bloody maddening woman you obviously are?’ Gabriel grated.
Then you shouldn’t mind getting rid of me when I’ve trained up a replacement, Rose thought, but she kept that to herself. For reasons best known to her, she wanted to be the one to leave. That way, she would prove to herself that she was in control, proactive as far as her emotional state was concerned.
She looked down to where her fingers were fiddling uselessly with her jumper and stilled them. But she didn’t look at him and she remained mutinously silent, not trusting herself to be discreet when she next spoke. Opinionated, stubborn and maddening were not easy insults to gloss over with a polite smile and a change of subject.
More annoying than her sudden outburst of frank and open honesty was the prolonged silence that greeted his remark. Gabriel, however much he brought his passion to his work, was formidably controlled in his dealings with women. They never, but never, got under his skin. Rose’s calm face lent his annoyance an edge of grinding frustration.
‘I have no idea why any of the women I have ever gone out with would have wondered what they did wrong,’ he heard himself saying just as he recognised the weakness in saying it. ‘It’s not as though they don’t know from the very start that commitment isn’t on the agenda. No one can criticise me for not being fair. The walks in the park, the home-cooked meal and the log-burning fire…Well, I don’t do little domestic scenes like that because that would just give them the wrong impression. Actually, I don’t think I would ever do little domestic scenes like that anyway.’
‘Why not?’ Rose reluctantly dragged her gaze away from her hands and met his eyes curiously.
‘Not me,’ Gabriel said abruptly. ‘So, getting back to your complaints. No long hours without notice and no additional tasks beyond the call of duty.’
Rose nodded. ‘Well, no additional tasks that don’t…well, don’t have anything to do with work. I’m sorry,’ she felt obliged to add because she knew that laying down rules and regulations after four years was a bit of a nerve.
‘Anything else?’
‘No. That’s all. And Gabriel, it’s only because I shall need to prioritise my time if I’m to do a course…’
‘Let’s hope it’s worth it.’ He stood up and shoved his hands into his pockets and watched as she got to her feet, straightening her clothes. At least that reassuringly prim habit hadn’t changed!
‘It will be,’ Rose assured him, walking out towards the front door. ‘It’ll be hard work but, at the end of it, I’ll be able to really start building up a satisfying career for myself. Not,’ she hastened to add, ‘that I haven’t been wonderfully happy working for you.’
‘With me. And you could have fooled me after everything you’ve laid at my door this evening.’
They both paused by the front door at the same time. Their eyes tangled, brown eyes clashing with deep blue ones, and Rose had to steady herself by placing her hand flat on the closed door.
‘So you intend to have it all, do you?’ Gabriel drawled. ‘The fast job, the fast car, the kids and the house husband who will stay at home and take care of everything…’ He leaned against the door and looked down at her. She was sharp enough to have it all, that much was sure, but until now he would never have thought it interested her. With wry honesty, he acknowledged that he had always thought that he was enough for her.
‘I don’t know about that.’ Now that he was on the point of imminent departure, she felt as if she could finally relax. ‘I’m too old-fashioned to be happy with the house husband scenario.’
‘You see the man as the protector, do you?’
‘No, of course not! Well, not in such simplistic terms anyway.’ She was mesmerised by the way the half-light in the hallway threw his face into intriguing angles.
‘Why? What’s wrong with simplistic terms? I agree with you. I’m the kind of man who would want to protect my woman. You’d better be careful, though. Your basic caveman isn’t drawn to a woman who’s just as capable as he is of hunting prey. Don’t pursue too much independence—you might just find it backfires on you.’
‘I would never be attracted to a man who was threatened by my independence,’ Rose said a little too breathlessly for her liking, but then he was very close to her and not just close, but close and giving her his undivided masculine attention. Just in case he saw the jittery spark in her eyes and misinterpreted it, or rather interpreted it too accurately, she thought to throw in, ‘And, for your information, I might not be feminist enough to want a house husband, but I certainly wouldn’t want a caveman.’
‘Touché,’ Gabriel said dryly. He straightened up and so did she. He had the suddenly consuming urge to touch her, maybe stroke the side of her face. Instead he opened the door. ‘But I’m not the caveman you seem to think I am when it comes to women…’
‘No? You could have fooled me.’
‘You really shouldn’t say things like that,’ he chided, leaning towards her so that her head was suddenly swimming and she felt as though her legs might buckle under her at any minute. ‘I might just be tempted to prove you wrong.’
CHAPTER FOUR
SITTING at the very far corner of the staff restaurant, Gabriel had a bird’s eye view of Rose, who was playing with the salad she had taken as though suspecting that something unpleasant might crawl out from under the lettuce leaves at any given moment. He had a feeling that she wasn’t even really aware of the clattering of voices on her table. Frankly, she looked as though she was a million miles away, thinking about God only knew what. Maybe the fact that June was proving to be a record breaker as far as soaring summer temperatures went. For the past two weeks the sky had been cloudless, the heat reaching unbeaten highs of early eighties. London was sweltering. People were complaining, as they did whenever the weather did anything unexpected. The parks were a sea of white bodies slowly going red in the relentless sun.
Of course, here in the restaurant, it could have been a fine autumn day outside. The marvels of central air-conditioning, which was probably why the place was packed. Who wanted to leave the comfort of the cool indoors to venture out into the baking sun? The first few days of novelty value had worn off for most of his employees and the fierce heat was not proving to be worth the bother of a tube journey to the nearest patch of green.
Which in turn was why Rose had not noticed his presence, tucked away with a couple of his corporate finance people and one of the company lawyers. They were discussing the minutiae of his most recent acquisition and Gabriel had switched off from the conversation a while back. In truth, he shouldn’t really be eating in the staff restaurant at all. A business lunch at the Savoy Grill had beckoned. Nothing that he couldn’t delegate to his CEO, allowing himself the bird’s eye view he was now shamelessly enjoying of his secretary.
He couldn’t quite put his finger on what had changed between them, but something had. Their working relationship when she had departed for Australia had been exemplary. The ideal working relationship, in fact. And then she had returned and he wasn’t sure if the physical change in her had kick-started something in him or whether it had been that evening spent with her, first at the restaurant and then afterwards at her house, during which he had caught tantalising glimpses of the red-blooded woman beneath the competent one-dimensional exterior.
Gabriel just didn’t know. He just knew that for the past few weeks he had
