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‘I’m a girlfriend-free zone at the moment, as it happens. Although I’m sure you’re already aware of that, considering you’re the one who’s responsible for booking the venues I go to with them.’
The unfeminine, drab-but-efficient secretary who answers to your beck and call and books all the exciting places you take your women to...
So far, she had just booked the opera, but he was still fresh out of his relationship with Georgia and perhaps not quite there when it came to diving into a brand new relationship with another woman. The opera for two...
‘What happened to your opera companion?’ She allowed herself to be distracted, swept away on the disagreeable thought that life was passing her by as she stood on the sidelines, somehow waiting for it to happen.
She had never felt this way before. She had been happy to settle into a routine and to accept that, if things hadn’t turned out the way she had planned, then they could be worse. This was her lot and so be it.
Was it Gabriel’s overwhelming vitality that made her feel slow and sluggish in comparison? Was it the fact that she was the dullard behind the computer who booked the exciting events for exciting women?
‘Turns out she didn’t have what it takes. Admittedly, she was sexy as hell,’ he mused lazily. ‘But sadly the legs, the curves, the winning pout...weren’t enough to save her from being interminably boring.’
Alice’s rictus smile felt strained at the edges. Another one bites the dust, she thought with simmering resentment. Time to move on to another model and, fingers crossed, the legs, the curves and yet another winning pout might be combined with half a personality. While other normal people stuck things out because life was just not one long array of delectable dishes to be sampled and discarded, the Man Who Had It All just couldn’t be bothered with little niceties like that.
‘Maybe,’ he continued in the same musing, sexy voice, ‘I should incorporate that into your job description... Maybe I should delegate you to finding me someone who won’t prove tiresome after five seconds. Think you can handle it?’
Anger replaced resentment and, suddenly, Alice saw red. Who the heck did he think she was? Some kind of facilitator to ensure that even less effort was required by him when it came to finding a woman? Did he have any idea how condescending he sounded? How terminally dull he made her feel? Did he even care?
‘You...you...you have to be the laziest man I have ever met in my entire life!’
‘Come again?’
‘You heard me, Gabriel. You’re lazy!’ Hot, angry eyes raked over that sexy, prone body with the silk dressing gown allowing her far too wide-ranging a view of hard muscle and sinew. ‘You may work like the Devil, and you may have the Midas touch, but you can’t even be bothered to sort your own emotional life out! Why don’t you put some thought into booking the stuff you decide to do with your women? Why don’t you field your own calls and make your own excuses when you don’t want to see someone? You even got me to choose a parting gift for Georgia after she stormed out of your office! Something conciliatory, you said, money no object—and you never even bothered to find out what I’d chosen! How lazy is that?’
She had picked out a huge bouquet of flowers and a designer scarf in the colours of the coat the other woman had been wearing when she had had her hissy fit in his office. It had been eye-wateringly expensive but she doubted he would even raise an eyebrow when it showed up on his statement.
‘You’re going beyond your brief,’ Gabriel told her coolly. Lazy? Him? Hell, he worked all the hours God made! He had climbed the ladder no one thought he could and he had climbed it to the very top and built a castle there!
But she hadn’t been referring to his unparalleled success on the work front, had she? She had gone straight to the emotional side of his life. Typical of a woman, he told himself without the slightest inclination to analyse what she had said. As far as he was concerned, he had come from nothing and now had everything. He could have any woman he wanted. They flocked to him and he was astute enough to suspect that his sizeable bank balance had a lot to do with it. Would they still have flocked in their droves if he had never climbed that ladder? If the foster-care kid had become the welfare-dependent adult? Somehow, he didn’t think so.
No, the only thing he could rely upon was his ability to make money and to use his wealth to buy himself absolute freedom. Everything else fell by the wayside in comparison.
But the description still left a sour taste in his mouth.
‘I’m sorry,’ Alice told him without hesitation. ‘I didn’t mean to be critical.’
