Boardrooms of Power. Heidi Betts

that moment in a bottle and hung on to it for ever, she would have because she knew that, once it was lost, it was lost for all time. They would never recapture it again.

      And neither could she exist in a bubble, living from one moment to the next.

      ‘…much as I’d like to…’ she finished explaining to him. They had just finished having the most amazing sex and a long swim in water that was so transparently blue and calm that it was mind boggling to think of it churning against the rocks the night before. The sun was rapidly drying them. Staring up at the cloudless azure sky, it was hard to believe that she was having this conversation.

      Gabriel propped himself up on one elbow and stared down at her, tilting her face so that she couldn’t avoid looking at him.

      ‘Who said anything about living in a bubble?’ he asked.

      ‘What do you call this…?’

      ‘I call it…my perfect secretary…’ He trailed his finger between her breasts, then circled first one nipple, then the other, finally rotating the sensitised nub of each between his fingers. His eyes lazily feasted on her body, the flat planes of her stomach, already turning a pale shade of gold, the V of soft downy hair that shielded her ripe womanhood. The taste of her still lingered in his mouth.

      Rose turned on to her side to look at him seriously. ‘But it’s not reality,’ she persisted quietly. ‘Reality is London. Reality is me working for you, coming into the office in a suit, sitting at a desk…Reality isn’t the two of us on a beach. This is stolen time.’

      ‘It’s only stolen if we leave it here,’ Gabriel said, bending to place a kiss on the corner of her mouth. It beat the hell out of him how he could have failed to notice just how perfect her lips were. Full and well defined. Like her. ‘When we’re back in London things can carry on just as they were before…in the office. And just as they are now with you in my bed.’

      But she wanted to spend the rest of her life following it through.

      The kiss at the side of her mouth deepened into something more urgent, something that sent her body into immediate meltdown. He pulled her close and she rubbed herself against him, head flung back, nostrils flared in pure sensuous pleasure at the abrasive feel of his hard erection against her. When he rammed his thigh between her legs and began pushing against her, she let her thoughts fly from her head.

      And that, for Gabriel, was the end of the conversation. It had literally gone from his mind. Rose knew that with unerring instinct and, for a short while, she was prepared to enjoy what was spectacularly on offer. They made love with an intensity and driving passion that was almost uncontrollable. And they overstayed their original four day plan! Rose was amused because, for Gabriel, it was unheard of. One of the bigger islands was a boat trip and short flight away and they made a day of it, buying clothes and various other luxuries not easily found on the small island.

      They would stay for a week, Gabriel told her. Things were being accomplished with the villa and, besides, he needed the break. But the week turned into two. They filled the time with trips to other islands, with a bit of work, with lots of love-making. Together they even chose tiles and accessories, which felt treacherously good. At night, wakeful when Gabriel was asleep and still hot with the imprint of his touch on her, Rose lay awake and pondered her options.

      Sooner or later, Gabriel would rouse from his unfamiliar slumber and the call to arms would sound its trumpet. He might like the idea of continuing with their loose affair back in London, but Rose had seen too many examples of what happened to the women he slept with once they had outlived their sell-by date. There was no doubt that, sooner or later, and probably sooner, she would end up sending the goodbye flowers to herself.

      And Gabriel had no intention of committing to anything other than a fling. He never had and he never would, not until he found the right woman and it certainly wasn’t her.

      Rose wasn’t going to wait until she became an embarrassment. Nor was she going to try and pin him down with questions of permanence. So when, after two weeks, he began making noises about regrettably returning to work, she did the only thing she could think of doing.

      She arranged a phone call to herself. It was a little tricky. It involved a call to her neighbour, instructing her to call and to leave an urgent message. Rose would take it from there. Her neighbour was bemused but blessedly tactful and the following lunchtime, hurrying from the public telephone in the town and wearing an anxious expression, Rose told Gabriel that she would have to leave immediately. An emergency. She had run through the various emergency options in her head and had settled on one that couldn’t be fixed with money.

      ‘A death in the family,’ she told him, packing as she spoke so that she wouldn’t be able to make eye contact. ‘An aunt—’ she crossed her fingers ‘—very sudden. I must go. Mum…Well, they were close, put it like that…’

      The clean break she had anticipated when she had returned from Australia was the only option now. If she didn’t take it, she knew that at some point she risked her longing and love for him to be transmitted, like osmosis, out of her and into him and her mind shut down when she tried to contemplate the humiliation of that eventuality.

      She would see him back in London, she lied, flinging things into her case, knowing that she would get rid of everything, every last memory. Three days—she laughed, half turning to him—not long!

      There was a bittersweet poignancy when he held her from behind, when his hand found those places that could send her soul soaring, when later they made love, enjoying each other for what seemed like an eternity.

      She wanted to commit every second of it to memory because it would have to last.

      CHAPTER NINE

      GABRIEL looked at the photographs of the villa that had been scanned and emailed to him. It was virtually complete. Two and a half months ago it had withstood the fury of the weather and it was as if that in itself had been a catalyst for change. Equipment and materials that had been a source of problems, suddenly became available. The workforce had resumed with renewed effort. Everything had dovetailed neatly into place.

      He logged off, sending the twenty-two scenic shots back into cyberspace, and pushed himself away from the desk, swivelling his chair around so that he was staring broodingly out of the window at an ever-darkening day.

      The sun, the island, the passion, that night of rain and wind and untamed sex, followed by two weeks of the most liberating love-making he had ever experienced, seemed like a dream. She seemed like a dream. And not one Gabriel particularly liked springing into his head when he least expected it. Like now.

      Three days after she had left, destination one deceased relative, so called, Gabriel had returned to London to find an empty office and a note.

      Don’t think this is going to work after all. Please don’t contact me. I have arranged for a replacement to start work as soon as you return. Rose.

      He could recall word for word what she had written because he had kept the note. He wanted it close to him at all times as a reminder of why any sort of emotional involvement with a woman was a mistake and, yes, he had become emotionally involved. Not much, of course, but enough. Too much.

      He had followed his natural pattern of replacing her with someone else and had been to the right places with the right six-foot leggy blonde clutching his arm and gazing up at him in awestruck adoration but the formula for forgetfulness had failed to work. He had been distracted and unable to find the energy to court her. She, in turn, had been hurt, mortified and ultimately enraged by his apparent slur to her pulling power.

      Gabriel had immediately abandoned himself to work. It would have been successful had it not been for moments like…this, when he found himself grimly subjected to the merciless power of memory.

      He had no idea why he couldn’t rid himself of the inconvenient image of her popping up in his head like a burr, determined to cause maximum irritation. He assumed it was because, for the first time in his life, he had been wrong-footed by a woman. In every single