The Notorious Gabriel Diaz

Lucy was grateful for that. She was awed and impossibly daunted by her surroundings. Every slab of marble and sheet of glass in the building breathed money and power. The employees were all decked out in designer suits and looked as though they were dashing off to very important, life-changing meetings.

In her jeans and T-shirt and flat black ballet shoes she felt as conspicuous as a bull in a china shop. She knew that people were staring as the lift disgorged them into a vast, elegant space, thickly carpeted, with a central circular sunken area in which various other besuited people were doing clever things in front of computers.

Her skin literally crawled with nerves, and her legs were so wobbly that it was a challenge to move one in front of the other.

Beyond the central atrium, a wide corridor was flanked on either side by private offices the likes of which could only, surely, be found in a company with profits to burn.

She found that she was lagging behind as Nicolette strode briskly towards the office at the very end of the corridor. Noiseless air-conditioning meant that it was much cooler inside the building than it had been outside, and it felt positively chilly up here on the eighth floor. She clamped her teeth together to stop them from chattering.

‘If you’d wait here…?’

Nicolette’s smile was kindly but Lucy hardly noticed. Her pink mouth, lip gloss long since gone, had fallen open at the opulence of her surroundings. Light grey smoked glass concealed this outer office from prying eyes. The walls were white, and dominated on one side by a huge abstract painting and on the other by smoked ash doors behind which lay heaven only knew what. Another office? A wardrobe stuffed full of designer suits? A bathroom? Or maybe a torture chamber into which recalcitrant employees could be marched and taught valuable life lessons?

Nicolette’s desk was bigger than the studio room in her house where Lucy did her meticulous drawings. At a push it could be converted into a dining table to seat ten.

She was staring at it, fighting the sensation that she had somehow been transported into a parallel universe, when she was told that Mr Diaz would see her now.

Lucy had thought she hadn’t forgotten what Gabriel looked like. As she entered his office and the door behind her clicked softly closed she realised she actually had. The man slowly turning from the window where he had been standing, looking out, was so much taller than she remembered. She was pinned to the spot by eyes the colour of bitter chocolate. Time had done nothing to dim the staggering force of his personality—the same force she had felt the first time she had seen him, surrounded by his minions. It swept over her, strangling her vocal cords and scrambling her ability to think.

This was not what Gabriel had expected. He had expected a middle-aged harpy with a begging bowl and pictures of unfortunate children.

But this was the woman whose image he had never quite been able to eradicate from his head. She had been stunning then and she was even more stunning now—although he would have been hard pressed to put his finger on what, exactly, it was about her that held his gaze with such ferocious intensity.

Her skin was pale gold and smooth as satin, and that amazing hair, pulled back into a long plait that ran down the length of her narrow spine, had the same effect on him now as it had two years ago. Confronted by the one and only woman who had ever said no to him, Gabriel schooled his features into polite curiosity. He didn’t know what she wanted, but the residue of his frustration and annoyance suddenly lifted.

‘Thank you for seeing me.’ Lucy hovered by the door, not having been invited to take one of the leather chairs that were ranged in front of a desk that was even bigger than the one belonging to his secretary. His silence was unnerving. It propelled her into hurried speech. ‘You probably don’t remember me. We met a couple of years ago. When you…ah… came to Somerset… Sims Electronics? It was one of the companies you took over…. I’m sorry. I didn’t even introduce myself. Lucy…ah… Robins. I’m sorry. You won’t have a clue who I am….’

Regret at her hasty decision to descend on him unannounced rushed over her, making her want to stumble back out of the door and as far away from this intimidating building as she could get. She didn’t know if she should walk towards him and extend her hand in a gesture of politeness, but just the thought of touching him sent her nerves into further debilitating freefall.

Not have a clue who she was? Gabriel wanted to laugh aloud at that one. One look at her face and he was realising that her polite rejection still rankled a lot more than he had suspected. He was not a man who had his advances spurned. The experience had burnt a hole in his memory. But what the hell was she doing here? Had she turned up two years ago he would have assumed that it was because she’d had a rethink about her incomprehensible decision to turn him away—but now…? All this time later…? No, something was at play here, and intense curiosity kicked into gear. It felt great. Invigorating. Especially after his ludicrous phone call with Imogen.

‘Are you going to say anything?’ she asked, her nerves making her stumble over the question.

At that, Gabriel pushed himself away from the window and indicated one of the chairs in front of his desk.

‘I remember you,’ he drawled, resuming his seat and watching every detail of the emotions flitting across her face. ‘The girl from the garden centre. You returned an item of jewellery. What did you do with the flowers? Introduce them to the incinerator?’

Lucy lowered her eyes and fumbled her way to the chair, not knowing whether he expected an answer to that deliberately provocative question. Her skin was burning, as though someone had shoved her to stand in front of an open flame, and although she wasn’t looking at him the harsh, perfect angles of his face were imprinted in her head with the forcefulness of a branding iron.

Staring down uncomfortably at her entwined fingers, she literally could see nothing else but his dark-as-midnight eyes, the curl of his sensuous mouth, the coolly arrogant inclination of his head. But she was glad to be sitting. At least it gave her legs some reprieve from the threat of collapsing under her.

‘So what do you want?’ Gabriel asked with studied indifference. ‘You have ten minutes of my time and counting.’

Lucy balled her hands into fists. She understood that they had parted company on less than ideal terms. Perhaps his pride had been wounded because she had turned him down. But was that any reason for him to make this even more difficult for her than it already was? Two years ago she had been offered a glimpse of his arrogance. Now she could see that in no way had it diminished over time.

‘I’ve come about my father.’ She took a deep breath and forced herself to meet his mildly enquiring gaze. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s been a bit of a situation…at the company…’

Gabriel frowned. His business interests were so extensive that entire companies that sheltered under his umbrella were practically self-accounting. Now he rapidly clicked his computer and began scrolling through all the details of Sims. It took him no time at all to unearth what her mystery trip to his office was all about.

‘By situation,’ he said coldly, ‘I take it that you’re referring to your father’s embezzlement?’

‘Please don’t call it that.’

‘You’re here because your father’s been caught out with his hand in the till. I’m hoping you’re not going to ask me to turn a blind eye to his thieving just because once upon a time I gave you a second look…?’

Mortification ripped through her, making her slight frame tremble. ‘You don’t understand! My father’s not a thief’.

‘No? Then we have a different take on what constitutes a thief. In my view, it’s someone who has been caught trying to rip a company off…dipping into the coffers…taking money…’ He leant forward and placed the palms of his hands flat on his desk. ‘Taking money without permission, presumably to enjoy the high life!’

‘He… Look, he knows that what he did was wrong….’

‘Good! Then perhaps the courts will look on him favourably and not make the sentence too harsh! Alternatively, they might just want to flex their muscles and demonstrate that fraud isn’t something to be taken lightly! Now…’

He stood up and cursed himself for the impact she still seemed to have on him—even when she was sitting in his chair, in his office, bleating on about her father and trying to pull the sympathy card. All of which added up to a situation with which he had less than zero tolerance.

‘If that’s all, Nicolette will show you out….’

CHAPTER TWO

LUCY’S SPINE STIFFENED in stubborn, angry refusal to see this as the conclusion of her expedition to London. He had treated her with contempt and hadn’t even bothered to hear her out. Of course he had every good reason to dismiss her, but the thought of her father being chucked into a prison cell like a common criminal…. He would never survive that, and neither would her mother.

She could feel his eyes burning into her downturned head and she fought down the sickening wave of pride that made her want to leave with her head held high. Right now pride was a commodity she couldn’t afford.

‘Please…please hear me out,’ she whispered, daunted beyond belief by the cold hostility emanating from him.

‘Whatever for?’ Gabriel’s voice was harshly blunt. ‘Embezzlement in my company is not accepted on any level. It’s as simple as that. It’s outrageous to think that you came here to parade your wares in front of me in the hope that I might bend the rules. Hell, you haven’t even bothered to wear something decent!’

‘Parade my wares?’ Lucy looked at him with bewilderment.

‘I wasn’t born yesterday. I know the way women operate. Fair means or foul pretty much sums it up. You thought that you could use your sexy little body to score a few points. Big mistake. I’ve seen a lot of sexy bodies in my time, and I’m inured to any woman who tries to use hers for any kind of profit.’

Sexy little body. Those three words, uttered so casually, brought a hectic colour to her cheeks. Having never considered herself in terms of how she looked, it was somehow shocking to hear him refer to her appearance so bluntly.

She was also uncomfortable with the brief surge of pleasure she’d felt at hearing herself described as sexy. She had never felt like a sexy woman. Sexy women had attitude. They flashed their eyes and swayed their hips and pouted and flirted. She had never done any of those things, and wouldn’t have been able to do them even if she had spent a lifetime reading books on how to achieve it. She just wasn’t sexy, and that was why she had shied away from relationships with boys at college.

She was conservative, traditional—one of those boring types who had never slept around and was saving herself for the guy she eventually fell in love with. Her parents had done a good job in instilling values that had long been left by the wayside by most girls over the age of seventeen.

And yet he had called her sexy. She thought that perhaps he needed his eyes checked, but now was hardly the time to point that out. Not when he was staring at her as though she was something that had crawled out of a dustbin into his immaculate office with the sole intention of making a mess.

‘I didn’t come here to…to…’

Watching the rise and fall of her chest, and inwardly remarking on a repertoire of facial expressions he hadn’t seen in a very long time in any woman, Gabriel caught himself wondering whether it was that wide-eyed innocence that he found so appealing. Appealing against his better judgement.

She had a face that would make any man go crazy, and yet it was coupled with a transparency that could only be dangerous.

‘To…to…?’ He parroted her stammer mockingly.

‘You’re horrible,’ Lucy uttered on a desperate cry, ‘and I’m really sorry I came here in the first place. I shouldn’t have. Dad said that he’d tried to explain to your people at the company but none of them would listen. I might have guessed that you wouldn’t listen either. I’m sorry I took up your precious time!’ She began to stand up.