Chapter Eight #3
Yes, they had decided to continue what had been started. Why not? It made sense to let the inevitable parting of ways happen without pre-empting it, but with a backdrop of reality, she wondered now how long their affair, such as it was, would survive.
When she thought about life post-Gabriel, something inside her hollowed out. Then she couldn’t quite see ever again enjoying the easy, innocent friendship they had once had.
In fact, when she thought about life post-Gabriel, she couldn’t see anything at all.
‘Returning to England is going to be weird,’ she now said abruptly, and she felt his dark eyes rest briefly on her averted profile.
‘Why?’
‘Well, this is a bubble, isn’t it? Us? Here? Falling asleep in the same bed? Waking up in the same bed? Work, for you, on the back burner so we’re spending all this time together?’
She was edgy and discontented inside. She felt him reach for her hand and idly link his fingers through hers. Her heart constricted when she saw their entwined fingers, his so much darker than hers.
She had a falling, swooping sensation and then a slow trickle of dawning realisations that fell into place.
All this time going on dates with other men, looking for the right guy to come along, the perfect match with whom she would spend the rest of her life. All those high-minded principles and expectations protecting her from a man like Gabriel. From Gabriel.
Her mouth went dry and her heart began to beat faster, faster and faster until she could feel a steady throb in her temples.
He was saying something, but there was a roar in her ears, and she was barely taking in what he was saying.
She was too busy realising that the reason love had eluded her was because it had always been there, hiding from her in plain sight.
She loved Gabriel. She was in love with Gabriel. He’d been her friend and then, bit by bit, had become so much more than that. He had become the love of her life, and that was the reason every man she’d ever gone out with had somehow felt not quite right.
Gabriel had stolen her heart. Now, wrapped up in this charade, she had finally been forced to confront that reality.
What happened next?
‘Are you listening to a word I’m saying?’
‘Huh?’ Jennifer blinked and looked at him, but now she saw him in a different light. This was the man she loved. She could close her eyes and know every part of his dear, beautiful face as well as she knew her own.
And now his body, the body she had traced with her mouth and her hands, tasting and loving it.
‘I said,’ he repeated slowly but with indulgence and amusement in his voice, ‘that in a way, that’s a good thing.’
‘What are you talking about?’
He laughed. ‘Tell me you didn’t nod off while I was talking. I think if you did, then my ego might never recover.’
Jennifer heard the familiar light teasing in his voice, and it hit her hard just how much more she wanted from him than that.
‘You have an ego, Gabriel? Shocking.’ She fell in with the familiar relationship they’d always had, even now when everything had changed, but her heart continued to beat like a sledgehammer inside her as she adjusted to a realisation she wished she’d never had.
‘When I always thought you were such a modest guy.’
‘Reality,’ he explained. ‘Reality is going back to my work schedule and you back to yours. It’s going to put a toll on this, and it’ll be natural when things begin unravelling until it fizzles out and we’re left where we started.’
‘It can never really be where it started, though, can it?’
‘Is this a general statement or something that’s leading up to an in-depth discussion of something that’s not worth discussing?’
‘What do you mean, something that’s not worth discussing?’
‘I suppose,’ he said slowly but honestly, ‘we’re committed to going with the flow, and I won’t lie when I say that I like where we are at the moment.
What’s the point in speculating about what happens when all this is over?
And trying to predict how we’ll feel or what we’ll feel?
When we get back, I intend to try and spend more time with my mother.
I’ll be seeing you more often than I normally would.
We can go house-hunting together and live in the moment. ’
‘What?’ For a second her mind went completely blank. Then she got excited about searching for a house to share with this glorious man. What would a life to share look like?
For a fleeting second, reality and fantasy merged, and she was swept away on a tide of pure joy.
‘What on earth are you talking about, Gabriel? What house?’
‘Don’t panic,’ he said wryly. ‘I haven’t suddenly decided to become domesticated. Don’t forget I’m paying you for what you’re doing here.’
Jennifer blinked at him and looked away.
‘Actually, I had forgotten.’
‘Well, it’s time to start remembering. I would have given you a lot more, but you’ll certainly have enough to put down a very healthy deposit on the house of your dreams—which, incidentally, is where, exactly?’
‘Gabriel, it doesn’t feel right to pay me now that we’re…we’re…’
‘Why not?’ He frowned and didn’t bother to pretend to misunderstand.
Jennifer knew in that moment that for him, nothing had changed. Sex was sex. It didn’t leach into other areas of his life, and it certainly wasn’t suddenly tied up in tormenting realisations about love and desires and yearnings for more than was on the table.
‘Feels weird,’ she said limply.
‘Won’t feel weird when we’re looking at houses.’
‘Won’t you be bored doing that?’ Jennifer asked, giving up on trying to get her garbled message across. ‘Have you ever actually been house-hunting before?’
‘No, now that you mention it.’ He glanced across at her. ‘When I want a house somewhere, I instruct my executive assistant to do all the necessary groundwork. I just give my approval to one when I’m presented with the shortlist, and after that, the interior designers take over.’
Jennifer burst out laughing. ‘Honestly, you really don’t live in the real world.’