Chapter Three #3
‘You were telling me about this estate we would be staying in…’ If there was a whisper of danger about the whole thing, then that must surely be in her imagination. There would always be an unbreachable chasm between them when it came to matters of the heart.
‘Elderly couple, very old-fashioned…couldn’t be better.
We would have separate rooms because far be it from me to tread on the sensibilities of our kind-hearted, traditional Italian hosts who probably think that a couple sharing a bed before marriage is a punishable offence.
I’ve met them a few times, and trust me, I know the score on that front.
At any rate, I would be out for most of the day covering essential groundwork, seeing the actual state of the vineyards.
’ He grinned. ‘I would do anything for my mother, but when it comes to the rest of the human race, I have my head firmly screwed on. If I can’t see a way to making it pay, then the deal is off. ’
‘How long have you been thinking about this whole vineyard idea?’
‘Actually, I started checking out the possibility of finding one over a year ago,’ Gabriel confessed.
‘And I seriously picked up pace on it about eight months ago when I located the one in Tuscany. Now it seems fortuitous, given the current situation. It’ll be a very useful bolt-hole for my mother to get away from her daily grind and be exposed to something different. A change of scenery.’
They looked at one another in silence for a few seconds.
Jennifer felt a shiver ripple through her, a mixture of trepidation and simmering excitement as the unexpected opened up beneath her. ‘When would this trip to Tuscany take place? I can’t just jump to attention and drop everything without warning.’
‘Why not? You’re on school holidays. You have two months of doing nothing.’
‘You know absolutely nothing about teaching,’ Jennifer scoffed. Gabriel shot her one of those smiles that she always suspected the women he dated would have found devastating.
‘I know you don’t have to get up tomorrow morning at seven thirty to go to work,’ he purred smoothly.
Then he grinned. ‘I can tell you’re about to give me a lecture on all your responsibilities.
’ The grin widened. ‘You can bring your books and prep your classes while we’re in Tuscany, although my bet is you won’t do any of that.
You and my mother will doubtless want to see the countryside and explore all the villages while I’m busy during the day. ’
Jennifer gasped. ‘How long are you planning on us being there?’
‘How long is a piece of string?’
‘That’s not an answer.’
Gabriel burst out laughing and shot her an appreciative look from under his lashes.
‘I like the way you don’t tiptoe around me,’ he drawled, laughter gradually subsiding. ‘Thank God I don’t have a fragile ego or I’d have been a broken man a long time ago.’
‘Very funny, Gabriel.’
‘When you think about it,’ he mused, head tilted to one side, ‘you might imagine my mother would be naturally sceptical about our newfound love given the history of the women I’ve dated in the past, but she’s never had much time for those women.
I admit I saw her trying not to snigger when the last one I brought to the house tried walking around the gardens in winter wearing ballet pumps.
Very fetching in a sitting room but a little impractical in the great muddy outdoors.
She’s probably always nurtured the dream of a suitable woman being more like you. ’
‘Is there a compliment tucked away in there somewhere?’ Jennifer asked tartly. Their eyes met, and the breath hitched in her throat.
God, the man was so sinfully gorgeous. Way too sexy for his own good.
Thank goodness, she reasoned belatedly, their friendship had made her immune to all of that.
‘You know there is!’ He beamed and then sprang to his feet. ‘Right. I’m going to drop you back to your house. You have a lot to think about. We can fine-tune the details tomorrow.’
‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ Jennifer said, scrambling to stand up and shoving her hair back. ‘How long will we be gone? And don’t tell me about pieces of string!’
‘Ten days, max. I have too much on here to stay a day longer than that. By the end of our stay, I figure my mother will be hale, hearty and back to what she was before her heart problems.’
Except, Gabriel thought, had she really been hale and hearty before the heart problems? Or had he just seen what he’d wanted to see because digging any deeper would have opened a can of worms?
He spun round on his heels and glanced over his shoulder to Jennifer, who was pink and flustered and frowning as she hurried behind him.
For a few seconds, Gabriel was struck by what he had said earlier about his mother probably wanting to marry him off to a woman just like Jennifer.
She was attractive, very attractive in a striking, intelligent way.
She had definite opinions and yet a tactful way of sharing her thoughts that was never at the expense of other people’s points of view.
A good listener. And for all that, she was still curiously feminine, with all that long, tangled hair and freckles and blue, blue, shrewdly teasing eyes.
He carried on looking and then frowned and abruptly looked away.
He could see why his mother would want to believe that he and his closest female friend might be an item. Suddenly it was very important for him to establish the boundaries between them.
He valued what he had with Jennifer and would never jeopardise it. Sure, the chances of doing that were non-existent, because they both understood one another and understood why, on any kind of romantic level, they were utterly unsuited, but…
He was introducing a new element to their friendship. Of course, it was fictional, but lines could get blurred. There was no way he wanted her to start thinking that she might ever be anything else other than his closest friend.
She surely wouldn’t, would she?
For a second, just a second, he saw her as a woman filled with passion, turning those big blue eyes on him with hunger and sexual craving…
But no! Out-of-bounds. And, he thought cynically, for Jennifer, hunger and sexual craving didn’t reside in a convenient box that could be open and shut at will. Hunger and sexual craving, for her, were tied up with love and marriage and permanence. She’d said so herself.
He stopped before opening the door which he had earlier closed and turned to her.
‘I’m glad you’re on board with this, Jen,’ he said in a husky undertone.
‘I could never trust any other woman to do this for me, to play this part. I would always fear that somewhere along the line, she would start…getting ideas, thinking that it might be a real relationship instead of a charade for the sake of my mother. But I know that with you…’
‘You’ve already said this, Gabriel. There’s no need to go over it. I know why you’ve come to me with this proposition. I’m a safe bet. We can play this game of make-believe, and then we can stop and things can return to normal, because we both know the rules of the game.’
‘Well put.’
‘I suppose we’ll have to get our stories straight. Friends one minute, more than that the next? Does that ring true?’
‘Of course it does. Friendship is a very sensible basis for a relationship.’
‘So it is,’ Jennifer murmured. She looked at him for a couple of seconds. It occurred to her just how one-sided his take on things had been.
He’d been very careful to remind her that this was all a charade, that it was a game in which only she could be a suitable participant because she would be the only woman to know the rules and to know how to obey them.
No personal involvement. No thinking that what was a pretence might turn into something real.
As if he hadn’t made that clear, he’d obviously felt compelled to repeat the mantra just in case she…forgot? Did he honestly think that there was no woman alive who could possibly resist him were she to be in his presence for long enough?
For once, Jennifer felt stirrings of real anger at him for his sweeping assumptions.
She folded her arms and stared at him coolly.
‘Honestly, Gabriel, you are the most egotistic man I’ve ever met in my entire life.’
She was half amused, half impatient when his jaw dropped and he frowned in open puzzlement.
‘Come again? Egotistic? Me? I’m prepared to do the most selfless thing anyone could ever imagine because I care about my mother. Since when is that being an egotist?’
‘I’m not talking about that.’
‘What then?’
‘I’m talking about the fact that you think it’s necessary to keep warning me that I need to be careful.
Do you honestly think you’re such a catch that after years of friendship, I’m going to be just too weak and gullible to resist the lure of Gabriel Garcia when he pretends to show an interest in me for five minutes?
’ She laughed dryly. ‘Honestly! Have you forgotten that on a romantic level, you’re just not my type? ’
‘Was that what I was doing?’
‘Yes, it was! What makes you think that I’m the one who needs warning off?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Maybe,’ she said with pointed challenge, ‘I should be the one doing the warning. Maybe you need to be careful that you don’t get it into your head that this charade you’ve set in motion is actually the real thing…’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Am I? You might think that you don’t believe in love, that you’re Mr Tough and Disillusioned, but everyone knows love creeps up on a person. You’d better be careful, Gabriel Garcia the Great, that it doesn’t creep up on you just when you’re not looking!’
‘Never going to happen.’
‘Good,’ she returned silkily. ‘Then there’s no further need to warn me off, and I’ll refrain from doing the same. Deal?’
‘Deal.’
He reached out his hand and she did too. They shook on it, eyes locked.
‘When this is over, things will return to being exactly the same between us,’ he murmured. ‘You have my word.’