‘Never.’
‘I thought school trips over here always involved at least one compulsory trip to France...or have you been to other bits of France?’
Alice thought of her school days. The state school she had attended hadn’t been great and she had had next to no supervision at home. Her father had been absent most of the time, either physically or mentally, and her mother had increasingly removed herself from the normal day to day things that most mothers did, burrowing down in her own misery.
‘I went to Spain once.’ She detoured around his direct question. ‘One of my school friends asked me over with her for two weeks over summer when I was fourteen. It was the nicest holiday I can remember having.’
‘What about family holidays?’
‘There weren’t many of those,’ Alice said abruptly.
‘I know the feeling.’
She looked at him, startled. She knew next to nothing about his past. He came to her as the man already formed, the billionaire with no emotional ties and no desire to form any. He was the brilliant, talented, driven guy who worked hard and played hard; who snapped his fingers and expected the world to jump, but who rarely seemed to put himself out for anyone.
She teetered on the brink of asking him for details. Curiosity clamped its teeth into her but for some reason the thought of stepping over that brink terrified her and she changed the subject, asking him about the places he had been and the countries he had visited.
Besides, would he even share personal details with her? He was intensely private and guarded in what he revealed.
Gabriel noted the way she had backed away from following up on his remark. He wasn’t too sure why he had said that in the first place. He had never felt inclined to let any woman into his past. Would he have told her about his foster-home background? Doubtful, although in fairness he couldn’t imagine her exclaiming with false sympathy or using it as leverage to try to prise him open like a shell.
His interest spiked and he looked at her with cool, guarded eyes.
The four-day trip to Paris suddenly seemed ripe with all sorts of possibilities. He wondered whether she had ever let her hair down, gone wild, got drunk, danced on tables. He couldn’t see it. He wondered what she was thinking, what was going through her head.
What she did on those weekends.
He caught himself wondering whether there was a man in her life, despite protests to the contrary...
The questions settled into vague background thoughts as their flight was announced and soon they had left the country.
Predictably, she talked about work on the trip over. She had shown a great deal of commendable initiative with one of his deals, presenting him with a list of facts and figures on a company he was in the middle of acquiring.
But she was awed by the whole first-class travelling experience. Gabriel was picking that up with antennae finely tuned to women and their responses. She wanted to play it cool, to keep that work hat firmly pinned in place, but she also wanted to stare around her at the plush surroundings, the muted subservience of the airline staff, the luxury...
They would be staying at one of the most expensive and high-profile hotels in Paris, a hotel that took luxury seriously. It was the only hotel in which he stayed when he was in the city and they knew how to look after him.
He felt a kick of pleasurable anticipation at seeing her face when they walked in.
He was a teenager again, trying hard to impress a girl...
Except, his teenage years had been a little too busy for such distractions. Escape had taken priority over making out with girls, not that that had been a problem for him. Besides, he wasn’t in the business of impressing anybody. He didn’t have to.
The limo that would be driving them wherever they wanted to go while they were in Paris was waiting for them at the airport when they arrived and Alice glanced over to him with a dry smile.
‘Don’t you ever do things the way most normal people do?’ The question was directed more at herself than it had been to him, although he picked up the half-murmured remark and chose to answer as soon as they were in the back seat of the car.
‘Why would I do that?’ he asked with a careless shrug, angling his big body so that he was facing her. She had tucked her hair behind her ears and was wearing ear rings, little pearl studs that were a far cry from the wildly extravagant costume jewellery most girls her age would probably have worn.
Infused with silly holiday excitement, and guiltily feeling a bit like a princess after her first-class experience, now in this chauffeur-driven limo, Alice laughed.
‘You don’t do that enough,’ Gabriel said gruffly, surprising himself with that observation, but meaning every syllable of it.
‘Do what?’ Alice rested back against the seat and looked at him through half-closed eyes.