Chapter Two #2
Except, she thought now, was she? Really?
‘I should be heading back,’ she said abruptly.
‘Why?’ he asked, suddenly snapping out of his introspection.
‘Because I have lots of things to do.’
‘Interesting. Such as what?’
‘Such as recovering from my date with Hal.’ She smiled, keen to get away from the suddenly alien place in which she had found herself, a place where her relationship with Gabriel had taken on a different and confusing dimension.
‘Yes, I understand that that might have been a disturbing experience. But I thought you said that he was one of the smartest guys you’d ever met?’
Jennifer laughed and followed suit as Gabriel stood up, nodding to a passing server and tapping his phone to pay without bothering to look at the bill.
He really was stupidly sexy, she absently thought. Tall, dark and handsome to the ultimate degree. No wonder women flung themselves at him.
How on earth he could ever have imagined his mother would have bought into the fiction that they were an item was a mystery. She just wasn’t his type physically, and men always went for a type.
‘Here’s why it wouldn’t have worked anyway,’ Jennifer mused aloud as they headed back towards his car.
‘Are we off the topic of the caveman?’
Jennifer ignored the question and slipped into the passenger seat, waiting until he slammed the door after her. When he was behind the wheel, she turned to him as she fastened the seat belt.
‘Look at the kind of women you go out with, Gabriel.’
‘Rapid change of topic. Okay. Let’s see where you’re going with this.’
‘I mean, you date tiny little blonde things who think you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.’
‘Now I’m hurt.’ But he was grinning as he started the engine and began pulling away. ‘You mean you don’t think I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread?’
‘So your mother,’ Jennifer continued, again ignoring his interruption, ‘would never in a million years fall for some tall tale about the two of us…what? Suddenly discovering that we’re a match made in Heaven?’
‘Why not? People believe what they want to believe. And honestly, in many ways, we are a match made in Heaven.’
Except, Jennifer suddenly thought, for those bits of you I know nothing about…those bits of you I’ve only just glimpsed…except for the fact that I believe in love and marriage, and you don’t…
‘I can’t say Mum has ever approved of any of my girlfriends,’ Gabriel admitted as he began driving off.
‘That’s because you only give them five minutes before you get bored and move on to newer models. How could she ever actually get to know any of them in any depth? Where are we going, by the way? Are you dropping me home?’
‘Back to mine. I bought you a present.’
‘Will your mother be up?’
‘Doubtful.’
‘What present? You can give it to me another time, can’t you? How long will you be staying?’
‘Long enough, and I could, but I want more time to try and persuade you to see my point of view and climb on board with my plan.’
‘That’s never going to happen, Gabriel.’
‘I dislike the word never. And speaking of types, why do you think that I’m only capable of going for one particular type of woman?’
‘I can’t recall ever seeing you with any woman who wasn’t small and blonde and adoring.’
With a start, Jennifer realised that despite their long, long friendship—a friendship that had covered so many things, a friendship filled with laughter, heated debates and downright teeth-clenching arguments—despite all of that, this was the very first time they were touching on a subject that they had both mutually shied away from.
They had never seriously discussed each other’s love lives in any depth.
‘I like women to be soothing additions to my life,’ Gabriel explained now. ‘I’m not unusual in that. A lot of men in high-pressure jobs can’t face a shrew on the home front.’
‘That a very polarised view. Why does the opposite of an undemanding plastic doll have to be a nagging shrew riding on a broomstick? Can I say that I’m disappointed in you?
’ Her voice was light, but somewhere inside she really was a little disappointed.
Did he really mean that? ‘What about someone who challenges you intellectually?’
‘I deal with enough intellectual challenges on a daily basis. Besides, if I want a woman to intellectually challenge me, I always have you.’
‘That’s another reason your mother would burst out laughing if we were to produce this piece of fiction out of thin air. She knows you like docile women, and we argue all the time.’
‘Not all the time, and I wouldn’t say we ever really argue.’
‘You always have a point of view on the guys I go out with.’ Jennifer sniffed. ‘And it’s hardly ever flattering.’ But those weren’t arguments. He teased her just like she teased him, and they always kept it superficial.
Until now.
They were approaching Gabriel’s home, which was set amid countless acres of gently undulating open land with spectacular views of the South Downs.
Jennifer never failed to be impressed by the size and elegance of the estate every single time she approached the family mansion along a long, tree-lined drive bordered with towering ancient oak trees and open fields.
It revealed itself slowly.
In the fading summer light, the vast, stately Georgian manor house was always so impressive with its honey-coloured stone and the banks and banks of sash windows.
Creeping ivy clad the south-facing walls, and the entrance was through a porticoed, sheltered outer area where wellies and brollies were dumped on wet, cold days.
Behind the house there were formal gardens and an orchard and various stables, once used but not anymore.
The car swung round the courtyard, and he stopped just by the fountain.
‘Gabriel, how will I get back to my house? I mean, I could walk…’
She shared a small three-bedroom bungalow on the outskirts of the town. It was her family home, and she still lived there with her mother while she saved for a deposit on a place of her own.
‘I have no idea why you won’t let me buy you somewhere to live, Jen.’
This was a familiar bone of contention between them.
‘You know why.’
‘Remember the saying that pride comes before a fall?’ Gabriel levered himself out of the car and swung round to open the passenger door before she could get to it.
‘There’s another way to consider what we discussed at the restaurant,’ he said in a thoughtful undertone, standing close to her so that she was obliged to stare up at him.
Jennifer could breathe him in. The backdrop of his family home, silhouetted against the open land like a proud, impressive matriarch, framed him, and he looked truly like the lord of the manor.
She blinked away the oddest feeling that a part of her was seeing him for the very first time.
‘Really?’ She raised her eyebrows and folded her arms.
‘Really.’ He turned away and began moving towards the door, fishing in his pocket for the solid front door key but leaning into her alongside him so that his voice remained low and husky and persuasive.
‘You could look at it as a job, of sorts.’
Jennifer stopped dead in her tracks and stared at him.
‘A job? You mean a sort of holiday job because I have the summer off from teaching? Somewhat like extra out-of-school tuition for one of my pupils, but with slightly different ground rules?’
‘I’m ignoring the sarcasm. You can frame it any way you like, Jen, but think about it for a minute.
For the sake of a couple of months of doing what I know would really help my mother emerge from the doldrums that threaten to consume her, you would be paid.
Like any job. Magnificently. You would be able to buy yourself the house you’ve been saving to buy for the past fifty years. ’
‘That’s really coming at it from a different angle.’
‘Damn it, Jennifer!’
Their eyes collided, fathomless black clashing with cornflower blue. Jennifer shivered, because there was nothing amused or light-hearted or indulgent in his dark, angry, frustrated gaze.
‘You’re not listening to me,’ he grated. ‘You’ve decided to occupy the moral high ground. Believe me, I wish I could think of some other solution to help my mother. But when she cried on the phone to me, it was the first time I’d ever heard her cry.’
‘Gabriel…’
‘No! Just listen to me for a couple of minutes, Jennifer, because this is bigger than you perhaps think.’ He shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair.
Then he stared down at her narrowly. ‘After my mother called, depressed and tearful, I contacted her consultant. He said that stress, at this stage of her recuperation, is the one unknown that can send her hurtling in the wrong direction.’
‘What do you mean, hurtling in the wrong direction?’
‘Another and more significant stroke. Something from which she might never fully recover. So, yes, I get that I’ve thrown you a curve ball, but you need to really think about it.’
‘Lying always ends up being so complicated.’
‘You’ve had much experience of this sort of thing before?’
‘No, but…’
‘Right. You haven’t. You teach, and for you there is clear blue water between what you consider right and what you consider wrong, except there are times where there’s no such thing as clear blue water.’
Jennifer turned away and began walking towards the front door, this time confused and thoughtful.
Was she that inflexible? She liked to think of herself as liberal and open-minded, but somehow he had made her seem rigid in her thinking.
How could he understand those blurry feelings inside her?
He had no idea how rooted she was in the purity of love.
For him, this was something she could do, something as a friend and as someone who cared deeply for his mother, so why wouldn’t she do it?
Deep down she wondered if that was what he really thought of her. As someone who didn’t quite know how to bend with the wind. Was that who she was? Someone in pursuit of the ideal to the point where her vision was blinkered? She was uncomfortable with that thought.