A Bargain with the Enemy

Tears blurred Bryn’s vision. ‘Sometimes that’s easier said than done.’

‘But it can be done.’ Her mother reached out and grasped Bryn’s hand tightly in hers. ‘I’m living proof of that.’

Yes, her mother’s happiness with Rhys now was living proof of that. Except... Gabriel had been directly involved in that past her mother spoke of. Not as a spectator, or someone removed from the situation, but as a full participant.

‘We’ll see.’ She squeezed her mother’s hand reassuringly. ‘But could we just forget about this for now? Talk about something else?’

Her mother looked less than happy with the idea. ‘If that’s what you really want.’

‘It is.’

Mary nodded. ‘You know where I am when and if you want to talk.’

Yes, Bryn knew; she just couldn’t see a time she would ever be able to tell her mother of the emotional tangle she had got herself into with Gabriel.

* * *

‘Did you have a good time in Wales last week?’ Gabriel’s expression was guarded as he looked down at Bryn and saw the way the colour drained from her cheeks. She slowly looked up from the magazine she was reading at the back of the coffee shop, the girl who had prepared his coffee having told him where Bryn was sitting taking her evening break.

Gabriel knew that Bryn had to have been back in London for four days now, but she hadn’t come anywhere near the gallery, or him. Mainly him, Gabriel suspected.

The fact that his unexpected appearance at the coffee shop this evening had caused Bryn’s face to pale so dramatically, as well as striking her uncharacteristically dumb, would seem to confirm that suspicion.

He pulled out the chair opposite hers and sat down before placing his mug of coffee down on the table between them. ‘Everything all right at home?’

Her throat moved as she swallowed before answering him. ‘Fine, thank you.’

‘That’s good.’ Gabriel leaned back in the chair to stretch his long legs out in front of him as he continued to study Bryn.

She appeared somehow fragile to his critical gaze. Her face was pale, and there were hollows in her cheeks that hadn’t been there a week ago, implying that she had lost weight since he saw her last. Her eyes were also shadowed and bruised-looking, as if she hadn’t been sleeping well.

Because she had been as disturbed by what had happened between the two of them the previous week as Gabriel still was, rather than the things he had said to her?

Had she talked to her mother, as he had advised? Did she now know the truth where her father was concerned? Or did she still hold Gabriel responsible for everything that had happened in the past?

His determination to find answers to these questions had brought him to the coffee shop.

The past week had been a torturous hell for Gabriel, the first three days spent wondering if Bryn would talk to her mother, what she was thinking if she had, what decision she was going to come to in regard to the two of them while she was away. He had then spent the four days since she’d returned from Wales assuming she had decided to cut him out of her life.

A totally unacceptable decision as far as Gabriel was concerned.

Bryn was totally disconcerted at Gabriel’s arrival in the coffee shop, not least because his appearance, in a casual cream polo shirt, faded jeans resting low on lean hips and the darkness of his overlong hair falling casually over his forehead, had literally taken her breath away. How she wanted this man.

More so even than a week ago, she acknowledged achingly as she looked at him from beneath lowered lashes, their time together in Gabriel’s office, the intimacies they had shared, having for ever changed the way she now thought and felt about him.

A realisation that made a complete nonsense of her avoidance of him this past week.

‘You haven’t been to the gallery since you got back.’ Gabriel’s accusing tone echoed some of her thoughts.

She shrugged. ‘I’ve spoken to Eric several times on the phone, explained that I couldn’t make it to the gallery because I’ve been really busy at work.’

‘So he told me.’

Bryn found it impossible to meet the dark shrewdness of Gabriel’s gaze. ‘Then I don’t understand why you’re here.’

He lost his relaxed pose as he sat forward and grasped both of her hands in his, his nostrils flaring angrily as Bryn instinctively sat back and tried to pull free. A freedom he wouldn’t allow her. ‘I’m here so that we can have the conversation we didn’t finish a week ago.’

Her tone was pleading. ‘Gabriel—’

‘Bryn, don’t try to freeze me out, or put me, and what happened between us, into some convenient little compartment in your brain never to be opened again,’ he warned fiercely, ‘because, I assure you, that isn’t going to happen. I’m not going to allow it to happen.’

She gave another tug on her hands, once again failing to free herself, her throat moving as she swallowed before speaking. ‘I don’t know what you mean—’

‘Like hell you don’t,’ Gabriel scorned harshly.

A blush warmed her cheeks as she hissed, ‘You’re causing a scene, Gabriel.’ Several people at neighbouring tables had turned to give them curious glances as they had obviously heard the harshness of Gabriel’s tone.

He gave a humourless smile. ‘We wouldn’t be having this conversation here at all if you hadn’t been too much of a coward to come to Archangel when you got back.’

She gasped. ‘I told you, I’ve been really busy at the coffee shop since I returned—’

‘Too busy to so much as bother to telephone the man who is your lover?’

‘Gabriel!’ she warned fiercely, wrenching her hands painfully from his grasp even as she glanced around them before turning back to glare across the table at him. ‘You are not my lover.’

‘More than any other man has ever been,’ he stated uncompromisingly.

And how Bryn regretted ever allowing Gabriel to realise that.

Gabriel wasn’t enjoying this conversation, not his own part in it, or the fact that it was obviously causing Bryn discomfort. But this past week of not personally hearing so much as a word from her had made him so frustrated that he couldn’t seem to help himself.

Just looking at Bryn again as she sat alone in a corner at the back of the coffee shop reading a magazine, taking in the delicate softness of her cheek, the long sweep of her lashes, the silkiness of that defensively spiky hair, had been enough to cause his breath to catch in his throat and his shaft to become hard and aching beneath his jeans—the same painful state of arousal he had been in for most of the past week!

Consequently, he wasn’t in the mood to accept the brush-off from Bryn again. ‘What time do you finish here tonight?’ he prompted.

She blinked. ‘Gabriel—’

‘We either have this conversation at my apartment later tonight, Bryn, or right here and right now, but we are going to talk sometime this evening,’ he assured her.

She gave a shake of her head. ‘I’m tired, Gabriel.’

‘And you think I’m not?’

Her frown was pained. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I haven’t exactly been sleeping like a baby for the past week as I waited to see what you decided to do about us.’

‘There is no “us”,’ she sighed wearily.

‘Oh, yes, Bryn, there most definitely is an “us”.’

She gave a shake of her head. ‘Doesn’t the fact that I haven’t bothered to contact you since I returned speak for itself as to how I feel about what happened between us?’

Gabriel gave a humourless smile. ‘It tells me you’re a coward, nothing more.’

Her chin rose. ‘That’s the second time you’ve called me a coward in as many minutes, and I don’t like it.’

‘Then prove that you aren’t one by meeting me once you’ve finished work tonight.’

She gave him a pitying glance. ‘We aren’t children playing a game of dare, Gabriel.’

‘We aren’t children at all, which is why you should stop behaving like one.’ His eyes glittered angrily. ‘I’m not going anywhere, Bryn, so if you thought I was going to help you get through this situation by going along with pretending last week didn’t happen, you were obviously mistaken. It happened, Bryn. I suggest you live with it.’

Bryn had been living with it for the past week. With the knowledge of her complete lack of resistance to this man. With the fact that she’d had no control over what had happened between them in his office a week ago. With the fact that Gabriel had been the one to call a halt to their lovemaking because she hadn’t been able to do so.

With the fact that she had only needed to look at Gabriel again tonight to know that she wanted him still.

Her mouth tightened. ‘It would have been the gentlemanly thing to do, in the circumstances.’