“Lunch?” Gabriel asked as they pulled away from the marae, the traditional meeting house set amongst velvety grass that gleamed bright green under the crisp winter sunlight.
“You’ll have to return a call first,” she said, having fielded everything during the meeting. “It’s Brent—he just needs two minutes.”
Gabriel took care of the matter using the car’s hands-free phone system, then turned to Charlotte. “Trust me, Ms. Baird?”
“Not when you smile like that.”
GABRIEL LAUGHED AT THE prim response that didn’t quite manage to hide the twitch of her lips. It made him want to kiss her. “You know me too well.” When her eyes sparkled, he said, “You have a cooking class or anything else you have to be back for tonight?”
“No, not tonight.”
Since he didn’t have coaching commitments either, he said, “Detour to the coast?”
A smile that made his need to kiss her almost unbearable, his heart doing things inside his chest that he was sure weren’t in the least macho. He couldn’t find it in himself to care, because when Charlotte smiled that way, it destroyed him.
“I’d love that.”
Gabriel could feel Charlotte’s pleasure in the coastal scenery the instant it opened up beside them. He, too, loved the twisted beauty of the old pōhutukawa trees, iconic against the blue-green sea that could be as cold as ice, the white sands glittering under sunlight.
Slowing down to let a mother duck and her fat little ducklings pass safely across the road, Gabriel allowed his eyes to linger on Charlotte’s face as she leaned forward to watch. It was rare for him to get a chance to look at his personal assistant without her noticing. When she was aware, he made sure not to do it because it discomfited her. Any attention discomfited her.
Even in the ill-fitting clothes she insisted on wearing, men noticed her petite beauty, but every time one made any kind of an approach, she withdrew. Gabriel had quietly but harshly discouraged one particularly enthusiastic advertising executive. The man had continued to ask her out despite her earlier negative responses, to Charlotte’s increasing distress.
Once Gabriel added his knowledge of that situation to her wariness when he’d dropped her home, he had a very bad feeling he knew how she’d been hurt. If he was right, he had an even harder road ahead than he’d realized. Giving up, however, was simply not an option. He had decided on Charlotte. The first time he’d decided on something, he’d been eight and it had been rugby. A seven-year international pro career later, he’d suffered the injury that took him out of play. So he’d decided on kicking ass and taking names as a man who specialized in rescuing drowning companies.
Now he’d decided on Charlotte.
“So, where are we going?” Charlotte asked after the last duckling disappeared into the reeds on the side of the isolated road.
“You’ll like it, I promise.” He rarely made promises, but when he did, he kept his word. It was important to him, a vow he’d made as a six-year-old who’d watched the bailiffs repossess the television his mom had worked so hard to get. Brian Bishop, Gabriel’s father, had used the money intended to pay off the television, as well as two months’ worth of rent money, to make an investment.
“Forget the television, Alison.” A huge grin, his father’s hands on his mother’s upper arms. “We’ll be able to buy the fucking electronics store once I cash in these shares. I had to strike now, buy them while they were at rock bottom. We’ll make a killing when they rise again, I promise.”
Only those shares had never risen. Another dud, like all his father’s other schemes.
“Gabriel.”
It was the first time Charlotte had used his given name. The intimacy of it sliced through the memory that marked the day he’d first understood the worthlessness of his father’s promises. He’d stopped being a child that day. “Yes?”
Voice hesitant, she said, “Your expression got very dark all of a sudden. Is everything okay?”
“Just thinking over a contract situation,” he said, his “father” a topic he preferred to avoid. “See that group of shops? That’s our destination.”
Pulling into the small parking area out front half a minute later, he got out and watched Charlotte hop out as well, stretch her legs. He wanted to put his hand on her lower back, rub to ease the muscles there. And he wanted to hold her close, alleviate his own tension by breathing her in, her soft warmth against him.
Hands fisting in his pants pockets, he led her to a tiny shop with a window to the street.