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‘Are you really willing to take that risk?’
She put her wrap around her shoulders, covering up her skin, crossing it over her chest like a shawl.
Eventually she looked at him. ‘Look, thank you for helping me, but you really don’t need to go out of your way to do any more.’
Gabriel moved closer to her, watching how her eyes flared and colour tinged her cheeks. She wanted him. He knew it.
‘Did you not hear what I said?’
She swallowed. Her fingers clutched her wrap.
For a second the possibility trickled into Gabriel’s mind that she was different from other women he knew in terms of experience, but he batted it away. She was twenty-four. To be inexperienced at her age, with her stunning beauty, in this modern cynical world, was practically an impossibility. Far more likely she was playing him. She knew he wanted her and she was getting off on watching him work to seduce her.
There was little novelty in Gabriel’s world and he suspected it was the same for her. She was hardly a wide-eyed innocent when she’d been about to announce a business arrangement masquerading as a marriage.
‘I want you, Leonora. You felt it too this evening. I saw it.’
She flushed and her eyes were huge. ‘But...we don’t even know each other. How can—?’
‘How can it be possible?’ Gabriel decided he’d indulge her faux innocence. ‘Because chemistry transcends such mundanities.’
Every line in her body was tense.
‘You don’t have to do this, you know.’
There was a fierce pride in the aristocratic lines of her beautiful face. Her eyes had turned stormy.
‘I don’t need your pity, Gabriel.’
* * *
Leonora was resisting the pull she felt to this man with every atom of her being. He was toying with her. He had no clue how inexperienced she was and she wasn’t about to let him expose her any more than she’d already been exposed tonight.
She went to move past him, intent on getting out of there before she could unravel completely, but he caught her hand, stopping her. Heat travelled up her arm. She clenched her jaw.
‘You seriously think I pity you?’
The incredulity in his tone compelled her to face him, her hand still in his. He was frowning. Suddenly she was very aware of their proximity, and of the darkness of his chest under the white shirt.
She swallowed. ‘Maybe you just feel sorry for
me...for what happened. You feel some kind of responsibility to make me feel...better.’
Even as she said this out loud she wanted to cringe. It sounded ridiculous.
He shook his head. ‘You give me far too much credit. I’m not that nice. I told you I want you because I meant it. And I believe you want me too. You wanted me even as you stood beside your fiancé.’
Leonora flushed with guilty heat. She tried to pull her hand back but Gabriel didn’t let go. He tugged her closer. She couldn’t breathe.
‘You don’t believe I want you? I can prove to you that I do. And that you want me.’
Leonora knew that if she tugged hard she’d be free. She knew that if she did that, and if she turned and walked away, he wouldn’t stop her. He was too proud for that. Too sophisticated to chase a woman or force her. And yet...she couldn’t move. Didn’t want to. That sense of being in a moment outside time, outside of her life, was acute.
As if sensing her vacillation, Gabriel said, ‘Here you are beholden to no one. There’s no duty or responsibility. We’re just two people. A man and a woman who want each other. Who are free to indulge our mutual desire.’
Leonora searched the hard planes of his face, those dark eyes. Was it really that simple? Could it be that simple? Was she free?
She thought of where she would be now if that woman hadn’t interrupted the announcement of her engagement.
