She tilted her chin up and maintained eye contact. ‘I’ll make sure that Rita is on the case first thing in the morning to find a replacement.’
Caught having to subdue a runaway libido, Gabriel nodded curtly and walked towards the door. ‘Good luck with your job search, Abby, and whatever other searches you intend to indulge.’ He looked at her, her flushed face, the rigid stance of her body, the proud angle of her head, and he was assailed by a tidal wave of memories that were both uninvited and unwanted. ‘Oh, and leave your company laptop and phone with HR, would you? Company policy.’
And with that he was gone, quietly shutting the door behind him, exiting her life without a sound.
Abby remained staring at the closed door for several minutes. She marvelled that the life that had absorbed every ounce of her being for close to two years could disappear as quickly as it had. Gabriel’s personality was so huge that he seemed to leave a physical void behind him.
He wasn’t going to reappear. He’d be gone for the remainder of the day, and he was going to remain gone so that, by the time he next stepped foot into his office, there would be no risk of seeing her still there.
Even so, Abby worked fast to complete everything she felt should be done in record time.
She’d made a couple of acquaintances at the office and, in due course, she would get in touch and paper over her hurried resignation with some fabricated story, but for now only Rita would know that she was leaving, and Rita was as silent as the grave.
‘You’ll have to find someone as quickly as possible to replace me,’ Abby told her. ‘Someone...who...well...’
‘Someone who can cope with him.’ Rita smiled, understanding completely, but not pressing her for an explanation.
That hurt, because it reminded Abby of how well she and Gabriel had worked together, and in the end how well they had played together. She had to fight down the temptation to burst into tears.
‘He can be difficult,’ she said, ‘But he’s never unkind and he’s always fair. You’ll just need to get someone with...stamina.’ Which was something she’d thought she had until he’d got under her skin and burrowed into her heart.
She was mentally washed out by the time she returned to her house and the enthusiasm to do anything at all had gone. She couldn’t be bothered to search for jobs on the Internet. She could scarcely be bothered to fix herself something to eat.
She wanted to curl up into a ball and disappear for a few hours. Or days or weeks...
Should she have let him kiss her? One last touch before the big goodbye? She dwelled on what it would have been like to feel his lips on hers one last time. She went to sleep wondering where she could find the inner strength to deal with the fact that she would never see him again.
Find it she would, because she had no choice, but after a week of distracted job-hunting and far too many lie-ins Abby admitted defeat and decided that she would take herself down to her parents’. They were on their cruise. She would have the house to herself and maybe, away from the hustle and bustle of London, she would be able to get her act together. There was no great rush to get a job, as she had ample savings which she had been putting aside for a deposit on a place or a rainy day. This certainly qualified as a rainy day, as far as she was concerned.
And maybe she wouldn’t bother returning to London. There was no need to, was there? She could look for something locally, or maybe further afield in Exeter. She would be able to afford to buy a lot more down there than in the capital.
She would be miles away from Gabriel with no possibility of ever running into him by chance.
And her broken heart would be given the space to heal.
CHAPTER TEN
ABBY STARTED TO the sound of the doorbell just as she had slipped into her pyjamas. It was going to be another early night but that was what deep, dark country living did to someone trying to piece together a broken heart. Outside, there were no street lights to illuminate the twisting road off which her parents’ house sat, squat, square and reassuringly familiar.
After ten days out here, she had finally got up the courage to tell her parents that she had quit her job and was now back in Somerset. She’d had no choice because sooner or later someone from the small village would have emailed them. Returning to her tiny home town was great when it came to wrapping herself up in the comfort blanket of what she knew, but terrible when it came to hiding out.
For a few seconds, she debated whether she should get the door or else just pretend that she wasn’t in, except that was something else that was impossible to achieve in a small home-town—invisibility. If she wasn’t in the house, then where was she?
Not to answer the door would have been to risk a search party being dispatched to try and seek her out.
So off she went, detouring to sling her dressing gown over the drab pyjamas, because she hadn’t been able to bring herself to put on anything sexier.
There was no peep hole through which she could identify an uninvited guest.
She opened the door a fraction, because London had taught her to be careful when it came to doorbells pinging at nine-thirty in the evening.
Leather shoes, patent and expensive. Trousers, grey and unspeakably expensive. A hand shoved into one of the trouser pockets, distorting it. Abby’s eyes lingered on that hand, the way the dark hair curled round the dull matt of a steel watch.
Everything in her head was adding up to the identity of her caller, yet she refused to believe what her eyes were telling, her because the last person she expected to see standing on the doorstep of her parents’ house was Gabriel.
Gabriel could read what was going through her head. Like everything else, every other detail quietly stored away over time, this was just another one of those little things that should have pointed to the direction in which his emotions were going. He knew her. He knew her without even realising that he knew her—just as she knew him—and that was something he’d found out in the eerie quiet of his office, with his efficient replacement PA whose presence only served to remind him of the woman who was no longer there. He’d caught himself missing Abby’s smile, the way she could read what he was going to say, the way she was. He’d been so sure of himself, so naively convinced that he was invulnerable when it came to falling in love, so bloody stupid.
She was still half-hiding behind the door. With utter shock and the dizzying sensation that soon the ground was going to give way under her feet, Abby finally raised disbelieving eyes to his face and her heart stood still. He had been on her mind every second of every minute of every day, yet how was it that she had failed to remember just how stunningly beautiful he was? How tall? How sinfully sexy? He was smiling that crooked little smile that made her toes curl and her tummy lurch.
How dared he land on her doorstep with that smile?
Abby stiffened and moved slightly to bar him further from entering the house.
‘You,’ she said coldly. ‘What are you doing here?’
Gabriel looked at her without budging. Good question, he thought, except there was no single-syllable answer to it.
Deserted by the easy charm and abundant self-assurance that was so much part and parcel of his personality, he could only stare at her.
This was pretty much what he’d imagined her night wear to look like—before the sexy lingerie had come out into the open. Baggy pyjamas, strange, fluffy bedroom slippers, faded dressing gown...
Except she looked even sexier in this get up than she had in any of the skimpy silk-and-lace froth she had worn when they’d been in Seville.
He clenched his jaw and diverted his eyes from the jut of her breasts under the layers of clothes.
‘I’ve come to...talk to you.’
‘Really? What about?’
‘Will you let me in?’ He tried to peer around her. ‘I’m guessing your parents haven’t returned from their cruise?’
‘How did you find out where I was?’
‘You neighbour. She was very helpful when she
found out that I was your boss and that I needed to see you.’
‘Sophie should never, never, have revealed my whereabouts!’
‘Maybe she didn’t see me as a threatening predator up to no good.’
Abby glowered at him. She refused to get stuck in a stupid conversation about what her neighbour in London might or might not have thought of Gabriel. He was drop-dead gorgeous and would have swanned up in one of his mega-expensive cars. Add to that the fact that he could ooze charm at the snap of a finger, and it was little wonder that Sophie had cracked and told him where she was.
‘You haven’t told me what you’re doing here.’
‘Abby...’ Firmly on the back foot, Gabriel sifted his fingers through his hair and shook his head. ‘This isn’t a conversation I want to have standing on your doorstep. Let me come in. Please.’
It was the please that did it. That and the fact that Gabriel on her doorstep would set the gossip grapevine on fire should anyone happen to pass by and spot him.
‘If this is to do with work,’ Abby said as soon as he was in the hallway, ‘Then I can’t help you. I left Rita with as many instructions as I could and it’s up to her to sort you out with someone suitable.’ She wasn’t looking at him. She didn’t dare. She didn’t even want to be in his radius so she shuffled a little towards the wall and folded her arms.
She didn’t know why Gabriel had come, and she didn’t want to start thinking that it had anything to do with wanting to see her, which just left work, and that made perfect sense because it was about the only thing he was capable of caring about.
‘It’s not to do with work. Look, I’ve just spent hours on the road. Could we sit...somewhere?’
‘I don’t recall inviting you here, Gabriel, so why would I invite you to make yourself at home?’ She stared at him narrowly and then, with an impatient sigh, she walked towards the kitchen because she needed to sit down, never mind him.
Gabriel followed. Hostility sparked from every bone in her body and he couldn’t blame her.
‘You can have a cup of coffee,’ Abby said, struggling to keep herself together, even though her mind was whizzing through every possible reason that might have brought him down here. ‘And then you can go.’ She banged around for a couple of minutes, made two mugs of coffee and turned to find him seated at the kitchen table.
Uncomfortable as he appeared to be, he still owned the space around him, and that made her even angrier because this was her territory, her refuge and he couldn’t just come here and somehow take over.
She’d told him how she felt about him and then she had walked away. With his blessing! The cogs in her brain turned and bits began falling into place. If he wasn’t here because he needed to find a file, then he could only be here for one other reason.
Abby reddened as her anger levels shot through the roof.
‘I know why you’re here,’ she said in a low, trembling voice. She sat down, facing him, hands cupping the mug. ‘When I last saw you, Gabriel, you were moving on, getting back on the horse! So? Did your hot date not live up to expectation?’ Abby taunted, wallowing in the pain because it fuelled her anger and that in turn protected her from the sickening impact he had on her, despite everything.
‘She did not.’
‘Oh, dear! What a shame! Well, Gabriel, if you think that you can swan down here and pick up where we left off because you’ve found that my replacement hasn’t worked out the way you thought it would, then you’re mistaken. I don’t want anything else to do with you. Ever.’
‘I’m not here to pick up where we left off,’ Gabriel said quietly. ‘And I certainly wouldn’t think of presuming to tempt you back into a relationship because I’ve decided that I still want you.’
‘Good!’ Except what on earth was he doing here in that case? ‘Is...is Ava all right?’ she asked uncertainly.
‘We’re going round the houses, Abby. I came here to...talk to you. I wish I knew where to begin but this is difficult for me.’
‘Gabriel, are you all right?’ Fear clutched her and she had to stop herself from leaping out of her chair and flinging herself at him.
He smiled crookedly. ‘Health wise, I’m in top condition. As I once remember telling you, there’s not a germ that could get past my defences. I would never allow it.’
Bewildered, Abby stared at him. Shorn of his natural panache, there was a vulnerability about him that made the breath catch in her throat, and she didn’t want that. She didn’t want him getting to her in any way. She’d fought tooth and nail to try and move forward, and had spent so many hours polishing the check list of all the reasons why she was better off without him that the thought of that check list being dismantled filled her with despair.
She just didn’t want him sitting there, looking beautiful and somehow uncertain, and making her play guessing games.
‘Well, I don’t know why you’re here, but don’t you try and use clever words to get round me.’
‘For once, I find that I’ve run out of clever words,’ Gabriel said with such seriousness that Abby blinked in confusion, fighting down the crazy hope that had sprang from nowhere and was making itself heard. Her heart was beating like a sledgehammer. She licked her lips, eyes fixed on him. ‘You told me how you felt, Abby, and I did what I was programmed to do—I ran in the opposite direction. I wasn’t interested in any sort of emotional involvement and I wasn’t about to open that up for discussion. That’s how it had always been and nothing was going to change on that front.’
He sighed. ‘I’ve spent my life standing back from making the mistake of letting go. In truth, it had never been very difficult, because I’d never met anyone I was remotely interested in letting go to, if you get my meaning. Until you.’
‘Don’t, Gabriel. Please don’t say things you don’t mean.’
‘It’s the truth. I knew that one day I would marry, because I knew it was what my grandmother wanted—it was expected, but I was arrogant enough to assume that I could have that without going down the road of emotional commitment. All other types of commitment, yes, but not the kind that could lead me to become weak and vulnerable, the way my father had become weak and vulnerable when it came to my mother. Not that kind. My father’s love for my mother seemed to count above all else—above his love for his son, even. And, when he lost her, the grief took over everything for him, too. I planned to never succumb to that kind of love.’
He laughed shortly. ‘Then I became involved with you. The one person who had shared my life more than any woman had ever done. You brought me news of my fiancée and, instead of being distraught, I was quietly relieved. Lucy, on paper, would have made the perfect wife but she wanted more than I would ever have been prepared to give. I was immune to emotional involvement. I’d locked my heart away and thrown out the key, which is why, when we became lovers, it never occurred to me that there would be anything more to it for me than sex. Brilliant sex, as it turned out. Brilliant, once in a lifetime, unbeatable, fireworks-in-the-sky sex.’
Abby thought about that fireworks-in-the-sky sex and her whole body tingled as though he’d reached out and stroked her.
She didn’t know where this was going and she was too addled to try and predict the destination. Too addled and too wrapped up looking at him, hating him for coming, and loving him for it at the same time.
‘I never thought that, against all odds, the very thing I’d spent a lifetime avoiding would creep up from behind and take me by surprise,’ he said roughly. ‘I ended up wanting so much more when I was with you. What started as a game became...what can I say? It turned into reality. I did just what I’d warned you not to do.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Alarm bells should have sounded,’ Gabriel said wryly, ‘When I realised that whatever it was driving me to take you was way beyond my control.’
‘It was?’
‘That time in Seville was a revelation, even though I chose to bury that realisation and put it down to great sex and nothing mor
e. My grandmother tells me that she knew you were the one the minute she met you and saw the way we interacted. Unfortunately, I only knew you were the one for me when I realised that I’d lost you. That date? Fiasco. The only woman I wanted to be with was you, and you were the woman I had turned my back on because I was too stupid to and stubborn to face the fact that what you felt for me was what I felt for you.’
‘You love me?’
‘I have no words to describe how much, Abby. My life has been a mess since you left.’
‘So, you love me...and you’re not just saying that?’
‘So I do, and I’m not.’ He gave her a lopsided grin that went straight to her heart. Now the distance separating them felt like a canyon and all she wanted to do was bridge the gap and get close to him, touch him. ‘You have no idea what it felt like driving down here,’ he said gravely. ‘I’d messed up big time and I’m prepared to beg you to give me a second chance, let me prove to you that I’m worth it.’
‘Now I’m going to cry.’
‘That’s what I have a shoulder for. For you to cry on.’ He patted his lap and she shuffled over to sit on it and throw her arms round his neck, content to nestle into him. ‘I came here to ask you to marry me. A real engagement, a real wedding and all the fuzzy stuff to go along with it.’ He stroked her hair and cupped his hands on her cheeks, loving the sense of belonging and rightness he felt. ‘I want you in my life for ever, Abby. I want to wake up next to you and know that I’m coming back to you every day of every week of every year. I want you to have my babies. You make me complete.’
In receipt of that, Abby did what she had wanted to do since...for ever. She hugged him tight, wrapped her arms around him and he wrapped his around her, as secure and protective as the warmest of blankets, as steady as the most solid of rock.
She raised her face to his and smiled. ‘I want all of that as well, so, yes, Gabriel. Yes, yes, yes! I’ll marry you...’
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