts and traffic lights that were the hallmark of suburbia, would she be able to look at this man and resist him? When would she be able to hear his voice, redolent with its soft, sexy come-on, and not feel every bone in her body melt?
More disturbingly, what was going to happen to her when he got sick of revisiting old territory and vanished, leaving her behind to pick up the pieces and start again? It seemed that they were living in a vacuum, where sex was the integral force, but whilst she was spinning away into the fantasy realms of love, he was merely enjoying her for a short while, enjoying the thought of controlling the woman who had turned him down. He wasn’t spinning away anywhere.
She was barely aware of the change in the scenery. From passing estates to more open land where houses lay un-glimpsed down avenues leading away from the main road.
His car turned down one of these imposing avenues and Laura blinked with a start to the view of a sprawling, ranch-style mansion, which loomed imposingly ahead of them.
‘Your house?’ She gaped incredulously and Gabriel half smiled.
‘My house,’ he agreed, slowing the car to park to one side of the drive. ‘Like it?’
‘It’s very ...impressive,’ Laura said with resounding understatement. ‘Very ...big. Well, huge, really.’
She had to stand and stare once she was out of the car, whilst he patiently waited, watching her through narrowed eyes.
‘It seems a bit magnificent for one person,’ Laura finally volunteered, following him towards the imposing front door.
‘Like I said, I originally bought it as a financial investment and as such it has been worth every penny.’
‘There’s more to life than money.’
‘Really? I have yet to encounter it.’ He opened the front door and stood aside to let her through.
Breathtaking enough on the outside, it was a designer’s paradise on the inside. Wooden floors gleamed and seemed to stretch endlessly and matched perfectly with the heavy cream of the wallpaper, and through open doors she could glimpse a harmony of rich colours and thick curtains that hung to the ground in swirls.
The house had been cunningly designed on various levels, so from where she stood, with her back to the front door, Laura could see the staircase curve towards the left, where a luxurious sitting area overlooked the main entrance and presumably led to one wing of the house, before winding up towards the right wing of the house.
‘If this is the sort of thing you like,’ she joked nervously, ‘then you’re going to hate Oakridge House when it’s finished. Lord, Gabriel, I almost feel as if I should remove my shoes just in case the shiny polished wood gets scuffed.’ It was meant as a light-hearted observation but she could see from the thinning of his mouth that he hadn’t cared for it.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Laura. Come on, I will show you to the kitchen and we can have something to drink before we have a look around.’ This was a mistake, he thought grimly. She hated this place and
he was disgusted to find that he was now seeing it through her eyes as well and not much liking what he saw.
They bypassed rooms, into which Laura sneaked quick, fascinated peeks until they came to the kitchen, which, much as she might have expected, was everything anyone could want from a kitchen. Wood, chrome and cream gleamed with showroom brightness.
‘Lovely,’ she said faintly, and he glowered at her.
‘You hate it. Why not be honest and admit it? I won’t get annoyed.’ He was so annoyed, in fact, that it felt good to add, with deliberate casualness, ‘What you think does not affect me at all.’
‘I don’t hate it,’ Laura said stubbornly, folding her arms. Did he have to spell out his position with such relentless indifference? ‘And I would love a cup of coffee,’ she continued, ‘if you can locate it. These counters seem very clear of anything useful. I mean—’ she could feel her hurt gathering some much-needed momentum ‘—what the heck is that?’ She pointed at a silver gadget on the counter by the stove, which was so dazzlingly bright that you very nearly needed sunglasses to look at it.
‘It’s a ...ah ...juice extractor.’
‘And that?’
‘Cappuccino maker.’
‘Which you’re going to use to make my cup of coffee?’
‘I prefer the ordinary kettle.’ He had ruffled her beautiful feathers with his dismissive put-down, and Gabriel felt a twinge of disproportionate delight.
‘Then why on earth did you waste your good money on a cappuccino maker? Huh? If you preferred the ordinary kettle’? More money than sense.’
‘I did not buy it, as a matter of fact.’
‘Oh, I see. It just landed on your counter one morning from outer space.’
Gabriel threw back his head and laughed, it does look a little terrifyingly alien,’ he agreed.
‘And do you know how to use it?’
‘You don’t know!’ Laura crowed, grinning. ‘What did I just say about more money than sense? I bet you’re scared to go anywhere near it in case it explodes if you press the wrong button!’
The Millionaire's Revenge Page 13
