she had signed up for a pole dancing course. Now that would bring a guilty tinge to her cheeks.
‘And?’ he prodded.
‘It starts at the beginning of October, but I shall have to have a day off for induction some time in September. I’ll let you know when.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘What?’
‘The sum total of details you intend to throw out at me?’
‘There’s nothing else to tell you! If you’re that interested, I could always bring in the prospectus.’ Gabriel, in the wrong mood, could turn being maddening into an art form and he was doing it now, looking at her in a way that made her stomach flip over, steamrollering his way into her private life even though she had spent weeks giving off all the right Keep Out vibes.
‘Shall we crack on with the workload?’
Prepared to face a barrage of questions that she would be obliged to dodge like flying bullets, Rose was momentarily taken aback by his change of tack. But she jumped on the bandwagon gratefully and after half an hour her pulse had settled back down to normal, as had her voice.
He had remained on the couch, seemingly unaffected by the incongruity of conducting work in nothing more than a bathrobe, and she had stayed at his massive desk, typing directly on to the computer, punctuating the pattern with little notes in her pad, which she would research and transcribe back at the office.
She looked at her watch once. The next time she glanced at it, it was lunch time. They had been working solidly for over three hours!
‘We’ll call it a day now.’ Gabriel watched as she flexed her fingers and attempted a stretch. ‘Come over here.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Come over here.’
Rose obediently gathered up her stuff, everything ordered and clipped together neatly so that she could move swiftly through them when she returned to the office.
‘Sit.’ Gabriel swung his legs to one side and patted a space next to him. ‘And don’t worry, I won’t bite…’ There was something softly alluring and very, very feminine about her hesitation. It made a refreshing change from women who were as sexually aggressive as men and didn’t need an invitation to get close up and personal.
‘I don’t want to catch anything.’
‘You won’t catch anything.’ How very true, he thought wryly. ‘I’m simply going to massage your shoulders, get rid of some of that tension. Come on. Sit. I’m a very good masseur.’
Rose gasped. Her knuckles whitened as she clutched her wad of papers with horrified desperation. Was he being serious? Massage her back? There was nothing simple about the suggestion. Not in her fevered mind. She took a step backwards. She thought she might be overreacting. The amused, self-assured expression lurking on his face was giving her an indication of that, but there was no way that he would be laying a finger on her. She took a couple more steps backwards and of course that was when it happened. Sod’s law, she thought, as she grappled and failed to retrieve her footing, that the one place that damned low footstool was, the same footstool he had kicked aside to make way for her and the tray, would be right there behind her left ankle. Just the right spot to ensure that she fell in an undignified heap on to the ground, surrounded by her neatly compiled paperwork and with her flimsy summer skirt in hideous disarray. Rose scrambled to gather herself, her face burning with embarrassment, only belatedly registering that, for someone who was supposedly ill, Gabriel had leapt out from the couch with remarkable agility and was now, horror of horrors, bending over her with a concerned expression, bathrobe agape, allowing her a glimpse of boxer shorts.
Lord, but could things get any worse?
Rose pushed herself up and yanked her skirt down, just as Gabriel scooped her up, ignoring her yelps of dismay. There went the skirt. Riding up. Undoing the job she had just done. Exposing so much thigh that Rose was scared to let her attention linger. And his arms around her were like steel, forcing her head against his chest, bare skin because his robe was in as much disarray as she was.
The whole mortifying episode must have taken all of five seconds, but to Rose, it seemed like eternity. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion until he had deposited her on the couch, at which point it was real time again except she found that she couldn’t jump to her feet, the one thing she wanted to do, because he was kneeling in front of her.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Rotate your foot. That was a pretty bad fall. We need to make sure that you haven’t twisted anything.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘If you hadn’t been scuttling off like a little scared rabbit, you would never have tripped.’
Rose wanted to smash him over the head with the nearest heavy object.
‘If you hadn’t been…’
‘Hadn’t been what?’
‘Do you mind giving me back my foot?’ He had removed her shoe and was massaging her foot, working his fingers along the soft underside, rotating it with exquisite pressure until she wanted to scream or groan or something. ‘Nothing’s wrong with it! Everything’s fine!’
‘Hadn’t been what?’ Gabriel straightened up, which was a more dangerous position because now he was on her eye level and way too close for comfort. She could so easily slide her hand under his silk robe. Four years’ worth of fantasies crashed through her like a tidal wave and Rose closed her eyes briefly.
‘Well?’
Rose opened her eyes to find that he was even closer to her. And amused. The smile was right there behind eyes that were pretending to be serious and interested. And here she was, desperately trying to fight down the effect he was having on her. It just wasn’t fair! Four years fighting off a lethal attraction to a man who had now decided that it might be a bit of fun to flirt with her once in a while, when he was between women and had nothing better to do.
Every fibre in her being regretted the decision she had made to stay put for a while longer.
‘If you hadn’t been flirting with me,’ Rose said coldly. ‘If you hadn’t forgotten that it’s totally inappropriate. I expected more of you.’
She had been hoping to shame him. She failed. He gave her a slow, devastating smile.
‘Flirting…’ He inclined his head to one side as if considering a new found concept. ‘You’re right. Maybe flirting was a bad idea. Maybe…’his voice was velvety soft and rich with husky sexuality ‘…I should have just done this…’
For three seconds time stood still. His mouth touched hers with gentle curiosity, then hungry urgency that had her clinging to him, matching his want with hers in equal measure. And it took ten seconds for sickening reality to intrude.
‘Don’t!’ Rose pushed him so forcefully that he stumbled backwards, giving her time to get to her feet and put some distance between them. ‘How dare you?’
Gabriel stood up, but he wasn’t angry. Not at all. And that was even scarier. The expression on his face
