To Sin with the Tycoon Page 5

  She had no time for breakfast. She could have grabbed something but for some unaccountable reason she found herself rushing to have a shower, rushing to get dressed, rushing to head for the tube and then, on the spur of the moment, hailing a black cab—because she could almost feel those dark eyes peering at her from wherever he was.

  The man was utterly impossible. He really and truly didn’t care what discomfort he caused for other people. He took it as his God given right to disrupt other people’s plans and then excused himself his own arrogance by giving one of those elegant shrugs and waving aside all objections because, after all, comparatively he paid them the earth. He was brilliant, he did as he pleased, and why on earth would anyone not want to fall in line?

  She made it to his house within the hour and only when the taxi had deposited her there did her nervous system kick back into gear.

  This was unknown territory. Had anyone in the office ever been to his house? Company entertaining was all done in restaurants, or expensive venues in the City, and he certainly wasn’t the avuncular sort of boss who hosted little parties so that his employees could bond with one another.

  She stared at the impressive Georgian facade and hesitated. What had she expected? She didn’t know. Something far less grand—a penthouse apartment, perhaps. There was, after all, only one of him, even if he had all the money in the world to play with. Why did he need a London mansion?

  Black brass railings cordoned off the house and matched all the other black brass railings of the mansions alongside it. Standing here, gazing up with her little handbag, her company case full of files and her computer, she felt as though she might be arrested at any moment for the crime of just not quite blending in.

  Inhaling deeply, she rang the buzzer and his disconnected voice came on the line.

  ‘I’ll buzz you in. You’ll find me upstairs.’

  ‘Where...?’ But the door had popped open; as to his whereabouts...she assumed she would have to locate him through sheer guesswork.

  Her heart was beating madly as she stared around her. The hall was absolutely enormous, almost as big as the entire ground floor of her shared house. Victorian tiles were broken by a pale Persian rug and ahead of her a staircase wound its elegant way upwards.

  What was he doing upstairs? Was his office there?

  She smoothed down her skirt with perspiring hands. She could have worn something more casual— could have worn her jeans and a tee-shirt, considering she wouldn’t actually be in the office—but she hadn’t. She had dressed as she always did, in a neat black skirt, her white short-sleeved blouse and her little black jacket. She was very glad she had gone for the formal option.

  It was harder to locate him than she would have thought possible because the house was huge, split into three storeys with myriad rooms to the left and right of the staircase. She peered into two sitting rooms and several bedrooms before she eventually hit the right one at the very end of the wide corridor.

  Through the half-open door, she glimpsed rumpled covers on a bed and she hesitantly knocked.

  ‘About time! How long does it take one person to make her way through a house?’

  Gabriel was propped up in bed. The rumpled duvet had been shoved to one side and he was in a black dressing gown, legs bare, sliver of chest exposed, black hair tousled. Next to him was his computer, on which he had clearly been working.

  Alice averted her eyes and felt a tightening in her chest, almost as if she was in the grip of an incipient panic attack.

  ‘Are we going to be...er...working here?’

  ‘Stop hovering by the door and come inside. And where else do you suggest we hold proceedings?’

  ‘I passed an office...’

  ‘I can’t get out of bed. I’m ill.’ This was the first time in living memory that he had been in his bed and the woman standing in his bedroom looked as though the last thing she wanted was to be there. ‘And, as you can see, this isn’t a bedroom. It’s a suite.’ He nodded to the sofa which was by the tall windows and the long coffee table in front of it. ‘Does it make you uncomfortable, Alice?’

  ‘Of course not.’ But there was a wicked gleam in his eyes which did make her uncomfortable. Gabriel would not be happy with being bed-ridden for whatever reason. He was not the sort of man whose restless energy could be contained without it emerging somewhere else. The Devil worked on idle hands and for him his hands would be idle...

  ‘I just think that it might be more suitable if we were in an office environment.’

  ‘Why? Everything I need is right here. Where are the files? And for God’s sake, sit down! How are you going to work if you keep standing by the door?’

  He shifted impatiently and Alice gulped as yet more of that hard, bronzed torso was revealed.

  He should be in his suit. He should be properly attired. There was an intimacy here that had her nerves all over the place and she was so keen to make sure that he didn’t see that, her movements were stiff and awkward, her mouth more tightly pursed, her hands white as they gripped the case she had brought with her.

  She felt horrendously uncomfortable in her knee-length black skirt, and her sheer black tights were itchy against her legs.

  ‘Have you...taken anything for your cold?’ she asked as she sat gingerly on the sofa and tried not to look at him without actually looking away; tried to mentally blank him out, which was next to impossible. ‘Sorry, I meant flu?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘What good would that do? The thing just has to run its course.’

  ‘I’ll get you some paracetamol.’

  ‘You will sit and start going through the Dickson file with me.’

  ‘Where is your medicine cabinet?’

  ‘I don’t have one.’

  Alice shot him an exasperated look and walked across to stand over him with her arms folded. ‘You look terrible.’

  ‘Good. You’re waking up to the fact that I’m seriously ill.’

  ‘And you look terrible because you’re refusing to help yourself. You are not seriously ill, Gabriel. You have a spring cold. You’re just not accustomed to being under the weather.’

  ‘What do you mean, I’m refusing to help myself?’ Gabriel growled. ‘You’re a woman! Where’s your milk of human kindness? Do you know how many women would kill to be in this position—to be able to prove that they’re domestic goddesses by cooking me something to eat and playing at Florence Nightingale!’

  ‘In which case...’ She handed him his mobile phone. ‘Please feel free to call any one of them. I’m more than happy to be replaced.’

  ‘Sit down!’ he roared, before spluttering into a coughing fit which Alice observed without budging, arms still folded, cool as a cucumber and grudgingly amused at seeing her all-powerful boss losing his control because he was in the grip of nothing more serious than a simple passing cold.

  He could be vulnerable. In a way least expected, he was showing her that he could be petulant, utterly exasperating in a very human way and...

  Stupidly endearing with it.

  ‘I have some tablets in my handbag. I’ll fetch you a glass of water and you’re going to take them. They might not cure your cold but they’ll relieve your symptoms.’

  ‘Does that include my roasting fever? I’m burning up. Feel me if you don’t believe me.’

  Alice sighed and felt his forehead and, as she did so, she felt a throbbing ache rip through her, scattering her self-composure for a second or two.

  ‘You have a slight temperature.’ She yanked her hand back and surreptitiously wiped it on her skirt, hoping to rid herself of the spark that had flared between them, dangerously, electrifyingly alive and as threatening as her dream had been to her peace of mind.

  Why the sudden awareness of the man? she wondered
. She disapproved of him as much now as she had done when she had first met him. So, they worked well together. So, maybe there were different sides to him; he wasn’t the one-dimensional guy she had chosen to categorise him as...

  But why was it that the minute he was within touching distance of her she became as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof?

  It was galling to think that she might have fallen into the same pathetic trap as all his other secretaries and she instantly killed that notion by telling herself that she hadn’t. He was fabulously good-looking and she was only human, after all. What reaction he evoked was one she could squash without any difficulty.

  Although right now, having to sit in the same room as him when he was, quite frankly, indecently underdressed...

  She strode out of the room into the adjacent en suite bathroom, ignoring the slightly damp white towel carelessly slung on the heated towel rail, and emerged with a glass of tap water and the tablets which she had extracted from her bag.

  ‘Take them.’

  ‘You’re extremely bossy.’ But he took the tablets from her and swallowed them with a gulp of water. ‘Not a feminine trait.’

  Alice blushed, hot, flustered and irritated. ‘I’m not here to be “feminine”,’ she retorted tartly. ‘I’m here to go through some files which couldn’t possibly wait until next week. You have your string of girlfriends to distract you with their feminine wiles.’

  ‘I’m a girlfriend-free zone at the moment, as it happens. Although I’m sure you’re already aware of that, considering you’re the one who’s responsible for booking the venues I go to with them.’

  The unfeminine, drab-but-efficient secretary who answers to your beck and call and books all the exciting places you take your women to...

  So far, she had just booked the opera, but he was still fresh out of his relationship with Georgia and perhaps not quite there when it came to diving into a brand new relationship with another woman. The opera for two...

  ‘What happened to your opera companion?’ She allowed herself to be distracted, swept away on the disagreeable thought that life was passing her by as she stood on the sidelines, somehow waiting for it to happen.

  She had never felt this way before. She had been happy to settle into a routine and to accept that, if things hadn’t turned out the way she had planned, then they could be worse. This was her lot and so be it.

  Was it Gabriel’s overwhelming vitality that made her feel slow and sluggish in comparison? Was it the fact that she was the dullard behind the computer who booked the exciting events for exciting women?

  ‘Turns out she didn’t have what it takes. Admittedly, she was sexy as hell,’ he mused lazily. ‘But sadly the legs, the curves, the winning pout...weren’t enough to save her from being interminably boring.’

  Alice’s rictus smile felt strained at the edges. Another one bites the dust, she thought with simmering resentment. Time to move on to another model and, fingers crossed, the legs, the curves and yet another winning pout might be combined with half a personality. While other normal people stuck things out because life was just not one long array of delectable dishes to be sampled and discarded, the Man Who Had It All just couldn’t be bothered with little niceties like that.

  ‘Maybe,’ he continued in the same musing, sexy voice, ‘I should incorporate that into your job description... Maybe I should delegate you to finding me someone who won’t prove tiresome after five seconds. Think you can handle it?’

  Anger replaced resentment and, suddenly, Alice saw red. Who the heck did he think she was? Some kind of facilitator to ensure that even less effort was required by him when it came to finding a woman? Did he have any idea how condescending he sounded? How terminally dull he made her feel? Did he even care?

  ‘You...you...you have to be the laziest man I have ever met in my entire life!’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘You heard me, Gabriel. You’re lazy!’ Hot, angry eyes raked over that sexy, prone body with the silk dressing gown allowing her far too wide-ranging a view of hard muscle and sinew. ‘You may work like the Devil, and you may have the Midas touch, but you can’t even be bothered to sort your own emotional life out! Why don’t you put some thought into booking the stuff you decide to do with your women? Why don’t you field your own calls and make your own excuses when you don’t want to see someone? You even got me to choose a parting gift for Georgia after she stormed out of your office! Something conciliatory, you said, money no object—and you never even bothered to find out what I’d chosen! How lazy is that?’

  She had picked out a huge bouquet of flowers and a designer scarf in the colours of the coat the other woman had been wearing when she had had her hissy fit in his office. It had been eye-wateringly expensive but she doubted he would even raise an eyebrow when it showed up on his statement.

  ‘You’re going beyond your brief,’ Gabriel told her coolly. Lazy? Him? Hell, he worked all the hours God made! He had climbed the ladder no one thought he could and he had climbed it to the very top and built a castle there!

  But she hadn’t been referring to his unparalleled success on the work front, had she? She had gone straight to the emotional side of his life. Typical of a woman, he told himself without the slightest inclination to analyse what she had said. As far as he was concerned, he had come from nothing and now had everything. He could have any woman he wanted. They flocked to him and he was astute enough to suspect that his sizeable bank balance had a lot to do with it. Would they still have flocked in their droves if he had never climbed that ladder? If the foster-care kid had become the welfare-dependent adult? Somehow, he didn’t think so.

  No, the only thing he could rely upon was his ability to make money and to use his wealth to buy himself absolute freedom. Everything else fell by the wayside in comparison.

  But the description still left a sour taste in his mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Alice told him without hesitation. ‘I didn’t mean to be critical.’

  Gabriel could have taken her up on that insincere assertion. He didn’t. Instead, he turned to the reason she was there in the first place and the next three hours were spent poring over the files she had brought with her.

  She had a good brain. She had creative and different ways of looking at potential problems. She could quickly do the maths when it came to sounding out the viability of certain tricky areas.

  She had obviously forgotten her outburst but he still caught himself staring at her every so often, her down-bent head, her slender fingers tapping expertly on the keyboard as she amended documents.

  And the damn woman had been right about the tablets. By midday, he was feeling better.

  ‘Right.’ He swung his legs over the side of the bed and Alice, ensconced on the sofa by the window, looked at him in alarm.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She had just about forgotten that she was working with him in his bedroom and that he was wearing nothing but a flimsy black robe which he was at no pains to pull tightly around him. She had told her wayward eyes to get a grip and thankfully, under the onslaught of work, they had. She had established their routine of sorts. And now he was standing up and tying the belt of the bathrobe only after she had glimpsed boxer shorts and brown thighs speckled with fine dark hair. He had amazing ankles. She kept her eyes firmly riveted on that fairly harmless section of his body as he strolled towards the bathroom and informed her that he was going to have a shower.

  ‘Why don’t you wait for me in the kitchen? We can grab something to eat before we carry on.’

  ‘You seem a lot better,’ Alice ventured. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wrap up what we’ve been doing and really...um...harness your energies? They say that the best way to get rid of a cold—sorry, flu—is to just take it easy and rest.’

  ‘That might work for some people but not for me. Taking it easy isn’t my style. N
ow, unless you want to follow me into the bathroom so that we can continue discussing the situation with the electronics subsidiary, I suggest you stretch your legs and head downstairs. In fact...’ He paused by the door and looked at her, his eyes showing just the merest flicker of amusement even though his tone of voice remained bland. ‘You could always make yourself useful and cook us something to eat. You’ll find the fridge and the cupboards well-stocked. In keeping with my laziness, I have someone who makes sure that they are...’

  With which he disappeared into the bathroom, not bothering to lock the door, leaving her with the frustrated feeling that somehow the rug had been neatly pulled out from under her feet.

  Since when did her secretarial duties encompass cooking for the boss? Did the man know how to do anything but take advantage? Since when had it been written into her contract that she would have to fly over to his house, faster than the speed of light, so that she could plough through endless files with him because he happened to have caught a passing bug?

  And why on earth hadn’t she objected more than she had? Why on earth did she feel so alive even when she was around him?

  Downstairs, she looked around a kitchen where everything, from granite counters to gadgets, was polished to a high shine. She guessed that the person responsible for making sure that the fridge and cupboards were stocked with food was also responsible for making sure that dust and dirt didn’t find a foothold.

  There was bread, ham, eggs and all manner of delicacies in the fridge and, after several attempts, she located the whereabouts of the tea, various kinds, and also various kinds of coffee.

  ‘I could always order in...’ His voice drawled behind her and Alice spun round, skin burning as though she had been caught red-handed with her hand in the till.

  Gabriel wandered towards her, freshly showered and thankfully out of his bathrobe and in clothes—although his clothes were no less disconcerting, because he was in a pair of black jeans and a baggy rugby shirt. She couldn’t expect him to get dressed in his usual suit to stay home, but she wished that he had, because it would have cemented the boss-secretary line between them, would have reinforced their respective roles.