had been a sobering experience but over time she had managed to persuade herself that she had had the misfortune to have invested all her youthful love in someone who hadn’t felt the same towards her. These things happened. The music charts were littered with singers crooning on about broken hearts and unrequited love.
She was working out now that, even if he had been madly in love with her, which he hadn’t been, he still would have walked out of her life because he was Gabriel Cruz and there was no way he would ever have hitched his wagon to a nobody.
Hadn’t she met his fiancée first-hand? Hadn’t she seen for herself what he was all about? Rich men needed all the right trappings and that applied to everything, from houses to cars to fiancées. On every level she was waking up to the fact that she had been an even bigger fool than she could ever have imagined possible.
‘So,’ she said slowly, very, very angry now, ‘let me get this straight. Five years ago, you pretended to be someone you weren’t for a bit of fun. I’m right about that, aren’t I? Were you bored with fawning rich girls? Was that it? So you decided that you’d take a bit of time out and pretend to be just like everybody else and I just happened to be the poor schmuck who landed up in your path.’
‘You’re overreacting!’
‘I am not overreacting! You may be rich and powerful but that’s no excuse to manipulate other people! I trusted you!’
‘I didn’t manipulate you,’ Gabriel muttered, ‘and I didn’t do anything with you that you didn’t enjoy!’ He raked restless fingers through his black hair and Alex followed that graceful movement with a compulsion that terrified her. She didn’t want to think about exactly how much she had enjoyed all those things he had done with her.
‘That’s not the point! The point is, I might have liked having an idea of the person I was dealing with!’
‘Why? Would you have behaved differently? Expected a bit more? Five-star hotels, perhaps? Four-poster feather beds and my limo to ferry you everywhere?’
‘That’s a horrible thing to say!’
‘Why is it horrible? Call me cynical, but I’ve noticed that a healthy bank balance brings out all sorts of predictable behaviour patterns in women.’ From the unusual position of self-defence, Gabriel fell back on the dispassionate air of someone delivering self-evident truths.
‘Yes, well, believe it or not, there are some women who would run a mile from a man with a healthy bank balance.’
Gabriel gave a roar of incredulous laughter, which made her even more furious. ‘Really? Let me think about that…No-o-o…don’t think I’ve ever met that particular species…’
‘Would you mind telling me why you summoned me here?’
‘Why do you think, Alex?’ He linked his fingers behind his head and leaned back. ‘You don’t seriously imagine that you can carry on working for me and kidding yourself that you don’t know who I am, do you?’
Alex steeled herself to meet his gaze levelly, without flinching. She was thinking fast now, thinking about all the different ways his reappearance might jeopardize the life she now led, thinking that the last thing she wanted was for him to start picking her out from the herd. It wasn’t likely. He was almost a married man. But what if he decided to play catch up games, just for the heck of it? There was too much at stake.
‘You’re right,’ she conceded quietly. ‘I shouldn’t have…have let my feelings run away with me. It’s been a bit of a shock but I’m over it now. You caused me a lot of sleepless nights when you walked out of my life…’ she forced herself to smile wryly at him ‘…but that was a long time ago. It was just an eye-opener hearing the truth about who you were. If I reacted a little over the top, then I apologise…’
Gabriel was watching her carefully, his eyes narrowed. Her volte face was almost as dramatic as her outburst had been. His initial thought was that she was waking up to the fact that there was such a thing as kicking up too much of a fuss. She could reasonably get away with a little, given their past connection, but he was her boss and she was expendable. Hence her strategic back down.
Less welcome was the suspicion that she was trying to get rid of him, but he decided to discard that option.
‘Apology accepted,’ he drawled, his sharp