possessed—overnight bag included—could be replaced. He felt he might enjoy a ceremonial burning of her entire wardrobe.
‘I didn’t think you would be here to meet me. You said you’d be sending your driver….’
‘I found that I couldn’t wait…. You should be flattered.’
Lucy was making sure not to walk too close to him. She didn’t want to be here at all, had been put in a position of having no choice, and she hated the strange effect he had on her. She would be facing bigger problems soon enough. Her nervous system deserved as much rest as it could get before those problems arose.
‘Where are we going now?’ she asked anxiously, stepping back as he opened the door of the car for her.
‘I expect you’re in need of a bath.’ Gabriel waited until he was sitting next to her before he went on. ‘Train journeys always have that effect on me.’
‘Do you take many?’
She pressed herself against the door and Gabriel suppressed a stab of sheer annoyance. This wasn’t what he was used to. Women didn’t act disappointed when they saw him, and they didn’t try to put distance between them. It was going to be a challenging weekend if she intended to scuttle around him like a terrified rabbit. He cheered up when he reminded himself that he had never been one to shy away from a challenge.
‘Admittedly, no,’ Gabriel conceded with an elegant shrug. ‘I don’t do delays, timetables or discomfort. We’ll be going back to my place. You can have a bath. Freshen up…’
Lucy didn’t want to dwell on any of those disconcerting things and rushed into hasty speech. ‘I want to thank you for calling your people off Dad. He said that he’s been told by them that charges aren’t going to be pressed and he’s very relieved.’
‘I’m sure he is,’ Gabriel responded smoothly. ‘I would be, too, were I in his position. There can be nothing so worrying as a trip to a police station followed by a prison sentence. How did he take our little deal? I suppose, given the alternative, he wasn’t overly bothered….’
‘I didn’t go into the details.’ Lucy shot him a look of simmering resentment from under her lashes.
‘That must have been difficult, given the circumstances. How many employers would have consent to overlook fraud?’
‘I wish you’d stop calling it that.’
‘If the cap fits… So, tell me how you managed to explain the terms of our arrangement…?’
Lucy guiltily thought of the way she had tiptoed around any difficult explanation through a mixture of practically turning Gabriel into some sort of earthly saint, filled with the milk of human kindness, and implying that she was girlishly attracted to him, thereby excusing any trips to London, should this crazy situation go past a single weekend.
‘I…er…they were just so pleased that…er…’
‘Getting the picture. Neither of them wanted to ask too many questions. Sometimes it’s easier for people to skim over the details—especially when those details might force them to take a stand. I don’t like you tying your hair back like that.’
‘Sorry?’
‘And I’m not entirely taken with your choice of clothing either….’
‘These are the kind of clothes I wear….’
‘And that’s great when you’re surrounded by plants, mud and soil, but when you’re with me the surroundings will be vastly different and you’ll be expected to look the part.’
‘I’ve been meaning to have a little chat with you about…about that…’ Lucy had never been so insulted before. Nor was she turned on by the prospect of being moulded into someone who looked the part. But staging an argument in her defence would require a lot of tact, because the inescapable truth was that he had bought her. And now he presumed that he had rights.
‘About what?’
‘This arrangement…how long do you think it’s going to take?’
Once again Gabriel fought down his annoyance. Her dewy smooth skin, light gold from time spent outdoors in the summer months, was flushed. She looked like someone who, knowing that they had to stomach a dose of vile medicine, was keen to ascertain how much, exactly, they would be required to swallow. Did she have any idea of how insulting her evident reluctance was?
‘How long is a piece of string?’ He threw the unanswerable question back at her. ‘And what makes you think,’ he drawled, ‘that you’re going to be in a hurry for it to end?’
‘Of course I am! I don’t even want to be here. I’m only here because I have no choice! Why would I want this situation to last longer than necessary?’
‘I can think of one or two scenarios…’
‘That’s because you’re egotistical and you’re accustomed to women fawning over you and wanting to be in your company!’ She almost wept in frustration at the slow smile he gave her. She modulated her voice and tried to infuse calm into her overwrought body. ‘I’m just asking because I can’t keep taking weekends off. For starters I have a dog, and I can’t fob him off on Mum and Dad every weekend. They’re old. They don’t want the responsibility. Plus I have friends, a life….’
‘Too bad.’ There was no point humouring her on this score, Gabriel reasoned. He wondered what this life that she was talking about consisted of. There was no boyfriend on the scene. Or was there? Had she said what she had wanted him to hear to save her skin? Or rather the skin of her parents? ‘What’s this life you’re talking about?’
‘Friends…’
‘Any in particular? The boyfriend from two years ago may be happily shearing sheep in New Zealand, but I’m not going to be impressed if he’s been replaced by someone else and you’ve diplomatically decided to keep him under wraps….’
Lucy wondered how many lies she had told so far. She was losing count. Very soon she would need a calculator to keep abreast.
‘I’m referring to my girlfriends. We have an active social life back home.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Cinema…and we have supper at each other’s houses… I just need to have some sort of idea of when my life will get back to normal!’
‘I think it’s best to work on the assumption that “normal” for you stopped the day your father got caught stealing from me,’ Gabriel remarked drily.
Without her even noticing they had left the crowded streets around the station behind and were now in an exclusive residential area. For several long minutes she could only stare at the massive elegant houses set in a street unlike any she had ever seen in all her trips to London. There were no inconvenient pedestrians cluttering the pavements, no cars bumper to bumper, impatient to get to destinations unknown. These houses were clearly owned by people wealthy enough to ensure that serenity in the middle of one of the most vibrant cities in the world was guaranteed.
When his limo pulled up in front of the most impressive of the lot—a huge, white-fronted Georgian mansion nestled at the end of a peaceful, tree-lined street that ended in a cul-de-sac—it took Lucy a while to collect her thoughts and respond to the door that was being held open for her by his driver.
There surely could not have been a more effective way of underlining what he had said about her normal life being temporarily on hold.
No wonder he had made such a song and dance about her clothes! No wonder he had told her that in his world she would have to look the part! She felt as though she had gone from being in Little House on the Prairie to Dallas.
Her mouth went dry as they entered the mansion. There was a lot of marble. Cream marble shot with very pale pink on which sat silk rugs in muted colours with elaborate patterns. The paintings on the walls all looked vaguely familiar. If she didn’t recognise some of them, she felt she ought to.
The door shut behind her and Lucy fell back in sheer terror.
‘I don’t belong here,’ she said quickly, staring around and clutching her backpack in both her hands.
‘Interestingly, that’s not the reaction my house usually generates in women.’
Gabriel moved to stand in front of her with an amused
expression softening the harsh contours of his face. Lucy stared up at him, her eyes huge and round.
‘Generally speaking,’ he expanded, shoving his hands in his pockets and grinning, ‘there’s a lot of wow…what an incredible place…I can’t believe this…’
Lucy was held captive by that grin. There was so much unconscious charm in it that she felt she could understand why women fell at his feet. Naturally she was at pains to remind herself she was immune to anything like that, given the horror of the situation in which she found herself, but still…
‘Why do you need something as big as this when there’s only one of you…?’ she asked inanely.
He seemed to find that even more hilarious.
‘I don’t need to. I choose to. There’s a difference.’
The tone of his voice said it all. He was a man who got what he wanted. He might not need something, but if he wanted it then he got it. He didn’t need her, but he wanted her—and he had found at his disposal the perfect means to achieve that. She was a commodity that he had procured through blackmail.
‘You’re spoiled rotten—do you know that?’ she said, turning away and fumbling with her backpack, because a sudden wave of self-pity was bringing tears to her eyes and she would not allow herself to cry about this predicament.
‘Come again?’
‘You’re like a kid!’ Lucy shouted, staring him down. ‘An over-indulged rich kid who points his finger and knows that he can have whatever he points at—even if it’s not necessary, even if the thing he wants now, right now, will probably be tossed aside in a day’s time!’
Gabriel was enraged that she should dare to say something like that to him. But her slender frame was trembling, and if she weren’t clutching her backpack she would almost certainly have been throwing it at him. And all because he had thrown her thieving father a lifeline and brought her back to a house that had twice received offers to be placed in a glossy magazine!
‘You’ve got me here! And you won’t even have the decency to tell me when I’ll be released!’ she practically sobbed.
Gabriel fought to control his spiralling temper. He had never been a man to lose control. He also hated hysterics.
‘I’ll show you to the bathroom,’ he gritted.
Lucy continued to look at him with unalloyed hostility. Her hair was unravelling from its braid and her sea-green eyes were spitting fire. How was it that she was still managing to get to him? On the one hand there was a gentleness to her that was almost childlike. On the other he had never been in the presence of such a little hellcat in his life before. Her every emotion was swept to the surface and emerged undiluted by artifice. Was that why she had such an effect on him? Because she was so incredibly different from all the other women he had been with?
He spun round and began heading up the stairs. Lucy, for want of any other option, began following him. Her backpack was slung over one shoulder. Ahead, he was carrying her overnight bag.
The majestic staircase opened onto an exquisite landing. Here, the marble gave way to rich wooden flooring, and as they passed room after room she was privy to the sight of shutters, billowing voile, deep, rich drapes and yet more of those amazing silk rugs that were to be found on the ground floor.
He turned left and she almost collided into the back of him as she came to an abrupt halt in a bedroom. Like everything else in the house the scale of this room was eye-wateringly grand. Two enormous windows overlooked a large garden and they were dressed with deep burgundy drapes. The furniture was built in, so there were no bits of furniture to interrupt the open sweep of the room or to distract the attention from the massive, aggressively masculine bed that now stared at her with mocking triumph.
Lucy croaked and stared back at it. His room. The room she would be sharing. With him. The bed was big, but not so big that she would be able to partition herself away from his daunting body.
She wouldn’t think about that yet. She would cross that bridge when she came to it.
‘Is this the room I’ll be sleeping in?’ she asked, on the off-chance that this was a spare bedroom—one that coincidentally looked lived-in. By him.
‘I’ll run you a bath.’
Gabriel pushed open a concealed door and Lucy followed him towards a bathroom that was as big as the ground floor of her cottage. The bath was huge. To
Lucy’s dazed eyes it looked as though it could hold a football team. Big, fluffy towels hung on a heated towel rail and she stared at him as her mouth went dry.
‘Thank you,’ she squeaked. ‘I can take things from here.’
‘Relax,’ Gabriel urged. ‘Admittedly these circumstances are a bit on the unusual side, but let’s not kid ourselves. We’re attracted to one another. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have fun….’
He curved his hand to the side of her head and Lucy stopped breathing altogether as he began stroking her face, running his thumb along her cheekbone.
‘I’m not attracted to you. You’ve got it all wrong….’
Her voice faltered as he ran his thumb over her mouth. Of their own accord her lips parted and she found that she could barely catch her breath. Her breasts swelled, became sensitive. She was scarcely aware of him undoing her hair, and she was even less aware of him propelling her gently back until she was against the cool tiled wall.
‘Don’t talk,’ Gabriel murmured. He slipped his hand under her T-shirt and those dangerously long, lean fingers travelled upwards until they found the soft cotton of her bra.
Lucy had felt nothing like this in her life before. She wasn’t a prude. At college there had been boys interested in her. She had even gone out with two of them. But neither had tempted her beyond the stage of kissing and some fondling.
How did any of this make sense? her mind was screaming. How had those two boys at college she had really liked not been able to get past the starting post and yet Gabriel Diaz—a man she disliked, a man who had blackmailed her into his bedroom—was now having this electrifying effect on her, sending her body into terrifying, excited freefall?
When he unclasped her bra she moaned, and she moaned more as his big hand cupped her breast, as his fingers played with her erect nipple.
Gabriel felt the conflict in her. Her face was flushed, her eyes half closed. God, her body was setting him on fire. He was so aroused that it was painful. He pushed up the T-shirt and groaned in appreciation of her small breasts, their nipples two big, rosy discs, begging to be sucked.
He had never been one to lose control when it came to sex. However beautiful and desirable a woman, he had always been able to wait. Having sex up against a wall was for horny teenagers with libidos that needed to be brought into line.
God, where was his formidable self-control now? He hoisted her up in one easy movement, marvelling at how light she was, and there her nipples were, where they should be—by his mouth.
She straddled him, her arms loosely linked behind his head and her body as hot as a piece of toast. He blindly sought out those tempting peaks, clamping his mouth over one and suckling hard so that she was gasping and wriggling and moaning in his arms.
Crazy with sensation, and barely able to get her head round what was happening, Lucy was lost. The T-shirt had completely ridden up, as had her unclasped bra, and the sight of his dark head at her breasts was an amazing turn-on. Her body was alive. It had never felt so alive. Her jeans were a cumbersome hindrance that she wanted to kick off. Her underwear, the same sensible cotton as the bra, was damp, and through her jeans the pressure of his body between her legs was sending delicate but insistent shivers through her. She had an urgent need to move against him, harder and harder, until those shivers picked up pace.
She arched back and her eyes opened, looking past his head.
In a mirror that dominated the sand-coloured tiles on the wall opposite the face that stared back at her was a face she didn’t recognise. Long blond hair hung in a tangled mane over her shoulders, her lips were swollen, her skin was flushed, as though
she was in the grip of a terrible fever, and her eyes glittered with an excitement she had never seen in them in her life before.
It was a truly terrifying sight, and she began wriggling to be put down.
‘Wha—?’
‘Put me down! What are you doing?’
‘What am I doing?’
It took a few seconds for her protests to get through to him. As soon as she was out of his arms she wrenched down the T-shirt and glared at him.
‘You…you…’ Lucy spluttered, and tried to think of some fitting put-down. But all she could see in her mind’s eye was that disturbing vision of herself in the mirror. ‘I want you to leave this bathroom immediately!’
‘Stop playing games.’ Gabriel caught her hand, forcing her to look up at him with glaring accusation. ‘And stop kidding yourself that you want me to leave you alone.’
‘I do want you to leave me alone! I’m not happy to be here and the last thing I need is for you to…to…think that you can just…assault me!’
‘Be very careful how you use your words….’
Lucy stared at him mutely. She didn’t understand what was going on. Her heart was thumping so hard she could feel it banging against her ribcage and her body was still throbbing from where it had been touched.
‘This isn’t me,’ she whispered. ‘I know what you want from me, but I’m not that kind of person….’
‘You don’t think you are.’ He dropped her hand and stood back. ‘I’ll be waiting in the bedroom for you.’
Gabriel spun round on his heels and heard her lock the door behind him. Assault? Her use of that word was highly incendiary, and he was outraged that she could throw herself into the role of victim when not only was he doing her a favour but she had come to him with a smile on her face and a body that was giving off all the right signals.
His arousal was taking a long time to subside. He flung himself on the bed and watched the closed bathroom door with scowling intensity, waiting for it to open and giving himself time to cool down.
This was not the sort of situation he had envisaged. When he had tendered his offer he had imagined that she would be relieved—grateful and eager to do whatever he wanted. He had sidestepped her professed hesitation, barely giving it the time of day because he had known underneath all the wide eyes and the um-ing and ah-ing that she found him attractive. He had looked forward to a relationship in which there was mutual understanding and no unreasonable expectations of a happy-ever-after. They would have sex, and it would be an arrangement in which there would be profit on both sides.
The Notorious Gabriel DiazRuthless Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress Page 5
