It was almost challenging to think that what he had missed first time round could now be his.

Dark, speculative eyes drifted down to the shape of Lucy’s small, high breasts, and Gabriel’s arousal was as fierce as it was sudden.

Lucy was disconcerted by that lazy appraisal in Gabriel’s roving dark eyes. It made her feel uncomfortable. She suppressed the crazy notion that buried beneath that discomfort a slow swirl of excitement was eddying in her veins, making her breasts tingle and sending a shooting, melting warmth between her legs.

‘And what do you have in mind?’

‘You. I have you in mind.’

About the Author

CATHY WILLIAMS is originally from Trinidad, but has lived in England for a number of years. She currently has a house in Warwickshire, which she shares with her husband Richard, her three daughters, Charlotte, Olivia and Emma, and their pet cat, Salem. She adores writing romantic fiction, and would love one of her girls to become a writer—although at the moment she is happy enough if they do their homework and agree not to bicker with one another!

Recent titles by the same author:

A TEMPESTUOUS TEMPTATION

THE GIRL HE’D OVERLOOKED

THE TRUTH BEHIND HIS TOUCH

THE SECRET SINCLAIR

Did you know these are also available as eBooks?

Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Notorious
Gabriel Diaz
Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘WHAT DO YOU mean? Explain again. I’m not getting it.’ Lucy Robins looked between her parents, buying time while her brain tried to catch up with what she had just been told. Running round and round at her feet, Freddy, the pug she had adopted three years ago, now made a stab at grabbing her attention by flipping over on his back and playing dead.

‘Not now, Freddy!’ she said, patting her lap. With that small show of encouragement, the brown and black dog scrambled onto her lap and proceeded to gaze adoringly up at her.

The second Lucy had got her mother’s phone call she had known something was wrong. Celia Robins never called her daughter at work, even though Lucy had repeatedly told her that it really didn’t matter—that it wasn’t as though she worked in an office where there was a big, bad boss keeping a watchful eye over employees and punishing anyone caught using their mobile.

The huge garden centre, set within the grounds of botanical gardens, which drew visitors from the across the country, was the most relaxed of environments. There, Lucy was part-gardener, helping with the landscaping team, and part-artist, using her newly gained degree in graphic art to draw exquisite detailed illustrations of flowers for a comprehensive book of the flora and fauna at the centre.

Her mother’s call had come just as she had been about to start replanting a batch of delicate orchids that had been meticulously cared for since their arrival at the centre six months previously. She had heard the words, ‘Honey, could you possibly come home? There’s something of an emergency…’ and had flown to her car, pausing only to tell Victor where she was going and to scoop up Freddy, who was allowed free rein in the outdoor space.

Now she stared in dismay at her father’s drooping figure. ‘What do you mean you’re in trouble with the company finances?’

Nicholas Robins, as small and round as his wife was tall and slender, raised apologetic eyes to his daughter. ‘I borrowed some money a few years ago, Luce. Not much. When your mother had her stroke…things just got a little crazy… I thought we were going to lose her… I wanted to give her her dream of a cruise… I wasn’t thinking rationally…’

On her lap, Freddy had nodded off and was snoring. Lucy stroked his fat tummy. Her skin was clammy. When her father had announced that he and her mother were going on a cruise—a lifetime dream, a wonderful opportunity that might be their last—he had told her he had received an unexpected bonus at work. The company had just been taken over by an electronics giant and Lucy had believed him—had been over the moon at his unexpected good luck.

‘When she recovered—’ her father’s voice was laboured, heavy ‘—I wanted to take her somewhere special. I thought if I borrowed a little bit more I could repay it before it was missed. I can’t believe I was that stupid.’

Lucy glanced worriedly towards her mother. Celia Robins was a frail woman who would be unable to cope with the distressing catastrophe unfolding in front of her. The stroke she had suffered had sapped her of her energy, and both Lucy and her father lived in constant fear that she would suffer another.

‘I didn’t think that anything would change after GGD took us over,’ her father continued in a shaking voice. ‘Before the takeover, I was the only bookkeeper there. They brought in a team of financial whiz kids. I managed to keep things under wraps for as long as I could, and I’d started repaying the money, but this morning I was called in and told they had found some discrepancies and that it might be an idea if I took a little leave until it gets sorted out….’

Appalled, Lucy didn’t know what to say. Her father was by no means a crook, and yet she knew with a sinking heart that no lawyer in the land would see it that way. He had helped himself to company funds and that was where the story would end. There would be no room for sob stories or excuses. That wasn’t how big organisations operated. Especially that would not be how GGD would operate.

Gabriel Garcia Diaz was the guy who had founded GGD. Ruthless, cold and brilliant, he had risen to dominate the field of electronics in the space of a mere eight years, consuming smaller companies and growing more and more powerful in the process. Gabriel Garcia Diaz was the shark in the pond, and a shark wouldn’t look at small minnows like her father and weep tears of sympathy for his plight.

A wash of nervous perspiration broke out over her. For the past two years she had contrived to put Gabriel Diaz out of her mind, but now the past galloped towards her, stampeding into the present and crashing through the flimsy defences she had erected to keep the unsettling memory of him at bay.

She had met him quite by accident. For weeks the talk of the town had been the takeover of Sims Electronics by GGD. The big guns were rolling into town and would be rescuing the ailing company where her father worked, transforming it into a mega-sized giant and in the process creating hundreds of jobs.

Lucy hadn’t been able to get worked up over it. She’d been pleased that the rampant unemployment that afflicted their little slice of Somerset would be brought to an end, but big business didn’t interest her. She had just got her job at the garden centre and all her excitement had been saved for that. She loved plants, she loved working outdoors, and she’d also had something else to celebrate. She had been called in and offered the task of illustrating the centre’s first documented book of all the rare and exotic species of flowers being cultivated in the massive greenhouses.

Indeed, she had forgotten that the big boss of GGD would be rolling into town. Excited to tell her father about her new area of responsibility, for both her parents knew how keen she was to utilise her art degree, she had hopped on her bike in her lunch hour and cycled like the wind to where he worked.

It had only been when she had spotted the sleek black limo and the convoy of similarly grand cars in the parking lot that she’d belatedly remembered that it was the big day.

In the glittering summer sun, all the employees of Sims had gathered outside the building while, dominating the space in the centre, and surrounded by an alarming circle of threatening men in dark suits, one man had stood literally head and shoulders above the rest.

Lucy’s eyes had been drawn to him, and even from a safe distance she’d been able to feel the power of his personality radiating out with shocking force. Everyone’s attention had been glued to his face. Some of them had had their mouths half open, in thrall to whatever he was saying. She hadn’t been able to hear. She’d been too far away. However, she’d understood what it was about the man that commanded their attention. Beyond the aura of power he was just the most incredible human being she had ever clapped eyes on. Tall, with raven-black hair, harsh, beautifully chiselled features and a bronzed colouring that lent him the air of someone breathtakingly exotic, he was as spectacularly beautiful as a lovingly carved statue of a Greek god.

Her father had been in the inner circle, dressed in his best suit, but as the tall man had headed to the open doors of the company, surrounded by his entourage, her father had fallen back and she’d taken the chance to race towards him on her bike so that she could tell him her good news.

Mr VIP had been heading off to inspect the building and the components centre. Later, Lucy hadn’t understood how it was that he had managed to notice her amidst the excited commotion surrounding him. Had he spotted her cycling away? Had he radioed one of his lackeys who had remained outside with the fleet of cars, primed for a hasty departure? Nor, at the time, had she thought anything of the beefy guy in the suit who’d asked her who she was and what she was doing on the premises.

Anxious not to mention any connection with her father, for she didn’t know if it was against rules for employees to speak when their attention should be one hundred percent focused on their leader, Lucy had instead vaguely told him that she worked at the garden centre and had been checking to make sure all the plants they’d installed for the visit were okay.

Later, packing up for the day, she had had her first real contact with Gabriel Garcia Diaz. About to cycle home, she had been bending down to the wheel lock on the bike. When she’d stood up, there he’d been. At a distance, two bodyguards had lounged by a shiny black car.

He had literally taken her breath away. Never had she felt such a strange compulsion to stare and stare and stare—as though her eyes couldn’t get their fill of his bronzed, exotic beauty. Up close he’d been so much more breathtaking, and when he’d spoken, his voice had been a low, dark, lazy drawl…asking her to tell him her name…telling her that he had noticed her…informing her that he hadn’t planned on staying over but he would now make an exception to take her out….

Lucy had been speechless, flustered and vaguely terrified. What sort of man approached a woman he didn’t know and informed her that she would be taken out to dinner? In a tone of voice that denied any negative response?

His urbane sophistication, his staggering good looks, and the lazy, sexual appreciation in those dark, dark eyes had made her head swim. Backing away, she had turned him down. She hadn’t been able to imagine what a man like him would want with someone like her, but as soon as she’d asked herself the question she’d come up with the answer. Sex.

She had virtually run for cover and had continued to turn him down for the remainder of that week, which had seen deliveries of flowers—terrifically expensive flowers, the centre of attention at the garden centre—and one express delivery of a gold bracelet that she had refused to accept. He hadn’t approached her again in person, but the sustained bombardment, designed to erode her defences, had confused her and sent her further into hiding. In the end she had left a text message on the cell number he had given her. She had told him to go away, that she had a boyfriend…

And he had.

Curiously, the abrupt cessation of all that attention had left her feeling deflated for weeks afterwards. Then, gradually, she had gathered herself and put the memory of him behind her as just one of those weird things.

Working at the garden centre left her no time to question the disturbing impact he had had on her. Nor had he returned to visit the offices where her father continued to work. Huge though the modernisations and expansions had been to Sims, it remained, or so she had been told, just a very small tentacle of one mammoth conglomerate.

Now, as Lucy looked at her parents, who seemed frightened and diminished by the rapidity with which everything they knew seemed to be unravelling, the image of Gabriel Diaz rose up in her head like a dark, avenging angel.

‘Perhaps I could help,’ she offered, her heart beating nervously. ‘I mean, I get a good salary at the garden centre, and I could always ask whether they would advance me some of the money for the illustrations I’ve already done for their second volume. I’m nearly through with them. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind…. Plus Kew Gardens are interested in commissioning me to do some work for them….’

‘It’s no good, honey.’ Nicholas Robins shook his head with something approaching despair. ‘I tried to talk to them…to explain the circumstances. I offered to have my salary cut by as much as it took to pay the debt off but they weren’t interested. They said that’s not how they run their organisation. One strike and you’re out.’

‘And you spoke to…to… Mr Diaz himself?’ His name passing her lips sent a shiver through her, and again she recalled those glittering, mesmerising dark eyes and the way they had looked at her.

‘Oh, no.’ Her father sighed. ‘I asked if I could see him but this matter isn’t important enough for him to get involved. The man’s hardly in the country as it is.’

‘So what’s going to happen?’ Lucy could barely phrase the question because she was so scared of the answer, but ducking reality was never a good idea. Her voice was thick with tears but she wouldn’t let herself cry. Her parents were both distressed enough as it was. She was an only child, and they had had her late in life and always protected her. Her unhappiness would be as wounding to them as their own.

‘At best,’ her father confessed, ‘we’ll lose the roof over our heads. At worst…’

That dreadful worst-case scenario remained unspoken, but it hovered in the air like a malignant cloud. At worst he could go to jail. Embezzlement was an offence that the courts took very seriously.

Lucy opened her mouth to suggest that they could both always come and live with her, sell their house and beg to pay off the debt with the proceeds, but practically how on earth would that work? She rented a small one-bedroomed cottage on the edge of the village. It suited her needs ideally, with its big, rambling garden and a tiny studio off the kitchen, where she often worked at her illustrations at night, but at best it was only good to house one girl and her dog. Stick two more human beings in and there wouldn’t be room to move.

The options were running out fast. Her mother rose to make them all another pot of tea, and in her absence Lucy leaned forward and hurriedly asked how her mother was doing. Really.

‘I’m worried,’ her father said unhappily. ‘She’s being supportive but she has to be scared stiff. And we both know her health isn’t good. If I get put away you’ll have to look after her, Luce. She can’t look after herself….’

‘You won’t get put away!’ But the sound of options running out was the sound of jail doors being clanged shut. ‘I could have a word….’ she said finally.

‘With who, my darling? Believe me, I’ve tried my damnedest and they’re not interested. I even offered to show them receipts for how the money was spent…the holiday Mum and I took after she had the stroke…. They don’t care. They’re there to do a job and there’s no appealing to them….’

‘I could see Mr Diaz…’

‘My love, he’ll be a hundred times worse. He’s a money-making machine without an emotional bone in his body. Sims went from being a small, friendly family firm to being part of a giant company where profits get made but there’s a price to be paid. There’s no such thing as compassionate leave. He has his minions there to make sure no one leaves early or even makes personal calls….’

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…?’

Mortification 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!’

‘Parade my wares?’ Lucy looked at him with bewilderment.

‘I wasn’t born yesterday. I know the way women operate. Fair means or foul pretty much sums it up. You thought that you could use your sexy little body to score a few points. Big mistake. I’ve seen a lot of sexy bodies in my time, and I’m inured to any woman who tries to use hers for any kind of profit.’

Sexy little body. Those three words, uttered so casually, brought a hectic colour to her cheeks. Having never considered herself in terms of how she looked, it was somehow shocking to hear him refer to her appearance so bluntly.

She was also uncomfortable with the brief surge of pleasure she’d felt at hearing herself described as sexy. She had never felt like a sexy woman. Sexy women had attitude. They flashed their eyes and swayed their hips and pouted and flirted. She had never done any of those things, and wouldn’t have been able to do them even if she had spent a lifetime reading books on how to achieve it. She just wasn’t sexy, and that was why she had shied away from relationships with boys at college.

She was conservative, traditional—one of those boring types who had never slept around and was saving herself for the guy she eventually fell in love with. Her parents had done a good job in instilling values that had long been left by the wayside by most girls over the age of seventeen.

And yet he had called her sexy. She thought that perhaps he needed his eyes checked, but now was hardly the time to point that out. Not when he was staring at her as though she was something that had crawled out of a dustbin into his immaculate office with the sole intention of making a mess.

‘I didn’t come here to…to…’

Watching the rise and fall of her chest, and inwardly remarking on a repertoire of facial expressions he hadn’t seen in a very long time in any woman, Gabriel caught himself wondering whether it was that wide-eyed innocence that he found so appealing. Appealing against his better judgement.

She had a face that would make any man go crazy, and yet it was coupled with a transparency that could only be dangerous.

‘To…to…?’ He parroted her stammer mockingly.

‘You’re horrible,’ Lucy uttered on a desperate cry, ‘and I’m really sorry I came here in the first place. I shouldn’t have. Dad said that he’d tried to explain to your people at the company but none of them would listen. I might have guessed that you wouldn’t listen either. I’m sorry I took up your precious time!’ She began to stand up.

His order to ‘Sit!’ took her so much by surprise that she practically fell back into the chair.

‘You mean you’re going to listen to…?’

Gabriel raised one imperious hand to cut her off mid-sentence. ‘You can forget about any sob stories. Your father stole money from my company and that’s the end of it. I’m not interested in listening to a long, tedious and fabricated list of extenuating circumstances. There are no extenuating circumstances when it comes to theft.’

He swung his long, lean body out of the chair and moved with economical grace to perch on the edge of his desk, his hands loosely clasped together. Nicolette knocked and popped into the office to remind him of a meeting due to be held in the conference room in fifteen minutes. Gabriel waved her aside.

‘Let Davis cover for me,’ he said, not taking his eyes off Lucy’s downbent fair head. Her entire posture spoke of weary, despairing resignation. She had come to try and save her father’s skin, and he supposed he could award her one or two brownie points for that, but he was pleased that she had got the essential message—which was that he was no sucker. Spinning him hard luck stories was a non-starter.

He knew that at this juncture he should send her away and let her father try and convince the long arm of the law that it had all been a terrible mistake. But why hide from the truth? She was the one who’d got away and he still found her curiously attractive. Even dressed in clothes no woman should wear, and with a begging bowl in her hands.

His last abortive relationship with Imogen…the line of beautiful bodies and beautiful faces and easy availability…he was bored with them all. He was tired of women who simpered whenever they were with him, sick of the certain knowledge that they would all do whatever he wanted, however outrageous his request might be.

At the age of thirty-two, he found his palate was lamentably jaded. Looking at the woman in front of him made him feel as though he had been injected with youth serum. Everything about her fascinated him—from her naïveté in showing up at his office with a sob story right down to the novelty of being in the company of a woman who didn’t ask How high? the second he told her to jump.

It was almost challenging to think that what he had missed first time round could now be his.

Dark, speculative eyes drifted down to the shape of her small, high breasts and his arousal was as fierce as it was sudden. She chose that very moment to raise moss-green eyes to him and he smiled a slow, satisfied smile—the smile of someone anticipating victory in a battle that had yet to commence.

‘How was your trip to London?’ Gabriel asked, maintaining eye contact.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Good trip? It must have been a wrench leaving the plants behind….’

‘Why are you asking me these questions? I thought you were in a rush. I thought you could only spare me a few minutes. What’s the point wasting the few minutes I have telling you about my trip?’

‘Well, it’s more worthwhile than wasting them telling me about what a sterling character your father is….’

Lucy fell silent, although he continued to stare at her. She didn’t know where his weird turn in the conversation was going, but she clung to the slender hope that whilst he was talking he might still be prepared to listen. Surely he couldn’t be so lacking in emotion that he wouldn’t even hear her out?

His dark, watchful eyes set up a series of stirring reactions inside her until she could feel her temples begin to throb. She just didn’t know what he wanted her to say and confusion brought a flush of colour to her cheeks. ‘I… the journey was fine….’

‘And your job? How’s that going?’

‘Good. Great. I…’ She was gripped by a sudden idea and her eyes brightened. ‘Better than great, in fact. I… I don’t only work in the garden centre—I do quite a bit of illustrative work as well. I… I did a degree in graphic art and I was commissioned two years ago to do some drawings of the rare plants and flowers for a compendium the centre was putting together….’

Gabriel made a non-committal sound that was neither encouraging nor discouraging. Frankly he couldn’t care less about whatever drawings she had been commissioned to do, but he was enjoying the genuine enthusiasm on her face. He toyed with the pleasant thought that he might be able to generate that same enthusiasm. Once more he was subjected to a wildly pressing urge to release her hair so that he could tangle his fingers in its rippling length.

Any woman in possession of looks like hers should not have been caught dead in a pair of faded jeans and a T-shirt—least of all in his presence. He had expressed disgust that she might come to him with a view to using her body to get what she wanted without even bothering to dress for the occasion, but now he realised that he would have been disappointed had she done so.

Hadn’t he had his fill of Barbie dolls? Wasn’t he sick to his back teeth of women who were perfectly manicured, perfectly groomed and perfectly dressed in the most expensive and revealing clothes that money could buy?

Lucy was disconcerted by that lazy appraisal in his roving dark eyes. It made her feel uncomfortable. She suppressed the crazy notion that buried beneath her discomfort a slow swirl of excitement was eddying in her veins, making her breasts tingle and sending a shooting, melting warmth between her legs.

She pressed her legs firmly together and leaned forward, gripping the soft leather of the chair. ‘What I’m trying to say,’ she said quickly, because he struck her as a man who lost interest fast and she needed to grab his attention before that happened, ‘is that I get paid well for my art work. I’ve been putting money aside for the past couple of years. I’ve been trying to save so that I can afford to buy the little cottage I rent at the moment. Mrs Hardy, who owns it, says that she’ll continue renting it to me until I can afford to put down a deposit and get a mortgage from the bank….’

‘Where are you going with this?’

‘Right. Well…would you be amenable to me paying you back the money that Dad…er… borrowed from your company? You can take all the money I’ve saved. It’s a little over four thousand pounds. And I’m willing and happy to give you everything I earn. I mean, I’d have to keep a little aside for bills and food, but you could have the rest….’

‘First, your father didn’t borrow the money. Second, I’m afraid your savings and some of your monthly earnings wouldn’t begin to put a dent in his debt. Frankly, you’d be paying me until the day you died and beyond. So you can scrap that suggestion straight away.’

‘In other words there’s no point to me being here at all, is there?’

Lucy watched her bright idea disappear over the horizon, taking with it all hope that she might appeal to Gabriel’s better side. It was clear that he didn’t have one of those. Not only that, but he was deriving great enjoyment from watching her squirm. Perhaps this was his way of exacting revenge for having been turned down by her two years ago. A man like Gabriel Diaz, blessed with drop-dead good looks and the trappings of wealth, would not be used to any woman turning him down. She was now paying the high price for being one of that rare breed of woman who had.

‘Call me crazy—because anyone else in my situation would have thrown you out on your ear the second you walked into this office and opened your mouth—but you might have a way out of this….’

‘Really?’ Hope flared and she looked at him with nervous, wary anticipation.

Gabriel noted that she had amazing eyes. They were a peculiar shade of green—deep green, the colour of the sea in certain lights.

‘Really. But before I get to what I have in mind let me ask you this: what happened to the boyfriend?’

‘Sorry?’ Lucy frowned, at a loss to understand where this reference to a boyfriend had come from. She didn’t have a boyfriend.

‘The boyfriend,’ Gabriel said impatiently. ‘The one you told me you had when you sent me your Dear John text.’

‘I really offended you back then, didn’t I?’

Gabriel laughed with caustic amusement. ‘Offended me?’

‘I—I didn’t mean to…’ Lucy continued in an anxious stammer. ‘I’m not used to…’

‘Spare me the involved explanation. Just tell me the fate of the boyfriend.’

Lucy had no idea what this had to do with the matter in hand. She had to cast her mind back even to remember that small white lie. At the time the presence of a man in her life had seemed the only way of wriggling out of the situation. Gabriel Diaz had oozed sex, and there was no way she would have accepted his proposition. He had also oozed persistence. Added together, she had felt it perfectly acceptable to produce a fictitious other half, and afterwards she’d been very glad she had done so—because a quick trip on the internet had shown her what she had already suspected. Gabriel Diaz was a player—a man who, from everything she had read, worked his way through women without conscience. There were pictures of him with various beauties, none of whom had stayed the course of time.

‘He…ah… it didn’t work out,’ Lucy mumbled, dropping her gaze and staring with furious concentration at the tips of her very unflattering black pumps.

‘No? What went wrong?’

‘I don’t really want to talk about it,’ she muttered, licking her lips and frantically trying to imagine what the fate of this made up guy might have been. One tiny and necessary white lie was one thing. A series of follow-on lies was not going to do. But his continuing silence was already telling her that she was expected to expand. And yet, she thought with a rare spark of defiance, why should she? He had been horrible to her. Arrogant, sneering and dismissive. Why should she tell him anything she didn’t want to?

But that sliver of hope he had dangled in front of her was an effective gag on her rebellious thoughts. If nothing else she owed it to her parents to take advantage of any crumb of mercy he was prepared to throw her way. Perhaps he could arrange for her father to be let go, but for his reputation to remain intact and any prison sentence to be waived. That would certainly be a worthwhile result. Her parents played an active part in the community. It would be hard if her father’s situation were to become public knowledge. Fortunately the two men who had uncovered the problem were both Londoners and would not be hanging around.

‘He…um… broke up with me,’ Lucy imparted reluctantly. ‘And then, shortly afterwards, he went away. To…to New Zealand… To live with the woman he dumped me for…’ This seemed the best way to ensure that her fictitious boyfriend was well and truly out of the way. ‘But I still don’t understand what this has to do with anything….’

‘A boyfriend on the scene would have been a nuisance when it comes to what I have in mind….’ Gabriel didn’t do women with husbands, and he didn’t do women who had boyfriends either. Why would he? The world was full of beautiful, single, willing women. Why go to the trouble of courting someone who came with baggage?

‘And what do you have in mind?’

‘You. I have you in mind.’ Gabriel watched with wonderment a face that expressed absolutely no comprehension of what he was getting at.

She was literally at a loss. Any other woman would have followed the thread of this conversation, and certainly by now would have got the message loud and clear. This woman was staring at him with a frown, as though he had produced a complicated maths problem from under a hat and demanded she provide a solution immediately.

‘May I do something?’ he asked with silken assurance, and then, just in case she was still away with the fairies and not getting where he was going, he strolled behind her. Before she could react he was pulling free her hair, releasing it from its constricting braid.

Lucy swivelled round and stood up, faltering backwards until she bumped into the edge of his desk.

‘What are you doing?’ With one hand she clasped her loosed hair, pulling it over one shoulder. She couldn’t peel her eyes away from his face, and her heart was pounding so fiercely in her chest that she could scarcely breathe. She gave a little squeak of horror as he very slowly strolled towards her.

‘I wanted to do that the first time I laid eyes on you,’ Gabriel murmured.

He smiled, and that smile had the effect of making her feel as though she was falling through the air with no safety net beneath her. Her stomach lurched and every nerve in her body was at screaming pitch.

‘I saw you on that bike and I wanted you. Simple as that. You were like a gazelle—all beauty and grace. And, mysteriously, I find that I still want you….’

‘But you can’t…’ Lucy breathed jerkily. ‘You…you date supermodels….’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because I looked you up on the internet!’ She went bright red. He was standing so close to her that she could feel his heat. He must be able to feel hers, because she was certainly burning up.

‘You did, did you?’ Gabriel was intensely satisfied that he had made more of an impression on her than he had given himself credit for—boyfriend or no boyfriend. An indifferent woman would never have looked him up on the internet. More to the point, an indifferent woman wouldn’t be looking at him now with lurking excitement in her eyes. Even if she was strenuously trying to conceal it. An expert when it came to the opposite sex, he could sense her response to him as clearly as if it had been emblazoned on her forehead in neon lettering.

‘I was curious….’ Lucy defended.

‘Curiosity is good.’ He leant forward to brace himself on the desk, his hands on either side of her, caging her in.

The fantasy of taking her here—in his office, on his desk—was so powerful that he hardened, his erection painful as it pressed thickly against the zipper of his trousers. Gone was the jaded, world-weary feeling that had settled over him for what seemed like years. For that alone she would be worth every penny.

‘So here’s my proposal…’

Regretfully, he straightened, because being so close to her, breathing in that refreshing innocence, the clean, minty smell of her fabulous hair, was doing all sorts of things to his body. Much as he enjoyed the sensation, he had to acknowledge that they were in his office, and Nicolette was just one door away. Having his secretary accidentally burst in on a scene of rampant lovemaking on his desk would not be good for her dodgy blood pressure.

At no point did it occur to him that Lucy might reject his advances the way she had rejected them two years ago. This time he held the trump card, and he had every intention of using it.

As he strolled back towards his chair he could feel her eyes on him, and he knew with every primitive instinct in his body that she had not been immune to that brief moment of contact when he had touched her hair.

‘I won’t try to wrap it up in any fancy packaging. I want you, and in return for having you in my bed I’m willing to let your father off the hook. All the stolen money will be replaced. Orders issued to my two finance guys that with the debt owing to me cleared the matter is to be buried, never again to resurface. Of course your father won’t be able to return to his job. That would be taking the joke a step too far. After all, a thief is a thief is a thief. But he will be retired with a generous package, and hopefully a salutary lesson in never dipping his fingers in the till of any company again….’

Lucy couldn’t help staring at him. Here was the same man who had shown up at the garden centre with his lackeys in tow and a dinner invitation he’d expected to be accepted. Now he was offering her an invitation of another sort, and this time he was calling the shots. She was truly appalled at his lack of morality. Was this how all rich people operated? Did they assume that they just needed to snap their fingers and the rest of the world would dance to their tune?

‘That’s ridiculous…’ She edged away from the desk and began backing unsteadily towards the door. She eyed the backpack she had brought with her. It was on the ground, next to the chair she had fallen into when she had first entered his office. Her unravelled hair fell in a long, thick blond curtain over one shoulder, but she was hardly aware of it as she took small steps towards the bag.

‘What’s so ridiculous about it?’

His words halted her, and she jerked up to stare at him with an expression of disbelief. ‘You’re asking me to be…to…’

‘Sleep with me…make love…have sex—at times and places of my choosing… No need to tiptoe over the details.’

‘But that’s utterly immoral!’

‘So’s stealing—and on the plus side sex isn’t a criminal offence punishable with a jail sentence….’ He was incredulous that she was even quibbling over his generous offer. As rescue packages went, he didn’t think she could have landed herself a better one.

And yet she was still staring at him as though he had asked if she wouldn’t mind stripping off and running naked down the street. What exactly, he wondered, was the problem here? If she was playing hard to get in an attempt to up the ante then she was definitely barking up the wrong tree. He would never have dreamt of doing a deal like this with any other woman. Perhaps that had something to do with the fact that she was the only woman ever to have turned him down. But, although she might be the exception, her window of opportunity was small.

‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t.’

Lucy retrieved her backpack and clutched it in front of her like a shield. She wondered whether there was anything else she could say that would buy her father some clemency, but in her heart she knew that the offer on the table was the only one this man would be making. She also knew that by turning it down she was condemning her parent to swift retribution.

But how could she possibly do what he wanted? Sex, for him, was clearly no more than a physical transaction. It was irrelevant that there was no emotion involved. She had always promised herself that sex for her would have lots of emotion involved. How could she abandon the moral principles she had been weaned on?

Gabriel shrugged. He strolled towards her and received the impression that she was holding her ground only by the skin of her teeth. Given half a chance she would have hightailed it through the door at speed.

‘Your choice,’ he told her with casual indifference.

‘Isn’t there something else you want?’ Lucy asked desperately.

‘No.’ Gabriel refused to mince words. ‘That’s the only deal on the table.’

‘And so…my dad…’

‘Goodbye freedom. Hello Cell Block H….’

‘You’re the most heartless, unsympathetic man I’ve ever met in my entire life!’

‘But I have many other things to offer….’ Gabriel’s voice was low and husky. She had a dusting of freckles on her nose and her eyelashes were so thick and dark that anyone would think she had laid on the mascara with a trowel were it not for the fact that she radiated a natural glow that had nothing to do with make-up.

He had always found that a certain element of surprise worked when it came to disarming his opponents. He used it now.

Lucy, staring at him with the dazed expression of someone suddenly subjected to a whiplash rollercoaster of events they had been least expecting, was not prepared for his lean brown hand as he reached to curl his fingers in her hair. She was certainly not prepared for his cool mouth as it descended to meet hers, and she was even less prepared for the way her body was galvanised into a reaction that was so strong it deprived her of the ability to breathe.

She had been kissed before, but never like this. As his tongue gently parted her lips she felt scorching heat race through her. Her breasts were heavy, sensitive to the slight brush of his chest against hers. Her nipples tingled in a way that shot signals to every other part of her body. Like wax subjected to open flame, she was melting. She heard a low moan and was shocked to realise that it was coming from her.

With a push, she separated her treacherous body from his and found no opposition. Indeed, he released her immediately and stood back with a slight smile curving his beautiful mouth.

‘How could you?’

‘Take advantage of you? You enjoyed it…’

‘I did not!’ Lucy cried fiercely. ‘I’m not like that! I’m not like those women you go out with!’ But she was mortified, and ashamed of her body—which was loudly protesting her virtuous words. ‘I’m going!’

She took a couple of panicky steps to remove herself from the stranglehold of his proximity and he didn’t follow her. He reached for something on his desk, scribbled on it.

‘Here’s my card. I’ll give you twenty-four hours, and after that my offer expires. Word of advice? It’s a generous offer. Think very carefully before you decide to put your principles ahead of common sense. And don’t kid yourself that you would be disgusted by the deal. You came alive for me just then, and there’s plenty more where that came from….’

‘Don’t say those things!’ But already she was reacting to his words, her mind flashing erotic images through her head—images that made her squirm because they were so new, so unexpected, so horribly, frighteningly different from anything she had ever experienced before.

She was barely aware of leaving his office. She couldn’t have said how she managed to make it to the train station or get on the train. Several times she looked at the card he had given her and was tempted to rip it into shreds and chuck it in the nearest bin.

So why didn’t she? He had offered her a devil’s contract. She should have thrown that card away the second she left his office. She should never have accepted it in the first place!

Her thoughts were all over the place. Scenery flashed past and she saw none of it. When she tried to recall the conversation they had had all she could see was his sinfully handsome face, all she could hear was the velvety persuasiveness of his low, sexy drawl. He hadn’t touched her, but she felt as though he had. Her body tingled as though he had run those lean brown fingers over it.

She was determined that he couldn’t buy her, but even as she stood self-righteously on her podium and declared that as an absolute certainty a little voice in her head was reminding her of how he had made her feel, how that kiss had cut through all her fine words and blown them apart into smithereens.

Once home, she briefly dropped in to make sure Freddy was all right, and then drove to her parents’ house—to find neither of them there and the house in darkness.

On top of everything that had been going on this could only mean bad news—which was confirmed when she called her father on his mobile to be told that they were at the hospital.

‘Your mother had a turn.’

He was holding it together, but with difficulty. Lucy could hear that down the phone line.

‘I didn’t want to worry you. You’ve been worried enough already. At any rate, they’re doing tests, but they think she may have had a mild panic attack. They’ll keep her in overnight. There’s no need to get yourself into a tizzy about it….’

But that was easier said than done.

In the space of a couple of days her world had shifted on its axis. Her comfortable routine had been blown apart.

At the hospital, exhausted after a day’s worth of travelling, Lucy was cheered to hear that her mother had indeed suffered only a mild panic attack, but when the doctor took her aside, with her father, and gravely told them that they should make sure that Celia was kept as stress-free as possible, she could only think of that offer Gabriel had made.

What price high-minded principles when her mother was lying on a hospital bed and her father was staring down the barrel of a gun?

Would it be the end of the world for her? Was she really prepared to sacrifice her parents for the wonderful prize of her virginity?

It was dark by the time she eventually made it back to her cottage. After a day cooped up indoors Freddy was raring for some fun and she spent half an hour outside with him. Her mind was clouded with anxiety as she threw his ball and watched as he fetched it, romping back to her triumphantly and waiting so that the exercise could be repeated.

Lucy knew what she had to do, but it wasn’t going to be easy.

And yet the memory of that searing kiss leapt into her head and her heart began to pound.

The palms of her hands were clammy when, an hour later, after she had tried and failed to have something to eat, she tapped Gabriel’s number into her telephone.

The business card he had given her displayed a dizzying array of numbers but he had handwritten his cell number, which probably meant that it was a number only released to a small number of privileged people. She figured that the women who had that number probably thought they had won the lottery.

He picked up on the third ring and immediately she wondered where he was. At the office? In his house or apartment, or whatever expensive pad he called home? It certainly wouldn’t be a quaint little house in the suburbs!

‘It’s me. It’s Lucy. Lucy Robins. I came to see you at your off—’

‘My memory is in perfect working order,’ Gabriel said drily. He had literally just stepped through the front door of his sprawling house in Kensington. It was the one of the most prestigious houses in one of the most prestigious roads in London.

He began removing his tie, heading to the kitchen to pour himself a whisky. Amazing. Even the sound of her voice had an invigorating effect on his libido.

‘I’m taking it you’ve had a little think about the conversation we had today…?’ he encouraged, when her awkward, stammering introduction was followed by complete silence.

‘Yes, I have.’

‘And you’ve come to what conclusion? That your father is to face those cruel, unforgiving and heartless scales of justice and reap his due rewards?’

‘No…’

That single monosyllable sounded as though it had been dragged out of her, but Gabriel was unperturbed by that. Had she really been as repulsed by him as she had tried to convince him then the offer would have been withdrawn. But she wasn’t. Reaching for a glass, he smiled to himself—the satisfied smile of a predator that has successfully corralled its prey and can look forward to enjoying the catch.

‘Maybe we can talk,’ she muttered.

‘Count on it. I’ll be with you tomorrow.’ Some meetings would have to be rearranged, but she was a prize that would be worth that small inconvenience.

‘No!’ Lucy was alone in the cottage, but she still looked guiltily around her—as though at any moment the walls might decide to spout ears. Have Gabriel swan down to Somerset? She could think of nothing worse! There was no way she would ever let her parents suspect that she had struck this deal. They would be horrified. It would be her shameful secret and would have to be kept exclusively in London. A shameful weekend secret. It was the only way. ‘I… I can come to London at the weekend…’

‘Not sure I can wait that long.’

‘Please. It’s only two days away. If you give me your address…or better still we could meet at…a restaurant…or something…’

‘I’ll text you my address.’ Anticipation roared through him as it never had before. ‘When I see you I don’t want anyone around.’ He was already thinking of that slender, loose-limbed body, as graceful as a dancer’s. He would definitely have to have a cold shower tonight. ‘I can’t wait….’

CHAPTER THREE

TWO DAYS LATER Lucy was back on the train, speeding up to London. On the one hand she was a nervous wreck. Gabriel was no longer someone she could shove to the back of her mind and forget because he wasn’t physically around.

He had phoned her twice since her decision to give him what he wanted. She felt as if he was keeping tabs on her, making sure his quarry wasn’t allowed any second thoughts, although his conversations were not at all threatening. He asked her about her day and expressed interest in the details. Lucy didn’t believe for a minute that he really cared one way or the other about successfully transplanted orchids or the large order the garden centre had taken from a chain of hotels in the north. She knew that he was trying to put her at her ease, but instead of feeling relieved she just felt increasingly as if she had been bought and was now being primed for consumption.

On the other hand the wheels were in motion for her father’s reprieve.

She had told her dad haltingly, because lying didn’t come easy—especially lying to her parent—that she had managed to get in touch with Gabriel and the meeting had been a good one.

‘I think he might be prepared to let you off,’ she had said only the morning before.

A more suspicious parent would have immediately jumped to the right conclusion that any favour granted from someone like Gabriel Diaz would require a hefty payback, but suspicion didn’t run deep in Nicholas Robins’s bones. He was a man who saw the good in people, and he had had no trouble accepting that Gabriel Diaz had been open to persuasion.

‘It’s a first-time offence,’ she had offered by way of explanation for a decision that made no sense, ‘and I don’t know—maybe he doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of the local people by dragging you through the courts. I… er…told him how sorry you were, and how affected everyone in the community would be if you were to be punished…how they close ranks against outsiders…’

‘And did you tell him that I will be willing to sacrifice all my pay until the debt’s cleared? I could get a second job…something to bring a little money in… The bulk of my earnings could go towards paying him back…. Did you mention that I had already started making repayments?’

Lucy hadn’t had the heart to tell her father that the likelihood of him returning to his old job was about as likely as a trip to the moon. Instead she had waxed lyrical about Gabriel’s wonderfully sympathetic nature…the vast reserves of wealth that had enabled him to write off her father’s debt as a mere bagatelle that could be swept under the carpet…his empathy for a man who had borrowed money, misguidedly, for a very worthwhile cause…

She’d had to stop herself from laughing out loud at the one hundred percent inaccurate and ridiculous picture she had painted of a man who was just the opposite of the one she had so feverishly described to her father.

The main thing was that her father no longer faced the threat of being thrown into prison. Also, her mother had been released from the hospital and was cheered by this change in their fortunes.

They were both so naive that Lucy could have wept, but she’d kept up the optimistic front and only sagged when she’d got to the station and bade farewell to her village for the weekend.

Details to finalise, she had told them, and then, to add credence to her story, she had hinted that she liked Gabriel more than she was letting on.

All in all she had given an award-winning performance. She hated herself for it, but her hands were tied.

Now she stared down at the overnight bag that was on the seat next to her. She was travelling first class at Gabriel’s insistence. Well, it was preferable to the car he had offered to send for her, or the helicopter that he’d assured her would be no great trouble. She had explained a lot to her parents, but there was no way she could have explained a helicopter landing in the village square to collect her.

As soon as her eyes alighted on the overnight bag her pulses began to race and she had to lean back and briefly close her eyes. Tonight she should have been going to the movies with two of her girlfriends, who had now also been on the receiving end of a few white lies. Her life, which had been so uncomplicated before, now seemed to be comprised of a string of half-truths. She was an innocent little insect that had inadvertently strayed into a spider’s web, and her every move ensured greater entrapment.

Gabriel had told her that a driver would be sent to collect her from the station. But she walked out into the blinding sunshine to see immediately that any prolonged period of reprieve was at an end—because Gabriel himself was there, casually dressed and looking ludicrously out of place amidst the banks of stressed-out, tired passengers leaving the station.

She couldn’t fail to notice how many women looked at him. He, with arrogant indifference, appeared not to notice the attention he was getting. He was lounging against the railings, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. Across the street she could see his black limo, parked and waiting.

Gabriel spotted her as soon as she walked out of the station and noted with dissatisfaction that she seemed to have gone to great pains to dress in the least flattering outfit conceivable. Not jeans this time, but combat trousers the colour of sludge and yet another T-shirt. The flat shoes had been replaced with trainers. He didn’t think that he had ever gone out with or even personally known any woman who possessed a pair of trainers. As far as he was concerned that kind of footwear was suitable only for the gym.

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