An Exquisite Challenge Read Free

know your work and I trust you.”
    Trust. Her stomach lurched. The very thing he’d taken away from her when she’d had so little to start with. She clenched her hands into fists and drew herself up to her full height, her gaze clashing with his wintry silver one. “You lied to me and dishonored your wife, Jordan. You almost destroyed my career. Don’t talk to me about trust.”
    “Let me make it up to you.” He thrust his hands in his pockets and shifted his weight onto both feet. “I heard you lost Generes. Let me give you some work.”
    She lifted her chin. “Go to hell.”
    Head held high, she pushed through the crowd, anger stinging her eyes, stinging every part of her. How dare he so cavalierly dismiss what he’d done? How dare he think she’d even want to talk to him, let alone work for him? She was almost to the front doors when a hand grasped her arm. Sure it was him again, she swung around, intent on giving him a piece of her mind, but it was Gabe standing in front of her.
    “Everything all right?”
    She nodded. “I just need some fresh air.”
    “You know Jordan Lane?”
    Damn. He had seen them. She struggled to wipe the emotion from her face, to wipe away any evidence she had ever known the man who had almost destroyed her. “Yes—” she nodded “—he was a client at my old agency.”
    A frown creased his brow. “He was coming on to you?”
    “No.” She raked a hand through her hair and looked away from that penetrating green gaze. “He was offering me a job.”
    “He’s not the kind of guy you want to work for, Alex.”
    She set her chin at a belligerent angle. “Then give me the job and I won’t have to.”
    He was silent for a moment. If there was one person she couldn’t read in this world, it was Gabe. He guarded his feelings with a security worthy of Alcatraz. “I’m ready to go,” he said finally, pulling the sweater out of her arms and holding it out for her. “You look exhausted. Let’s go.”
    She slipped her arms into the sleeves, letting him wrap it around her. His deliciously male scent enveloped her, sending her senses into overdrive. And not the kind of overdrive that had anything to do with business.
    The valet brought Gabe’s car around. He held the door open for her and she slipped into the luxurious interior of the silver-blue Porsche and sighed. So much better to be out of that crowd.
    On the way to her hotel, Gabe wanted to know how his nephew, Marco, Lilly and Riccardo’s rambunctious two-year-old, was doing. She gave him an update, smiling when he asked her what he should buy him for his birthday present, because Gabe inevitably bought Marco totally inappropriate toys. No one saw fit to correct him because, really, how could you tell a proud uncle that a two-year-old, however clever Marco undoubtedly was, was not capable of building a suspension bridge by himself?
    They hadn’t even begun discussing the events when Gabe parked outside her boutique Union Square hotel, cut the engine on the powerful beast of a car and looked at her. “Talk over a drink?”
    She nodded, even though every bone in her body told her it was a bad idea. She wasn’t sure if it was seeing Jordan tonight that made her nervous about having a man in her hotel room or if it was just that it was Gabe, but her cozy little suite suddenly seemed far too small as they entered it and he shrugged out of his jacket and loosened his tie. Steady on, she told herself, turning some lights on as he folded himself into the sofa in the little sitting room. It’s just a drink.
    He looked tired, she noticed, the lines at the sides of his mouth more pronounced than usual, the hand he used to rub his eyes shifting back to cradle his neck. The stress was getting to him.
    She walked over to the bar. “Scotch?”
    “Soda and lime if you have it. I have to drive back to the vineyard tonight.”
    “Aren’t you swamped back in New York?” he asked as she handed him his drink and perched on the sofa