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Everything hurt. Seeing him again. Having him back in her life butnotback in her life. He was a stranger, and yet he knew things about her that no one else knew. So much had happened between them—only everything she’d felt had been false. For Gabriel it had all been just a game. And now she was going to have to work with him.
Her shoulders stiffened against the cool leather. When Dove was a child, her mother had used to read her the Greek myths. Some she’d loved, like the tale of the Golden Apple, but the one she’d hated was the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. Only it hadn’t been the monster that had scared her, but the labyrinth. She hadn’t been able to bear to imagine how it would feel to be trapped in the darkness, blundering into one dead end after another.
She didn’t need to imagine it now.
Ever since Gabriel had left the office she had been trapped in a labyrinth of his making. She had tried repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, to find a loophole—she was a lawyer, after all. But unless she was willing to call his bluff there was no way out.
And she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t risk doing something that might harm Alistair. Or the fifty or so people who worked at Cavendish and Cox. And then, of course, there was Olivia. Refusing to work for Gabriel would have meant telling Alistair the truth about Gabriel and Oscar, and then her mother would have found out everything—because that was how it worked. One moment of transparency would lead inevitably to another, like flowers bursting into bloom in spring.
After all this time, could she really just casually drop that kind of grenade in her mother’s lap? It would serve no purpose except to upset her, and Olivia was finally in a good place.
‘Not long now, Ms Cavendish.’
Her chin jerked up. The helicopter’s co-pilot had turned to face her, smiling reassuringly.
‘We should seeThe Argentumin around ten minutes.’ His eyes dropped to where her hand was clamped around the armrest. ‘Would you like me to play some music through the speakers? Some of our more nervous passengers have found it helpful not to hear the sound of the rotors.’
She smiled stiffly. ‘Thank you.’
Moments later, soft piano music filled the cabin and, uncurling her fingers, she rested her hands in her lap. She wasn’t a nervous flyer. But there was no need to tell a perfect stranger the truth. That the real reason for her nervousness was sitting onThe Argentum.
All six foot four of him.
Nothing short of a medicated coma was going to make this terrible edgy feeling disappear. Not when she could still feel the imprint of his lips against hers.
She felt a sharp warning twist through her stomach, like seasickness, just as if she was already standing on the deck of the yacht. But in her mind she was back there in the war room, replaying the moment when Gabriel had kissed her.
It shouldn’t have happened—she had been right about that. But being right with hindsight didn’t change the facts. He had kissed her, and she had let him. Worse, she had kissed him back.
Why had she done that?
There was no making sense of it. But that hadn’t stopped her from asking herself that question roughly every ten minutes since Gabriel had sauntered out of the Cavendish and Cox building five days ago. The only difference was that this time it was asked to the accompaniment of Chopin’sPrelude Op 28 No 15.
And she still didn’t have an answer—or at least not one that didn’t make her want to jump out of the helicopter and into the sea below.
Glancing out of the window, she felt her heart start to beat arrhythmically. But it was too late even for that now.
Beneath her, a glossy white yacht rose out of the shimmering sheet of water like a displaced iceberg. Stomach churning, she pressed her hands together in her lap to hide how badly they were shaking. Back at the hotel, she’d thought Gabriel had deliberately already taken the yacht out to sea for some Machiavellian reason designed to put her in her place. But now she saw there could be only few marinas that would be able to take a boat of that size.
‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’
Turning her gaze, she saw that both pilots were gazing down atThe Argentumwith undisguised admiration.
‘And not just beautiful,’ the co-pilot added. ‘That bow can cut through Arctic ice.’
‘That’s amazing.’ Dove smiled automatically. It was the kind of detail Alistair would have loved, and she felt a sharp pang, picturing his excitement when she told him.
The helicopter began to descend, just as she had known it would, and ten minutes later she was stepping onto the sleek white deck, panic punching through her like a jackhammer. She was half expecting Gabriel to meet her—not out of courtesy, but simply to gloat. Instead, a short, bright-eyed man wearing navy trousers and a white polo shirt greeted her with a firm, dry handshake. In his other hand he was holding a tablet.
‘Welcome on boardThe Argentum, Ms Cavendish. I’m Peter Reid, the chief steward. Did you have a good flight?’
‘Yes, thank you. It was very...’ she searched for an adjective ‘...smooth.’
‘That’s what we aim for.’ Lifting the tablet, he typed something, then swiped across the screen. ‘Just updating the manifest,’ he murmured. ‘Now, if you would like to come this way, Mr Silva is waiting for you in the lounge.’
She followed him through the boat, the sound of her heartbeat swallowing up his voice intermittently so that she only caught occasional snatches of sentences.
‘...sixty-member crew...twenty thousand square feet of living space...encased in bomb-proof glass...fingerprint security system...twenty-four thousand horsepower diesel engines.’
