had warned darkly, Rose was a one-dimensional cut-out and always would be. Her only chance of rescuing her sense of self-worth would be to take the pay cut and leave the job.
Well, she hadn’t left the job yet but she was still going to be a woman of substance who was not afraid to speak her mind.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Gabriel said in a shell-shocked voice, which would have been funny if she could feel anything under the rising tide of mortification.
‘You heard me, Gabriel.’
‘Where did you get language like that from?’
‘Language like what? I don’t believe I said anything obscene? Did I?’
‘No, but…’
‘That’s fine, then!’ Her sister’s diagnosis of her had been brutally to the point. Rose could out-perform anyone when it came to hard work and skill. Whatever she wanted to do, Grace had said, she would achieve because she was clever and ambitious. Unlike yours truly, she had added ruefully. But underneath the brisk, capable exterior lurked a heart longing for romance. Hence her feelings for her boss, which she had allowed to run unchecked for four years. Like a complete idiot. Grace, so impractical when it came to anything involving office work, computers, money and all things electronic, was utterly practical in affairs of the heart. She had never wasted time mooning over unattainable boys at school and Rose was inclined to follow her advice. After all, comparing situations, who was in the better one?
‘But actually I don’t care what you do with the women who come in and out of your life. What I care about is how it impacts on mine.’
‘And how does it do that?’ Gabriel asked with sudden interest.
‘Here’s how. You meet a woman. You shower her with presents. I buy the presents, usually in my lunch hour or at the weekend. Always in my leisure time, at any rate. Then there are the restaurants that need to be booked. The flowers that have to be sent with the right messages to the right people. Sometimes I have to fend off sobbing women who haven’t quite seen your point of view that it was a privilege to have gone out with you and now it’s time for them to find the nearest exit door. Sometimes they seem to have been under the deluded impression that you actually cared about them.’ Her voice implied poor fools.
The surprises were piling on by the minute. Gabriel had never sensed any resentment in her when it came to doing what was, as far as he had always been concerned, part and parcel of a good PA’s job, namely taking care of the incidentals that he had no time to do himself. Or inclination, if he was to be perfectly truthful. So what was wrong with ordering a few flowers down the phone now and again? Or taking a trip to the jewellers to buy a bracelet? Didn’t all women like buying jewellery?
‘Are you jealous?’ Gabriel’s voice was silky-smooth and speculative and, in response, Rose could feel her heartbeat quicken, because, and this was a truth she only admitted to herself late at night, when she was alone with her thoughts, she was. Whenever she had been in those exclusive shops buying exclusive things, holding up a glittering ruby ring for inspection or twirling a cashmere scarf between her fingers, she had thought, imagined, that it was for her.
‘Of course I’m not jealous,’ she said coldly. ‘Do you really think…’ She caught herself in the nick of time.
‘Really think…what?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No. Tell me. After all, today seems to be a day of revelations.’
Rose looked at him and wondered how he would react if she told him the truth on this day of revelations. If he was stunned by the revelations he had had thrown at him today, then he would go into a state of cataclysmic shock if she really decided to reveal all!
‘All right. As you asked, do you really think that I would ever, could ever, be jealous of all those women you choose to date?’ Rose laughed humourlessly. ‘For a start, they’re not the sharpest knives in the block…’
‘Who ever said I wanted sharp?’ Actually, Gabriel thought, whoever said I wanted to be discussing this? But it was such an unusual ride that he was driven to go along with it. The woman whose thoughts he had never seen was handing them to him now and he was strangely fascinated. In fact, he couldn’t take his eyes away from her face, although he reluctantly admitted to himself that that might have had something to do with her physical transformation. ‘An intelligent woman is an overrated species,’ he said, flexing his arms and then strolling to inspect the books ranging the central fireplace on either side. Though not before glancing at her face to see how she had reacted to his incendiary remark. With gratifying outrage. He decided to continue, curious to see where the road would lead. ‘I mean, an intelligent woman will usually end up getting on a man’s nerves.’ He idly slipped a book out of its nesting place, surprised to discover that it was a first edition and wouldn’t have come cheap. An intelligent woman with taste. He shoved the book back in its spot and turned to look at her. ‘The endless discussions…the earnestness…the sheer tedium of someone with a point of view…’ He mimicked a yawn and was amused to see her eyes glitter dangerously. ‘Have you noticed how an intelligent woman will always have a point of view and will always bang on about it, even when everyone else has nodded off with boredom?’
‘Have you noticed—’ Rose was drawn into the argument even though common sense told her that it was ridiculous ‘—how a bimbo will spout such rubbish that you can end up losing the will to live…?’
Gabriel shot her one of those slow, devastating smiles that made her curl her fists on her lap. Then he laughed out loud. When he had sobered up his blue eyes swept over her and he murmured, with wicked amusement, ‘I won’t deny they can sometimes spout rubbish but I assure you that when I’m in bed with one of them I never end up losing the will to live…’
Rose drew in a sharp intake of breath. He had pushed himself away from his inspection of her books and for a few heart-stopping seconds she could have sworn that he was moving in her direction, but then he sat down, his eyes lazy and satisfied as he contemplated past conquests. Stupid, stupid jealousy made her feel temporarily faint.
‘And then…’ she carried on, her voice glacial-cold even though something was raging inside her, ‘I suppose I feel sorry for them. You might think that you treat them well, and you do, but what a woman wants goes beyond the things that money can buy.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Oh, really. The bracelets and earrings are nice enough but a walk in the park is even better, as is a home-cooked meal and then chatting in front of an open fire or a trip to the seaside on a sunny day…’
‘Possibly for you…’
‘I’ve had enough conversations with the women you’ve discarded to know that they’re always more heartbroken than you think they are!’ Rose said defensively, aware that she had given away too much in her careless musings. ‘Have you any idea how difficult it is to placate someone who’s in tears and wondering what they did wrong?’
The conversation, which had been pleasantly challenging, appeared to have taken an ugly turn and Gabriel frowned at her discouragingly. ‘I don’t know where we’re going with this one…’
‘You pressed me for an opinion…’
‘Which is different from blanket criticism.’ He shook his head and tried to get a handle on his self control.
‘Only because
