amazing eyes. They were a peculiar shade of green—deep green, the colour of the sea in certain lights.
‘Really. But before I get to what I have in mind let me ask you this: what happened to the boyfriend?’
‘Sorry?’ Lucy frowned, at a loss to understand where this reference to a boyfriend had come from. She didn’t have a boyfriend.
‘The boyfriend,’ Gabriel said impatiently. ‘The one you told me you had when you sent me your Dear John text.’
‘I really offended you back then, didn’t I?’
Gabriel laughed with caustic amusement. ‘Offended me?’
‘I—I didn’t mean to…’ Lucy continued in an anxious stammer. ‘I’m not used to…’
‘Spare me the involved explanation. Just tell me the fate of the boyfriend.’
Lucy had no idea what this had to do with the matter in hand. She had to cast her mind back even to remember that small white lie. At the time the presence of a man in her life had seemed the only way of wriggling out of the situation. Gabriel Diaz had oozed sex, and there was no way she would have accepted his proposition. He had also oozed persistence. Added together, she had felt it perfectly acceptable to produce a fictitious other half, and afterwards she’d been very glad she had done so—because a quick trip on the internet had shown her what she had already suspected. Gabriel Diaz was a player—a man who, from everything she had read, worked his way through women without conscience. There were pictures of him with various beauties, none of whom had stayed the course of time.
‘He…ah… it didn’t work out,’ Lucy mumbled, dropping her gaze and staring with furious concentration at the tips of her very unflattering black pumps.
‘No? What went wrong?’
‘I don’t really want to talk about it,’ she muttered, licking her lips and frantically trying to imagine what the fate of this made up guy might have been. One tiny and necessary white lie was one thing. A series of follow-on lies was not going to do. But his continuing silence was already telling her that she was expected to expand. And yet, she thought with a rare spark of defiance, why should she? He had been horrible to her. Arrogant, sneering and dismissive. Why should she tell him anything she didn’t want to?
But that sliver of hope he had dangled in front of her was an effective gag on her rebellious thoughts. If nothing else she owed it to her parents to take advantage of any crumb of mercy he was prepared to throw her way. Perhaps he could arrange for her father to be let go, but for his reputation to remain intact and any prison sentence to be waived. That would certainly be a worthwhile result. Her parents played an active part in the community. It would be hard if her father’s situation were to become public knowledge. Fortunately the two men who had uncovered the problem were both Londoners and would not be hanging around.
‘He…um… broke up with me,’ Lucy imparted reluctantly. ‘And then, shortly afterwards, he went away. To…to New Zealand… To live with the woman he dumped me for…’ This seemed the best way to ensure that her fictitious boyfriend was well and truly out of the way. ‘But I still don’t understand what this has to do with anything….’
‘A boyfriend on the scene would have been a nuisance when it comes to what I have in mind….’ Gabriel didn’t do women with husbands, and he didn’t do women who had boyfriends either. Why would he? The world was full of beautiful, single, willing women. Why go to the trouble of courting someone who came with baggage?
‘And what do you have in mind?’
‘You. I have you in mind.’ Gabriel watched with wonderment a face that expressed absolutely no comprehension of what he was getting at.
She was literally at a loss. Any other woman would have followed the thread of this conversation, and certainly by now would have got the message loud and clear. This woman was staring at him with a frown, as though he had produced a complicated maths problem from under a hat and demanded she provide a solution immediately.
‘May I do something?’ he asked with silken assurance, and then, just in case she was still away with the fairies and not getting where he was going, he strolled behind her. Before she could react he was pulling free her hair, releasing it from its constricting braid.
Lucy swivelled round and stood up, faltering backwards until she bumped into the edge of his desk.
‘What are you doing?’ With one hand she clasped her loosed hair, pulling it over one shoulder. She couldn’t peel her eyes away from his face, and her heart was pounding so fiercely in her chest that she could scarcely breathe. She gave a little squeak of horror as he very slowly strolled towards her.
‘I wanted to do that the first time I laid eyes on you,’ Gabriel murmured.
He smiled, and that smile had the effect of making her feel as though she was falling through the air with no safety net beneath her. Her stomach lurched and every nerve in her body was at screaming pitch.
‘I saw you on that bike and I wanted you. Simple as that. You were like a gazelle—all beauty and grace. And, mysteriously, I find that I still want you….’
‘But you can’t…’ Lucy breathed jerkily. ‘You…you date supermodels….’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I looked you up on the internet!’ She went bright red. He was standing so close to her that she could feel his heat. He must be able to feel hers, because she was certainly burning up.
‘You did, did you?’ Gabriel was intensely satisfied that he had made more of an impression on her than he had given himself credit for—boyfriend or no boyfriend. An indifferent woman would never have looked him up on the internet. More to the point, an indifferent woman wouldn’t be looking at him now with lurking excitement in her eyes. Even if she was strenuously trying to conceal it. An expert when it came to the opposite sex, he could sense her response to him as clearly as if it had been emblazoned on her forehead in neon lettering.
‘I was curious….’ Lucy defended.
‘Curiosity is good.’ He leant forward to brace himself on the desk, his hands on either side of her, caging her in.
The fantasy of taking her here—in his office, on his desk—was so powerful that he hardened, his erection painful as it pressed thickly against the zipper of his trousers. Gone was the jaded, world-weary feeling that had settled over him for what seemed like years. For that alone she would be worth every penny.
‘So here’s my proposal…’
Regretfully, he straightened, because being so close to her, breathing in that refreshing innocence, the clean, minty smell of her fabulous hair, was doing all sorts of things to his body. Much as he enjoyed the sensation, he had to acknowledge that they were in his office, and Nicolette was just one door away. Having his secretary accidentally burst in on a scene of rampant lovemaking on his desk would not be good for her dodgy blood pressure.
At no point did it occur to him that Lucy might reject his advances the way she had rejected them two years ago. This time he held the trump card, and he had every intention of using it.
As he strolled back towards his chair he could feel her eyes on him, and he knew with
