Chapter Eight
‘I FEEL TERRIBLE, GAbrIEL. Do you feel terrible?’ Jennifer wasn’t looking at him.
She was sitting contentedly in a chair outside one of the many piazzas in the charming town they had decided to visit for the day.
She was happily working her way through a gelato with Gabriel right next to her, both of them facing out to people-watch while they chatted.
‘I can’t say I’m feeling particularly terrible at the moment.’
‘It’s the third day we’ve abandoned your mother to do our own thing.’
‘I prefer to think that it’s the third day she’s hustled us out of the house because she doesn’t want to get in the way of the lovebirds having a good time.’
They were lovebirds. In a manner of speaking.
That was how Jennifer felt, and if she occasionally had one or two qualms that she might just be getting in out of her depth, then she very quickly stifled those qualms. Really things were utterly straightforward.
They would continue with what they had, would wait for this fever to pass. In the meantime, they’d enjoy one another. Not a string attached in sight!
‘How else do we deal with this thing between us?’ he had murmured a couple of nights before, when they’d been lying in each other’s arms, spent and with the light of a silvery moon casting shadows over their bodies on the bed.
‘I’m happy, you’re happy, my mother is happy. All one big, happy family.’
Jennifer had been more than willing to go along with that conclusion. She was having fun. She’d always thought that she was someone who enjoyed life, but never like this.
When had she ever sat in a piazza, in a town perched on a hilltop where, from one of the many towers, you could see rolling vineyards, olive groves and fields that stretched towards a limitless horizon, drenched in sunshine?
She reached out her hand, felt for his and linked their fingers.
She sneaked a sideways glance at him. The sun had deepened the colour of his already rich, burnished skin tone. He was wearing a pale grey polo shirt with linen trousers and loafers, and he looked, as always, elegant, understated and very, very expensive.
‘Will you miss being here?’ she asked idly.
‘Tuscany?’
‘I mean being here and doing nothing. You’ve barely worked at all in the past few days.’
Her voice was lazy and light. Gabriel looked at her averted profile, at her face raised to the sun, her eyes concealed behind the sunglasses she was wearing. She was in a loose, swishy skirt, a tight vest and a baseball cap, and she’d never looked sexier.
He frowned. Was that true? He’d done a bit of work here and there, but in truth, work had taken a back seat to sex. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. Or maybe he just wasn’t sure he understood it.
‘How could I?’ he drawled. ‘When we’re supposed to be loved up? How’s it going to look if I say good morning and then disappear to put in a full day’s work? I would have a nagging wife-to-be to contend with, and what man wants that? Especially when rings aren’t even on fingers?’
‘You’re confusing me with someone else, Gabriel. I’m not the sort of woman who nags.’
‘How do you know until you’ve been married and the guy you thought was going to be there 24-7 spends half his time in an office sitting behind a desk in front of a computer?’
It was dawning on him that, contrary to every ingrained learned behaviour, he had been sleeping with her.
Not just having sex but sleeping. She’d occupied his bed for the past few nights.
He’d enjoyed reaching out and feeling her naked body next to his, had enjoyed waking before her and staring at her for a couple of seconds before padding out to make them both a cup of coffee.
She was as casual as he could have possibly hoped for, but even so…thinking about slow steps to a domesticity he was never going to embrace set his teeth on edge and made him remember just what was going on here.
An arrangement with the now added bonus of benefits thrown in. Hearts were never going to be involved. He had no heart to engage. Hurt and love were too entwined for him to trust, and without trust, love could never exist.
And her heart? Not his for the taking, and not one he would ever want to capture.
Hers was a heart destined for a normal guy.
He surfaced from unsettling thoughts to find that she had twisted to look at him.
There was a smudge of chocolate ice cream in the corner of her mouth. He instinctively reached for the paper serviette on the table in front of them and swiped it away. Something swelled inside him at his own unconscious, automatic gesture, and he frowned.
Her pink tongue flicked out, sexy and tantalising, and completed the job.
He was quietly pleased that his instinctive reaction to that glimpse of tongue was to think about sex. There were no disturbing thoughts to deal with when it came to straightforward sex, because that was right in his comfort zone.
He couldn’t read the expression in her eyes behind the sunglasses, but he could feel the quiet seriousness in her voice when she spoke.
‘I guess,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘that living in the office, maybe on a camp bed, while the nagging wife waits behind the scenes is your take on marriage.’ She smiled wryly.
‘Poor woman, if that’s your attitude before the whole deal kicks off.
Besides, Gabriel, I just don’t understand.
Why don’t you give yourself a chance at taking a risk when it comes to finding a partner? ’
‘We’ve talked about this.’
‘So we have, but look at it from my point of view. We’re here, and we’re not even in a proper relationship, yet you’ve managed to stay away from the computer for…hours on end!’
‘Variety is the spice of life,’ Gabriel purred silkily. ‘It’s your fault for being so tempting.’
‘Tempting or maybe just different, if variety is the spice of life,’ Jennifer quipped, and he remained silent for a few seconds.
‘I don’t feel hemmed in by you,’ Gabriel eventually said. ‘You know me, and you know my ground rules, which is why I wanted you to be the one to help me out. Why I chose you. And now that we’re sleeping together, I still don’t feel hemmed in by you.’
‘So it’s possible, then…’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘If you can feel free with me and not in danger of being swamped by someone who wants to cling to you like superglue, then you can feel like that about someone else. And if you throw love and affection into the mix—well, there you have it…’
‘There I have what?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t understand.’
‘Life’s not so easy, Jen. Maybe for you. Not for me. You lost your father when you were young, but your memories of what a healthy relationship with both your parents looks like are still intact.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘When I was thirteen, I left home.’
‘What?’ She turned to him, eyes wide with shock, because this was the first she was hearing anything of this.
Their conversation had been lazy and meandering, touching on the personal without dwelling on it. Now she sat up straight and was paying attention.
How did she not know this about him? For no reason, she was inexplicably hurt, even though common sense told her that Gabriel was a very private man, that there would probably be lots of things she didn’t know about him. Yet being here had fostered a closeness between them that made her think…
Made her think what?
She licked her lips and tried to harness her thoughts, which kept evaporating like wisps of smoke when she tried to catch them.
‘You left home?’ She blinked and slowly removed her sunglasses so that now they were staring at one another.
She was no longer aware of the busy piazza, of the people bustling all around them…
laughing and talking in loud, urgent voices.
The vibrant music from the street musician playing close to the busy, colourful market stalls that lined one side of the piazza faded away.
‘You left home to do what?’ she asked, bewildered. ‘A school trip? I’m not following you.’
‘I thought it might be a good idea to go see what my father was up to.’
The words hung in the air between them, sucking the oxygen out and leaving a breathless, bated, electrifying silence.
Gabriel looked away from those curious, intelligent, penetrating blue eyes.
He wasn’t sure why he had said what he had. It was something he’d never discussed with anyone. That had been a moment in time best forgotten, but now that he had opened up, he didn’t regret it.
He stared out, waiting for the inevitable barrage of questions and wondering whether he would instantly be propelled into resentment.
‘Well?’ he prodded when nothing was forthcoming.
‘Well, what?’
‘You sounded shocked by what I said. Were you?’
‘I was,’ she admitted. ‘But I’m not going to pry and be nosy, because I guess you’ll probably end up somehow resenting the fact that you shared anything at all.
You’re private, and you’re proud, and those are two big reasons why you’ll end up somehow blaming me because you might have confessed to something you’d rather have kept to yourself. ’
‘Since when did you turn into an amateur psychiatrist?’ he asked, but there was fond amusement in his voice, and she smiled.
‘Since I teach teenagers who have a tendency to do their utmost to push the envelope just to see how far they can go. Sometimes takes a little forethought to steer them back on the right track.’
‘And is that what you’re doing? Steering me in the direction you want me to go?’
This time, she did look at him seriously.
‘No. I was being honest. Of course I’m curious, but it’s up to you if you want to talk about whatever…happened back then and not up to me to try and force you.’