was something of a hero of hers. The food had been marvellous, and she had drunk more wine than usual and felt as if she was floating. Stephen had watched her across the table, his eyes half veiled by heavy lids, and she had been hypnotised by that deep stare, gazing back in sleepy languor while they sipped superb coffee.
‘You look lovely in that dress; you should wear white more often,’ he’d said.
The compliment had made her flush, and she’d lowered her eyes.
Stephen had stretched a commanding hand across the table and taken her hand, moving his thumb softly up and down against her wrist.
‘Gabriella, turning thirty-six has made me stop and think about the way my life is going. I’ve been too busy building up my business to have time to think of marriage, but since I met you I’ve realised how much has been missing from my life for years. Living alone isn’t natural for human beings—we need each other too much—but I was always so busy that I never had time to see just how lonely I was.’
She had stared, struck dumb. What was he saying? Was he going to ask her to live with him, share his bed, to move into that huge penthouse apartment of his? He couldn’t be asking her to marry him!
She had never quite known why he kept seeing her, or what he wanted—and she had been so shy with him that she hadn’t dared ask. She had hoped, stupidly, that their relationship would go on in that undemanding, tranquil way.
The moment that he had proposed had been the end of her illusions, although it hadn’t dawned on her at once that everything had changed that night. She had been too bewildered.
‘I’ll be forty in a few years, and the clock is ticking faster. I want a family while I’m young enough to enjoy them,’ he had gone on quietly. ‘How do you feel about having children? I’ve noticed you with your cousin’s baby; you seem to love looking after him—do you want some of your own?’
Her eyes had glowed. She adored Tommy, her cousin Lara’s baby, and she had given Stephen an instinctive, unthinking reply. ‘I love children, especially when they’re babies; I love to hold them, all milky and smelling of talcum. I envy Lara having Tommy. She says she doesn’t want any more—it’s too much like work—but I’d like at least four. I was an only child and I was always lonely. I told myself then that I’d make sure that I had more than one child.’
Now she thought, Why did I say all that? I knew what he might be going to say—why didn’t I lie, tell him that I didn’t want children and he should ask someone else? Why did I babble on like that, misleading him, giving him the wrong impression?
Did I secretly want to marry him? Or was it the same old weakness that has always haunted my life—the inability to recognise danger, to avert catastrophe?
He had picked up her hands and held them loosely, watching the way that her face lit up as she talked about babies, and, when she had finally run out of words and stopped breathlessly, he said, ‘Then will you marry me, Gabriella?’
She looked now at Paolo and gave a long sigh. ‘I thought he was marrying me because he wanted a family.’ That was the truth, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?
Paolo’s brows shot up. ‘Then you realised that you would be sleeping with him?’
She blushed. ‘Yes, but…’ Knowing something with your conscious mind was one thing; realising it at the very deepest level was another. It all depended on how you perceived a situation. Stephen had asked her if she wanted children and she did; she loved the idea of having a baby of her own, and finally belonging to a real family again. That had been one aspect of his proposal and their engagement—she had closed her eyes to another aspect of it.
That was why when Stephen had lost control and all that passion had flared out of him she had gone into blinding panic.
If he had acted that way on the night that he had proposed she would have run like hell. But he had been so different then; he had told her softly, ‘I’ll make you happy, Gabriella!’ and she had been lulled into false optimism by that gentleness, the apparent lack of passion. She had drifted into engagement without realising what dangerous waters lay ahead, had let him put his ring on her finger, had let him arrange the wedding, had sat and nodded when he’d made suggestions, had allowed his personal assistant to organise it all, even the invitations to her few friends and family.
The closest of her family were all dead, of course. She only had distant relatives, and her bridesmaids were to have been one of Stephen’s nieces and two of her old college friends—and Lara, who was to have been matron of honour in warm peach silk. The rest on the enormous wedding guest list were Stephen’s friends and colleagues—some of them wealthy and influential. What would they all be thinking? What would Stephen have told them? Perhaps they would jump to the conclusion that she had run off with another man.
‘He suspects you’ve run off with another man,’ Paolo said, as if picking up on her thoughts—as he’d sometimes done in the past, she remembered. They had some sort of mental link; it had always been there, even when they were children. Thoughts flashed from one to the other like electric sparks.
She looked up at him anxiously. ‘Did he say so?’
‘I picked it up from his voice. Mia cara, that is a very jealous man, jealous as hell—I could smell the fire and brimstone down the telephone line!’
She flinched. Yes, Stephen probably did suspect that she had run off with someone. When someone fled from marriage to one man, it was usually to go to another. But jealous? Stephen? Was he? That would be yet another shock discovery, if it was true. I hardly know him at all, she thought; he’s as much a mystery to me as he was the day I met him.
‘He’ll want explanations, answers,’ Paolo warned her. ‘And you had better have them ready. I have a shrewd idea that he will keep looking for you no matter how long it takes, Gabriella.’
She got up and began to hurry back towards the hotel as if running away again—and that might have been the best plan. Now that Stephen had found Paolo he might hire a private detective to check to see if she was in Como. But there were other places she might go, and he had no idea how close she and Paolo were. Surely he would hunt elsewhere first?
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