glad about that,’ he said briskly. ‘So, about my job offer…’
‘I think I’ll stay where I am, but thanks anyway.’
‘There’s no profit in being a martyr, Alex. You obviously need the money…’
‘What makes you say that?’ she asked with surprise and he pushed himself away from the table, all the better to really look at her. She had, he admitted to himself, the most amazing eyes. Large, dark pools that were once as transparent as glass and full lips that promised laughter. He knew the shape and the feel of her small, high breasts, now totally concealed under her functional jumper. A flash of uncomfortable warmth surged through him and he quickly gathered himself.
‘If you didn’t need the money, you would have taken your time to find another job. Also, I recognise the trainers. Five years is a pretty long time to hang on to a pair of shoes because you like the sparkly bits on the side…’
Just like that, Alex was catapulted right back to the past, to those glorious, heady days when every single day trembled with promise. It was precisely the last place she wanted to be. She rustled in her bag and fished out her wallet with trembling hands, not looking at him and not caring what he read into her abrupt reaction.
‘I really don’t think memory lane is appropriate, do you?’ she said curtly, pulling out some change and dropping it on the table. ‘Considering you’re engaged to be married!’ She had thrown that at him as a timely reminder, in the hope that he would be stung into retreat, but it had the opposite response.
Instead of embarrassment, Gabriel threw his head back and laughed and, when his bout of amusement had subsided, he said softly, ‘You always did look very fetching when annoyed. And, speaking of inappropriate, isn’t it inappropriate to be jealous when you have someone in your life as well?’
‘Don’t flatter yourself!’ Alex said through gritted teeth, red with anger.
‘And there’s no need to pay your way.’
‘There’s every need to pay my way!’ She knew that she was teetering on the edge of sounding childish but her head felt as though it was going to explode. She just wanted to scream to an unkind fate Okay, you win! I give up!
‘Your car!’ She spun round to look at him and was further enraged to see the traces of amusement lingering on his beautiful mouth. What did he have to snigger about? ‘That great big gas-guzzling BMW I spotted outside the office, I take it?’
‘Tsk, tsk. Don’t tell me you’re going to deliver a sermon about global warming.’
‘I wouldn’t waste my breath!’
Gabriel was enjoying this rampant display of fire. The Alex he had known had been outspoken, yes, but her sharp tongue had never been directed at him. Oh, no, in his company she had been all soft and pliant and wonderfully warm and willing. He should have been outraged at most of what she had said to him since their unexpected crossing of paths, but he wasn’t. He was intrigued.
‘Okay. Hands up, in that case. The gas-guzzling monster is mine.’ He beeped it open from a distance and was surprised as she stormed towards it and then stopped dead, with her hand on the passenger door. ‘You’re asking me for a lift?’
‘You offered me one earlier.’
‘And you informed me that the bus was good enough.’
‘I’ve changed my mind.’
‘In that case, hop in. Give me your address. I’ll put it into my sat-nav…’ Now he was seriously curious but more than willing to go along for the ride. He wondered if these were delaying tactics before she accepted his wildly generous offer to give her back her job on a silver platter and decided that it probably was. Pride was all well and good, he thought dryly, but it didn’t pay the bills. He was slightly disappointed at this pedestrian conclusion to their little meeting, but she would have been a complete fool to have resisted his offer. Especially if she needed to support a half-baked layabout.
‘Did you own this when I met you? When you were riding around on a motorbike? Was this in storage somewhere? Having a little holiday while you passed the time of day with the hired hand?’
Gabriel’s good mood vanished like dew on a summer’s day and his lips thinned. ‘Don’t put yourself down. I don’t like it.’
Alex hadn’t realised the depth of her bitterness and was shocked by it. Yes, she still thought about him, which was only natural, but she’d really believed that she had come out the other side of the tunnel. Now a little voice whispered that surely she hadn’t. If she had, wouldn’t she have found someone else by now? Moved on? It was what people did after they had learnt their lessons. He had moved on. He was on the threshold of getting married! He had moved on big time!
She gave him her address and watched as he expertly typed it into the gizmo on his dashboard. She noticed that he hadn’t answered her question about whether or not the car had been his when he had been busy pulling the wool over her eyes and decided that it probably hadn’t. Didn’t really rich people change their cars as frequently as most normal people changed their toothbrushes?
‘You were going to go into hotel management,’ Gabriel remarked, pulling away from the kerb and glancing across to where she was as still and as stiff as a marble statue. Why had she asked for a lift if he was going to be treated to the silent treatment? he wondered.
‘Plans changed.’
‘How so?’
Alex twisted so that she was looking at his profile. When he turned and their eyes met, she forced herself not to look away. She was also, she decided, going to make a heroic effort to drop the bitterness, which wasn’t going to get either of them anywhere. She had had her say and now was the time to take a deep breath and move on.
‘You’ll see.’
For the first time, Gabriel felt a twinge of unease. He looked at her but she was staring out of the window. Her neck was long and slender, all the more apparent because her hair was so short, and at this angle the lashes framing her large almond-shaped eyes were long and thick. She had confessed early on in their relationship that she had always been a tomboy, the consequence of having so many brothers. She looked anything but a tomboy, even in her sloppy clothes and the woolly hat which she had stuck back on.
Shockingly, his body kicked in and that shook him so much that he tightened his grip on the steering wheel and applied his mind to the business at hand. The areas through which they drove alternated between cramped and rundown to just cramped until she pointed to a tiny terraced house at the end of the street and instructed him to get parked wherever he could because it was always hell finding an empty slot.
‘So you have a car?’
‘No. I only go on what I see.’
Her heart was beating fast and hard and nerves had kicked in with a vengeance. She literally felt sick and she had to take a few deep breaths before she opened her car door.
‘I’m…I’m really sorry…’ she said in a low voice, glancing at him over her shoulder.
‘Sorry for what?’ Gabriel threw her a sharp look but she was already turning away and slamming the door behind her.
‘Sorry
