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Dove managed to make a smile appear on her face as Alistair turned to share his excitement. She knew the Silva Group had recently moved into London’s latest exclusive high-rise development. A multi-tiered white tower known colloquially as the ‘Wedding Cake’. She felt a trickle of relief wash through her, picturing the gleaming open-plan offices. At least there, surrounded by his attentive staff, there would be little opportunity for them to be alone.
‘You must come and visit, Alistair. But...’ Gabriel paused, and she looked up at him uneasily. ‘We won’t be working out of the office. You see, when I greenlight an acquisition I prefer to work fromThe Argentum. My yacht,’ he added, his eyes on hers. ‘She’s moored off the Côte d’Azur.’
Her throat was suddenly so tight that it ached to breathe.
Beside her, Alistair was looking even more delighted. ‘And you call that working?’
Gabriel inclined his head. ‘I know it sounds a little crazy, but it actually works very well. Aside from privacy issues, on shore there are distractions, temptations. Out at sea, everyone stays focused. It’s perfect, really.’
The sunlight was behind him now and she couldn’t see his expression, just the faint gleam of his eyes. But, staring up at him, Dove felt a warm, slippery panic rising up from her stomach.
Sailing around the Mediterranean while working would be most people’s idea of a dream job. Only how was she supposed to stay focused, staysane, when it was clear, after what had happened this morning, that the most distracting temptation for her would not be on shore but on the yacht?
CHAPTER THREE
GABRIELSTRODEOUTinto Lincoln’s Inn Fields, his blue eyes narrowing. Not at the unusually bright London sunshine but at his complete and utter lack of self-control.
What had he been thinking? Dove Cavendish was the woman who had scorned and then humiliated him. She had taken his heart and trampled on it in her red-soled heels, and yet all it took was one touch and he had forgotten his anger, his thirst for revenge. Had anyone asked him he would have struggled to tell them his name...
His jaw clenched tight, and for a few quivering seconds he could almost feel her body pressed against his as intensely as if it was reality.
Frustration in every sense of the word burned through him.
He had broken his first rule of business. He had let himself get distracted.
But it wasn’t as if he had bumped into her randomly in the foyer of some hotel. This day had been long coming. It had taken six long years for everything to fall into place so that he could finally confront Dove Cavendish on her home turf. He had planned it all out, scripted each word, fully intending to cut her down to size, to make her feel as small and powerless as she’d made him feel all those years ago.
Instead, he had behaved like some stupid, oversexed teenage boy.
Holding her in his arms, feeling the fever-heat of her skin beneath that silky blouse, had made time lose its shape so that the past had overlapped the present. In those few devastating seconds when Dove had melted against him it had been as if ten thousand years of evolution had reversed in the blink of an eye. He had no longer been Gabriel Silva, billionaire CEO, whose suits cost the same amount as a small family car. He had been just a man. A primitive man driven by mind-melting impulses and unconscious need.
And that wasn’t all. Shaken by his sudden loss of control, and the sweet, wild lightness of Dove’s response, he had suggested that she fly out to join him onThe Argentum—even though, up until that moment, he had been intending simply to keep her dangling in London.
He swore under his breath, then lifted his hand with the mix of carelessness and authority that was now as instinctive to him as breathing, watching as a sleek, dark limousine with tinted windows pulled up alongside the kerb.
Inside the car, the air was cool. Jaw clenching, he sank back against the pale leather upholstery.
It hadn’t always been the case. Making money was the easy part—but being rich took surprisingly long to master. Because being rich was about more than just having a lot of money. And he had alotof money. More than he could have ever imagined, growing up in his parents’ two-bedroomed terraced house in Swindon.
Some of the tension in his shoulders loosened, as it always did when he thought about his mother and father. Luis and Laura Silva might not have had much money, but they had given him everything a son could want or need. They had supported and guided him and had faith in him. Most of all they’d loved him—unconditionally.
Once upon a time, when he had been younger and more trusting, he had believed Dove loved him like that too. He knew better now.
He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, then closed his eyes, seeing again the look of panic on her face as they broke apart. For her, it had never been a relationship. It had been just a summer fling. Maybe she’d liked it that he’d been nothing like any of the men in her circle, with their floppy fringes, striped shirts and loud, braying voices. That summer, when he’d worked as a waiter for an events company, he’d had his fill of them. He had thought Dove had too. It was certainly what she’d implied.
But what had he really known about her?
His eyes snapped open.
Nothing, that was what.
More incredibly still, he hadn’t cared. The first time he’d laid eyes on Dove, he’d wanted her. Wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything or anyone. Wanted her so badly that it had hurt to breathe.
He had been working since the start of the summer. Sometimes in the kitchens, scraping food from pots and pans, loading plates and cutlery into the dishwashers. Other times he’d been required ‘front-of-house’ to wait at tables. All of it had been dull, repetitive, exhausting work, but he’d needed money—he’d always needed money then. And he had still been smarting from what had happened a year earlier. Work had taken his mind off the pain. And the guilt.
And the shame.
The shame of failing. Failing to be wanted, welcomed, embraced. Not once but twice.
