‘Why not? All right; we can find somewhere a little more private under the trees, although there’s no one around. Is it always this deserted?’
‘You need to get out of London a little more.’ She was damp and hot as they walked hand in hand towards the nearest bank of trees. ‘There’re lots of places like this out here. It’s quiet, peaceful. That’s why Mum decided that she wanted to move here. It was restful after living in Birmingham. I also think she wanted to be as far as she could from any ugly reminders of her marriage.’ She pulled him towards her and stretched up to kiss him, fingers clasped behind his neck, their bodies pressed so tightly together that she could feel the hardness of his urgent, demanding arousal.
‘Lying down might be a little uncomfortable,’ Gabriel said, but he had to have her. Nor did he want the substitute of her hand or her mouth. He wanted to be inside her, needed to be inside her.
‘Then let’s forget about it and stroll back down to the village,’ Alice teased as she stroked his cheek and watched the fire blaze in his dark eyes. ‘We could have that scone and that cup of tea. Tea can be very refreshing...might cool us down...’
‘You’re a witch,’ Gabriel said in an unsteady voice he barely recognised. He tugged down the jeans, told her to step out of them.
She kept the jumper on. Being half-naked like this, with her bottom half-exposed, felt decadent.
‘Now, legs apart,’ he commanded.
Having him down there, standing perfectly still when she wanted to collapse because her legs felt as wobbly as jelly, was exquisite agony.
He explored her, taking his time. It surprised him that he’d never made love outdoors and he thought that next time he would make sure they brought a rug with them.
Next time? Yes, there would be a next time, because he couldn’t get enough of her...
Their love-making was basic, wild and hard. He hoisted her up so that her legs were wrapped around him. She could have been as light as a feather.
The sensation was intense. Her buttocks clenched as he drove her down on him and she came over and over, splintering into a thousand glorious pieces.
Afterwards, the walk into the village was languorous. Sated, Alice had never felt happier. It was almost as though they were a normal couple—ducking into shops, laughing at some of the souvenirs on sale, stopping to buy ice-creams. Mr and Mrs Average on a day out.
What a joke! She reminded herself that they certainly were not Mr and Mrs Average, or Mr and Mrs Anything.
He certainly wasn’t average! In fact, he cut an impressive and madly exotic figure next to his paler counterparts as they dipped in and out of the shops. People stared. He didn’t seem to notice, but she did. Women of all ages stole glances; wondered; maybe thought that he might be someone famous.
For the first time in her life, Alice felt as though she had stepped out of the shadows and become a person in her own right, someone who wasn’t so surrounded by barriers, that she could be free to just...be.
They had a very long lunch in one of the three pubs in the village and it was only when they were emerging that she bumped into one of the ladies whom she knew visited her mother on a regular basis.
Alice had never socialised with Maggie Fray, but they had met on a couple of occasions, and now the older woman stopped and looked at Gabriel with twinkling, knowing eyes.
‘So this is the young man your mother says you talk so much about.’ She held out her hand with a smile while, mortified, Alice tried to shrink away from the grey, inquisitive eyes.
‘My boss...’ Alice said in a thin, high voice, but minutes before they had been holding hands and that begged the question of what exactly the relationship between boss and secretary was.
The older woman’s smiling eyes seemed to be making all the right assumptions.
‘Well,’ she said comfortably, ‘you two seem to make a very good match. And I know your mother would love to hear the sound of wedding bells in the not too distant future!’
On a scale of one to ten of hideous conversations, Alice rated this one at somewhere around twelve. She barely heard the rest of whatever Maggie was chattering about.
How much had she told her mother over the many weeks that she had been working for Gabriel?
A lot. They were accustomed to sharing. Even if she had made a big effort to play down the way she felt about Gabriel, she unknowingly would have given the game away because her mother could read her the way no one else could. Her mother would have been able to interpret her hitched silences, the expression on her face whenever she mentioned his name, the number of times she talked about him and the number of times she didn’t...
Her arrogant, self-centred, infuriating, egotistic boss who was also brilliant, inspiring, unbelievably smart, charismatic and funny. And the fact that Gabriel had shown up at the house, uninvited, unannounced and apparently with no other purpose but to see her, would have given credence to whatever fairy stories her mother had been concocting in her head.