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Her phoned beeped with the taxi announcing itself outside and, ready for the short trip to Heathrow, Alice focused on practical issues.
Her mother was fine. She hadn’t forgotten anything. Another big deal was brewing on the sidelines and she had thought to read up on the company in question and download relevant facts that Gabriel might find useful.
She made it to the airport to find Gabriel already there and waiting at the designated spot by the first-class check-in counter.
He eyed her case sceptically.
‘Is that all the luggage you’ve brought with you?’ Annoyingly, she had been on his mind more than usual. He didn’t know what he expected when she joined him at the airport but, unsurprisingly, she was in her usual work uniform of nondescript grey suit, a lighter one to accommodate the milder weather, and her neat black patent leather pumps.
‘We’ll only be gone for four days.’ Alice’s eyes skirted around him. He was elegantly casual in some cream trousers and a cream jumper under which he was wearing a striped shirt. He looked expensive, sophisticated and drop-dead gorgeous, the sort of man who wouldn’t be travelling anything other than first class.
‘I’ve dated women who have packed more than you have for an overnight stay in a hotel,’ Gabriel remarked drily. He was discovering that he enjoyed the way she blushed, enjoyed the way her eyes never quite met his whenever she felt that something he said might have been a little too provocative.
He checked her in, holding up her passport so that he could examine the unflattering picture of her, and then they headed to the first-class lounge.
Excitement rippled through her.
‘I’ve never been to Paris,’ she confided, impressed with the first-class lounge with its comfortable seating, waiter service and upmarket lounge-bar feel.
Gabriel tilted his head to one side, pleasantly surprised, because she so rarely said anything to him of a personal nature.
In any other woman, that would have been a definite plus point. In her, he found it weirdly irritating. It was as if the more she failed to tell him, the more he wanted to find out.
‘Never?’
‘Never.’
‘I thought school trips over here always involved at least one compulsory trip to France...or have you been to other bits of France?’
Alice thought of her school days. The state school she had attended hadn’t been great and she had had next to no supervision at home. Her father had been absent most of the time, either physically or mentally, and her mother had increasingly removed herself from the normal day to day things that most mothers did, burrowing down in her own misery.
‘I went to Spain once.’ She detoured around his direct question. ‘One of my school friends asked me over with her for two weeks over summer when I was fourteen. It was the nicest holiday I can remember having.’
‘What about family holidays?’
‘There weren’t many of those,’ Alice said abruptly.
‘I know the feeling.’
She looked at him, startled. She knew next to nothing about his past. He came to her as the man already formed, the billionaire with no emotional ties and no desire to form any. He was the brilliant, talented, driven guy who worked hard and played hard; who snapped his fingers and expected the world to jump, but who rarely seemed to put himself out for anyone.
She teetered on the brink of asking him for details. Curiosity clamped its teeth into her but for some reason the thought of stepping over that brink terrified her and she changed the subject, asking him about the places he had been and the countries he had visited.
Besides, would he even share personal details with her? He was intensely private and guarded in what he revealed.
Gabriel noted the way she had backed away from following up on his remark. He wasn’t too sure why he had said that in the first place. He had never felt inclined to let any woman into his past. Would he have told her about his foster-home background? Doubtful, although in fairness he couldn’t imagine her exclaiming with false sympathy or using it as leverage to try to prise him open like a shell.
His interest spiked and he looked at her with cool, guarded eyes.
The four-day trip to Paris suddenly seemed ripe with all sorts of possibilities. He wondered whether she had ever let her hair down, gone wild, got drunk, danced on tables. He couldn’t see it. He wondered what she was thinking, what was going through her head.
What she did on those weekends.
He caught himself wondering whether there was a man in her life, despite protests to the contrary...
The questions settled into vague background thoughts as their flight was announced and soon they had left the country.
Predictably, she talked about work on the trip over. She had shown a great deal of commendable initiative with one of his deals, presenting him with a list of facts and figures on a company he was in the middle of acquiring.
