Boardrooms of Power. Heidi Betts

silence that reverberated around the room was deafening and, for the first time since she had known him, Rose was treated to the one-off sight of her boss rendered utterly speechless. The colour drained from his face and he stared at her for a few seconds, during which she would have sworn that her heart stopped beating.

      But he rallied fast. Shock gave way to suspicion. ‘That’s impossible. We were careful.’

      ‘We were careful most of the time, Gabriel. But we weren’t careful on that first night…Do you mind if I sit back down?’ If she didn’t, she might fall down because her legs felt as unsteady as rubber. She sat on the chair and for a while he remained standing behind her, as if locked in one spot. Rose refused to twist around and face him. She couldn’t imagine what was going through his head but she was pretty sure that she wouldn’t like any of it. Fatherhood was a high price to pay for a couple of weeks of sex with a woman who was destined to be yet another one of his ships that passed in the night. She would never have featured on his agenda at all if she hadn’t returned from Australia several pounds lighter, several shades darker and more in keeping with what he considered attractive!

      She daredn’t look at the horror that would be stamped across his beautiful face.

      Eventually she heard him walk towards her, past her, towards the window, through which he stared in complete and telling silence.

      Most of all, she wanted to tell him that she was sorry but it had never occurred to her, not for a minute, that she would fall pregnant because of a single slip-up. She had stupidly allowed passion to overwhelm the simple matter of taking precautions. Gabriel, mistakenly, had assumed that she was on the pill and the following day, having been assured by her that no, she wasn’t protected, but that they had been absolutely safe the night before, he had taken the issue of contraception into his own hands.

      She hadn’t guessed that, by then, it was too late.

      It had taken her sister six months of trying to conceive!

      ‘When did you find out?’ Gabriel asked coolly, turning to look at her.

      ‘Ten days ago.’ Her eyes fluttered away from his cold, shuttered expression. ‘I…I didn’t think about my periods until I had to go to the dentist and she asked whether I could possibly be pregnant because I needed an x-ray to be done. Then it occurred to me that I hadn’t had one for ages.’ She knew that her words were tripping over one another but that look in his eyes…

      When she had rehearsed what she would say, the scene had never unfolded in her head like this. Yes, she had anticipated being nervous, but she had her speech all down pat. She was pregnant. She took full responsibility for what had happened. She felt it only right that he should be aware of the situation but she wasn’t about to impose on him, either emotionally or financially. In her head she emerged from the messy situation as proudly independent, open and willing to negotiate whatever visiting rights he might want, but also open and willing to accept that he might want very little. After all, a child had never been part of his game plan and she should know because, in a weird way, she knew him like the back of her hand.

      ‘What makes you think that I believe you?’ Gabriel asked.

      Rose looked at him, startled out of her gut-wrenching apprehension. ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘I mean,’ he said, his tone of voice implying that what he was about to say would be logical beyond all dispute, ‘I suddenly discover that you find me irresistible. You’ve worked for me for years and yet, five seconds after arriving on the island, I’ve suddenly turned into the man of your dreams. Odd, wouldn’t you say?’

      To refute this sweeping, inaccurate observation would have left her wide open and vulnerable, so Rose remained silent, waiting for him to develop what he meant.

      ‘Particularly odd,’ Gabriel continued, ‘considering you’d just got yourself a boyfriend…’He thought of the way she had run out on him and his fiercely wounded male pride was like the sharp edge of a knife, goading him into accusations which her changing expression was making a nonsense of. He couldn’t help himself. He particularly couldn’t help himself when he thought about what’s-his-name and the possibility that she might, actually, be seeing him again, sleeping with him. Who was to say differently?

      ‘Now you swan in here, months after you’ve walked out on your job, with some story about being pregnant.’ His mouth twisted into a cynical sneer. ‘If you are, and I’m not even willing to admit to that, who’s to say that you weren’t already pregnant when you came with me on that trip? Who’s to say that your sudden, overwhelming need to hop in the sack with me wasn’t a ruse for you and your lover to con me out of money?’

      Rose’s shock showed in her white, disbelieving face, sufficient for Gabriel to feel a morsel of guilt at his casual shredding of her character.

      She made to stand but he was in front of her before she was halfway to her feet and she fell back into the chair, wincing away from his dark, oppressive anger as he leant over her, his arms on either side of the chair like steel bars.

      ‘Don’t even think about it!’ he grated. ‘Don’t even think that you can come in here and tell me that you’re pregnant with my child and then leave!’

      ‘And don’t you think that you can accuse me of being a gold-digger or of using you! That’s the most insulting thing anyone has ever told me! How dare you think that I had some kind of ulterior motive for sleeping with you? It says a lot about you, Gabriel Gessi, that you could have such a…vile opinion of another human being!’

      Gabriel shot to his feet and walked away, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He raked his fingers through his hair and swung round to look at her.

      ‘What can you expect?’ he muttered. ‘You’ve come in here with a bomb and detonated it at my desk.’

      ‘I’m sorry.’ An icy calm had settled over her. Yes, he would be in shock, but his extreme reaction was somehow easier to bear than if he had offered help or compassion or even money. She wasn’t even sure why she was so surprised and wounded at his raw accusations. Gabriel was filthy rich and he had the instinctively suspicious mind of someone who was filthy rich. And she could concede—just—that pregnancy was the fastest way to a man’s wallet. The hurtful part wasn’t his cold, detached approach to what she had said, it was that he had thought it in the first place, that he had allowed his flawed intellect to take precedence over what he must surely know about her by now.

      ‘I know you’re in a state of shock,’ she said tonelessly. ‘I debated whether I should come and tell you or not but in the end I felt you should know. And, before you leap in with any more accusations, let me tell you straight away that I’m not after your money. This wasn’t part of some elaborate plot to rip you off. I can’t go back in time and take back what happened between us on that island but I didn’t connive for it to happen.’ She risked a glance at him and felt a sharp stab of compassion. ‘And it’s yours, Gabriel. I haven’t seen Joe since I got back to England and, anyway, I never slept with him.’

      She suddenly felt desperately weary. The past ten days had been a struggle. In fact, the past two and a half months had been a struggle. She had returned to London, jobless, and had immediately found herself a decent enough temp job. But it was uninspiring and left her ample time to mourn what she had abandoned. She was tormented by the thought that she should have stayed, had the affair he had offered, waited to see what happened. She had salvaged her pride, saved herself the eventual let-down, but her bed was cold and lonely at night and her mind chattered ceaselessly with argument and counter-argument.

      She had also dropped her plans to go on her business course. Somehow she didn’t feel herself to be in a positive enough frame of mind.

      So she had drifted miserably from one day to the next until, ten days ago, when two bright blue lines on a home pregnancy testing kit had galvanised her out of her depressed torpor.

      Now here she was, having done the right thing, facing down a barrage of accusations. She gritted her teeth against the desire to cry.

      ‘Okay, let’s