Jokes? He was making jokes? Well, of course he was. Jonah had told her just how important Professor Larson was, how a visit from him could only mean one thing. Gabriel would shortly be saying goodbye to Glasgow and hello to Stockholm, which was fine by her. The further he went away from her the better.
‘I’m glad the hot weather has finally broken,’ he continued. ‘I don’t think we Scots are designed for it.’
‘No,’ she said shortly, then added, ‘You haven’t pressed the fourth floor button.’ To her surprise, he didn’ t make any attempt to do so.
‘I was wondering whether I could come round and see Charlie this evening?’ he said instead.
Not on your life. ‘I’m afraid we’re going out this evening,’ she lied.
‘What about Friday, then?’ he said.
‘We’re going to the cinema,’ she said. Well, we are now.
‘Then how about Saturday?’
‘I’m afraid—’
‘You’re going out then, too,’ he finished for her. ‘Maddie, you agreed I could see Charlie—’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said, stretching past him to press the fourth floor button, and the lift began its slow, creaking progress upwards. ‘I think a clean break is better.’
‘I don’t,’ he said, and to her amazement he hit the stop button and the lift shuddered to a halt. ‘I want to see Charlie, and I want to see you, talk to you.’
‘You can talk to me at work,’ she said. ‘And you—in case you’ve forgotten—have a very important meeting with Professor Larson in approximately…’ she looked down at her watch ‘…ten minutes.’
‘Screw the meeting,’ he said, and her jaw dropped.
‘Screw the…? Gabriel, this is the Professor Larson. The world-famous Professor Larson who is coming to the Belfield Infirmary specifically to meet you, and who—in case you’ve forgotten—you had me jumping through hoops for last week to rearrange your appointments. You cannot be late.’
‘I can do whatever I damn well want, and right now getting you to listen to me is more important than any meeting I might have.’
‘There is nothing you can say that I would be interested in,’ she said stiffly, stretching past him to hit the start button. ‘You’ve already made your position clear. I know where you stand, what you think.’
‘No, you don’t, and we’re going to stay here until you do,’ he exclaimed, pressing the stop button again, and Maddie moved from angry into incensed.
‘Will you stop doing that?’ She pressed the start button, but nothing happened. She hit it again and all the elevator did was judder. ‘Oh, wonderful,’ she snapped. ‘Just wonderful. Now we’re stuck. If you’d just left the damn thing alone and not kept hitting it like some overgrown schoolboy…’
‘You hit it as many times as I did,’ he pointed out. ‘If you’d just left it alone, and listened to me—’
‘So, what do we do now?’ she interrupted. ‘Suffocate?’
‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘There’s an emergency phone.’
‘Then I suggest you use it,’ she retorted.
He opened the small box on the wall, took out the phone and after a few seconds’ conversation with Maintenance put it back again.
‘What did they say?’ she asked.
‘They’ll get on to it as quickly as they can.’
‘But that could mean anything from five minutes to five hours,’ she protested. ‘And why didn’t you ask them to tell the unit where you are, so Professor Larson doesn’t think you’ve stood him up?’
Quickly, he reached out and caught her hands in his. ‘Maddie, don’t you understand even yet that I don’t give a damn about my meeting with Professor Larson? You are the only one I care about. I was a fool to walk out on you that Saturday night.’
She pulled her hands free, and threw him a scathing look. ‘Decided you ought to have had the sex, and then walked, have you? Well, I’m sorry but I’m not on offer any more.’
‘Will you listen to me?’ he roared, and her chin came up.
‘Shouting will get you nowhere,’ she said, her voice ice-cold. ‘I have nothing to say to you, Gabriel Dalgleish, and there is absolutely nothing you can say to me that I would ever want to hear.’
‘How about I love you, and I want to marry you?’
Her mouth fell open. He was teasing her—he had to be teasing her and it was a cruel joke—but he didn’t look as though he was teasing her. In fact, his eyes were fixed on hers, deep, and dark, and liquid, and suddenly there didn’t seem to be enough air in the lift for her to breathe. Could they be running out of air already? Surely they couldn’t be running out of air already, but she was definitely breathless.
‘Maddie, did you hear what I said?’ he said gently. ‘I said I love you, and I want to marry you.’
He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it. She didn’t dare allow herself to believe that he meant it.
‘Maybe…maybe you want me,’ she said unevenly, ‘but wanting and loving…It’s not the same thing, Gabriel.’
‘I know it isn’t,’ he said, ‘because though I want you—and God knows I do—what I feel for you I’ve never felt for any other woman before.’
‘Gabriel—’
‘No, please, let me finish. Before I met you…’ He raked his fingers through his hair, his face pale under the fluorescent lighting in the lift, a muscle in his jaw quivering slightly. ‘Before I met you I was only living half a life, and you…You brought sunshine and laughter, and all the things I didn’t think mattered into my life. Hell, I wasn’t even aware of them, let alone that they did matter. Now that I know there’s more—so much more—I don’t want to go back to the empty, lonely place that I was in before. I need you, Maddie.’
She needed him, too, she knew she did, but she had to keep a grip on reality. One of them had to.
‘You might say that now—believe that now,’ she said, ‘but can you honestly say you don’t wish I didn’t come with Charlie and Susie attached?’
‘Maddie, there’s no point in us dealing with imaginary situations,’ he protested. ‘We have to face the situation as it is.’
‘But if you could have the perfect scenario, wouldn’t it be just me without Susie and Charlie?’ she persisted, and he sighed.
‘It would certainly make things easier—’
‘Well, there you go.’
‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try my level best to be a father to Charlie and Susie, if they’ll let me. I walked away that Saturday night because I was scared of failure. I thought I had to be the perfect father, and somebody has explained to me that I don’t have to be. I can be a so-so father, and it’s still OK.’
She said nothing. She didn’t know what to say. Part of her—a very large part—wanted to believe him, but the other part…
‘Gabriel, you said you wanted to be a father yourself one day. What if I can’t have children? What if we marry, and I discover I can’t have children?’
‘What if the sky falls down tomorrow and the end of the world comes?’ he said. ‘I don’t know what will happen in the future. All I know is I want you by my side. You’re lodged in my heart—as necessary to me now as the air that I breathe, the food that I eat—and I want to marry you, to take care of you, and Charlie and Susie, and to keep you all safe.’
He meant it, she could see in his eyes that he meant it, and a sob broke from her. A sob that had all the love and longing in his eyes replaced by horror.
‘Oh, Maddie, don’t cry,’ he begged. ‘I thought—I hoped—you might feel the same as I do, but if you don’t…’
‘I do love you, Gabriel,’ she whispered. ‘I will always love you.’
And before she could move, before she could do anything, he had wrapped her in his arms and was kissing her, and this time it was even better than it had been before because neither of them was holding anything back, neither of them had any secrets from the other any more.
‘Oh, Maddie, I love you,’ he said as he drew
back, breathing heavily. ‘Did I tell you that?’
‘Once or twice,’ she said, as breathless as he was, and he kissed her again, and she fell into his heat, loving the feel of his hands on her again, loving everything about him, and knowing that at last—at last—she’d finally got it right.
‘When are you going to marry me?’ he demanded. ‘Tomorrow? Saturday?’
She chuckled into his neck. ‘You can’t marry anyone as fast as that, Gabriel. No one can. You have to go to a registry office—’
‘Church,’ he interrupted. ‘I want the full works. You in a white dress, me in a morning suit, Nell as matron of honour, Charlie as a page boy, and Susie in a bridesmaid’s dress, even if she is throwing daggers at me.’
‘She won’t—she actually really likes you,’ Maddie said, then clutched hold of him as her knees suddenly seemed to give way. ‘Gabriel, are we moving?’
‘I like where you live now,’ he said, planting a row of kisses along her collar-bone and making her shiver. ‘It’s the kids’ home. It’s what they know, where they’re comfortable.’
‘No, I meant—’
The rest of what she’d been about to say was lost as he kissed her again, and she clung on to him, drowning in his love, wanting him closer, nearer, knowing that she had never ever felt so happy, and knowing, too, that this was only the beginning.
‘How do you think Susie and Charlie would feel about your fiancé staying overnight some time in the near future?’ he said raggedly. ‘The very near future. In fact, tonight?’
‘I think they’d be delighted,’ she said huskily. ‘I know I would be.’
‘Tonight, then,’ he said fervently. ‘Lord, but I want you now.’
‘I want you, too,’ she said. ‘Maybe we’ll be stuck here all night. Maybe Maintenance won’tbe able to rescue us until tomorrow and I can think of lots of things we can do to pass the time.’
‘Me, too,’ he said, kissing her neck and lightly biting the spot he had kissed. ‘In fact—’
‘Ahem,’ a voice suddenly said, and Maddie froze.
There was more air in the lift. She knew there was, and that could only mean one thing. Slowly she glanced over her shoulder, hoping she was wrong, but she wasn’t. The lift doors were open and, worst of all, not only had they reached the fourth floor, but standing outside in the corridor was an acutely embarrassed-looking Jonah with a tall, distinguished-looking man with steel grey hair beside him.
‘Professor Larson,’ Jonah said, his voice coming out slightly strangled. ‘This…this is Gabriel Dalgleish, and our…our medical secretary, Madison Bryce. Gabriel, this is Professor Larson.’
Gabriel stuck out his hand, all too aware that his shirt was half-open, and so was Maddie’s blouse.
‘I’m afraid you’ve caught me at rather a bad time, Professor,’ he said.
‘So I see,’ Professor Larson observed, then his eyes twinkled slightly. ‘I hope you are not quite so familiar with all your medical secretaries, Mr Dalgleish.’
Gabriel grinned, and looked down at Maddie.
‘Only with medical secretaries who are shortly to become my wife.’
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5866-5
THE GOOD FATHER
First North American Publication 2006
Copyright © 2006 by Maggie Kingsley
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