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‘It’s got nothing to do with maintaining my freedom!’ Rose told him painfully. ‘What exactly do you think I’m going to with this so called freedom I’m desperate to maintain? When I’m at home with a baby?’
Gabriel ignored that. He couldn’t think straight. In his mind, the only thing he could see was that man leaving the house. He burned to lay into her, demand to know what the hell she was playing at, inviting strange men into her house, and he loathed his own weakness in feeling so desperate.
‘Good. Then we compromise. And I really don’t care if you refuse, Rose, because I will simply stay put until you agree.’
‘What’s brought on this change of mood?’
‘A clear head,’ Gabriel snapped. ‘You don’t want to marry me. Fine. You’re right. I cannot drag you kicking and screaming up the aisle, although how your conscience allows you to jeopardise the stability of our child’s future is beyond me.’
‘I don’t know h…’
Gabriel raised one imperious hand to silence her protest. ‘But there is a limit to what I will tolerate. If you won’t marry me, then you will live with me.’
‘Be your mistress?’
‘Call it whatever you like. The description is immaterial.’ He gave one of those nonchalant shrugs of his although his eyes remained very firmly focused on her dazed face.
‘I don’t see the point,’ Rose muttered, but she was exhausted by his drip, drip technique. He had used a sledgehammer to crack a nut but once he had clocked into the fact that she wasn’t budging, Gabriel had changed his techniques and over the months had become the master of subtlety, making small but consistent measures to chip away at her resolve. Sometimes she had the unsettling suspicion that part of his persistence came from the fact that she presented a challenge he felt compelled to overcome. It was a disturbing thought.
‘What was the urgency to rush over here at this hour to discuss this?’ she asked, stifling a yawn. ‘I’m really tired.’
‘I’ll bet.’
Something in Gabriel’s voice made Rose stiffen. Now she knew that something was wrong. ‘What does that mean?’
‘What do you think it means?’ Gabriel threw out belligerently.
‘I have no idea. Are you going to tell me or are you going to try and make me guess?’
‘Who was he?’ Gabriel heard himself ask the question and it was as if his vocal cords were functioning without the agreement of his brain, because he certainly hadn’t intended to reduce himself by asking.
‘Who was who? What are you talking about?’
‘Don’t give me that butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth act! I wasn’t born yesterday, Rose!’ He sprang to his feet and began pacing the room, releasing some of the high voltage energy that was threatening to make him really explode with her. He daredn’t look at her bewildered expression when it must be obvious to her exactly what he was talking about. I mean, he thought savagely, how many men did she entertain when he wasn’t around?
Now frankly disturbed, Rose padded across to where he was standing by the window, arms folded, his eyes aggressive slits. She placed her hand worriedly on his arm and he shrugged it off.
‘I have no idea what you’re on about.’
‘There was a man leaving this house when I drove up,’ Gabriel said, struggling to maintain his composure. ‘Why do you think I flew over here? What do you imagine I meant when I told you that my plans had changed? I heard his voice in the background when I spoke to you earlier on the phone and, sure enough, I get here and what do I find? A man leaving this house. Cool as a cucumber! And you acting as though nothing’s happened! Well, it won’t do! You’re going to move in with me and that’s the end of it!’
‘Are you jealous, Gabriel?’ Rose couldn’t squash an excited flutter of hope. If he was jealous, surely that meant that he felt more for her than lust, which would pass, and a sense of duty?
‘Should I be? I come here, I see a strange man leaving your house late at night…Tell me, should I be? Furthermore, I notice you still haven’t told me who the hell he is! No need. I can guess! What’s-his-name off the business course! Am I right?’ He looked away from her and tried not to imagine the worst. Somewhere inside, he knew that his fears were groundless but, like a leaf caught up in a storm, he was incapable of anchoring himself. ‘I hadn’t realised that you two were still in contact.’
‘We’re not.’
‘No? The figure leaving the house was really just a figment of my imagination?’
‘Joe’s called me a couple of times…’
‘Joe’s called you a couple of times…’
‘Well, yes.’ Now she felt guilty that she hadn’t mentioned the calls. Partly her lapses in memory were to blame and also the fact that she had known that Gabriel’s reaction would probably not have been too understanding. She hadn’t reckoned on it being as extreme as it was, however, and guilt brought a tinge of colour to her cheeks. Gabriel was on to that in a flash.
‘But I don’t know what you’re so worried about. I mean, there’s no need for you to be jealous…’Rose laughed self-consciously and, in some corner of her mind, she was aware that this time Gabriel had not denied that he was jealous. ‘Look at me, Gabriel and tell me what you see!’ With her smock dress and thick, forgiving cardigan, she was like a ship in full sail.
‘A very sexy woman…’ Gabriel affirmed through gritted teeth.
Something in Rose melted. She walked over to her handbag, which was on the chair, and rummaged inside, finally extracting a piece of white card which she handed in silence to him. Gabriel glanced at it, then read it.
‘He’s invited us to his engagement party,’ Rose said. ‘He phoned a few weeks ago because he’s a nice guy and he wanted to find out how I was doing with the pregnancy. He mentioned that he’d met a woman and things were serious. I was pleased for him.’
Gabriel stared down at the invitation. He should have been alarmed at his huge overreaction but he wasn’t because he knew why he had reacted the way he had. Why he was so desperate to marry her, why, when faced with her constant refusal, he was now desperate to have her live with him. The writing on the card looked blurry and he realised that he was no longer focusing on it but travelling down the blindingly obvious paths his mind was revealing to him.
He looked at her and cupped her amused, gently quizzical face in his hands.
‘Okay. Here’s the deal,’ he said sombrely. ‘You have to move in with me because it’s driving me nuts living apart from you.’
‘What are you saying?’ Rose wanted to hold her breath, close her eyes and wish as hard as she could that he would say what she wanted to hear, but reality never worked that way, so she held his gaze steadily and waited.
‘I’m saying…’ Gabriel ran his fingers through his hair and fidgeted. Finally he led her to the sofa and tugged her down to sit next to him, close enough for him to still touch her face. ‘I’m saying…that I can’t think straight with you living on your own here. I’ve felt it for a while but I denied it. Now, I know.’ He sighed and looked as if he might be trying to put his thoughts into some kind of coherent order. ‘Seeing that man leaving here…imagining…well, I can’t tell you…seems crazy but that’s what you do to me. You make me crazy.’ He kissed her gently on the mouth but pulled back before they could find themselves unable to break apart. He needed to talk without the distractions of her amazing body. But, as if he was still compelled to have some level of physical contact with her, he placed his hand on her stomach and she, in turn, placed her hand on his.
‘I can’t concentrate properly. I worry about you.’ He looked at her carefully. ‘I thought I wanted to marry you for the sake