The Dominant Male. Sarah Holland

man could ever hope to make her truly fall in love.

      Of course, she loved Bobby, but in such a different way. He was and always had been more like a friend, a comfortable and familiar cushion she nestled on while getting on with her own life and career.

      But a man like Gabriel Stone could make her fall helplessly in love, and that made him dangerous.

      Far too dangerous to allow him access to her again—even though she was already so fascinated by him that all she could think of were his dazzling eyes, his cynical face, the power of his kiss…and what other wicked delights a kiss like that could lead to.

      ‘Rhiannon!’ Bobby called up the vast sweeping staircase. ‘I booked the table for seven-thirty! We’re going to be late!’

      ‘Just coming!’ Rhiannon snapped out of her reverie and hurried downstairs with her little suitcase, which Bobby stowed in the car as they both said their goodbyes to the charity organisers.

      They drove swiftly back to London and had dinner at a homely little Italian restaurant just round the corner from Rhiannon’s Kensington home.

      But she was preoccupied and tense all through the meal, dark passion occasionally smouldering in her eyes as she toyed with her food indifferently and remembered Gabriel’s words—’I like to see you looking helplessly feminine…’ Why did that phrase make her want to make love with him until the world exploded into a thousand stars?

      After dinner, Bobby drove her home.

      ‘Darling,’ he said as he pulled up in the cobbled mews, ‘you’ve been so quiet since we left the Manor. Are you all right?’

      ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ She looked at him through her lashes, frowning. How could she tell him the truth? He had never even tried to make love to her. Their whole relationship had been founded, from the beginning, on a mutual fear of casual sex and intimacy. How could she confide in him now when what was bothering her was precisely that?

      Something in her must have changed. There was no denying that she had spent the whole evening dreaming of Gabriel’s kiss, touch, dominant lovemaking. But Bobby was unaware of that. Just as he was unaware that Rhiannon now clamoured for more of Gabriel Stone.

      Guilt ate away at her. Bobby was clearly still the same. He had not been the man to awaken her sleeping desires. Gabriel Stone had done that. So what could she possibly say to Bobby about it without rocking their security and damaging their friendship?

      ‘I suppose you’re just tired?’ Bobby ventured helpfully.

      ‘I suppose so,’ she agreed, wishing she could confide in him as she had always done when something was bothering her. ‘And I had such a busy week at the office. I was working late every night.’

      ‘You work too much.’ Bobby smiled, relaxing with the familiar excuse. ‘I’ve told you that before.’

      ‘I love working. I’ve told you that before!’

      Bobby laughed and opened his door. ‘OK, Mademoiselle Workaholic! Let’s call it a night, shall we?’

      Rhiannon stepped out of the car too, and walked round in the moonlit, lamplit mews to her bottle-green front door with the gold lion knocker and the two hanging plants beside it.

      ‘Lunch tomorrow?’ Bobby put his arms around her. ‘I could come round at twelve, read the papers while you cook. Maybe we could have a game of Monopoly…’

      The thought of the familiar routine horrified her. Don’t you realise that everything’s changed since I met Gabriel Stone? she wanted to say. But she would just have sounded mad. After all—how could it all have changed in just one meeting with a complete stranger…?

      Suddenly she needed to do something that would keep her security with Bobby, and for some insane reason she thought that making him see her in a sexier light would do the trick.

      ‘Bobby,’ she said on impulse, ‘why don’t we do something different this Sunday?’ ‘Such as? Picnic in Hyde Park? Motor down to—?’ ‘Why don’t we make wild, passionate love instead?’ His eyes almost fell out of his head. ‘Make love…!’ ‘I…’ Her skin burned with embarrassment. ‘I—I just meant we ought to do something different. That’s all.’ She turned away from him, worry in her eyes. His attitude to sex had never bothered her before. Why did it bother her now? But she knew the answer to that. It was six feet six with steel-blue eyes and a tough, sexy mouth.

      ‘Well, I…’ Bobby coughed nervously, as uncomfortable as she was. ‘I’d love to, darling, but I thought you felt as I did. About sex before marriage, I mean. Not the done thing, and all that. Rather tawdry.’ He shuffled his feet, face red. ‘Sort of thing cheap, insincere people do.’

      ‘But we have been together for five years, and—’

      ‘Yes, yes, but…’ He shifted uncomfortably in the lamplight. ‘The wedding night is the proper time. And don’t forget we’ve steered clear of sex because it was what you wanted. That was what you said in the beginning, remember?’

      ‘What did I say?’ she asked huskily, leaning against his shoulder, closing her eyes and praying that his love, his kindness, his tenderness would keep the forces of her desire for Gabriel Stone at bay. Like a magic charm, an amulet, a crucifix to ward off the Devil.

      ‘That Jack Ratchett had driven you mad with his need to control you. That he’d made you obey him in everything. And that you never wanted to be involved with a man like that again as long as you lived.’

      She sighed softly, reassured. ‘And what else?’

      He kissed her forehead, saying deeply, ‘That you would only get involved with me if I promised never to play power-games with you, and never to force you into lovemaking until you were ready.’

      ‘Yes, that’s right…’ She smiled up into his eyes with love. ‘I did say that, didn’t I?’

      ‘And you are still happy with it, aren’t you, darling?’ He asked eagerly, almost desperately. ‘I mean—you don’t change your mind about something so loathsome overnight. Do you, dearest?’

      ‘No…’ Her voice said the word, but she stared at him and thought, Loathsome? Did we really once agree? Am I really going to marry him?

      The worry she felt as those thoughts ran through her mind was so deep she couldn’t cope with it. Instinctively she tried to cling to what was safe, secure, familiar.

      ‘You’re right, Bobby. Power-games are horrid and so is sex. I want nothing more to do with either.’

      Horrors! she thought, listening to herself. I sound like some awful old prude instead of a young woman. Do I really hate sex? But even as she thought it she remembered Gabriel Stone’s kiss, her passionate response and the helpless desire she had felt in his arms…

      ‘Look, I really must go in now,’ she heard her shaken voice saying as her hands fumbled in her bag for the keys. ‘I’m so tired. That’s probably all that’s wrong with me. I need to sleep.’

      ‘A tired boy is a fretful boy, as my mother always says.’ Bobby irritated her further with yet another of his mother’s sayings. ‘And it applies to girls too, darling. We don’t want you all fretful when you’ve so much work to do, do we?’

      Rhiannon smiled tensely, kissed him goodnight and went inside.

      She put the light on and stood staring at her beautiful living room for a long moment in silence.

      It seemed strange. As though she’d never seen it before. As though it were a rented house, not the home she’d lived in and loved for three years.

      Her briefcase was open on the pale yellow couch and the storyboard was visible from here: tiny television screens with colour drawings in each one, depicting frame by frame the advertisement she had devised for Carillo’s Cuban coffee.

      A Cuban hacienda at night. Two cups of coffee steaming