She had to ask directions to the bar and, when she got there, she paused and frankly gaped.
It was carpeted, the carpet pale, patterned and very old. On the walls, deep, rich tapestries left you in no doubt that this hotel was old and proud of its age. Rich velvet curtains hung at the long windows and the chairs were regal, blending in with the air of expensive antiquity. There were no modern touches, nothing to indicate that outside the bustling twenty-first century was happening.
It was fabulous French decadence. It recalled the days of aristocracy and noblemen.
At which point, she scanned the room and there he was, sitting at one of the tables, frowning in front of the newspaper.
Temporarily lost in the financial section of the newspaper he was reading, absently drinking a glass of red wine from the bottle that had been placed on the table in front of him, Gabriel was unaware of her entrance.
And of the heads turning in her direction as she stood by the door looking at him.
But gradually he picked up that there was a certain silence. His eyes unerringly found her and for a few seconds he found that he was holding his breath.
He half-stood, which she took as a signal to move forward to join him, and although his breath returned he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her slowly approaching figure. He was aware of men turning to stare.
‘So...’ he drawled when she was standing in front of him. ‘You obeyed my instructions to the letter.’ She was exquisite. How had he failed to notice that before? The pale delicacy of her features was a revelation, as was the slender column of her neck, the graceful elegance of her body. Her presence dominated the room even though what she had chosen to wear was simple, unrevealing and refined.
‘You told me to get rid of my drab, grey clothes...’ Was that all he could say? she thought with a stab of disappointment.
‘Glass of wine?’ He sat back down, inwardly marvelling that she had managed to puncture his composure. ‘Where did you go shopping?’
Alice sat and gave him a little run-down of how she had spent her afternoon. Had he been staring at her as she had walked towards him? Or had he only been just looking to make sure that she could pass muster? His expression had been unreadable and she had a fierce longing for him to tell her that she looked beautiful.
He, of course, looked as stunning as he always did. He was dressed semi-formally in a charcoal-grey suit that looked hand-tailored and lovingly accentuated his physique.
‘Your hair...’ he murmured. ‘Very effective.’
Alice blushed, no longer feeling like his secretary but feeling, weirdly, like his date, even though she recognised the foolishness of letting herself get swept away by such a silly notion.
‘I had it dyed,’ she confessed self-consciously. ‘I hope it’s not too much.’
‘It’s...’ Gabriel was momentarily lost for words. ‘It’s... It suits you.’ He fought the temptation to reach out and run his fingers through its silky length.
‘Should we perhaps run through what sort of questions we might get asked about this buy-out?’
Gabriel found that he couldn’t care less about the buy-out. For once, business could not have been further from his mind. Those little snippets of wayward thoughts that had flitted through his mind now and again—little snapshots of her released from her armour of the perfect little secretary—coalesced into one powerful image of her without that dress on, naked and sprawled on his bed...
And where was he going with that thought, exactly? He had always made it his business never to mix work with pleasure—that was a sure-fire recipe for problems. The sexy little thing in the accounts department might display her wares but those were offers he had always avoided like the plague.
But this woman...
‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘We should do that—discuss potential problems; try and cut them off at the pass...’ He drained his glass and poured himself another. Potential problems? Who cared? He had it covered. His mind wanted to think about other intriguing possibilities...
He half-listened as she launched into a summary of the company and the technicalities of buying something that was rooted in a family.
‘Especially when there are...how many children did you say...? Three? All involved in the decision-making process...?’
‘Three children, yes,’ Gabriel murmured, sitting back and sipping his wine. It took extreme will power not to let his eyes rove over her pert breasts. She was so unlike the women he’d dated who had all been universally proud of the fact that they spilled out of bras. Since when, he mused, was that such a great selling point anyway? ‘Two boys and a girl,’ he added, because she seemed to expect him to expand on that succinct statement. ‘And I gather the daughter doesn’t really care one way or another. She travels, it would seem, spreading peace and love and playing at being a trust-fund hippy. What about you? Any siblings?’