Harlequin Presents January 2015 - Box Set 2 of 2: The Secret His Mistress CarriedTo Sin with the TycoonInherited by Her EnemyThe Last Heir of Monterrato

by Lynne Graham

  ‘When would you like me to book these tickets for?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘That might be impossible, if it’s one of the more popular operas.’

  ‘Mention my name. I give generously to the Opera House. They’ll find seats.’ He strolled towards her and dropped a stack of files on her desk. ‘And you’ll have to get through these before you leave tonight.’

  ‘But it’s already five-thirty!’

  ‘Tough.’ He flicked back the cuff of his white shirt and strolled back into his office, shutting the door behind him.

  Gabriel had never put himself out for any woman and he wasn’t about to start now, but her cool detachment got on his nerves. It was as if Paris had never happened. She had even returned to her dreary grey garb, having tried to return the designer clothes he had ordered her to buy in Paris.

  Naturally he had refused but he suspected that the whole lot had probably been given to charity. No reminders.

  The worst of it was that he still wanted her. He couldn’t look at her without the memory of that slender, willowy body writhing underneath him. Another woman was what he needed, he had decided. He had had his change and it was time to return to what he knew.

  He settled down to work and didn’t look up until there was a knock on his door and he saw, with surprise, that it was nearly seven.

  ‘Finished already?’ he asked, swinging back in the chair and looking at her with brooding, unreadable eyes. ‘Scanned and sent off everything?’

  ‘Your date is here, Gabriel.’ It was a challenge just getting the words out. So, he had reverted to type. Bethany Dawkins was small, curvaceous and dressed to impress in a figure-hugging black dress with a neckline that plunged almost to the waist, displaying bountiful breasts restrained behind a sliver of black netting. Alice had looked at the other woman and immediately felt dowdy, drab and unappealing, and she had known from the way the other woman’s eyes had skimmed over her that she wasn’t alone in that opinion.

  She had already buzzed through to him that the tickets had been booked. She doubted sexy little Bethany with the flowing dark hair would be in the slightest bit interested in opera.

  ‘Wonderful.’ He stood up and began slinging on his jacket.

  ‘Have a lovely evening,’ she said through gritted teeth.

  Gabriel paused, as though suddenly struck by an errant thought. ‘With Bethany for company, I undoubtedly will. Opera interest you, Alice?’

  ‘You know it does.’ It was the first time she had alluded to one of the many conversations they had had over a bottle of wine before they’d had to return to the hotel, like adolescents unable to go long without touching one another.

  ‘Of course. I’d forgotten. Care to join us? I’m sure it would be possible to have them arrange for a third seat to be made available.’

  And witness first hand how easily he had moved on? Watch them holding hands and staring at each other in that ‘can’t wait to climb into bed after this’ way? That was how he had looked at her in Paris. Over meals, in the back seat of the limo, he had looked at her with dark hunger, as though the time couldn’t go by fast enough until he was in bed with her again.

  ‘I’ll give that a miss. Thank you. And, to answer your question about the files, yes, everything’s been done so, if it’s all the same with you, I’ll leave now. I shall be going to visit my mother in Devon tomorrow and I thought I might stay over until Tuesday. I could look in on that customer we’ve been having problems with in Exeter. It’s no trouble and it’ll save you having to make the trip yourself.’

  ‘How far does your mother live from Exeter?’

  ‘Close enough.’ Something else that he’d forgotten. She had told him the name of the little village where her mother lived, although she had kept all other surplus information to herself. Had he forgotten everything she had said to him? He had appeared so attentive, but had it been in one ear and out the other?

  Well, he certainly had form when it came to that, she thought bitterly, but it hurt, because she had been one-hundred percent committed when she had talked to him.

  ‘I think your hot date might be getting a bit impatient outside,’ she reminded him coolly.

  ‘And that’s a problem because...?’ He wondered why the sudden disappearing act for a long weekend. Since she had effectively walked out on him, he had been thinking about her non-stop, which alternately baffled and angered him—hence his decision to seek some replacement therapy. But not even the delectable woman waiting for him outside could kill the curiosity he felt when it came to Alice.

  He knew that she visited her mother every weekend and, for the life of him, that seemed peculiar. It took filial devotion to whole new lengths.

  And this weekend, she wanted to stay longer. He knew that the village was only forty-five minutes’ drive from his client, so why the pressing urgency to stay the day?

  Did she visit more than just her mother when she vanished on those mysterious trips to the back of beyond? The more he considered that option, the more likely it seemed, and of course there could be only one pressing reason for her to trek all the way down there every weekend without fail. A man.

  She had slept with him and she had fancied the hell out of him, or so he had thought. Frankly, wasn’t it a little suspect that she could move from fancying him to treating him like a complete stranger within a matter of hours? Women didn’t operate like that. Detachment did not come as second nature to them. Why would Alice be the exception to the rule? It was as though the woman she had been in Paris had stayed there.

  He had never been given to flights of imagination. He had always considered that the luxury of people who had too much spare time on their hands, but he was discovering that his imagination was playing all sorts of games now as he stood there, looking at her.

  So, she had slept with him. Was it because the guy she really wanted was not available? Was the man married? Was that what those weekend visits were all about? Was it a so-called duty visit to dear mama, but really to hook up with some sleazy guy with a wife and kids who gave her sex now and again while promising to leave his albatross family one day?

  Red mist settled over his eyes. ‘I’ll expect you back here first thing on Monday. Harrisons can wait. There’s too much work here for you to take a day off.’

  ‘I’ve already booked the day off,’ Alice told him abruptly. ‘I was being helpful when I suggested I visit Harrisons—it would actually have cut into my day. But they’re only a hop and a skip away and I shall probably be in the area to do some...shopping anyway. I don’t mind popping in and picking up the hard copy information we need.’ How dared he think that he could be heavy handed with her just because he had moved on and was involved with someone else?

  Just then Bethany appeared at the door, her face a picture of petulance. He had met Bethany several months ago at a company do. Her father—an Argentinian man in his late fifties whose company had surfaced on Gabriel’s radar for acquisition—had brought her along in the absence of his wife, who’d been on a cruise with a gaggle of her friends, he had told Gabriel. Bethany had visibly blossomed the second she had set eyes on Gabriel and had followed him around for the evening, much to her father’s delight. She was thirty, sexy as hell and, she’d confessed with a sultry little smile, bored out of her mind with all the dreary people talking about work.

  Gabriel had taken her number, vaguely intimated that he might give her a call and promptly forgotten her existence, of which he had been reminded several times in the intervening months.

  He had finally, two days previously, decided to take her up on her repeated offers. This was his comfort zone—being chased by women. His comfort zone was not one in which he pursued and was knocked back.

  He looked between the women and the differences could not have been more startling.

  Alice was nearly six inches
taller in flats, slim, with her hair neatly tied back and her pale face intelligent and attractive rather than flamboyantly beautiful. She had a composure and a stillness that the much shorter, sexier woman lacked and Gabriel stifled his irritation at finding himself losing interest in his hot date for the evening.

  ‘Have a really nice evening.’ Alice couldn’t bear to see them together, to see her replacement who was everything she was not. She hated the thought that she had been the temporary aberration, and she wondered whether Gabriel had been drawn to her because she was so unlike the women he went out with as a rule.

  Bethany had lost interest in Alice altogether and was preening for Gabriel’s benefit, smoothing her hands over her figure-hugging dress and then twirling round, demanding to know what he thought of her outfit.

  Alice turned away, not wanting to see the rampant male appreciation in his eyes, appreciation that she had once seen directed at her.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it, shall I?’ She interrupted the love birds and Gabriel turned to look at her.

  ‘If you don’t mind.’ His voice was ultra-polite, his eyes flat and unreadable. ‘And, Alice, have a good weekend...visiting your mother...’

  Alice reddened. ‘I happen to have other things planned,’ she muttered, because he had made her sound sad and pathetic, and he had done it on purpose. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he had just pushed her back into the ‘efficient secretary without a life’ box whose weekend occupation was visiting her mother. Not that he knew the full story behind those visits.

  ‘Oh? Anything exciting?’ Gabriel’s ears pricked up. Bethany’s arm possessively linking his felt like a dead weight and it was all he could do not to shrug it off impatiently off impatiently.

  ‘Oh, just seeing one or two people,’ Alice told him vaguely. ‘You know...’

  Gabriel didn’t know and the not knowing preyed on his mind for the remainder of the evening. He was irritated with his date, and then further irritated with himself, because before Paris Bethany would have been just the thing to relieve him of whatever stress he might have been having.

  She had no interest in what was happening on the stage and several times asked him what the plot was. She spent quite a bit of time peering round her to see if she could recognise anyone, and was visibly relieved when the ordeal was at an end and they could get something to eat. Although, she said with a little moue, she really, really, would have loved to have something to eat at his place.

  Sex was not going to happen.

  In fact, nothing was going to happen.

  Gabriel fed her, listened to her while his mind drifted in other, less welcome directions and then settled her into his chauffeur-driven car, made his excuses and headed back alone to his house.

  So much for his attempts at distracting himself! The only thing on his mind was Alice’s remark about having people to see at the weekend. The thought of her having a man down there had lodged in his head, utterly destroying the self-assurance he wore like a mantel on his shoulders.

  There was no getting round it—if he had been used, if he had been some kind of sick substitute for a man who couldn’t commit to her, then he had a right to know.

  He knew where her mother lived. She had touched upon that topic in passing, had mentioned the house with a wistful smile on her face. She had talked about the little village and the picturesque country road which she was fond of walking down, breathing in the fragrance of the summer blossoms, the sharpness of the wintry air, dawdling in autumn on her way from house to village to appreciate the russet reds of the falling leaves.

  Oh yes, he had a memory like a computer, and he hadn’t forgotten a single thing she had told him in Paris when she had let her guard down and confided, told him snippets of her past which had seemed to slip out in between their conversations about art and culture, work and deals, the state of the world.

  Alice, he thought with a frown as he retired for bed much later that night, would have appreciated the opera. She wouldn’t have asked a bunch of idiotic questions, she wouldn’t have stifled yawns and she wouldn’t have kept looking around her like a bored kid at an adult gathering.

  It all came back to Alice. He had never been this obsessed with a woman and he wondered whether it was because he still felt that they had unfinished business between them. If there was some mystery man in the background, then the business would be finished and she would be out on her ear looking for a new job. But if there wasn’t... Maybe what they had started in Paris needed to reach a natural conclusion.

  She might say that she didn’t want that, but he did. Badly...and he was a man who always got what he wanted.

  * * *

  Alice finished preparing the supper and went to join her mother in the little sitting room that overlooked the tidy, pretty garden in which Pamela Morgan spent so much of her spare time, pottering and enjoying being outside where her phobia could not get a grip and drive her back to the safety of the four walls.

  There was something that her mother was keeping from her and that was worrying. True, she would be seeing her mother’s therapist on Monday morning first thing, but she couldn’t help wondering if there had been some sort of setback.

  The sitting room was bright and airy and very different from the sitting room in the house in which she had grown up. Here, photos of her as a girl were proudly displayed on the mantelpiece and the sofa and chairs were deep and comfortable. It was a cluttered room, which was something her father had loathed, preferring to have as few reminders as possible around that he was a family man.

  ‘You were telling me all about your trip to Paris,’ Pamela Morgan encouraged as soon as her daughter was sitting down, legs tucked underneath her, cosy and comfortable in her faded jogging bottoms and bedroom slippers, with her hair in a stubby ponytail.

  Actually, Alice thought that talking about her trip to Paris was pretty much all she had done since she had arrived. It had been the same last weekend and, whilst she had done her best to skirt round the topic of Gabriel, she had found herself talking about him, recounting some of the anecdotes he had told her. Her mother had made a very good listener, hardly interrupting, and Alice wondered if she had confided more than she should have.

  But if her mother wanted to hear more about the Louvre and what they had seen, or the Jardin des Tuileries and how beautiful it was, then so be it.

  Alice was accustomed to handling Pamela Morgan with kid gloves. She tiptoed around anything too intrusive, permanently aware that her mother was not one of life’s more robust specimens.

  Outside, the day had been surprisingly warm and sunny, and the sun was only now beginning to dip, throwing the garden into lovely, semi-sunlit relief.

  In the kitchen, some meat sauce was simmering on the stove. Later they would eat together and, as always, it would be an early night.

  As she chatted, her mind played with the thought of Gabriel and how he was enjoying his weekend with the pocket brunette. Had the opera been an aperitif, the taster course before the main meal? Of course it had, she chided herself scornfully. The main meal would have been the bedroom. Gabriel might be lazy when it came to every single form of emotional involvement, but he was just the opposite when it came to physical involvement. On that level, he was one-hundred percent active and engaged.

  She wished she could eliminate him from her head, somehow press delete and get rid of all the inconvenient memories that were making her life a living hell.

  She didn’t want to quit her job but that was becoming a very real possibility with each passing day. Yesterday, seeing that woman in the office, had been the worst...

  It was a reminder of how fleeting she had been for him. Her voice trailed off and she caught her mother looking at her speculatively; she grinned and tried to remember what she had been talking about. Paris? Work? Her flatmate Lucy’s new boyfriend?

  ‘You’re a milli
on miles away,’ Pamela said softly. ‘Have been since you returned from Paris. It’s not your boss, is it? He seems to have made quite an impact on you.’

  Appalled, Alice’s mouth dropped open and she blushed. ‘Of course not!’ she denied vigorously. ‘I wouldn’t be so stupid! You know how I feel about the whole relationship thing, Mum, after...’

  ‘I know, dear. After your father and that dreadful boyfriend you had. But...’ There was a tentative silence and then Alice was startled when her mother said quietly, ‘You can’t let those experiences dictate your future.’

  ‘I—I wouldn’t do that,’ Alice stuttered. ‘It’s just that you have to be careful when it comes to getting involved. It’s all too easy to make the wrong choices!’ She continued with heated earnestness, ‘I will make very sure that, if and when I become seriously involved with a guy, he’ll be someone who is right for me! Honestly, Mum, you want to meet my boss! He has a constantly revolving carousel of women who service his needs and, then, pouf! They’re gone, straight through the exit, and ten seconds later another version is heading in his direction. He plucks them off the carousel the way someone plucks fruit from a tree! Has a little taste and then chucks what’s left!’

  ‘You’re far too young to be so cynical about men...’

  Alice bit her tongue but she and her mother knew each other well and she looked away because she could read what her mother was thinking.

  If you’re not careful you’ll end up with no one because no one will fit the bill.

  ‘I’d rather be on my own than make a mistake,’ she said, her cheeks bright red, pre-empting the statement before it could be made.

  Her mother sighed and lowered her eyes. She was not argumentative, and neither was Alice, but she had to be firm. She’d always had to look out for the two of them and it somehow felt treacherous for her mother to tell her that she was too cynical about men.

  ‘What’s the point of learning curves if you don’t learn from them?’ Fat lot of good that had done for her, she thought. She had been swept up in the same tidal wave of lust and desire that afflicted all the women who came into Gabriel’s magical range. And she hadn’t stopped at the lust and desire, which would have been bad enough. Oh no, she had taken it a step further and fallen in love with the man!