Page 44 of A Wedding Negotiation with Her Boss

She wasn’t going to make waves now, she decided. She wasn’t going to ask questions that couldn’t be answered, and she wasn’t going to give him any indication that she might want more than what they were enjoying.

For Gabriel, it was all about the sex, whatever personal snippets he had shared with her. He had confided, and she had absorbed those little confidences, and they had buried deep inside her and fed her feelings for him. She had confided and he had responded because he was interested and because they were lovers, but they hadn’t fed anything in him, because there was nothing to feed.

And, if this was all the time left to her, then why shouldn’t she enjoy it as well? Why shouldn’t she feel like a woman. It had been so long since she had, and a few more days of stolen pleasure wasn’t going to add to the pain. She was going to hurt, whatever happened.

When they returned to London, she would put a smile on her face and she would begin hunting around for something else. Maybe she would return to Cornwall. She could easily use that as an excuse if she wanted to avoid curious questions and raised eyebrows.

He was good at those two things.

‘But it was very nice all the same,’ she said weakly and he grinned.

‘That’s sounds a lot like me being damned with faint praise.’

‘There goes your ego again,’ Helen murmured, more in truth than jest, and he caught her eye and laughed.

‘No one talks to me like that.’

‘Maybe that’s your problem,’ she said drily.

‘Who knows? You could have a point.’

She said what she thought. She always had. If she disagreed with him over something, or had a viewpoint that didn’t coincide with his, she was never shy about telling him and she never feared the consequences.

He’d vaguely thought that that was because she was secure in her job, and knew he wasn’t a guy who sacked anyone for a viewpoint, even though not many of his employees ever disagreed with his decisions. He’d also vaguely assumed that, because they weren’t lovers, she wasn’t in the same bracket as other women who tiptoed around him and were always eager to please.

But now they were lovers and she still didn’t tiptoe around him. Shestillspoke her mind. She was still the same cool, composed woman.

Except, underneath there was a depth he hadn’t seen before. She’d been hurt by what she’d experienced, and she’d grown from it. She had learned, as he had, that self-control was a good thing. They had both been formed from their backgrounds in different ways. Like him, she knew that life wasn’t always straightforward.

His thoughts were running away at a tangent and as the grand, sepia-coloured hotel loomed ahead of them, uniformed attendants waiting to gather their luggage and usher them in, he decided that this had certainly turned out to be one of the best unexpected situations that had happened to him in a very long time.

He was going to enjoy playing tour guide for the next four days.

And he was going to enjoy so much more than that.

Helen looked at Gabriel, seeing him sprawled on the king-sized bed in the reflection of the mirror where she was sitting, brushing her hair.

The sheet was draped over him, just about covering the part of him he had only just very effectively used to bring her to a shuddering orgasm.

He’d offered to run a bath for her, when eventually she had found the energy to move, but she’d laughed and told him that a girl needed a bit of time to herself now and again.

So she’d had her bath, taking her time, and thought about how one pretence had led to another. Pretending to be an item had morphed seamlessly into pretending not to have feelings for him.

This was going to be their last night here. The past few days had been momentous. Today, in particular, her heart had clenched with love and empathy, for he had taken her to see the palace where his mother had grown up.

It had been sold many years previously and had been turned into exquisite apartments. The façade had remained the same, though, and, although he’d told her that it was a modest enough palace, it had still seemed vast to Helen, who couldn’t conceive ever living in a place like that.

Sitting with strong coffee in one of the squares, people-watching, she had asked him questions and he had answered without his customary wariness, staring off into the distance, his voice low and thoughtful.

He spoke about his past the way someone might talk about a country they had once visited. Only once had she heard a curious hitch in his voice, a sign that underneath the cool exterior was an undercurrent of emotion of which, she suspected, even he was unaware. She had seen how momentous it had been for him to meet Arturio—life-changing, even if he might not have admitted it.

Helen had wondered whether this was what had sucked her in—a glimpse of someone powerful and impregnable who, without realising it, was also vulnerable and touchinglyhuman.

‘Penny for them.’

‘Huh?’

‘Your thoughts. Or I’m prepared to go higher if you’d like more. A pound, maybe?’

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