The Notorious Gabriel DiazRuthless Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress

by Cathy Williams

  Lucy thought back to that broodingly arrogant face and could well believe that anyone daring to disobey Gabriel Diaz would be hung, drawn and quartered without trial.

  And yet he had sought her out two years ago, had made his intentions perfectly clear. He had wanted her. She hadn’t understood why at the time, and she was no nearer to understanding now, but couldn’t that brief flare of attraction help her out now? Perhaps encourage him to be more sympathetic to her parents’ plight than he might normally have been under the circumstances?

  Glancing up, Lucy caught sight of herself in the long oval mirror over the fireplace. What she saw was a slender girl with waist-length fair hair the colour of vanilla ice cream streaked with toffee, at the moment swept back into a haphazard ponytail, a heart-shaped face and green eyes. There was nothing there to get excited about as far as she was concerned, and chances were that the man wouldn’t even remember who she was, but wasn’t it worth the risk of approaching him?

  ‘Let me think about things, Dad,’ she told him, moving to where he was slumped on the sofa to give him a hug. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try and get to Mr Diaz…you can never tell…’

  She was thankful that her parents knew nothing of that peculiar little episode two years ago. Had they known that the devil in disguise had made a pass at her they would have immediately forbidden any contact. They were deeply traditional and would have been appalled to think that she might be allowed entry to Gabriel Diaz’s hallowed walls simply because he had once fancied her for a week.

  As it was, they did their best over the next hour to drop the conversation, to talk about less contentious topics, but by the time Lucy left later that evening she was drained, and so scared on behalf of her parents that she almost couldn’t think clearly.

  Not even the soothing act of drawing could calm her tumultuous thoughts and Freddy, sensing her mood, trotted behind her with a forlorn look on his squashy little face, the very picture of a depressed mutt.

  The following morning she didn’t give herself a chance to argue her way out of what she knew she had to do. Instead she phoned the garden centre first thing and explained that she wouldn’t be coming in. She didn’t anticipate being in London longer than a couple of hours, but Freddy would have to be deprived of his day dashing around the gardens, chasing insects. He gazed at her reproachfully as she closed the front door on him, immune to her promises of a treat when she returned.

  It was warm outside. Summer had arrived with a bounce, delivering blue, cloudless skies for the past three weeks, and today was no exception.

  It was a shame that she had no attractive dresses to wear to a meeting she suspected would be grueling—if it even took place at all. As her father had said, Gabriel Diaz was out of the country most of the time. Working at the garden centre had made her lazy when it came to her wardrobe. There was no need for her to wear anything dressy, so she had a cupboard that was full to bursting with faded jeans, combat trousers, jumpers, T-shirts and overalls.

  She chose the least worn of her jeans, one of the few T-shirts that didn’t advertise a rock band, and the most respectable of her shoes—a pair of black flats.

  The mirror reflected back to her a picture of a girl, five foot eight, slender to the point of skinny, with long blond hair, which she personally considered her best feature. As a last resort, to add glamour to the package, but feeling tainted by the very act of aiming to appeal to someone via her looks, she dabbed on a little lip gloss. That, however, was as far as she was prepared to go.

  * * *

  In the middle of concluding a distasteful conversation with a certain tall, sexy brunette model he had been seeing for the past four months, and whose presence in his life had now outstayed its welcome, Gabriel Diaz was interrupted by his secretary poking her head into his office to tell him that he had a visitor.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘She refused to say,’ Nicolette said apologetically. ‘She said it’s personal. I could tell her that you’re not in…’

  In receipt of information like that, Gabriel’s first response would usually have been to assume that the woman in question was a lover. Despite his dislike of any woman intruding in his workspace, it had been known to happen. Women had an irritating tendency to think that sex bought them leniency in certain areas—to imagine that sleeping with him entitled them to pop into his office for nothing more than a quick chat. Gabriel could have told them that such behaviour only guaranteed an early exit from his life.

  But having just come off the phone with Imogen, he knew that his mood was not conducive to completing the report that was blinking at him on his computer.

  He berated himself for not taking action sooner to terminate his relationship with Imogen. Glamorous she might very well be, but she had displayed sufficient signs of clinginess early on for him to have realised that whatever they had would end in tears. Sure enough, the fifteen-minute telephone conversation he had just had with her had been ample proof that her expectations had far exceeded what had been on offer.

  This was the third woman Gabriel had had in eight months. Even for him that was a record. What was it about women who just never seemed to get the message that he wasn’t in it for the long haul? It wasn’t as though he didn’t make it clear to them from the very beginning that he was not a man who was on the lookout for commitment. No one could ever accuse him of not being scrupulously fair on that front. He never, ever made promises he had no intention of keeping. And yet time and again what started out as something light-hearted and fun ended up with him having to wriggle away from a woman who’d begun taking an unhealthy interest in domestic life and an even more unhealthy interest in diamond rings and friends with babies.

  He scowled at the memory of Imogen shrieking down the phone that he had led her on. Such behaviour disgusted Gabriel. And he found it particularly annoying that she had seen fit to call him at work.

  Faced with the prospect of being distracted from his report or seeing a mystery woman for ten minutes, he decided that bit of light relief might do the trick.

  ‘Show her up.’ He sat back and braced himself for someone on a begging mission. ‘But make sure you tell her that I have ten minutes to spare and no more. Oh, and Nicolette? Remind her that I already contribute heavily to a number of charities. The money pit isn’t bottomless….’

  * * *

  Hovering on the ground floor, where all the marble and glass and chrome and well-groomed artificial plants were combining to send her blood pressure shooting through the roof, Lucy was trying hard not to panic.

  A surprise visit to Gabriel Diaz had seemed such a good idea at the time. In fact, it had seemed like the only idea at the time. But now a serious case of nerves was threatening to make her turn tail and flee.

  The building, which she had located in the labyrinth of office buildings in the heart of the City, was terrifyingly impressive. Everyone at Sims had been thrilled to death when their small two-storeyed brick-clad office block had been expanded and turned into a high-tech glasshouse. Her father had related numerous tales of clean tiled floors and brand-new top-of-the-range desks. Lucy thought that he would be rendered speechless were he to see the opulence of DGG headquarters.

  She had almost expected to be told that Gabriel wasn’t in the country, and she told herself that it was a sign that he was in the country, was in his office and would see her.

  She kept her eyes peeled as she walked past the bank of snobby girls at the circular reception desk in the middle, with its sleek, wafer-thin computer terminals, and breathed a sigh of relief when she spotted a middle-aged woman striding towards her.

  This must be Gabriel’s secretary. Or one of them. At least the woman heading in her direction, unlike the girls at the reception desk, wasn’t looking at her as though she were something dragged in by the cat after a night on the tiles.

  ‘You’re…?’

  ‘Lucy. I’m sorry I didn’t give…er…Gabriel my name, but I thought it might be nice to surprise him….�
� Lucy was open by nature, and subterfuge made her cheeks pinken.

  ‘He can’t allot you much time, I’m afraid. Mr Diaz is on a very tight schedule.’

  Nicolette was well-versed in the sort of women her boss dated. This girl was not at all built in the same mould. Nor had Nicolette ever seen anyone quite so stunningly pretty and, judging from the clothes and the lack of make-up, quite so ignorant of her looks.

  As they took the lift up to the directors’ floor she made sure to keep the conversation light.

  Lucy was grateful for that. She was awed and impossibly daunted by her surroundings. Every slab of marble and sheet of glass in the building breathed money and power. The employees were all decked out in designer suits and looked as though they were dashing off to very important, life-changing meetings.

  In her jeans and T-shirt and flat black ballet shoes she felt as conspicuous as a bull in a china shop. She knew that people were staring as the lift disgorged them into a vast, elegant space, thickly carpeted, with a central circular sunken area in which various other besuited people were doing clever things in front of computers.

  Her skin literally crawled with nerves, and her legs were so wobbly that it was a challenge to move one in front of the other.

  Beyond the central atrium, a wide corridor was flanked on either side by private offices the likes of which could only, surely, be found in a company with profits to burn.

  She found that she was lagging behind as Nicolette strode briskly towards the office at the very end of the corridor. Noiseless air-conditioning meant that it was much cooler inside the building than it had been outside, and it felt positively chilly up here on the eighth floor. She clamped her teeth together to stop them from chattering.

  ‘If you’d wait here…?’

  Nicolette’s smile was kindly but Lucy hardly noticed. Her pink mouth, lip gloss long since gone, had fallen open at the opulence of her surroundings. Light grey smoked glass concealed this outer office from prying eyes. The walls were white, and dominated on one side by a huge abstract painting and on the other by smoked ash doors behind which lay heaven only knew what. Another office? A wardrobe stuffed full of designer suits? A bathroom? Or maybe a torture chamber into which recalcitrant employees could be marched and taught valuable life lessons?

  Nicolette’s desk was bigger than the studio room in her house where Lucy did her meticulous drawings. At a push it could be converted into a dining table to seat ten.

  She was staring at it, fighting the sensation that she had somehow been transported into a parallel universe, when she was told that Mr Diaz would see her now.

  Lucy had thought she hadn’t forgotten what Gabriel looked like. As she entered his office and the door behind her clicked softly closed she realised she actually had. The man slowly turning from the window where he had been standing, looking out, was so much taller than she remembered. She was pinned to the spot by eyes the colour of bitter chocolate. Time had done nothing to dim the staggering force of his personality—the same force she had felt the first time she had seen him, surrounded by his minions. It swept over her, strangling her vocal cords and scrambling her ability to think.

  * * *

  This was not what Gabriel had expected. He had expected a middle-aged harpy with a begging bowl and pictures of unfortunate children.

  But this was the woman whose image he had never quite been able to eradicate from his head. She had been stunning then and she was even more stunning now—

  although he would have been hard pressed to put his finger on what, exactly, it was about her that held his gaze with such ferocious intensity.

  Her skin was pale gold and smooth as satin, and that amazing hair, pulled back into a long plait that ran down the length of her narrow spine, had the same effect on him now as it had two years ago. Confronted by the one and only woman who had ever said no to him, Gabriel schooled his features into polite curiosity. He didn’t know what she wanted, but the residue of his frustration and annoyance suddenly lifted.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me.’ Lucy hovered by the door, not having been invited to take one of the leather chairs that were ranged in front of a desk that was even bigger than the one belonging to his secretary. His silence was unnerving. It propelled her into hurried speech. ‘You probably don’t remember me. We met a couple of years ago. When you…ah…came to Somerset…Sims Electronics? It was one of the companies you took over…. I’m sorry. I didn’t even introduce myself. Lucy…ah…Robins. I’m sorry. You won’t have a clue who I am….’

  Regret at her hasty decision to descend on him unannounced rushed over her, making her want to stumble back out of the door and as far away from this intimidating building as she could get. She didn’t know if she should walk towards him and extend her hand in a gesture of politeness, but just the thought of touching him sent her nerves into further debilitating freefall.

  Not have a clue who she was? Gabriel wanted to laugh aloud at that one. One look at her face and he was realising that her polite rejection still rankled a lot more than he had suspected. He was not a man who had his advances spurned. The experience had burnt a hole in his memory. But what the hell was she doing here? Had she turned up two years ago he would have assumed that it was because she’d had a rethink about her incomprehensible decision to turn him away—but now…? All this time later…? No, something was at play here, and intense curiosity kicked into gear. It felt great. Invigorating. Especially after his ludicrous phone call with Imogen.

  ‘Are you going to say anything?’ she asked, her nerves making her stumble over the question.

  At that, Gabriel pushed himself away from the window and indicated one of the chairs in front of his desk.

  ‘I remember you,’ he drawled, resuming his seat and watching every detail of the emotions flitting across her face. ‘The girl from the garden centre. You returned an item of jewellery. What did you do with the flowers? Introduce them to the incinerator?’

  Lucy lowered her eyes and fumbled her way to the chair, not knowing whether he expected an answer to that deliberately provocative question. Her skin was burning, as though someone had shoved her to stand in front of an open flame, and although she wasn’t looking at him the harsh, perfect angles of his face were imprinted in her head with the forcefulness of a branding iron.

  Staring down uncomfortably at her entwined fingers, she literally could see nothing else but his dark-as-midnight eyes, the curl of his sensuous mouth, the coolly arrogant inclination of his head. But she was glad to be sitting. At least it gave her legs some reprieve from the threat of collapsing under her.

  ‘So what do you want?’ Gabriel asked with studied indifference. ‘You have ten minutes of my time and counting.’

  Lucy balled her hands into fists. She understood that they had parted company on less than ideal terms. Perhaps his pride had been wounded because she had turned him down. But was that any reason for him to make this even more difficult for her than it already was? Two years ago she had been offered a glimpse of his arrogance. Now she could see that in no way had it diminished over time.

  ‘I’ve come about my father.’ She took a deep breath and forced herself to meet his mildly enquiring gaze. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s been a bit of a situation…at the company…’

  Gabriel frowned. His business interests were so extensive that entire companies that sheltered under his umbrella were practically self-accounting. Now he rapidly clicked his computer and began scrolling through all the details of Sims. It took him no time at all to unearth what her mystery trip to his office was all about.

  ‘By situation,’ he said coldly, ‘I take it that you’re referring to your father’s embezzlement?’

  ‘Please don’t call it that.’

  ‘You’re here because your father’s been caught out with his hand in the till. I’m hoping you’re not going to ask me to turn a blind eye to his thieving just because once upon a time I gave you a second look…?’

  Mortifica
tion ripped through her, making her slight frame tremble. ‘You don’t understand! My father’s not a thief.’

  ‘No? Then we have a different take on what constitutes a thief. In my view, it’s someone who has been caught trying to rip a company off…dipping into the coffers…taking money…’ He leant forward and placed the palms of his hands flat on his desk. ‘Taking money without permission, presumably to enjoy the high life!’

  ‘He… Look, he knows that what he did was wrong….’

  ‘Good! Then perhaps the courts will look on him favourably and not make the sentence too harsh! Alternatively, they might just want to flex their muscles and demonstrate that fraud isn’t something to be taken lightly! Now…’

  He stood up and cursed himself for the impact she still seemed to have on him—even when she was sitting in his chair, in his office, bleating on about her

  father and trying to pull the sympathy card. All of which added up to a situation with which he had less than zero tolerance.

  ‘If that’s all, Nicolette will show you out….’

  CHAPTER TWO

  LUCY’S SPINE STIFFENED in stubborn, angry refusal to see this as the conclusion of her expedition to London. He had treated her with contempt and hadn’t even bothered to hear her out. Of course he had every good reason to dismiss her, but the thought of her father being chucked into a prison cell like a common criminal…. He would never survive that, and neither would her mother.

  She could feel his eyes burning into her downturned head and she fought down the sickening wave of pride that made her want to leave with her head held high. Right now pride was a commodity she couldn’t afford.

  ‘Please…please hear me out,’ she whispered, daunted beyond belief by the cold hostility emanating from him.

  ‘Whatever for?’ Gabriel’s voice was harshly blunt. ‘Embezzlement in my company is not accepted on any level. It’s as simple as that. It’s outrageous to think that you came here to parade your wares in front of me in the hope that I might bend the rules. Hell, you haven’t even bothered to wear something decent!’