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‘Finished already?’ he asked, swinging back in the chair and looking at her with brooding, unreadable eyes. ‘Scanned and sent off everything?’
‘Your date is here, Gabriel.’ It was a challenge just getting the words out. So, he had reverted to type. Bethany Dawkins was small, curvaceous and dressed to impress in a figure-hugging black dress with a neckline that plunged almost to the waist, displaying bountiful breasts restrained behind a sliver of black netting. Alice had looked at the other woman and immediately felt dowdy, drab and unappealing, and she had known from the way the other woman’s eyes had skimmed over her that she wasn’t alone in that opinion.
She had already buzzed through to him that the tickets had been booked. She doubted sexy little Bethany with the flowing dark hair would be in the slightest bit interested in opera.
‘Wonderful.’ He stood up and began slinging on his jacket.
‘Have a lovely evening,’ she said through gritted teeth.
Gabriel paused, as though suddenly struck by an errant thought. ‘With Bethany for company, I undoubtedly will. Opera interest you, Alice?’
‘You know it does.’ It was the first time she had alluded to one of the many conversations they had had over a bottle of wine before they’d had to return to the hotel, like adolescents unable to go long without touching one another.
‘Of course. I’d forgotten. Care to join us? I’m sure it would be possible to have them arrange for a third seat to be made available.’
And witness first hand how easily he had moved on? Watch them holding hands and staring at each other in that ‘can’t wait to climb into bed after this’ way? That was how he had looked at her in Paris. Over meals, in the back seat of the limo, he had looked at her with dark hunger, as though the time couldn’t go by fast enough until he was in bed with her again.
‘I’ll give that a miss. Thank you. And, to answer your question about the files, yes, everything’s been done so, if it’s all the same with you, I’ll leave now. I shall be going to visit my mother in Devon tomorrow and I thought I might stay over until Tuesday. I could look in on that customer we’ve been having problems with in Exeter. It’s no trouble and it’ll save you having to make the trip yourself.’
‘How far does your mother live from Exeter?’
‘Close enough.’ Something else that he’d forgotten. She had told him the name of the little village where her mother lived, although she had kept all other surplus information to herself. Had he forgotten everything she had said to him? He had appeared so attentive, but had it been in one ear and out the other?
Well, he certainly had form when it came to that, she thought bitterly, but it hurt, because she had been one-hundred percent committed when she had talked to him.
‘I think your hot date might be getting a bit impatient outside,’ she reminded him coolly.
‘And that’s a problem because...?’ He wondered why the sudden disappearing act for a long weekend. Since she had effectively walked out on him, he had been thinking about her non-stop, which alternately baffled and angered him—hence his decision to seek some replacement therapy. But not even the delectable woman waiting for him outside could kill the curiosity he felt when it came to Alice.
He knew that she visited her mother every weekend and, for the life of him, that seemed peculiar. It took filial devotion to whole new lengths.
And this weekend, she wanted to stay longer. He knew that the village was only forty-five minutes’ drive from his client, so why the pressing urgency to stay the day?
Did she visit more than just her mother when she vanished on those mysterious trips to the back of beyond? The more he considered that option, the more likely it seemed, and of course there could be only one pressing reason for her to trek all the way down there every weekend without fail. A man.
She had slept with him and she had fancied the hell out of him, or so he had thought. Frankly, wasn’t it a little suspect that she could move from fancying him to treating him like a complete stranger within a matter of hours? Women didn’t operate like that. Detachment did not come as second nature to them. Why would Alice be the exception to the rule? It was as though the woman she had been in Paris had stayed there.
He had never been given to flights of imagination. He had always considered that the luxury of people who had too much spare time on their hands, but he was discovering that his imagination was playing all sorts of games now as he stood there, looking at her.
So, she had slept with him. Was it because the guy she really wanted was not available? Was the man married? Was that what those weekend visits were all about? Was it a so-called duty visit to dear mama, but really to hook up with some sleazy guy with a wife and kids who gave her sex now and again while promising to leave his albatross family one day?
