took her so much by surprise that she practically fell back into the chair.
‘You mean you’re going to listen to…?’
Gabriel raised one imperious hand to cut her off mid-sentence. ‘You can forget about any sob stories. Your father stole money from my company and that’s the end of it. I’m not interested in listening to a long, tedious and fabricated list of extenuating circumstances. There are no extenuating circumstances when it comes to theft.’
He swung his long, lean body out of the chair and moved with economical grace to perch on the edge of his desk, his hands loosely clasped together. Nicolette knocked and popped into the office to remind him of a meeting due to be held in the conference room in fifteen minutes. Gabriel waved her aside.
‘Let Davis cover for me,’ he said, not taking his eyes off Lucy’s downbent fair head. Her entire posture spoke of weary, despairing resignation. She had come to try and save her father’s skin, and he supposed he could award her one or two brownie points for that, but he was pleased that she had got the essential message—which was that he was no sucker. Spinning him hard luck stories was a non-starter.
He knew that at this juncture he should send her away and let her father try and convince the long arm of the law that it had all been a terrible mistake. But why hide from the truth? She was the one who’d got away and he still found her curiously attractive. Even dressed in clothes no woman should wear, and with a begging bowl in her hands.
His last abortive relationship with Imogen…the line of beautiful bodies and beautiful faces and easy availability…he was bored with them all. He was tired of women who simpered whenever they were with him, sick of the certain knowledge that they would all do whatever he wanted, however outrageous his request might be.
At the age of thirty-two, he found his palate was lamentably jaded. Looking at the woman in front of him made him feel as though he had been injected with youth serum. Everything about her fascinated him—from her naïveté in showing up at his office with a sob story right down to the novelty of being in the company of a woman who didn’t ask How high? the second he told her to jump.
It was almost challenging to think that what he had missed first time round could now be his.
Dark, speculative eyes drifted down to the shape of her small, high breasts and his arousal was as fierce as it was sudden. She chose that very moment to raise moss-green eyes to him and he smiled a slow, satisfied smile—the smile of someone anticipating victory in a battle that had yet to commence.
‘How was your trip to London?’ Gabriel asked, maintaining eye contact.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Good trip? It must have been a wrench leaving the plants behind….’
‘Why are you asking me these questions? I thought you were in a rush. I thought you could only spare me a few minutes. What’s the point wasting the few minutes I have telling you about my trip?’
‘Well, it’s more worthwhile than wasting them telling me about what a sterling character your father is….’
Lucy fell silent, although he continued to stare at her. She didn’t know where his weird turn in the conversation was going, but she clung to the slender hope that whilst he was talking he might still be prepared to listen. Surely he couldn’t be so lacking in emotion that he wouldn’t even hear her out?
His dark, watchful eyes set up a series of stirring reactions inside her until she could feel her temples begin to throb. She just didn’t know what he wanted her to say and confusion brought a flush of colour to her cheeks. ‘I… the journey was fine….’
‘And your job? How’s that going?’
‘Good. Great. I…’ She was gripped by a sudden idea and her eyes brightened. ‘Better than great, in fact. I… I don’t only work in the garden centre—I do quite a bit of illustrative work as well. I… I did a degree in graphic art and I was commissioned two years ago to do some drawings of the rare plants and flowers for a compendium the centre was putting together….’
Gabriel made a non-committal sound that was neither encouraging nor discouraging. Frankly he couldn’t care less about whatever drawings she had been commissioned to do, but he was enjoying the genuine enthusiasm on her face. He toyed with the pleasant thought that he might be able to generate that same enthusiasm. Once more he was subjected to a wildly pressing urge to release her hair so that he could tangle his fingers in its rippling length.
Any woman in possession of looks like hers should not have been caught dead in a pair of faded jeans and a T-shirt—least of all in his presence. He had expressed disgust that she might come to him with a view to using her body to get what she wanted without even bothering to dress for the occasion, but now he realised that he would have been disappointed had she done so.
Hadn’t he had his fill of Barbie dolls? Wasn’t he sick to his back teeth of women who were perfectly manicured, perfectly groomed and perfectly dressed in the most expensive and revealing clothes that money could buy?
Lucy was disconcerted by that lazy appraisal in his roving dark eyes. It made her feel uncomfortable. She suppressed the crazy notion that buried beneath her discomfort a slow swirl of excitement was eddying in her veins, making her breasts tingle and sending a shooting, melting warmth between her legs.
She pressed her legs firmly together and leaned forward, gripping the soft leather of the chair. ‘What I’m trying to say,’ she said quickly, because he struck her as a man who lost interest fast and she needed to grab his attention before that happened, ‘is that I get paid well for my art work. I’ve been putting money aside for the past couple of years. I’ve been trying to save so that I can afford to buy the little cottage I rent at the moment. Mrs Hardy, who owns it, says that she’ll continue renting it to me until I can afford to put down a deposit and get a mortgage from the bank….’
‘Where are you going with this?’
‘Right. Well…would you be amenable to me paying you back the money that Dad…er… borrowed from your company? You can take all the money I’ve saved. It’s a little over four thousand pounds. And I’m willing and happy to give you everything I earn. I mean, I’d have to keep a little aside for bills and food, but you could have the rest….’
‘First, your father didn’t borrow the money. Second, I’m afraid your savings and some of your monthly earnings wouldn’t begin to put a dent in his debt. Frankly, you’d be paying me until the day you died and beyond. So you can scrap that suggestion straight away.’
‘In other words there’s no point to me being here at all, is there?’
Lucy watched her bright idea disappear over the horizon, taking with it all hope that she might appeal to Gabriel’s better side. It was clear that he didn’t have one of those. Not only that, but he was deriving great enjoyment from watching her squirm. Perhaps this was his way of exacting revenge for having been turned down by her two years ago. A man like Gabriel Diaz, blessed with drop-dead good looks and the trappings of wealth, would not be used to any woman turning him down. She was now paying the high price for being one of that rare breed of woman who had.
‘Call me crazy—because anyone else in my situation would have thrown you out on your ear the second you walked into this office and opened your mouth—but you might have a way out of this….’
‘Really?’
