But she had spent far too much time telling her mother about him, describing him, inviting the curiosity that was now unstoppable.
How great to finally meet the man her daughter worked for! ‘You never told me that he was so good-looking!’... ‘My daughter loves her job; I can tell because she talks so much about it!’... ‘And Paris...how wonderful that she had the opportunity to go there! She can’t stop talking about it!’
‘You asked me, Mum!’ Alice avoided eye contact with Gabriel but she could feel him simmering with his own curiosity. ‘I talked about Paris because you asked me!’
Her mother had chosen, however, to skirt round that technicality.
‘I’ve intruded,’ Gabriel murmured. Pamela Morgan was an attractive woman, with a frailty that her daughter lacked. Not even the loose-fitting dress or the long, cream cardigan could conceal her good looks. Was that why her daughter was so self-conscious about her appearance? Was there some sort of unspoken rivalry between mother and daughter? And, yet, no; there was clearly a strong bond there.
This was the first time he had ever met any relative of any woman he had slept with, aside from Bethany’s father. Meeting the family had been something he had always heavily discouraged. Now, he was intensely curious, intensely curious to join the dots and make connections—intensely, inexplicably curious just to find out more.
‘You’re not intruding! Is he, Alice?’
‘Well, now that you mention it...’ She caught Gabriel’s eye and noted the wicked gleam of amusement.
‘That’s very kind...may I call you Pamela? Yes? Well, you’re very kind, but I won’t be staying long.’
‘Yes.’ Alice stood up with a wide, false smile. ‘Gabriel has to be on his way. Don’t you, Gabriel? He’s probably got all sorts of plans for the evening.’
‘None,’ Gabriel drawled. He settled down comfortably in the kitchen chair to which he had been ushered. ‘But I will have, if you ladies would allow me to take you both out for a meal...?’ His sharp eyes noted the quick look that was exchanged, and then Pamela Morgan was on her feet, clutching her cardigan tightly around her.
‘You two go out. There’s a lovely little restaurant in the village, just opened...’
‘There is?’ Alice gaped. ‘And, no! We won’t be going anywhere!’ She glared at Gabriel who returned the glare with a comfortable smile of satisfaction.
‘Yes, you will, Alice! I insist. We eat in every single weekend. It will do you good to get out and see the place for a change. Plus, there’s food here for me, and what’s left over I can pop in the freezer. And the weather is so nice at the moment. Such a lovely change from all that rain we’ve been having. Alice, darling, why don’t you go and change, and you two young things can go out and have some fun.’
‘Mum...’
‘If you’re sure, Pamela...’ Gabriel stood up, exuding innate charm. ‘Why don’t you run along, Alice? Change into your glad rags? And, in the meantime, Pamela and I can get to know one another...’
CHAPTER EIGHT
ALICE FUMED. WHY HAD he shown up on her doorstep? It was utterly out of character for him, but then being dumped was out of character for him as well. Was that why he had said that he couldn’t get her out of his head? Once you stripped that remark down to its bare bones, what you were left with was a man who wanted something of which he had been deprived, whatever the cost.
He was impossible!
She had practically nothing to wear. She didn’t come down to Devon intent on having nights out. Her wardrobe consisted of comfortable clothes to hang around the house in. With a groan of despair, she rummaged through the bottom shelves where clothes from another era had been shoved and forgotten.
Gabriel here, in her mother’s house, felt like an invasion of her privacy. He was seeing where she had lived for years; seeing the photos of her which were liberally scattered throughout the small house; the little drawings she had done which her mother had kept in a box during those long, miserable years when she’d been married, drawings which she’d had framed as soon as she had a house of her own.
He was a billionaire and she couldn’t help wondering what he thought of her mother’s house: too small, not smart enough, filled with mementoes and knickknacks that had cost practically nothing. Everything else, the more expensive stuff, had been sold off when her father had died and the family home sold. Her mother had not wanted to bring any bad memories with her to wherever she chose to put down roots.
Alice wasn’t at all ashamed of where she had lived but it was only human to see your own particular circumstances through the eyes of someone else. In this case, her arrogant, super-rich boss.