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pregnancy tale of woe on his shoulders. Nor did he know what had compelled him to lay into her with such force. But he believed her. She was carrying his baby.

      Gabriel, who had never once contemplated the reality of fatherhood except as some distant situation that might or might not arise in the fullness of time, was shocked to realise that his initial feelings were ones of pure, virile satisfaction.

      He felt as though he had triumphed.

      ‘Yes…?’ Rose was treading warily.

      ‘Which isn’t to say,’ he added, ‘that I won’t demand a DNA test somewhere along the line…’ He wouldn’t.

      ‘I’m not lying to you, Gabriel. Would you believe me any quicker if I told you that I didn’t come here today to try and get money out of you? That I came because I thought it was the right, moral thing to do?’

      ‘You must know that there’s no way I would let any son of mine go without…’

      ‘Son? Hang on a minute…’

      ‘Or daughter, of course.’ He gave an elegant shrug and then began prowling the room, forcing her to turn around to keep up with his progress. ‘Whatever. No child of mine will be allowed to go without.’

      ‘Naturally it will be up to you, whatever you decide to contribute to his or her welfare.’

      ‘Contribute?’ He gave a bark of laughter and paused to look at her with incredulity. ‘Contribute? You speak as though my own flesh and blood would be on the receiving end of the occasional donation! No, my involvement will be much more far reaching than a cheque sent out once a month…’

      For the first time since she had disappeared, Gabriel felt the angry restlessness inside him begin to ebb away as he contemplated, with calm acceptance, a future he had not banked on.

      ‘What do you have in mind?’ Rose asked, her voice even more guarded.

      ‘Put it this way, Rose…’He sat behind his desk and looked at her. Yes, he could see now that she had put on a bit of weight. Not so much that you would notice, but enough. She looked glowing. ‘No child of mine will be a bastard.’

      ‘Meaning…?’

      ‘Meaning that you’ll have to marry me.’

      Rose gazed at him, shocked by his Draconian solution. ‘I don’t intend to do any such thing!’ she informed him adamantly. ‘We’re no longer in the Dark Ages, Gabriel. Children are born out of wedlock all the time. There’s no longer any social stigma associated with that.’

      ‘Irrelevant.’

      ‘No, it’s not irrelevant!’ Marry him? Live a life knowing that he had tied himself to her because of a child? Was there a faster way for a marriage to turn sour between two people? ‘I can’t marry you because I’m pregnant!’ Rose struggled to make him see her point of view, aware that she was battling against the traditionalist core of a dinosaur. ‘It’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard. You didn’t ask for this situation!’

      ‘That I won’t deny…’So why, he wondered, didn’t he feel worse about it?

      ‘And I’m sorry but I won’t let you bury yourself in matrimony with me because you feel obliged…’

      ‘I don’t think I mentioned that you had a choice.’

      Rose thought about marriage and her expectations of it. None of them included her loving a man, having his baby, desperately waiting and hoping that one day he would return her love. Nor had she ever looked forward to the inevitability of a husband who would stray because he would eventually become bored with her, bored by the sight of her. A child was many things but superglue wasn’t one of them and a marriage artificially sustained because of one would be a marriage made in hell.

      ‘You will marry me, Rose. It can be a small affair or you can lay on all the trimmings, but marry me you will.’

      CHAPTER TEN

      GABRIEL, in what was becoming a familiar situation of disgruntled uncertainty, clicked off his mobile with a frown.

      He was sure that there had been a man’s voice in the background. Or maybe it was his imagination playing tricks on him. It had been doing that lately. Ever since he had found himself on the receiving end of Rose’s determination.

      No marriage.

      Naturally, he had assumed, with his boundless self-assurance, that he could steamroller over her objections, and he had given it a damn good shot.

      For every point she raised he had countered it with ten of his own.

      To claims that he was behaving like a Victorian tyrant, he had pointed out that his intention was merely to honour his responsibilities and ensure that his progeny was born with the greatest advantages of having a mother and father, both living under the same roof, both sharing the decision making.

      ‘You will never be able to accuse me of not doing the right thing,’ he had told her with pride.

      And, just in case she remained unconvinced, which she surely couldn’t be, given the indisputable logic of his arguments, he had ticked off, on his fingers, every reason for marrying him.

      The benefit of security for his son. Or daughter, he had hastened to add. The benefit to her because she would be financially secure, able to fully appreciate motherhood without feeling the need to go out to work. Additionally, he had told her, they got along and were attracted to one another. It was hardly as if they were sworn enemies being forced into an unnatural alliance!

      To any further obstacles and to reassure any misplaced sense of pride, he had informed her that she could look on it as something of a sensible business arrangement.

      ‘As you do?’ she had asked blandly, and he had nodded thinking that, yes, it really was something that made sense. And, to top it off, it made him feel good. He had never thought that the prospect of marriage would make him feel good. Rather, he had always privately maintained that, whatever tales he had heard to the contrary, most men, himself included, would view the institution of marriage as a regrettable cessation of the sheer joy of the affair, 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

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