Boardrooms of Power. Heidi Betts

a mansion and she located the kitchen without too much difficulty. It was a wealthy bachelor’s paradise. Black granite counter tops, chrome double-fronted fridge-freezer with integral ice-maker, coffee-maker that looked as though you would need a degree in electronics to operate it. Nothing looked as though it had ever been used, which either meant that he was rarely to be found doing anything like cooking in his own kitchen or else he had an extremely efficient cleaner.

      The frying pan, finally located, was gleaming. It was almost a crime to use it for something as mundane as preparing food.

      It was half an hour before she eventually walked back into the study to find him still reclining on the couch. The black silk robe was revealing even more sinfully muscled chest and Rose cleared her throat meaningfully, giving him time to cover himself up, which he didn’t. He just sat up, propping himself against the arm of the sofa, which was a band of wood, giving the item of furniture something of a sleigh bed look, a fact she had only now noticed.

      ‘Smells delicious. Where did you find the tray?’

      Rose raised her eyebrows questioningly, although it didn’t exactly amaze her that he was fairly clueless as to the contents of his kitchen.

      ‘Tucked away in a groove between two of the cupboards. No one would ever guess that it had been used. Along with everything else in the kitchen.’ She placed the tray on his lap and averted her eyes as best she could from the enticing glimpse of hard brown skin.

      ‘I don’t do a great deal of cooking,’ Gabriel agreed, tucking into the food with evident relish. ‘In fact—’he paused to look at her ‘—the last time I ate home-cooked food was…three months ago when I went back to Italy for a week.’

      ‘You can’t eat out all the time, Gabriel!’ Rose was suitably shocked by the thought of that. ‘It’s impractical, never mind the expense.’

      ‘Why is it impractical?’

      ‘Because…it just is. It’s not nutritious.’

      ‘Do you make an effort to cook for yourself?’

      ‘Yes. Yes, I do. I enjoy cooking. I find it very relaxing.’

      ‘Maybe you could come and cook for me now and again.’ He saw the expression on her face and bit back his sudden impatience. ‘Just a joke, Rose. There’s no need to snatch the nearest bottle of smelling salts in case you pass out from the horror of such a thought.’

      ‘I don’t cook very fancy food,’ she said, trying to pour a bit of oil on troubled waters. A cooped up Gabriel was a dangerous Gabriel, especially now the boundary lines between them had become frighteningly blurred at the edges. ‘Not the kind of food you would enjoy eating.’

      ‘I’m enjoying this.’

      ‘Stop being difficult, Gabriel. You know what I mean.’

      ‘Do you know you are the only woman I have ever allowed to talk to me like that? Aside from my mother. And, of course, my sisters, who see it as their duty to keep me in my place.’

      Rose grinned at the thought of anyone trying to keep Gabriel in his place. She missed the thoughtful glint in his eyes as he contemplated her, back in her position of safety behind the desk, which dwarfed her.

      ‘What makes you think that you know the sort of food I enjoy?’

      Was it her imagination or was he dragging it out with that breakfast? Normally Gabriel worked on full throttle, barely pausing to draw breath. It was unlike him to call her over urgently, only to engage her in chit-chat.

      ‘I don’t know.’ Rose shrugged and looked down at her fingers, at the pale pink polish which she had applied the day before. She never used to wear nail polish but she did now and she liked the way it looked and the feminine way it made her feel.

      ‘How are you doing with finding a suitable course? Is that all sorted out now?’ Gabriel changed tack as dragging the conversation on to a personal level obviously wasn’t going to work.

      And why exactly he was engaged in this ridiculous charade was beyond him anyway. He felt as fit as a fiddle but despite that had been unable to fight off the driving desire to have her in his territory, have her see him in it. Why? Because curiosity was eating away at him? He would have considered himself above sexual curiosity, but clearly not, considering he had concocted a lame excuse for her to come to his house for no better reason that to play games. On a weekday. When he should have been in meetings. Hell, it wasn’t as if he didn’t work all the hours God made, he decided, squashing his guilty conscience. He deserved a break now and again. And when was the last time a woman had captured his imagination?

      ‘Oh, yes, I think so.’ She went pink and stared harder at her neatly painted nails. In fact, if only he knew that her search for a suitable course had led her into some very interesting waters.

      ‘You think so? Shouldn’t you have signed up by now?’

      ‘Yes. Yes, I have, as a matter of fact.’

      Gabriel’s eyes narrowed on her embarrassed face. He could smell concealment a mile off and wondered what it was she was hiding from him. Surely discussing something as boring as a business course did not warrant an air of secrecy. For a few enjoyable seconds he toyed with the notion that perhaps his capable secretary hadn’t signed up for a business course at all. Maybe she had signed up for a pole dancing course. Now that would bring a guilty tinge to her cheeks.

      ‘And?’ he prodded.

      ‘It starts at the beginning of October, but I shall have to have a day off for induction some time in September. I’ll let you know when.’

      ‘And that’s it?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘The sum total of details you intend to throw out at me?’

      ‘There’s nothing else to tell you! If you’re that interested, I could always bring in the prospectus.’ Gabriel, in the wrong mood, could turn being maddening into an art form and he was doing it now, looking at her in a way that made her stomach flip over, steamrollering his way into her private life even though she had spent weeks giving off all the right Keep Out vibes.

      ‘Shall we crack on with the workload?’

      Prepared to face a barrage of questions that she would be obliged to dodge like flying bullets, Rose was momentarily taken aback by his change of tack. But she jumped on the bandwagon gratefully and after half an hour her pulse had settled back down to normal, as had her voice.

      He had remained on the couch, seemingly unaffected by the incongruity of conducting work in nothing more than a bathrobe, and she had stayed at his massive desk, typing directly on to the computer, punctuating the pattern with little notes in her pad, which she would research and transcribe back at the office.

      She looked at her watch once. The next time she glanced at it, it was lunch time. They had been working solidly for over three hours!

      ‘We’ll call it a day now.’ Gabriel watched as she flexed her fingers and attempted a stretch. ‘Come over here.’

      ‘I beg your pardon?’

      ‘Come over here.’

      Rose obediently gathered up her stuff, everything ordered and clipped together neatly so that she could move swiftly through them when she returned to the office.

      ‘Sit.’ Gabriel swung his legs to one side and patted a space next to him. ‘And don’t worry, I won’t bite…’ There was something softly alluring and very, very feminine about her hesitation. It made a refreshing change from women who were as sexually aggressive as men and didn’t need an invitation to get close up and personal.

      ‘I don’t want to catch anything.’

      ‘You won’t catch anything.’ How very true, he thought wryly. ‘I’m simply going to massage your shoulders, get rid of some of that tension. Come on. Sit. I’m a very good masseur.’

      Rose