Chapter Nine #3
In that moment, looking into her honest, beautiful, intelligent blue eyes, Gabriel at last understood the source of that edginess he’d been feeling recently, an edginess that had been there from the first moment he’d touched her.
Or maybe even before. Certainly it had been there when Father Giovanni had chatted to them about marriage and the importance of overcoming the pitfalls.
It was the sickening discomfort that sprang from fear. Gabriel hadn’t recognised its provenance because fear was an emotion that largely didn’t generally register on his radar.
He’d felt fear, the fear of temptation. He’d thought about her, about her being by his side and never leaving it. He’d been terrified because the thought had stirred something deep inside him, something that resembled hope.
Hope for what? Love? Hope that the stupid fantasies accompanying love might be true for him? That the stories people told about love being the thing money could never buy might actually work? Hope in what the priest had said, with all that sincerity and earnest conviction?
Not for him, he thought fiercely as he continued to drown in her questioning, earnest blue eyes. Never for him.
Love meant trust—and trust, when it was broken, resulted in the sort of pain he’d felt once and never intended to feel again.
And then there was her heart, pure and open. When that got broken, it would never be pieced together again. She would be like him, locked away in an ivory tower with walls too high for anyone to penetrate.
He had no intention of being the man who ended up breaking her heart.
Inside himself, though, something was splintering, because he knew he had to turn away from her. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut for a couple of seconds, putting a stop to the anguish that threatened to tear him apart.
She’d said she loved him, but she would recover in due course and find someone she deserved.
She would thank him when the hurt had passed and her pride had been put back together again. If he were to encourage the illusion that they could actually make things work between them…when it failed, what they had would never recover.
The mere thought that he had flirted with the notion of it at all made his jaw clench, because it was a weakness he had never anticipated having to deal with.
‘Now,’ he heard her say, ‘it’s my turn to ask what’s going through your head.’
‘You think you love me, Jen,’ he rasped unsteadily, ‘but you don’t.
We’re here…and the strangeness, the scenery…
and then that blessing…it’s all made you think that there’s more to this than what there actually is.
’ He thought about his own weakness, the way he’d slipped so easily into the habit of sharing a bed with her, putting her ahead of work—flirting with the impossible.
Steel solidified inside him as he automatically recoiled at his own susceptibility.
‘As for me? I’ve told you that I’m not built for what you’re looking for, and it was naive of you to ever think that somehow anything would have changed on that front.
Jen, you know more about me than anyone else.
You should understand that the lessons I’ve learnt from my parents’ divorce, from the cynicism of my father using my mother for money, from the way I was firmly turned away when I was idiotic enough to think there might be feelings for me, his own child, there…
well, all of that is the foundation that has made me who I am. ’
Jennifer sucked in a shaky breath.
Her nakedness made her feel vulnerable and humiliated and foolish. Hope, which had felt so solid such a short time ago, had evaporated as quickly as dew on a hot summer’s morning.
She began pulling away and then froze when he stayed her with fierce desperation.
‘I get the message,’ she mumbled.
‘I’ve hurt you.’
‘You’ve been honest, and I can only be thankful for that. I… I don’t know what got into me.’
‘You were overwhelmed by everything out here. The icing on the cake was Father Giovanni and his well--intentioned sermon on love and marriage.’
Jennifer knew that he was throwing her a lifeline.
She could pretend that yes, it had all been an inconvenient rush of blood to the head.
Of course she didn’t love him! Of course she hadn’t given her heart to him!
She’d just found herself swept away in the moment, probably because of that blessing, which was something neither of them had counted on.
After all, hadn’t things been ticking along quite nicely before Father Giovanni had appeared on the scene?
‘Maybe,’ she said.
‘There’s no maybe about it.’
‘You’re right,’ she said quietly. ‘There’s no maybe about it. I love you, Gabriel, and there’s no point pretending that I don’t, that this is just some sort of holiday romance that’ll go away once reality kicks in.’
‘You said…’
‘I know what I said.’ She flung her hands up in frustration and impatience.
‘I know I told you that you were the last man I would ever be interested in settling down with. I know your idea of a relationship is something that lasts ten seconds before you get bored and start looking at your watch because you know it’s time to move on. ’
‘That’s hardly fair.’
‘That’s one hundred percent fair!’ She leapt from the bed, dragging the sheet off to sketchily cover herself, suddenly livid with him and with herself.
She didn’t care that she was still flushed from making love.
She stood by the side of the bed, clumsily clutching the sheet, her body leaning belligerently towards him, her long, dark hair falling around her shoulders in an unruly tangle. Her blue eyes were narrowed with anger.
‘Don’t do that,’ Gabriel muttered in a harsh, shaky growl.
‘Do what? Tell you how I feel? Speak my mind? I’m not a puppet you can control! I don’t have to say what you want to hear just because you don’t enjoy feeling uncomfortable!’
‘I know you’re not a puppet, Jen!’ Gabriel bellowed back with equally frustrated ferocity.
He rolled out of the bed to stand in front of her, his body language as combatant as hers but with no sheet covering his nakedness.
‘Since when,’ he imparted with an impatient slash of his hand, ‘have you ever tiptoed around me?’
‘Never! And that’s why I’m not tiptoeing now, either! You’re welcome to find yourself some silly little woman who doesn’t stand up to you and is willing to do as they’re told!’
‘It’s not about that,’ Gabriel muttered in a driven undertone.
‘You’re just scared to get involved with anyone. You’re scared that you might end up getting hurt, but what’s life about if you never take chances?’
‘This is an impossible conversation!’
But he didn’t turn away. His eyes drifted down from the hectic flush of her cheeks, the angry flare in her eyes, to all those places the sheet was barely covering.
‘Don’t you dare!’ she snapped.
‘Dare what?’ He raked his fingers through his hair and glared at her.
‘Look at me!’
‘You mean the way you’re looking at me?’
Jennifer felt her breath hitch in her throat. He was just so beautiful, so unashamedly masculine and so outrageously turned on. His proud erection felt like a personal challenge, throwing her into turmoil and just daring her to touch.
Had she been looking at him?
Yes. It was a shameful admission. How could she resist? She breathed quickly, nostrils flaring as she tried to peel her eyes away from him and yank her disobedient thoughts back under control.
‘You stand there telling me all this,’ he said shakily, ‘and what I want to do is…’
Jennifer opened her mouth to tell him in no uncertain terms that the last thing she wanted was for him to touch her. Then he touched her, and every bone in her body melted.
‘I’m not interested,’ she moaned, reaching to shamelessly wind her arms around his neck and feeling the sheet slither to the ground to pool at her feet.
The hard push of his length against her was irresistible.
She reached down to grip it in her hands, to caress it the way she knew he loved, her rhythm firm and slow and in time with the throb of his response.
‘Jennifer…’
‘One last time,’ she whispered. ‘And then…’
‘And then what?’
‘We part company. The next time you see me, the person who loved you will be gone forever.’