Chapter Six #4
‘Already told you…er…darling…we had a fabulous day. Isn’t that right, Francesca?
Fabulous day sightseeing?’ She licked her lips when he squeezed her knee and then let his hand remain there, burning a hole through her summery dress.
When he casually slid it a tiny bit under the hem of the dress, she felt her body go up in flames.
Her eyes glazed over. Francesca, on cue, had launched into an enthusiastic account of the day. Jennifer half listened and steadfastly kept her eyes fixed anywhere but on the man wreaking havoc on her nervous system.
For the entire evening.
They stood as they were called to the table for dinner…and his arm was slung over her shoulder.
They sat at the table…and his eyes, she could feel, were riveted to her profile as if he were in the presence of the most fascinating woman on the planet.
She joined in the conversation, and his hand would briefly linger over hers in a gentle caress…
She asked for the salt, and he would solicitously look up at her and then meet her eyes for a soulful few seconds before handing it over.
What was he playing at?
Of course, she knew. This was the loving couple image they had both signed up for, including her. Everything was phoney, unreal, a lie. Suddenly they weren’t friends any longer, not the friends they’d always been.
She was playing a part and so was he, and somehow their friendship had become lost in the process.
She contained her misery through the course of the evening, hid it under a smile. She made sure to chat and laugh in all the right places even though she was painfully conscious of a tightening knot in the pit of her stomach at the thought of how things were changing between her and Gabriel.
Would things return to being normal and real between them when this was over?
Francesca was the first to retire, immediately after dessert. With relief, Gabriel took the lead and politely declined after-dinner drinks with their hosts.
‘Another busy day tomorrow,’ he said, moving towards the door and taking her with him, fingers lovingly linked. ‘I’m visiting a couple of other vineyards to see production methods.’
‘And will competitors be willing to show you how it’s done? Seems awfully generous,’ Jennifer remarked, inserting herself into the conversation whilst simultaneously slipping out of his suffocating, heart-stopping casual embrace.
Their eyes met. ‘You’d be shocked at the power of charm and persuasion,’ Gabriel replied with the sort of silky self-assurance she had become accustomed to over the years.
‘I’ve already started building my contacts and working out how we can all benefit one another.
Like one big, happy family. Working together is always better than trying to go it alone,’ he added expansively.
Jennifer snorted, and he grinned. Just for a second, they were back to the place she knew and loved. But then, as soon as they were outside, his hand dropped. She could feel the remoteness between them again.
She pulled away and then swept past him as soon as he opened the door to the cottage, but she didn’t fly towards her bedroom even though she wanted badly to.
Instead, she spun round, arms folded, and looked at him with simmering fury.
‘You’re being weird!’
‘What? I’m being weird? How am I being weird?’
Gabriel looked at her with equal fury, but he knew that his fury wasn’t with her. It was with himself. He was furious that he’d spent the evening playing a part, in the hope that it would remind him that this was all it was…the touching, the looking. A part.
But he had still felt his body reacting, stirring, responding, and now…
God, she was so beautiful. He’d never seen her furious with him, and the sight was something spectacular to behold. Fiery. Fierce. He clenched his jaw and didn’t respond for a couple of seconds.
‘Well?’
He’d lowered his head, but now he looked up to see that she had taken a few steps closer to him. In that moment…
In that moment, nothing mattered—not common sense, not self-control, not reason.
Temptation played its trump card. He moved towards her so that their bodies were inches apart. He could feel the heat emanating from her, could breathe in whatever perfume she was wearing, could see the clear, dramatic blue of her eyes and the soft curve of her full mouth.
‘Want to know what’s bugging me?’ he growled. ‘You, Jen. You’re bugging me, and want to know why?’ Oh, yes…she wanted to know why. He could see it in the widening of her eyes and the way her breathing stilled.
She wanted him. She wanted him just as much as he wanted her. She wasn’t backing away at speed from the bold challenge in his eyes. She was coming towards it, like a moth to a flame, whether she was aware of that or not.
‘Ha,’ she said weakly. ‘I have no idea what you mean.’
‘Would you like to find out?’
The answer was right there in the slow colour crawling into her cheeks, in the parting of her lips, in the wide dilation of her pupils.
‘Let me show you,’ he growled.
He curled his hand into his hair, pulled her towards him and then lowered his head and kissed her.