Harlequin Presents January 2015 Box Set 3 of 4(64)

Through the slender panes of glass, Gabriel’s face was dark with anger. She couldn’t make out what was being said but his voice was low and deadly. The woman’s, on the other hand...

She should interrupt. She should try to manage this situation because it was just the glorified version of what she occasionally had to do on the phone.

He didn’t seem to care whether women chased him or not, or even whether they threw hissy fits down the end of the line, but he kept sharp dividing lines between work and play.

Obviously some poor woman had failed to pay attention to that dividing line and was paying the price.

And doesn’t it serve him right?

The thought sprang from nowhere but, once it took hold, it couldn’t be budged.

She had no idea who this woman was but why shouldn’t he sort this situation out himself? Just because he had all the money and power in the world, it didn’t mean that he could take the easy way out when it came to the situations he engendered with his women!

She calmly removed her lightweight coat and hung it up in the sliding cupboard. Then she made herself a cup of coffee and, with mug in hand, she sat at her desk and switched on her computer.

But she couldn’t focus. Her eyes kept sliding from her computer screen to the sketch being enacted behind Gabriel’s closed door. That said, she was still shocked when the closed door was banged open and out flew a woman with waist-length dark hair and a porcelain-white complexion. Her red dress was skin-tight, her heels were five inches high at the very least and she was trailing a pink-and-black-checked summer coat over her shoulder.

She looked furious. Furious and upset. She paused just long enough to glare at Alice through tear-filled eyes.

‘He’s a pig!’ She glared over her shoulder to where an impassive Gabriel was watching them both with steely-eyed coldness, then fixing enraged dark eyes on Alice. ‘But at least he hasn’t got one of those dolly birds working for him this time!’

‘Georgia...’ Gabriel’s voice silenced what promised to be a tirade. He spoke very quietly and with such contained menace that Alice felt sorry for the poor woman. ‘If you don’t leave my premises immediately, I will call security and have you thrown out. And you...’ He directed this at Alice who tilted her head to one side in perfect secretarial mode. ‘Kindly escort Georgia out of the building and then come into my office...’

She was barely aware of Georgia talking non-stop on the way down in the lift. The diminutive brunette was angry, bitter and, reading between the lines, humiliated because she had never been dumped in her life before. Men chased her and she was the one responsible for doing any dumping.

Alice could have told her that she had taken on far more than she could ever have hoped to chew with a man like Gabriel.

‘Well, at least you’ll be safe as houses,’ the other woman sniped as her parting shot. ‘Gabriel would never look twice at someone like you. And tell him from me—I hope he rots in hell!’

The spurt of courage that had prompted her to stay put in her office twenty minutes earlier had evaporated by the time Alice returned there, having successfully deposited Georgia on the street outside. Still, there was no way that she intended to apologise for not having interrupted the scene in his office.

With any luck, he would simply brush over the whole incident and the day would commence as it always did, at full tilt.

‘What the hell do you think you were playing at?’ were his opening words as she walked into his office with her tablet in her hand, ready for the day to begin.

‘I beg your pardon?’ She started as he swooped round his desk to perch on the edge so that he was looming over her, face as dark as thunder.

‘And don’t give me that “butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth” look! I saw the way you sneaked into the office and hid behind your computer!’

‘I did not sneak into my office, Gabriel...’ It always felt odd to call him by his Christian name but after three days of ‘sir’ and ‘Mr Cabrera’ and ‘Mr Cabrera, sir’ he had impatiently insisted that she drop the titles and call him Gabriel. It was one of those names that did not happily roll off the tongue. It was just too...sexy...

‘Nor,’ she asserted firmly, ‘did I hide behind my computer!’

‘You did both. You knew that I was trapped there with that woman and instead of offering to escort her out you ducked for cover and watched from the sidelines!’

‘That woman...?’

Gabriel flushed darkly and raked long fingers through his hair. ‘I’m not in the mood for your sermonising,’ he growled, glaring at her.