She was literally at a loss. Any other woman would have followed the thread of this conversation, and certainly by now would have got the message loud and clear. This woman was staring at him with a frown, as though he had produced a complicated maths problem from under a hat and demanded she provide a solution immediately.
‘May I do something?’ he asked with silken assurance, and then, just in case she was still away with the fairies and not getting where he was going, he strolled behind her. Before she could react he was pulling free her hair, releasing it from its constricting braid.
Lucy swivelled round and stood up, faltering backwards until she bumped into the edge of his desk.
‘What are you doing?’ With one hand she clasped her loosed hair, pulling it over one shoulder. She couldn’t peel her eyes away from his face, and her heart was pounding so fiercely in her chest that she could scarcely breathe. She gave a little squeak of horror as he very slowly strolled towards her.
‘I wanted to do that the first time I laid eyes on you,’ Gabriel murmured.
He smiled, and that smile had the effect of making her feel as though she was falling through the air with no safety net beneath her. Her stomach lurched and every nerve in her body was at screaming pitch.
‘I saw you on that bike and I wanted you. Simple as that. You were like a gazelle—all beauty and grace. And, mysteriously, I find that I still want you….’
‘But you can’t…’ Lucy breathed jerkily. ‘You…you date supermodels….’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I looked you up on the internet!’ She went bright red. He was standing so close to her that she could feel his heat. He must be able to feel hers, because she was certainly burning up.
‘You did, did you?’ Gabriel was intensely satisfied that he had made more of an impression on her than he had given himself credit for—boyfriend or no boyfriend. An indifferent woman would never have looked him up on the internet. More to the point, an indifferent woman wouldn’t be looking at him now with lurking excitement in her eyes. Even if she was strenuously trying to conceal it. An expert when it came to the opposite sex, he could sense her response to him as clearly as if it had been emblazoned on her forehead in neon lettering.
‘I was curious….’ Lucy defended.
‘Curiosity is good.’ He leant forward to brace himself on the desk, his hands on either side of her, caging her in.
The fantasy of taking her here—in his office, on his desk—was so powerful that he hardened, his erection painful as it pressed thickly against the zipper of his trousers. Gone was the jaded, world-weary feeling that had settled over him for what seemed like years. For that alone she would be worth every penny.
‘So here’s my proposal…’
Regretfully, he straightened, because being so close to her, breathing in that refreshing innocence, the clean, minty smell of her fabulous hair, was doing all sorts of things to his body. Much as he enjoyed the sensation, he had to acknowledge that they were in his office, and Nicolette was just one door away. Having his secretary accidentally burst in on a scene of rampant lovemaking on his desk would not be good for her dodgy blood pressure.
At no point did it occur to him that Lucy might reject his advances the way she had rejected them two years ago. This time he held the trump card, and he had every intention of using it.
As he strolled back towards his chair he could feel her eyes on him, and he knew with every primitive instinct in his body that she had not been immune to that brief moment of contact when he had touched her hair.
‘I won’t try to wrap it up in any fancy packaging. I want you, and in return for having you in my bed I’m willing to let your father off the hook. All the stolen money will be replaced. Orders issued to my two finance guys that with the debt owing to me cleared the matter is to be buried, never again to resurface. Of course your father won’t be able to return to his job. That would be taking the joke a step too far. After all, a thief is a thief is a thief. But he will be retired with a generous package, and hopefully a salutary lesson in never dipping his fingers in the till of any company again….’
Lucy couldn’t help staring at him. Here was the same man who had shown up at the garden centre with his lackeys in tow and a dinner invitation he’d expected to be accepted. Now he was offering her an invitation of another sort, and this time he was calling the shots. She was truly appalled at his lack of morality. Was this how all rich people operated? Did they assume that they just needed to snap their fingers and the rest of the world would dance to their tune?
‘That’s ridiculous…’ She edged away from the desk and began backing unsteadily towards the door. She eyed the backpack she had brought with her. It was on the ground, next to the chair she had fallen into when she had first entered his office. Her unravelled hair fell in a long, thick blond curtain over one shoulder, but she was hardly aware of it as she took small steps towards the bag.
‘What’s so ridiculous about it?’
His words halted her, and she jerked up to stare at him with an expression of disbelief. ‘You’re asking me to be…to…’
‘Sleep with me…make love…have sex—at times and places of my choosing… No need to tiptoe over the details.’
‘But that’s utterly immoral!’
‘So’s stealing—and on the plus side sex isn’t a criminal offence punishable with a jail sentence….’ He was incredulous that she was even quibbling over his generous offer. As rescue packages went, he didn’t think she could have landed herself a better one.
And yet she was still staring at him as though he had asked if she wouldn’t mind stripping off and running naked down the street. What exactly, he wondered, was the problem here? If she was playing hard to get in an attempt to up the ante then she was definitely barking up the wrong tree. He would never have dreamt of doing a deal like this with any other woman. Perhaps that had something to do with the fact that she was the only woman ever to have turned him down. But, although she might be the exception, her window of opportunity was small.
‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t.’
Lucy retrieved her backpack and clutched it in front of her like a shield. She wondered whether there was anything else she could say that would buy her father some clemency, but in her heart she knew that the offer on the table was the only one this man would be making. She also knew that by turning it down she was condemning her parent to swift retribution.
But how could she possibly do what he wanted? Sex, for him, was clearly no more than a physical transaction. It was irrelevant that there was no emotion involved. She had always promised herself that sex for her would have lots of emotion involved. How could she abandon the moral principles she had been weaned on?
Gabriel shrugged. He strolled towards her and received the impression that she was holding her ground only by the skin of her teeth. Given half a chance she would have hightailed it through the door at speed.
‘Your choice,’ he told her with casual indifference.
‘Isn’t there something else you want?’ Lucy asked desperately.
‘No.’ Gabriel refused to mince words. ‘That’s the only deal on the table.’
‘And so…my dad…’
‘Goodbye freedom. Hello Cell Block H….’
‘You’re the most heartless, unsympathetic man I’ve ever met in my entire life!’
‘But I have many other things to offer….’ Gabriel’s voice was low and husky. She had a dusting of freckles on her nose and her eyelashes were so thick and dark that anyone would think she had laid on the mascara with a trowel were it not for the fact that she radiated a natural glow that had