On paper, it all sounded wonderful. In practice, a little voice was issuing warnings at a rate of knots.
‘Perhaps I could help out in my spare time,’ she conceded lightly. ‘I’m sure Hugo would be flexible with my hours, if I needed to have time off now and again.’
‘Not good enough, Laura. Getting the stables back up to running standard is going to be a full-time job and you know it. People are going to have to be employed, contacts are going to have to be revived...’ And the thought of her popping out to do her job with Hugo there to mop up any flagging spirits would not do at all. In fact, the mere thought of it made his stomach clench in violent knots. I will ensure that you are paid handsomely for your work, of course...’
‘So in other words, I shall become your employee.’
‘If you want to put it like that.’
‘Is there another way of putting it?’
‘You could see it simply as being offered the chance of a lifetime to get the stables back on the map where they belong...’
‘In other words, I have no choice.’
‘Naturally you have a choice. We all have choices. You can choose to reject my offer, in which event I shall be forced to return to London empty-handed.’
So in other words, no choice. Laura sighed and gulped down a bit more of the champagne. She could already feel it going to her head but she didn’t care. ‘So what happens next?’
‘You mean after you go and collect your things from work?’
‘After I go and tell Hugo what’s happening. I don’t have anything at work, as such.’
‘He already knows what is happening.’ Gabriel narrowed his eyes on her flushed face. God, but how he would have liked to have plunged straight into her beautiful head and found out what exactly was going on in there. He couldn’t imagine her being attracted to a man like Hugo, making wild love with him, but then maybe she now liked them safe and bland and unexciting.
‘I don’t intend to disappear without any sort of explanation to him. I’ve worked there for years now and he’s been ...good to me...’
‘And in what ways has he been ‘good to you’?’ Gabriel’s mouth twisted and Laura glared back at him.
‘You have a one-track mind.’
‘I recall a time when you liked that...’ he murmured, and she couldn’t help it. A faint pinkness invaded her cheeks. Oh, yes, she remembered that time well. Too well.
‘That was then and this is now,’ Laura informed him crisply. ‘After I quit my job, what then?’
‘What then? Why, we sign papers. Mine are all prepared, including the stipulation that you work for me running the place. I can have them faxed to your accountant by lunchtime tomorrow. More immediately, we return to the house. My surveyor is booked to inspect it this afternoon. As soon as the deal is signed, I can begin throwing some food to the baying wolves and you can begin sleeping easier at night knowing that the bailiff will not be knocking at your front door.’#p#分页标题#e#
Their food arrived but all Laura could do was toy with the Caesar salad on her plate. Her mind was buzzing with thoughts, most of them vaguely alarming.
‘You should eat more than that,’ she heard him saying and Laura blinked in surprise at the sudden change in conversation. One minute informing her that he was now in charge of her life, or at least a hefty part of it, and the next minute chiding her for not eating enough for all the world as if they were two normal people, having a normal conversation in a normal situation.
‘Is salad all you have been living on since your father died?’
‘Why do you ask?’ Laura retorted suspiciously, only to sigh at her overreaction to a perfectly polite question, it’s easier.’ In fact, she had lost weight since her father had died. Everything had fallen on her shoulders and somehow rounding up the day with a hearty meal for one had not been top of her agenda.
‘You’ve lost weight.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since I last made love to you seven years ago.’
Laura nearly gagged on the bluntness of his statement. Had he done that on purpose? Because he knew that it would send her entire nervous system into a rapid nosedive? But when she looked at him, it was to find him returning her gaze with complete innocence.
‘I happen to like the way I look,’ she retorted. ‘You’re entitled to your own taste in women if you like them plump.’
‘Voluptuous,’ Gabriel corrected mildly.
‘I was never voluptuous, so your tastes must have changed over the years!’