her palms was her undoing.
‘Okay. Let’s go,’ she said.
Apparently that was all Gabe needed. He grabbed her hand and drew her through the crowd, parting it like a hot knife through butter.
‘Gabe!’ a voice broke into her buzzing sub-conscious.
Fully expecting Gabe to accelerate into a sprint, Paige was so surprised when he actually stopped she banged into his back, and had to grip his arm in order to steady herself. He wrapped his arm around her in order to steady her, so she was all wrapped up in him when she found herself the subject of some shrewd attention from a man she’d never met.
‘Now what?’ Gabe said, his impatience clear as day.
The party guest, handsome in a clean-cut jock kind of way, smiled patiently at Gabe, and then at her.
Gabe sighed, then said, ‘Nate Mackenzie, Paige Danforth.’
Nate grinned as he held out a hand. ‘The infamous lift monopolist. Pleasure.’
Paige laughed in surprise. Then glanced at Gabe to find him quietly fuming at his friend. A friend he’d talked to about her. While she’d never said a word to Mae. Mae who was somewhere at the party, clueless she was about to do a bunk. Her stomach clutched more than a little.
‘One last thing before you depart,’ Nate said to Gabe. ‘The men in grey by the window. Go say “hi”.’
Gabe growled so low Paige winced. ‘Another time.’
Paige felt Nate’s attention focus on her even as he held Gabe’s dark gaze with his deceptively smiling eyes. ‘This is the only time. We need them. For the … deal.’
Gabe’s grip tightened on hers and she prepared to make a dash for the door. But when her eye slid to his it was to see a muscle clenching in his cheek.
To her he’d always seemed basically untouchable. As if nothing could topple him. In that moment he looked like a fish on a hook. A fish who could have thrown the hook with little more than a jerk of his great head if he’d decided to do so. But a fish who was currently chewing on the hook instead, gritting it between his teeth, before he squared his shoulders, apologised to her for a momentary change of plans, and took off.
‘Sorry,’ Nate said, clearly meaning it. ‘Business, you know.’
‘That’s fine,’ she said, even though she hadn’t a clue. She barely knew what Gabe did for a living. It involved travel, a phone that might as well be permanently attached to his hand, and … men in suits, apparently.
‘I’m his partner at BonaVenture,’ Nate said. ‘And by the look in your eyes he’s never mentioned me to you.’
‘Sorry.’
They’d never talked that much about her work either. Which added to growing worry gnawing at her innards, because her work was pretty much the most significant thing in her life. Only the past week that distinction had been usurped by the man standing stiff-backed amongst a group of men who were grinning and fawning, shaking his hand as if he were some kind of rock star.
‘If only he wasn’t one of a kind.’
‘Hmm?’
Nate ran a hard hand up the back of his neck, eyes zeroed in on the conversation on the other side of the room. ‘Gabe. He’s brilliant, you know.’
She didn’t know that either, actually. Oh, she knew the man had skills, but she was fairly sure she and Nate were thinking of quite different ones.
‘I have a good line in spin,’ Nate continued, ‘but Gabe? He’s a superstar. He can smell potential from a continent away. He can seduce even the most timid ideas men to let him in. Nobody else out there like him. My life would be a hell of a lot simpler if there were.’
Nate’s astute gaze slewed from Gabe and back to her, his mouth lifting into a smile so self-confident it completely belied his previous words. She could see in that look why the two men got along. They were both forces of nature. And even while she had no idea what was going on behind Nate’s clever hazel eyes it gave her goose bumps.
Then Nate said, ‘If you have any kind of influence over him—’
She held up her hands and waved them frantically enough to stop Nate in his tracks. ‘I don’t. Honestly. We’re … friends.’
For a perfectly nice term, ‘friends’ sounded such a lame description for what they were, and Nate’s raised eyebrows told her he wasn’t buying it either.
But he backed down. ‘Apologies. Clearly I’m getting desperate.’
‘For?’
‘Him to stay, of course.’
The worries that had been little fissures splintered to form the Grand Canyon. ‘He’s considering sticking around?’
‘You tell me.’
She swallowed past the tightness in her throat. Like a good many things, they hadn’t talked about when he was leaving as an actual couple would, because they weren’t an actual couple. They were … flinging. And to protect herself from any damage the act of flinging might incur, she’d done a lot of assuming. And you knew what they said about assuming?
She needed him to go. The only reason she was taking chances where she’d never taken them before was because it had an end date.
As if he knew she was thinking about him, Gabe looked back across the room. As their eyes connected she could practically see the energy arcing between them.
Gabe shook his head once, promising he wouldn’t be long. Or was he saying, Don’t get any ideas, now. Don’t make the mistake of falling for me? On any other man the warning would be conceited. Gabe ought to have had it tattooed on his bicep at birth.
It seemed she’d been right to try to protect herself from fling damage. Only problem was, it hadn’t worked.
THE sound of the party spilled through the closed front doors of Gabe’s apartment as Paige pressed the lift button, her finger shaking, whether from anticipation of what was to come or aftermath of the conversation with Nate. Probably a mixture of both.
She glanced up, and caught Gabe’s eye. Remembered the warmth that had flooded her the night she’d caught him smiling at her over a doughnut while he leant against his kitchen bench in unbuttoned jeans and felt a tiny stab of fear that Mae wasn’t the only one she was hiding things from any more. So she blurted, ‘When are you going back to Brazil?’
‘I’m not,’ he said, and Paige’s stomach fell to her shoes. Then, ‘That deal’s done. But I will be leaving as soon as I’m done here. I follow the work, and ninety per cent of the time it’s many many miles from here.’
She breathed out a sigh of relief so loud she closed her eyes tight against the embarrassment of it.
‘Wrong answer?’ he asked, and she was surprised to find humour in his voice.
She screwed up her eyes. ‘Will it sound callous if I say that’s the right answer?’
‘It does a bit,’ he said, his smile growing. He gathered her to him, sliding his hands over her hips, his thumbs trailing hot and tempting spirals over her lower back. ‘But then it seems I’m into callous women.’
The lift binged. Opened.
Paige let out a huge ‘Whoop!’ as Gabe’s hands slid to her backside, lifted her and carried her into the lift. Then, before the lift doors closed, his lips were on her neck, his fingers sliding into the edge of dress, caressing the outer edge of her breast.
This, she thought. This was what mattered. Not