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Red mist settled over his eyes. ‘I’ll expect you back here first thing on Monday. Harrisons can wait. There’s too much work here for you to take a day off.’
‘I’ve already booked the day off,’ Alice told him abruptly. ‘I was being helpful when I suggested I visit Harrisons—it would actually have cut into my day. But they’re only a hop and a skip away and I shall probably be in the area to do some...shopping anyway. I don’t mind popping in and picking up the hard copy information we need.’ How dared he think that he could be heavy handed with her just because he had moved on and was involved with someone else?
Just then Bethany appeared at the door, her face a picture of petulance. He had met Bethany several months ago at a company do. Her father—an Argentinian man in his late fifties whose company had surfaced on Gabriel’s radar for acquisition—had brought her along in the absence of his wife, who’d been on a cruise with a gaggle of her friends, he had told Gabriel. Bethany had visibly blossomed the second she had set eyes on Gabriel and had followed him around for the evening, much to her father’s delight. She was thirty, sexy as hell and, she’d confessed with a sultry little smile, bored out of her mind with all the dreary people talking about work.
Gabriel had taken her number, vaguely intimated that he might give her a call and promptly forgotten her existence, of which he had been reminded several times in the intervening months.
He had finally, two days previously, decided to take her up on her repeated offers. This was his comfort zone—being chased by women. His comfort zone was not one in which he pursued and was knocked back.
He looked between the women and the differences could not have been more startling.
Alice was nearly six inches taller in flats, slim, with her hair neatly tied back and her pale face intelligent and attractive rather than flamboyantly beautiful. She had a composure and a stillness that the much shorter, sexier woman lacked and Gabriel stifled his irritation at finding himself losing interest in his hot date for the evening.
‘Have a really nice evening.’ Alice couldn’t bear to see them together, to see her replacement who was everything she was not. She hated the thought that she had been the temporary aberration, and she wondered whether Gabriel had been drawn to her because she was so unlike the women he went out with as a rule.
Bethany had lost interest in Alice altogether and was preening for Gabriel’s benefit, smoothing her hands over her figure-hugging dress and then twirling round, demanding to know what he thought of her outfit.
Alice turned away, not wanting to see the rampant male appreciation in his eyes, appreciation that she had once seen directed at her.
‘I’ll leave you to it, shall I?’ She interrupted the love birds and Gabriel turned to look at her.
‘If you don’t mind.’ His voice was ultra-polite, his eyes flat and unreadable. ‘And, Alice, have a good weekend...visiting your mother...’
Alice reddened. ‘I happen to have other things planned,’ she muttered, because he had made her sound sad and pathetic, and he had done it on purpose. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he had just pushed her back into the ‘efficient secretary without a life’ box whose weekend occupation was visiting her mother. Not that he knew the full story behind those visits.
‘Oh? Anything exciting?’ Gabriel’s ears pricked up. Bethany’s arm possessively linking his felt like a dead weight and it was all he could do not to shrug it off impatiently off impatiently.
‘Oh, just seeing one or two people,’ Alice told him vaguely. ‘You know...’
Gabriel didn’t know and the not knowing preyed on his mind for the remainder of the evening. He was irritated with his date, and then further irritated with himself, because before Paris Bethany would have been just the thing to relieve him of whatever stress he might have been having.
She had no interest in what was happening on the stage and several times asked him what the plot was. She spent quite a bit of time peering round her to see if she could recognise anyone, and was visibly relieved when the ordeal was at an end and they could get something to eat. Although, she said with a little moue, she really, really, would have loved to have something to eat at his place.
Sex was not going to happen.
In fact, nothing was going to happen.
Gabriel fed her, listened to her while his mind drifted in other, less welcome directions and then settled her into his chauffeur-driven car, made his excuses and headed back alone to his house.
So much for his attempts at distracting himself! The only thing on his mind was Alice’s remark about having people to see at the weekend. The thought of her having a man down there had lodged in his head, utterly destroying the self-assurance he wore like a mantel on his shoulders.
