the vigour and excitement of the chase.
But, surprisingly, he had felt nothing like that and he could only assume that the prospect of fatherhood was more powerful than he had ever imagined.
So it had come as a brutal shock when she had stuck to her guns. No marriage.
Threats to drag her up the aisle had met with stony silence and he had resorted to dangling all manner of financial carrots in front of her, at which point she had turned her back on him and thrown over her shoulder that, unless he stopped pestering her, not only would she not marry him but she would find it hard to have anything to do with him at all!
Pestering her! Just the memory of those two words made Gabriel’s teeth snap together in baffled fury.
He was certainly left in no doubt that the last thing she was was a gold-digger! In fact, he sometimes caught himself half wishing that she was more impressed by his wealth. At least then he might have been able to pin her down!
As it was, she was now in her sixth month of pregnancy and there was still no prospect of any ring going anywhere near her finger.
Gabriel had even consulted his mother on the best way of tying her down, expecting keen support from that area—after all he came from a family of traditionalists—but he had been woefully let down. His mother had quizzed him, asked all the right questions, sympathised with his dilemma which, as he pointed out, was the irrational dilemma of a man thwarted from doing the right thing, and then confounded him by saying that he couldn’t make someone do something they didn’t want to do.
He had been reduced to visiting her, as often as he could, and he had arranged his work life to fit in accordingly.
He said nothing when she told him that there was no need and, over time, she had stopped telling him. Of course, he didn’t like the fact that she was still working but, when he’d mentioned that she had laughed and told him that pregnancy wasn’t an illness, that it was a perfectly natural condition and putting her feet up would only make her put on too much weight.
However, he was reassured that she had postponed the business course, which would have been sheer lunacy.
Apart from the marriage issue, which appeared to be going nowhere fast, things seemed to be progressing nicely and privately Gabriel had been working on a plan to buy them a house. He would let her choose it. Would let her fall in love with it. And then, maybe, he could entice her into doing what he realised he wanted more and more.
Now this.
Had he heard a man’s voice in the background? It occurred to him that she had seemed a bit breathless down the phone.
It was nine-thirty at night! Why would she be breathless? Gabriel, on the way to the airport, tapped on the partition separating him from his driver and gave him immediate instructions to turn around.
He wasn’t turning around to check up on her, he told himself. Naturally there was no man in the house! Why should there be? She was six months pregnant with his child! And over the months he had come to appreciate that she was not deceptive by nature. She could no more lie to him than she could flap her arms and fly to the moon.
On the other hand, it wasn’t as though they were married, was it? She had maintained her freedom even if he was convinced that she had no intention of using it. Damn it, they were still making love! He had done his homework. Read the pregnancy books. Was convinced that sex in the latter stages of pregnancy was absolutely fine, provided there were no contra-indications.
For a few seconds, Gabriel’s mind drifted to the eminently pleasing recollection of their passionate love-making. He wasn’t ashamed of admitting that her ripe body was a massive turn-on for him. Her breasts were now more than a generous handful and her nipples had swelled and darkened and seemed to have become ultra-sensitive, judging from the way she squirmed whenever he licked their stiffened peaks.
He shifted as his body responded swiftly and inevitably to the mental pictures in his head and he told the driver, in a clipped voice, to hurry.
If she sounded breathless, he decided, then he had to check it out. Purely on health grounds. His deal halfway across the world would just have to wait. He phoned his secretary, utterly unapologetic about disturbing whatever she happened to be doing, and told her to cancel all arrangements for him for the next couple of days. Thrown in at the deep end, she had certainly smartened up her act over the months. He still had to spell certain things out for her and she would never attain the level of responsibility that Rose had, but she would know what to do in this event.
That dealt with, Gabriel stared through the window as the car tackled London on a dark, dank, wintry Thursday night.
His thoughts were all over the place. Right there and then he made the decision that he would not leave her place until he had persuaded her to move in with him. Okay, she hadn’t yet agreed to marriage, despite his reasonable approach, an approach that made sense from whichever angle it was viewed, but they would live together. Not ideal, but that way he could keep an eye on her.
The journey took thirty-five torturous minutes and, as the chauffeur-driven Jaguar pulled up to the kerb outside her house, Gabriel was witness to the one thing he didn’t want to see.
The male voice in the background hadn’t been a figment of his over-active imagination after all. It had been all too real and Gabriel didn’t need to look very hard to know the identity of the mystery guest. Who else could it be but the ex-boyfriend?
He sat in silence for a few seconds, clenching and unclenching his fist, watching the man sling on his coat even as he walked down the road away from the Jaguar, reminding himself that he had no control, ultimately, over what she chose to do with her life.
He was overcome with a feeling of failure, an emptiness that was quite unlike how he was used to feeling.
He rubbed his eyes with his thumbs, clearing his head, trying to silence the roar in there, then he told his driver that he could head back.
‘I’ll make my own way home,’ Gabriel said tersely, pushing open the car door. Jealousy was threatening to overcome every shred of self-control he possessed. He made it to her front door before she even had time to hit the staircase.
Rose heard the banging and immediately assumed that Joe had left something behind.
She wasn’t prepared to find Gabriel standing outside her door. Not that it wasn’t a wonderful surprise. It was. Because she had thought that he would be at Heathrow, waiting for his plane, although in truth her mind wasn’t as sharp as it had been before she became pregnant. She smiled and waited for his responding smile but none was forthcoming. Instead he stepped wordlessly into the hall and turned around to face her.
‘What are you doing here?’ Rose asked, hesitating at the expression on his face. ‘I thought you were on your way to Hong Kong…’
‘It would seem that there was a change of plan.’ His instinct was to lay into her with questions about what the hell that man was doing in her house, but he restrained himself. Over the past few months, he had discovered a reservoir of patience he had never known existed in him and he called upon it now. Arguing would be no good for her in her condition and, besides, it occurred to him, he seldom won.
A change of plan and so he’d rushed over to her house. Rose tried not to feel flattered but she was. The man who had never actively pursued any woman was pursuing her now and it took all her strength to remind herself of the reason for that.
