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Gabe sighed as he felt her soft lips brushing against his skin. He had never planned to marry her. He hadn’t wanted to marry her. Reluctantly, he had taken what he considered to be the best course of action in circumstances which could have ruined her. He had done the right thing by her. Yet instead of showing her gratitude by melting quietly into the background and making herself as unobtrusive as possible, she had proved a major form of distraction in ways he had never anticipated.
From the moment she opened her eyes in the morning to the moment those long black lashes fluttered to a close at night, she mesmerised him in all kinds of ways.
The way she rose naked from the rumpled sheets—a tall, striking Venus with caramel skin and endless legs. The reverse-heart swing of her naked bottom as she wiggled it out of the room. The way she slanted him that blue-eyed look, which instantly had his blood boiling with lust.
But he knew that women often mistook a man’s lust for love; and that lust always faded. In the normal scheme of things, that wouldn’t matter, but with Leila it did. He couldn’t afford to let her fall in love with him and have the all too predictable angry outcome when she realised it wasn’t ever going to be reciprocated. He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want her to start thinking that he could feel things, like other men did. She was the mother of his child and she wasn’t going anywhere. He might not have wanted to become a father, but he was going to make damned sure that this baby was an enduring part of his life. Which he guessed was why he found himself saying, ‘W
hat exactly do you want to know?’
‘Tell me how you first got into advertising,’ she said. ‘Surely that’s not too difficult.’
‘Look it up on the internet,’ he said.
‘I already have.’ She remembered how she’d checked him out before that fateful meeting in Simdahab. ‘And although there’s lots of stuff about you winning awards and riding motorbikes and being pictured with some of the world’s most beautiful women—there’s not much in the way of background. Almost as if somebody had been controlling how much information was getting out there.’ She stroked her finger down his cheek. ‘Is that down to you, Gabe?’
‘Of course it is.’ His response was economical. ‘I’m sure your brother controls information about himself all the time.’
‘Ah, but my brother is a sultan who rules an empire and has a lot of enemies. What’s your excuse?’
She saw the flicker of irritation which crossed his face—a slightly more exaggerated irritation than the look she’d seen yesterday when he’d discovered a dirty coffee cup sitting on the side of his pristine bathtub and acted as if it were an unexploded bomb.
‘My excuse is that I try to remain as private as possible,’ he said. ‘But I can see that you’re not going to let up until you’re satisfied. Where shall I begin?’
‘Were you born rich?’
‘Quite the opposite. Dirt poor, as they say—though I doubt whether someone like you has any comprehension of what that really means.’
His accusation rankled almost as much as his attitude, and Leila couldn’t hide her hurt. ‘You think because I was born in a palace that I’m stupid? That I have no idea what the vast majority of the world is like? I’m surprised at you, Gabe—leaping to stereotypical judgements like that.’
‘Ah, but I’m an advertising man,’ he said, a smile curving the edges of his mouth. ‘And that’s what we do.’
‘I think I can work out what dirt poor means. I’m just interested to know how you went from that to...’ the sweeping gesture of her hand encompassed the vast dimensions of the dining room, with its expensive view of the river ‘...well, this.’
‘Fate. Luck. Timing.’ He shrugged. ‘A mixture of all three.’
‘Which as usual tells me precisely nothing.’
He levered himself up against the pillows, his gaze briefly resting on the hard outline of her nipples. He felt the automatic hardening of his groin, wondering if that sudden flare of colour over her cheeks meant that she’d noticed it, too.
‘I left school early,’ he said. ‘I was sixteen, with no qualifications to speak of, so I moved to London and got a job in a big hotel. I started in the kitchens—’ He fixed her with a mocking look as he saw her eyes widen. ‘Does it shock my princess to realise that her husband was once a kitchen hand?’
‘What shocks this particular princess is your unbelievable arrogance,’ she said quietly, ‘but I’m enjoying the story so much that I’m prepared to overlook it. Do continue.’
She saw another brief flicker of sexual excitement in his eyes, but quickly she dragged the cotton sheet up to cover her breasts. She didn’t want him seducing her into silence with his kisses.
‘I didn’t stay in the kitchens very long,’ he said. ‘I gravitated to the bar where the buzz was better and the tips were good. A big crowd of guys from a nearby advertising agency used to come in for drinks every Friday night—and they used to fascinate me.’
She stared at him. ‘Because?’
For a moment, Gabe didn’t answer because it was a long time since he’d thought about those days and those men. He remembered the ease with which they’d slipped credit cards from the pockets of their bespoke suits. He remembered their artful haircuts and the year-round tans which spoke of winter sun—at a time in his life when he’d never even had a foreign holiday.
‘I wanted to be like them,’ he said, in as candid an admission as he’d ever made to anyone. ‘It seemed more like fun than work—and I felt I was owed a little fun. They would sit around and brainstorm and angst if they were short of creative ideas. They didn’t really notice me hanging around and listening. They used to talk as if I wasn’t there.’ And hadn’t it been that invisibility which had spurred him on—even more than his determination to break free from the poverty and heartbreak which had ended his childhood so abruptly? The sense that they had treated him like a nothing and he’d wanted to be someone.
‘They had a deadline looming and a slogan for a shampoo ad which still hadn’t been written,’ he continued. ‘I made a suggestion—and I remember that they looked at me as if I’d just fallen to earth. Some teenage boy with cheap shoes telling them what they should write. But it was a good suggestion. Actually, it was a brilliant suggestion—and they made me a cash offer to use it. The TV campaign went ahead using my splash line, the product flew off the shelves and they offered me a job.’
He remembered how surprised they’d been when he had coolly negotiated the terms of his contract, instead of snatching at their offer, which was what they’d clearly expected. They’d told him that his youth and his inexperience gave him no room for negotiation, but still he hadn’t given way. He had recognised that he had a talent and that much was non-negotiable. It had been his first and most important lesson in bargaining—to acknowledge his own self-worth. And they had signed, as he had known all along they would do.
‘Then what happened?’
