Yes, she hated him, she told herself fiercely, or, at least, she desperately needed to hate him.
Her utterance was like a knife twisting in his stomach, ‘I do not know why,’ he said acidly, ‘when I am prepared to rescue you from your situation.’
‘If you buy this place, then you’re doing it for yourself, Gabriel. What will you do with it? Convert it into a leisure centre? Turn it into a country house so that you have somewhere to spend weekends away from London? Or do you really care what happens to it? Will it just be enough to know that for a moment in time you could indulge your desire to have control over me?’ She pulled open the office door, desperate to get out of the place and away from his suffocating masculine presence.
‘I already own a country house,’ Gabriel drawled, watching her retreat and allowing her the temporary victory of imagining that her retreat might be permanent.
‘You don’t live in London?’
‘Naturally, I have a penthouse there for when I have to stay in the city, but my primary residence is in the country.’
Laura edged out of the room and into the cooling air outside. He followed her and she angled around him to lock the office door, pulling back so that she could create some vital distance between them as they walked back to the house.
‘And you, you commute to London every day?’ Keep the conversation on an impersonal level, she told herself feverishly. ‘It... it must be exhausting.’
‘I live in Berkshire. It’s not a million miles away from London and, at any rate, I have a driver who takes me in to the city. Except, of course, when I decide to stay in my apartment in Chelsea.’
‘If you’re working late?’ The house was thankfully within sight and Laura had never been more grateful to see it.
‘Working late or ...playing late,’ he murmured, sliding his eyes across to her and watching as two bright patches of colour appeared on her cheeks.
Playing late. There was no need for him to expand on that. Laura could well visualise the type of games he played and the sort of women he played them with. Sophisticated, beautiful women, the female counterparts of himself.
‘So what would you do with the place?’ she reverted to her original question.
‘Allow me.’ His hand brushed hers as he pushed open the front door and Laura felt an alarming quiver of sexual awareness race through her veins, making her jerk back. He stood aside and she scuttled past him into the hall. ‘I would keep it as a riding stables, of course,’ he harked back to her original question. ‘It would require a considerable amount of money to bring the place hack up to a respectable standard, but it is feasible.’
‘And when do you think you’ll be able to give me an answer on, uh, whether you’re interested in buying or not?’
‘After I’ve looked at all the paperwork,’ Gabriel said lazily. ‘Which reminds me, I need to get it all from the kitchen.’
‘Uh, yes, of course. I’ll just go and fetch it.’ Anything to get away from him so that she could clear her head! She hastily gathered all the paperwork together and was rushing, head down, back into the hall, intent on shoving the lot into his hands and escorting him to the front door post-haste, when she more or less catapulted into him coming towards her.
The shock made her stumble and he caught her, wrapping his solid arms around her body to steady her.
‘What are you doing?’ she shrieked, pulling back and instantly regretting her desperate outburst as his coal-black eyes raked over her flushed face. She could have sworn that the devil could read every panic-driven thought in her head!#p#分页标题#e#
‘You came hurtling out of that kitchen like a bullet,’ he said drily, propelling her gently back but keeping his hand firmly on her arms. Her face was flushed with defensive anger, which was slowly replaced by the dawning realisation that she had overreacted to his simple attempt to pre vent them both from crashing to the ground. Like it or not he thought with grim satisfaction, he was turning her world on its head. She might feel nothing for him emotionally but he had awakened a dormant passion and if she thought that he was going to allow it to go away without first getting exactly what he wanted, then she was in for shock.
‘The papers?’ She was looking at him in a dazed fashion. Now she blinked as he reminded her of the reason she had been rushing out of the kitchen and she quickly thrust the lot into his hands.
‘I’ll be in touch ...soon.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Laura sat at her desk, staring ahead at her computer screen and trying to focus on what was in front of her. Some agreement about a house that had just been sold. She had just typed it, but she really didn’t have much of a clue as to what she had actually typed. Three days and still no phone call. Phillip had told her that he would make the call to Gabriel on her behalf, to find out what his intentions were for buying the stables, and she had hotly denied him permission to do any such thing. She would not beg. She would not encourage Gabriel’s notion that she was so desperate for him to purchase that she would do anything. Her behaviour three days previously, when she had fallen into his arms like a sex-starved nymphomaniac, still terrified her because she could see it happening again. And she would have to fight against any such thing with every bone in her body.