‘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…’
ISBN: 978-1-55254-944-5
THE ITALIAN BOSS’S SECRETARY MISTRESS
First North American Publication 2007.
Copyright © 2006 by Cathy Williams.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
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