“No, not tonight.”
Since he didn’t have coaching commitments either, he said, “Detour to the coast?”
A smile that made his need to kiss her almost unbearable, his heart doing things inside his chest that he was sure weren’t in the least macho. He couldn’t find it in himself to care, because when Charlotte smiled that way, it destroyed him.
“I’d love that.”
Gabriel could feel Charlotte’s pleasure in the coastal scenery the instant it opened up beside them. He, too, loved the twisted beauty of the old p?hutukawa trees, iconic against the blue-green sea that could be as cold as ice, the white sands glittering under sunlight.
Slowing down to let a mother duck and her fat little ducklings pass safely across the road, Gabriel allowed his eyes to linger on Charlotte’s face as she leaned forward to watch. It was rare for him to get a chance to look at his personal assistant without her noticing. When she was aware, he made sure not to do it because it discomfited her. Any attention discomfited her.
Even in the ill-fitting clothes she insisted on wearing, men noticed her petite beauty, but every time one made any kind of an approach, she withdrew. Gabriel had quietly but harshly discouraged one particularly enthusiastic advertising executive. The man had continued to ask her out despite her earlier negative responses, to Charlotte’s increasing distress.
Once Gabriel added his knowledge of that situation to her wariness when he’d dropped her home, he had a very bad feeling he knew how she’d been hurt. If he was right, he had an even harder road ahead than he’d realized. Giving up, however, was simply not an option. He had decided on Charlotte. The first time he’d decided on something, he’d been eight and it had been rugby. A seven-year international pro career later, he’d suffered the injury that took him out of play. So he’d decided on kicking ass and taking names as a man who specialized in rescuing drowning companies.
Now he’d decided on Charlotte.
“So, where are we going?” Charlotte asked after the last duckling disappeared into the reeds on the side of the isolated road.
“You’ll like it, I promise.” He rarely made promises, but when he did, he kept his word. It was important to him, a vow he’d made as a six-year-old who’d watched the bailiffs repossess the television his mom had worked so hard to get. Brian Bishop, Gabriel’s father, had used the money intended to pay off the television, as well as two months’ worth of rent money, to make an investment.
“Forget the television, Alison.” A huge grin, his father’s hands on his mother’s upper arms. “We’ll be able to buy the fucking electronics store once I cash in these shares. I had to strike now, buy them while they were at rock bottom. We’ll make a killing when they rise again, I promise.”
Only those shares had never risen. Another dud, like all his father’s other schemes.
“Gabriel.”
It was the first time Charlotte had used his given name. The intimacy of it sliced through the memory that marked the day he’d first understood the worthlessness of his father’s promises. He’d stopped being a child that day. “Yes?”
Voice hesitant, she said, “Your expression got very dark all of a sudden. Is everything okay?”
“Just thinking over a contract situation,” he said, his “father” a topic he preferred to avoid. “See that group of shops? That’s our destination.”
Pulling into the small parking area out front half a minute later, he got out and watched Charlotte hop out as well, stretch her legs. He wanted to put his hand on her lower back, rub to ease the muscles there. And he wanted to hold her close, alleviate his own tension by breathing her in, her soft warmth against him.
Hands fisting in his pants pockets, he led her to a tiny shop with a window to the street.
“Award-winning fish and chips,” Charlotte read out with a grin. “I’m starving.”
He’d taken women to Michelin-starred restaurants and never seen such open, unaffected joy. After buying the meal, which the owner wrapped in greaseproof paper, Gabriel took it to a weathered wooden picnic table by the beach while Charlotte carried over their drinks. They sat across from one another, the food on the tabletop between them, and ate in a comfortable quiet that did nothing to hide the thrumming sexual tension beneath.
Charlotte might refuse to accept it, but it was there. He saw it in her blushes when she watched him, thinking he wasn’t aware, caught it in her eyes in the mornings after he returned from a run. Maybe he’d stripped off his T-shirt a few times in the office rather than waiting till the shower just to see her breath catch.
He was a guy, after all. He liked the way she looked at him.
He’d like it even better if she’d touch and kiss and handle his body like her favorite treat. Sucking would be encouraged. As would licking. Hell, anything she wanted to do to and with him would be encouraged. As long as he got to put his hands on her too. The idea of having her naked and laughing and soft and silky under his hands…
Shifting on the bench, he told himself to shut it down before his hard-on became so obvious he’d have to sit here for another hour to get rid of it. Instead, he focused on all the other things he liked about Charlotte, especially her mind. “You saw the new advertising package PR’s proposing. What do you think?”
As she spoke, face mobile and animated, he watched her. The wind had tugged several of her curls free of the bun in which she’d managed to confine her hair, and he enjoyed seeing them flirt against her face as she talked and sipped her lime-flavored milkshake. They disagreed on some of her points, but it was a friendly disagreement, Charlotte sassing him more than once.