Boardrooms of Power. Heidi Betts

him that pregnancy wasn’t an illness, that it was a perfectly natural condition and putting her feet up would only make her put on too much weight.

      However, he was reassured that she had postponed the business course, which would have been sheer lunacy.

      Apart from the marriage issue, which appeared to be going nowhere fast, things seemed to be progressing nicely and privately Gabriel had been working on a plan to buy them a house. He would let her choose it. Would let her fall in love with it. And then, maybe, he could entice her into doing what he realised he wanted more and more.

      Now this.

      Had he heard a man’s voice in the background? It occurred to him that she had seemed a bit breathless down the phone.

      It was nine-thirty at night! Why would she be breathless? Gabriel, on the way to the airport, tapped on the partition separating him from his driver and gave him immediate instructions to turn around.

      He wasn’t turning around to check up on her, he told himself. Naturally there was no man in the house! Why should there be? She was six months pregnant with his child! And over the months he had come to appreciate that she was not deceptive by nature. She could no more lie to him than she could flap her arms and fly to the moon.

      On the other hand, it wasn’t as though they were married, was it? She had maintained her freedom even if he was convinced that she had no intention of using it. Damn it, they were still making love! He had done his homework. Read the pregnancy books. Was convinced that sex in the latter stages of pregnancy was absolutely fine, provided there were no contra-indications.

      For a few seconds, Gabriel’s mind drifted to the eminently pleasing recollection of their passionate love-making. He wasn’t ashamed of admitting that her ripe body was a massive turn-on for him. Her breasts were now more than a generous handful and her nipples had swelled and darkened and seemed to have become ultra-sensitive, judging from the way she squirmed whenever he licked their stiffened peaks.

      He shifted as his body responded swiftly and inevitably to the mental pictures in his head and he told the driver, in a clipped voice, to hurry.

      If she sounded breathless, he decided, then he had to check it out. Purely on health grounds. His deal halfway across the world would just have to wait. He phoned his secretary, utterly unapologetic about disturbing whatever she happened to be doing, and told her to cancel all arrangements for him for the next couple of days. Thrown in at the deep end, she had certainly smartened up her act over the months. He still had to spell certain things out for her and she would never attain the level of responsibility that Rose had, but she would know what to do in this event.

      That dealt with, Gabriel stared through the window as the car tackled London on a dark, dank, wintry Thursday night.

      His thoughts were all over the place. Right there and then he made the decision that he would not leave her place until he had persuaded her to move in with him. Okay, she hadn’t yet agreed to marriage, despite his reasonable approach, an approach that made sense from whichever angle it was viewed, but they would live together. Not ideal, but that way he could keep an eye on her.

      The journey took thirty-five torturous minutes and, as the chauffeur-driven Jaguar pulled up to the kerb outside her house, Gabriel was witness to the one thing he didn’t want to see.

      The male voice in the background hadn’t been a figment of his over-active imagination after all. It had been all too real and Gabriel didn’t need to look very hard to know the identity of the mystery guest. Who else could it be but the ex-boyfriend?

      He sat in silence for a few seconds, clenching and unclenching his fist, watching the man sling on his coat even as he walked down the road away from the Jaguar, reminding himself that he had no control, ultimately, over what she chose to do with her life.

      He was overcome with a feeling of failure, an emptiness that was quite unlike how he was used to feeling.

      He rubbed his eyes with his thumbs, clearing his head, trying to silence the roar in there, then he told his driver that he could head back.

      ‘I’ll make my own way home,’ Gabriel said tersely, pushing open the car door. Jealousy was threatening to overcome every shred of self-control he possessed. He made it to her front door before she even had time to hit the staircase.

      Rose heard the banging and immediately assumed that Joe had left something behind.

      She wasn’t prepared to find Gabriel standing outside her door. Not that it wasn’t a wonderful surprise. It was. Because she had thought that he would be at Heathrow, waiting for his plane, although in truth her mind wasn’t as sharp as it had been before she became pregnant. She smiled and waited for his responding smile but none was forthcoming. Instead he stepped wordlessly into the hall and turned around to face her.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ Rose asked, hesitating at the expression on his face. ‘I thought you were on your way to Hong Kong…’

      ‘It would seem that there was a change of plan.’ His instinct was to lay into her with questions about what the hell that man was doing in her house, but he restrained himself. Over the past few months, he had discovered a reservoir of patience he had never known existed in him and he called upon it now. Arguing would be no good for her in her condition and, besides, it occurred to him, he seldom won.

      A change of plan and so he’d rushed over to her house. Rose tried not to feel flattered but she was. The man who had never actively pursued any woman was pursuing her now and it took all her strength to remind herself of the reason for that. The baby. Had it not been for the baby, she would no longer have been a part of his life. He hadn’t bothered to search her out when he had returned from the island and found that she had left his company, after all. And his marriage proposal. That, too, was all about the baby and she respected him for his alacrity in accepting responsibility, but he was no closer to seeing now than he had been months ago that a loveless union was worse than no union at all and he didn’t love her. He was willing to take care of her because she would be the mother of his child and he was, as he had pointed out in various ways, an Italian traditionalist through and through. But not once had he mentioned love.

      Rose could see all the advantages in marrying him. He would be a generous husband and a fantastic father, but she knew him well. Playing the dutiful husband to a woman he didn’t love would grind him down and, over time, inevitably, his eyes would begin to wander. And, looking the way he did, it would be all too easy for temptation to meet opportunity.

      There was no such thing as guaranteed fidelity within a marriage but, as far as Rose was concerned, most marriages at least started out with the expectation. For her, it would be like waiting for an axe to fall and there was no way she was going to do that.

      But it was hard. When they made love, the feeling of total completeness was as uplifting as it was painful.

      ‘What was the change of plan?’ Rose asked, leading him towards the sitting room. Too much standing about tired her out these days.

      Normally, he would sit next to her on the squashy sofa, but this time he settled for the chair by the fire.

      ‘We need to regulate this situation,’ Gabriel said abruptly. He had waited for her to raise the subject of the man leaving the house, but she hadn’t. She obviously thought that they would have missed each other by a few minutes and he was damned if he was going to ask questions. He felt sick with rage and jealousy.

      ‘Regulate…?’ Rose was baffled by the statement. She yawned and was startled when he asked her, rather coldly, if she would mind staying up so that she could listen to what he had to say.

      ‘What’s the matter?’ Rose asked, suddenly sitting up. ‘What’s wrong? Is it work?’

      ‘Work couldn’t be better,’ Gabriel said icily. ‘And if I appear to be in a bad mood it’s because I am angry with myself for allowing this situation to go as far as it has done. It is no longer satisfactory for us to be living apart. In three months time you will give birth to our child and I don’t intend to remain an occasional visitor to your house.’