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

  ‘But first thing in the morning,’ she told him firmly, ‘I will have a chat with Mum.’

  * * *

  Pamela Morgan was up bright and early the following morning but the coffee was still hot, ready to be drunk, when Alice made her way down.

  Her thoughts were still all over the place. She had slept with him; she had lost the fight to put her feelings behind her and allow the common sense that had always ruled her life to take over, as she had told it to. As she had needed it to.

  He didn’t know the depth of her feelings—which was something, she supposed—but he knew how much she wanted him and, now, her life had been laid bare for his perusal. Not content with keeping what they had to London, he had invaded her life here in Devon...

  And revealed things she herself hadn’t even known about. Which showed just how much he had managed to ingratiate himself with her mother.

  But then, he was the man who didn’t have to try; the man who could move mountains with a smile, with a lazy turn of his head, with just a look...

  ‘Alice, dear...! How was the meal last night?’ Pamela Morgan was beaming. ‘You never told me what a lovely man your boss was! Such a looker...’

  ‘We need to talk, Mum.’

  ‘Do we, dear?’ But there was a tell-tale flush in her cheeks as she sat down opposite her daughter and fiddled guiltily with her coffee cup.

  ‘A man...? A suitor...? You never said...’ Alice had been hurt when Gabriel inadvertently had told her about a man in her mother’s life but that hurt hadn’t lasted. How could it, when her mother’s eyes were glowing as she chatted happily and with relief about Robin, her friend’s cousin who had moved to the village to start up his own small landscaping business. He was wonderful...they had so much in common. They had only seen each other a handful of times but thanks to him she had managed to venture more and more into the village; he had even taken her to see his company, which was still in the process of being set up.

  Alice was dazed.

  ‘But why didn’t you say anything to me all this time?’ she finally asked, but she knew why.

  ‘Just a few weeks,’ Pamela said uncomfortably. ‘And I knew you’d try to warn me off him, my darling, and I would quite, quite have understood, but...’

  But she, Alice, her loving daughter, would have disapproved, would have issued stern warnings, would have dished out helpful advice by the bucket load, and in the end would have stifled anything that had a chance of surviving. Her mother had wanted to take a chance and she would have been afraid that her daughter would have killed that chance dead.

  Alice wasn’t hurt, she was mortified. Years of helping to prop her mother up had turned her into a hard-edged young woman who had allowed her own disillusionment to colour her behaviour.

  Gabriel’s entrance half an hour later helped to lighten the glum introspection into which she had been plunged and, with an unerring ability to cut to the chase, the first thing he said to her as they were walking out of the house was, ‘You’re upset. You spoke to you mother...and...?’

  It was not yet nine-thirty but already the sun was warm and the open fields were bathed in the clear, unencumbered light so typical of the countryside where buildings and pollution didn’t cloud the view and sully the air. He realised he didn’t mind it. He quite liked it, as a matter of fact. A change from urban life.

  ‘Do you really care?’ Alice turned to him. The breeze ruffled her hair, blowing it across her face. She was slender and coltish in a pair of faded jeans, an old baggy jumper and a pair of walking boots.

  ‘I’m interested; of course I am.’ Gabriel refused to give in to qualifying what he felt. Naturally he cared if she was upset. He wasn’t a monster. And, yet, when was the last time he’d actually cared whether some woman was upset or not? Had he been that bothered when Georgia had flounced into his office and thrown a hissy fit because she couldn’t take no for an answer?

  He had been irritated but he certainly hadn’t been upset. Nor had he ever been curious about what happened or didn’t happen in a woman’s life. As long as they gave him what he wanted, he was absolutely fine and he always, but always, made sure that his conscience was clear by being upfront with them. Life was so much simpler when you made sure you didn’t get wrapped up in complicated emotional situations that would always end up leading to dead ends anyway.

  He had nothing to give and wasn’t interested in trying to break that mould.

  But he sensed that she had asked a leading question and he knew that he should repeat his honest, upfront, ‘don’t look to me for anything but sex and a good time’ talk—just in case she had forgotten. And he would...but later...

  He was interested. He didn’t care but he was interested. Two completely different things, as far as Alice was concerned.

  ‘And she’s got a boyfriend.’

  ‘Good for her.’ Gabriel slung his arm over her shoulder and breathed in the fragrant, floral scent of her hair. God, what was it about this woman that drove him nuts? ‘I want you so much right now that it hurts.’

  Alice pulled apart and stared at him then she rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘Is sex all you think about, Gabriel?’

  ‘It’s pretty deserted out here...’

  ‘I was talking about my mother!’

  ‘And I’m listening. I just want to touch you a little while you talk...’ He slipped his hand under her jumper and circled her narrow waist. ‘Tell me you don’t like that.’ Up ahead, the fields were broken with clumps of trees. It was an idyllic, picture-postcard scene. ‘You’re not wearing a bra. I like that...’

  ‘I usually go bra-less when I’m down here. I don’t have enough to warrant wearing one twenty-four-seven...’

  ‘You have just the right amount.’ He pushed up the jumper, ignored her half-hearted attempts to swat him away and gazed down at her small, pert breasts tipped with their rosy pink nipples.

  Her breathing quickened as he rubbed the sensitive tips with his thumbs until they were stiff and aroused.

  This was her wild adventure. She had fallen in love with the wrong man and had thrown caution to the winds because her heart was ruling her head. She knew that he was only in it for the sex, for the good time, but it was so hard to bury the part of her that wanted to find out where they were going, whether there was the slightest chance that he might want more than just sex.

  He gently pulled down her jumper; his hand went to the button of her jeans, then the zip, and she gave a little shocked yelp as he began tugging down her trousers.

  ‘We can’t.’

  ‘Why not? All right; we can find somewhere a little more private under the trees, although there’s no one around. Is it always this deserted?’

  ‘You need to get out of London a little more.’ She was damp and hot as they walked hand in hand towards the nearest bank of trees. ‘There’re lots of places like this out here. It’s quiet, peaceful. That’s why Mum decided that she wanted to move here. It was restful after living in Birmingham. I also think she wanted to be as far as she could from any ugly reminders of her marriage.’ She pulled him towards her and stretched up to kiss him, fingers clasped behind his neck, their bodies pressed so tightly together that she could feel the hardness of his urgent, demanding arousal.

  ‘Lying down might be a little uncomfortable,’ Gabriel said, but he had to have her. Nor did he want the substitute of her hand or her mouth. He wanted to be inside her, needed to be inside her.

  ‘Then let’s forget about it and stroll back down to the village,’ Alice teased as she stroked his cheek and watched the fire blaze in his dark eyes. ‘We could have that scone and that cup of tea. Tea can be very refreshing...might cool us down...’

  ‘You’re a witch,’ Gabriel said in an unsteady voice he barely recognised. He tugged down the jeans, told her to step out of them.

  She kept
the jumper on. Being half-naked like this, with her bottom half-exposed, felt decadent.

  ‘Now, legs apart,’ he commanded.

  Having him down there, standing perfectly still when she wanted to collapse because her legs felt as wobbly as jelly, was exquisite agony.

  He explored her, taking his time. It surprised him that he’d never made love outdoors and he thought that next time he would make sure they brought a rug with them.

  Next time? Yes, there would be a next time, because he couldn’t get enough of her...

  Their love-making was basic, wild and hard. He hoisted her up so that her legs were wrapped around him. She could have been as light as a feather.

  The sensation was intense. Her buttocks clenched as he drove her down on him and she came over and over, splintering into a thousand glorious pieces.

  Afterwards, the walk into the village was languorous. Sated, Alice had never felt happier. It was almost as though they were a normal couple—ducking into shops, laughing at some of the souvenirs on sale, stopping to buy ice-creams. Mr and Mrs Average on a day out.

  What a joke! She reminded herself that they certainly were not Mr and Mrs Average, or Mr and Mrs Anything.

  He certainly wasn’t average! In fact, he cut an impressive and madly exotic figure next to his paler counterparts as they dipped in and out of the shops. People stared. He didn’t seem to notice, but she did. Women of all ages stole glances; wondered; maybe thought that he might be someone famous.

  For the first time in her life, Alice felt as though she had stepped out of the shadows and become a person in her own right, someone who wasn’t so surrounded by barriers, that she could be free to just...be.

  They had a very long lunch in one of the three pubs in the village and it was only when they were emerging that she bumped into one of the ladies whom she knew visited her mother on a regular basis.

  Alice had never socialised with Maggie Fray, but they had met on a couple of occasions, and now the older woman stopped and looked at Gabriel with twinkling, knowing eyes.

  ‘So this is the young man your mother says you talk so much about.’ She held out her hand with a smile while, mortified, Alice tried to shrink away from the grey, inquisitive eyes.

  ‘My boss...’ Alice said in a thin, high voice, but minutes before they had been holding hands and that begged the question of what exactly the relationship between boss and secretary was.

  The older woman’s smiling eyes seemed to be making all the right assumptions.

  ‘Well,’ she said comfortably, ‘you two seem to make a very good match. And I know your mother would love to hear the sound of wedding bells in the not too distant future!’

  On a scale of one to ten of hideous conversations, Alice rated this one at somewhere around twelve. She barely heard the rest of whatever Maggie was chattering about.

  How much had she told her mother over the many weeks that she had been working for Gabriel?

  A lot. They were accustomed to sharing. Even if she had made a big effort to play down the way she felt about Gabriel, she unknowingly would have given the game away because her mother could read her the way no one else could. Her mother would have been able to interpret her hitched silences, the expression on her face whenever she mentioned his name, the number of times she talked about him and the number of times she didn’t...

  Her arrogant, self-centred, infuriating, egotistic boss who was also brilliant, inspiring, unbelievably smart, charismatic and funny. And the fact that Gabriel had shown up at the house, uninvited, unannounced and apparently with no other purpose but to see her, would have given credence to whatever fairy stories her mother had been concocting in her head.

  ‘People in a small village are inclined to gossip,’ Alice said weakly as Maggie disappeared towards one of the shops, having given them a cheery wave goodbye. ‘It’s very annoying. Because...er...most of the time, what they say has no basis in truth whatsoever...’ Alice couldn’t bring herself actually to say out loud what the older woman had said. To mention that word ‘wedding’ would open a can of worms and she didn’t know how she would be able to stuff them back in.

  Gabriel was ominously silent.

  He should have seen this coming. He had warned her off but he should have clocked that there was something intensely vulnerable about her.

  ‘Vulnerable’ should have hit his radar and generated the automatic ‘no trespassing’ response, but somehow his guard had been down. It was what novelty and lust did when they came together—a lethal combination.

  ‘What the hell was the woman talking about?’ He beeped open the car and climbed into the driver’s seat, but he didn’t start the engine. Instead, he waited for her to follow suit, and then he turned to her with a cool, unreadable expression.

  ‘I told you...’ A hint of defiance had crept into her voice. ‘In a village there’s always gossip. Maggie is one of my mother’s friends and somehow she’s managed to get hold of the wrong end of the stick.’

  ‘Because out of nowhere your mother somehow gleaned, erroneously, that we’re...what Alice? About to tie the knot? Walk up the aisle? Start believing in fairy stories and building castles in the sky?’

  ‘You’re so bloody cynical!’ she exploded. ‘And no. I haven’t been telling my mother anything. I’m not so stupid that I’d fall into the trap of thinking that you’re there for anything but the short term, Gabriel!’

  ‘I’m not going to get into a pointless argument with you over this.’ He started the engine and began driving slowly away from the village.

  Alice couldn’t credit that they had been making love not so long ago. She couldn’t believe that she had been so stupid to think that, if she blanked out the fact that she was hopelessly in love with him, everything could tick along nicely until such time as...what, exactly? He got bored? Became indifferent?

  Was she so desperate that she would abandon all her principles just to steal a bit more time with him?

  Was it any wonder that he had become so lazy over the years when women like her allowed him to get away with doing exactly as he wanted?

  She had fallen under his spell and been mesmerised. She had slept with him in Paris; had kidded herself that she could walk away and carry on working for him without any repercussions. But there had been repercussions. She had been so aware of him, so acutely sensitive to his presence, that she had scarcely been able to function.

  He had found his way to the very essence of her and he had taken up residence there.

  She had never been an addict of anything in her life, but she had become addicted to him. Was that why she had fallen right back into bed with him— because he had happened to show up at her house and had told her, in that dark, dangerous, sexy voice of his, that he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head?

  Or maybe she had been injected with some sort of crazy, dare-devil urge because her mother—her always hesitant, always careful mother; her mother to whom she had preached the good sense of not getting involved with a man because just look at what she had ended up marrying—had had the courage to embark on a relationship?

  Or was it just a combination of things that had galvanised her into the worst choice she had ever made in her entire life?

  She could find a million reasons to justify why she had done what she had done, but in the end what it amounted to was that she had climbed onto a roller-coaster ride and now it was time to climb off.

  Gabriel Cabrera was the equivalent of an extreme sport and she just didn’t have the constitution for it.

  She blanked her mind to the thought of the endless days and nights ahead of her which would not contain him in them. She would have to hand in her notice, find work somewhere else.

  ‘It would only be a pointless argument,’ Alice half-shouted, ‘because you don’t want to have it! And, just so you know, I’ll be handi
ng in my notice first thing on Tuesday morning.’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous!’

  ‘And that being the case,’ she continued as her anger, mostly with herself, spilled over, ‘I might as well tell you that you may think you’re being fair by warning women off you, just in case they get it into their silly little heads that you might actually have a heart buried there somewhere, but you’re not. You’re just taking care of your conscience. You don’t want to have to try at anything that isn’t work. You’ll end up a lonely, sad man with stacks and stacks of money but no one to share it with!’ She was staring at his profile which could have been hewn from rock.

  There was no getting through to him. Why hadn’t she been strong enough to wise up to that before? Dig deep below the charm, the looks, the charisma and the formidable intelligence and there was...nothing.

  Those glimpses of gentleness, tenderness, vulnerability had all been an illusion. She shut the door on any other interpretation. She was shaking like a leaf and kept herself as rigid as a plank of wood to control emotions that threatened to burst their fragile containment.

  ‘And on that note,’ Gabriel drawled, ‘I’ll drop you back to your house. There will be no need for you to return to work. You can consider that little speech of yours a suitable letter of resignation.’

  They were at the house. She hadn’t even been aware that he was driving.

  He reached across to click open her door and she drew back, horrified at how her body reacted even now, when everything was falling apart.

  ‘If there’s anything personal that you need to take from your office,’ he said coolly, ‘then you can get in touch with Personnel. They can forward it to you.’ Their eyes tangled and Alice was the first to look away.

  She couldn’t find room in her head to accommodate everything she was feeling: the horror of the end; an overwhelming sadness; self-recrimination.

  ‘There’s nothing I want to take with me.’ Her voice betrayed nothing of what she was feeling. She stepped out of the car, walked towards the house and she didn’t look back.