they turned a corner into the mosaic floors and gorgeous architecture of the lavish office suites, Gabriel indicated that he needed to collect something from his office.
He smiled as Gemma looked curiously around the light-flooded room. “One of the perks of the job. If you want to freshen up, there’s a bathroom through there.”
Bemused, Gemma checked out the cream marbled bathroom, which contained a walk-in shower and a heated towel rail draped with fluffy white towels. She was used to the Atraeus family and their extreme wealth, so she was accustomed to opulent surroundings. She guessed she just wasn’t used to seeing Gabriel in the center of the same kind of elaborate wealth and power. In Dolphin Bay he had seemed attainable. Here he did not.
As she stepped back out into Gabriel’s office and his gaze connected with hers, the tension she had briefly managed to leave behind returned full force.
While he checked his computer, she sank into a leather chair that felt like a cloud and tried not to fall in love with the ring on her finger, or the shattering, improbable idea that Gabriel might want the engagement to be real.
Even if Gabriel did genuinely want her, the second he found out about Sanchia, everything would change. He wouldn’t be happy that she had kept Sanchia from him and they would be forever linked in a way that took away his choice. There would be no more easy companionship or heart-pounding lovemaking. Nothing would be either simple or easy between them again.
A quick tap at the door and a husky female voice had her head turning. A pretty, blue-eyed brunette came in, a sleek computer tablet in one hand. Dressed in an elegant white suit that made her skin look like porcelain, and possessed of a delicate serene beauty, for a confused moment Gemma thought she was Lilah Cole, then the differences registered. Her hair was shorter, just brushing her shoulders in a sleek bob, and she was shorter and more delicately built.
Not tall and just a little lanky, or too forthright, as Gemma was.
Gabriel made introductions, but before Gemma could do more than acknowledge Simone, apparently one of the bank’s investment analysts, Gabriel walked her out into the corridor, where he completed his discussion with her.
As the conversation ended, Simone glanced in the door and gave Gemma a long, silent look before turning on her heel and strolling back to wherever it was she had come from.
Gemma realized that somewhere along the way she had forgotten to breathe. As Gabriel collected a briefcase from his desk, she rose to her feet. The glitter of the gorgeous ring caught her eye again, and she wished, too late, that she hadn’t hidden it in her lap while Simone was in the room.
Finally, she identified the emotion twisting in her stomach. Picking up her handbag, she waited for Gabriel and wondered if she could find something solid she could bang her head against.
If she’d had any doubts about the in-love diagnosis they were gone. After all of the progress she’d made in walking away from Gabriel and trying to neutralize the irresistible attraction, she had somehow managed to progress another step in the wrong direction.
She was fiercely, primitively jealous.
Gemma dressed for the evening in a slinky tangerine gown Gabriel’s sister Sophie had helped her choose. Gabriel arrived, still dressed in the suit he’d worn to the office, to pick her up, but insisted on coming in for a moment.
Reluctant to allow him in because the place was dotted with photographs of Sanchia, and the odd toy, she agreed, then rushed around, jamming photos and toys in cupboards.
She left one photograph of Sanchia as a chubby baby out, because it would be strange if she didn’t have any. Even that was a risk, because with her dark hair and eyes Sanchia looked heart-stoppingly like a Messena.
When Gabriel stepped inside her apartment, she logged his instant, searing appreciation and felt suddenly self-conscious. The tangerine dress was much more her natural style—bright and pretty with an edge of sophistication. But after seeing Simone in his office, with her subtle, perfectly cut clothes and serene beauty, she wondered a little desperately what Gabriel found attractive about her.
He slipped the Fabergé case out of his pocket and extracted the diamond necklace. “I want you to wear this tonight, as well.”
Gemma stared at the cascade of diamonds shooting off fiery sparks under her lights. “Because Mario will expect it.”
Gabriel’s gaze was abruptly soft enough to make her heart melt. “No. Because I’d like you to wear them.”
“That is not a good answer.”
“It’s the truth.”
She drew a breath and turned, lifting the weight of her hair away from her neck.
The oval mirror in the hall framed Gabriel as he fastened the necklace at her nape. She fingered the diamonds where they warmed against her skin. The pure, fiery light of the jewels was a perfect foil for the dress. “They look beautiful.” Although almost all of her attention was on his hands where they cupped her bare shoulders.
“They suit you.”
Taking a deep breath, she smiled brightly. “Diamonds suit anyone.”
She moved away from his touch before she did something sillier, like turning into his arms and kissing him. Instead, she picked up her evening bag and the wrap, which was neatly folded on the small table in the hall.
Gabriel paused beside the small table beneath the mirror. “Is this a picture of Sanchia?”
Her heart banged against the wall of her chest as she saw Gabriel with the baby photo in his hands. “Yes.”
A small silence formed as he replaced the frame on the table. Feeling worse than she had expected to feel, Gemma opened the door and pointedly waited.
Gabriel’s gaze was enigmatic as he walked out onto her front porch, and she wondered a little anxiously if he’d seen any resemblance to photos of other Messena babies.
Gabriel held the car door for her then walked around and climbed into the driver’s seat. As he accelerated away she sent him a fleeting glance. “So who’s cooking tonight?”
“If you’re asking me if I can cook, I can, but it’s strictly survival stuff. Maris rang a local restaurant that caters dinner parties. They’re delivering.”
Warmed by the relaxed timbre of his voice, the way that he loosened off his tie as he drove, as if he was unwinding from the day’s work, Gemma looked away from the clean lines of his profile and tried to focus instead on the neon signs and illuminated shop windows of downtown Auckland.
Gabriel ran the gamut of Queen Street and the series of traffic lights then turned along the waterfront. Eventually, he turned into a gated apartment complex in Mission Bay.
Opening the front door of an apartment that was the size of a small mansion, with ground-floor access and three stories, he allowed her to precede him into the hall then on into a large lounge with a towering ceiling. He checked his watch. “I need to shower and change before Mario and Eva get here. Make yourself at home.”
