Chapter One #2
Jennifer had been walking in the gardens with her sketch-pad, deciding what flowers to draw for a summer school project, when Gabriel had sneaked up from behind and pulled her hair. She’d spun round and whacked him. Hard. With her sketchbook.
He still mentioned that to this day.
He beeped open the Range Rover, and she hopped inside and slammed the door shut behind her.
‘How did you know where I was?’ she demanded, buckling up but then turning to look at him as he edged the car out of the space.
‘I phoned your friend.’
‘Which friend? I have lots.’
‘The one with the cats.’
‘Caroline. And you know that’s her name, Gabriel.
You’ve been to her house with me many times before.
’ Jennifer thought that her friend would have gone into a meltdown at the sound of Gabriel’s voice on the phone.
She harboured lustful thoughts about him even though she had a very nice boyfriend.
She wasn’t the only one of her friends who went a little fuzzy in the head whenever he was around.
Jennifer got it. He was rich and gorgeous but…
he was also the guy who’d never had a serious relationship in his life before and went through women with such speed that it made her head spin.
Sometimes she thought that her imperviousness to his charm and wealth and staggering good looks was what had kept their friendship so strong and steady.
He might be as tempting as the finest of chocolate on a physical level, but on every other level…
no. He was the guy who played the field with cheerful abandon, the guy who didn’t believe in love.
She was the girl who’d seen the love her parents had shared, had seen the way her mother had kept that love burning even when her dad had died all those years ago.
She was the girl who wanted what her parents had had.
The things she and Gabriel found important in life were so very different.
Besides…if she’d ever got it into her head to have some sort of crazy crush on him…
Well, it didn’t bear thinking about. He’d run a mile. Gabriel was allergic to commitment when it came to the opposite sex. She had no idea why and had never asked. Some questions remained out-of-bounds however strong a friendship, and that was one of them.
‘So, you still haven’t told me what’s happening.’
‘It’s about my mother, but don’t start worrying. She’s fine.’
‘Yes, she’s been doing great since her heart op a month ago, but Gabriel…she still seems worried all the time. Mum goes across every day. Now she thinks that perhaps she ought to start staying overnight, just in case…’
‘I don’t think that’s necessary.’
‘Why do you sound weird when you say that?’
‘That’s your imagination playing tricks on you. Have you eaten?’
Momentarily distracted, Jennifer hesitated. Eaten? At the Chick’n’Rib Shack? Hadn’t even been tempted.
‘Thought not. Let’s go have something to eat, and I’ll do my best to explain why I’ve shown up out of the blue.’
‘Maybe,’ Jennifer mused, as he swung away from the brightly lit bar into the darkness of the honeycomb of streets, finally emerging on the outskirts of the town, ‘having had cancer all those years ago, another bout of ill health has made her depressed, even though the consultant has said that she’s doing really well? ’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Gabriel murmured, ‘but let’s not get lost in speculation.’ She was aware that he slanted a sideways glance at her. She stared through the window with a small frown. ‘I haven’t seen you in weeks,’ he continued. ‘Tell me what you’ve been up to.’
‘You know what I’ve been up to. You’ve been talking to me twice a week since the op so that I can tell you how things are going with your mum.’
‘That’s called you reporting back to me.
Our phone calls have been brief, which was not of my choosing.
Work. What can I say? It’s ridiculous at the moment.
Anyway, back to my mother. As you know, she has a habit of glossing things over when she tells me how she’s doing.
I need a variety of data so that I can get a realistic picture.
On another note, I had no idea you were dating someone from a Hell’s Angels gang. ’
‘I’m not dating Hal,’ Jennifer said irritably. ‘And he’s not from a Hell’s Angels gang. I’m not even sure Hell’s Angels still exist!’
‘Not dating? My mistake. I assumed you were when the cat friend told me that you were on a date, and then I found you with the caveman sharing drinks. Although it’s not much of a date if he can’t even run to buying you a meal.’
‘You’re impossible.’
‘Have you missed me?’
He was grinning, but just for a second, a split second, Jennifer felt that something again, a twinge somewhere deep inside her. An unerring gut instinct told her it had to be firmly stifled.
‘Nope.’
His grin widened.
‘I’ll take that as a yes.’
At this hour of the night, the traffic was light. They were at the local Italian restaurant within several minutes of leaving the Chick’n’Rib Shack.
He killed the engine, but instead of swinging open his door, he leaned against it and looked at her in silence for a few seconds.
The atmosphere was suddenly charged. Or maybe, Jennifer thought, that was her imagination playing tricks on her because she was starving, and because her date with Hal had been a resounding disappointment.
‘You’re staring at me,’ she said after a while. ‘I’m shocked you don’t know that that’s rude.’
‘I always miss your caustic sense of humour when I’m away from it for too long.’ He grinned with lazy amusement. ‘I have no idea what would have possessed you to date the caveman.’
‘Stop calling him that!’
‘Will you be seeing him again?’
‘That’s currently under review.’
‘Say no more.’
‘He’s really nice,’ Jennifer said a little too defensively.
‘Not your type.’
‘You have literally no idea what my type is, Gabriel.’ She briefly wondered if she knew what her type was. If she did, then how was it that she was still in the dating game at the ripe old age of twenty-nine?
She decided that it was an advantage not to have a type. Having a type was very restricting. Gabriel had always had a type. Small, blonde and beautiful. She slanted a sideways look at him and shivered at the thought of him with a woman.
‘Don’t I? Actually, maybe I don’t, but I’m guessing you’d go for someone intelligent,’ Gabriel said thoughtfully.
‘Hal happens to be very intelligent. He’s a car mechanic. Just because he doesn’t run around making billions like you, Gabriel, doesn’t mean that he isn’t smart.’
‘Say the word and I could introduce you to any number of my friends.’
Jennifer burst out laughing.
She rested her hand on the button to open her door but looked at him for a few seconds with genuine amusement.
‘I’ve met a few of your friends before, Gabriel,’ she said dryly. ‘They’ve always seemed to have small blonde things hanging on to their arms for dear life. A bit like you, if I’m honest. Not for me, I’m afraid.’
She was even more amused when Gabriel flushed. He so rarely allowed anything or anyone to get under his skin, but her remark had clearly hit home, and she wasn’t going to apologise about that.
If he could make judgement calls on her love life, then she could make similar calls on his.
She usually kept her opinions to herself, aside from the occasional sarcastic comment, because his choice of women was his concern, but now and again a little prod didn’t go amiss.
‘Small blonde things can be fun,’ he pointed out, recovering quickly and grinning right back at her. He reached across to open her door, and Jennifer tensed at the feel of his arm brushing her breasts.
She was suddenly hot and bothered—and annoyed with him for making her feel hot and bothered.
‘I’m sure they can. Now, are we going to go have some food and actually get down to talking about what you interrupted my date to talk to me about? Or are we going to carry on sitting here, getting hotter and hotter by the second?’
When he burst out laughing, she went bright red. Belatedly she heard the double entendre in what she had just said.
‘And you know I don’t mean what…what you’re cackling about!’
He was still chortling, though, as they made their way into the Italian restaurant, which they had both been to many times over the years.
She, of course, had been there a lot more often than Gabriel, because although she’d left to go to university three years after he had, she had returned to Sussex afterward.
Whereas he had spread his wings and taken up residence in London before collecting places in New York, Hong Kong and Dubai like properties on a Monopoly board.
There had been no need for him to fly anywhere to earn a living because he came from money. His mother had lived in the same house forever, a vast ancestral country pile with acres of land.
He could easily have returned after university to run the estate, but instead he had got people in to do it, had sold off some of the acreage so that it was more manageable and had done his own thing.
He had concentrated on making his billions.
He had entered the lucrative world of property development, focusing on commercial property and specialising in warehouse space and land for out-of-town retail parks.
Then, from that springboard, he had begun an inexorable process of eying up lucrative startups, buying them, investing in them and turning them into goldmines.
Without the need to initially think about financing what he wanted to do, he’d had the freedom to do whatever he wanted, to explore what made him money, safe in the knowledge that if he failed, he wouldn’t end up sleeping under newspapers outside a shop.
He had gone exploring and had never returned to being the presence in her life she had become accustomed to over the years.
To his credit, though, he did come back to check in on his mother at very regular intervals. He was a devoted son.