‘Perhaps I ought to come along,’ she suggested with saccharine sweetness. ‘After all, I have lived in this house all my life and I would be very interested to know what repair work might have to be done.’
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‘No need,’ Gabriel drawled. He had managed to disengage himself from the raven-haired bombshell and Laura was besieged by a further attack of acidity at the thought that he would probably resume intimate contact the minute they were out of sight. ‘It may have been your house, but as of tomorrow it will be in my possession. It is far more pertinent that I find out firsthand the extent of damage.’
‘I will have my report ready within a week,’ Anna addressed her with a smile. ‘It will be quite detailed.’
‘And I’ll be allowed a copy, will I?’ Her voice dripped sarcasm although Gabriel appeared blithely unaware of that. In fact, he seemed in remarkably high spirits, Laura thought as she politely stared him down with her hands planted firmly on her slim hips.
‘Naturally.’ For sheer devilry, he once again slipped his arm around Anna’s waist before guiding her towards the spiral staircase winding up to the first floor. God, he wanted to look back over his shoulder just to see if she was still standing there, all bewitching defiance, simmering. But he didn’t.
In fact, he kept his arm wrapped around the brunette’s waist and only removed it when they had cleared out of sight. And only then did he begin quizzing Anna about her husband, Rodolfo, and their eighteen-month-old son. If his cousin was slightly bemused by her exuberant welcome, she concealed it well, chattering happily about family business, whilst casting her well-trained eyes into corners and nooks and crannies and up the fireplaces for any hazards waiting to be uncovered.
‘What games are you playing, Gabriel?’ she finally asked him curiously as they inspected the last of the rooms one and a half hours later, having agreed to call it a day.
‘Games, my dearest cousin?’
‘Games,’ she declared firmly.
‘Cat and mouse,’ he said succinctly, aware that that only covered the tip of the iceberg.
‘And which one is the mouse?’ she teased. ‘Do I resemble a mouse to you?’
‘No, but then I have never seen you play this type of game with a woman before. Do not enter into something only to discover that you do not know the rules.’
‘Trust me, Anna.’ His eyes gleamed in anticipation of the woman waiting in the kitchen. He could feel her presence calling him. ‘I am in total control ...am I not always?’
CHAPTER FIVE
An hour and a half spent condemned to the kitchen, sidelined into the role of onlooker in her own home, had done nothing for Laura’s temper. She had usefully prepared something for herself to eat later, then had sat at the kitchen table contemplating every little thing she now thoroughly disliked about the man who had once been the centre of her life.
The fact that he was canoodling in one of the rooms with a curvaceous brunette, flaunting his sex life in front of her as a stark reminder that she was nothing to him now except a bitter taste in his mouth he was determined to eradicate, only made her more sour.
Laura remembered something her father had told her months after Gabriel had walked out of her life. She had been staring out of the kitchen window, lost in the familiar cloud of depression, when Peter Jackson had surprised her from behind. Her infernal moping around had to end, he had informed her angrily, it was not doing anyone any good at all, least of all her mother. Had she ever stopped to think, he had snapped, that she was busily mourning the loss of a man who had had his eye on the main chance? That this so-called love of her life had wanted the status and position she offered and that if she had been anyone else he would not have looked at her twice?
No, it certainly had not occurred to her then, but it was occurring to her now.#p#分页标题#e#
There was no shred of nostalgia in him for the past they had once shared, no hint that he remembered her wide-eyed adoration with any affection, because, she had thought in the solitude of the kitchen, he had never really cared about her.
By the time Gabriel and Anna finished their extended tour of the house, Laura was stiff-lipped with the battery of thoughts that had been whirling around in her head.
She stood up when she heard their footsteps, arms folded. And he still had his infernal arm around the woman’s waist!
‘Something smells good in here,’ Gabriel said, disengaging himself. ‘Anna, you’ll stay for some coffee, won’t you?’ Her body language was speaking volumes, he thought with satisfaction. Arms folded, face rigid with disapproval. Yes, he was utterly and pleasurably in control. The thought did wonders for his sense of well-being.