‘You are utterly incorrigible, woman.’
‘And utterly right as well. So what other gadgets do you have concealed in this high-tech kitchen which you’re too scared to use?’
Gabriel couldn’t help it. He grinned sheepishly back at her and shrugged. ‘The microwave can be a little uncooperative sometimes,’ he admitted ruefully, wondering how on earth he had ever managed to feel remotely comfortable in a kitchen where most of the appliances seemed designed to repel casual use.
‘So how on earth do you manage to fend for yourself?’ Laura asked, folding her arms and subjecting him to a penetrating, quizzical stare.
The urge to tell her that what he needed was a good woman to fend for him was so strong that it left him shaken.
‘I have staff,’ he muttered, and she nodded with superior condescension. ‘Handy.’
‘It is one of the privileges money buys.’ Gabriel wondered how she would look in an apron, cooking for him, tending to his every need. Try as he did to turn the image into a purely sexual one, all he could picture was the leggy blonde in front of him sitting at a kitchen table, a beaten old pine kitchen table, listening to him talk about his day, soothing away his stress.
Good God!
‘Maybe we should leave the coffee for later,’ he muttered, turning away so that she couldn’t see any tell-tale darkening of his cheeks, I might as well show you around the rest of the house and, please...’ he slid his eyes over to where she was standing, looking at him with her head inclined ‘...feel free to speak your mind.’
‘Okay,’ Laura replied airily. ‘I will.’
Twenty minutes later and Gabriel was beginning to regret his open invitation. She had voiced her opinions on everything, from the colour of the walls to the choice of paintings hanging on them, from the design of the furniture to its level of comfort. In the sitting area she had bounced experimentally on the long pale blue sofa and pronounced it too firm.
‘It may look attractive,’ she had told him, sweeping imperious eyes over the sofa and chairs, which, from his vague recollections, had cost a small fortune, ‘but sofas should be squashy. If you would prefer something along these lines, then you’d better tell me now, so that I know what to order or, rather, which stores to send you to for you to decide.’
‘I cannot possibly make a decision like that on my own. I wouldn’t know where to begin.’
‘Now I’m supposed to see you as the Helpless Male?’ Laura had shot him a disbelieving, sceptical look. ‘You still haven’t answered my question. Firm or squashy?’
‘Squashy.’
‘Patterned or plain?’
‘What...’ he had almost fallen into the trap of telling her to choose anything she liked, but had caught himself in the nick of time ‘...would you suggest? You are the designer.’
‘Something warm and patterned,’ Laura had said. ‘Something with ethnic overtones, maybe in terracottas and greens.’
‘Fine.’
And every room had been subjected to the same critical eye. By the time they were heading up the stairs to the bedroom wing of the house, Gabriel was fast developing a keen sense of loathing for most of his furnishings.
After guest room number two, Laura stood in front of him, frowning, her hands on her hips.
‘I’m getting very mixed messages here, Gabriel,’ she informed him.
His reply was wary. He was being bombarded by mixed messages himself, none of which he welcomed. ‘What about?’ he asked, his eyes narrowing.
He breathed an inner sigh of relief when she said, looking around the pristine room, ‘I don’t dislike anything I’ve seen, but I would never have chosen this kind of decor myself. It’s very ...impressive and tasteful, but I find it all very cold and lacking in the comforts I associate with a home. But you’ve lived here for years and so you must like it. In which case, perhaps I’m not the best person to use for doing the inside of Oakridge House. Maybe you need someone professional.’
‘I have every confidence in you, querida.’ The endearment, combined with those dark, sexy eyes, did what they always did. Made her forget what she had been saying.
‘To choose stuff I would like, Gabriel, which, judging from what I’ve seen of your house here, you would absolutely hate. And let’s face it, Oakridge House is your house, not mine. I don’t want to finish my job only to discover that I haven’t done it to your liking.’
‘Why don’t you leave me to worry about that?’ He was beginning to hate those lines of demarcation that he had been so keen to establish only a few weeks ago. ‘And do not start rambling on about your duties as my employee,’ he continued repressively.
‘I can’t just overlook that little technicality,’ Laura said tightly. ‘You’re paying me a fabulous salary, rescuing me from penury and I want to repay you by doing a good job.’ God, it was so easy to get carried away on the wings of day-dreaming, and of reading signals that just weren’t there. Discussing domestic issues was a sure-fire way to forget exactly what their situation was, and Laura felt compelled to pull herself back from the brink of massive, dangerous self-deception.
‘Then as your employer,’ he mimicked with thinly veiled anger, ‘who is paying you a fabulous salary and rescuing you from penury, I order you to furnish the house precisely how you want to. Use your flair and imagination and I am happy to leave the outcome up to you.’ He turned away and began striding along the corridor, with its plush white carpeting and pale ochre walls.
‘There’s no need for you to storm off in one of your Latin American moods,’ Laura called to him, which instantly made him stop in his tracks and dragged a reluctant smile to his lips. He turned slowly to face her and realised that she had not moved an inch from where she had been standing at the door to the guest room.
‘Just as there is no need for you to constantly harp on about your status as my employee.’
They stared at one another from one end of the corridor to the other.
She could have told him that seeing her reduced to that status had been the object of his exercise, and that the only reason he was now choosing to overlook the little detail was because they were lovers and even he must feel some guilt at making love to the woman he had sought out for purposes of revenge.
But she held her tongue.
To have said any of those things would have made their already precarious bubble burst into a million smithereens and she wanted to hold onto the bubble for as long as she could.
Eventually, she shrugged lightly and stepped towards him.
‘If you don’t mind my taste, then I’ll furnish your house just as I would furnish my own,’ she said, walking towards him, and she was rewarded with one of those blisteringly sexy smiles that almost made her falter in her tracks.
‘I think it is time you saw the master bedroom,’ Gabriel murmured, not taking his eyes off her approaching figure for a second, it is the one room in the house I actually chose for myself.’
He reached out sideways to push open a door to his right, watching her intently as she came towards him and only turning away when she too turned to gape at the room in front of her.
Gone was the impersonal beauty of the previous rooms she had explored. Here was a room that breathed masculinity. The bed was very low to the ground and the dark, swirling colours of the quilt demanded touching. A rich, dark wooden chest of drawers banked one wall and the pale carpet was almost unseen beneath a massive Persian rug that dominated the floor space. Heavy, deep blue velvet drapes completed the feeling of eroticism.
‘You like it?’ he whispered into her ear and all Laura could do was nod in wonder at the vibrant mix of colours, none of which seemed out of place although most of them clashed.
‘The quilt cover is silk,’ he said softly, it feels magnificent against bare skin. Would you like to try?’
The mere thought of them writhing naked on top of the silk made her skin begin to tingle, and with supreme confidence he took her hand and led her over to th
e bed, leaving her to stand by it only for as long as it took him to draw the curtains, plunging the room into instant darkness.
‘A sensual boudoir,’ Laura said as he lit four bulky candles of varying heights on the chest of drawers. ‘Was this your intention when you ...created it?’
Gabriel nodded and omitted to mention that it had been a chaste boudoir. He had never brought any of his women back to this house, preferring to see them in his penthouse in London. She was the first, but damned if she would know that.
He moved to where she was still standing and pulled off the shirt, groaning involuntarily as his hands slipped under the vest to find the heavy warmth of her bare breasts.
He rolled his thumbs over the tightened peaks of her nipples and half closed his eyes as she slipped the vest over her head and tossed it to the ground. Then the trousers. Down they came, followed by the lacy underwear. She had been right. Making love in a car did not lend itself to the delight of seeing her exquisite, naked body.
‘And what would you like me to do on this silk duvet of yours?’ Laura murmured seductively.
‘For starters, just lie on it and let me see you.’
It felt as beautiful as it had promised. Laura stretched on the bed, watching him through half-closed eyes, and began moving sensuously for his languid viewing. When her hand trailed along her stomach to ruffle the fine fair hair that guarded her sex, Gabriel sank onto the covers with a grunt of savage passion and captured her wandering hand with his own.
‘You little hussy,’ he growled. ‘Do not even think about touching yourself. That is for my enjoyment only.’
And he was about to prove that very point when the doorbell shrieked into the thick silence and Anna’s voice crackled on the intercom in the bedroom, laughing and asking Gabriel, ‘Where are you?’
CHAPTER NINE
Laura walked tentatively towards the kitchen. The sound of Anna’s voice had galvanised them both into action. In Gabriel’s case, it had been a simple matter of running his fingers through his hair whilst swearing darkly under his breath about interruptions, and then going downstairs to open the front door.
In Laura’s case, she had slipped back on her clothes with the nervous tension of a teenager being caught on the couch with her boyfriend when her parents should have been safely out. It was ridiculous, she told herself severely. They were both consenting adults. Which just went to bring home to her in all its ugly clarity the clandestine nature of their relationship. They were fine romping around in the sack just so long as reality didn’t manage to break through.
She peeped into the kitchen to find that Gabriel was nowhere to be seen, although Anna was sitting comfortably at the kitchen table, quietly composed with her fingers linked on the glass surface.
‘This is a ridiculous table to have in a kitchen, wouldn’t you agree?’ The dark-haired woman smiled and Laura relaxed and walked in. ‘I told Gabriel to get rid of it years ago, and, in all fairness, he agreed every time I mentioned it, but, like all men, did nothing about the advice.’
‘Hi.’ Laura smiled back cautiously, I’m sorry. We weren’t ...expecting you ...but it’s lovely to see you again.’ She hovered, not too sure what to say. Anna was right. Kitchens should be comfortable and chrome and glass did not constitute comfort, but it would have been ludicrous to embark on a conversation about a kitchen table. ‘Where ...where is Gabriel?’
‘I sent him out.’
‘You sent him out?’
‘To get some oil for my car,’ Anna explained. ‘The little red light started appearing on my way here and, being a woman, I have no idea how to put oil in.’ She shrugged and gave Laura a conspiratorial smile that suggested she was more than adept at putting oil in her car. ‘Besides, I wanted to talk to you without my cousin glowering in the background. Shall we have some coffee?’ She stood up and headed towards the cappuccino maker and began operating it in a professional manner, fetching coffee from one of the cupboards and mugs from a drawer.
‘You drove here to talk to me?’ Laura asked in bewilderment. ‘What about?’
How do you take your coffee?’
‘White, no sugar. Thank you.’ Laura sat down and tilted her chair so that she could look at what Anna was doing.
‘I needed to see Gabriel, actually. In fact, I telephoned the house, but you must have just left. The foreman there told me that you were heading down here. Apparently Gabriel had said that he was to lock up behind him because they were going to Berkshire and might not be back in time before they were due to leave. Naturally, I assumed that you would be coming here and I thought I would kill two birds with one stone. Discuss some business with Gabriel and also grab some time with you. Here you go, coffee almost as you would get it in a restaurant. Without the grated chocolate on top.’ Without giving Laura time to ponder the little issue of why Gabriel’s cousin wanted to talk to her, she rested the mug on the table and sat down.
She looked as stunning as she had done the first time
Laura had set eyes on her. Her brown hair was neatly tied back, though this time in a more casual French braid, to suit her more casual outfit of pale brown cord trousers, flat brogues and a cream, thin jersey top with a fine ribbed pattern running vertically down.
‘So. How is the house coming along?’
‘That’s what you wanted to discuss?’ Laura breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Well, Gabriel suggested that we do the easy bits first, so at the moment I’m working on updating the house.’ She grimaced and then smiled. ‘Nothing has been done on it for as long as I can remember. All the wallpaper is being stripped and a lot of the furniture will be replaced. I shall keep a few of the old pieces that belonged to Mum and Dad and then sell the rest, although a lot of it will fetch token amounts. There’s very little market for secondhand furniture these days.’
‘And how do you feel about it? You know, working and renovating a house that used to belong to you?’ Anna sipped some of her coffee whilst looking at Laura levelly over the rim of the mug.
‘I look on the bright side. That things could have been a lot worse for me. At least I have a roof over my head and, when my job at the stables is over, I should have saved sufficient money to get a small place of my own.’ Why did she get the feeling that they were skirting around an issue? Nibbling the appetiser in preparation for the main meal? And why did she get the feeling that the main meal was not going to be to her liking?
‘And Gabriel has moved in, I gather?’
Laura flushed and drank some of her coffee. ‘He said he wanted to be on hand so that he could have input into what was going on. He said that it would have been difficult to travel up when he was needed from London and that it was easier to communicate with his office via computer.’ She half expected Anna to give a snort of laughter at that, but was disconcerted to find that she just continued looking thoughtfully at her, as if weighing up something in her mind.
‘And you two ...have become close, have you?’
Laura felt a brief flare of anger at the intrusiveness of the question, but it was immediately quenched by the gentle look in the other woman’s eyes.
‘I don’t mean to be nosy,’ Anna apologised. ‘But Gabriel did explain a bit of the relationship between the two of you... that you used to know each other a long time ago...’
‘I was still a teenager at the time. Gabriel came to the stables occasionally.’
‘My cousin is a very passionate man, Laura...’ Anna looked a little embarrassed at this observation but she drew in a deep breath and continued anyway. ‘Under any other circumstances, I would leave him to get on with his life, but I like you and I disapprove of his tactics.’
‘His tactics?’ So here it was. The starter course was finished and they were on to the main meal and Laura knew exactly where it was heading.
‘He rescued you from your situation so that he could avenge himself of what he saw as an insult delivered many years ago...’ She paused and looked at Laura with blazing honesty. ‘He
can be a very persuasive man, full of charm. Too much charm, really, and I am only cautioning you against falling in love with him because he will hurt you.’
Too late for that little warning, Laura thought restlessly to herself, not that it would have helped anyway. She had never fallen out of love with him.
‘I know you think that I am being intrusive, poking my nose in matters that do not concern me, but...’ she sought around for a tactful way to say what she wanted to say
‘...you strike me as a gentle, maybe emotionally vulnerable girl, even after all you have been through...’
Laura counteracted this accurate observation by gulping down some coffee and then staring fixedly at the pattern on her mug before reluctantly raising her eyes to meet Anna’s.
‘I can take care of myself.’
‘Even when it comes to Gabriel?’ She sighed, I gather that he is getting you out of his system and, in so doing, it would be easy for you to absorb him into yours and he will ...he will never marry you.’
There. The finality of her words hung in the air between them and Laura drew her shoulders up.
‘I’m not a fool. I know that. So it’s just as well that I haven’t made the mistake of falling in love with him, isn’t it?’
‘Isn’t it just.’ Gabriel’s voice from the kitchen doorway exploded like a bomb in the kitchen and he walked towards them, his angled face devoid of expression. His hands were thrust into his trouser pockets and he didn’t even dare look at Laura because to look at her would have been to be consumed with rage.
Had he expected anything else from her? He had wooed and seduced a woman who felt nothing for him but lust and all his plans for revenge lay in ruins around his feet because, fool that he was, he had actually committed the same cardinal sin he had committed years before. He had misread her signals and allowed himself to be lulled into loving her all over again.
He didn’t know who filled him with more rage. Her or himself.
‘Because Anna is absolutely right.’ He stopped directly in front of Laura and steeled himself to meet her brown, dismayed eyes, I will never marry you.’ Then he turned to his cousin with a hard expression. ‘And you were totally out of order in coming here so that you could interfere in matters that do not concern you. Running around behind my back and stirring up trouble is not part of your job specification.’
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