Gabriel had never lacked self-confidence. It was what had propelled him upwards, had given him the drive to leave his past behind and the confidence of knowing that he could do it. Right now his confidence had gone on holiday. He was shaken by the sensation of someone standing on the brink of a precipice with one foot hanging over the side and no safety net to catch him if he fell.
‘I didn’t come to try and get you to come back to work,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Although your replacements haven’t been any good, as it happens.’ That last offering failed to generate even a hint of a smile.
And why would she smile? She had given and he had taken and, in return, had stayed true to his lifelong motto of giving nothing back.
He had been a prize idiot.
‘In that case, why are you here, Gabriel?’
‘I’m here...because...because...’
He was stammering. Since when did the invincible Gabriel Cabrera stammer? But she wasn’t going to let any sprigs of hope infiltrate the barriers she had been trying so hard to rebuild around herself.
‘Forget it.’ She clenched her jaw and forced herself to look at him, to meet his black stare without flinching. ‘I’m not about to climb back into a relationship with you.’ She laughed shortly at how lacking in veracity that was, because it had hardly been a ‘relationship’ by anybody’s standards! ‘Relationship.’ She spoke aloud, her voice thick with self-mockery. ‘What a joke. As you’ve proudly told me, you don’t do relationships, do you, Gabriel?’
‘I said that. How was I to know that fate can sometimes have a nasty habit of laughing at all your good intentions?’
‘Forget it, Gabriel. Forget all the fancy words.’ Restlessness invaded her body like a sudden burning itch that needed to be scratched. ‘Have you run through a few of your pocket-sized dates and decided that you weren’t quite through with me just yet?’
‘I’ve missed you. Have you missed me? Tell me that you haven’t and I’ll walk out of this house and you will never see me again.’
As ultimatums went, that one went beyond the barrier. She didn’t want him here, did she, invading her life all over again? Smooth talking his way back into sex because of unfinished business...did she? But she hesitated because the finality of what he was offering terrified her. She might not really have expected to see him ever again, but now she could see that she had stupidly hoped, because her love was so strong that it seemed incredible that she could be left with nothing overnight.
Now she knew that if she turned away this time she really would never see him again. Fragile hope would be killed dead.
‘Well?’ Gabriel prompted shakily.
‘So I missed you! Big deal. Does that change anything?’
‘You’re the first woman I’ve ever missed.’
‘Am I supposed to be flattered by that?’ But she was. And she didn’t want to be any more than she wanted to feel the racing of her heart; any more than she wanted to be moved—stupidly, idiotically moved— by the way he was looking at her with eyes that were somehow naked.
She didn’t want any of that because none of that changed the man that he was, a man who was incapable of giving.
‘You can’t give anything, Gabriel,’ she said, reconfirming that simple fact to herself just by voicing it out loud; reminding herself that she had been sucked in not once but twice and that she was not going to be sucked in again. ‘And you have no right to barge into my house, to sweet-talk my friend into letting you in so that you can sit there and start spinning stupid stories just because I didn’t give you what you wanted!’
‘I’m not here to spin stupid stories.’
But Alice was in full flow. Memories rained down on her, memories of how much she had given and how little had been returned. ‘You’re empty inside, Gabriel! One stupid three-second conversation with someone you met in the village and you took off in a hurry. The merest shadow of a hint that you might have been expected to provide more than just inventive sex and you couldn’t escape fast enough! And now you have the nerve to come here and talk about missing me...’
‘I get it, Alice. I should have got it sooner, but I get it now.’
‘Don’t you dare try and make nice with me for your own benefit!’ And stop looking at me like that... ‘Repeat: you can’t commit! You can’t even plan a month ahead with any woman because you might need to run away long before then! You don’t just want to make sure that you don’t put down roots, you want to make sure that you don’t even leave footprints!’ She was shaking like a leaf, all the hurt and anger bubbling up inside her.
‘Oh God, Alice. Do you think that I don’t know that every single word you’re saying is true?’ He sat forward, angling the chair so that he could lean his forearms on his thighs. Still hunched, he raised his eyes to look at her. ‘You were right when you once accused me of being emotionally lazy. I am. Was. Always have been.’
Was...? Hope flared, as persistent as a weed and as tenacious as ivy. Drained by her outburst and by the desperate range of emotion surging wildly through her, she remained silent, her breathing heavy and laboured, as though she had run a marathon. She wanted to drag her eyes away from him but found that she couldn’t, any more than she could stop her heart from opening up like a wound that had only been scabbed over, bleeding all over again. ‘I want you to leave,’ she whispered. ‘You need to leave.’
‘Please. Let me just... It’s hard for me; just hear me out. There’s something you probably don’t know about me.... No, there’s something you definitely don’t know about me...’ That standing-on-the-edge-of-a-precipice feeling was back, but he didn’t care whether he fell or not, or whether there would be a safety net to catch him or not. Nothing could have been worse than the past few weeks without her.
‘I was dragged up in foster homes. You told me your story, and maybe I should have repaid the confidence, but confiding is something I’ve never done. I’ve never known how. It’s something that’s sucked out of you when you’re a kid in care. You learn to get tough fast. So, I’ve never told anyone my story.’ He smiled crookedly at her. ‘Until now.’
‘Foster homes?’ She shook her head slowly.
‘Correct. No privileged upbringing. No upbringing to speak of, in actual fact. Just driving ambition and, thankfully, sufficient brainpower to turn that driving ambition into career success. But someone consumed with driving ambition, someone who had to fight to clamber out of a crappy background. What can I say? There was no space left inside me for sharing—I wanted money and everything that comes with it because it made me invincible. And for a long time that was exactly what I was: invincible.’ He looked at her, reading her thoughts, stalling them at the pass. ‘No fancy words, Alice. Just me. Being open.’
‘And then what happened? You were invincible...’ She tried to imagine a youthful, defiant, angry Gabriel and her heart constricted. He had erected the same defences as she had, but his had been made of steel and he had never let them down, and she could understand why. ‘You’re not going to get me back into a non-relationship with you with a sob story,’ she said half-heartedly because she knew that she should still be protecting herself.
‘I don’t want to get you back into a non-relationship.’
‘Oh.’ Disappointment seared through her like a blazing inferno. So he had come to explain himself. That was something—that he had thought enough of her to tell her about his past—but she wanted so much more...
‘I need you to see that for me giving in a relationship had always been a non-starter. I was dependent only on myself, the way I always had been for my entire life, and I had no intention of allowing anyone in to share that space. But you came along, Alice, and bit by bit you chipped away...’
‘You never hinted that you wanted anything more from me than a sexual relationship.’
‘I refused to believe that I did. I’ve been a fool, Alice.
’ He dared to reach out and was shaken with relief when she allowed him to twine his fingers through hers. ‘I should have known that you were different, and not just because you were taller than the women I usually dated. Hell, I was that thick.’ Another of those crooked smiles made her toes curl and did all those things to her body that she had become accustomed to whenever she was around him.
‘I went from looking at you, to wondering, to fancying and then to wanting you more than I’d ever wanted any woman in my life before. And somehow, in the mix, came all that other stuff...’
‘What other stuff?’
‘The wanting...the craving...the needing and the loving...’
‘You love me?’
‘And I never even recognised it for what it was.’ His voice was strangely shaky when he next spoke. ‘So I haven’t come here to restart a non-relationship, as you called it. I’ve come here to ask you to marry me so that we can start just the sort of committed, fairy-story, walk-up-the-aisle relationship I never thought I’d have. Because, Alice Morgan, I find that I can’t live without you. And if you can’t give me your answer now—and I’d understand, because I’ve been a hellishly poor excuse of a lover—then you can think about it.’
He stood up and he was already at the kitchen door when her legs did what they had been programmed to do and sprinted after him.
‘Don’t you dare go anywhere,’ she said breathlessly, her eyes shining. She flung her arms around him and held tight. ‘Because I love you, Gabriel Cabrera. So, yes, yes and yes! I want to marry you. I want to be with you for the rest of my life.’ She looked up and her eyes were glistening with unshed tears.
‘No fancy words?’
She laughed and sniffed and laughed again. ‘I had my own barriers,’ she confessed, dragging him back to the kitchen table, but this time when he sat down, she sat on his lap because she just needed his arms around her. ‘You know all about my dad, and I guess I always thought that it was safer never to let go, never to put myself in a position where I could be hurt. I was so determined that you wouldn’t get under my skin. I’d categorised you in my head within days of working for you, and somehow I thought that made me safe.’ She stroked his hair, kissed his dear face and submitted when he kissed her back, tenderly, lingeringly.
‘You mean if I was a bastard then you could never fall for me...’
‘But, bit by bit, that image started to melt and fall apart. And then there was Paris...’
‘And then there was Paris...’
‘I just...got lost in you, Gabriel. It was like you got hold of my heart, and I was terrified, because you’d laid down all those ground rules of yours; because I knew your views on commitment... I decided that the only way to deal with it was to back right off. I thought that, if I backed right off, there just wouldn’t be the glue to keep you attached but it was too late.’
‘Hell, Alice, it was too late for me as well. You were in my head all the time and, idiot that I was, I never stopped to ask myself why I love you, Miss Morgan—and I can’t wait for you to become Mrs Cabrera.’
‘I can’t wait either.’ Her world had opened up the day he had entered it and she felt like she was soaring high when she thought about the whole bright future taking shape in front of her. ‘I want you to hold me and never let me go, because I’ll never let you go.’
* * * * *
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CHAPTER ONE
SERENA DEPIERO SAT in the plush ante-room and looked at the name on the opposite wall, spelled out in matt chrome lettering, and reeled.
Roseca Industries and Philanthropic Foundation.
Renewed horror spread through her. It had only been on the plane to Rio de Janeiro, when she’d been reading the extra information on the charity given to her by her boss, that she’d become aware that it was part of a much bigger organisation. An organisation run and set up by Luca Fonseca. The name Roseca was apparently an amalgamation of his father and mother’s surnames. And Serena wasn’t operating on a pay grade level high enough to require her to be aware of this knowledge before now.
Except here she was, outside the CEO’s office, waiting to be called in to see the one man on the planet who had every reason to hate her guts. Why hadn’t he sacked her months ago, as soon as she’d started working for him? Surely he must have known? An insidious suspicion took root: perhaps he’d orchestrated this all along, to lull her into a false sense of security before letting her crash spectacularly to the ground.
That would be breathtakingly cruel, and yet this man owed her nothing but his disdain. She owed him. Serena knew that there was a good chance her career in fundraising was about to be over before it had even taken off. And at that thought she felt a spurt of panic mixed with determination. Surely enough time had passed now? Surely, even if this was some elaborate revenge cooked up by Luca Fonseca as soon as he’d known she was working for him, she could try to convince him how sorry she was?
But before she could wrap her head around it any further a door opened to her right and a sleek dark-haired woman dressed in a grey suit emerged.
‘Senhor Fonseca will see you now, Miss DePiero.’
Serena’s hands clenched tightly around her handbag. She felt like blurting out, But I don’t want to see him!
But she couldn’t. As much as she couldn’t just flee. The car that had met her at the airport to deliver her here still had her luggage in its boot.
As she stood up reluctantly a memory assailed her with such force it almost knocked her sideways: Luca Fonseca in a bloodstained shirt, with a black eye and a split lip. Dark stubble shadowing his swollen jaw. He’d been behind the bars of a jail cell, leaning against a wall, brooding and dangerous. But then he’d looked up and narrowed that intensely dark blue gaze on her, and an expression of icy loathing had come over his face.
He’d straightened and moved to the bars, wrapping his fingers around them almost as if he was imagining they were her neck. Serena had stopped dead at the battered sight of him. He’d spat out, ‘Damn you, Serena DePiero, I wish I’d never laid eyes on you.’
‘Miss DePiero? Senhor Fonseca is waiting.’
The clipped and accented voice shattered Serena’s memory and she forced her feet to move, taking her past the unsmiling woman and into the palatial office beyond.
She hated that her heart was thumping so hard when she heard the door snick softly shut behind her. For the first few seconds she saw no one, because the entire back wall of the office was a massive window and it framed the most amazingly panoramic view of a city Serena had ever seen.
The Atlantic glinted dark blue in the distance, and inland from that were the two most iconic shapes of Rio de Janeiro: the Sugar Loaf and Christ the Redeemer high on Corcovado. In between were countless other tall buildings, right up to the coast. To say that the view was breathtaking was an understatement.
And then suddenly it was eclipsed by the man who moved into her line of vision. Luca Fonseca. For a second past and present merged and Serena was back in that nightclub, seeing him for the first time.
He’d stood so tall and broad against the backdrop of that dark and opulent p
lace. Still. She’d never seen anyone so still, yet with such a commanding presence. People had skirted around him. Men suspicious, envious. Women lustful.
In a dark suit and open-necked shirt he’d been dressed much the same as other men, but he’d stood out from them all by dint of that sheer preternatural stillness and the incredible forcefield of charismatic magnetism that had drawn her to him before she could stop herself.
Serena blinked. The dark and decadent club faded. She couldn’t breathe. The room was instantly stifling. Luca Fonseca looked different. It took her sluggish brain a second to function enough for her to realise that he looked different because his hair was longer, slightly unruly. And he had a dark beard that hugged his jaw. It made him look even more intensely masculine.
He was wearing a light-coloured open-necked shirt tucked into dark trousers. For all the world the urbane, civilised businessman in his domain, and yet the vibe coming from him was anything but civilised.
He crossed his arms over that massive chest and then he spoke. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing here, DePiero?’
Serena moved further into the vast office, even though it was in the opposite direction from where she wanted to go. She couldn’t take her eyes off him even if she wanted to.
She forced herself to speak, to act as if seeing him again wasn’t as shattering as it was. ‘I’m here to start working in the fundraising department for the global communities charity.’
‘Not any more, you’re not,’ Fonseca said tersely.
Serena flushed. ‘I didn’t know you were...involved until I was on my way over here.’
Fonseca made a small sound like a snort. ‘An unlikely tale.’
‘It’s true,’ Serena blurted out. ‘I had no idea the charity was linked to the Roseca Foundation. Believe me, if I’d had any idea I wouldn’t have agreed to come here.’
To Sin with the Tycoon Page 17
