by Maggie Cox
‘Enjoy your pizza,’ Lara murmured automatically.
As the twin glass doors swung shut behind the slender blonde, her heart hammered at the realisation that she and Gabriel were alone. The impulse to do something, anything, to help still her nerves took hold, but Gabriel’s handsome face was suddenly looking ominously serious and she couldn’t help but stare. Just what did he want to say to her? Whatever it was, she was determined that she would have her say first.
‘What on earth are you doing here—and how did you know where to find me? I don’t recall giving you the college’s address.’
‘I went to see your parents,’ he replied. ‘Your mother told me where to find you.’
‘When was this?’
‘This morning.’
Lara’s hand automatically shot to her abdomen. She gently rubbed it through the soft grey tunic she wore beneath her cardigan, then realised she was drawing attention to the one place she didn’t want Gabriel’s eyes to be drawn to.
Had her mum told him about the pregnancy? Even though she had been over the moon on hearing Lara’s news about the baby, declaring it was the blessing she had been praying for, Lara was confident that she wouldn’t have told him anything without checking with her first. But her insides still churned at the thought of how Gabriel would take the news.
‘Why did you go to see them? Was it to collect Sean’s photographs? And when did you get back to the UK? Is this another flying visit, Gabriel?’
Seeing that Lara’s slender hands were gripping the edge of the fibreglass counter as if her life depended on it, and hearing the distress in her voice, Gabriel frowned. He hated the idea that his appearance had upset her, even though he knew she had plenty of reason to be distressed. The need to alleviate her unhappiness became imperative.
‘I’ll explain everything in a moment. Trust me, there’s nothing to worry about. Right now all I want to do is look at you.’
He ached with an unholy ache to take her in his arms and kiss away every hurt, every moment of unease or despair he had ever visited on her, but he forced himself to wait. This wasn’t the moment to blunder back into her life and just take what he wanted as if it was his God-given right. That was the old Gabriel. The man who had been too selfish and self-obsessed to know what a gift had been bestowed on him when Lara had surrendered her virginity and confessed that she loved him—had always loved him.
‘You look tired. The shadows under your eyes look like bruises and you’re far too pale. What have you been doing to yourself? Burning the candle at both ends?’
Gabriel hadn’t meant his observation to sound critical, but he saw straight away that Lara was immediately defensive—angry, too. Her animated reaction confirmed it.
‘What do you care what I’ve been doing? You didn’t even bother to ring me after I left New York, and nor did you have the decency to let me know you were back in the UK! I’m done with worrying about you, Gabriel. I really am. I think it’s time I focused my attention on myself and my own needs.’
Her dark eyes crestfallen, she leant towards the desk and switched off the lamp that was there. Then she opened a drawer and collected her shoulder bag.
‘I’m going home now. It’s been a long day.’
‘We need to talk, Lara. I know you probably think I’m not worth giving the time of day to, but I want the opportunity to help change your mind about that. Did you drive here?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Then I’ll follow you in my car.’
She didn’t answer. With her head held high, and clutching her bag in front of her, she came round the counter and started to walk towards the exit.
Although she hadn’t argued with his intention, Gabriel felt oddly hurt that she wouldn’t even look at him. Instead she arranged the strap of her bag more firmly onto her shoulder and drew the sides of her long wool cardigan together as if she was cold. Almost as if needing to protect herself. Then she proceeded out of the building to the car park.
The journey back to Lara’s flat was thankfully a short one. Afraid that too long a delay before they were able to talk would give her added time to mull over past events and decide she would be better off without him, Gabriel couldn’t help but be anxious. She’d seemed so adamant just now that they were over. But then he remembered the times when she’d openly demonstrated how much she cared and once again hope flared inside him.
Standing beside her as she inserted the key in the lock and opened the door of the Victorian semi where she lived, he stayed silent as a reluctant Lara invited him in.
‘We’ll talk in the living room,’ she declared, her brown eyes issuing him with a mere cursory glance before sliding quickly away again. ‘The sooner we get this over and done with, the better.’
In spite of its lofty ceiling, the room Gabriel followed Lara inside to was surprisingly cosy and welcoming. The space couldn’t help but reflect the personal touches and preferences of the woman who lived there. From the small collection of family photographs that sat atop the pine bookcase and the mantelpiece to the several wooden shelves that were literally crammed with books, it was eminently clear what the occupant’s priorities were.
A seriously comfortable-looking dark gold couch with an embroidered throw on the back was strewn with brightly coloured cushions, and an old Chesterfield armchair sat before an uncurtained window overlooking the garden.
‘You may as well sit down.’ Her tone less than inviting, Lara threw her shoulder bag down onto the couch and, with her arms folded, moved her head to indicate he take the armchair.
Murmuring ‘Ladies first’, Gabriel waited until his reluctant hostess had settled herself on the couch and then, shrugging off his raincoat, he folded it over the back of the venerable old armchair and sat down.
‘You said you were going to explain everything?’
Her pretty face was inevitably troubled as she leant forward in her seat to study him. Sighing, Gabriel scraped his fingers through his thick dark hair and smiled. ‘I will. What I want to tell you is that I decided what I wanted wasn’t in New York after all, but here.’
‘You mean your family’s home? Have you decided to sell it?’
‘I’m not just talking about the manor, Lara. Although in answer to your question I have to tell you I’m not intending on selling it. My plan is to live there. In fact I’ve been living there for the past three months now, attempting to make my peace with the past and turning the place back into a home—a real home.’
‘You have? Oh, Gabriel, that’s wonderful.’
The surprise and pleasure that shone from her beautiful dark eyes couldn’t help but melt Gabriel’s heart. But he hadn’t finished telling her the full extent of his plans yet, and a lot depended on her answer to his next question as to whether he carried them out or not.
‘The truth is, Lara...’ he continued. ‘The truth is it won’t be a real home until you agree to marry me and come and live with me there. Will you?’
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WASN’T THE MOST romantic thing in the world to have happen, but when the full impact of Gabriel’s question hit her, Lara sensed a sudden, urgent need to be sick. Hurriedly rising to her feet, she threw him an apologetic look and ran out through the door to her bedroom’s en-suite bathroom. Once there, she crouched down in front of the toilet and was violently ill even as she heard Gabriel come in behind her.
‘Sweetheart, what’s wrong?’
As his deeply concerned voice asked the question, he stooped down behind her and gently gathered her hair behind her head so that it wouldn’t fall over her face. When she’d finished, it was to find him running some cold water into the sink and dampening a washcloth. Almost as if she was a little girl he proceeded to wipe her mouth, dabbing gently at her lips, and then he carefully helped her to her feet.
‘Wait here,’ he instruct
ed, and as the familiar, warm, musky scent of his cologne besieged her senses and rendered her even weaker he briefly disappeared, to return with a glass of cold water. ‘Take a good long drink,’ he ordered her.
Although he patiently waited for her to finish, Lara easily sensed the concern that gripped him.
When she glanced up again Gabriel removed the glass from her trembling hands and stood it on the shelf above the sink. Then he stared at her. Many times before she had been the recipient of that intensely direct examination, but it had never been as intense as this. Disturbingly, what she saw in the depths of that glittering gaze were varying shades of anger—like the precursor to a storm—and deep, deep anguish and pain.
‘What the hell is going on, Lara? You’d better tell me.’
‘Haven’t you guessed? Don’t you know the signs?’
Suddenly overwhelmed with the situation, she shouldered past him into the bedroom. Once there, she dropped down onto the bed and brought her hands up to her face. Incredibly, Gabriel had just asked her to marry him. But was he now going to reject her because she was pregnant? She almost couldn’t bear the thought. Before she knew it scalding tears were trickling down behind her palms.
Suddenly the door opened and Gabriel was there. He was staring down at her, a muscle flinching in the side of his carved cheekbone, his expression mirroring hurt disbelief.
‘You’re pregnant.’
It was a statement of fact, not a question. Raising her head, Lara met his accusing gaze with her heart thudding and her mouth as dry as sand. ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
‘So no sooner had we parted than you found yourself another man? I thought I was getting to know you, Lara, but now I realise I didn’t know you at all.’
Sounding despairing, Gabriel started to move back towards the door, as if he had already made up his mind what he was going to do about her admission.
But then he turned and said furiously, ‘You certainly didn’t waste your time missing me, did you? And to think I believed you when you said you were a virgin the first time we made love. What a prize idiot I was to fall for such an unlikely story!’
With his hand on the doorknob he glared at Lara, then stalked from the room. Ice-cold fear poured through her like white-water rapids as she realised he was going to leave.
Lara jumped up and ran after him.
‘Gabriel!’
She got to the living room just as he was collecting his coat from the back of the chair and she rushed forward to grab his wrist and stop him from going. Suddenly it was her turn to be furious.
‘You are an idiot. Such a stupid, stupid idiot!’ Even as the accusation left her lips a fresh bout of scalding tears rolled down her cheeks and Gabriel stared at her, clearly uncomprehending either her meaning or the reason for her distress. ‘Do you honestly think I would sleep with another man when it’s you that I love—have always loved and always will?’
His lip curled with disdain. ‘But you’ve just admitted that you’re pregnant.’ He shook off her grip on his arm. ‘Or are you going to try and convince me it was some kind of immaculate conception?’
Lara sucked in her breath in a bid to try and steady herself. ‘Before you go any further I need to tell you—I need to tell you it’s true that when we first slept together I was a virgin. I waited all these years to give up my virginity to a man I really loved because it was important to me. That man has always been you, Gabriel.’ She paused to take in another steadying breath and saw the interplay of hope and uncertainty that crossed his face. ‘The baby is yours, Gabriel,’ she finished.
‘What?’
‘Just hear me out, will you? I fell pregnant when I forgot to take one of my contraceptive pills that week we were together in New York. I didn’t do it deliberately. I would never try and trap you like that. But my head was in the clouds the whole time I spent with you—it was like a dream. I only discovered I’d missed one of my pills a few weeks after I got home. I’d been feeling nauseous and light-headed, but I put that down to being upset because I was missing you and you hadn’t been in touch. I didn’t even know if I would ever see you again.’
‘The baby is mine?’ The raincoat Gabriel was holding slid out of his hand onto the floor.
Raising her hand in an attempt to dry her tears, Lara nodded. ‘I swear it. I’ll show you the foil packet with the pill I didn’t take still in it. You can trace it back to our week together in New York. But if you still don’t believe me then I don’t know how else to convince you. I foolishly thought my word and the devotion I’ve shown you would be enough. I don’t tell lies, Gabriel. Remember I told you that once before?’
The man standing in front of her looked seriously stunned. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant as soon as you found out? I would have come back straight away.’
Shrugging, Lara gave him a wobbly smile. ‘I didn’t want to put any pressure on you or make you feel obligated, that’s why. I especially didn’t want that because of the way you were when we said goodbye at the airport. You seemed so angry, Gabriel. Angry and distant. It was as though you resented me. I knew you were already in turmoil because of your uncle’s letter and what he’d told you about your mother. I didn’t want to add to your worries.’
Gabriel was shaking his head as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. ‘You really are unbelievable—you know that? You had every damn right in the world to demand I come back and take up my responsibility to you and the baby. When will you learn that you’re the important one, Lara—not me?’
‘Don’t say that. You’re very important to me, too, Gabriel.’ She followed this declaration with a puzzled frown. ‘But why didn’t you tell me you’d decided to come back and live at the manor? Were you thinking that I would automatically expect us to take up where we left off when you clearly had doubts about our relationship?’
‘You crazy woman,’ he breathed.
Fastening his hands around her slim upper arms, he pulled her against his chest. Lara’s heart went wild. As he pushed back a stray curl where it brushed against the side of her cheek she saw his intimate smile was candid and unguarded as he gazed back at her, and it rendered him even more beautiful in her eyes. That heartrending smile suggested he’d made the decision to reveal at last the real Gabriel Devenish. To reveal the honourable and decent man behind the steely corporate facade and the much admired financial acuity that he was known for. The man Lara had always known he was.
‘I didn’t want to tell you I was coming back to live at the manor until I’d taken some proper time to examine some of the hurts from my past and tried to make some headway into healing them. You didn’t deserve to be with a broken man, Lara—a man who didn’t know how to love anyone but himself.’
He grimaced painfully.
‘And I didn’t even make a very convincing job of that. I poured all my energies into my work, and my relentless desire to be the best at what I did was only because I wanted to have the admiration and praise of my peers. I was looking for validation that I was worthwhile. It wasn’t even about the money. But that ambition became the most important thing in my life. A very empty and meaningless life, when all was said and done.
‘Apart from being good at my job, I didn’t regard myself as being good at very much at all. And I didn’t have meaningful relationships because I couldn’t allow myself to be close to a woman in case I was betrayed in some way—that’s another reason why I directed all my attention into my work.
‘And as far as doubts are concerned, I can tell you that the only doubts I had were whether I was good enough to be with an angel like you,’ he continued huskily. ‘I always intended on coming back for you, Lara. Was I hoping for too much when I hoped that you would want to share the rest of your life with a man like me? As I want to share my life with you?’
Lara lifted her hand to lay her palm gently against his roughen
ed cheek. ‘No,’ she said earnestly. ‘You weren’t hoping for too much. I can’t think of anything I’d like more than to share the rest of my life with you. Besides...no one else would want me if I couldn’t be with you Gabriel. I’d be like an empty shell. Don’t you know that you’ve ruined me for any other man because my body and soul belongs to you?’
A profoundly dazed look stole into the eyes that gazed back at her.
Gabriel’s hands tightened as they dropped down to her hips and pulled her harder against him. ‘And now you’re going to have my baby. I’m going to be a father. We are going to be parents, with a family of our own. I can’t help asking myself if I deserve to be this happy.’
‘So you don’t mind that we’ll have a baby to take care of so early in our relationship? We can’t pretend it won’t be challenging.’
‘We’ll weather any storms that come, sweetheart,’ Gabriel reassured her warmly. ‘We’ll weather them because together we’re strong and our love won’t let the challenges of life overwhelm us. Look at what we’ve already overcome. This baby will bring us ever closer—just you wait and see.’
His face came towards hers, but with a quick shake of her head Lara gently but firmly pushed him away. ‘You have to let me go and freshen my mouth before you kiss me,’ she declared. ‘Then I’ll let you kiss me senseless if you want!’
His carved lips quirked in an amused grin. ‘That’s like asking me if I need to take my next breath. If you take longer than ten seconds then I’m coming to find you—and I warn you...if you’re not ready there’ll be a hell of a penalty to pay.’ As she smiled and walked towards the door, he added, ‘And you still haven’t answered my question.’
Feigning ignorance, Lara stopped and turned to examine him. ‘What question might that be?’
‘Will you marry me? Put me out of my misery, woman, and give me your answer. A man can only take so much before he cracks.’
Her expression softening, Lara laid her hand over her heart and then, with a graceful flourish, indicated that it was his. ‘Of course I’ll marry you, Gabriel. That’s always been my intention—ever since Sean brought you home with him that very first time. He’ll be so pleased that two of the people he loved best are going to be together, don’t you think?’
