‘There’s a deadline on this deal. The lawyers have pored over it with a fine-tooth comb but I still need to make sure that all bases are covered. I can’t afford to have a comma in the wrong place or else there’s the chance the whole thing will be called off. It’s taken long enough for me to get the family on board with the concept of selling. I don’t want any delay to have them getting cold feet at the last minute.’
Alice nodded. She was mesmerised by the intensity of his eyes, the perfect command he had when he was in work mode; the sheer, unadulterated sexiness of him in casual clothes. When it came to business, he was a machine. He could focus for hours on end without losing concentration. He could tackle a problem at eight in the morning and not let up until he had solved it, whether it took him two minutes, two hours or two days. She watched his hands as he gestured, her brow creased in a small frown which she hoped would convey a suitable level of concentration.
‘And I’m afraid you have no choice in the matter...’
Alice started as she caught the tail end of his sentence.
‘Have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying, Alice?’ Just at that point, the doorbell rang and he returned a minute or two later with two bags filled with beautifully packed gourmet food.
‘I’m sorry. Of course. You were talking about Trans-Telecom...’
‘And informing you that you might get away with avoiding work duty this weekend but I’m giving you advance warning from now that, whatever plans you have for next weekend, you’re going to have to cancel because you’re coming to Paris with me to sign off on this deal. I’ll need you there to transcribe everything that’s said and agreed, word for word.’
‘Next weekend...’
‘Next weekend. So you can spend next week getting your head round it.’
Of course her mother would be fine for one weekend. Alice knew that but she still felt a stab of guilt. She knew that she could have just told him what her weekend plans were, confided the situation about her mother with him, but somehow that would have felt like another line being crossed and she didn’t want to cross any more of those lines.
Besides, Gabriel Cabrera was many things, but a warm and fluffy person who encouraged girlish confidences was not one of those things.
Nor was she the fluffy, girlish type to dispense them.
‘Of course,’ she said brightly. ‘I’ll make sure that I...rearrange my weekend plans...’
Which were what, exactly? Gabriel wondered.
‘Good. In that case, twenty minutes to eat, and then let’s carry on...’
CHAPTER FOUR
ALICE HAD NOT been out of the country on a holiday for a while. She knew that this wasn’t going to be a holiday—the opposite. But she would still be leaving the country and how hard would it be to take a little time out and explore some of the city on her own? Even if it meant grabbing an hour or two when they weren’t entertaining clients or working.
And her mother had taken it well—better than Alice had expected, in fact.
She had been down in Devon, as usual, at the weekend and had decided, before she had even stepped foot in her mother’s little two-bedroom cottage in the village, that she would break the news when she was about to leave.
Pamela Morgan lived on her nerves. A highly strung woman even in the very best of times, she had become progressively more neurotic and mentally fragile during the long course of her broken marriage.
Still only in her mid-fifties, she remained a beautiful woman, beautiful in a way Alice knew she never could be. Her mother was small, blonde, with a faraway look in her big blue eyes. She was the ultimate helpless damsel that men seemed to adore.
But that ridiculous beauty had been as much of a burden in the long run as it had been a blessing. Growing up, Alice had watched helplessly from the sidelines as her mother had floundered under the crushing weight of her husband’s arrogant, far more flamboyant personality. She hadn’t seemed to possess the strength to break free. She was the classic example of a woman who had always relied on her looks and, when the going had got tough, had had nothing else upon which to fall back.
When Rex Morgan had begun to lose interest in his pretty wife, she had not been able to cope. She had desperately tried to make herself prettier—had done her hair in a thousand different styles, dyed it in a hundred different shades of vanilla blonde, had dieted until her figure made men stop in their tracks—but none of it had ever been enough. In the end she had given up, choosing instead to remain passive as her husband’s philandering had beome more and more outrageous.
She had cowered when he had bellowed and waited without complaining when he had disappeared for days on end, reappearing without a word of explanation but reeking of perfume.