The Executive's Vengeful Seduction - Maxine Sullivan Page 0,2

finished making numerous calls to explain the situation to her clients, then turned off her cell phone to take a break from it all. Before the plane had left Sydney, she’d spoken to Eileen, who’d been supportive of her situation and had made her promise to phone as soon as she was settled.

Dear Eileen. If it hadn’t been for the older woman taking her in and treating her like one of her daughters, Gabrielle didn’t think she would be as “together” as she was now. Eileen had helped her through so much.

And so had Lara and Kayla, Eileen’s daughters. Not only had she been homeless on her arrival in Sydney, but if it wasn’t for all three, she would’ve had to swallow her pride and call her father for help when she’d been in that car accident.

Her heart wrapped in pain, she looked over at Damien Trent, sitting opposite her reading some business papers he’d taken out of his briefcase. If he only knew… Oh God. No, she wouldn’t think about that. She’d think about him instead. That would give her something to do.

In his early thirties, he looked as trim and taut as ever, with dark hair and moss-green eyes that always made her catch her breath. He was a lethal combination of manhood.

Her Damien.

The man she’d loved without question five years ago. The man she’d let glimpse her soul. The man she’d have died for. How had she found the courage to walk away from him, knowing she was carrying his child?

Yet how could she have stayed when she’d known he hadn’t loved her? Their relationship had never been about emotional depth. Not on his part, anyway.

Oh, she’d had no doubt he would have married her once he’d known she was pregnant. But she hadn’t wanted that. Not after her father’s drunken rage that night telling her to go, when she’d decided then and there that she’d rather her child not have a father at all, than one who hadn’t loved its mother. She just hadn’t been able to bear the thought of Damien treating her with disdain in front of their child in the years to come. She’d been that child with her own parents, and it wasn’t a nice feeling.

No, it had been better to cut the ties back then. And from that point on she’d decided she had to stand guard and protect herself from hurt. Love brought too much pain, and she’d wanted nothing more to do with letting anyone so deeply into her heart. And she hadn’t.

Until today.

Until Damien had stepped back into her life.

All at once she realized Damien’s eyes were upon her. “Everything okay?” he asked, watching her with a light in his eyes that went beyond the sexual, as if he were trying to decipher her thoughts. It made her uncomfortable.

She nodded and turned away, looking out the small window at the blue sky surrounding them, then down at the unimaginable vastness below. They’d left the red dust of the Outback behind some time ago, and now she could see greenery beneath them, growing increasingly greener with each mile, and the closer they got to the coast.

Then time passed and not far in the distance, she could just catch sight of the ocean at the “Top End” of Australia. She sat there for ages absorbing it all, letting it wash over her. This was where she’d been born… where she’d grown up…been happy and sad…passionate and heartbroken.

“You’re home,” Damien said as the plane swept around over the ocean then banked toward the runway. Beneath them the city of Darwin glistened in the hot tropical sun.

A lump swelled in her throat and she had to blink rapidly. Damien was right, no matter how much she’d denied it to herself all these years. This was home. And home was where her heart was.

It always had been.

Two

O nce Damien’s plane landed they stepped straight through the invisible sheet of humidity and into a waiting BMW, before speeding through the Darwin suburbs toward the private hospital.

Gabrielle tried to hold her apprehension and worry at bay, but all she could think about now was her father. All these years she’d believed she’d prepared herself for news like this, but now she knew that wasn’t possible. The emotional distance she’d worked so hard to maintain was going down the drain. No matter what had gone on between them, he was still her father and she loved him despite everything, and the thought of him dead brought