‘Have you ever experienced that before, Alice?’

‘Experienced what?’ she asked in a hoarse whisper.

Gabriel laughed under his breath. ‘The grip of passion that makes you behave irrationally …’

‘I prefer to trust reasoning and logic,’ she managed to say.

‘So that's a no …’

‘If you recall …’ She was close to snapping, because not only was he making her feel uncomfortable but he was enjoying himself. ‘I did say to you when I took this job that I didn't want to talk about my private life!’

‘Was that what we were doing? Talking about your private life?’

He stood up, flexed his muscles, debated whether to let this conversation go and just as quickly decided not to.

Why deny it? She roused his curiosity. She was so contained, so secretive whilst giving the impression of being straightforward, so unwilling to share even the smallest of confidences … When you could have anything you wanted—including access to people's thoughts and emotions—what would you pay to have a person who withheld everything?

SEVEN SEXY SINS

The true taste of temptation!

From greed to gluttony, lust to envy, these fabulous stories explore what seven sexy sins mean in the twenty-first century!

Whether pride goes before a fall, or wrath leads to a passion that consumes entirely, one thing is certain: the road to true love has never been more enticing!

To Sin with the Tycoon

Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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 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!

To my beautiful daughters for all their support

Contents

Cover

Introduction

SEVEN SEXY SINS

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EXTRACT

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

ALICE MORGAN WAS growing more annoyed by the second. It was ten-thirty. She had now been sitting in this office for an hour and a half and no one could tell her whether she would be sitting there, tapping her foot and looking at her watch, for another hour and a half, two hours, three hours or for the rest of the day.

In fact, she seemed to have been forgotten. Mr Big played by his own rules, she had been told. He came and went as he pleased. He did as he wanted. He was unpredictable, a law unto himself. All this had been relayed to her by a simpering, pocket-sized blonde Barbie doll as she had been ushered into her office to find that her new boss was nowhere to be found.

‘Perhaps he has a diary?’ Alice had suggested. ‘Maybe he had a breakfast meeting and forgot that I would be coming at nine. If you could check, then at least I would know how long I can expect to be kept waiting.’

But, no. Mr Big didn’t run his life according to diaries. Apparently he didn’t need to because he was so clever that he could remember everything without the benefit of reminders. Besides, no one was allowed into his office when he was absent—although the Barbie doll had worked for him for four days a few months ago and knew for a fact that he didn’t use any diaries. Because he was brilliant and didn’t need them.

The Barbie doll had since peered into the office twice, smiled apologetically and repeated what she had previously said—as though lateness and discourtesy were winning selling points that the entire staff happily accepted and so, therefore, should she.

Mouth tight, Alice looked around her, from her smaller office through the dividing glass partition into Gabriel Cabrera’s much bigger, much more impressive one.

When she had been told where she would be temping, Alice had been thrilled. The offices were situated in the most stunning building in the city. The Shard was a testimony to architectural brilliance with magnificent views over London. People paid to go up it. The bars and restaurants there were booked up weeks in advance.

And now she would be working there. True, her contract was only for six weeks, but she had been told that there was a chance of being made permanent if she did well. He had a reputation for hiring and firing, the woman at the agency had added, but Alice was good at what she did. Better than good. By the time she’d arrived at the building at precisely eight-forty-five that morning, she had made up her mind that she would do her damnedest to secure a permanent position there.

Her last job had been pleasant and reasonably well paid, but the surroundings had been mediocre and the chances of advancement non-existent. This job, should she manage to get it, promised a career that might actually move in an upward direction.

Right now, she thought that she wouldn’t be going anywhere if her new boss didn’t show up, except back to her little shared house in Shepherd’s Bush with one wasted day behind her. She probably wouldn’t even be paid for her time because no one would sign off her work sheet if she didn’t actually do any work. She wondered whether his reputation as a hirer and firer wasn’t actually a case of him being left in the lurch every three weeks because his secretaries got fed up dealing with his so-called brilliance. Not so much a case of him firing his secretaries as his secretaries firing him.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored wall that occupied one section of her office and frowned at the image reflected back: her neat outfit and unremarkable looks did not seem to gel with the glossy, snappy image of the other employees she had seen as she had been channelled onto the directors’ floor. She could have landed on a film set. The guys all wore snappy, expensive suits and the women were largely blonde and achingly good-looking in a polished, well-groomed way. Young, thrusting, career graduates who all had the full package of looks, ambition and brains. Even the secretaries and clerks who kept the wheels of the machinery oiled and running were just as glamorous. These were people who dressed for their surroundings.

She, on the other hand...

Brown eyes, brown hair falling straight to her shoulders, and she was far too tall, even in her flat, black pumps. Something about her grey suit and white blouse screamed lack of flair, although when she had stuck it on that morning she had been quietly pleased at the professional image she projected. It had certainly made a change from the more casual gear she had become accustomed to wearing at her last job. Now, here, she just looked vaguely...drab.

For the first time she wondered whether the gleaming CV in her handbag and her confidence in her abilities were going to be enough. An eccentric and insane employer who surrounded himself with glamour models might just find her a little on the boring side.

She swept aside the nudge of insecurity trying to push itself to the forefront. This wasn’t a fashion parade and she wasn’t competing with anyone in the looks stakes. This was a job, and she was good at what she did. She picked things up easily; she had an agile brain. When it came to work, those were the things that mattered.

She hunkered down for the long haul.

It was nearly midday, and she was bracing herself for an awkward conversation with one of his employees about his whereabouts, when the door to her office was pushed open.

And in he came. Her new boss, Gabriel Cabrera. And nothing had prepared her for him. Tall, well over six foot, he was the most sinfully good-looking man she had ever set eyes on. His hair was slightly too long, which lent him a rakish air, and the perfection of his dark, chiselled features was indecent. He emanated power and a sort of restless energy that left her temporarily lost for words. Then she gathered herself and held out her hand in greeting.

‘Who are you?’ Gabriel stopped abruptly and frowned at her. ‘And why are you here?’

Alice dropped her hand and bared her teeth in a polite smile. This was the man she would be working for and she didn’t want to kick things off on the wrong foot—but, in her head, she added to the list of pejorative descriptions which had been growing steadily ‘rude and fancies himself’.

‘I’m Alice Morgan...your new secretary? The agency your company uses got in touch with me. I have my CV...’

‘No need.’ He stood back and looked at her intently, head tilted to one side. Arms folded, he circled her, and she gritted her teeth in receipt of this insolent, arrogant appraisal.

Was this how he treated his female staff? She had got the message loud and clear that he did what he wanted, irrespective of what anyone had to say on the matter, but this was too much.

She could leave. Walk out. She had already been kept waiting for over two hours. The agency would understand. But she was being paid over the odds for this job, way over the odds, and it had been hinted that the package, should she be made permanent, would be breath-taking. The man paid well, whatever his undesirable traits, and she could do with the money. She had been renting for the past three years, ever since she had moved to London from Devon, where her mother lived. There was no way she could afford to leave rented accommodation but she would love to have the option of not sharing a house. And then there were all those other expenses that ate into her monthly income, leaving her with barely enough to survive comfortably.

Practicality won over impulse and she stayed put.

‘So...’ Gabriel drawled, eyebrows raised. ‘My new secretary. Now that you mention it, I was expecting you.’

‘I’ve been here since eight-forty-five.’

‘Then you should have had ample opportunity to read and digest all the information on my various companies.’ He nodded to the low ash sideboard which was home to various legal books and, yes, an abundance of financial reports on his companies. She had read them all cover to cover.

Alice felt her hackles rise. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, keeping her voice level, ‘you could give me a run-down of my duties? Normally there’s a handover from the old secretary to the new one but...’ But the last one obviously ran for cover without looking back...

‘I don’t actually have time to run through every detail of what you’re expected to do. You’ll just have to pick it up as you go along. I’m assuming the agency will have sent me someone competent who doesn’t need too much hand-holding.’ He watched as delicate colour invaded her cheeks. Her eyes were very firmly averted from him and she was as stiff as a piece of board.

All told, it was not the reaction Gabriel usually expected or received from the opposite sex, but perhaps the agency had been right to send him someone who wouldn’t end up with an inappropriate crush on him. Miss Alice Morgan—and she looked every bit a ‘Miss’ even if he hadn’t known she was—clearly had her head very firmly screwed on.

‘Item number one on the agenda is...a cup of coffee. You’ll find that that’s an essential duty. I like mine strong and black with two sugars. If you unbend slightly and turn to the left, you’ll notice a sliding door. All coffee making facilities are there.’

So far, everything the man was saying was getting on her nerves, and she hadn’t missed the amusement in his voice when he had told her that she could ‘unbend’.

‘Of course.’

‘Then you can grab your computer and come into my office. Fire it up and we can get going. I have some big deals on the go. You might find that you’re being thrown in at the deep end. And you can relax, Miss Morgan. I don’t eat secretaries for breakfast.’

Her legs finally started moving as he disappeared into his office. Duty number one : coffee making. She had not made coffee for her boss in her last job. There, everyone had chipped in. Quite frequently, Tom Davis had been the one bringing her a cup of coffee. It was clear that Gabriel Cabrera did not operate on such civilised lines.

By nature, Alice was not confrontational. There was, however, a streak of fierce independence in her that railed against his dictatorial attitude. She simmered and seethed as she made the coffee for him.

His image still swam in her head with pressing insistence: that ridiculously sexy face; the casual assumption that he was the big boss and so could do precisely as he pleased, even if his behaviour bordered on rude. He was rich, he was drop-dead good-looking and he knew the full extent of the power he wielded. When he had stood in front of her, she had felt as vulnerable as a minnow in the presence of a shark. Something about him was suffocating, larger than life. He was dressed in a suit, charcoal-grey, but even that had not been able to conceal the breadth of his shoulders or the lean muscularity of his physique.

He was a man who was far, far too good-looking, far too overpowering.

‘Sit,’ was his first word as she entered the hallowed walls of his office.

It was a vast space. Floor-to-ceiling panes of glass flooded the room with natural light which was kept at bay by pale-grey shutters. Beyond the immediate vicinity of his working area was a sectioned-off space in which low chairs circled a table and tall plants created a semi-private meeting space.

‘You’d better brief me very quickly on what computer systems you’re familiar with.’ He drummed a fountain pen on his desk, which was chrome and glass, and gave her his undivided attention.

A sparrow. Neat as a pin, legs primly pressed together, eyes tactfully managing to avoid eye contact. Gabriel wondered whether he should send her back in exchange for something a little more decorative. He liked decorative, even though he knew the drawbacks always outweighed the advantages. But, hell, he was a man who could have anything he wanted at the click of a finger and that included interchangeable secretaries. Ever since Gladys—his sixty-year-old assistant of seven years—had inconsiderately emigrated to Australia to be with her daughter, he had run through temps like water. He knew that any agency worth its salt would have scratched him from their books if he’d been anyone else, just as he knew that they never would with him. He paid so well that they would be saying farewell to far too much commission and, in the end, wasn’t greed at the bottom of everything?

His lips curled in derision. Was there nothing he couldn’t have? There were definite upsides to being able to get whatever he wanted... Women flocked to him; heads of business fell silent when he spoke; the press followed him with bated breath, waiting for a hint of the next financial scoop or for a glimpse of his very active private life. He was at the very peak of his game, the undisputed leader of the pack, and there were no signs that he would be relinquishing the position any time soon. So why did life sometimes feel so damned unsatisfying?

He sometimes wondered whether he had used up his capacity for any genuine emotion in his tenacious climb to the top. Perhaps battling against the odds had actually been the great adventure. Now that the game had been played and he had emerged the winner, was the adventure over? Not even the brutal, frenetic push and shove of work could provide him with the adrenaline it once did. What was the point of trying when you could have it all without effort? Was trying just something else that had once mattered but now no longer did in the same way?

The sparrow was in full flow, telling him about her last job and giving him a long list of her responsibilities there. He held up one imperious hand, stopping her mid-sentence.

‘You can only be an improvement on the last girl,’ he drawled. ‘I think somewhere along the line the agency lost track of the fact that I actually wanted someone who knew how to type using more than one finger.’

Alice smiled politely and thought that maybe the agency was in the dark as to whether he cared one way or another, given that his priorities seemed to lie with how good-looking the candidates were.

Gabriel frowned at that smile; it seemed at odds with the meek and mild exterior projected. ‘You’ll find the file on the Hammonds deal on your computer,’ he said, focusing now. ‘Call it up and I’ll tell you what you need to do.’

Alice didn’t surface for the next four hours. Gabriel kept her pinned to her computer. There was no lunch break, because it had been practically lunchtime when he had eventually strolled into the office, and he clearly assumed that she would not be hungry. He wasn’t, after all, so why should she be?

At four-thirty, she looked up to find him standing in front of her.

‘You seem to be keeping up. New broom sweeping clean, or can I expect this show of efficiency to be ongoing?’

Under the full impact of his rapid-fire instructions, Alice had forgotten how objectionable she found him. If that was his way of telling her that she had done a good job on day one, then surely there had to be more polite ways of delivering the message?

‘I’m a hard worker, Mr Cabrera,’ she told him evenly. ‘I can usually handle what’s thrown at me.’

Gabriel sat down in the chair facing her desk and extended his long legs to one side.

Every inch of him breathed self-assurance and command. Okay, so she had to admit that the man was clever. He had the astute brain of a lawyer and an ability to pick through the finer details until he found the essential make or break one that was the difference between success and failure. On the telephone, he was confident and authoritative. From every pore of his body, he radiated the self-assurance that what he wanted, he would get.

‘Highly commendable,’ he said drily.

‘Thank you. Perhaps you could tell me what time I shall be expected to work until today?’ Considering he had kept her waiting for hours for reasons he had not bothered to share.

‘Until I’m satisfied that your job for the day is done,’ Gabriel said coolly. ‘I don’t believe in clock watching, Miss Morgan. Unless, of course, you have some pressing need to go by five? Have you?’

Alice smoothed her skirt with nervous hands. She had read all the promotional literature on offer during the three-hour wait in her office, and within a few seconds had known that the man was beyond influential. He was a billionaire with killer looks and she had seen from the way he had dealt with various interruptions by staff members during the day that, as the little Barbie had informed her, he did exactly as he pleased. One poor woman, the head of his legal department, had been told very firmly that she would be required to work the following weekend without a break because they were closing an important deal and would therefore be required to miss her best friend’s wedding. He hadn’t even bothered to pay lip service to an apology.

Gabriel Cabrera paid his employees the earth and in return they handed over their freedom.

That was a bandwagon Alice had no intention of jumping on. Right now, she was nothing more than a lowly temp, so could speak her mind and lay down some boundaries. Because should—and it was a big should—the job be offered to her on a permanent basis, then she would no longer have the freedom to tell him what she was willing to do and what she wasn’t. And working weekends was definitely not on the agenda. Not given her mother’s current situation.

‘I’m not a clock watcher, Mr Cabrera, and I’m more than happy to work overtime if necessary. But, yes, I do value my private life and I would have to know in advance if I’m expected to sacrifice my leisure time.’

Gabriel looked at her narrowly. ‘That’s not how my company operates.’ Indeed, that was not how he operated. Doling out long explanations for what he did was not part of the package. He did as he pleased and the world accepted it. He felt another tug of weary cynicism which he swatted aside. He had earned his place at the head of the table by fighting off the competition. He had started from nothing and now had everything...and that had been the object of the game: to have it all. He was accountable to no one, least of all a secretary who had been with him for two minutes!

‘If I understand correctly, you’re being paid double what you would normally get doing the same job in another company.’

But with a different boss, Alice was tempted to insert. A normal boss.

‘That’s true,’ she admitted.

‘Are you going to tell me that you don’t like the nice, juicy pay packet? Because I can, of course, slash it if you want to start imposing conditions for your working hours. You’ve been here for five minutes and you think that you can start dictating terms?’ He gave a short, incredulous laugh and shook his head. ‘Unbelievable.’

‘The agency implied that there might be a permanent job on offer if I made it through the probation period. I understand you haven’t had a great deal of success with the previous secretaries who were sent to you.’

‘And, because you’ve had a good first day, you somehow think that you have leverage?’ But he had had a bad time of it when it came to his secretaries. Perhaps he should have been hunting down a Plain Jane like the one sitting in front of him, but you should be able to get along with the person in whose company you usually ended up spending most of your day. That seemed a sensible conclusion. He was forced to concede that his theory fell down slightly given the fact that some of the girls he had employed had wanted to get along a little too well with him for his liking.

‘You seem to be getting a little ahead of yourself here,’ he remarked, watching her closely. ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘No.’ Alice took a deep breath, prepared to stand her ground, because she could see very clearly how the land lay with this guy.

Dark eyes clashed with hazel and she felt a tremendous whoosh go through her, as though the air had been sucked out of her body. She found him unnerving, yet today had been the most invigorating she had spent in a long time. She had blossomed under the pressure of her workload, had even seen areas where she might be able to branch out and assume more responsibility.

Was she willing to jeopardise six weeks of a sure thing in favour of laying down ground rules for a permanent job that might not even be hers?

Even as she asked herself that question, she knew the answer. She wasn’t going to let anyone, however much they were paying her, dictate the parameters of her life, and not just her working life. No one in his company seemed to mind. Half the women were probably besotted with him, but not her, and she needed her time out. Life was difficult enough as it was, with her weekends taken up going to Devon to visit her mother. The last thing she needed was to have her precious week-day evenings sucked away, even if it meant forfeiting paid overtime.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Gabriel couldn’t actually recall the last time anyone had ventured an opinion that was obviously unwelcome. Great wealth gave great freedom, and commanded even greater respect, and hadn’t that always been his driving goal in life—to jettison the dark days of growing up in foster homes, where his opinion had counted for nothing and his life had been in the control of other people?

‘I’ve only been here for one day, Mr Cabrera, and on my first day I waited for nearly three hours until you arrived. Yes, that did give me ample time to read your company literature, but I wasn’t aware that that would be how I would spend my morning.’

‘Are you asking me to account for my whereabouts this morning?’ He looked at her with blatant incredulity.

At this juncture ordinarily, she would have ambushed all her chances of having another day in his company, much less the permanent position she seemed to think might be hers. But he was galled to discover that the thought of another line of inept secretaries inconveniently fancying him was not appealing, even if he did enjoy the pleasant view from his office they provided.

He was also weirdly fascinated by her nerve.

‘Of course I’m not! And I do realise that it’s not my place to start laying down any terms and conditions...’

‘But you’re going to anyway?’ Blazing anger was only just kept in check by the fact that she had done damn well on the work front, too well to dismiss without a back-up waiting in the wings.

‘I’m afraid I can’t sacrifice my weekends working for you, Mr Cabrera.’

‘I don’t believe I asked you to.’

‘No, but I saw you cancel that poor girl’s weekend. Her best friend’s wedding, and you told her that she had no choice but to work solidly here on both days.’

‘Claire Kirk makes a very big deal about being one of the youngest in the company to head a department. She’s good at what she does, and it would be a mistake to encourage her into thinking that she’ll go places in this company if she isn’t prepared to go the extra mile.’

Alice didn’t say anything but she wondered whether he knew that there was ‘going the extra mile’ and then there was sacrificing your life for the sake of a job.

‘I wouldn’t have made a big deal about any of this,’ she said quietly, ‘But I thought you ought to know how I feel about my working conditions from day one rather than not say anything and then find myself expected to work hours I’m not willing to work. I’m not saying that I won’t do overtime now and again, but I’m a firm believer in separating my personal life from my working life.’

‘Tell me something, did you lay down similar boundary lines for your last boss?’

‘I didn’t have to,’ she replied.

‘Because he was a nine-to-five-thirty kind of guy? Thought so. Well, I’m not a nine-to-five-thirty kind of guy and I don’t expect my employees to be nine-to-five-thirty kind of people.’ It would be a shame to lose someone who showed potential but he had humoured her for long enough. ‘Employees like Claire, who want to aggressively climb career ladders, work weekends when they don’t want to because they understand the rules of the game. The prize never goes to the person who doesn’t realise that a little sacrifice is necessary now and again if something important arises. Granted, you’re not the head of a department, and you may not want any kind of career to speak of—’

‘I do want to have a career!’ Bright patches of colour appeared on her cheeks.

‘Really? I’m all ears, because you’re not selling it...’

Alice licked her lips nervously and stared at him. There was a brooding stillness to him that was unsettling. Nerves did their best to launch her into mindless chatter but a deeply ingrained habit of keeping her private life to herself held her back and she composed herself sufficiently to flash him another of her polite smiles.

‘That was why I left my last job. I liked it there but Tom, the director of the company, was going to hand the reins over to his son, and Tom Junior wasn’t a strong believer in women in the workplace, especially not in the haulage business.’

Gabriel cocked his head to one side, listening to what she was saying and what she wasn’t. She talked like a prissy school-marm but there was nothing prissy or school-marmish about the way she had stood up for herself. She claimed to want a career but, when pressed, could only tell him something vague about why she had left her last company. Given half a chance, most women couldn’t wait to involve him in long stories about themselves, especially long stories that were slanted in their favour, but this one... He got the feeling that she only said what she wanted someone to hear and that included him.

He glanced over her, his eyes taking in the unimaginative get-up, the long, slim frame, the uninspiring haircut.

His employees were all given a generous clothes allowance. They could afford designer gear, and this worked in particular favour of his staff lower down the pecking order, whose salaries were less enviable. Everyone, whatever their ranking, projected a certain image and he liked that. Compared to them, the little sparrow in front of him lacked polish, but there was something about her...

‘So what were you planning your career to be there, had little Tommy Junior not come along to fill Daddy’s shoes...?’ Gabriel had virtually no respect for anyone gifted a business. He had had to find his way by walking on broken glass and he was fundamentally contemptuous of all those well-groomed, pampered boys and girls born with silver spoons in their mouths. He was a hard man who had travelled a hard road. It had worked well for him, had put him where he was today, able to do precisely as he pleased.

‘I thought I might be able to get funding for an accountancy course...’ She thought wistfully of the dreams she had once had to get involved in finance. She had always had a thing for numbers and it had seemed a lucrative and satisfying road to go down. Dreams, she had discovered, had a tendency to remain unfulfilled. Or at least, hers had.

‘It wasn’t to be,’ she said briskly. ‘So I thought that perhaps joining a bigger, more ambitious company might be a good idea.’

‘But, before you got too accustomed to the job, you felt it necessary to tell me that your working schedule is limited.’

‘My weekends are accounted for.’ Alice was beginning to wish that she had decided never to say anything. She should have just kept her head down and then crossed whatever bridge she had to cross when she came to it. Instead, she had made assumptions about the way he ran his company and had decided to act accordingly.

‘Boyfriend?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Or maybe husband, although I don’t see any wedding ring on the finger.’

‘Sorry, but what are you talking about?’

‘Isn’t it usually the boyfriend in the background who ends up dictating the working hours?’ Gabriel asked, intrigued by her outspokenness, her sheer gall in laying down ground rules on day one—as though she had any right—with him. Intrigued, too, by that air of concealment that was so unusual in a woman. At least, in the women he knew.

‘Not in this case, Mr Cabrera,’ Alice told him stiffly.

‘No boyfriend?’

Alice hesitated but, perhaps having misjudged her timing to start with, why not go the whole hog and expand on her conditions? He would probably chuck her out on the spot. She would return to the agency, who wouldn’t be surprised to see her, and they would find her another job—something with a normal boss, working normal hours in a normal environment. It sounded unappetising.

‘I should mention...’ She heard the wooden formality in her voice and cringed because she was twenty-five years old, yet she sounded like someone twice her age. ‘I also do not appreciate talking about my personal life.’

‘Why not? Have you got something to hide?’

Alice’s mouth fell open and, in return, Gabriel raised his eyebrows without bothering to help her out of her awkward silence.

‘I...I do a very good job. I take my work very seriously. If you decide to keep me on, you won’t regret it, Mr Cabrera. I bring one hundred and ten percent to everything I do in the working environment...’

Gabriel didn’t say anything. He watched her flounder and wondered whether she brought one hundred and ten percent to whatever it was she did in the leisure time that she was so stridently protecting.

‘Accountancy courses require weekend time... What would you do about those precious weekends of yours that you can’t possibly sacrifice?’

‘I can do the work in my own time,’ Alice said promptly. ‘I’ve checked it out. And I would pass the exams. I have a good head for figures.’

‘In which case, remind me why you didn’t go into that field of work when you left school...college...university? In fact, now that you seem to be campaigning for a permanent job with me, why don’t you hand over the CV which I am sure is burning a hole in your bag...?’

Alice hesitated fractionally and Gabriel looked at her, his dark eyes cool and assessing.

His mobile phone rang; he glanced down at the caller ID and then he, too, hesitated, fractionally, but this time there was a smile hovering on his lips as he disconnected the call.

‘Here’s the deal, Miss Morgan.’ He sat forward, invading her space, and rested his elbows on her desk.

Alice automatically inched back and her breathing quickened as their eyes clashed. Suddenly, she was aware of every inch of her body in ways she had never been before. She felt hot all over; her breasts felt prickly and sensitive, her skin tight and tingly. She took a deep breath and shakily told herself that she would have to subdue reactions like that if she was to be offered the job of working with this man full-time. She might not like the guy but she couldn’t afford to let that dislike control her responses.

‘Yes,’ she said, grateful that her voice was steady and cool.

‘I’m going to read your CV and, provided I don’t discover any...suggestion of little white lies in it, and provided your references check out, I’m going to offer you a full-time job working with me...’

‘You are?’

‘And I’m going to go the extra mile. After all, don’t preach what you can’t practise. I’m going to open the door for you to do that accountancy course you want to do.’

‘Really?’ A thousand jumbled thoughts were flying through Alice’s head but the one that was winning the race was the one that was telling her that her life might finally start moving forward, that she might finally have enough money to start saving a little bit...

‘And, naturally, you won’t be called upon to sacrifice your weekends unless imperative. In return...’

‘You’ll find that I’m up to anything you can throw at me.’

‘In that case...’ He reached over for the telephone on her desk and dialled a number then, before the line connected, he said with a slow smile, ‘You’ll find that there are times when you do need to involve yourself in my personal life, Miss Morgan.’ He handed her the phone. ‘I won’t be in touch with this particular woman again, so maybe you can set her straight on that score. And let’s see whether you’re really up to anything I can throw at you...’

CHAPTER TWO

GABRIEL SAUNTERED INTO his office and closed the door behind him. He felt energised, pleased with his decision to hire the new woman on the spot. Normally, something as trivial as this would be left to his Personnel department but the impulse had felt right.

On the spur of the moment, he telephoned the company where she had last worked and spoke for five minutes to the boss, who gave her a glowing reference.

So, he had had an interminable string of relatively competent secretaries. They had all looked good, and why shouldn’t he have gone for that? Some of them could even have been brought up to the standard he wanted had they not ended up becoming inconvenient. Lingering looks, offers to work as much overtime as he wanted, skirts that seemed to get shorter and tops more plunging as the days went on... All in all, pretty annoying in the end.

He wondered how this new one was dealing with the latest woman to have been dispatched from his life and he half-smiled when he imagined her tight disapproval.

Georgia had been exciting at the beginning. She had been enthusiastic and innovative in bed and, more importantly, had seemed to really take on board the ground rules for any relationship with him—namely, forget about looking for long-term commitment. So why had he got bored with her? She had certainly been eager to please and what man didn’t want a woman willing to bend over backwards for him? He wondered whether there were just too many women willing to bend over backwards for him: gorgeous, sexy, voluptuous women whose vocabulary largely centred on the word ‘yes’. In his high-octane, high-pressured life, the word ‘yes’ had always been a soothing counterpoint. Although of late...

He scrolled through the report in front of him and acknowledged another successful takeover that would allow him to expand certain aspects of one of his technology companies into Europe. In a rare moment of introspection, he grimly congratulated himself on the distance he had travelled from the foster-home kid with zero prospects to a man who ruled the world. He was sure he had felt more pleasure in the past when he had occasionally contemplated his achievements.

He had started on the trading floor, a sixteen-year-old gofer with an uncanny ability to read markets and predict trends. His first real kick had come when he had realised that the guys with the cut-glass accents and the country estates had begun to take him seriously when he spoke. They had started seeking him out and, with the instincts born of someone from the wrong side of the tracks who was hungry and ambitious, he had learnt how to ruthlessly use and eventually channel his talents. He had learnt when to share information and when to withhold it. He had learnt that money was power and power brought immunity from ever having to do what anyone else told him to do.

He became the man who gave the orders and he liked it that way. Thirty-two years old and he was untouchable.

The firm knock on the door snapped him out of his thoughts and he sat back in his chair and summoned her in.

This, Alice was thinking as she walked into his office, was why she could never like this guy. He had dialled a number and then left her to it and, from what she had gleaned during that conversation with Georgia of the husky voice, he was just the sort of inveterate playboy she despised.

But the job was going to be hers and she wasn’t going to let this type of challenge kill her chances. He seemed to have accepted her request for her weekends to remain sacrosanct and had hired her without the usual bank of interviews. She got the feeling that this was a departure for him. So she could bend a little in this area...

Her face, however, was rigid with disapproval as she sat in the chair indicated.

‘I assume,’ she began stiffly, ‘that you would want to see me to find out how my conversation went with your...girlfriend...’

‘Ex—ex-girlfriend. Hence the point of the conversation. So that she could be left in no doubt as to where matters stood.’ The waves of disapproval emanating from her were palpable. She looked as though she’d swallowed a lime and was painfully having to digest it. ‘I spoke to your ex-boss. Sounds like a nice man. I’m thinking you were never required to step up to the plate and have any awkward conversations with his ex-lovers...’

Was he being deliberately provocative? The lazy intensity of his gaze and the suggestion of a smile on his lips sent the blood rushing to her head and she tightened her jacket around her and sat up a little straighter. Her crossed legs felt as stiff as planks of wood, yet there was a curling sensation low down in her pelvis that she chose to ignore. Top of her mind right now was counting the ways she disliked her new boss. Good-looking he might be...staggeringly good-looking...but she decided on the spot that his personality left her cold.

In a way, it would make for an excellent working relationship. She had already gleaned from her phone call with the unfortunate Georgia that the problem with his past few secretaries, apparently, had been with them all developing inappropriate crushes on him.

‘I can’t believe he’s got one of his secretaries to do the dirty work for him!’ Georgia had wailed down the line. ‘Well, if you’re like the other one...’ she had sobbed, ‘Showing off your boobs and thinking you can snap him up, then you’re making a mistake! He’s never going to go there! He doesn’t like to mix work and play. He told me! So you can forget it!’

Georgia had lasted a mere two months, one week and three days. Was that the average duration of his relationships with women—a handful of months before he got bored and moved on to the next toy?

Thoughts that were usually deeply buried rose swiftly to the surface and she thought about her father—the years spent watching from the sidelines as he’d failed to return home, failed to pretend that he hadn’t been playing away, failed to pay lip service to a marriage he’d wanted to ditch but couldn’t afford to. She killed that pernicious, toxic trip down memory lane and dragged her wayward mind back to the present.

‘Tom was and is a very happily married man,’ Alice intoned. ‘So, no, there were no awkward phone calls to women.’ And you should make your own phone calls, she wanted to snap.

‘I gather from your expression that I’m not winning a popularity contest at this moment in time?’ Did he care one way or another? No. But if they were going to work together then there was no point in pretending to be a saint. Soon enough she would come into contact with the women who entered and left his life, barely producing a ripple. She would have to get used to fending off the occasional uncomfortable phone call and, if her moral high ground didn’t allow for that, then he needed to know right now.

‘She was very upset,’ Alice informed him, trying hard to avoid the trap of sounding judgemental, because what he got up to in his private life was none of her business. If he didn’t care who he shared it with, then that was up to him.

And yet, she couldn’t help feeling that there were sides to him that he shared with no one, and she couldn’t quite work out what gave her that impression—something veiled in his eyes that belied the image of a man who laid all his cards on the table. He didn’t give a damn whether she knew about his women or not but, yes, he did give a damn about other things, things she suspected he kept to himself.

Of course, it was fanciful thinking, because it didn’t take a genius to work out that a man who had reached the meteoric heights that he had would not be the open, transparent type. He would be the type who revealed only what he wanted to and only when it served his purposes.

‘I have no idea why,’ Gabriel said wryly. ‘I’d already informed her that I was pulling the plug on our relationship. Unfortunately, I think Georgia found it harder than she thought to accept the breakup.’

‘Do you usually farm difficult conversations out to your secretaries?’

The edge of criticism in her voice should have got on his nerves but Gabriel found that it didn’t. For once, he was in the company of a woman who seemed in no danger of developing a crush on him. Nor was she his type. He liked them small and curvy with an abundance of obvious charm. Prickly and challenging didn’t work for him. Prickly and challenging smacked of an effort he had no enthusiasm for giving.

‘I can’t say the opportunity has arisen in the past few months,’ Gabriel drawled.

And it wouldn’t have happened now, Alice deduced, except for the fact that he had wanted to put her to the test. Maybe he thought that she would not be up to the task—too prim and proper. She didn’t have to hear him say that to know that it was what he had been thinking and she bristled even though a part of her knew that, yes, she took life seriously. She had always had to. There had not been much scope to develop a frivolous side when she had spent so much of her youth supporting her mother through the innumerable bouts of her father’s indiscretions.

Pamela Morgan had never seemed to have the strength to stand up to her bullying, philandering husband, so she had turned to Alice for moral support. By the time Rex Morgan had died, in a car accident, his wife had become a shadow of the girl who had married him in the false expectation of living happily ever after.

Alice’s dreams had been put on hold and, when she looked back, she could see that she had spent her teenage years laying down the foundations for the person she would later become: reserved, cautious, lacking in the carefree gaiety that might have been her due, given a different set of circumstances.

Her one experience with the opposite sex had merely served to drive home to her that it never paid to think that anything good was a foregone conclusion.

‘Is there anything else you’d like me to do now, and what time might I expect you to be in tomorrow morning? I don’t know what your diary is.’ The diary he never used.

‘I keep my diary on my phone. I’ll email you the contents. And tomorrow? I expect I’ll be in...at my usual time. Then I’m away for the next three days. Think you can handle being on your own?’

‘As I said, Mr Cabrera, I will do my utmost to deal with anything you can throw at me...’

* * *

Disgorged from the jumble of people on the tube three weeks later, it occurred to Alice that whatever had been thrown at her had obviously been full of all the right vitamins and proteins because she was enjoying her job. No, more than enjoying it. She got up early with a spring in her step, looking forward to the workload ahead of her and the slow creeping of responsibilities that were landing on her plate.

Her brain was being challenged in all sorts of ways. She was personally responsible for three large accounts. She had enrolled for her accountancy studies. And, by her standards, she was being paid a small fortune.

It was amazing, given the fact that she disapproved of much of what Gabriel stood for. She disapproved of his blatant womanising; she disapproved of the way he picked up lovers and then discarded them. He made no secret of the fact that he was as ruthless in his private life as he was in his working one. She disapproved of his supreme certainty that whatever he wanted would be his. She disapproved of the way every female employee, almost without exception, practically went down on bended knee whenever he deigned to address them. She disapproved of his ego.

On a daily basis, she fielded calls from women who wanted to talk to him and she could gauge from their hopeful, breathless voices that talking was not the only thing they wanted.

She disapproved of all of that.

The guy clearly didn’t have to try when it came to the opposite sex, so he didn’t. He was pursued and presumably, when he felt like it, he took one of his pursuers up on her offer and established something that couldn’t even really be called a relationship.

He was lazy.

But so beautiful, a little voice in her head absently pointed out, and Alice halted for a second so that the crowds parted around her, some of them muttering impatiently under their breath.

She wouldn’t deny that he had looks. The strong, aggressive lines of his lean, dark face were imprinted in her head with the force of a branding iron. She thought about him in passing more than she liked, then justified her lapses by telling herself that of course she would think of him—he was an exciting person to work for and she was only new to the job, hadn’t had time to get used to him yet.

Which was why she knew just how long his dark lashes were and the way they could conceal the expression in his eyes... Which was how she knew that the second he entered the office, bringing all that force and vitality behind him, he would roll up the sleeves of his shirt, walk past her and immediately ask for his coffee.

She doubted that he even really noticed her. She was his über-efficient secretary who did as she was told faster than the speed of light. For long periods of time, he barely glanced in her direction at all.

She picked up speed, suddenly irritated for allowing her thoughts to stray down forbidden paths. He didn’t notice her because she wasn’t his type.

His type was...

No, she wasn’t going to let her mind start speculating.

By now familiar with the impressive entrance foyer and well used to the hordes of workers and, later in the day, the tourists who were always milling about, Alice blanked everyone out as she strode purposefully towards the lift.

It was not yet eight. The three floors occupied by his company would only be partly peopled. She liked the relative quiet as she was transported upwards...and upwards and upwards...

She felt a curl of excitement as she exited the lift. She barely recognised the emotion. Her head was full of what she had to do that day. The last thing she was expecting was to enter her office to the sight of two figures having an argument in Gabriel’s office.

Through the slender panes of glass, Gabriel’s face was dark with anger. She couldn’t make out what was being said but his voice was low and deadly. The woman’s, on the other hand...

She should interrupt. She should try to manage this situation because it was just the glorified version of what she occasionally had to do on the phone.

He didn’t seem to care whether women chased him or not, or even whether they threw hissy fits down the end of the line, but he kept sharp dividing lines between work and play.

Obviously some poor woman had failed to pay attention to that dividing line and was paying the price.

And doesn’t it serve him right?

The thought sprang from nowhere but, once it took hold, it couldn’t be budged.

She had no idea who this woman was but why shouldn’t he sort this situation out himself? Just because he had all the money and power in the world, it didn’t mean that he could take the easy way out when it came to the situations he engendered with his women!

She calmly removed her lightweight coat and hung it up in the sliding cupboard. Then she made herself a cup of coffee and, with mug in hand, she sat at her desk and switched on her computer.

But she couldn’t focus. Her eyes kept sliding from her computer screen to the sketch being enacted behind Gabriel’s closed door. That said, she was still shocked when the closed door was banged open and out flew a woman with waist-length dark hair and a porcelain-white complexion. Her red dress was skin-tight, her heels were five inches high at the very least and she was trailing a pink-and-black-checked summer coat over her shoulder.

She looked furious. Furious and upset. She paused just long enough to glare at Alice through tear-filled eyes.

‘He’s a pig!’ She glared over her shoulder to where an impassive Gabriel was watching them both with steely-eyed coldness, then fixing enraged dark eyes on Alice. ‘But at least he hasn’t got one of those dolly birds working for him this time!’

‘Georgia...’ Gabriel’s voice silenced what promised to be a tirade. He spoke very quietly and with such contained menace that Alice felt sorry for the poor woman. ‘If you don’t leave my premises immediately, I will call security and have you thrown out. And you...’ He directed this at Alice who tilted her head to one side in perfect secretarial mode. ‘Kindly escort Georgia out of the building and then come into my office...’

She was barely aware of Georgia talking non-stop on the way down in the lift. The diminutive brunette was angry, bitter and, reading between the lines, humiliated because she had never been dumped in her life before. Men chased her and she was the one responsible for doing any dumping.

Alice could have told her that she had taken on far more than she could ever have hoped to chew with a man like Gabriel.

‘Well, at least you’ll be safe as houses,’ the other woman sniped as her parting shot. ‘Gabriel would never look twice at someone like you. And tell him from me—I hope he rots in hell!’

The spurt of courage that had prompted her to stay put in her office twenty minutes earlier had evaporated by the time Alice returned there, having successfully deposited Georgia on the street outside. Still, there was no way that she intended to apologise for not having interrupted the scene in his office.

With any luck, he would simply brush over the whole incident and the day would commence as it always did, at full tilt.

‘What the hell do you think you were playing at?’ were his opening words as she walked into his office with her tablet in her hand, ready for the day to begin.

‘I beg your pardon?’ She started as he swooped round his desk to perch on the edge so that he was looming over her, face as dark as thunder.

‘And don’t give me that “butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth” look! I saw the way you sneaked into the office and hid behind your computer!’

‘I did not sneak into my office, Gabriel...’ It always felt odd to call him by his Christian name but after three days of ‘sir’ and ‘Mr Cabrera’ and ‘Mr Cabrera, sir’ he had impatiently insisted that she drop the titles and call him Gabriel. It was one of those names that did not happily roll off the tongue. It was just too...sexy...

‘Nor,’ she asserted firmly, ‘did I hide behind my computer!’

‘You did both. You knew that I was trapped there with that woman and instead of offering to escort her out you ducked for cover and watched from the sidelines!’

‘That woman...?’

Gabriel flushed darkly and raked long fingers through his hair. ‘I’m not in the mood for your sermonising,’ he growled, glaring at her.

‘I didn’t realise that I sermonised,’ Alice said truthfully. She had her thoughts, but those she kept very much to herself.

‘You don’t have to! I know exactly what goes on in that head of yours whether you voice your opinions or not!’

Alice didn’t say anything. His proximity was having a weird effect on her. If she looked directly at him, the glittering intensity of his dark eyes was unnerving. But if she looked a little lower, then she was confronted by his thigh, the taut pull of fine fabric over muscular legs, and that was even more unnerving. She could almost hear the steady drum roll of her heart and the rush of blood in her ears. He rarely invaded her space like this and she didn’t have the resources to withstand the impact he had on her nervous system.

‘Explain that remark.’

Alice had subtly pressed herself into the back of her chair. She wished he would let this conversation go because she could feel it teetering on the brink of getting too personal, and getting personal was something he had studiously avoided over the past three weeks. He never even asked her how she had spent her weekends.

‘What remark?’ she asked warily and he gave her another of those piercing looks that seemed to imply that he was perfectly aware that she was trying to dodge the conversation.

‘You should try to avoid doing that as much as you can, you know,’ he murmured softly.

It was like having her skin lightly brushed with a feather; the lazy speculation in his voice was even more disconcerting than the full-body impact of his towering presence so close to her.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me what I mean by that?’ Gabriel continued into the lengthening silence, and Alice tried her best to dismiss the prickles of sensation racing through her body like tiny sparks of fire. ‘No, of course you won’t, but I’ll tell you anyway. You should never try and wriggle away from a direct question. It makes me all the more determined to prise a suitable answer from you. The rule of thumb is that there’s nothing more challenging to a man like me than a gauntlet that’s been thrown down—and your silences count as gauntlets.’ He didn’t normally like challenges when it came to women but, hell, he liked this one...

A man like him?

Alice steeled herself to look him squarely in the face. ‘I don’t think it’s very nice of you to throw your ex-lover out of the building because she happened to be upset with you.’ There was a lot more she could have said on the subject but she chose to keep that to herself.

‘It wasn’t,’ Gabriel grated, ‘very nice of my ex-lover to descend on me, in my office, so that she could throw a tantrum.’ He vaulted upright and prowled through the office which she had somehow managed to make her own in the handful of weeks she had been working for him. There were two plants on the bookshelf, another on her desk and a discreet Buddha figurine which she kept next to the telephone. Having circled the room, he returned to stare down at her, hands thrust into his pockets.

‘I don’t suppose that was her intention,’ Alice told him calmly. ‘I don’t think she came here planning to have a yelling fit at you. I think if she’d planned on screaming she could have done it down the telephone rather than come here and risk the humiliation of being ushered out of the building like a common criminal.’

‘But then, if she’d used the telephone, she would have had to get past my faithful and extremely proficient secretary, wouldn’t she?’

Alice blushed and wondered how two perfectly flattering adjectives could end up sounding so unappealing.

‘Maybe,’ he mused, leaning down, palms of his hands on her desk, ‘she was overcome with a pressing need to vent. Do you think that might be it?’

Alice shrugged and for a few seconds their eyes tangled. Her mouth went dry and her brain seemed to seize up completely so that she had to suck in air and force herself to breathe evenly.

‘Have you ever experienced that before, Alice?’

‘Experienced what?’ Alice asked in a hoarse whisper, and he laughed under his breath.

‘The grip of passion that makes you behave irrationally...’

‘I prefer to trust reasoning and logic,’ she managed to say.

‘So that’s a no...’

‘If you recall...’ She was close to snapping because not only was he making her feel uncomfortable but he was enjoying himself. ‘I did say to you when I took this job that I didn’t want to talk about my private life!’

‘Was that what we were doing? Talking about your private life?’ He stood up, flexed his muscles, debated whether to let this conversation go and just as quickly decided not to. Georgia’s untimely visit had dented his concentration and he was finding it strangely enjoyable to offload on his secretary. Offloading was not something he normally did. In his formidably controlled life, there was seldom any reason to, and he had to concede that, had Alice not been there, not been his secretary, he wouldn’t have felt tempted.

But, hell, why deny it? She roused his curiosity. She was so contained, so secretive whilst giving the impression of being straightforward, so unwilling to share even the smallest of confidences, such as what she did on those precious weekends of hers that couldn’t possibly be interrupted...

He would stake his fortune on ‘nothing’ and he wondered whether his curiosity was sparked by the mere fact that she never mentioned it. When you could have anything you wanted, including access to people’s thoughts and emotions, what price for the person who withheld everything?

‘You may think it’s okay to treat women exactly how you like, but everyone has their story to tell, and you have no idea what sort of collateral damage you could be inflicting!’ Her eyes skittered away from his narrowed gaze and she knew that she was beetroot-red and angry with him for encouraging an outburst that was inappropriate.

‘Collateral damage...?’ he asked thoughtfully.

‘I apologise. I shouldn’t have...said anything.’ She offered him a weak smile which he chose to ignore.

‘We work closely together,’ he murmured. ‘You should always feel free to speak your mind.’

‘You like women speaking their minds, do you?’ Alice asked tartly and was rewarded with one of those rare smiles that always knocked the breath out of her body.

‘Touché... It can occasionally be a little tedious, but then I never encourage the women I date to ever think that it might be a good idea to give their thoughts an airing.’

Why not? Alice was tempted to ask. She didn’t dare look at him because she had a sneaking suspicion that he might be able to read her mind.

Besides, didn’t she know why? Why go to the bother of working at something meaningful if you could have whatever you wanted without putting the effort in? People got where they were because of circumstances shaping them over the course of time and, whatever the circumstances that had shaped Gabriel Cabrera, they had left him in a place where he just couldn’t be bothered.

‘What do you encourage them to do?’ She asked her reluctant question, which was motivated by a burning curiosity she was desperate to kill whilst being unable to resist.

‘I don’t.’ Gabriel gave her a slashing smile of satisfaction. ‘And, now that we’ve plumbed the depths of my psyche, why don’t we get down to doing something productive?’

* * *

It was nearly six by the time she surfaced. He had spent a good part of the day involved with high-level meetings, giving her the chance to quell the sludgy, disturbing feelings that had come to the fore during their conversation, when he had strayed beyond their normal boundaries like an invader testing a solid wall for cracks through which unwelcome entrance might be possible.

As she began clearing her desk to leave, she succumbed to a little smile at what an overactive imagination could produce. He didn’t want to find out about her. He wasn’t interested in whether there were cracks in her armour or not. He enjoyed pushing against barriers because that was the way he was built and, if the barriers happened to be around her, then push against them he would if the inclination took him.

As a woman, she held no interest for him.

She thought of Georgia of the husky voice and imagined that that was the sort of woman that interested him. Men always went for the same type, didn’t they?

An image of Alan sprang uninvited into her head. Alan of the floppy blond hair and the brown eyes, who had ditched her for a version of womanhood not a million miles removed from her boss’s ex. Flora was small and curvy as well. Not as stunning, and probably not as breezily self-confident about the power she had over the opposite sex, but, yes, fashioned from the same mould.

‘You’re smiling.’

She hadn’t even been aware of Gabriel entering the office behind her as she shrugged on her jacket and she started and blushed.

‘It’s nearly the end of the week,’ she responded automatically, although, thinking about it, her week days were more relaxing than her weekends, which were consumed with long trips down to visit her mother.

‘Is working for me that much of a trial?’ She had been awarded the same clothes allowance as the other employees on her level yet she still wore the same dreary suits to work. Black and shades of black seemed to be the preferred, professional option with his staff, yet her suits, although the requisite colour, didn’t seem to fit with the same snug panache.

The errant thought occupied his mind for a few seconds and he frowned and pushed it away.

‘Of course not. I...I love it, as a matter of fact.’ He was lounging against the doorframe, as dramatically good-looking at the close of day as he was first thing in the morning. Where most people occasionally looked harried, he always seemed to be brimming over with vitality, however frantic his day might have been.

‘That’s good to hear because I haven’t got around to having any kind of appraisal with you.’

Alice doubted he had ever done an appraisal in his life. If his employee didn’t fit the bill, then he simply dispensed with them.

‘Not,’ he said, reading her mind with unnerving accuracy, ‘that I make a habit of conducting appraisals of my secretaries.’

‘Is that because they usually only last two minutes?’

A tingle of pure pleasure raced through her when he burst out laughing, which subsided eventually for him to cast appreciative eyes over her.

‘Something like that,’ he murmured. ‘Seems a little pointless to give them an appraisal when they’ve already got one foot through the back door and their desk has been cleared.’

‘Well...’ He was blocking her way out and she dithered uncomfortably. Standing by him, it was brought home sharply just how tall he was. She was tall but he positively towered over her.

‘Well, of course, you’re on your way out. Is that what had you smiling?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Your plans for the evening. Is that what put that smile on your face?’

If only you knew... If only you guessed that I was smiling at the notion that you would never look twice at me; smiling for being an idiot even to think about something like that.

His plans had been for the theatre, followed by dinner at one of the most exclusive restaurants in London.

The theatre, followed by dinner out—at a haunt for the paparazzi because the clientele was usually very high-profile—followed by...

Heat flooded her as she contemplated after-dinner sex with the man standing in front of her, still blocking her path. His hands on her body, his mouth exploring her, that dark, sexy voice whispering in her ear...

Her body jack-knifed into instant, crazy reaction. Liquid pooled between her legs and the unfamiliar tug of desire hit her like a ton of bricks, shocking in its intensity and as destabilising as the sudden onslaught of some ferocious disease. She couldn’t move. Her legs were blocks of cement, nailing her to the floor as her imagination took flight in forbidden directions.

And, all the while, she could feel those dark, dark eyes pinned to her face.

‘I have to go,’ she said tightly. She went to push him aside and more heat flared inside her, making a mockery of her attempts to harness her prized composure.

He was a man she might respect but didn’t like! A man whose brilliance she could admire whilst being left cold by his detachment!

Once out of the office, she fled...

CHAPTER THREE

ALICE WOKE WITH a start. In her dream, she had been running down an endlessly long corridor, chasing Gabriel who would occasionally glance over his shoulder, only to turn away and continue running. In the dream, she had no idea what lay at the end of that corridor, or even if there was an end to it, but she was filled with a sense of terrifying foreboding, wanting to stop and yet propelled forward by some power greater than her own.

She was slick with perspiration and completely disoriented and it took her a few seconds to realise that her mobile was ringing. Not the sharp, insistent buzz of her alarm but actually ringing.

‘Good. You’re awake.’

Hard on the heels of her disturbing dream, Gabriel’s voice cut through the fog of her sleepiness as effectively as a bucket of ice-cold water, and she sat up in bed, glancing at the clock on her bedside table which showed that it wasn’t yet six-thirty.

‘Is that you, Gabriel?’

‘How many calls do you get from men at this hour of the morning? No, don’t answer that.’

‘What’s wrong with your voice?’ This was the first time he had ever called her at home on her mobile and she looked around her furtively, as though suspecting that at any second he might materialise from the shadows.

Thankfully, her bedroom was as it always was—small with magnolia walls, some nondescript curtains and two colourful pictures on either side of the dressing table, scenes of Cornwall painted by a local artist whom Alice knew vaguely through her mother. An averagely passable room in a small, uninteresting house whose only selling point was its proximity to the tube.

In the bedroom next to hers, her flat mate, Lucy, would still be sleeping.

‘It seems I’m ill.’

‘You’re ill?’ The thought of Gabriel being ill was almost inconceivable and she felt a sudden grip of panic.

Whatever was wrong with him, it would be serious. He was not the sort of man to succumb to a passing virus. He was just too...strong. She couldn’t imagine that there could be any virus on the planet daring enough to attack him.

‘Ill with what?’ She brought the decibel level of her worried voice down to normal. ‘Have you called the doctor?’

‘Of course not.’

‘What do you mean of course not?’

‘Are you dressed?’

His impatient voice, which she had become accustomed to, sliced through her concern and she glanced in the dressing-table mirror facing her to see her still sleepy face staring back at her.

Her straight hair was all over the place and the baggy tee-shirt, her bedtime attire of choice, was half-slipping off her shoulder, exposing the soft swell of a breast.

Self-consciously, she hoiked it up and then lay back against the pillow.

‘Gabriel, my alarm doesn’t go off for another forty-five minutes...’

‘In that case, switch it off and think about getting up and out of bed.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Sore throat. Headache. High fever. I’ve got flu.’

‘You’ve phoned me at...at six-twenty in the morning to tell me that you’ve got a cold?’

‘I think you’ll find that what I have is considerably more serious than a cold. You need to get up, get into the office and bring the two files I left on my desk. Not all of the information is on my computer and I need to access it in its entirety.’

She had worked with him long enough to know that he dished out orders in the full expectation that they would not be countermanded, but she was still outraged that he had seen fit to yank her out of sleep so that he could...

What, exactly?

‘Bring your files?’

‘Correct. To my house. And bring your computer as well. You’ll have to work from here. It’s not ideal but it’s the best I can come up with. I can’t make it into the office today.’

‘Surely you can just take the day off if you’re not feeling well, Gabriel?’ Like any other normal human being, she was tempted to add. ‘If you tell me what you want me to work on, I can do it in the office and I can scan and email the files over to you, if you really think that you’re up to working.’

‘If I’d wanted you to do that, I would have said so. And I can’t keep talking indefinitely. My throat’s infected. If you head for the office now, you can be with me within an hour and a half. Less, if you get your skates on. Got a pen?

‘A pen?’ Alice parroted in dismay as this new unfolding of her day ahead began to take shape in her head.

‘A pen—instrument for writing. Have you got one to hand? You’ll need to write down my address and postcode. And for God’s sake, take a taxi, Alice. I know you’re fond of the London public transport system, but we might as well get this show on the road as quickly as possible. There’s a lot to get through and I won’t be up to much beyond six... It’s ridiculous. I haven’t been ill in years. I must have caught this from you.’

‘You haven’t caught anything from me! I’m fighting fit!’

‘Good. Because you have a lot to get through today. Now, let me give you my address.’

She got a pen and wrote down his address and then listened as he rattled off a few more orders and then...dial tone.

She had no time for breakfast. She could have grabbed something but for some unaccountable reason she found herself rushing to have a shower, rushing to get dressed, rushing to head for the tube and then, on the spur of the moment, hailing a black cab—because she could almost feel those dark eyes peering at her from wherever he was.

The man was utterly impossible. He really and truly didn’t care what discomfort he caused for other people. He took it as his God given right to disrupt other people’s plans and then excused himself his own arrogance by giving one of those elegant shrugs and waving aside all objections because, after all, comparatively he paid them the earth. He was brilliant, he did as he pleased, and why on earth would anyone not want to fall in line?

She made it to his house within the hour and only when the taxi had deposited her there did her nervous system kick back into gear.

This was unknown territory. Had anyone in the office ever been to his house? Company entertaining was all done in restaurants, or expensive venues in the City, and he certainly wasn’t the avuncular sort of boss who hosted little parties so that his employees could bond with one another.

She stared at the impressive Georgian facade and hesitated. What had she expected? She didn’t know. Something far less grand—a penthouse apartment, perhaps. There was, after all, only one of him, even if he had all the money in the world to play with. Why did he need a London mansion?

Black brass railings cordoned off the house and matched all the other black brass railings of the mansions alongside it. Standing here, gazing up with her little handbag, her company case full of files and her computer, she felt as though she might be arrested at any moment for the crime of just not quite blending in.

Inhaling deeply, she rang the buzzer and his disconnected voice came on the line.

‘I’ll buzz you in. You’ll find me upstairs.’

‘Where...?’ But the door had popped open; as to his whereabouts...she assumed she would have to locate him through sheer guesswork.

Her heart was beating madly as she stared around her. The hall was absolutely enormous, almost as big as the entire ground floor of her shared house. Victorian tiles were broken by a pale Persian rug and ahead of her a staircase wound its elegant way upwards.

What was he doing upstairs? Was his office there?

She smoothed down her skirt with perspiring hands. She could have worn something more casual— could have worn her jeans and a tee-shirt, considering she wouldn’t actually be in the office—but she hadn’t. She had dressed as she always did, in a neat black skirt, her white short-sleeved blouse and her little black jacket. She was very glad she had gone for the formal option.

It was harder to locate him than she would have thought possible because the house was huge, split into three storeys with myriad rooms to the left and right of the staircase. She peered into two sitting rooms and several bedrooms before she eventually hit the right one at the very end of the wide corridor.

Through the half-open door, she glimpsed rumpled covers on a bed and she hesitantly knocked.

‘About time! How long does it take one person to make her way through a house?’

Gabriel was propped up in bed. The rumpled duvet had been shoved to one side and he was in a black dressing gown, legs bare, sliver of chest exposed, black hair tousled. Next to him was his computer, on which he had clearly been working.

Alice averted her eyes and felt a tightening in her chest, almost as if she was in the grip of an incipient panic attack.

‘Are we going to be...er...working here?’

‘Stop hovering by the door and come inside. And where else do you suggest we hold proceedings?’

‘I passed an office...’

‘I can’t get out of bed. I’m ill.’ This was the first time in living memory that he had been in his bed and the woman standing in his bedroom looked as though the last thing she wanted was to be there. ‘And, as you can see, this isn’t a bedroom. It’s a suite.’ He nodded to the sofa which was by the tall windows and the long coffee table in front of it. ‘Does it make you uncomfortable, Alice?’

‘Of course not.’ But there was a wicked gleam in his eyes which did make her uncomfortable. Gabriel would not be happy with being bed-ridden for whatever reason. He was not the sort of man whose restless energy could be contained without it emerging somewhere else. The Devil worked on idle hands and for him his hands would be idle...

‘I just think that it might be more suitable if we were in an office environment.’

‘Why? Everything I need is right here. Where are the files? And for God’s sake, sit down! How are you going to work if you keep standing by the door?’

He shifted impatiently and Alice gulped as yet more of that hard, bronzed torso was revealed.

He should be in his suit. He should be properly attired. There was an intimacy here that had her nerves all over the place and she was so keen to make sure that he didn’t see that, her movements were stiff and awkward, her mouth more tightly pursed, her hands white as they gripped the case she had brought with her.

She felt horrendously uncomfortable in her knee-length black skirt, and her sheer black tights were itchy against her legs.

‘Have you...taken anything for your cold?’ she asked as she sat gingerly on the sofa and tried not to look at him without actually looking away; tried to mentally blank him out, which was next to impossible. ‘Sorry, I meant flu?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘What good would that do? The thing just has to run its course.’

‘I’ll get you some paracetamol.’

‘You will sit and start going through the Dickson file with me.’

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