The Threat of Love

by Charlotte Lamb

  'Nice to see you, Leonard,' she said. 'How's Rose?'

  'Oh, she's fine. She had a cold last week but she's over that.'

  'And the children?'

  'Children?' he said with amused derision. 'Caroline, my youngest is older than you! But they're all great, thank you for asking.' He gave her a grin. 'But what about you, then?'

  'I'm great, too,' she said lightly.

  'I meant how about what we've all been reading?' Leonard said cheerfully, and the room went silent; everyone seemed to turn and stare, and Caro wanted to sink through the floor. 'When we saw it in the papers, Rose and I were staggered. I had no idea you were even dating him!' He glanced round, suddenly realised how people were listening and watching them, and hurriedly concluded, 'Well, I hope you're going to be very happy, Caroline.'

  Before she could answer, Gil strode to the table and dropped a pile of folders on it with a little crash. 'Shall we get started?' he said loudly, and Leonard rushed off to take his seat, as did everyone else.

  Caro and Gil stared at each other along the gleaming, highly polished table, like duellists before they began to fight, a level, hostile gaze needing no words.

  She had dressed carefully for this meeting, too: her smooth, tailored wool dress was black, she wore small pearl studs in her ears and a string of pearls around her neck, carried a black purse and wore fine, handmade black high-heeled shoes. She might not be pretty, but she knew she looked elegantly businesslike. She had wanted to command the respect of everyone in the room, including Gil.

  Her father sat down beside her, murmuring, 'Nervous?'

  She made a little face. 'Well, I don't enjoy addressing these big meetings, but I'll be fine.' A breakdown of her report, excluding anything confidential, had been circulated to them all, including Gil and his people, and she knew she was going to face rigorous questioning about it. She was sure she could hold her own, but she was bothered by the prospect of being taken apart by Gil. She knew she would either lose her temper and shout at him, or go to pieces, and she wasn't sure which she dreaded the most.

  She ran her eyes over the faces around the table. Most of them men, she noted grimly, as usual. Few women seemed to get to this level. They were dominant at lower levels in the stores, but her father had packed his board with men, and most of the lawyers and accountants he employed were men, too.

  That will change one day, she thought. When I'm running this business there will be a lot more women at top management level. They are allowed so far, and no further, and it's very frustrating for the most able women to keep hitting their heads against that ceiling.

  Her eyes met Gil's again and quickly moved on around the table. A frown drew her brows together. One face was missing. She checked again, then murmured to her father, 'I thought Damian Shaw was going to be here?'

  Her father gave her an odd look. Did he imagine she was dying to see Damian? He knew she had once been in love with him, years ago, and had been badly hurt. 'It seems he no longer works for Gil,' Fred said carefully.

  Caro stiffened and shot a look down the table to where Gil was reading a thick file of papers. What had happened? Had he fired Damian? Or had Damian walked out? Her mind seethed with questions but Fred was banging on the table with a wooden gavel to get everyone's attention, and Caro heard him begin to introduce her.

  'You all know my daughter, Caroline.' Fred's voice was jovial. 'And I've no doubt you've all read the latest piece of exciting fiction published by the so-called gentlemen of the Press.' Everyone laughed, except Caro and Gil, both of whom stared at the table. Fred went on, 'But we're not here to talk about that. We're here to discuss the report she has put together on Westbrooks. The final negotiations will be based on her findings, so this is a vital document, and I hope you all know it backwards.'

  Caro stood up to polite applause and began her brief outline of the report as they had all read it. 'Now, if you have any questions I shall be happy to answer them,' she ended, sitting down.

  A silence fell. Everyone on the Westbrooks team looked at Gil. He was leaning back in his chair, his dark eyes fixed on the ceiling, his fingers silently tapping on the polished table. He seemed to be lost in thought.

  After a moment or two, one of the accountants asked Caro a question about the projected profit graph on the back of the report.

  She answered readily, and several other questions came hot on the heels of that, none of them difficult or hard to answer. After around twenty minutes it was obvious that Gil either had nothing to say, or was reserving his fire, and Caro grew very edgy. What was he up to? Why was he staying silent? She kept waiting for him to intervene, to start his cross-examination of her, but he did not make a move. Everyone around the table was clearly intrigued; they kept glancing at each other, lifting their brows or grinning, and Caro knew what they were thinking. Gil's silence had led them to believe that the sale of Westbrooks no longer had any importance for him because he was marrying her anyway, and would remain in control of the store.

  But that wasn't true. Gil had told her furiously that he wasn't marrying her to keep his store. No shotgun wedding, he had said, and he had meant it. So why was he staying silent?

  Fred looked at his watch a few moments later. 'Any more questions?' There was a significant pause, everyone looked at the table, then Fred said, 'Well, if no one has any further questions for my daughter, I suggest we break for coffee now.'

  Caro gathered up her papers, smiled politely at the congratulations people offered her, then said quietly to her father, 'Do you want me any more after the break, Dad?'

  'Stay if you want to, or not, as you like,' Fred said.

  'I think I'll get back to my office,' she said. 'I have a mound of paperwork I've had to neglect while I did this report.'

  Everyone was crowding round the far end of the room, where the coffee was laid out. Caro was able to slip out without being noticed, and spent the rest of the day in her office working with angry energy. She worked late. Her father was to be a guest at an important dinner in the City of London, at which the main speaker was to be the Prime Minister, so she did not have to get home in time to eat dinner with Fred. She wasn't hungry, and couldn't be bothered to go out for a meal. Their housekeeper was off for the evening, too, so Caro decided that when she did get home she would have beans on toast or scrambled egg, cooked by herself and eaten at the kitchen table.

  It was nearly nine when she let herself into the house. Silence lay on it like dust; sometimes she was disturbed by being alone in a house but not tonight. Tonight, she needed to be alone. She felt like someone after a funeral: haunted by loss, heavy with grief.

  She walked slowly towards the kitchen. Just as she was opening the door she heard a crash from one of the other rooms and froze. What was that?

  Hadn't Fred gone to that dinner? But if he hadn't, he would have rung to tell her he would be at home. He had known she was working late.

  She stood listening intently, her nerves stretched, and heard another sound, a faint movement.

  There was someone in the house, in the sitting-room. She crept back along the hall to listen outside the door, and heard somebody breathing on the other side of the door. Were they listening to her? If only she had a weapon! She looked around frantically, saw a heavy walking-stick of her father's with a silver handle, and grabbed it. That would do!

  She took a deep breath, quietly turned the handle of the sitting-room door and gave a rapid glance around, and saw a man with his back to her, actually having the nerve to pour himself a glass of her father's best whisky. Caro leapt at him, the heavy stick raised.

  He heard her coming and whirled, jumping aside just in time before the silver handle would have come down on his skull.

  'What the devil do you think you're doing?'

  Caro dropped the stick, turning white, then red. 'Gil! I could have killed you!'

  CHAPTER TEN

  Gil bent to retrieve the stick and weighed it in his hand, grimacing. 'I'm very glad that didn't smash into m
y head! You're a dangerous woman.' He glanced at her through his lashes, smiling crookedly. 'But then I knew that.'

  'I thought you were a burglar!' Caro whispered with an enormous effort. She was feeling very odd; waves of coldness were washing over her. She swayed and the room went round and round. Oh, no, I'm going to faint, she thought, panic-stricken. I can't.. .not now.. .not with Gil watching me...

  The next time she opened her eyes she was lying on a couch and Gil was kneeling beside her, pushing back the hair from her forehead, staring anxiously at her. 'Caro...' he said huskily. 'You scared the life out of me. Are you OK?'

  'I fainted,' she said with bitterness. Gil was always seeing her in embarrassing situations. What a fool he must think her!

  'Right into my arms,' he said, stroking her cheek with the tips of his fingers, and his caress made her head swim again. She sat up hurriedly, very flushed now, her body was always going from one extreme to the other while Gil Martell was around.

  'Gil, how did you get into the house? What are you doing here?' she asked, brushing down her skirt and running a shaky hand over her dishevelled hair.

  What on earth had possessed him to do such a shameful thing?

  'When I told him that I liked to do my own proposing and I wasn't in the market to be bought up by prospective father-in-laws, he flew into a temper,' Gil drily said. 'He became very Victorian, and said I had compromised you. He was apparently incensed by the story that appeared in yesterday's paper. More by the picture, I gathered, and the implications of it. You had been photographed with me coming out of my home in the early hours of the morning, in a very dishevelled state, and the whole world was going to believe that we had been sleeping together.' He looked at her through his lashes, smiling crookedly, and Caro couldn't stop the inevitable rise in her colour. Did he have to keep reminding her? As if she needed reminding! Images of their lovemaking kept flashing through her head when she least wanted them; she was haunted by those moments in his arms.

  'I'm sorry, it's ridiculous, I'll speak to my father,' she said stiffly.

  Gil did not seem to be listening. He slid a hand inside his jacket pocket and produced a small, square, velvet-covered box. She stared at it as if it were a snake and might bite her. He opened it on a dazzle of red and white; she remembered the ring as soon as she saw it.

  'This was my grandmother's engagement ring,' he said, raising it so that the facets of the great ruby flamed in the light, the little diamonds around it glittering. 'She wants you to wear it, but if you'd rather have a new ring...'

  'No,' she said involuntarily, her eyes on the ruby. 'It's beautiful.' Then she pulled herself together. 'I'm not marrying you!' she told him. How could she, now? How could her father do this to her?

  'Well,' he said doubtfully, his dark head on one side as he contemplated her, 'we could live together, of course, without bothering to get married, but I shudder to think of the Press coverage we'd get. No, much simpler to get married. Far less fuss in the long run.'

  'You told me you weren't going to be stampeded into a shotgun wedding!' she bitterly reminded him. 'What changed your mind? What exactly did my father offer you? That you would remain in control at Westbrooks?'

  'Yes,' he agreed coolly.

  Her blood turned to ice; a sliver of it seemed to reach her heart and she wanted to die. 'And you claim you can't be bought?' she spat at him.

  T didn't say I'd accepted.' Gil suddenly seized her hand and deftly slid the ruby and diamond ring up her ring finger. 'It's a pretty good fit, oddly enough,' he said in some surprise. 'I thought it might be too big, but my grandmother's hands must be more or less the same size as yours.'

  Caro stared dumbly at the deep red glow against her pale skin. The ruby seemed to pulse while she gazed into it, and she loved the weight of it, the beauty of it, on her hand, but she shook her head, pulling free of Gil and taking the ring off.

  'No, I can't marry you,' she said, offering him the ring.

  He took it and put it back into the box without argument. T'm leaving next month,' he murmured and Caro frowned.

  'Leaving? Westbrooks?'

  'Yes, Westbrooks—and the country.' He sat down again on the couch, and Caro automatically sat down, too, stunned by what he had just said.

  'You're going abroad? A holiday?'

  He shook his head, leaned back and crossed his legs casually. 'No, I've accepted a job in California, running a new department store in Beverly Hills. It's an exciting project, a new concept in shopping, but I can't talk about that yet, it's all very hush-hush in case the opposition steal a march on us. The building is almost complete, but we won't be opening until the autumn, which gives me plenty of time to get my operation in place.'

  Caro swallowed, her throat hurting. He was going away. Gil was leaving the country, going thousands of miles away, to the west cost of America. She might never see him again. 'If you've accepted this new job, why did you go through that pantomime of asking me to marry you, offering me that ring...?' she muttered harshly. 'Was that some sort of joke? You must have a weird sense of humour if you found that funny!'

  'Watch me laugh,' he said, turning his face to her, and as she looked into those dark eyes her body began to shake and she couldn't breathe. Gil's hand caught her arm and dragged her towards him. At the first touch of his mouth she was burning, her body on fire as she clung, kissing him hungrily. Gil had both arms round her now, and they toppled and fell from the couch to the floor, without the kiss ending. Caro almost lost all sense of her identity; she was consumed with passion, and only when Gil broke the kiss did she slowly come back to consciousness, lifting dazed eyes to his flushed face.

  'I love you,' Gil said hoarsely.

  Caro couldn't believe what he had said; tears came into her eyes, she shut them, shaking her head.

  'Yes,' Gil said. T don't know why or how, I think it started the day I saw you in that fitting-room at Westbrooks. You have a very sexy body and I couldn't take my eyes off it.'

  She remembered that, blushing. 'Or your hands,' she said.

  'Or my hands,' Gil agreed, laughing huskily. T wanted you. I've wanted other women, of course...'

  She looked coldly at him. T know.'

  He laughed, his eyes tender. 'You terrifying woman! OK, there have been other women, I like women and they usually like me, but I never even considered marrying any of them. I liked my freedom too much, I was having too good a time.'

  'And they didn't have fathers as rich as mine?' Caro bitterly accused.

  'If I told you that didn't matter a row of beans" to me, would you believe me?' he asked and she shook her head. 'Then I won't bother.' He shrugged, his mouth hard. 'If you don't trust me enough to marry me, OK. We won't get married.'

  She sat up, shakily pushing her hair back from her face. 'Gil, how can I trust you when I know the sort of women you've always dated? I read the gossip columns, I've seen Miranda. She's beautiful, I expect they all were. I'm not.'

  He put a hand under her chin and turned her reluctant face to him, contemplating it thoughtfully. 'No, you're not.'

  She hadn't expected him to lie, but she hated hearing the truth from him, and her grey eyes blazed. Gil grinned at her, his long index finger flicking down her cheek.

  'What a temper you've got! Did you want me to say you were beautiful? We're going to tell the truth to each other, Caro, it's the only way we can live together. Your face isn't beautiful, but your body is magnificent.' He watched the rise of her colour, laughing. 'It really turns me on,' he whispered, and she wanted so badly to believe him, but she still couldn't forget Miranda.

  'That isn't any reason for marrying,' she muttered and he agreed.

  'No, and if you can't trust me there would be no point in getting married, either. We could still live together, couldn't we?'

  Caro's whole body jerked in shock. 'Live together?'

  'Come to America with me, we'll build this new store together. You understand how to run a store, I've never met anyone who had a mind like y
ours. If I weren't in love with you I'd want to employ you, you're worth your weight in gold.'

  She had been angry when he'd told her he loved her because she'd been sure he was lying, but she was flattered now because she knew she was good at her job— she could believe Gil when he said she understood how to run a store. It was true. She did. She had spent most of her life listening to her father, working in stores, thinking about ways to run them, arguing with her father about her ideas and often being frustrated because if their ideas clashed it was Fred Ramsgate's plans which went ahead while hers were pushed aside.

  'My father would go crazy,' she said slowly, imagining her father's face.

  'Let him. I'm not scared of your father,' Gil said, shrugging.

  'Neither am I!' she protested. 'But I love him and I don't want to hurt him or make him angry. If I leave him and go to work for you, he won't understand, he'll be knocked for six.'

  Gil's dark eyes were hard, glittering. 'It's a difficult choice for you, then. I guessed it would be—I've realised how much your father has always dominated you, and I'm not prepared to let him go on dictating your life, Caro, not if we're going to be together from now on. It's either him or me. You can't belong to us both.'

  Her heart hurt her at the thought of belonging to Gil. Could she bear to lose him? Even if she didn't quite believe he meant what he said about loving her, could she bear to see him go away to the other side of the earth, when he was offering to take her with him? But the thought of explaining all this to her father! She flinched from the prospect. Fred would be so furious. His daughter, living with a man she hadn't married, working for him rather than for her own father! She could imagine his face. Fred had solid, old-fashioned, immovable ideas. He believed in marriage and family. He thought she owed him all her loyalty, as his daughter. He had trained her, she should repay him. Fred was firmly rooted in an earlier time, and she had always loved him for that, for the stability and security, the unfailing affection he had always given her.