anyone along the way.’
He flushed darkly and his mouth tightened into a hard line. ‘It is as simple as you choose to make it.’
‘No, it’s not! It’s anything but simple! What about my university degree?’
‘I told you…’
‘Yes, that I could come to London and somehow it would all be sorted out! And my parents? Do I just walk away from them as well? Why can’t you just…wait? Wait for a few years? My parents would adjust over time…I know they would. I would be able to finish my degree. Perhaps I could start in Edinburgh and arrange a transfer…’ Her voice faltered into silence as she absorbed the hard expression on his face.
‘I made a mistake.’ His mouth curled into a twisted smile that was the death knell on any lingering illusions she might have been nurturing that she could somehow prevent him from walking out of that door and never turning back. ‘I thought I knew you. I realise now that I never did.’
‘You knew me, Gabriel. Better than anyone has ever known me,’ Laura intoned dully. One errant tear slipped out of the corner of her eye and she let it trickle down the side of her face.
‘Oh, I don’t think so, querida.’ The endearment that had filled her with joy only an hour before was now uttered with sneering cynicism. ‘It’s time for you to get back to the playground you know best. You will go to university and be the golden girl your mummy and daddy have trained you to be and then, in time, you will marry someone they approve of and live happily ever after.’
He turned away and began walking towards the door and that snapped her out of her daze and she rushed behind him, past him so that she could position herself in front, blocking his way out.
‘Don’t do this!’
‘Get out of my way.’ There was a grim determination in his voice but Laura stood her ground, refusing to watch him leave even though her head was screaming at her that it was all over and that there was nothing she could do to make him stay.
It flew through her head that she could agree to marry him. Marry him and crash headlong into her parents’ disappointment and anger. Toss aside her aspirations and follow him, as he wanted, to the ends of the earth. But the moment was lost when she realised, knowing it to be a fact, that he would never accept her now. All those little indications of his pride that she had glimpsed over the months had solidified into something she could not breach.
She felt an anger rise inside her suddenly. ‘If you loved me, you would wait for me.’
He reached out and pulled the door open from behind her and, tall though she was, she was not half as powerful as he was. He opened it easily, sending her skittering out of his path.
‘It can’t end like this,’ Laura cried desperately. Her flash of self-righteous anger had lasted but a second before disappearing in a puff of smoke. ‘Tell me that we’ll meet again.’
He paused and looked at her then. ‘You should hope, querida, that we never do…’
CHAPTER TWO
THIS was Gabriel Greppi’s favourite time of the day. Six-thirty in the morning, sitting in the back seat of his Jaguar whilst his driver covered the forty-minute drive into London, allowing him the relative peace and sanity to peruse the newspapers at his leisure. From behind the tinted windows of the car, he could casually look out at the world without the world casually looking back at him.
Sometimes, in the quiet tranquillity of the car, he would occasionally reflect that the price he had paid for his swift and monumental rise to prominence had been a steep one. But such moments of reflection never lasted long. His days of idle, pointless introspection were long over and they belonged to a place he would never again revisit.
He picked up the Financial Times and began scouring it, his dark eyes frowning in concentration as he rapidly scanned the daily updates on companies and their fortunes. This was his life blood. Companies that had suffered under mismanagement, inefficiency or just plain bad luck were his playground and his talents for spotting the golden nugget amidst the dross were legendary.
He almost missed the tiny report slipped towards the back section. Four meagre square inches of newsprint that had him narrowing his eyes as he re-read every word written about the collapsing fortune of a certain riding stables nestling in the Warwickshire equestrian territory.
No, not a man for idle introspection, but this slither of introspection galloping towards him made his hard mouth curve into a smile. He reached forward and tapped on the glass pane separating him from Simon, his driver.
‘You can take the scenic route today, Simon,’ he said.
‘Of course, sir.’ Obligingly, Simon took the next turning from the motorway and began manoeuvring the byroads that led away from the country mansion in Sunningdale towards the city centre.
Whilst Gabriel relaxed back into the seat, crossed his long legs encased in their perfectly tailored and outrageously expensive handmade trousers, and clasped his hands behind his head.
So the riding stables were on the verge of bankruptcy, pleading for a buyer to rescue them from total and ignominious ruin. He could not have felt more satisfied if a genie had jumped in front of him and informed him that his every wish would come true.
For the first time in seven years he allowed his tightly reined mind to release the memories lurking like demons behind a door.
Laura. He stared through the window at the lush countryside gliding past them and lost himself in contemplation of the only woman to have brought him to his knees. The smell of the stables and the horses. Glorious beasts rising up in the misty twilight as they were led back into the stables. And her. Long white-blonde hair, her strong, supple body, the way she laughed, tossing her head back like one of her adored animals. The way she moved under his touch, moaning and melting, driving him crazy. The way she had finally rejected him.
His jaw clenched as he feverishly travelled down memory lane and he felt the familiar, sickening rush of rage that had always accompanied these particular memories.
‘On second thoughts, Simon. Take the motorway. There’s a call I want to make…’
Or rather, a call he would instruct his head accountant to make. But Andy, his head accountant, didn’t get to the office until eight-thirty, and waiting until then nearly drove Gabriel to the edge of his patience.
It was not yet nine when Laura raced into the kitchen and grabbed the telephone, breathing quickly because she had just finished doing the horses and had opened the front door to the frantic trilling of the phone. Of course, the minute she picked up the receiver, she could have kicked herself. Why bother? She knew what was going to greet her from the other end. Someone else asking about unpaid bills. Lord, they were crawling out of the woodwork now! Her father had managed to keep the hounds at bay whilst he had been alive, spinning them stories, no doubt, and using his upper-crust charm to squeeze more time in which to forestall the inevitable, but the minute he had died and she had realised the horrifying extent of the debt, every man Jack had been down her throat, demanding their money. The house had been mortgaged to the hilt, the banks were clamouring for blood and that was only the tip of the iceberg.
How she had managed to swan along in total ignorance of their plight was now beyond her comprehension. How could she not have managed to realise? The house slowly going to rack and ruin? The racehorses being sold one by one? The horses in their care gradually being removed by concerned owners? She had merrily gone her way, doing her little job in the town, coming back to the security of her home and her horses, protected as she had always been from the glaring truth of the situation. God!
Her voice, when she spoke, was wary. ‘Hello? Yes?’
‘This is Andrew Grant here. Am I speaking to Miss Jackson? The owner of the Jackson Equestrian Centre?’
Laura ran her slender fingers through her shoulder-length blonde hair and stifled a little groan of despair.
‘Yes,