A Very Fake Fiancée: The Fiancée Charade / My Fake Fiancée / A Very Exclusive Engagement

Gemma’s heart almost stopped in her chest. Zane.

He was too intent on his own agenda to notice them as he climbed into the Ferrari parked at the curb and shot away. Gemma skimmed the lighted hotel entrance looking for press. She couldn’t see any, but she wasn’t taking any chances. If Zane was here, the media were bound to be, also. The last thing she wanted to do now was walk into the lobby and get snapped.

She directed Gabriel around to the parking lot at the rear of the staff accommodation. As he slotted the Maserati into a space, Gemma’s stomach tensed as the reporter who had followed her at the Castello stepped out of a rental car, camera in hand. He was accompanied by a second reporter, who was holding a video camera.

Gabriel frowned. “It’s getting a little crowded around here. What do you want to do?”

She absolutely did not want to run into the media again, tonight. “Leave.”

Zane and reporters was a combination she couldn’t afford, which meant she couldn’t stay at the Atraeus Resort tonight.

She could try requesting security, which she had needed on occasion in her job as Zane’s PA. But after what had happened at the Castello and the fact that she had officially resigned, she had to consider the possibility that Zane had advised his people that as she was no longer on the payroll, her status was as a guest only.

Before she could suggest another hotel, Gabriel reversed and cruised across the parking lot. The cameraman turned at the low throaty growl of the Maserati, but by the time he had lifted the camera and aimed it in their direction, Gabriel had turned out onto the main highway.

Seconds later they were in the middle of town, with its milling tourists, street cafés and tavernas. Idling now, to avoid the occasional jaywalking pedestrian, Gabriel cruised along the waterfront. “Do you have a place you could stay? Any friends on Medinos?”

Still unnerved by the sighting of both Zane and the press crew that seemed to be stalking her, Gemma kept her gaze on the ranks of gleaming cars parked along the street, the brightly dressed tourists mingling with the much more conventional Medinians. “No. When I’ve stayed in Medinos, I’ve always been working. I’ve spent most of my time either at the airport or the resort.”

And any spare time she had spent either studying, talking with Sanchia via the internet or troubleshooting endless problems with nannies.

Gabriel took a turn into a quieter section of town, dotted with villas. “I have a beachside villa with a security gate. If you want to stay the night you’re welcome.”

Gemma risked a glance at Gabriel’s profile. With his longer hair and the faint shadow of stubble on his jaw, he looked far more broodingly dangerous and exotically Medinian than she remembered.

The thought of spending further time with him in a private setting with no one but perhaps an odd servant around tightened the tension humming through her. Although with the Ambrosi Pearls launch it was entirely possible there would be other family members staying. “I was thinking a small pensionato.”

Gabriel pulled over against the curb and stopped. “Unless you’ve prebooked one, you might have trouble getting a room. It’s the height of the tourist season, plus there are a lot of press and extra people on the island for the Ambrosi Pearls launch.”

He lifted a brow. “And unless you’ve got some extra clothing, even if you find a room, you could still have a problem with that scenario.”

Gemma’s stomach sank. She had temporarily forgotten that Medinos was a place that hadn’t quite shaken off its medieval traditions, particularly with regard to women. Caught halfway between the east and west, no bikinis, and no cleavage or overtly sensual clothing were allowed in public areas. Unless in a private setting, which the Castello had been, women were expected to dress modestly.

Until she could either get into her room at the resort, or go shopping, all she had to wear was what she had on. No respectable pensionato—and that was the only kind on Medinos—would rent her a room while she was wearing a black lace dress and high heels, and with no luggage.

Although her bag, despite holding champagne and a negligee, could pass for luggage.

Gabriel extracted his phone from his pocket. “If you want I can ring a couple of places.”

“Okay.”

Fifteen minutes and ten calls later, Gabriel set the phone down. “The offer of a bed at my place is still good.”

Gemma stared out of the Maserati’s window and tried not to feel a forbidden jolt of excitement that she would be extending her time with Gabriel. “All I need is a bed for a few hours.”

It was the lesser of two evils.

Just one night. How dangerous could that be?

Seven

A small thrill shot down Gemma’s spine as Gabriel’s villa, which occupied the bay next to Medinos’s central business district, loomed in the darkness. Set against the pure dark backdrop of sea and sky, it was an arresting mixture of ancient and modern. The crenellated stone tower of an old fortress blended seamlessly with the blunt addition of smoothly rendered walls, the windows stark sheets of glass.

The view slid away as Gabriel drove into a cavernous, empty garage. As the remote-controlled door came down behind them, Gemma unbuckled her belt and climbed out of the car, eager to assert her independence before Gabriel could get around to open her door.

Grabbing her bag, she tried to suppress a renewed surge of awareness. Desperate to at least give the appearance of normality, she examined the garage space, which was big enough to hold at least four cars. It was empty, but that could be because everyone was out for the night. “Does your family stay here?”

Gabriel closed the door of the Maserati with a quiet thunk. “No. This is something in the nature of a retreat for me. My family usually arranges their own accommodations.”

Her heart beat once, hard. So they really would be alone.

Despite her determination to be brisk and superficial, to clamp down on the spellbinding intensity of the attraction, she found herself once again caught in the net of Gabriel’s gaze. Despite the fact that, in theory, Gabriel shouldn’t have the least interest in her, the sense of being herded was suddenly suffocatingly strong. “I guess that explains why your mother was at the Atraeus Resort.”

His gaze sharpened. “You saw my mother at the Atraeus Resort?”

“I helped settle her and her friend into their room.”

He opened a door that led out onto a covered deck and gestured that she precede him. “Mom mentioned she had seen someone who looked like you, but she couldn’t be sure because you’ve lost so much weight.”

Gemma frowned, remembering the awkwardness of the scene. Although most of that had been generated by the shock she’d received when she’d heard that Gabriel was about to be engaged.

The remembrance of that made her stiffen. In all the turmoil of the night, the tingling heat of the kiss they’d shared, she had managed to gloss over the fact that Gabriel wasn’t free. “I didn’t think your mother recognized me.”

Feeling suddenly depressed, she stopped at a heavy door and looked upward at old fortress rock, weathered by time. “This looks like an old watchtower.”

“It’s the remnants of the Messena Fortress, given to an ancestor during the Crusades. It was a crumbled ruin even before the bombing in the Second World War.”

Without waiting for him, she grasped the heavy iron ring and attempted to open a door that looked ancient and clunky.

When the door didn’t budge, Gabriel stepped in. “Unless you know the security codes, you’re going to have to let me do that.”

Lifting a metal flap fitted into a niche in the rock wall, he pressed in the key and alarm codes. The lock disengaged with a smooth click.

As she pushed the door open into pooling silence, despite her confusion another electrifying thrill shot up Gemma’s spine. At the Castello there had been people everywhere. Now there were no reporters, no pressure, just the two of them and the night.

* * *

A sense of inevitability heightened all of Gabriel’s senses as Gemma stepped into the ancient watchtower, now a wine cellar filled with extremely expensive wines. He flicked a switch. Soft golden light filled the room, highlighting the rich color of Gemma’s hair, the creaminess of her skin, and he was gripped by the conviction that in the space of a few minutes his life had swung in a totally new direction.

He had felt that kind of internal shift before, the night his father had died. That night had been marked by grief and grim resolve. The way he presently felt was the exact opposite. The calm deliberation that had become his hallmark had utterly deserted him and in its place was a humming, restless energy.

A cliché or not, he knew the exact moment the change had taken place: when he had seen Gemma across the width of the crowded reception room.

Stepping inside, he swung the heavy door, with its medieval double thickness of timbers designed to stop both arrows and spears, closed behind him. The sound of the lock reengaging echoed.

Gemma, who was already at the far end of the circular room that opened out at one end into a large barnlike lounge, was busy checking out the impressive view across the sea. She swung around, her expression professionally brisk. Gabriel couldn’t help thinking that it was a look he had gotten used to seeing from his own very efficient PA.

“If it was anyone else, I might suspect your motives in locking the door.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Although Gabriel’s sense of irritation increased that, evidently, even Gemma didn’t think he was capable of doing anything either remotely edgy or borderline. Strolling to the wine counter, he poured some of the water, which was still sitting there from his afternoon session with Constantine, into two clean glasses. “What makes you so sure I don’t have motives?”

Gemma gave him a preoccupied look, as if her attention had just switched to something else. “It’s been six years since we last met. I seem to remember you saying that we had very little in common, so I don’t see how that’s changed.”

“We did have one thing in common.”

She checked her watch, although her cheeks had taken on a pink tinge, so she wasn’t entirely oblivious to their exchange. “I don’t think sex counts.”

It did in his world. “So any motives on my part other than chivalry are doubtful?”

Her blush deepened. “It’s been six years. You never called. I think that about settles it.”

Gabriel frowned. Thinking about what Gemma might have needed from him was not an aspect he had dwelled on, because he’d been so absorbed with fixing the scandal that had erupted after his father’s death. But he was thinking about it now. “Did you want me to call?”

Her gaze locked with his for an electrifying moment. “I slept with you. That was not something I did lightly. Of course I wanted you to call.”

Blinking, as if she couldn’t quite believe that she had said the words, Gemma set the bag, which she was still keeping annoyingly close, down beside one of two leather chairs grouped around a coffee table.

“I thought about calling.” And a couple of times it had been more than that. He had actually picked up the phone and started pressing numbers before he had come to his senses.

She sent him a level look. “It wasn’t a problem. I understood why you couldn’t afford to be involved with me. Banks and scandal don’t really go together.”

Gemma began investigating the racks of wine lining the walls as if she were riveted by his wine collection. Gabriel suppressed a surge of frustration. It was not the response he’d hoped for.

She pulled out a bottle of a rare French vintage worth a staggering amount of money. “I know for a fact that if anything about you appears in the papers, it’s always in the financial, not the social pages.”

Suddenly intensely irritated at the way Gemma insisted on reinforcing his image as a staid, boring banker, Gabriel drained his water and set the glass down on the counter with a click. “I didn’t know you were interested in the financial pages.”

She gave the label of the award-winning burgundy a distracted look and slipped the bottle back onto the rack. “When I’m stuck on a long haul flight, I’ve been known to read anything I can get my hands on, even the financial pages.”

She glanced at the narrow watch on her wrist again, and despite the optimism that had gripped him when Gemma had agreed to spend the night at his house, his mood plummeted. “One step up from the classified ads.”

“Only just.” She abandoned her perusal of the wine racks and strolled over to the counter. “Speaking of finances, I read somewhere that you’re a qualified economist as well as an accountant—”

“With a calculator for a heart, no doubt.”

She accepted the glass he handed her. “I didn’t say that. If you had a calculator for a heart you wouldn’t have bothered to rescue me. Twice.”

His pulse racing that she had mentioned the previous occasion that he had intervened to help her, he said, “Just a suggestion, but maybe you need to rethink the kind of guy you’re dating.”

The second the words were out, he wished he could retract them. Six years on from the one passionate night they’d shared and he was sounding like an older brother—worse, a father figure—dispensing advice.

“I intend to. As of tonight, I’m not dating anyone afraid of commitment—”

The distinctive chime of her phone distracted Gemma from a conversation and a simmering tension that was continually pushing her out of her depth. She had been worried because Sanchia was due to call her and she absolutely could not take the call right now.

Feeling under siege, she dug the phone out of her evening purse, intending to simply turn it off. Sanchia would understand. She knew that Gemma couldn’t always answer, and that she would pick up on the missed call when she could.

The phone ringing was a sharp reminder that she could not afford another sizzling fling with Gabriel. Before she could hit the power button, the phone was whisked out of her hand. Incensed, Gemma grabbed at the phone, desperate to get it back. “That’s mine.”

“You can have it back once Zane’s hung up.”

“Why would Zane be ringing me?”

Gabriel’s gaze was cool and flat. “I’m not prepared to take any chances.”

The small silence that followed, the knowledge that Gabriel was not only acting unreasonably, he was behaving in a distinctly possessive way, made her stomach clench.

Although she refused to accept that Gabriel’s disconcerting focus on her was either real or lasting. She knew now that Zane and Lilah had found the kind of deep, committed love she herself longed for. She wished them well with all of her heart, but that didn’t change the fact that their togetherness underlined her single, lonely—and now desperate—state. “I’m not Zane’s girlfriend or his mistress.”

Gabriel’s expression underlined his disbelief. Given that he had dropped her like a hot coal six years ago, his opinion shouldn’t register, but tonight it did.

She was tired of being judged and dismissed and treated as if she was a pretty airhead just out for a good time. She was strong and independent; she had dreams and desires and plans. She certainly wasn’t the good-time girl the tabloids had dubbed her.

Just the thought of that derogatory label made her feel sick. The only good time she’d ever had had lasted just a few short hours. “I am not interested in an affair with Zane. If only you knew, it’s the last thing I want.”

One final chime and the call went through to answer phone.

She drew an impeded breath. She should be angry that Gabriel was behaving so high-handedly in taking her phone and switching it off. That he could believe, even now, after everything that had happened, that she would try to remain in contact with Zane.

But she couldn’t sustain the anger for one simple reason. Gabriel wouldn’t behave in such an arrogant fashion if he didn’t care. The thought clutched at her deep inside and refused to let go, generating a dangerous excitement she recognized only too well. She lifted her chin. “And if Zane does call, what then?”

“I’ll deal with him.”

“It’s none of your business, but the number that flashed up was my sister’s, in Dolphin Bay. She’s looking after Sanchia until I get home.”

She caught the flash of relief in Gabriel’s gaze and in that moment a startling thought hit her. Gabriel was jealous. The revelation took root, spiralled through her on a dizzying wave of delight.

So it definitely wasn’t chance that he had used the secret tunnel that had come out near Zane’s door. He must have deduced where she had gone and had probably chosen the hidden way to avoid the press.

He let out a breath, dragged long fingers through his hair, his expression repentant enough as he handed her the phone that she had to resist the urge to smile. “Damn. Sorry.”

And just like that they were back to the softness, the singular, sweet camaraderie that in tiny fragments they’d shared over the years, and which she had always adored.

She drew in a breath at the curious melting sensation inside, the crazy desire to step close to Gabriel and test out her theory by winding her arms around his neck, lifting up on her toes and kissing him again.

Feeling suddenly in need of air, she turned to the French doors behind her, fumbled at the handle and stepped outside.

The fresh, cool night air took her breath as she walked to the edge of the balcony and looked out to sea and a magnificent view of the nearest island, Ambrus. Anything to dissipate the perilous warmth, the heady tension that gripped her.

Below the balcony a sweep of floodlit lawn flowed to a wild, rock-strewn garden, then down to a smooth stretch of sand. Further out dark clouds blotted out the stars. A gust of wind, a forerunner of the distant storm, sent strands of hair drifting around her cheeks and raised gooseflesh on her bare arms.

In the instant she felt cold, Gabriel’s jacket dropped around her shoulders, the weight of it deliciously warm, a hint of his clean masculine scent clinging to the fine dark weave.

Grateful for the warmth, she resisted the urge to meet his gaze and succumb to that particular madness again. She’d gone to the Castello tonight needing a knight in shining armor. Instead, she was here on an ancient watchtower balcony with the fascinatingly dangerous Gabriel Messena, the last man she had thought she would ever be alone with again.

Worse, she was feeling every one of the tingling symptoms of attraction that she had tried to feel for Zane, and failed.

Desperate to break what was becoming an uncomfortable silence, Gemma checked her wristwatch and quickly texted Sanchia. She knew it was late on Medinos and that Gemma could possibly be asleep, so she wouldn’t be too worried if Gemma didn’t call back right away.

She tried for a bright, relaxed smile as she hugged his jacket around her, soaking in the warmth. “Thank you. I guess I’m still acclimating.”

Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the parapet, looking sleek and muscular and as graceful as a big cat. With his dark hair blowing around clean-cut cheekbones, he looked utterly at ease in the stark Mediterranean landscape. “If you want to know why I helped you, it’s because I saw a piece about you and Zane in a newspaper. I felt responsible, since I was the one who originally recommended you for the job.”

Gemma frowned at Gabriel’s alleged involvement in her landing the Atraeus job in Sydney four years ago. Originally, it had been for a PA position in one of the Sydney hotels. She had thought at the time that it had been a minor miracle that she had beaten off a number of better-qualified applicants but she would never in her wildest dreams have imagined that Gabriel had helped her out. “I thought it was Elena Lyon who put in a reference.”

Elena was a girlhood friend, also from Dolphin Bay, and well known to the Messena family, since her aunt had been the housekeeper who was supposed to have had the affair with Gabriel’s father. Although Elena swore black and blue that the affair was nothing more than supposition and media hype.

Gabriel lifted his shoulders. “Maybe she did, but Constantine approved the appointment on my recommendation.”

Gemma firmly suppressed a surge of pleasure that Gabriel hadn’t forgotten about her altogether, that he’d cared enough about her to ensure she obtained a good job. “In that case, thank you, but I still don’t understand why you thought you had to intervene then or now. I’m well used to looking after myself.”

Gabriel was silent for a beat. “I’m sure you are. But what about the father you need for your child?”

Eight

Gemma froze. Her first thought was that he knew Sanchia was his, but then the way he had referred to her registered.

He had said “your child,” not his child. Which meant he had probably read one of the gossipy snippets of information the tabloids had recently printed. Snippets which had implied that Zane was the father and thankfully hadn’t included any real details about Sanchia, such as her age. The reporters had been more interested in repeating known facts about Zane rather than far less interesting facts about either herself or her daughter.

For a few taut seconds, the urge to confess to Gabriel that Sanchia was his was strong enough that she actually opened her mouth to speak, but the caution that had gripped her ever since the last nanny had accused her of being an unfit mother reasserted itself.

The custody situation was difficult enough without introducing the complication of Sanchia’s biological father. “That’s why you intervened? Because you thought Zane wouldn’t be interested in fatherhood?”

Gabriel frowned. “I intervened because I was the one who put you in a situation where you came into Zane’s sphere of influence in the first place.”

Gemma gripped the lapels of Gabriel’s jacket, hugging it more closely against the wind, although that was a mistake, because the movement released more of his clean, masculine scent.

She went back to the issue of just how she had gotten her job. “What makes you so sure I wouldn’t have gotten the job purely on merit?”

“Constantine wanted someone who could be trusted with confidentiality. I told him you could.”

If Gemma had felt chilled before, she was warming up fast. Gabriel probably thought he was pouring oil on troubled waters, but as far as she was concerned it was more like pouring gasoline on a smoldering fire. “You mean I got the job because I kept quiet about sleeping with you?”

Her throat had automatically locked against the phrase one-night stand. Maybe it hadn’t been special for him, but she had been caught up in the fairy-tale magic of the night, the indefinable feeling that the gorgeous man who had come to her rescue was special.

He shrugged. “A lot of people are affected by wealth. They have an agenda. That didn’t seem to be the case with you.”

She frowned at his summation of her character, even though it was on the positive side. Maybe it was simply that his view of her was so objective. She couldn’t help thinking that if he had ever been even the tiniest bit in love with her, he wouldn’t have seen her in such a cold, impersonal light.

Like an employee.

It highlighted an aspect of Gabriel’s character that she had suspected had always been there. That in his heart of hearts, Gabriel valued control and slotting people into neat boxes more than he valued spontaneous love and affection.

It explained why his mother had thought he would accept a marriage to a well-connected, suitably rich and beautiful girl.

Suddenly, the idea that Gabriel could judge her for possibly wanting to make a good marriage, when it was obviously standard practice within the Messena family, made her bristle. “So you thought I had an agenda, as in trying to marry the boss.”