The Mistress Scandal

He got straight to the point. ‘Why didn’t you tell me on Friday that you were a widow?’

‘Why …?’ It wasn’t hard under the circumstances to assume a dumb expression. She felt slow and stupid.

‘Like it didn’t come up in the conversation.’ He drawled. His languid tone was not reflected in his face; he looked remarkably angry in a dark, dangerous broody had sort of way. ‘I was slagging the guy off, if you recall.’

She did. ‘I don’t go around explaining details of my personal life to perfect strangers,’ she replied with studied defiance.

This angry statement struck Gabriel as being bizarre—under the circumstances. His eyes darkened as some of the personal details he did know about her came to mind—like the tiny oval mole on her left shoulder and the silver appendix scar just below the shapely crest of her right hip.

‘Even when you’ve shared your body with that perfect stranger?’ His mobile lips formed a cruel parody of a smile.

There were perfect strangers and perfect, as in flawless strangers, Alice thought, her eyes reluctantly studying the angular perfection of his lean face. Did he think she was likely to forget?

‘That was a long time ago,’ she said in a hushed voice.

‘About as long as your husband’s death?’ And was the tragic expression in her wide eyes reserved for that event or sleeping with him?

Alice’s shoulders hunched forward defensively, but she just shook her head mutely.

‘Do I look like him?’ Glancing quickly up, she saw his expression suggested he didn’t much care for this idea. His sharp cheekbones jutted through the tightly stretched smooth olive skin of his face. He had the sort of bone structure that would make a sculptor automatically reach for his chisel.

‘Not really.’

‘Your sister seemed to think …’

‘Superficially, perhaps!’ she snapped. ‘You’re the same height, build, and similar colouring.’

‘Is that why you were looking at me that night? Because you thought I was him?’ He took hold of her shoulders and Alice looked helplessly up at him.

‘For a second,’ she admitted, hoping he’d let the damned subject drop, but not getting her hopes up. He was the sort of person who could extract the last drop of blood from the most uncooperative stone. ‘I suppose I wanted you to be him,’ she reflected, with a frown.

Didn’t everyone want to go back and say the things they wanted to say—unsay the things they wished they hadn’t? Would she ever forget or forgive herself for those savage sentiments? The last things she’d ever said to Oliver.

Gabriel’s chest lifted as he inhaled deeply. His expression had grown curiously still.

‘How long had you been widowed?’ His eyes were now focused on a point over her head.

‘It was the day of the funeral.’

Gabriel gave a harsh, incredulous gasp before he let go of her shoulders. Alice watched him walk up to a large yew tree. He rubbed one finger slowly down the coarse-textured bark before turning abruptly back to face her.

‘You used me.’ It was an incredulous statement, not a question.

She gave a low, disbelieving grunt. ‘You can dish it up, but you can’t take it. Is that the problem here?’ She found this classic display of male double standards staggering. He glared at her in brooding irritation. ‘What were you doing to me if it wasn’t using?’

‘Don’t you remember?’ Wouldn’t that be the final irony, he reflected grimly, when he could recall every touch, every erotic little catch of breath.

Gabriel wasn’t entirely sure why he felt this angry—this betrayed. It had only been a one-night stand, but then that was only half the truth too. One night it might have been, but it was the one night by which his every potential sexual encounter would be measured in the future, and found wanting. He knew this for a fact.

No woman had ever responded to him as she had, with such uninhibited pleasure. Every man probably had a fantasy lover, but few ever met them in the flesh—perhaps, he reflected grimly, they were the lucky ones!

After three years he could still hear her husky sobs of pleasure as he’d touched her and she’d touched him. He could recall the precise erotic journey her skilful fingers and lips had made over his skin. She’d displayed an insatiable curiosity for his body and what pleased him … what made him wild. His eyes darkened and his body responded helplessly to the memory. Gabriel didn’t like being a helpless victim of his own lusts.

Now he didn’t even have the illusion that it had been him she’d been moaning or begging for. She’d been closing her eyes and thinking of another man. Only her eyes hadn’t been closed; they’d been wide open and deep drowning cornflower-blue.

The glazed, almost other-worldly quality in her expression seemed suddenly all too explicable. He’d been a macabre substitute! She’d been laying a ghost—quite literally!

The next time she’d know exactly who it was she was making love to, he vowed grimly. She’d been his totally that night and she would be again. The next time he was going to make her admit it.

‘I do have a hazy recall.’

Gabriel’s sharp inhalation made Alice regret her aggressively flippant response.

‘I was hurting. I wanted someone to hold me.’ That was only half the story, but she wasn’t about to go into any of the painful details. As for her motivation—even after three years she hadn’t quite fathomed that one out herself. There were some things that were better left well alone.

‘We did a lot more than hold.’

A sudden light gust of wind blew her fine hair around her face and made the fine georgette blouse she wore billow softly. The material lifted it exposed the gentle indentation just above her navel. Her skin was smooth as silk and creamy pale.

‘One thing led to another …’ she reflected miserably. Glancing up, she saw his dark eyes were fixed on the small exposed area of skin around her midriff, and the restless, hungry expression she glimpsed made her swallow nervously. ‘I’m not proud …’ She pulled her jacket tight at the waist and told herself only a fool would find such dangerous scrutiny stimulating.

Gabriel’s jaw tightened. Now that made him feel one hell of a lot better!

‘We didn’t work up to anything. The way I recall it we started at the top,’ he growled bluntly, ‘and stayed there.’

Alice’s fractured sigh was audible.

Good! She remembered all right, he thought, savagely pleased to see confirmation in the faint distressed quivering movements of her long sensitive fingers.

The door had closed and she had pressed her fingers to his lips. ‘Don’t talk,’ she’d pleaded.

She hadn’t wanted to think; she had just wanted to feel—feel something that she’d instinctively known would blank out the pain and fill the emptiness within her. She had boldly delivered herself up into the hands of a total stranger, but oddly that hadn’t frightened her.

He hadn’t spoken—not then. They’d both been too impatient to even undress the first time. She’d ripped ineffectually at his clothes in the grip of a lustful frenzy like nothing she’d ever experienced before.

The piercing pleasure of that first kiss, the extraordinary, indescribable mixture of lust and tenderness, had made her go as limp as a rag doll. Gabriel had supported her then, displaying a virile strength that had excited her deeply. The need within her as he’d pressed his hard, aroused body up against hers had been immediate and total.

In total contrast to that swift, urgent coupling Gabriel had undressed her later with agonising slowness. He’d made up for his previous silence too, telling her as he peeled off each garment exactly what he was going to do to her and what she was going to do in return. Even as his insidiously sexy voice had dripped like honey all over her Alice hadn’t quite been able to believe that people said such things! By the time she’d been naked Alice had been in a state of agonised arousal, almost begging him—Who was she kidding? She had begged him!

‘That wasn’t me …’ she protested weakly. Am I trying to convince him or myself? she wondered.

‘No?’ He reached out and ran a finger down the length of her neatly trimmed hair. The pad of his fingertip rested briefly on the curve of her jaw before falling away. ‘Despite the puritanical haircut, you look remarkably similar.’

‘You know what I mean.’ The casual contact had butterflies running riot in her belly. This is sexual deprivation talking, Alice Lynn, she told herself severely. Pull yourself together!

She’d been too involved with Will, and a lot of the time simply too tired from the demands of this solo job to admit she had any needs that weren’t being met. Her body was letting her know just how wrong she’d been with a vengeance right now. It had been bound to happen some time—only not now, please, not with him!

‘You were there in body but not in spirit,’ Gabriel suggested with a sneer. ‘Actually,’ he leered, ‘it’s the body I’m interested in.’