Читать книгу Boardrooms of Power - Heidi Betts - Страница 14

GABRIEL, in what was becoming a familiar situation of disgruntled uncertainty, clicked off his mobile with a frown.

He was sure that there had been a man’s voice in the background. Or maybe it was his imagination playing tricks on him. It had been doing that lately. Ever since he had found himself on the receiving end of Rose’s determination.

No marriage.

Naturally, he had assumed, with his boundless self-assurance, that he could steamroller over her objections, and he had given it a damn good shot.

For every point she raised he had countered it with ten of his own.

To claims that he was behaving like a Victorian tyrant, he had pointed out that his intention was merely to honour his responsibilities and ensure that his progeny was born with the greatest advantages of having a mother and father, both living under the same roof, both sharing the decision making.

‘You will never be able to accuse me of not doing the right thing,’ he had told her with pride.

And, just in case she remained unconvinced, which she surely couldn’t be, given the indisputable logic of his arguments, he had ticked off, on his fingers, every reason for marrying him.

The benefit of security for his son. Or daughter, he had hastened to add. The benefit to her because she would be financially secure, able to fully appreciate motherhood without feeling the need to go out to work. Additionally, he had told her, they got along and were attracted to one another. It was hardly as if they were sworn enemies being forced into an unnatural alliance!

To any further obstacles and to reassure any misplaced sense of pride, he had informed her that she could look on it as something of a sensible business arrangement.

‘As you do?’ she had asked blandly, and he had nodded thinking that, yes, it really was something that made sense. And, to top it off, it made him feel good. He had never thought that the prospect of marriage would make him feel good. Rather, he had always privately maintained that, whatever tales he had heard to the contrary, most men, himself included, would view the institution of marriage as a regrettable cessation of the sheer joy of the affair, the vigour and excitement of the chase.

But, surprisingly, he had felt nothing like that and he could only assume that the prospect of fatherhood was more powerful than he had ever imagined.

So it had come as a brutal shock when she had stuck to her guns. No marriage.

Threats to drag her up the aisle had met with stony silence and he had resorted to dangling all manner of financial carrots in front of her, at which point she had turned her back on him and thrown over her shoulder that, unless he stopped pestering her, not only would she not marry him but she would find it hard to have anything to do with him at all!

Pestering her! Just the memory of those two words made Gabriel’s teeth snap together in baffled fury.

He was certainly left in no doubt that the last thing she was was a gold-digger! In fact, he sometimes caught himself half wishing that she was more impressed by his wealth. At least then he might have been able to pin her down!

As it was, she was now in her sixth month of pregnancy and there was still no prospect of any ring going anywhere near her finger.

Gabriel had even consulted his mother on the best way of tying her down, expecting keen support from that area—after all he came from a family of traditionalists—but he had been woefully let down. His mother had quizzed him, asked all the right questions, sympathised with his dilemma which, as he pointed out, was the irrational dilemma of a man thwarted from doing the right thing, and then confounded him by saying that he couldn’t make someone do something they didn’t want to do.

He had been reduced to visiting her, as often as he could, and he had arranged his work life to fit in accordingly.

He said nothing when she told him that there was no need and, over time, she had stopped telling him. Of course, he didn’t like the fact that she was still working but, when he’d mentioned that she had laughed and told him that pregnancy wasn’t an illness, that it was a perfectly natural condition and putting her feet up would only make her put on too much weight.

However, he was reassured that she had postponed the business course, which would have been sheer lunacy.

Apart from the marriage issue, which appeared to be going nowhere fast, things seemed to be progressing nicely and privately Gabriel had been working on a plan to buy them a house. He would let her choose it. Would let her fall in love with it. And then, maybe, he could entice her into doing what he realised he wanted more and more.

Now this.

Had he heard a man’s voice in the background? It occurred to him that she had seemed a bit breathless down the phone.

It was nine-thirty at night! Why would she be breathless? Gabriel, on the way to the airport, tapped on the partition separating him from his driver and gave him immediate instructions to turn around.

He wasn’t turning around to check up on her, he told himself. Naturally there was no man in the house! Why should there be? She was six months pregnant with his child! And over the months he had come to appreciate that she was not deceptive by nature. She could no more lie to him than she could flap her arms and fly to the moon.

On the other hand, it wasn’t as though they were married, was it? She had maintained her freedom even if he was convinced that she had no intention of using it. Damn it, they were still making love! He had done his homework. Read the pregnancy books. Was convinced that sex in the latter stages of pregnancy was absolutely fine, provided there were no contra-indications.

For a few seconds, Gabriel’s mind drifted to the eminently pleasing recollection of their passionate love-making. He wasn’t ashamed of admitting that her ripe body was a massive turn-on for him. Her breasts were now more than a generous handful and her nipples had swelled and darkened and seemed to have become ultra-sensitive, judging from the way she squirmed whenever he licked their stiffened peaks.

He shifted as his body responded swiftly and inevitably to the mental pictures in his head and he told the driver, in a clipped voice, to hurry.

If she sounded breathless, he decided, then he had to check it out. Purely on health grounds. His deal halfway across the world would just have to wait. He phoned his secretary, utterly unapologetic about disturbing whatever she happened to be doing, and told her to cancel all arrangements for him for the next couple of days. Thrown in at the deep end, she had certainly smartened up her act over the months. He still had to spell certain things out for her and she would never attain the level of responsibility that Rose had, but she would know what to do in this event.

That dealt with, Gabriel stared through the window as the car tackled London on a dark, dank, wintry Thursday night.

His thoughts were all over the place. Right there and then he made the decision that he would not leave her place until he had persuaded her to move in with him. Okay, she hadn’t yet agreed to marriage, despite his reasonable approach, an approach that made sense from whichever angle it was viewed, but they would live together. Not ideal, but that way he could keep an eye on her.

The journey took thirty-five torturous minutes and, as the chauffeur-driven Jaguar pulled up to the kerb outside her house, Gabriel was witness to the one thing he didn’t want to see.

The male voice in the background hadn’t been a figment of his over-active imagination after all. It had been all too real and Gabriel didn’t need to look very hard to know the identity of the mystery guest. Who else could it be but the ex-boyfriend?

He sat in silence for a few seconds, clenching and unclenching his fist, watching the man sling on his coat even as he walked down the road away from the Jaguar, reminding himself that he had no control, ultimately, over what she chose to do with her life.

He was overcome with a feeling of failure, an emptiness that was quite unlike how he was used to feeling.

He rubbed his eyes with his thumbs, clearing his head, trying to silence the roar in there, then he told his driver that he could head back.

‘I’ll make my own way home,’ Gabriel said tersely, pushing open the car door. Jealousy was threatening to overcome every shred of self-control he possessed. He made it to her front door before she even had time to hit the staircase.

Rose heard the banging and immediately assumed that Joe had left something behind.

She wasn’t prepared to find Gabriel standing outside her door. Not that it wasn’t a wonderful surprise. It was. Because she had thought that he would be at Heathrow, waiting for his plane, although in truth her mind wasn’t as sharp as it had been before she became pregnant. She smiled and waited for his responding smile but none was forthcoming. Instead he stepped wordlessly into the hall and turned around to face her.

‘What are you doing here?’ Rose asked, hesitating at the expression on his face. ‘I thought you were on your way to Hong Kong…’

‘It would seem that there was a change of plan.’ His instinct was to lay into her with questions about what the hell that man was doing in her house, but he restrained himself. Over the past few months, he had discovered a reservoir of patience he had never known existed in him and he called upon it now. Arguing would be no good for her in her condition and, besides, it occurred to him, he seldom won.

A change of plan and so he’d rushed over to her house. Rose tried not to feel flattered but she was. The man who had never actively pursued any woman was pursuing her now and it took all her strength to remind herself of the reason for that. The baby. Had it not been for the baby, she would no longer have been a part of his life. He hadn’t bothered to search her out when he had returned from the island and found that she had left his company, after all. And his marriage proposal. That, too, was all about the baby and she respected him for his alacrity in accepting responsibility, but he was no closer to seeing now than he had been months ago that a loveless union was worse than no union at all and he didn’t love her. He was willing to take care of her because she would be the mother of his child and he was, as he had pointed out in various ways, an Italian traditionalist through and through. But not once had he mentioned love.

Rose could see all the advantages in marrying him. He would be a generous husband and a fantastic father, but she knew him well. Playing the dutiful husband to a woman he didn’t love would grind him down and, over time, inevitably, his eyes would begin to wander. And, looking the way he did, it would be all too easy for temptation to meet opportunity.

There was no such thing as guaranteed fidelity within a marriage but, as far as Rose was concerned, most marriages at least started out with the expectation. For her, it would be like waiting for an axe to fall and there was no way she was going to do that.

But it was hard. When they made love, the feeling of total completeness was as uplifting as it was painful.

‘What was the change of plan?’ Rose asked, leading him towards the sitting room. Too much standing about tired her out these days.

Normally, he would sit next to her on the squashy sofa, but this time he settled for the chair by the fire.

‘We need to regulate this situation,’ Gabriel said abruptly. He had waited for her to raise the subject of the man leaving the house, but she hadn’t. She obviously thought that they would have missed each other by a few minutes and he was damned if he was going to ask questions. He felt sick with rage and jealousy.

‘Regulate…?’ Rose was baffled by the statement. She yawned and was startled when he asked her, rather coldly, if she would mind staying up so that she could listen to what he had to say.

‘What’s the matter?’ Rose asked, suddenly sitting up. ‘What’s wrong? Is it work?’

‘Work couldn’t be better,’ Gabriel said icily. ‘And if I appear to be in a bad mood it’s because I am angry with myself for allowing this situation to go as far as it has done. It is no longer satisfactory for us to be living apart. In three months time you will give birth to our child and I don’t intend to remain an occasional visitor to your house.’ Nor, he thought savagely, do I intend to let other men have contact with my child!

‘But, Gabriel, we’ve talked about this!’

‘And, like a fool, I have indulged your crazy desire to maintain your freedom!’

‘It’s got nothing to do with maintaining my freedom!’ Rose told him painfully. ‘What exactly do you think I’m going to with this so called freedom I’m desperate to maintain? When I’m at home with a baby?’

Gabriel ignored that. He couldn’t think straight. In his mind, the only thing he could see was that man leaving the house. He burned to lay into her, demand to know what the hell she was playing at, inviting strange men into her house, and he loathed his own weakness in feeling so desperate.

‘Good. Then we compromise. And I really don’t care if you refuse, Rose, because I will simply stay put until you agree.’

‘What’s brought on this change of mood?’

‘A clear head,’ Gabriel snapped. ‘You don’t want to marry me. Fine. You’re right. I cannot drag you kicking and screaming up the aisle, although how your conscience allows you to jeopardise the stability of our child’s future is beyond me.’

‘I don’t know h…’

Gabriel raised one imperious hand to silence her protest. ‘But there is a limit to what I will tolerate. If you won’t marry me, then you will live with me.’

‘Be your mistress?’

‘Call it whatever you like. The description is immaterial.’ He gave one of those nonchalant shrugs of his although his eyes remained very firmly focused on her dazed face.

‘I don’t see the point,’ Rose muttered, but she was exhausted by his drip, drip technique. He had used a sledgehammer to crack a nut but once he had clocked into the fact that she wasn’t budging, Gabriel had changed his techniques and over the months had become the master of subtlety, making small but consistent measures to chip away at her resolve. Sometimes she had the unsettling suspicion that part of his persistence came from the fact that she presented a challenge he felt compelled to overcome. It was a disturbing thought.

‘What was the urgency to rush over here at this hour to discuss this?’ she asked, stifling a yawn. ‘I’m really tired.’

‘I’ll bet.’

Something in Gabriel’s voice made Rose stiffen. Now she knew that something was wrong. ‘What does that mean?’

‘What do you think it means?’ Gabriel threw out belligerently.

‘I have no idea. Are you going to tell me or are you going to try and make me guess?’

‘Who was he?’ Gabriel heard himself ask the question and it was as if his vocal cords were functioning without the agreement of his brain, because he certainly hadn’t intended to reduce himself by asking.

‘Who was who? What are you talking about?’

‘Don’t give me that butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth act! I wasn’t born yesterday, Rose!’ He sprang to his feet and began pacing the room, releasing some of the high voltage energy that was threatening to make him really explode with her. He daredn’t look at her bewildered expression when it must be obvious to her exactly what he was talking about. I mean, he thought savagely, how many men did she entertain when he wasn’t around?

Now frankly disturbed, Rose padded across to where he was standing by the window, arms folded, his eyes aggressive slits. She placed her hand worriedly on his arm and he shrugged it off.

‘I have no idea what you’re on about.’

‘There was a man leaving this house when I drove up,’ Gabriel said, struggling to maintain his composure. ‘Why do you think I flew over here? What do you imagine I meant when I told you that my plans had changed? I heard his voice in the background when I spoke to you earlier on the phone and, sure enough, I get here and what do I find? A man leaving this house. Cool as a cucumber! And you acting as though nothing’s happened! Well, it won’t do! You’re going to move in with me and that’s the end of it!’

‘Are you jealous, Gabriel?’ Rose couldn’t squash an excited flutter of hope. If he was jealous, surely that meant that he felt more for her than lust, which would pass, and a sense of duty?

‘Should I be? I come here, I see a strange man leaving your house late at night…Tell me, should I be? Furthermore, I notice you still haven’t told me who the hell he is! No need. I can guess! What’s-his-name off the business course! Am I right?’ He looked away from her and tried not to imagine the worst. Somewhere inside, he knew that his fears were groundless but, like a leaf caught up in a storm, he was incapable of anchoring himself. ‘I hadn’t realised that you two were still in contact.’

‘We’re not.’

‘No? The figure leaving the house was really just a figment of my imagination?’

‘Joe’s called me a couple of times…’

‘Joe’s called you a couple of times…’

‘Well, yes.’ Now she felt guilty that she hadn’t mentioned the calls. Partly her lapses in memory were to blame and also the fact that she had known that Gabriel’s reaction would probably not have been too understanding. She hadn’t reckoned on it being as extreme as it was, however, and guilt brought a tinge of colour to her cheeks. Gabriel was on to that in a flash.

‘But I don’t know what you’re so worried about. I mean, there’s no need for you to be jealous…’Rose laughed self-consciously and, in some corner of her mind, she was aware that this time Gabriel had not denied that he was jealous. ‘Look at me, Gabriel and tell me what you see!’ With her smock dress and thick, forgiving cardigan, she was like a ship in full sail.

‘A very sexy woman…’ Gabriel affirmed through gritted teeth.

Something in Rose melted. She walked over to her handbag, which was on the chair, and rummaged inside, finally extracting a piece of white card which she handed in silence to him. Gabriel glanced at it, then read it.

‘He’s invited us to his engagement party,’ Rose said. ‘He phoned a few weeks ago because he’s a nice guy and he wanted to find out how I was doing with the pregnancy. He mentioned that he’d met a woman and things were serious. I was pleased for him.’

Gabriel stared down at the invitation. He should have been alarmed at his huge overreaction but he wasn’t because he knew why he had reacted the way he had. Why he was so desperate to marry her, why, when faced with her constant refusal, he was now desperate to have her live with him. The writing on the card looked blurry and he realised that he was no longer focusing on it but travelling down the blindingly obvious paths his mind was revealing to him.

He looked at her and cupped her amused, gently quizzical face in his hands.

‘Okay. Here’s the deal,’ he said sombrely. ‘You have to move in with me because it’s driving me nuts living apart from you.’

‘What are you saying?’ Rose wanted to hold her breath, close her eyes and wish as hard as she could that he would say what she wanted to hear, but reality never worked that way, so she held his gaze steadily and waited.

‘I’m saying…’ Gabriel ran his fingers through his hair and fidgeted. Finally he led her to the sofa and tugged her down to sit next to him, close enough for him to still touch her face. ‘I’m saying…that I can’t think straight with you living on your own here. I’ve felt it for a while but I denied it. Now, I know.’ He sighed and looked as if he might be trying to put his thoughts into some kind of coherent order. ‘Seeing that man leaving here…imagining…well, I can’t tell you…seems crazy but that’s what you do to me. You make me crazy.’ He kissed her gently on the mouth but pulled back before they could find themselves unable to break apart. He needed to talk without the distractions of her amazing body. But, as if he was still compelled to have some level of physical contact with her, he placed his hand on her stomach and she, in turn, placed her hand on his.

‘I can’t concentrate properly. I worry about you.’ He looked at her carefully. ‘I thought I wanted to marry you for the sake of the baby,’ Gabriel told her. ‘But somewhere along the line things have changed…No…things had changed before then. Sometimes I wonder whether what I felt for you was there all along, from way back when, just something waiting to be revealed…’

‘What you felt for me? What do you feel for me…?’

‘I need you…’ Gabriel felt as though he was falling off the side of a precipice. ‘I’m in love with you…’

Rose looked at him and smiled, a slow, mesmerised smile that only touched the depth of her happiness. ‘Will you marry me?’ she asked. ‘Because I’m in love with you too and you have no idea…I’ve been waiting so long for you to tell me that you love me too…I never dared hope…’ The baby kicked and they both looked down.

‘My darling,’ Gabriel murmured, marvelling at how his frantic life suddenly made sense, ‘I’m yours for ever…’