‘You wanted to see me.’ Alex could feel her stomach churning as she hovered indecisively by the door, ready for flight.
‘I did.’ Gabriel didn’t stand. Instead, he sat back and devoted one hundred per cent of his attention to acknowledging how little she had changed. Remarkable. She must be what now…? Twenty-three? Twenty-four? And she still hadn’t succumbed to the polish and finesse to which most young people in the capital seemed to aspire. ‘Come in.’ He gestured expansively to one of the chairs positioned in front of his desk. ‘Have a seat. I would offer you coffee but Janet, my personal assistant, has already left.’ He shrugged and offered an apologetic smile.
Alex wondered whether a man of his importance was incapable of working a coffee machine. ‘I…I really can’t stay…’
Gabriel frowned. ‘Maybe you didn’t quite understand me when I told you that I don’t tolerate clock-watching in my employees.’
‘I know. And I’m more than happy to work overtime, but I need a day’s notice. As it is, I’m already really late for…’
Gabriel raised one imperious hand. ‘Not interested. Whatever date you’ve got lined up will have to wait. There are a few things we need to discuss.’ He thought that he had swept all traces of her from his mind but he must have been mistaken because there was a familiarity about her that was strangely disconcerting and he was aware that the faintest colour scored his slashing cheekbones. Déjà vu slammed into him with pulsating intensity and suddenly he could remember everything about her, right down to the smallest details, the tiny freckles across her shoulder blades, the way she always smelt of the pine soap she liked to use, the sounds she used to make when he ran his hands all over her body.
The memories stole into his head like destructive gremlins and he banished them without conscience.
‘What things?’
‘You said that I reminded you of someone you used to know. Tell me.’
‘Wh…what?’
‘And stop clinging to that door knob as though you’re on the verge of collapse! I told you to sit down!’
Alex could barely hear herself think. The blood was rushing through her and, even though she could see a precipice yawning open at her feet, she was still desperately happy to kid herself that everything was fine. She was having an inconvenient conversation but that was the extent of it.
‘I…I really have to go, Mr Cruz. I have…obligations. I know you hate clock-watchers but…’
‘I told you. Cancel your date. It’ll be a lot easier than you think.’
Alex tried not to look resentful in the face of his implacable smile. In fact, she was trying hard not to look at him at all.
‘Okay.’ She angled her body away from him and spoke in a low, hurried voice, explaining the situation and lacing her request with a thousand apologies. Then, feeling a bit calmer, she turned to face him.
‘So.’ Gabriel watched as she gingerly sat down. Her body language was shrieking discomfort. ‘This guy you tell me that I remind you of.’
‘It’s not important. I thought you called me here to find out how my day with your fiancée went.’
‘Okay. Shall we use that as our starting point? How did the day go? Feel free to speak your mind. It’s something I encourage in all my employees.’
Alex refrained from pointing out that he hadn’t much liked it when she had spoken her mind and told him that she had to leave the office. ‘The day went very well. She’s demanding but I think she got a few things accomplished.’
‘Yes,’ Gabriel mused thoughtfully, ‘I can imagine that you might have found Cristobel a little challenging. What else did you think of her?’
‘I don’t think it’s my place to say, sir.’
‘There’s no need to keep repeating sir at the end of every sentence. So I take it that you two didn’t get along…’
‘I think she found my translating skills very useful.’
‘I’m beginning to get the drift.’
‘She’s a very…a very…polished woman…’ She had broken out in a film of perspiration because she suspected that traps were being laid, except she had no idea where the traps were. If she inadvertently stepped on one, would it signal the end of her career? Women, apparently, had a great deal of influence over their men, or so she had read somewhere, and if the mind-numbingly empty-headed socialite Cristobel decided to blacken her name, then she might very well find herself out of a job before she had had a chance to even get her feet under the table. But there was no way that she could pretend a rapport where none had existed. Nor was she finding it comfortable to look at him, which meant that she was addressing her answers to her feet. Hardly the sign of an efficient rising executive in his dynamic company.
An uncomfortable silence lengthened between them until Alex was eventually driven to look up at him and, as their eyes tangled, she felt her skin begin to prickle. The thread of reason that had held sway throughout the course of the day, the notion that there was no way that this man was the same one who had invaded her life and turned it upside down, began to fray at the edges.
When he said softly, ‘Would that guy you remember have gone by the name of Lucio…?’ Alex barely heard him. His words floated around her head and then, like laser-guided torpedoes, shattered through her protective barriers and her eyes widened in shock and dawning horror.
‘How…how did you know?’ The truth had already sunk in but, in her determination to block it out, she had subconsciously created all sorts of pointless justifications in her head as to why the guy sitting in front of her, oozing sex appeal and power, couldn’t possibly be the Lucio she remembered from years ago. Lucio had been broke. He hadn’t descended from the Spanish hierarchy. And surely he hadn’t been as tall or aggressive or dangerously masculine as this man?
‘I’m surprised you don’t recognise me, Alex. I recognised you the second you walked through my door. You know, in a way, I’m a little offended but I’ll rise above that.’
‘But…but your name’s not Lucio…it’s…it’s…’ A great chasm was opening up at her feet and she tried not to stare down into its dark abyss.
‘Lucio is my middle name.’
Having laboured to avoid looking at him at all, Alex now felt driven to stare as her memory of Lucio overlapped and merged with the reality of Gabriel Cruz, one and the same person, and of course she had been a complete fool to have thought otherwise. His was not a face to be forgotten, even with the benefit of some serious wishful thinking, and if she had found him good-looking back then, he was scarily sexy now. Time had taken the guy of twenty-six and honed him into staggering perfection.
And he was engaged.
‘I don’t understand,’ Alex stammered in complete confusion.
‘What don’t you understand?’
‘You lied to me? All those years ago? When I saw you in this office, I just thought you resembled the guy I used to know. Why would I think that you had lied to me? I knew someone who didn’t have much money and liked the simple things in life. Who were you?’
Gabriel’s lips thinned and he flushed darkly at the wounded accusation in her voice. She had always been upfront and honest. It had been one of the things he had enjoyed about her. No games, no subterfuge, no hidden agendas. No way was she going to understand his harmless pretence and now he felt like a bastard, which didn’t sit well with him because he was someone accustomed to always feeling pretty good about himself.
‘I indulged in a piece of innocent fiction,’ he drawled with a shrug of his broad shoulders. And it had been innocent. Saddled with the weight of responsibility from a young age and already prematurely jaded by the nature of women and the lengths they would go