Читать книгу Paws And Proposals - Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 30

December 30th

WATCHING Gabe sleep was becoming a dangerous habit. Most people got less attractive when they were sleeping. They sagged and gaped and were somehow … diminished when unconscious. Gabe just got better with the relaxation of his muscles.

Softened.

But it hardly seemed fair to watch him, since she’d be mortified if he did the same thing to her when she was off shift.

She turned back to the monitor. Mjawi had emerged at first light from B-den for her morning salute to the dawn—squeezing, as always, out of the entrance hole and leaving the pups sleeping deep inside. A subordinate male immediately took the chance to crawl into the den and investigate. If it had been lion or hyena they were watching that would have been cause for alarm, but wild dogs were the closest thing to being caring that carnivores got, and every dog looked out for the future of the pack. Ingrid knew he’d nuzzle them to death before doing anything more sinister.

Mjawi thought a bit of puppy-sitting was just fine. She flopped down by the waterhole and enjoyed the fresh morning air. Ingrid zoomed one of the perimeter cameras in on her to check her condition.

It seemed hours and yet just moments until Gabe’s raspy morning voice murmured from behind her.

‘She looks good.’

Glossy coat, good clean muzzle, and as well fed as such a lean species could appear. ‘She needed a break.’

‘From a dozen pups? No doubt.’

Ingrid tipped her head back to look up at him. ‘Are you truly expecting a dozen?’

Gabe shrugged. ‘That’s pretty common.’

Wow. From zero to twelve. That was some family. And here she was complaining about her shift from being one to one of five.

‘Safety in numbers.’ He shrugged. ‘In the wild getting your pack size up is a priority if you want to survive. Family is all.’

Ingrid shifted against the uncomfortable thought that maybe that was what she was supposed to be doing. Her parents had done their job and got her to adulthood, and then they’d gone back again and brought more life into the world with the people they now loved—and they were working hard to get them to adulthood too. Her brothers and sisters were only babies—a mix of half and step-siblings—but they were family. And they might as well not have a big sister if she didn’t get a handle on her unconventional family.

She glanced back at the empty entrance to B-den. That subordinate male wasn’t complaining that he wasn’t alpha, that he didn’t get to have offspring of his own; he was just pitching in and doing what he could for the betterment of the pack.

Maybe the only person Ingrid was ultimately hurting was herself.

On screen, Mjawi jogged lightly back to the entrance to the den and squeezed her head and shoulders into the hole. Halfway in, her feet dug in and she started to retreat as the male emerged. The two of them met right at the entrance and a momentary battle for access broke out. As the male kicked and reared back the den entrance took quite a beating, and Ingrid suspended her breath and waited for it to cave in.

Gabe was up and out of the camp bed and halfway to unlocking the A-den hatch by the time the momentary flare-up settled.

‘It’s fine, Gabe,’ Ingrid urged. ‘He’s out. She’s gone back in.’

‘How’s the entrance tunnel?’

Ingrid stood aside so that he could get a good look on the monitor. ‘Battered. But still holding.’

Though a clump of earth fell from its roof as they watched. She lifted her eyes to his.

‘I think it’s just a question of when, now,’ he said, ‘not if.’

‘Should we break through?’ Their estimations said there were just inches between Mjawi’s tunnel and Ingrid’s.

He thought about that long and hard. ‘No. Not yet. But I think we’re in for a long day.’

More earth sprinkled down across the entrance to the den. Ingrid pressed her lips together and tried to imagine a first-time mother—and a first-time tunnel-digger—knowing enough to get a dozen pups out in time.

Not likely.

‘Just say the word.’

He turned and looked at her. ‘Are you going to be okay if this doesn’t end well?’

Occasional loss of life was a reality in being a vet nurse. And in running a zoo. ‘Let’s just do our best not to let that happen.’

Gabe nodded.

They watched the tunnel entrance until the earth found its natural stability again. Then Gabe left to shower and eat and be back in time for his shift. Ingrid splashed some milk from the drugs fridge into a wax-lined single-serve cereal packet that doubled as its own vessel and tucked into the crunchy flakes as she watched the other dogs investigating the morning. They frolicked until they flopped, exhausted, in the shade. But it would only take one to rouse the rest of the boisterous pack back into chaotic activity.

She smelled Gabe’s return before hearing it. Soap and French aftershave were as good as a neon sign when you were working with the stinkiest species in the zoo. Her body half turned to him before she could temper its traitorous reaction.

At the last moment she turned her eagerness into a clumsy sort of update. ‘No real change.’

Better that than have him see the flash of excitement she’d felt. He’d only been gone half an hour.

He strode from the bright morning light into the darkened room like some kind of archangel. Tall men had such a way of moving, and something about them being damp and smooth-shaven made that even harder to ignore.

She fought it—hard.

He stopped right up close to her, just behind her left shoulder. She could practically feel the amusement pumping off him. He knew what he was doing. He’d been standing extra close, whispering extra low, smiling extra sexy since she’d fumbled her way so badly out of the admission that she still responded to him physically.

Only it was more than physical—as her reaction of moments ago showed. It was Gabe she responded to, not just his body. It was him she wanted to talk to—for hours, to get deep under his skin, to see what made him tick and how he’d become the man he was. It was his mind that stimulated hers and his pain that hurt her.

‘I’m going to grab some breakfast,’ she lied, knowing her shift wasn’t up for two hours yet, but knowing he would cover for her. ‘See you later on.’

She was up and away from Gabe’s eau de gorgeous and his high-frequency energy before he’d even acknowledged her words. She crossed the yard behind the night quarters and cut up an embankment on a set of stone steps that hadn’t been used by the public for two decades.

A good hot shower would take her mind off Gabe. Or a good cold one. She just needed time away—a literal and emotional time-out. Working together so closely like this was bound to blur their usual boundaries. She just needed to get a better handle on her innermost thoughts and stop blurting them out.

Feeling them was one thing …

Indulging them was not an option.

A relationship was the last thing she wanted. Not when she was building herself a new career and future. Not when she was so determined to shore up her place in the organisation she’d worked at for so many years to bring her spinning world to a halt.

She’d allowed herself that one night with Gabe a year ago because she’d believed it came parcelled up with its own expiry date. He was leaving. Except then he wasn’t. The last-minute chance she’d thought she’d been exploiting had suddenly loomed long and open-ended in front of her, as unpredictable as the rest of her world.

She could forgive herself that one time because she hadn’t known he was staying. This time she knew. This time there could be no forgiveness.

There could be no more ‘times’.

Her job now was to push Gabriel Marque and his hard-jawed, purry-accented, broad-shouldered gorgeousness way back in her mind. Despite what her body thought was a good idea. Despite what her heart whispered.

Hearts were no way to run a life. They were way too capricious.

And when you were working hard to bring stability to your life inconstancy was not something to be encouraged.

All she wanted was a good job with a clear career path where she could build relationships with the people and animals she worked with. She didn’t want complications. She didn’t want tumult.

She didn’t want Gabe.

Even if—very much—she did.

Just for something different she swung back, clean and emotionally shored up, via the visitors’ side of the wild dog exhibit. Her path took her through the Okavango Delta exhibit, and passed lions, giraffe, rhino, zebra all resting in their enclosures. Meerkats. A serval. A mini-wetland dotted with flamingo and pygmy hippos. Some lifted their heads, surprised to see a human up and about so early.

She rounded the thickly planted corner which opened out onto the viewing area for the African wild dogs. They were doing much what they had been when she’d left: lounging around with just one or two trying hard to goad the others back into play.

Two of them dashed back and forth, dodging and weaving in their version of a game of tag, splashing through the waterhole, skidding in the red earth and vocalising madly the whole time.

Ingrid’s eyes lifted to the rear of the exhibit, where it backed onto the night quarters. She imagined Gabe in there, beyond the thick concrete wall, his intense eyes concentrating on the monitor. You could see the visitors’ viewing bay on the camera that captured the whole exhibit, but she’d be a tiny khaki-coloured speck in the background. There was something dangerously appealing about imagining him hard at work while he didn’t know she was watching. It was a little bit like watching him sleep.

It wasn’t real if he didn’t know.

One dog darted left to avoid its pack-mate and sprinted up the earth mounded against the night quarters. It spun to a halt right atop the dens and stood panting, waiting for the game to continue.

As she watched the dog lurched where it stood, braced its legs wide and looked sharply at the earth beneath its feet. It lurched again and leapt backwards, closer to the building.

Ingrid’s stomach dropped the way the dog had and her feet started to move.

B-den was collapsing …

As she rounded the end of the exhibit pathway at full speed her mobile phone vibrated in her back pocket. She dragged it to her ear and uttered a breathless hello into the mouthpiece as she ran.

‘Ingrid?’ Gabe’s deep, distressed voice barked. ‘I need you.’

She found him as she skidded around the corner of the night quarters. He tossed the last of several juicy carcass pieces into the holding area. ‘We have to break through. Now.’

Oh, God …

‘I’ve blocked the entrance to A-den. You get ready by the hatch. I’ll get the pack in.’

Blocking the entrance was a risk. If Mjawi tried to move the pups using the entrance and found it blocked she might take them back into the collapsing den.

‘What if she won’t come in?’ Ingrid couldn’t safely break through to B-den with Mjawi still in it. She’d take her head off.

‘I’ll get her out.’

That sounded dangerously determined. ‘Wait, Gabe …’

‘I’ll get her out,’ he said, hard and certain.

It took only ten minutes to get the bulk of the pack into the night quarters. The very food-motivated wild dogs did everything as a pack, so once the first one caught wind of the carcass pieces it followed its nose into the holding area and fell on the sheep’s leg. Its excited vocalisation immediately drew the others.

Ingrid had the hatch open and her digging tools in hand, ready to go the moment Mjawi was out of range. The monitors showed sprays of dirt being flung from the entrance to B-den as Mjawi tried to dig out some of the earth that had fallen.

Gabe swung around the doorway and leaned in. ‘Everyone but Mjawi is in. I’m going to lure her out long enough for you to break through.’

‘What? How?’ Luring was a mile from approved protocol, and it would mean he was technically in the exhibit with uncontained dogs. Wild dogs. Her chest squeezed down into a tight fist.

‘If we do our jobs right it’ll be too fast to be dangerous. Mjawi will be distracted and the pups will be too startled to respond when you break through.’

If we do our jobs right …

Her uncertainty must have shown on her face. Gabe crossed straight over to her and curled one hand behind her neck. ‘If we wait for other staff to arrive it could collapse.’

Concern mixed freely with the urgency in his eyes. He didn’t want to do it, either. But her mind whizzed through every other option and there really were none that would mean the safety of the pups.

‘You can’t go in with her,’ she whispered, staring up at him. He was strong, but not that strong, and a mother protecting her pups was capable of anything.

‘I can’t not. Besides, she likes me—remember?’ He pulled her closer and pressed his lips to her clammy forehead. His brave smile died. ‘Just be fast, cherie.’

If her speed reduced the danger for him, she’d dig like a demon.

Without thinking she reached up, pressed both her hands to his cheeks, and pulled him down to meet her lips halfway. If he was going to risk his life, she wasn’t having him do it thinking she still hated him.

Because she didn’t—and they both knew it.

Courage flowed from his lips into hers and warmed her enough to move again. ‘Good luck.’

He smiled as he pulled away, hit redial on his phone, held it up and said, ‘Put me on speaker.’

And then he was gone. Off to do something dangerous and against all rules. There was some hope that Mjawi’s surprise at his unprecedented appearance inside the fence would stall her just long enough for him to stay safe.

She answered her ringing phone.

‘Get in the tunnel.’ Gabe’s voice came through the tinny speaker. ‘And get ready to break through. Don’t make a sound. The moment you hear me call you, do it.’

He lowered the phone then, but she could hear him clanking and clanging as he opened the access door to the exhibit—intentionally loud, perhaps, to draw Mjawi’s attention—and then he paused.

She paused, too, halfway through the hatch. Listening.

‘Okay, I’m going in.’

A wave of anxiety washed through her that he was risking himself like this for them. For her. But being paralysed with fear wasn’t going to help Gabe. Only her speed and accuracy would. She commando-crawled fully into A-den, and then beyond it into her hand-dug adjoining tunnel, and got herself positioned with her right arm tightly bent ahead of her.

And then she waited.

Through the speaker on her phone she could hear the sound of Gabe running—out into the exhibit, presumably—and then calling out to Mjawi in French.

‘Viens ici, la chienne!’

She pressed her thumb over her phone’s speaker to muffle it and the words became a tingle against her flesh. She thought she heard a scrabbling from beyond the thin sandy membrane between the dens, and then a moment later her phone cried out in Gabe’s voice.

‘Now, Ingrid!’

She dropped her mobile, punched forward with her trowel, and pushed her fist straight through what little dirt remained packed between the dens. High-pitched surprise greeted her, and a split-second glimpse of several pairs of blackcurrant eyes glinting back at her from a dark, stinky mass of furry bodies.

Ingrid pulled her fist back towards her and in the same moment started to reverse crawl out of the tunnel. She spidered backwards, breathing erratically, flung her legs through the hatch and used the point of the trowel to pierce the inflatable block sealing A-den entrance, then dragged that back with her out of the hatch.

She heard the repeat clanging of the exhibit gate as her feet hit the floor and she slammed the door shut.

Gabe was safe.

She was safe.

Now if only the pups could be safe.

‘What happened?’ He burst around the corner, pale and sweaty. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine. I’m fine.’

He pulled her hard against him and curled his arms around her head. She felt inelegant and uncomfortable with her face pressed into his armpit, but she wasn’t moving for all the wine in France. He just stood there. Holding her hard.

As if he was never going to let go.

An odd noise finally drew both of them out of their adrenalin-fuelled embrace. A shoving. A rustling.

A snuffling.

They both looked at the phone held in Gabe’s fist, still set to speaker phone. Ingrid looked at her empty left hand. Then at the hatch.

‘I dropped my phone,’ she mouthed.

The snuffling continued and resolved into a gentle mewling, some licking—the sounds of a mother comforting her babies. Together, Ingrid and Gabe sank into the chairs in front of the monitoring station and listened to the unexpected audio-feed while staring intently at the entrance to B-den on the monitors, which lost increasing amounts of earth clods with every minute that passed. The babies scrambled for Mjawi’s reassurance. She gave it. Then they heard the sound of big paws scraping at the earth, heavy, doggy breath chuffing hard up against Ingrid’s phone and experimenting with its taste.

At one stage Mjawi must have pushed it with her nose, because it seemed to slide away from them and land with a thunk on the floor of the slightly echoey, slightly lower A-den. They both looked straight at the hatch.

Silence.

Silence and then … a hint of something else. The snuffling resumed. Very small snuffling. Very inquisitive snuffling.

Ingrid opened her mouth to speak. Gabe pressed dirty fingers against her lips with one hand and set his phone to mute with the other. Then he lowered his fingers—but not far. He rested them on her cheek.

‘A pup has moved over,’ she whispered, excited.

He nodded and concentrated even harder on the sounds coming from her phone. More mewling. More pawing. And then the phone was muffled, as though someone had sat on it.

She’s in A-den!

Gabe’s wide eyes echoed her thought.

A flurry of rearrangement followed, and the high-pitched chatter from the pups continued. They rediscovered the phone and mouthed it and smothered it, generally explored the new toy.

And then—just when they’d begun to rely on it—something rolled on it and the signal was disconnected.

Ingrid stared at Gabe. ‘They hung up on us.’

He laughed first, quiet and low now that the pups were just a few feet away, and that only made it all the funnier. Ingrid joined him, trying hard not to let it out. His hazel eyes sparkled with a mix of emotion as the adrenalin faded away, but he kept them locked on her.

They stared at each other for a dangerously long time.

‘Five? Maybe six?’ she whispered.

His dark brows folded.

She sat back. ‘The number of pups I saw.’

His eyes widened. ‘You saw them?’

‘I saw fur and eyes. Just for a moment. It was hard to distinguish individual shapes, but I’m playing it back in my head and I’m sure there were five or six pairs of eyes.’

‘How did they look?’

‘Scared.’

He snorted. ‘I think we all were. Mjawi looked terrified, but she ran me down anyway.’

There was something engagingly attractive about a man who was perfectly willing to admit when he was frightened out of his skin. ‘Show me?’ she said.

They played the footage back and Ingrid mentally followed what was on screen with what she’d been doing and hearing underground. The moment Gabe entered the exhibit and started calling out Mjawi shot like a bullet out of the den, paused and crouched low as she spotted him, and then pelted straight for him.

Brave, given her pack was entirely absent, but determined to protect her babies. Ingrid could only imagine the pressing conflict of having a predator so close to her litter but knowing the den was crumbling around them, too. Wild animals were nothing if not outstanding prioritisers.

On screen, Gabe flung himself back into the night quarters and slammed the door shut. Mjawi skidded up against it bodily. Then she turned and jogged straight back to her litter.

‘Just seconds,’ Ingrid mused. ‘It felt like eternity.’

Gabe snorted again. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘We’re going to get in such trouble.’

He shook his head and locked eyes with her. ‘I don’t care. Do you?’

Did she? Breaching procedure like that and putting themselves at risk was technically a dismissible offence. She’d just poised the career—the organisation—that meant so much to her right on the edge of the toilet bowl and pressed flush. Everything she’d worked for. Everything she’d planned for.

Did she care?

‘No.’

They’d done the right thing. They’d saved the pups. If they got drummed out of the zoo for that it would be a pretty good way to go.

His smile just amplified the reward of what they’d done. ‘Thought not.’

And then, before she could do more than take a hasty breath, he leaned in and breached the short distance between their seats and kissed her. Hard. Hot. All that nervous energy had to go somewhere, and Ingrid gladly let it flow straight into her. Deep down into that place that had been cold and empty ever since she’d last let it be filled with Gabe’s energy.

His fingers forked up into her hair, closed gently around the strands and eased her head back so that their mouths could fit together better. Ingrid curled her fingers in the two halves of his shirt to pull herself closer to him. One of them was officially on shift, so one of them was being highly unprofessional, but she didn’t know who and, as his lips moved over her skin, she really didn’t care.

Her usual standards didn’t stand a chance when Gabe was around.

‘I’ve missed you,’ he whispered when finally they had to breathe.

Sensual haze robbed her of speech. His words swam, lost, around her mind, looking for somewhere to connect and form meaning. He stroked the hair from her face and snared her gaze with his. She was as slow as a newborn babe to focus on him. When she did, she saw the uncertainty there, mingling with the desire.

‘I didn’t understand why you walked away,’ he whispered.

She made herself find speech. ‘The job …’

His eyes narrowed just slightly. ‘That’s all?’

A sudden tension washed through her. She nodded.

‘It wasn’t because I was staying?’

Thump, thump … Her heart got in on the conversation. ‘Why would it be?’

His brows dipped. ‘Just a pattern in my life. Women back home didn’t last long once they realised I wasn’t going to gild their future with Marque euros.’

She matched his frown. ‘You thought that was what I was doing?’

A shadow flickered across his gaze. ‘I thought it was similar. I’ve never had problems getting women—’

I’ll bet …

‘—just keeping them for more than a few weeks. One night, in your case. A personal best.’

She shook her head. ‘That was—’

‘The job. I know.’ His eyes grew darker. ‘It finally dawned on me that I was never going to find my kindred spirit amongst my family’s world. And women of any kind were in short supply in the field in Africa. Then I came here.’

‘Where you had no trouble sampling the local wares.’

His brows dipped again and he shrugged. ‘I’ve had a couple of dates in Australia, but you won’t find anyone in the zoo who can say they were one of them.’

Anyone else. ‘Why?’

He thought about that. ‘Because I wasn’t looking for just anyone. I wasn’t really looking at all.’

‘Then what …?’ Warmth flooded her cheeks.

‘What happened that night?’ He dropped his hand away from hers and sat back.

She felt the little loss to her core.

‘You finally noticed me.’

It was all she could do not to gape at him. Finally? She’d noticed him long before he’d even been introduced. And the fact he didn’t know that made her inexplicably angry. ‘False modesty doesn’t sit well on you, Gabe.’

He straightened, and it put a few more necessary inches between them. ‘Why do you think we ended up together?’

She shrugged. ‘I assumed I was a challenge.’

He stared at her. ‘No, you didn’t. The woman I took home that night didn’t have doubts about herself. You felt it as much as I did.’

Her skin shrank against her bones, constricting and limiting. Every part of her wanted to run. She couldn’t let him know how deep her emotions ran. ‘Felt what?’

‘The thing that we had between us. That we still have.’

One by one Gabe had stripped back her layers, the barriers between them. But she wasn’t going that easily. ‘We just risked our lives together. That’s a powerful aphrodisiac.’

‘It has nothing to do with just now. I’ve wanted to kiss you since I walked in here on Christmas morning. And you twitch if I so much as brush against you.’ He leaned back in, extra close, and breathed the challenge against her lips. ‘You still feel it.’

She lifted her chin. ‘Maybe I just don’t like being touched.’

His eyes darkened, but this time it wasn’t a mysterious shadow. ‘Oh, cherie. Don’t ask me to believe that.’

She had liked being touched. She’d practically bloomed in his hands.

‘You kissed me back just now,’ he pointed out.

She tossed her head. ‘Maybe you’re just a really good kisser.’

His smile said he knew exactly what she was doing. Exposure didn’t sit comfortably on her. ‘Let’s take that as a given. So why are we wasting time? We could be kissing right now.’

They almost were. So she sat back. ‘The moment’s passed. I don’t just kiss on command.’

He locked eyes again. ‘What if I asked nicely? What if I begged?’

Breath escaped from her throat, leaving her speech tight and strained. ‘You’re too proud to beg. Besides, if it was just kisses you wanted you could walk into the staffroom and find a dozen willing participants.’

He shrugged. ‘I only want your kisses.’

Her sigh physically hurt. ‘Why?’

‘Because they fit me.’

She stared at him.

‘Because they haunt me.’

Every word he spoke cut her straight to the heart. They were words she’d always wanted to hear. And they were words she could not accept. But returning them like an unwanted gift … where did she even begin to do that?

‘Are all the Marque boys this smooth?’ she hedged.

‘Smoother, generally speaking. I’m the rough-round-the-edges one, if you recall.’ He stared. ‘So, would you like me to beg?’

Not demeaning himself. Not for her. ‘No, I would not. It’s not going to happen, Gabe.’

Damn him and his height. He had so much further to lean and he gobbled up another few inches now.

‘Why not? The job is no longer between us.’ He traced her jaw with a fingertip. ‘You ignite under my touch. We were born to be together.’

Her skin tightened again. Any more and bones were going to start poking through. ‘Because it’s not just up to you.’

His snort was as good and every bit as challenging as a bull in an arena. ‘Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want me.’

And there it was. Ingrid knew she couldn’t stare into those all-knowing eyes and convince him she wasn’t interested. And she couldn’t hide behind the job any more. But anything else just wasn’t possible.

‘I don’t want a relationship. With anyone.’ Just saying it aloud was awful. Was she condemning herself to being alone for ever?

That stopped him cold. ‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t. I know your monumental French ego will make this all about you, but it’s not. It’s about me. And I make the decisions about me.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said, eyes narrow.

‘Your loss.’

‘You’re pushing me away?’

‘I’m trying to.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not actually required to defend myself to you, Gabriel Marque.’

‘No. But I’m asking you to tell me why you’re rejecting me. Do me the courtesy.’

Rejecting me. The words came from way down deep, where child-like Gabe hid.

‘I’m not …’ She sighed. ‘It’s not rejection. It’s choice. Free choice.’

‘You’re choosing to be alone rather than be with me?’

‘I’m choosing—’ work, my career, the safe path ‘—to decline.’

He slumped back in his chair. ‘I see.’

No. He didn’t. The wounded look at the back of his confused eyes confirmed that. But telling him the truth was just too messy. And too hard. ‘Come on, Gabe. You’re seriously going to pout because I choose to put my needs before yours? That’s not you.’

And lying wasn’t her, but it was coming more and more easily. Desperate times …

‘It’s not that I’m not attracted to you. I’m just choosing not to do anything about it.’

His lips pressed together, as if in trying to make it easier for him she’d said something horrible.

‘You speak as though any of this is in our hands. As if there is a choice.’ He pushed up onto his feet. ‘The fact you can make that choice without blinking tells me everything I need to know.’

And with that he was gone, out into the bright morning light. She’d cover his duties until he was able to come back, but then she’d go. It was time to end the lazy make-believe world they’d created for themselves in their concrete bunker.

The pups were safe. Either of them could manage to vaccinate, chip and weigh them alone if Mjawi left the den. It would just take twice as long. She’d been foolish to let that be her excuse for staying.

She and Gabe would just go back to politely ignoring each other. Life would go on. The sun would keep rising.

It just wouldn’t shine as brightly.

It had taken Gabe two furious circuits of the still-waking zoo to burn off the uncomfortable sensation of being judged and found lacking. But then he’d walked back in and found Ingrid with bag and keys in hand—just waiting to get out of there—and that utterly innocent gesture had undone all his good work.

Even the dogs had conspired to be utterly uninteresting all day after she’d gone home, and they’d failed to take his mind off the fact that, while he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head for the past twelve months, Ingrid was entirely take-it-or-leave-it about him.

Not the greatest stroke for his ego.

Section staff had come to check on the pups’ progress and gone again. His supervisor had hit the roof when he’d heard how they’d managed to pull off the den-swap, and then the director had got called in for a departmental investigation. They’d talked it all through and concluded that there had been no other viable option and that Gabe’s actions were warranted. Just not entirely desirable. He’d done his best to play down Ingrid’s role and keep her from direct scrutiny. This place was her whole world. She didn’t need any black marks against her name if she was hoping to get zookeeping work in the future.

Her whole world.

The vulnerable part inside of him leapt on that. Was she so focussed on her career that she didn’t want anything getting in the way? But a zookeeper was the perfect person for her to form a relationship with. Who better to understand the pressures of the unpredictable rosters, the extra hours, the emotional attachment, the highs of success and the devastating lows of the failures?

They were a great match professionally.

God knew they were physically suited, too. That instant whoosh when they touched; the perpetual hum that existed when they were in a room together; the simmering passion that she kept so buttoned-down most of the time …

He’d never wanted to conquer and cherish in such equal measure.

But obviously being good together wasn’t enough to counter whatever it was he lacked. He’d managed much bigger disappointments in life, but always when he had some understanding and control of the situation. He didn’t do powerless. It was infuriating not to measure up to a bar you couldn’t see.

The beast in him paced in circles that grew tighter and tighter as the afternoon wore on.

‘How are they doing?’

He spun around at the tentative words behind him. The tautness of his muscles was amplified in his voice. ‘I wondered if you were coming back.’ And just like that he understood his slowly growing tension.

Her brows lifted just slightly at his tone and her entire body stiffened. ‘I’m not late.’

‘You weren’t here. What if something had happened?’

‘Then I was only twenty minutes away.’

‘Your mobile is probably inside a wild dog.’

‘I left my home number on the observation sheet.’

She might as well have gouged it into the table; it stank of her desperation to be gone.

‘You must really want the money. I thought for sure you’d swap shifts with someone else.’

‘I want the experience, not the money.’

Right. That was why she’d stayed. He should have realised it was nothing to do with him. He swallowed the rest of his umbrage before he said something even more inappropriate.

‘Are you staying?’ she offered, to break the silence.

‘We’re too close now to bail.’

Her lips thinned. ‘I didn’t bail. I went home. And I came back for my shift. I’m doing my job.’

‘Oui, I can always rely on you to do the minimum, Ingrid.’

Her gasp was overly loud in the concrete building. ‘That’s not fair. I work very hard.’

It wasn’t fair. But he wasn’t feeling fair. He was feeling hurt. And defensive. And a tiny bit curious. If he pressed the right button would he get the answers he was after?

He shrugged. ‘At some things.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means that giving any part of yourself to someone else is hard work, and you’re not up to it.’

‘Are we back to this, Gabe?’

‘Too hard to talk about?’

‘I’m not enjoying hurting your feelings,’ she hissed.

‘My feelings are just fine. Thanks for the concern.’

‘What do you want from me?’

‘I want to know why you’re backing away from this thing we have.’

‘I’m not.’

‘It started the day after you let yourself be with me.’

‘I told you. I thought you’d—’

‘Yeah, you told me. But I don’t believe it was about the job. I think that’s what you told yourself. What was really going on, Ingrid?’

Her face grew strained and distressed. ‘Please don’t make me say it again …’

She didn’t want to hurt him. Even now her compassion moved him. And infuriated him. He pushed it down hard. He wanted to know. ‘What is it, Ingrid? Holding out for something better?’

‘Gabe—’

But the path to self-destruction felt too good. And any second now he’d have the truth. He’d know what it was that he was lacking for woman after woman after woman. ‘I want to know, Ingrid. What kind of a man would it take to crack your hard exterior?’

That knocked her back physically in the doorway.

He saw the impact of it in the slight curve of her body as it accommodated the pain. Like catching a football.

He was an ass.

‘I’m not hard.’ But the affirmation was quiet enough to be doubtful. And tight enough to be right on the edge of a deeper emotion. ‘I’m just careful.’

‘What have I done to deserve such caution? Am I a man who betrays trust? Who lies or sleeps around or steals?’

She spoke, but he didn’t hear the mumbled words. She shook her hair across her downturned face.

‘Huh?’ His best French one-shoulder shrug. A classic Marque trait. It occurred to him that this emotional post-mortem was classic Marque, too. Sometimes he realised how much of his parents he had in him.

She cleared her throat. ‘I said before. It’s not about you.’

‘Yeah, you did. But I don’t believe you.’

‘I can’t help that. Your insecurities are your own to deal with.’

For seconds time stopped. How proud his father would have been of a son who flayed a woman alive rather than face his own inadequacies. Ingrid didn’t want him—so be it. Why wasn’t he able to take that like a man and walk away with his dignity intact? Why was he demeaning himself like this for a woman? For love?

In the same moment that word hit his consciousness a single tear hit the floor at Ingrid’s feet.

He froze, breathless, and stared at the tiny glistening spot.

He’d never got over her. Despite a year of trying. And now he was foisting the blame for his own weakness onto his beautiful, bright Ingrid—punishing her for not sharing his feelings. For not loving him back sufficiently. Just because he wanted it.

And she was bowed before him, weeping.

His eyes fell shut. He was his father’s son.

He tried to speak and failed. He swallowed and tried again.

‘I’ll sleep in my car,’ he finally murmured, though it was more of a sigh. Apologies weren’t going to help. Not right now. The kindest thing he could do for her was just get out of her face and leave her in peace. ‘If you need me, call me from the feed shed phone.’

She nodded again. Still silent. Eyes still downcast.

He collected up a few things and squeezed past her in the doorway. He stopped halfway. Turned out he was too not like his father to walk out of there without apologising for his behaviour.

‘I’m sorry, Ingrid,’ he breathed, touching her shoulder. ‘I accept your choice. I won’t raise it again.’

He wouldn’t. Though it would kill him always to wonder what it was that she wanted. What it was that he lacked.

He pressed his lips together even as he pressed past her in the doorway. Then he was through and heading off into the growing darkness. The sounds of the zoo at night wafted all around him. The throaty rumbles of lion grumbling, the overhead clucking of roosting egrets, the sudden puffs of elephants settling for the night.

The half-choked sound of a woman’s sob.

Gabe forced himself to keep walking. Though it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do.

She didn’t want him the way he wanted her.

Time to deal with it and move on.