‘I could not live with my conscience if I had said nothing, Gabriel.’
‘Which is hardly my problem. Now I think it is time you left.’
‘I need to talk to you about a couple of our clients.’
‘Not now.’
Anna stood up and glared accusingly at her cousin. In all fairness, Laura thought, she did not appear in the least intimidated.
‘I’ll leave,’ Laura suggested, clearing her throat and standing up. She had slept with this man, loving him and knowing that he did not return her love, knowing that he was playing with her, but she had managed to justify her responses to herself because neither of them had crossed the dangerous barrier of discussing their emotions and what they felt or didn’t feel. Now, though, with everything spilled out into the open, turning a blind eye to reality was no longer an option.
‘Leave and go where?’ Gabriel asked coldly and she flinched at the expression in his eyes.
‘Back to Oakridge.’
‘And how do you imagine you will get there?’ he asked icily. ‘Sprout wings and fly?’ He knew that she was desperate to retreat and that whatever they’d had between them was well and truly over. He could read it in her brown eyes, which could barely meet his without sliding away. So it’s over, he thought. Well, it was inevitable. But he felt as if a light was being turned off inside him. Light or not, though, he would not ask her back into his bed.
‘I could wait and perhaps, Anna, you could give me a lift to the nearest station when you’re leaving?’
‘She will do no such thing. She is leaving right now and you will stay as planned.’
‘Gabriel, let her go.’
‘Goodbye, Anna. You know where the front door is. Feel free to use it. You can telephone me in the morning to discuss whatever business you wanted to discuss.’ He didn’t even bother glancing at his cousin when he said this. He just continued pinning Laura with his eyes into frozen immobility.
She felt rather than saw the other woman reluctantly leave the kitchen, but, instead of feeling relieved that at least one member in the cast of this awful, unfolding drama was out of the way, she was overcome with sudden, wild tension that made her legs shake, and she collapsed back onto the kitchen chair.
‘You look nervous,’ Gabriel said into the tautly stretching silence and he forced himself to offer her a mimicry of a smile, I have no idea why. You surely must have known all along that what we had was not going to go anywhere.’
‘Of course I knew that, Gabriel.’
‘So why do you look so shell-shocked? Nothing my cousin said should have disturbed you.’ He hated himself for his reluctance to let her go. With controlled calmness, he walked across to a cupboard, extracted a bottle and proceeded to help himself to a generous serving of whisky, to which he added a couple of blocks of ice, but nothing else. He needed it. In fact, he had never needed a drink as much as he now needed this one. The stark realisation of how he felt about the woman sitting in muted silence only feet away from him had struck him where he hurt most.
At the very core of his masculine pride and at the heart of his formidable self-control.
‘And don’t think that you can start bleating on about being used.’ He swigged back a mouthful of the drink. ‘You threw yourself willingly at me.’
‘I wasn’t about to start bleating on about anything.’
‘Then why the strained expression? I told you myself once that you meant nothing to me.’ Just saying it made him feel a bastard but, in some crazy way, punishing her was to punish himself and it was something he was compelled to do.
‘I know, but...’
He felt a flare of treacherous hope and squashed it ruthlessly. ‘But you thought that you could change my mind? Is that it?’ he taunted. ‘Did you imagine that I would get so enraptured with your warm, available body that I would begin to hear the distant sound of wedding bells?’
‘You sound as if you hate me, Gabriel,’ Laura whispered. ‘How could you have made love to me if you had hated me?’
‘You flatter yourself. Hate is a big emotion.’ He gave an expressive shrug of his big shoulders. ‘We had an arrangement by mutual consent in which emotion did not play a part.’
‘I think it’s time I left.’ She hoped that she would find the control of her legs that she needed and was relieved when they did not sink from under her as she rose to her feet and walked woodenly towards the kitchen door, skirting around so that she did not come within touching distance of him. ‘I’ll walk to the station if you’re not prepared to drop me. Or I can get a taxi. Would you mind if I use your phone?’
‘I take it that you do not wish to continue our love-making, which was so rudely interrupted an hour ago?’
Gabriel felt that his heart were being physically wrenched out of his chest.
‘I think it’s best if we stick to what we should have stuck to from the start,’ Laura said, pausing to look at him, loving every ounce of the proud, cruel man standing across the kitchen from her. ‘Business. If, that is, you still want me to work for you at the stables.’
‘Why should that have changed?’ He deposited his glass on the counter and then leaned against it, propping himself up by his hands. ‘Of course, it might be a little awkward, in view of our new-found business-only relationship, if I were to carry on working at the house, so I will have my things collected some time tomorrow.’
He was letting her go without a backward glance, Laura thought in anguish, and, amidst all her emotions, at least surprise wasn’t one of them. He had never lied to her. She was the one who had been guilty of lying to herself.
‘And I shall drop you to the station myself. Never let it be said that I am not the perfect...’ his mouth twisted cynically ‘...gentleman.’
The short ten-minute drive to the station was completed in total silence and he stopped the car only to allow her time to get out, not even killing the engine to imply that he might stick around if even to see that she got safely on a train back to the house.
The only words he spoke were to inform her that he expected to be kept advised of what was going on with the decorating of the house and that all major decisions were naturally to be referred to him, as her boss.
‘Naturally,’ Laura responded with equal cool and she held her head high as she walked away from him, only allowing her emotions to spill over when she was on the train heading back.
At least he would no longer be working under the same roof and she would be spared having to live alongside him, without the joy of knowing his body at night. How easy it had been for her to ignore the truth and kid herself that it didn’t really exist.
Anna had simply forced a situation and she should have been grateful for that because love just grew with time and her love would have known no boundaries.
It was late by the time she reached the house. The workmen had all left, thankfully, although the house hardly felt like a home with the wallpaper stripped from a lot of the walls and the downstairs carpet in the process of being removed.
Laura was barely aware of the chaos, however. She bypassed the kitchen, ignoring the rumbling in her stomach, and headed straight for the bedroom. Luxuriating in a bath seemed like a needless waste of time, so she had a quick shower instead, and then got into her pyjamas, which were items of clothing that she had not recently been wearing.
Gabriel had told her that he had liked to feel her nakedness next to him even when he was asleep, and she had been all too happy to oblige. Now they were a mocking reminder that all of that was over. She was back to pyjamas and loneliness with the added bonus of a future filled with anguished memories and regret.
Gabriel, she was sure, was not lying in his king-sized bed with its silk duvet, nursing thoughts of misery and loss. Hopefully, he was not flicking through his little black book and seeking out her immediate replacement. No, she more imagined him sitting in front of a computer somewhere in the house, in another of those designer-clad, soulless rooms, working.<
br />
He would have been. He should have been. If only he could manage to stand up without falling over. Alcohol never had been his way of dealing with anything but, from the relative comfort of a chair in one of the sitting areas, it seemed like a damned good idea. It blurred his feverish, maddening thoughts into a manageable numbness. Unfortunate that it also had such a numbing effect on his limbs, aside, that was, from his arm, which seemed to function perfectly when it came to topping up the whisky glass.
All he needed now was to fall asleep and be spared the occasional pain when a coherent thought managed to find its way to his brain, to remind him of what he had lost and to jeer at him for having got himself in such a position that he had been vulnerable enough to feel the pain of losing.
She didn’t love him. Never had, never would. She had just enjoyed the sex he had provided. He had heard it with his own two ears, and, drunk or not, he was not so far gone that he couldn’t remember that much. He had preached to her a load of bull that it shouldn’t have made a scrap of difference, but he could have been preaching to himself because it did. He could never touch her again now that he knew, for sure, how emotionally indifferent she was to him, but he couldn’t imagine a world in which she was not there to touch and talk to and laugh with. He shook his head in a dazed fashion and wondered whether another small drink might not send him into the arms of sweet, forgetful sleep. Unfortunately, the bottle, he realised, was empty, and he was too damned heavy-limbed to do anything about replacing it.
At a little past midnight, he finally drifted to sleep with the grim realisation that morning was not going to bring a whole lot more peace of mind.
But he would never go back to her. Even if being apart from her killed him in the process. He would have his things removed and keep in casual touch via telephone, or better still e-mail, even if that meant buying her a computer and getting someone to have it up and running. If he had to come face to face with her, he would bring someone in tow, preferably a very sexy woman, just to prove once and for all how little she had meant to him and to safeguard himself from doing something he might later regret. Such as fall back under her spell.
In a confused way, it all seemed to make sense when the alcohol was still swimming through his bloodstream, and in the morning, when he finally surfaced, he had enough wit to get on the phone and order his secretary to arrange for his things to be returned to London.
Which was why, soon after three in the afternoon, Laura was at hand to witness the quick and efficient departure of all evidence that Gabriel had ever set up office in the house.
She watched as every electronic item was carefully dismantled and boxed, and then signed the relevant sheet with an unsteady hand.
Then she sat at the now-empty dining table with her chin propped up in the palm of her hand and allowed her mind to drift away on its own unhappy course.
Only the sound of the telephone ringing brought her back to life, and when she heard Anna’s voice down the line she almost wept at the vague contact with the man she loved.
‘I’m phoning to say how sorry I am for ...not minding my own business,’ Anna said anxiously. ‘I had no idea how deep in you both were. And I certainly never expected that Gabriel would sneak up on us the way he did.’
‘I’m not in deep,’ Laura denied weakly. So we slept together, but we’re adults. It’s not unheard of, you know, sex between two consenting adults who are attracted to one another, even though there’s no emotional commitment. It doesn’t mean ...it doesn’t mean that...’ She couldn’t complete the rest of her empty protest.
‘Oh, but it does. I could see for myself, Laura.’
I... Oh, why am I lying? What’s the use? I was always in love with him, but everything comes to an end and there’s no need to apologise, Anna. You did what you thought was the right thing to do and ...both? We weren’t both deep in anything. / was deep in, but you heard Gabriel yourself and I can’t even say that he strung me along because he didn’t. I think a part of me was just always waiting for him to come back, so that I could pick up where we left off, unconditionally.’
‘So now you are back at the riding stables and he has remained at that gruesome mausoleum of his in Berkshire, am I correct?’
‘You’re correct.’
‘And presumably the fool has had all his things removed from the house?’
‘They’ve just taken away his fax machine, his computer, all the office equipment...’
‘And you let them?’
‘Of course I let them!’ Laura said robustly. ‘What else was I supposed to do? Fling my arms across the door and refuse them entry to a house that doesn’t even belong to me? Two strapping men?’
‘And you have not considered lighting for Gabriel?’
‘Fighting how?’ Laura wailed. ‘He doesn’t want me!’
‘If Gabriel did not want you, he would never have returned in the first place. He would have read about the stables, had a chuckle and moved on to the next page. If he did not want you, his eyes would not have burned with anger when he realised that you wanted to leave his house with me. Gabriel is a blind idiot and one day, when all this is over, I am going to get him to grovel at my feet in gratitude for being the interfering old bag that I am!’ And she sounded so spirited and so convincing that foolish thoughts began to multiply in Laura’s head and she seized the thread of hope they promised with both hands, rushing to get her diary when Anna suggested that they meet up and chat.
She flicked through the pages, then flicked back through them and a little cold film of perspiration broke out all over her at what she was seeing for the first time.
Her period. Where was it? For years she had adhered to her mother’s guidelines about always writing the commencement of her period in her diary because a woman could not afford not to be tuned into her reproductive system. But they had been very careful. From the very first, he had taken the necessary precautions. Well ...not from the very first, Laura thought slowly. No, that first time had been when they had gone riding and she had surrendered. Which had been ...a few weeks ago.
But she had had no symptoms. No sickness, no tiredness, no increased appetite. Nothing.
‘Hello? Are you still there?’
‘Yes,’ Laura said faintly. ‘Look, someone has just banged at the front door. Can I get back to you with a date? I’d love to meet up.’
Her heart was pounding when she replaced the receiver, although when she told the foreman that she was just stepping out for half an hour or so her voice sounded perfectly normal.
Stepping out to go to the nearest pharmacy, even though she knew in her gut that the trip was unnecessary. Unless her reproductive system had decided to go on a short holiday to cope with all the recent emotional turmoil, she was pregnant.
Nevertheless when, a little over an hour later, she saw two clear blue lines appear in the two windows of the device that boasted a ninety-nine per-cent accuracy rate, Laura gave a little moan of shock. So what happened next?
What happens, a little voice in her head said, is you pick up that telephone and you arrange to meet Gabriel. No point waiting for him to call at some point in time, because that point in time was never going to arrive. Gabriel’s pride was as big as a mountain. He would never come back to her, and, despite what Anna had said, she really didn’t know what his feelings towards her were. Yes, he wanted her, or at least he had done. And he was not as indifferent emotionally to her as he pretended to be. That, at any rate, was what she was going to have to believe when she picked that phone up in five minutes’ time.
He wasn’t in. Big anticlimax. But his secretary must have detected the urgency in her voice because she gave Laura his mobile phone number.
This time he did answer and in a voice that left Laura in no doubt that, whatever he was doing, he was not going to have the time to listen to what she had to say.
‘You need to cultivate a better telephone manner,’ were her first nervous words and she punctuated the ob
servation with shaky laughter.
Hearing her voice was so unexpected that it took Gabriel a few seconds before he realised that he was talking to the woman who had plagued his thoughts the night before. He had missed a breakfast meeting because he had just not been able to get out of bed in time to make it to the Savoy and he had only just managed to get to his second scheduled meeting for the day, at an impressive smoked-glass building in Canary Wharf.
He abruptly halted his long stride through the offices of DuBarry, obliging the personal assistant who was leading him through to the boardroom to stop as well, and cupped the cell phone in the palm of his hand.
How dared she? How dared she telephone him, using his mobile phone number no less, when he was about to go into a very important meeting, after he had made it absolutely clear that he wanted nothing more to do with her? That she could take a running jump off the side of a very steep cliff! Had she no respect for a single word he had spoken?
‘What do you want?’ God, it was bloody good to hear her voice.
‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything.’
‘You are, as a matter of fact. Now get to the point, Laura.’ He made sure to invest his voice with supreme indifference, overlaid with just the right amount of irritation that would indicate a busy man who had no time for some insignificant ex-lover. He placed his hand over the receiver and whispered to the personal assistant, a ferociously competent-looking woman in her mid-fifties with disciplined hair and a face that would terrify the most hardened of men, that she would have to go ahead of him and explain that he was dealing with a very important call, and would be in as soon as possible.
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘You have my e-mail address. You will have to learn to make decisions without running to me every two seconds. I thought I had made it perfectly clear to you that you and I are finished and the less contact I have with you, the happier I will be. Now, if that is all...’
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