I couldn’t get you out of my head...
She could feel his remark burning a hole through all her defences, worming its way past her conviction that it was just another example of his arrogance, and she groaned again.
She barged into the kitchen to find Gabriel enjoying a cup of tea and her mother giggling. Giggling! They both looked up as she entered, like a couple of kids found out in a conspiracy. Alice took a few deep breaths, gathering herself and resisting the urge to ask them what, exactly, what so funny.
She had been gone less than forty minutes and they had become best friends!
‘This is all I could find to wear,’ she said ungraciously, and was treated to a wolfish smile from Gabriel.
‘You look lovely, dear. Doesn’t she look lovely, Gabriel? You should wear red more often. It suits you.’
‘It certainly does...’ he murmured. ‘We’re going to an Italian restaurant. Your favourite type of food.’
Pamela looked between them with keen interest. ‘How do you know that?’ she asked with, Alice thought, a complete lack of tact.
‘Oh, I know a great many things about your daughter, Pamela...’
‘Because,’ Alice snapped, ‘when you’re stuck in someone’s company for days on end, you tend to find out superficial things about them. Like what their favourite cuisine is.’
‘Stuck in my company? I got the impression that you rather—’
‘Okay,’ Alice interrupted hurriedly, before something was said that would have her mother’s curiosity spiked even more than it already was. ‘Shall we go? I don’t want to be long, because...’
‘Where will you be staying, Gabriel?’
Gabriel shrugged. ‘Well, I hadn’t thought ahead.’
‘You’ll save some money if you stay here. The spare bedroom is small but it’s tidy. I use it as a sewing room, but I could just pop my bits and bobs in my sewing box.’
‘Gabriel doesn’t need to save money, Mum. And I’m sure he won’t be staying overnight.’
‘It’s way too late for me to drive back to London,’ Gabriel said thoughtfully. ‘And don’t we all need to save money?’
Alice controlled hysterical laughter. This was the man who travelled first class and only stayed in the finest five-star hotels. She doubted the concept of saving money had ever crossed his radar.
‘It would be rude of me to turn down such a kind invitation.’ He smiled at Pamela, the sort of smile that would have had any woman on the planet eating out of his hands.
‘No,’ Alice inserted firmly. ‘If you really can’t drive back tonight, then I’m sure we can fix you up with a pleasant local hotel. Closer to Exeter, of course, because I’m sure you’ll want to visit Harrisons first thing Monday...’
‘Of course you must stay here, Gabriel. I’ve never seen my daughter as happy and as fulfilled as she has been since she’s started working for you. And if in return you want to buy me a new toaster, well, then it would be downright churlish of me to refuse...’
With which, she shooed them both out of the house.
Head held high, Alice snatched her jacket from the coat hook by the front door and stormed out into the cool darkness. She closed her ears to the friendly banter between Gabriel and her mother and, when the front door had been quietly but firmly shut on them, she turned to him, hands on her hips.
‘How dare you?’
‘How dare I what?’ He guided her towards his black SUV, which had made light work of the journey down.
‘Become best friends with my mother!’
‘You’re being ridiculous.’ He opened the passenger door and steered her into the car.
‘I am not being ridiculous!’ she hissed as soon as he was behind the wheel, starting the engine into throaty life. ‘You shouldn’t have come here.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re not glad...no, excited...that I’m here. I can feel it.’
‘I am not...’
Whatever she had been about to say was lost as his mouth hit hers in a crushing, hungry kiss, a kiss he had been waiting for ever since they had returned from Paris and taken up the charade of playing boss-secretary as though nothing had happened between them.
Hand behind the nape of her neck, he pulled her towards him and carried on kissing her, their tongues melding, their bodies yearning for one another.
Alice was giddy from the fierceness of her driven response. Her fingers curled into his hair and she moaned with a mixture of wanting and not wanting, unable to help herself, and hating herself for her weakness.
Finally, he drew back and looked at her.
‘Don’t spin me any yarns about not wanting me,’ he growled. ‘If I were to take you right here, right now, you wouldn’t run screaming from this car. In fact, you’d get that sexy body of yours in all the right positions to have me in you!’