He shifted impatiently and Alice gulped as yet more of that hard, bronzed torso was revealed.
He should be in his suit. He should be properly attired. There was an intimacy here that had her nerves all over the place and she was so keen to make sure that he didn’t see that, her movements were stiff and awkward, her mouth more tightly pursed, her hands white as they gripped the case she had brought with her.
She felt horrendously uncomfortable in her knee-length black skirt, and her sheer black tights were itchy against her legs.
‘Have you...taken anything for your cold?’ she asked as she sat gingerly on the sofa and tried not to look at him without actually looking away; tried to mentally blank him out, which was next to impossible. ‘Sorry, I meant flu?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘What good would that do? The thing just has to run its course.’
‘I’ll get you some paracetamol.’
‘You will sit and start going through the Dickson file with me.’
‘Where is your medicine cabinet?’
‘I don’t have one.’
Alice shot him an exasperated look and walked across to stand over him with her arms folded. ‘You look terrible.’
‘Good. You’re waking up to the fact that I’m seriously ill.’
‘And you look terrible because you’re refusing to help yourself. You are not seriously ill, Gabriel. You have a spring cold. You’re just not accustomed to being under the weather.’
‘What do you mean, I’m refusing to help myself?’ Gabriel growled. ‘You’re a woman! Where’s your milk of human kindness? Do you know how many women would kill to be in this position—to be able to prove that they’re domestic goddesses by cooking me something to eat and playing at Florence Nightingale!’
‘In which case...’ She handed him his mobile phone. ‘Please feel free to call any one of them. I’m more than happy to be replaced.’
‘Sit down!’ he roared, before spluttering into a coughing fit which Alice observed without budging, arms still folded, cool as a cucumber and grudgingly amused at seeing her all-powerful boss losing his control because he was in the grip of nothing more serious than a simple passing cold.
He could be vulnerable. In a way least expected, he was showing her that he could be petulant, utterly exasperating in a very human way and...
Stupidly endearing with it.
‘I have some tablets in my handbag. I’ll fetch you a glass of water and you’re going to take them. They might not cure your cold but they’ll relieve your symptoms.’
‘Does that include my roasting fever? I’m burning up. Feel me if you don’t believe me.’
Alice sighed and felt his forehead and, as she did so, she felt a throbbing ache rip through her, scattering her self-composure for a second or two.
‘You have a slight temperature.’ She yanked her hand back and surreptitiously wiped it on her skirt, hoping to rid herself of the spark that had flared between them, dangerously, electrifyingly alive and as threatening as her dream had been to her peace of mind.
Why the sudden awareness of the man? she wondered. She disapproved of him as much now as she had done when she had first met him. So, they worked well together. So, maybe there were different sides to him; he wasn’t the one-dimensional guy she had chosen to categorise him as...
But why was it that the minute he was within touching distance of her she became as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof?
It was galling to think that she might have fallen into the same pathetic trap as all his other secretaries and she instantly killed that notion by telling herself that she hadn’t. He was fabulously good-looking and she was only human, after all. What reaction he evoked was one she could squash without any difficulty.
Although right now, having to sit in the same room as him when he was, quite frankly, indecently underdressed...
She strode out of the room into the adjacent en suite bathroom, ignoring the slightly damp white towel carelessly slung on the heated towel rail, and emerged with a glass of tap water and the tablets which she had extracted from her bag.
‘Take them.’
‘You’re extremely bossy.’ But he took the tablets from her and swallowed them with a gulp of water. ‘Not a feminine trait.’
Alice blushed, hot, flustered and irritated. ‘I’m not here to be “feminine”,’ she retorted tartly. ‘I’m here to go through some files which couldn’t possibly wait until next week. You have your string of girlfriends to distract you with their feminine wiles.’
‘I’m a girlfriend-free zone at the moment, as it happens. Although I’m sure you’re already aware of that, considering you’re the one who’s responsible for booking the venues I go to with them.’