Boardrooms of Power. Heidi Betts

perfection of his body.

      ‘Yes, I have,’ she admitted steadily, looking down at the letter on her lap and nervously smoothing her fingers over it. ‘It was hot over there. I lived on salads. I’m sorry you had such a problem with my replacements,’ she said, changing the subject because those amazing eyes of his were boring holes through her. ‘I honestly thought that Claire was going to work out or else I wouldn’t have recruited her. What exactly was the problem?’

      Gabriel, however, was still reeling from the transformation, not sure that he liked what he was seeing. Gone was the comfortably plump Rose, last seen in a practical navy-blue suit and white roll-neck sweater. In its place was a very slim Rose, showing off a surprisingly eye-catching figure in a tan and black checked skirt that actually revealed a bit of thigh and a figure-hugging black three-quarter length T-shirt that revealed breasts that would be more than just a good handful. The only sensible thing about her were her flat ballet style shoes.

      ‘I never knew you had legs,’ he mused aloud.

      ‘Of course I have legs, Gabriel! How do you think I manage to get from A to B? On wings?’

      ‘But you’ve always hidden them before…’ He moved swiftly from chair to desk and perched there, staring down at her assessingly. ‘And very attractive they are, too. But you might want to observe a little more decorum in the office.’

      Rose’s mouth dropped open in outrage at his openly sexist remark.

      ‘What have you done to your hair? Have you done something to your hair? It looks different.’

      ‘I haven’t done anything to my hair, Gabriel, aside from having it trimmed, and shall we leave the subject of me behind just for a moment…?’ She fiddled with the letter, not quite knowing how she was going to give it to him without having to sit through the torturous process of watching him read it.

      ‘Why? I’m fascinated by the transformation. I thought you were going over to help your sister with her new baby. I had no idea you were going for a complete make-over.’

      ‘I did go to help Grace!’

      ‘And in the process decided to go on a crash diet, cut your hair and lounge around in a bikini all day so that you could go brown…?’

      Rose counted to ten and wondered what exactly she saw in a man who was as arrogant as they came and saw nothing amiss in barging through every warning red light she was giving off without a second’s thought.

      ‘Have you ever been in the company of a newborn, Gabriel?’

      ‘Now that’s something I’ve always tried to avoid…’

      ‘Thought so, because if you had you would know that screaming newborns and tanning on loungers are two things that don’t go hand in hand.’

      ‘Surely your sister didn’t expect you to look after the thing the whole time!’

      ‘It wasn’t a thing. It was a baby. A beautiful little boy. They called him Ben.’ Her voice softened as she remembered the feel of that small, wriggling, plump body in her arms, a sensation that had kick-started her determination to change the rut into which she had comfortably sunk. Grace, two years older than her, had been so blissfully happy. Next to her, Rose had had an ugly vision of her own life and its sad limitations and she hadn’t cared for what she had glimpsed. In two years’ time she would be twenty-eight, the same age as her sister, but would she be cradling a newborn infant with a loving husband by her side if she continued doing what she was doing—working flat out for a man who didn’t have a clue she existed aside from her role as his capable secretary? Or would she be the eternal career girl who spent her life improving her house and bettering her lifestyle with nothing to show for it in the end? Well, nothing worth having, anyway. A certain wistfulness crept into her voice as she told him about her experiences in Australia. Grace’s husband, Tom, was an orthopaedic surgeon and had needed his nights to be free of interruption so that he could get enough sleep to enable him to operate safely. Hence, Rose’s input had been more than just a luxury. She had done her fair share of waking up during the nights, settling the baby back to sleep after his feed, but she had enjoyed every minute of it.

      Gabriel was hardly listening to her spiel about the baby. Babies would doubtless eventually come for him—he was, after all, half Italian—but for the moment he couldn’t care less about the antics of some undersized human being on the other side of the world.

      He was far too engrossed in the nut-brown creature sitting in front of him. The nut-brown creature with the abundant breasts, to which his eyes were repeatedly drawn.

      At the risk of appearing pathetically lecherous and feeling an unwelcome stirring in his loins, Gabriel removed himself back to his chair and tried to focus on what she was saying about baby Ben and the crazy inaccuracy of his baby clock. He had never seen that soft look in her eyes before, and he suddenly frowned.

      ‘I hope this trip hasn’t put ideas into your head,’ he said, interrupting her in mid-sentence, and Rose blinked.

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘Trip? Ideas? Your head?’

      ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rose told him bluntly.

      ‘I’m talking about my perfect secretary suddenly deciding that the time has come for her to dip her toes into motherhood. All that baby business can prove contagious sometimes. I know that for a fact.’

      ‘Oh, really, Gabriel…’ Rose felt a cold anger sweep through her and she had to make a big effort to keep her voice level. ‘And how would you know that?’

      ‘I have two sisters and a brother and both my sisters have children, roughly the same ages. I have it on good authority that other women are often afflicted by maternal feelings the minute they get too close to a newborn baby…’

      Rose looked at that dangerously sexy face and was unsurprised at his dismissive tone when referring to babies, parenthood and all that that implied. He was a man to whom settling down would be a notion best left on the back burner for as long as was humanly possible. Why complicate a perfectly satisfactory life, having any woman at the click of a finger, by choosing one woman and then, to compound the error, having a child? A screaming, demanding infant that would put paid to all thoughts of mobility?

      ‘I don’t intend to be trying motherhood any time soon,’ Rose said coolly. ‘I believe it’s necessary to have a serious partner before a woman takes a step like that.’

      In that one sentence Gabriel had more insight into Rose than he had ever had. He had always assumed that there was no man on the scene but only because she had never mentioned one and women generally couldn’t help mentioning the men in their lives. Now it was confirmed and he was quietly pleased.

      ‘And there’s no man in your life at the moment?’ he risked, pressing on in the face of her obvious reluctance to prolong the subject.

      Rose flushed and wanted to kick herself for the revealing crack in her armour. She had managed to keep their relationship on a strictly business level by making sure never to reveal anything about herself. She had instinctively known that the more he knew about her, the more dangerous her silly infatuation with him became. He could charm the birds from the trees and without really trying he could easily have sussed how she felt about him had he known anything about her private thoughts.

      Of course it no longer mattered. She was forgetting that in the heat of the moment. The realisation gave her the strength she needed and she smiled nonchalantly.

      ‘They come and go,’ she said airily. ‘You know how it is. I’m between chaps at the moment.’ The small white lie was worth every penny just to see the incredulity in his eyes and she smiled demurely, daring him to voice his shock that she might actually have a life outside his corporation. ‘Anyway…’ she fingered the letter nervously ‘…now that I’ve told you all about my trip to Australia, there’s something I need to give you…’ She stretched forward and placed the white envelope on his desk and a sudden rush of sickening nerves flooded through her