The Notorious Gabriel Diaz

Curiously, the abrupt cessation of all that attention had left her feeling deflated for weeks afterwards. Then, gradually, she had gathered herself and put the memory of him behind her as just one of those weird things.

Working at the garden centre left her no time to question the disturbing impact he had had on her. Nor had he returned to visit the offices where her father continued to work. Huge though the modernisations and expansions had been to Sims, it remained, or so she had been told, just a very small tentacle of one mammoth conglomerate.

Now, as Lucy looked at her parents, who seemed frightened and diminished by the rapidity with which everything they knew seemed to be unravelling, the image of Gabriel Diaz rose up in her head like a dark, avenging angel.

‘Perhaps I could help,’ she offered, her heart beating nervously. ‘I mean, I get a good salary at the garden centre, and I could always ask whether they would advance me some of the money for the illustrations I’ve already done for their second volume. I’m nearly through with them. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind…. Plus Kew Gardens are interested in commissioning me to do some work for them….’

‘It’s no good, honey.’ Nicholas Robins shook his head with something approaching despair. ‘I tried to talk to them…to explain the circumstances. I offered to have my salary cut by as much as it took to pay the debt off but they weren’t interested. They said that’s not how they run their organisation. One strike and you’re out.’

‘And you spoke to…to… Mr Diaz himself?’ His name passing her lips sent a shiver through her, and again she recalled those glittering, mesmerising dark eyes and the way they had looked at her.

‘Oh, no.’ Her father sighed. ‘I asked if I could see him but this matter isn’t important enough for him to get involved. The man’s hardly in the country as it is.’

‘So what’s going to happen?’ Lucy could barely phrase the question because she was so scared of the answer, but ducking reality was never a good idea. Her voice was thick with tears but she wouldn’t let herself cry. Her parents were both distressed enough as it was. She was an only child, and they had had her late in life and always protected her. Her unhappiness would be as wounding to them as their own.

‘At best,’ her father confessed, ‘we’ll lose the roof over our heads. At worst…’

That dreadful worst-case scenario remained unspoken, but it hovered in the air like a malignant cloud. At worst he could go to jail. Embezzlement was an offence that the courts took very seriously.

Lucy opened her mouth to suggest that they could both always come and live with her, sell their house and beg to pay off the debt with the proceeds, but practically how on earth would that work? She rented a small one-bedroomed cottage on the edge of the village. It suited her needs ideally, with its big, rambling garden and a tiny studio off the kitchen, where she often worked at her illustrations at night, but at best it was only good to house one girl and her dog. Stick two more human beings in and there wouldn’t be room to move.

The options were running out fast. Her mother rose to make them all another pot of tea, and in her absence Lucy leaned forward and hurriedly asked how her mother was doing. Really.

‘I’m worried,’ her father said unhappily. ‘She’s being supportive but she has to be scared stiff. And we both know her health isn’t good. If I get put away you’ll have to look after her, Luce. She can’t look after herself….’

‘You won’t get put away!’ But the sound of options running out was the sound of jail doors being clanged shut. ‘I could have a word….’ she said finally.

‘With who, my darling? Believe me, I’ve tried my damnedest and they’re not interested. I even offered to show them receipts for how the money was spent…the holiday Mum and I took after she had the stroke…. They don’t care. They’re there to do a job and there’s no appealing to them….’

‘I could see Mr Diaz…’

‘My love, he’ll be a hundred times worse. He’s a money-making machine without an emotional bone in his body. Sims went from being a small, friendly family firm to being part of a giant company where profits get made but there’s a price to be paid. There’s no such thing as compassionate leave. He has his minions there to make sure no one leaves early or even makes personal calls….’

Lucy thought back to that broodingly arrogant face and could well believe that anyone daring to disobey Gabriel Diaz would be hung, drawn and quartered without trial.

And yet he had sought her out two years ago, had made his intentions perfectly clear. He had wanted her. She hadn’t understood why at the time, and she was no nearer to understanding now, but couldn’t that brief flare of attraction help her out now? Perhaps encourage him to be more sympathetic to her parents’ plight than he might normally have been under the circumstances?

Glancing up, Lucy caught sight of herself in the long oval mirror over the fireplace. What she saw was a slender girl with waist-length fair hair the colour of vanilla ice cream streaked with toffee, at the moment swept back into a haphazard ponytail, a heart-shaped face and green eyes. There was nothing there to get excited about as far as she was concerned, and chances were that the man wouldn’t even remember who she was, but wasn’t it worth the risk of approaching him?

‘Let me think about things, Dad,’ she told him, moving to where he was slumped on the sofa to give him a hug. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I’ll try and get to Mr Diaz…you can never tell…’

She was thankful that her parents knew nothing of that peculiar little episode two years ago. Had they known that the devil in disguise had made a pass at her they would have immediately forbidden any contact. They were deeply traditional and would have been appalled to think that she might be allowed entry to Gabriel Diaz’s hallowed walls simply because he had once fancied her for a week.

As it was, they did their best over the next hour to drop the conversation, to talk about less contentious topics, but by the time Lucy left later that evening she was drained, and so scared on behalf of her parents that she almost couldn’t think clearly.

Not even the soothing act of drawing could calm her tumultuous thoughts and Freddy, sensing her mood, trotted behind her with a forlorn look on his squashy little face, the very picture of a depressed mutt.

The following morning she didn’t give herself a chance to argue her way out of what she knew she had to do. Instead she phoned the garden centre first thing and explained that she wouldn’t be coming in. She didn’t anticipate being in London longer than a couple of hours, but Freddy would have to be deprived of his day dashing around the gardens, chasing insects. He gazed at her reproachfully as she closed the front door on him, immune to her promises of a treat when she returned.

It was warm outside. Summer had arrived with a bounce, delivering blue, cloudless skies for the past three weeks, and today was no exception.

It was a shame that she had no attractive dresses to wear to a meeting she suspected would be grueling—if it even took place at all. As her father had said, Gabriel Diaz was out of the country most of the time. Working at the garden centre had made her lazy when it came to her wardrobe. There was no need for her to wear anything dressy, so she had a cupboard that was full to bursting with faded jeans, combat trousers, jumpers, T-shirts and overalls.

She chose the least worn of her jeans, one of the few T-shirts that didn’t advertise a rock band, and the most respectable of her shoes—a pair of black flats.

The mirror reflected back to her a picture of a girl, five foot eight, slender to the point of skinny, with long blond hair, which she personally considered her best feature. As a last resort, to add glamour to the package, but feeling tainted by the very act of aiming to appeal to someone via her looks, she dabbed on a little lip gloss. That, however, was as far as she was prepared to go.

In the middle of concluding a distasteful conversation with a certain tall, sexy brunette model he had been seeing for the past four months, and whose presence in his life had now outstayed its welcome, Gabriel Diaz was interrupted by his secretary poking her head into his office to tell him that he had a visitor.

‘Name?’

‘She refused to say,’ Nicolette said apologetically. ‘She said it’s personal. I could tell her that you’re not in…’

In receipt of information like that, Gabriel’s first response would usually have been to assume that the woman in question was a lover. Despite his dislike of any woman intruding in his workspace, it had been known to happen. Women had an irritating tendency to think that sex bought them leniency in certain areas—to imagine that sleeping with him entitled them to pop into his office for nothing more than a quick chat. Gabriel could have told them that such behaviour only guaranteed an early exit from his life.

But having just come off the phone with Imogen, he knew that his mood was not conducive to completing the report that was blinking at him on his computer.

He berated himself for not taking action sooner to terminate his relationship with Imogen. Glamorous she might very well be, but she had displayed sufficient signs of clinginess early on for him to have realised that whatever they had would end in tears. Sure enough, the fifteen-minute telephone conversation he had just had with her had been ample proof that her expectations had far exceeded what had been on offer.

This was the third woman Gabriel had had in eight months. Even for him that was a record. What was it about women who just never seemed to get the message that he wasn’t in it for the long haul? It wasn’t as though he didn’t make it clear to them from the very beginning that he was not a man who was on the lookout for commitment. No one could ever accuse him of not being scrupulously fair on that front. He never, ever made promises he had no intention of keeping. And yet time and again what started out as something light-hearted and fun ended up with him having to wriggle away from a woman who’d begun taking an unhealthy interest in domestic life and an even more unhealthy interest in diamond rings and friends with babies.

He scowled at the memory of Imogen shrieking down the phone that he had led her on. Such behaviour disgusted Gabriel. And he found it particularly annoying that she had seen fit to call him at work.

Faced with the prospect of being distracted from his report or seeing a mystery woman for ten minutes, he decided that bit of light relief might do the trick.

‘Show her up.’ He sat back and braced himself for someone on a begging mission. ‘But make sure you tell her that I have ten minutes to spare and no more. Oh, and Nicolette? Remind her that I already contribute heavily to a number of charities. The money pit isn’t bottomless….’

Hovering on the ground floor, where all the marble and glass and chrome and well-groomed artificial plants were combining to send her blood pressure shooting through the roof, Lucy was trying hard not to panic.

A surprise visit to Gabriel Diaz had seemed such a good idea at the time. In fact, it had seemed like the only idea at the time. But now a serious case of nerves was threatening to make her turn tail and flee.

The building, which she had located in the labyrinth of office buildings in the heart of the City, was terrifyingly impressive. Everyone at Sims had been thrilled to death when their small two-storeyed brick-clad office block had been expanded and turned into a high-tech glasshouse. Her father had related numerous tales of clean tiled floors and brand-new top-of-the-range desks. Lucy thought that he would be rendered speechless were he to see the opulence of DGG headquarters.

She had almost expected to be told that Gabriel wasn’t in the country, and she told herself that it was a sign that he was in the country, was in his office and would see her.

She kept her eyes peeled as she walked past the bank of snobby girls at the circular reception desk in the middle, with its sleek, wafer-thin computer terminals, and breathed a sigh of relief when she spotted a middle-aged woman striding towards her.

This must be Gabriel’s secretary. Or one of them. At least the woman heading in her direction, unlike the girls at the reception desk, wasn’t looking at her as though she were something dragged in by the cat after a night on the tiles.

‘You’re…?’

‘Lucy. I’m sorry I didn’t give…er… Gabriel my name, but I thought it might be nice to surprise him….’ Lucy was open by nature, and subterfuge made her cheeks pinken.

‘He can’t allot you much time, I’m afraid. Mr Diaz is on a very tight schedule.’

Nicolette was well-versed in the sort of women her boss dated. This girl was not at all built in the same mould. Nor had Nicolette ever seen anyone quite so stunningly pretty and, judging from the clothes and the lack of make-up, quite so ignorant of her looks.

As they took the lift up to the directors’ floor she made sure to keep the conversation light.