‘How dare you?’
‘How dare I what?’ He guided her towards his black SUV, which had made light work of the journey down.
‘Become best friends with my mother!’
‘You’re being ridiculous.’ He opened the passenger door and steered her into the car.
‘I am not being ridiculous!’ she hissed as soon as he was behind the wheel, starting the engine into throaty life. ‘You shouldn’t have come here.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re not glad...no, excited...that I’m here. I can feel it.’
‘I am not...’
Whatever she had been about to say was lost as his mouth hit hers in a crushing, hungry kiss, a kiss he had been waiting for ever since they had returned from Paris and taken up the charade of playing boss-secretary as though nothing had happened between them.
Hand behind the nape of her neck, he pulled her towards him and carried on kissing her, their tongues melding, their bodies yearning for one another.
Alice was giddy from the fierceness of her driven response. Her fingers curled into his hair and she moaned with a mixture of wanting and not wanting, unable to help herself, and hating herself for her weakness.
Finally, he drew back and looked at her.
‘Don’t spin me any yarns about not wanting me,’ he growled. ‘If I were to take you right here, right now, you wouldn’t run screaming from this car. In fact, you’d get that sexy body of yours in all the right positions to have me in you!’
‘That’s not—’
‘It damn well is! Stop running away from the obvious!’
‘I never said you weren’t an attractive man!’ Her lips tingled from where they had been ravished. Her whole body tingled. He was right, he could have her in a heartbeat, and it was a shaming thought. She had spent the past two weeks fighting to maintain a controlled front and in a few seconds he had demolished it like a house of cards. She wanted to sob from frustration.
Gabriel smiled and turned his attention to the road. ‘So...’ He guided the car along the narrow road that led to the village. ‘You’ve never been happier than you are now, working for me. Apparently, I’m an exciting boss.’
‘Is that what my mother told you?’
‘She’s not what I had expected. Somehow I had it in my head that she was more like you.’
‘Meaning what, Gabriel?’
‘Meaning...strong, focused, opinionated. She’s a beautiful woman, Alice, but she seems to live on her nerves.’
‘I don’t like you prying into my personal life.’ But her voice was defeated. He had crossed the last frontier. In the space of a few weeks, she had gone from being the cool, together secretary he had taken on to replace his string of inept temps to a woman who had fallen under his spell, slept with him and now...the woman whose entire life would be laid bare.
‘I’m expressing interest, Alice,’ he said gently. ‘Not prying.’
‘I never asked for your interest.’ She rested her head against the leather head-rest and stared through the window at the blurred, dark countryside racing past her. In a few minutes, they would be in the village. They could actually have walked. On a nice evening, it was a joy to stroll down the country lanes, breathing in the fragrance of the trees and flowers. It was a thirty-minute walk that she had always found therapeutic.
Sure enough, the village twinkled ahead of them, and he found his way easily to the village square, where he parked the car and then killed the engine.
He looked at her for a while. She had the most riveting face he had ever seen, even when that face was turned away from him. He wanted to drag her back into his arms, kiss her all over again, force her out of her coolness, which was unbearable now that he had seen another side to her.
He was baffled by the strength of his reactions to her. He wasn’t just in hot, determined pursuit; he wanted more from her than just her body and her compliance. He had never been remotely interested in any of his past lovers’ backgrounds or in trying to make sense of them.
He had taken what had been on offer and looked no further. Yes, so he had been lazy. He wasn’t lazy now.
‘Why is your mother hesitant about telling you that she has a boyfriend?’
Alice’s head whipped round and she looked at him, shocked by what he had just said. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! You don’t know what you’re talking about. And I resent you poking your nose into my life, Gabriel!’ She yanked open the car door and sprang out of the car, wildly looking round for whatever Italian restaurant they were going to. It wouldn’t be hard to find. It wasn’t as though the village was bursting at the seams with chichi eating places.