Especially when she’d seen first-hand how many women were suckers for a man like Gabriel. She’d done far too much end-of-relationship flower-buying on his behalf, thank you very much!
But he was in a strange place, even if he wouldn’t admit it, and it would seem, the devil was working on idle hands because that low-level teasing disturbed her. It was like having a feather brushed against her skin, giving her goose bumps, tickling her in places that made her blush.
Of course, he would return to normal soon enough, but just in case he decided that breaching the boundaries could become a permanent thing she felt that it was up to her to speak her mind.
She cleared her throat and looked him squarely in the eye.
‘I feel uncomfortable saying this.’ She hesitated, unsettled by his eyes which, now that she was staring into their depths, she noticed were the deepest and darkest of navy blue. ‘But since we’re going to be working with one another for the next week...’
‘Nothing new there, Abby.’
‘Yes, I know, but this is a little different. I realise I won’t be staying with you in a hotel because you’ll be at your grandmother’s place, but we won’t be in our...our...’
‘Usual territory?’ Gabriel inserted helpfully, intrigued by where this was leading.
‘So things seem to have altered a little between us and I get that. I have never been involved in your private life before, not really, but I have been recently, through no fault of my own.’ She glanced away because the intensity of his gaze was making her hot and bothered. She wished he’d say something but, perversely, he was silent, waiting for her to carry on or maybe, she thought, waiting for her to trip up with the tangled speech she’d begun without thinking through first.
‘And for that I apologise,’ Gabriel said seriously, eventually.
Their eyes met and there was a moment of perfect understanding between them. Beneath that grave tone, he was amused, and she knew it. She shot him a fulminating look of frustration and his lips twitched but he looked away, the thick fringe of his lashes concealing his expression.
‘Apology accepted,’ Abby said. ‘But what I feel I must say is that I don’t feel comfortable...er...er...’
Gabriel raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question and she gritted her teeth.
‘I don’t enjoy talking about my private life,’ she finished lamely.
‘I didn’t think we were, Abby.’
‘I have every sympathy for you, and I really feel for you having to break the news about Lucy to your grandmother, but I think we should move on and re-establish our...our...’
‘Why are you so scared about opening up?’ Gabriel asked softly and Abby was rattled enough to glare at him.
‘That’s exactly what I mean!’ she cried. She was shocked when she slammed down the leather lid of her tablet.
Gabriel was fascinated. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he’d registered that she was attractive enough but her whole face right now was alive with emotion. Her grey eyes had darkened, her full mouth was downturned in a pout of frustration and her cheeks were flushed.
Just like that, he wondered what she would look like naked. Naked on a bed, flushed from making love.
His mouth tightened and he shifted. ‘Message received loud and clear, Abby,’ he told her tightly. ‘Strangely, what you call an infringement of your privacy, most normal people call good manners and polite curiosity. But, if you’d rather we stick exclusively to work-related issues, then that’s fine with me.’
‘Thank you,’ she said tautly.
‘I’ve already read all those reports you want to get through.’
‘You have?’
‘You emailed them to me yesterday.’
‘And you’ve been in meetings most of the day.’
‘It doesn’t take me long to sift through the waffle and get to the bits that matter.’ Without further ado, he began talking work. In depth. It was exactly what she had demanded, and she had no idea why she was suddenly disappointed that she’d put an end to their little foray into a less structured relationship.
Did she really want him asking her lots of personal questions? No! Did she want to be hostage to all sort of peculiar, inappropriate sensations because he happened to turn all that lazy male charm onto her? No! Because he was in an odd place didn’t mean that he could entertain himself at her expense because there had been a temporary fissure in their usual rigid working relationship.
Once upon a time, when she’d been young, naïve and planning her happy-ever-after with Jason, she’d been open and trusting, but since then she’d erected more protective barriers than the Bank of England and she wasn’t going to let them be demolished by her boss.
Abby didn’t know why she felt the need to maintain all those barriers, because Gabriel had been right when he’d said that his questions weren’t intrusive. They were just normal conversation between two people who happened to spend the majority of their waking hours together.
It was just that there was a quality of danger that clung to him. She’d sensed it as soon as she’d started working for him—an unpredictable charisma about him that could seduce the unwary, and it went far beyond the killer looks and the sharp intellect.
So she’d built her defence system even though she knew that he would never look at her twice anyway. She’d seen his girlfriends and they weren’t average-looking women in their twenties with brown hair and grey eyes. They were voluptuous sex sirens, with the exception of Lucy, who had been so spectacularly pretty that when they were together it was almost a crime not to take a photo.
Abby surfaced to find him neatly concluding his monologue on the various legal loopholes they would have to look out for when they went to see his client the following day, and telling her to buckle up.
‘I’ll stop by my grandmother,’ he explained as the jet began its descent, and Abby gazed out of the window, then turned to look at him.
‘Fine.’ She nodded. ‘I have the address of the hotel. I’ll get a cab there, shall I? And when we’re not working I’m very happy to busy myself following up with the usual reports on what’s been said so that you have everything to hand fairly immediately.’
‘Very efficient,’ Gabriel murmured. ‘But I think it would be nice for you to meet Ava when we get there. When I disappear for hours on work-related business, she’ll at least know who I’m with.’
‘What else might she think you’re doing?’
Gabriel dealt her a slashing smile. ‘Who knows? She might think that a man with a broken heart might be looking for someone to help fix it.’
Abby reddened. Following on logically from that point, she could only conclude that, once Ava met her, her mind would be set at rest that her grandson was actually disappearing off to work because there was no way he could be doing anything else with someone like Abby.
She was in no doubt that he would certainly be looking for some
