Читать книгу Boardrooms of Power - Heidi Betts - Страница 13

GABRIEL looked at the photographs of the villa that had been scanned and emailed to him. It was virtually complete. Two and a half months ago it had withstood the fury of the weather and it was as if that in itself had been a catalyst for change. Equipment and materials that had been a source of problems, suddenly became available. The workforce had resumed with renewed effort. Everything had dovetailed neatly into place.

He logged off, sending the twenty-two scenic shots back into cyberspace, and pushed himself away from the desk, swivelling his chair around so that he was staring broodingly out of the window at an ever-darkening day.

The sun, the island, the passion, that night of rain and wind and untamed sex, followed by two weeks of the most liberating love-making he had ever experienced, seemed like a dream. She seemed like a dream. And not one Gabriel particularly liked springing into his head when he least expected it. Like now.

Three days after she had left, destination one deceased relative, so called, Gabriel had returned to London to find an empty office and a note.

Don’t think this is going to work after all. Please don’t contact me. I have arranged for a replacement to start work as soon as you return. Rose.

He could recall word for word what she had written because he had kept the note. He wanted it close to him at all times as a reminder of why any sort of emotional involvement with a woman was a mistake and, yes, he had become emotionally involved. Not much, of course, but enough. Too much.

He had followed his natural pattern of replacing her with someone else and had been to the right places with the right six-foot leggy blonde clutching his arm and gazing up at him in awestruck adoration but the formula for forgetfulness had failed to work. He had been distracted and unable to find the energy to court her. She, in turn, had been hurt, mortified and ultimately enraged by his apparent slur to her pulling power.

Gabriel had immediately abandoned himself to work. It would have been successful had it not been for moments like…this, when he found himself grimly subjected to the merciless power of memory.

He had no idea why he couldn’t rid himself of the inconvenient image of her popping up in his head like a burr, determined to cause maximum irritation. He assumed it was because, for the first time in his life, he had been wrong-footed by a woman. In every single instance he had always been the one who gave the rueful speech about it being time to move on. Now he had been given a taste of his own medicine and he didn’t care for it.

Not, of course, that he had any intention of seeking her out and prolonging the debate. That would have been unthinkable.

Gabriel stood up, stretched and loped over to the window. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared down at the fading day. Curiosity, a visitor he did his utmost to repel, gnawed tenaciously at the back of his mind. What was she up to? Had she started that course of hers? Was she seeing anyone? He assumed she would have taken up again with Mr What’s-his-name she had left behind. Thinking about that made his teeth clench in anger. After she had slept with him, proved to them both that Mr What’s-his-name was one hundred per cent lacking in the sexual compatibility department, she would go back to the guy just because he represented God knew what…security, he supposed!

Gabriel glowered through the window at nothing in particular. So far up, everyone and everything looked pleasantly small. He had had nearly three months to mull over her disappearing act and had come to the conclusion that underneath the sexy, responsive woman beat a heart that longed for security. Of course, he should have guessed that she would have eventually been terrified of having an affair with him, terrified of the limitless freedom of expression he offered her. He had allowed the fiery, sexual, hungry side of her to be expressed and she had decided that it was all a little bit too much.

Serve her right if she ended up living a life of drudgery and monotony with a man she clearly didn’t love and never would!

Gabriel sat back down at his desk and glared at the computer screen, which obligingly offered him the relaxing vision of company accounts. He lightly tapped one of the keys and the screen shifted to a draft report that needed checking.

It was just as well that she’d vanished if security was the thing she longed for! Because she would know only too well that he was the last man in the world to offer that gem of a prize to any woman. When the time came he would settle down, but that time was still a long way away! The last thing he needed was a messy situation involving someone who worked for him!

He couldn’t help but speculate, with satisfaction, that she was probably bitterly regretting her hasty impulse to leave. When she sobered up, it pleased him to think that she would realise just what a financial package she had tossed down the drain. How many companies were prepared to offer an employee a part-time week at an escalated salary, with no guarantee that said employee wouldn’t walk straight out of the door the minute they qualified in their studies? Frankly, none, and especially not considering she would be a recent employee at whatever company she had deserted him to join.

No, he was pretty sure that she would be suffering.

Fortified at the thought of that, Gabriel retrieved the photos of the villa and contemplated them in a less aggrieved frame of mind, flicking through them with satisfaction because the place looked stunning even in its as yet unfinished state. Amazing what painting and decorating could achieve! The landscaping, including the golf course, was yet to be completed but that would be the last thing, and the pools, three smaller ones and one large infinity overlooking the sea, were all but up and running.

He wondered whether he would aggressively advertise it as a luxurious, fairly private resort available to a select handful of people who were willing to basically rent an island or whether he would keep this treasure to himself, lend it out to friends, enjoy it with his family whenever he could find the time. His mother was always angling for a family reunion. She could have her reunions in style there.

He was just beginning to pleasantly contemplate the myriad uses to which the villa could be put when he heard his secretary knock tentatively on his door and he bit back the immediate surge of annoyance.

Karen Davis was proving to be an excellent replacement secretary if efficiency was the only prerequisite. Unfortunately, on most other counts, she didn’t press the right buttons for him. She was too young at twenty, too timid and too reluctant to take the initiative. He told himself that he really had to give her time to grow accustomed to his ways but, whenever he thought like that, he began thinking of Rose and then his mind, freed of its leash, would gallop all over the place.

‘What?’ he snapped, modifying his voice to a more polite, ‘Yes?’ when Karen poked her head around his door.

She was thin. Some might call it fashionably thin, but to his eyes, she appeared emaciated. Her hair was very long and she was very pale and had a tendency to look away whenever he spoke to her. She was, however, extremely good when it came to the basic mechanisms of her job. Gabriel reminded himself of that and of the succession of no hopers he had employed when Rose had gone to Australia. He tried to soften his expression.

‘There’s someone here to see you, sir…’

Gabriel had tried hard to make her call him by his first name but she persisted in sticking to sir and he had given up. ‘Who? There’s nothing in my diary.’

‘No, well, sir…’

‘Tell him to book an appointment through you. I won’t be working late tonight.’

Karen hesitated and glanced over her shoulder.

Rose, standing by the door, knowing that Gabriel wouldn’t be able to actually make her out, sent her a sympathetic glance back. Poor kid. This was probably her first real job, fresh out of secretarial college, all primed on her computer skills but totally green when it came to handling a man like Gabriel. For a few seconds, Rose forgot that she, herself, felt sick to the stomach with nerves. She gently lifted one finger to her mouth, instructing the girl not to pursue the matter and noticed the flash of relief in her eyes.

Karen nodded at Gabriel, who had already lost interest in the identity of his mystery caller, and quietly shut the door.

‘You go home,’ Rose said gently. ‘And I’ll go in.’

‘But…’ Karen looked back at the closed door and chewed nervously on her lip, ‘he’ll kill me if you just walk into his office. Part of my job is to…you know…vet the people who want to see him…’

‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll make sure you survive the ordeal.’ Rose smiled, although her mouth hurt from the effort. ‘Don’t forget I used to work for him. You’re not allowing a complete stranger into his hallowed presence…’Rose had met Karen briefly, on the very day she had returned to clear out her desk. Two days before Gabriel returned from the island. She knew that the young girl had been curious about the suddenness of her employment, but she had been easily convinced by the generosity of the pay package. So hers was a familiar face and if Karen suspected that she might not be an entirely welcome visitor—or else why would she have arrived unannounced for a surprise visit?—she was still happy to follow the path of least resistance. Which involved her making a quiet and speedy departure from the office.

With the outside door firmly shut, Rose drew in a deep shaky breath.

She had spent the past four days trying to predict how she would feel standing right here, inside this office. She could have come earlier in the day, but she knew how the office worked, knew that if she timed it well she would arrive when most of the staff were leaving, which would be the better option.

She had anticipated nerves, but nothing could compare to the wild, sick fluttering in her stomach now.

She smoothed her perspiring palms on her skirt and forced herself to walk towards his door. To knock or not to knock? Rose knocked and got exactly what she expected, which was a, ‘Yes! What is it now?’ that paid even less lip service to courtesy than when Karen had knocked previously.

She pushed open the connecting door.

Gabriel didn’t bother to look up. He was frowning heavily at his computer screen and, for a few seconds, Rose took the opportunity to just look at him.

His masculine beauty, as it always had, jumped out at her, making the breath catch in her throat, although he looked more gaunt than when she had last seen him on that fateful night before she’d walked out of his life. For good. Or so she had planned at the time.

‘Gabriel!’ Her voice seemed over loud in the confines of the room but it had the desired effect. Gabriel’s head shot up and his expression was one of utter shock, very quickly replaced by one of unreadable stillness.

They stared at one another. To Rose, it felt like hours. Her legs felt weaker and weaker but no way was she going to make her way to the chair, that chair facing him that she used to sit on every time she entered his office to take notes. He was the first to break the silence.

‘What are you doing here?’ Gabriel pushed himself away from his desk so that he could cross his legs and survey the woman standing in front of him, as nervous as a kitten. The fact that he was still raw from thinking about her only a few minutes ago left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Suddenly Rose found that the speech she had rehearsed wouldn’t emerge from her dry, stricken throat.

‘Sit down. Although I have to tell you…’he glanced at his watch, then back at her face ‘…I don’t have much time to chew the fat with you. I’m out on a date and I don’t think the lady in question would appreciate being kept waiting because of some ex-fling.’ There was no date in point of fact. He had cancelled the redhead a few days ago, preferring the option of a bit of solitude and the company of his faithful laptop computer but he didn’t flinch at lying. He also knew that dismissing her as little more than an ex-fling would cut and, sure enough, he saw her wince, although, to her credit, she didn’t take her eyes off his face.

‘So. What do you want?’

‘I…I…’

‘…you were in the area and thought that you’d just pop in and see how I was doing?’ Gabriel raised his eyebrows in patent disbelief. ‘Now, why do I find that hard to believe?’

‘I know you were probably surprised when you got back to London…and found…found that I had left…’This wasn’t exactly how she had planned on broaching the conversation, but just looking at him had thrown her off balance.

‘Now, what would give you that idea?’ Gabriel asked, with blistering sarcasm. ‘Is it because, the night before you left, we had made lingering, passionate love? I was obviously deluded into imagining that you might have wanted to prolong our affair.’

‘Things change.’

‘When did you decide that clearing off was a good idea?’ Gabriel found that he was compelled to hear the answers to questions he hadn’t even known existed in his head but obviously did. ‘Was it when you made it back to the UK?’ He digested the barely discernible flicker of hesitation on her face and pounced with deadly accuracy. ‘You’d made your mind up before, hadn’t you…?’Gabriel intoned slowly. She neither denied it nor did she confirm it and her silence was answer in itself. He had been used. Gabriel felt as though he had been hit in the gut with a sledgehammer.

‘You don’t understand, Gabriel…’Rose could feel herself descending into a quagmire of ugly accusations.

‘Oh, I understand all right. Shall I tell you how I see things…?’

‘No!’

Rose tried to control her shaking hands but she was mesmerised by his cruel, handsome face. She would hear him out. She didn’t have much choice anyway because Gabriel, when the mood took him, was an unstoppable force.

‘You became my lover because you were frustrated by the boyfriend you left behind here…Don’t ask me why—maybe you found that he couldn’t satisfy you.’

Rose gaped at him incredulously. She would have burst out laughing if he hadn’t been so absorbed in own ridiculous theory.

‘And, as fate would have it, we ended up in bed. Although…maybe fate played less of a part than I think. After all, it was you who came running into my bed at the first sound of thunder and it was you who fled out of the bathroom from a spider, just coincidentally happening to land on top of me…’

‘If you recall, I was also the one who told you that I didn’t want anything…to happen between us!’

‘An impossibility and you knew it!’ Gabriel dismissed. ‘You must have known that we would have ended up making love. Tell me, did you give your boyfriend the benefit of what you learnt from me?’

Rose clenched her fists tightly. If she had been within hitting distance, she would have struck him across his sexy, sneering face. How dared he jump to his horrendous conclusions and reduce her in the process? And why bother to tell him that Joe was no more? The man who’d lasted one date! It was a joke but she had known, beyond the shadow of a doubt, when she’d returned, that there could be no one for her but Gabriel. At least not for a while. It just wouldn’t have been fair to have any man suffer the humiliation of comparison.

‘How could you think that of me, Gabriel? How could you think that I would be…calculating enough to jump into bed with one man just so that I could practise?’

‘Then when did you make the decision to leave and why?’ Gabriel loathed himself for his weakness in wanting to know and he gave her a look of cold contempt that she could show up and extract the shameful admission from him.

‘I did you a favour, Gabriel.’ She looked at him steadily, even though inside she felt as though her nerves were being twisted into knots. ‘I knew that you would tire of me sooner or later. I spared you the embarrassment of knowing that you wanted to get rid of me and I spared myself the pain of…’

‘The pain of what?’

‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter. It has nothing to do with why I’m here. None of it has.’

In her head she had played around with all the various possible outcomes of her visit. None of them were very comforting.

When he didn’t say anything, she frowned and asked unsteadily, ‘Don’t you want to know why I’m here?’

‘I already do.’

Rose’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t! How could you?’

‘It’s easy.’ Gabriel gave an elegant shrug. ‘When you cut through all the nonsense, the only thing that speaks volumes is money.’

‘But…’

He raised one imperious hand. ‘How are you doing on your course?’

‘I haven’t actually…started it, as a matter of fact. But what does that have to do with anything?’

Gabriel couldn’t contain the grim stab of disappointment. Had he really thought her to be any different from the rest of the human race?

‘How much?’

‘How much what?’ Rose asked, dazed.

‘How much money are you after to fund your course?’ He stood up and strolled over to the window so that he could perch against the ledge and give her the full benefit of his contemptuous stare. ‘I wondered how long it would take before you realised just what a good financial deal you gave up here. I guess I could be heartless and tell you to clear off, but hell, what’s a bit of money in recognition of your…effort?’

‘Forget it, Gabriel.’ Rose stood up on trembling legs and turned blindly for the door.

It had been a huge mistake coming here, but she had talked it over with her sister, had seen it as the right and decent thing to do. Now, she could only ask herself what aspect of right and decent Gabriel Gessi would understand when his whole world was ruled by the concept of money.

‘Sit back down!’ he commanded, but she was already heading for the door.

She didn’t get far. In fact, she hadn’t even made it to the outer door when he was by her side, spinning her around so that she was forced to look at him.

The touch of his hand on her was like the heat of a branding iron and nor did he release her. He just stared down at her, his fingers digging into her skin, until she finally pulled away.

‘I didn’t come here to listen to your accusations!’ she said in a rush. ‘I didn’t come here to be accused of being some kind of gold-digger or anything else, for that matter!’

‘Oh, why did you come, then? To check and make sure the secretary you procured for me was doing all right? She is. You need have no worries on that front.’

‘I came to tell you that I’m pregnant!’

The silence that reverberated around the room was deafening and, for the first time since she had known him, Rose was treated to the one-off sight of her boss rendered utterly speechless. The colour drained from his face and he stared at her for a few seconds, during which she would have sworn that her heart stopped beating.

But he rallied fast. Shock gave way to suspicion. ‘That’s impossible. We were careful.’

‘We were careful most of the time, Gabriel. But we weren’t careful on that first night…Do you mind if I sit back down?’ If she didn’t, she might fall down because her legs felt as unsteady as rubber. She sat on the chair and for a while he remained standing behind her, as if locked in one spot. Rose refused to twist around and face him. She couldn’t imagine what was going through his head but she was pretty sure that she wouldn’t like any of it. Fatherhood was a high price to pay for a couple of weeks of sex with a woman who was destined to be yet another one of his ships that passed in the night. She would never have featured on his agenda at all if she hadn’t returned from Australia several pounds lighter, several shades darker and more in keeping with what he considered attractive!

She daredn’t look at the horror that would be stamped across his beautiful face.

Eventually she heard him walk towards her, past her, towards the window, through which he stared in complete and telling silence.

Most of all, she wanted to tell him that she was sorry but it had never occurred to her, not for a minute, that she would fall pregnant because of a single slip-up. She had stupidly allowed passion to overwhelm the simple matter of taking precautions. Gabriel, mistakenly, had assumed that she was on the pill and the following day, having been assured by her that no, she wasn’t protected, but that they had been absolutely safe the night before, he had taken the issue of contraception into his own hands.

She hadn’t guessed that, by then, it was too late.

It had taken her sister six months of trying to conceive!

‘When did you find out?’ Gabriel asked coolly, turning to look at her.

‘Ten days ago.’ Her eyes fluttered away from his cold, shuttered expression. ‘I…I didn’t think about my periods until I had to go to the dentist and she asked whether I could possibly be pregnant because I needed an x-ray to be done. Then it occurred to me that I hadn’t had one for ages.’ She knew that her words were tripping over one another but that look in his eyes…

When she had rehearsed what she would say, the scene had never unfolded in her head like this. Yes, she had anticipated being nervous, but she had her speech all down pat. She was pregnant. She took full responsibility for what had happened. She felt it only right that he should be aware of the situation but she wasn’t about to impose on him, either emotionally or financially. In her head she emerged from the messy situation as proudly independent, open and willing to negotiate whatever visiting rights he might want, but also open and willing to accept that he might want very little. After all, a child had never been part of his game plan and she should know because, in a weird way, she knew him like the back of her hand.

‘What makes you think that I believe you?’ Gabriel asked.

Rose looked at him, startled out of her gut-wrenching apprehension. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean,’ he said, his tone of voice implying that what he was about to say would be logical beyond all dispute, ‘I suddenly discover that you find me irresistible. You’ve worked for me for years and yet, five seconds after arriving on the island, I’ve suddenly turned into the man of your dreams. Odd, wouldn’t you say?’

To refute this sweeping, inaccurate observation would have left her wide open and vulnerable, so Rose remained silent, waiting for him to develop what he meant.

‘Particularly odd,’ Gabriel continued, ‘considering you’d just got yourself a boyfriend…’He thought of the way she had run out on him and his fiercely wounded male pride was like the sharp edge of a knife, goading him into accusations which her changing expression was making a nonsense of. He couldn’t help himself. He particularly couldn’t help himself when he thought about what’s-his-name and the possibility that she might, actually, be seeing him again, sleeping with him. Who was to say differently?

‘Now you swan in here, months after you’ve walked out on your job, with some story about being pregnant.’ His mouth twisted into a cynical sneer. ‘If you are, and I’m not even willing to admit to that, who’s to say that you weren’t already pregnant when you came with me on that trip? Who’s to say that your sudden, overwhelming need to hop in the sack with me wasn’t a ruse for you and your lover to con me out of money?’

Rose’s shock showed in her white, disbelieving face, sufficient for Gabriel to feel a morsel of guilt at his casual shredding of her character.

She made to stand but he was in front of her before she was halfway to her feet and she fell back into the chair, wincing away from his dark, oppressive anger as he leant over her, his arms on either side of the chair like steel bars.

‘Don’t even think about it!’ he grated. ‘Don’t even think that you can come in here and tell me that you’re pregnant with my child and then leave!’

‘And don’t you think that you can accuse me of being a gold-digger or of using you! That’s the most insulting thing anyone has ever told me! How dare you think that I had some kind of ulterior motive for sleeping with you? It says a lot about you, Gabriel Gessi, that you could have such a…vile opinion of another human being!’

Gabriel shot to his feet and walked away, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He raked his fingers through his hair and swung round to look at her.

‘What can you expect?’ he muttered. ‘You’ve come in here with a bomb and detonated it at my desk.’

‘I’m sorry.’ An icy calm had settled over her. Yes, he would be in shock, but his extreme reaction was somehow easier to bear than if he had offered help or compassion or even money. She wasn’t even sure why she was so surprised and wounded at his raw accusations. Gabriel was filthy rich and he had the instinctively suspicious mind of someone who was filthy rich. And she could concede—just—that pregnancy was the fastest way to a man’s wallet. The hurtful part wasn’t his cold, detached approach to what she had said, it was that he had thought it in the first place, that he had allowed his flawed intellect to take precedence over what he must surely know about her by now.

‘I know you’re in a state of shock,’ she said tonelessly. ‘I debated whether I should come and tell you or not but in the end I felt you should know. And, before you leap in with any more accusations, let me tell you straight away that I’m not after your money. This wasn’t part of some elaborate plot to rip you off. I can’t go back in time and take back what happened between us on that island but I didn’t connive for it to happen.’ She risked a glance at him and felt a sharp stab of compassion. ‘And it’s yours, Gabriel. I haven’t seen Joe since I got back to England and, anyway, I never slept with him.’

She suddenly felt desperately weary. The past ten days had been a struggle. In fact, the past two and a half months had been a struggle. She had returned to London, jobless, and had immediately found herself a decent enough temp job. But it was uninspiring and left her ample time to mourn what she had abandoned. She was tormented by the thought that she should have stayed, had the affair he had offered, waited to see what happened. She had salvaged her pride, saved herself the eventual let-down, but her bed was cold and lonely at night and her mind chattered ceaselessly with argument and counter-argument.

She had also dropped her plans to go on her business course. Somehow she didn’t feel herself to be in a positive enough frame of mind.

So she had drifted miserably from one day to the next until, ten days ago, when two bright blue lines on a home pregnancy testing kit had galvanised her out of her depressed torpor.

Now here she was, having done the right thing, facing down a barrage of accusations. She gritted her teeth against the desire to cry.

‘Okay, let’s just say I believe you…’He did. The truth was written all over her face. Nor had he really believed for a second that she would have wilfully slept with him so that she could later spring a pregnancy tale of woe on his shoulders. Nor did he know what had compelled him to lay into her with such force. But he believed her. She was carrying his baby.

Gabriel, who had never once contemplated the reality of fatherhood except as some distant situation that might or might not arise in the fullness of time, was shocked to realise that his initial feelings were ones of pure, virile satisfaction.

He felt as though he had triumphed.

‘Yes…?’ Rose was treading warily.

‘Which isn’t to say,’ he added, ‘that I won’t demand a DNA test somewhere along the line…’ He wouldn’t.

‘I’m not lying to you, Gabriel. Would you believe me any quicker if I told you that I didn’t come here today to try and get money out of you? That I came because I thought it was the right, moral thing to do?’

‘You must know that there’s no way I would let any son of mine go without…’

‘Son? Hang on a minute…’

‘Or daughter, of course.’ He gave an elegant shrug and then began prowling the room, forcing her to turn around to keep up with his progress. ‘Whatever. No child of mine will be allowed to go without.’

‘Naturally it will be up to you, whatever you decide to contribute to his or her welfare.’

‘Contribute?’ He gave a bark of laughter and paused to look at her with incredulity. ‘Contribute? You speak as though my own flesh and blood would be on the receiving end of the occasional donation! No, my involvement will be much more far reaching than a cheque sent out once a month…’

For the first time since she had disappeared, Gabriel felt the angry restlessness inside him begin to ebb away as he contemplated, with calm acceptance, a future he had not banked on.

‘What do you have in mind?’ Rose asked, her voice even more guarded.

‘Put it this way, Rose…’He sat behind his desk and looked at her. Yes, he could see now that she had put on a bit of weight. Not so much that you would notice, but enough. She looked glowing. ‘No child of mine will be a bastard.’

‘Meaning…?’

‘Meaning that you’ll have to marry me.’

Rose gazed at him, shocked by his Draconian solution. ‘I don’t intend to do any such thing!’ she informed him adamantly. ‘We’re no longer in the Dark Ages, Gabriel. Children are born out of wedlock all the time. There’s no longer any social stigma associated with that.’

‘Irrelevant.’

‘No, it’s not irrelevant!’ Marry him? Live a life knowing that he had tied himself to her because of a child? Was there a faster way for a marriage to turn sour between two people? ‘I can’t marry you because I’m pregnant!’ Rose struggled to make him see her point of view, aware that she was battling against the traditionalist core of a dinosaur. ‘It’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard. You didn’t ask for this situation!’

‘That I won’t deny…’So why, he wondered, didn’t he feel worse about it?

‘And I’m sorry but I won’t let you bury yourself in matrimony with me because you feel obliged…’

‘I don’t think I mentioned that you had a choice.’

Rose thought about marriage and her expectations of it. None of them included her loving a man, having his baby, desperately waiting and hoping that one day he would return her love. Nor had she ever looked forward to the inevitability of a husband who would stray because he would eventually become bored with her, bored by the sight of her. A child was many things but superglue wasn’t one of them and a marriage artificially sustained because of one would be a marriage made in hell.

‘You will marry me, Rose. It can be a small affair or you can lay on all the trimmings, but marry me you will.’