by Lynne Graham
CHAPTER TEN
FROM WORKING IN one of London’s landmark buildings, Alice’s life returned to normality with a deafening thud.
One month after she had walked away from Gabriel, she was now back in employment, working as a legal secretary in a small solicitor’s firm in the outskirts of London. She had gone from towering views of the city to the nondescript view of the back of a local supermarket car park. She had moved from the most exciting man on the planet to a middle-aged chap who handled small cases and apparently took himself off to play golf twice a week.
The highlights had grown out of her hair and Paris and everything else seemed like a dream.
She had not heard a word from Gabriel and, much as she had not expected to, the hope with which she awoke each morning turned into the sour disappointment that went to sleep with her each night.
Walking back to her house, her mobile phone rang and, when she picked up the call, it was from her mother.
Pamela Morgan’s recovery was coming along in leaps and bounds. In fact, treatment with the therapist had been reduced to once a month. Now that her love affair was out in the open, it seemed to be all she could talk about, and Alice, having met the man in question, had to concede that her mother was in safe hands.
Time had moved on, her mother had told her; she was in a different place from the one she had been in when she had married.
The implication was that Alice should have reached a similar conclusion—that time had moved on and she was no longer the girl growing up in a scary, dysfunctional family or the girl who had had a brief fling with someone who’d turned out not to be Mr Right.
The implication was that there was a time and a place to be careful and Alice was young enough to take life by the scruff of the neck and take chances...
Alice had not become bogged down in discussing her situation. She could have told her mother that she had taken enough chances with Gabriel to last a lifetime, but she kept quiet.
Now, her mother was talking to her about a holiday she planned to go on and marvelling that her life had been turned around so dramatically.
Alice listened, contributing here and there as she stepped off the bus and headed back to the house.
It was an overcast, muggy day and although it wasn’t dark, far from it, she was still surprised that the lights in the house were all off because she knew that Lucy would be in, getting herself ready for a hot weekend in Venice with the guy she had been seeing for the past few months.
It was a little after eight. Overtime was not expected but she had stayed on until just after six and had then gone out for a quick drink with two of the other girls from the office, who had a Friday-night routine in which she had been immediately included.
She was exhausted.
She let herself into the house, dropping her bag by the door, and heading for the kitchen whilst removing her lightweight summer jacket at the same time.
With the lights all switched off, the downstairs of the house was bathed in a grey twilight that Alice found rather soothing, so she didn’t bother turning on any lights, instead carolling up the stairs to let her house mate know that she was home.
The last time she had arrived home unexpectedly without loudly announcing her arrival, she had discovered Lucy and her loved-up guy in the sitting room about to embark on a compromising position, and Alice had been horribly embarrassed. Since then, entries were always as noisy as possible.
The last person in the world she’d expected to see was in the kitchen chair and he’d been there for the past hour.
Gabriel had been driven to seek her out. The past month had been hellish, his worst possible nightmare. He had been unfocused, unable to concentrate and in a permanently foul mood. People had scuttled in the opposite direction the second they had heard him striding through the office, on the hunt for someone on whom he could vent.
He had even broken his own personal record by dating six women, none of whom had progressed beyond polite conversation over dinner. In their company, he had spent an inordinate amount of time checking his watch.
He had refused to give in.
Hell, the woman had burned him off not once, but twice!
It hadn’t helped that he had not managed to find a suitable replacement for her. He was on secretary number three and the omens were not good.
He had cursed himself on more than one occasion that he had been lenient enough to let her leave without duly working out her notice. On reflection, he should have made her do the two weeks required.
His nights had been no better than his days. Work had failed to do what it should have done, distracted him from thoughts he neither liked nor invited.
He missed her.
He missed everything about her. He missed the way she spoke her mind; the way she laughed; the way she looked at him. He even missed the way she smelled. And all that was why he was now where he was—sitting in her kitchen, having despatched her friend, who had allowed him entry only after a questioning the likes of which hadn’t been seen since The Spanish Inquisition.
‘I thought you’d never get back. Where the hell have you been anyway?’ Casual voice to mask his far from casual emotions. Controlled but barely breathing.
About to reach for a bottle of water from the fridge, something to quench her thirst after three glasses of wine, Alice nearly fainted in shock at the sound of that voice which had haunted her for the past month.
She spun round and stared at the figure in the chair, speechless.
Her legs turned to jelly; she collapsed into one of the kitchen chairs facing him and just stared, unable to believe the evidence of her eyes.
‘I’ve been waiting for over an hour.’ Had she been out with a guy? No. If she had, she surely wouldn’t have returned home so early. Maybe she’d been on a date which had been a disaster. He enjoyed the thought of that. He had been on enough disaster dates himself.
‘Gabriel...’ It was the only thing she could find to say. Her mouth was dry and her heart was pumping so hard that it felt as though it would burst.
‘Your house mate let me in.’
‘Lucy.’ This was a surreal conversation. She couldn’t peel her eyes away from him. He looked...haggard. He was still in his suit but he had disposed of his tie and the top two buttons of his white shirt were undone. For a man who always managed to look carelessly elegant, he was dishevelled.
‘Right.’
‘Why are you here?’ Alice knew that she should sound firmer, angrier, more resolute. Her voice was thin and reedy and she cleared her throat and continued to look at him in the half-light: beautiful. Even drawn as he was, he was still the beautiful guy who had lodged like a burr under her skin and refused to budge.
And suddenly the anger that should have been there rose to the surface—because, she thought, she must not forget that this was the same emotionally lazy man who had walked away from her without a backward glance because he had got it into his head that she might, just might, be interested in more than just a romp in the sack!
This was the same guy who had nothing to give.
‘No,’ she said coldly. ‘Let me guess why you’re here. You can’t get to grips with any of the secretaries you’ve had to replace me. Well, if you think that I’m going to come along and do a good deed by handing over, then you’re wrong. I’m not going to be doing that. You’ve wasted your time, so you can leave. You know where the front door is.’ She was trembling and she wrapped her arms around her to steady her nerves.
Gabriel had never lacked self-confidence. It was what had propelled him upwards, had given him the drive to leave his past behind and the confidence of knowing that he could do it. Right now his confidence had gone on holiday. He was shaken by the sensation of someone standing on the brink of a precipice with one foot hanging over the side and no safety net to catch hi
m if he fell.
‘I didn’t come to try and get you to come back to work,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Although your replacements haven’t been any good, as it happens.’ That last offering failed to generate even a hint of a smile.
And why would she smile? She had given and he had taken and, in return, had stayed true to his lifelong motto of giving nothing back.
He had been a prize idiot.
‘In that case, why are you here, Gabriel?’
‘I’m here...because...because...’
He was stammering. Since when did the invincible Gabriel Cabrera stammer? But she wasn’t going to let any sprigs of hope infiltrate the barriers she had been trying so hard to rebuild around herself.
‘Forget it.’ She clenched her jaw and forced herself to look at him, to meet his black stare without flinching. ‘I’m not about to climb back into a relationship with you.’ She laughed shortly at how lacking in veracity that was, because it had hardly been a ‘relationship’ by anybody’s standards! ‘Relationship.’ She spoke aloud, her voice thick with self-mockery. ‘What a joke. As you’ve proudly told me, you don’t do relationships, do you, Gabriel?’
‘I said that. How was I to know that fate can sometimes have a nasty habit of laughing at all your good intentions?’
‘Forget it, Gabriel. Forget all the fancy words.’ Restlessness invaded her body like a sudden burning itch that needed to be scratched. ‘Have you run through a few of your pocket-sized dates and decided that you weren’t quite through with me just yet?’
‘I’ve missed you. Have you missed me? Tell me that you haven’t and I’ll walk out of this house and you will never see me again.’
As ultimatums went, that one went beyond the barrier. She didn’t want him here, did she, invading her life all over again? Smooth talking his way back into sex because of unfinished business...did she? But she hesitated because the finality of what he was offering terrified her. She might not really have expected to see him ever again, but now she could see that she had stupidly hoped, because her love was so strong that it seemed incredible that she could be left with nothing overnight.
Now she knew that if she turned away this time she really would never see him again. Fragile hope would be killed dead.
‘Well?’ Gabriel prompted shakily.
‘So I missed you! Big deal. Does that change anything?’
‘You’re the first woman I’ve ever missed.’
‘Am I supposed to be flattered by that?’ But she was. And she didn’t want to be any more than she wanted to feel the racing of her heart; any more than she wanted to be moved—stupidly, idiotically moved— by the way he was looking at her with eyes that were somehow naked.
She didn’t want any of that because none of that changed the man that he was, a man who was incapable of giving.
‘You can’t give anything, Gabriel,’ she said, reconfirming that simple fact to herself just by voicing it out loud; reminding herself that she had been sucked in not once but twice and that she was not going to be sucked in again. ‘And you have no right to barge into my house, to sweet-talk my friend into letting you in so that you can sit there and start spinning stupid stories just because I didn’t give you what you wanted!’
‘I’m not here to spin stupid stories.’
But Alice was in full flow. Memories rained down on her, memories of how much she had given and how little had been returned. ‘You’re empty inside, Gabriel! One stupid three-second conversation with someone you met in the village and you took off in a hurry. The merest shadow of a hint that you might have been expected to provide more than just inventive sex and you couldn’t escape fast enough! And now you have the nerve to come here and talk about missing me...’
‘I get it, Alice. I should have got it sooner, but I get it now.’
‘Don’t you dare try and make nice with me for your own benefit!’ And stop looking at me like that... ‘Repeat: you can’t commit! You can’t even plan a month ahead with any woman because you might need to run away long before then! You don’t just want to make sure that you don’t put down roots, you want to make sure that you don’t even leave footprints!’ She was shaking like a leaf, all the hurt and anger bubbling up inside her.
‘Oh God, Alice. Do you think that I don’t know that every single word you’re saying is true?’ He sat forward, angling the chair so that he could lean his forearms on his thighs. Still hunched, he raised his eyes to look at her. ‘You were right when you once accused me of being emotionally lazy. I am. Was. Always have been.’
Was...? Hope flared, as persistent as a weed and as tenacious as ivy. Drained by her outburst and by the desperate range of emotion surging wildly through her, she remained silent, her breathing heavy and laboured, as though she had run a marathon. She wanted to drag her eyes away from him but found that she couldn’t, any more than she could stop her heart from opening up like a wound that had only been scabbed over, bleeding all over again. ‘I want you to leave,’ she whispered. ‘You need to leave.’
‘Please. Let me just... It’s hard for me; just hear me out. There’s something you probably don’t know about me.... No, there’s something you definitely don’t know about me...’ That standing-on-the-edge-of-a-precipice feeling was back, but he didn’t care whether he fell or not, or whether there would be a safety net to catch him or not. Nothing could have been worse than the past few weeks without her.
‘I was dragged up in foster homes. You told me your story, and maybe I should have repaid the confidence, but confiding is something I’ve never done. I’ve never known how. It’s something that’s sucked out of you when you’re a kid in care. You learn to get tough fast. So, I’ve never told anyone my story.’ He smiled crookedly at her. ‘Until now.’
‘Foster homes?’ She shook her head slowly.
‘Correct. No privileged upbringing. No upbringing to speak of, in actual fact. Just driving ambition and, thankfully, sufficient brainpower to turn that driving ambition into career success. But someone consumed with driving ambition, someone who had to fight to clamber out of a crappy background. What can I say? There was no space left inside me for sharing—I wanted money and everything that comes with it because it made me invincible. And for a long time that was exactly what I was: invincible.’ He looked at her, reading her thoughts, stalling them at the pass. ‘No fancy words, Alice. Just me. Being open.’
‘And then what happened? You were invincible...’ She tried to imagine a youthful, defiant, angry Gabriel and her heart constricted. He had erected the same defences as she had, but his had been made of steel and he had never let them down, and she could understand why. ‘You’re not going to get me back into a non-relationship with you with a sob story,’ she said half-heartedly because she knew that she should still be protecting herself.
‘I don’t want to get you back into a non-relationship.’
‘Oh.’ Disappointment seared through her like a blazing inferno. So he had come to explain himself. That was something—that he had thought enough of her to tell her about his past—but she wanted so much more...
‘I need you to see that for me giving in a relationship had always been a non-starter. I was dependent only on myself, the way I always had been for my entire life, and I had no intention of allowing anyone in to share that space. But you came along, Alice, and bit by bit you chipped away...’
‘You never hinted that you wanted anything more from me than a sexual relationship.’
‘I refused to believe that I did. I’ve been a fool, Alice.’ He dared to reach out and was shaken with relief when she allowed him to twine his fingers through hers. ‘I should have known that you were different, and not just because you were taller than the women I usually dated. Hell, I was that thick.’ Another of those crooked smiles made her toes curl and did all those things to her body that she had become accustomed to whenever she was aro
und him.
‘I went from looking at you, to wondering, to fancying and then to wanting you more than I’d ever wanted any woman in my life before. And somehow, in the mix, came all that other stuff...’
‘What other stuff?’
‘The wanting...the craving...the needing and the loving...’
‘You love me?’
‘And I never even recognised it for what it was.’ His voice was strangely shaky when he next spoke. ‘So I haven’t come here to restart a non-relationship, as you called it. I’ve come here to ask you to marry me so that we can start just the sort of committed, fairy-story, walk-up-the-aisle relationship I never thought I’d have. Because, Alice Morgan, I find that I can’t live without you. And if you can’t give me your answer now—and I’d understand, because I’ve been a hellishly poor excuse of a lover—then you can think about it.’
He stood up and he was already at the kitchen door when her legs did what they had been programmed to do and sprinted after him.
‘Don’t you dare go anywhere,’ she said breathlessly, her eyes shining. She flung her arms around him and held tight. ‘Because I love you, Gabriel Cabrera. So, yes, yes and yes! I want to marry you. I want to be with you for the rest of my life.’ She looked up and her eyes were glistening with unshed tears.
‘No fancy words?’
She laughed and sniffed and laughed again. ‘I had my own barriers,’ she confessed, dragging him back to the kitchen table, but this time when he sat down, she sat on his lap because she just needed his arms around her. ‘You know all about my dad, and I guess I always thought that it was safer never to let go, never to put myself in a position where I could be hurt. I was so determined that you wouldn’t get under my skin. I’d categorised you in my head within days of working for you, and somehow I thought that made me safe.’ She stroked his hair, kissed his dear face and submitted when he kissed her back, tenderly, lingeringly.
‘You mean if I was a bastard then you could never fall for me...’