of the direction of his gaze, Abby went bright red and adjusted her skirt primly. ‘Lucy wasn’t there on her own,’ she began.
‘Who were you there with?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Who did you go with? You’re normally so reserved when it comes to talking about yourself that I expect you can understand my curiosity now.’
‘No, I can’t, Gabriel,’ Abby told him flatly. ‘And if you’d stop interrupting me and allow me to continue...’
‘What does my fiancée have to do with you arriving late for work this morning?’
‘We spent a good part of the evening talking and I ended up getting home far later than I’d anticipated, hence I overslept. That’s why I’m late. And I overslept because I was up most of the night following our conversation.’
‘You’re talking in riddles.’
‘Lucy was there with a guy, Gabriel, someone called Rupert. I hate saying this, and I know that I should never have been tasked with saying it, but I promised so here goes: Lucy is having cold feet about the marriage. She was at the club with this man and they were obviously...somewhat intimate.’
Gabriel’s dark eyes flicked to her face and he stilled because this was hardly what he’d been expecting to hear. From anyone else, he might have wondered whether they were having him on or else overplaying something relatively innocent but, coming from his PA, those two options were ruled out immediately.
‘I’m sorry,’ Abby said huskily. ‘This isn’t something I want to be doing right now, but Lucy left me with little choice.’
‘Rupert.’
‘It would be far better if the two of you sat down and had a conversation about this without me in the middle being used as a go-between.’
‘So my fiancée is screwing someone else.’
‘I never said that!’
‘The implication is there.’ He clenched his jaw and strolled towards the vast pane of glass that occupied one side of his office and overlooked the city.
Hand thrust into his trouser pocket, he stared out, barely registering the busy streets several storeys below.
He should be gutted, devastated and raging with a desire to hit something or someone—Rupert at the very least, a guy he vaguely knew. Or maybe a brick wall. Something upon which he could vent his anger.
Actually, all he felt was a certain amount of disappointment. The best laid plans, he thought.
He felt Abby touch him gently on his shoulder and he spun round to register the concern on her smooth, oval face.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I think Lucy was anxious that you would be angry with her.’
‘So she thought she would use you as the middle man to diffuse some of my anger?’
‘I guess so. She really does like you, Gabriel. She just isn’t sure that you’re the one for her, or at least that was what she told me. I wouldn’t normally have this conversation but she was desperate for me to pass on the message.’
‘How thoughtful of her. Since I appear to be having a break-up by proxy, what reasons did she give?’
Abby marvelled at how well he was managing to rein in all emotion. His personality was so forceful, so unapologetically alpha male, that his composure at a time when he should have been tearing down the office was disconcerting to say the least. Not that she wasn’t relieved, because she was.
Relieved and suddenly curious.
Curiosity, however, wasn’t part of the package when it came to being Gabriel’s PA. Abby liked to keep her working life in one box and her private life, what little there was of it, in another.
‘I don’t think she liked the thought of marrying someone who spends most of his time working.’
‘Understandable.’
‘I guess in her profession, she goes out a lot, to parties and so on and so forth, and she couldn’t envisage you accompanying her to them.’
‘Definite point there.’
‘I guess she thinks she might end up with someone who isn’t fun.’
‘No one can deny that I enjoy work,’ Gabriel murmured, ‘Although I’m hurt that I’m seen as someone who can’t have fun.’
‘Gabriel, you don’t seem too...too...upset by this. She’s your fiancée! You must be breaking up inside.’
‘I like to imagine that I’m a resilient sort of guy, and it has to be said that it’s better that doubts cast their long shadow before the vows are taken rather than the other way around. Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Yes, but...’
‘You want to see me weeping?’ he questioned coolly and with such self-control that Abby blushed.
She was no romantic. She’d been through the mill and had emerged with a healthy amount of scepticism when it came to flowers, chocolates and fairy-tale endings, but she now realised that she might have downplayed her own fundamental belief that happy-ever-afters existed.
‘It’s none of my business how you react or don’t react.’ She shrugged, back to her normal cool. ‘I didn’t want to do this but Lucy left me very little choice. I’m sure you’ll want to get in touch with her yourself and pass the message on. I just thought that... Of course, I didn’t expect you to weep...’
‘My grandmother,’ he said succinctly, surprising himself, because for all his outwardly easy banter he, like the woman standing in front of him, was intensely private and was seldom lured into revealing more than he wanted to. Yet here he was...
‘Your grandmother?’ Abby frowned. She’d taken a surreptitious step back but she was still so close to him that she could feel his heat and the energetic, physical dynamism of his personality. He dwarfed her and very occasionally made her so intensely aware of her femininity that she had to fight to retain her self-control.
It was happening right now as he stared down at her with unfathomable dark eyes.
It never failed to puzzle her how someone could wear the most expensive of business suits yet manage to look nothing like a conventional businessman.
‘My grandmother has suffered a series of mini strokes,’ Gabriel said, as serious as she had ever seen him. ‘They have taken their toll. Despite the fact that she’s been given a clean bill of health, she has become depressed about her future, and vocal about her sadness at not seeing me settled with a nice wife who will bear me nice kids and look after me in my dotage.’
‘Okay...’ Abby was shocked at this admission, which took them veering wildly off the employer-employee road they were accustomed to travelling down. Perhaps this was his vulnerability being exposed, she thought, acknowledging that alongside her surprise was a certain illicit thrill
